Nah, the Navy part is correct. The Airforce part too (mostly).
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What Germany did in WWII Military and Technology wise is Incredible
- Thread starter FullMetalx117
- Start date
Nah, the Navy part is correct. The Airforce part too (mostly).
Nikodemos
Member
I'd say equal parts bravery, desperation and Commissar-inspired fear. Remember that 'sabotage' order concerning tank crews?
dragonelite
Member
That series was a real eye opener and that ww1 didn't really had a bad guy or a moral cause.
It's was a real free for all.
Reading through A Bridge Too Far helped clarify for me the enormous degree to which WWII was a war premised mostly on enormous tactical and strategic errors being made by everybody involved constantly, due to the corrosive influence of fascism on Germany's ability to reason on the one hand, and the sheer unwillingness of the Allied powers to accept the situation they were in and respond appropriately on the other.
The moral framing of WWII which we are all familiar with belies the enormous resistance people exhibited towards actually going to war in defense of those morals. The Phony War was entirely predicated on just that failing, which ultimately means that the entirety of the war was, since a concerted French and English effort to actually live up to the Polish treaties would probably have ended the war before it begins
All this is to say that it is probably an error to look at the German successes in the early stages of the war and attempt to back out some kind of technological advantage.
The moral framing of WWII which we are all familiar with belies the enormous resistance people exhibited towards actually going to war in defense of those morals. The Phony War was entirely predicated on just that failing, which ultimately means that the entirety of the war was, since a concerted French and English effort to actually live up to the Polish treaties would probably have ended the war before it begins
All this is to say that it is probably an error to look at the German successes in the early stages of the war and attempt to back out some kind of technological advantage.
ClosingADoor
Member
Imagine how quickly things would have been over had France and the UK reacted to the remilitarization of the Rhineland with some force in '36.
ChuChuRocket
Member
Dont forget the MG42 aka "Hitlersäge" / "Hitlerhacksaw"
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1800/1*vfc5tfKi-PMsxmwVuCZEqw.jpeg
Business
Member
Yeah I thought you got confused.
You get it wrong again regarding engine life. Engines didn't fail after 20h, they needed maintenance every 20h and replacement after 200h.
As for the impact of the 262 in the war it was certainly a case of too little too late, I just pointed out the P80 was not its USAF counterpart, as you suggest, because it's an aircraft that didn't even participate in WWII.
You are trying to dismiss the technological achievement the 262 was with unreliability claims that are factually false and/or blatantly exagerated. Then you use these to justify the US or the UK could have matched the aircraft specs and deployment date if they wished to, but they choose not to striving for superior reliability.
"This is not a thread discussing the massive crime on humanity Germany is responsible for"
It's literally the first sentence in this thread.
I for example think the Autobahn was a pretty good thing to be built. Hitler was even in my hometown of Unterhaching for the ground-breaking ceremony of today's A8.
I guess in your book I'm a raging Nazi now since I like and use that Autobahn almost daily.
If you can't handle a topic and diversify, stay out of it.
Nikodemos
Member
People constantly bring up the Me 262, but the He 162 Spatz was a better plane. Admittedly, it was a worse bomber destroyer, due to weaker armament (2x 20 mm MG151/20 OR 2x 30 mm MK108 instead of 4x 30 mm MK108). Also, it suffered from insufficient testing (had some teething problems and fresh-design flaws), plus it needed relatively experienced pilots (which Germany had no more by 1944).
However, Alied pilots who flew it liked it considerably more than the 262. Lighter under controls, shorter take-off and landing.
Interestingly, a British test pilot who managed to convince a Luftwaffe crew to fuel up and prep an Me 163 (the ground crews were under orders not to allow pilots in them due to the many safety hazards) stated that, of all 5 different tail-less designs he had flown, the Komet was the only one he considered actually flyable.
However, Alied pilots who flew it liked it considerably more than the 262. Lighter under controls, shorter take-off and landing.
Interestingly, a British test pilot who managed to convince a Luftwaffe crew to fuel up and prep an Me 163 (the ground crews were under orders not to allow pilots in them due to the many safety hazards) stated that, of all 5 different tail-less designs he had flown, the Komet was the only one he considered actually flyable.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Some stuff was technologically impressive, but they were so incompetent at the logistics side of things that it hardly mattered. Pilot fatigue, retooling issues, all of the really wacky science shit really (other than rockets), literally EVERTHING about the Tiger...
And yeah, with the exception of rockets and jets, the Allies tech was overall more impressive.
And yeah, with the exception of rockets and jets, the Allies tech was overall more impressive.
Nikodemos
Member
Sub-wise the Allies were behind the Axis.
Although it bears mention that, due to underfunding, most KM subs were still ancient Type VII and IX (with only modest improvements ex. the deletion of deck guns and addition of schnorkels/radar).
Same with the IJN: despite having that ultrafast light sub, most IJN boats were still late-30s designs.
You clearly need more of a history lesson and also better perspective. No one's glorifying their atrocities or attempting to normalize them, merely discussing the advances they made.
And I am sure this is mostly those in the US, but the complete glossing over of the extreme cost and burden Russia shouldered during WWII needs to go away. US helped greatly with the lend-lease program, but by the time the 2nd front in France was opened and they "wiped the floor" on the western German front (Britain and Canadian forces say hi), the Russians were already pushing Germany back and had reclaimed essentially all the ground they had lost from operation Barbarossa and had the Germans on the run.
Russia withstood the full brunt of the wehrmacht (4 million German troops complete with armor, air support, artillery and vehicles just at the start of operation Barbarossa) and not only survived, but turned the tide of the war in Europe, well before significant direct US intervention. Numbers vary, but rough estimates have 25 million Russians dying as a result of world war II. Know how many Americans died? 500,000 ...US aid was crucial to the success of the war, no doubt there, but the US did not single handily defeat Nazism nor did they carry near the burden Russia did.
EDIT: Should also not be glossed over how the British essentially combated Nazi German for an entire year on their own and completely frustrated Hitler with their persistence. They had no direct assistance until Germany decided to invade Russia. France had been knocked out, Russia and German had the non-aggression pact (and Russia was actually supplying materials to German) and the US wanted nothing to do with European wars. If they had just offered peace, Hitler would have been more than happy to give it to them allowing him to focus his efforts solely on Russia (Hitler even expected Britain to offer peace soon after France was knocked out).
The British innovated even more. The Hundred Days Offensive is pretty eye-opening.
A lot of people seem to get hung up on the Sherman not being all that great against other tanks. However, that isn't the only role of a tank; it's not even in the top 3 roles of a tank, and the Sherman is great at all the others. I'd still put the edge on the T-34 overall, but different armies have different needs, and the Sherman would be better for the US Army.
The Soviets were also better at strategic and operational warfare. The German military had a lot of shortcomings, and much of that was disguised by German generals blaming all of their failures on Hitler after the war.
American small arms, armor, and aircraft were at or near par with the axis forces at the start. It didn't take long for the US to pull forward in every area and even produce so much that they could also supply the UK and Russia.
The main deciders were really manpower (especially experienced personnel), logistics (can't fight without fuel, ammo, spares), and tactical decisions. Germany really needed to run the tables on all three. They lost all of their experienced divisions to attrition with Russia and fumbled hard on the other two. Past a certain point, it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest if German designs were technically better on paper. They would be manned by new recruits, under supplied, utilized by most commanders poorly, and likely sabotaged by the laborers forced to build them.
Germany basically planned for a war where they wouldn't be bombed in return.
Muffin1611
Banned
Not disagreeing with you here, but it's not like Hitler was responsible for the Autobahn. That was a long planned project in the Weimar Republic and Adenauer let the first one be built in 1932. The nazis later labeled the first one as "Landstraße" again so they could claim they were responsible for the Autobahn when they built more.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Yup.
It's kind of hard to overstate just how big of a manufacturing advantage the US enjoyed in 1939. Adam Tooze pointed out that even a fairly poor industrial worker in Detroit could expect a standard of living—in terms of food available, apartment space, and appliances owned—equal to a middle-class German.
Or, in other words, US industry could churn out refrigerators and radios cheaply enough for working-class families to afford, and Model Ts cheaply enough for middle-class families to buy, while German, British, and Soviet industry could not. That was the kind of manufacturing advantage needed to design, test, and mass-produce reliable semi-auto rifles, as opposed to refurbishing WWI rifles like all the other combatants were forced to.
Maybe on paper the engine life was 200h, but not in the beginning at least.
Being a couple months ahead of the allies, isn't that big of an achievement. Both the U.S and UK had jets, but they took their time to develop and test, they could have rushed theirs into operation service and been "first".
But there really wasn't a point as shown by how little of an effect the ME-262 had on the war.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
Yeah, he came up and I posted the Tom Lehrer song about him, which is pretty scathing.
A lot of German equipment performed less well in reality than designed. The main reasons were that they were critically short of all sorts of resources like aluminum and metals and sabotage. Similar to the Me-262, the Tiger II's armor is extremely impressive on paper, but it fared much worse in combat because the quality of German armor was quite poor by the time it saw extensive service.
zephervack
Member
I dont care about tanks at all and still watched this whole thing.
Hari Seldon
Member
The ME-262 was actually good in combat though. The only chance the allies had against it was to shoot it while taking off and landing. The lack of raw materials and likely the extreme lack of mid level engineers and technicians (who were probably dead or at the front) to support the program is why it didn't have enough of an impact. But its operational record when it did see combat was legit.
That was France. Maybe in 1941/1942 you could say that about the Germans, but strategic bombimg was utterly ineffective in substantially affecting German production, right up until the end of the war- their production peaked in 1944. Their ability to adapt well to strategic bombing by moving production underground was quite effective.
One of the few WW2 designs that are still in service (in the form of the MG3). Of course not a patch on the M2 Browning HMG, US design doctrine is basically "stick more M2s on it" to this day.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
Funny enough the .50 cal round was made from reverse engineering rounds recovered in WW1 from tankgewehrs that were captured.
TheRedSnifit
Member
It was used as the basis for one of the prototype .50 cal cartridges, but this was rejected in favour of the scaled-up .30-06 round which remains in service to this day.
This has already been pointed out to an extent but to my mind, if anything the germans underperformed. Their early string of victories; Poland, France&Beligum&Holland, Yugoslavia, Greece was all against countries that were vastly inferior economically and in manpower. Yes the French were allied with British but the British contribution in 1940 was sadly, a joke, 47 million country with bigger GDP per capita deployed little bit more than 1/10 of the French contribution. Gamelin should have done much better than he did with the historical ratio of forces but since the German Division count for Barbarossa reached ~180 (+ other fronts), I'm not really sure if the French had a chance in the long run.
The Soviet Campaign is where the Germans under perform cause they get beaten even though they were the superior country economically even before their conquests (bigger coal&steel production), they had resources of an entire occupied Europe at their hand (a prewar GDP bigger than that of US) and through strategic surprise they deprived the Soviets of like 1/4 or even 1/3 of their manpower. Even with all that, the Soviets managed to outproduce them in a lot of most important fields every year. Of course there are some alleviating circumstances, British economic blockade, other fronts to take care for (How much tanks is one Uboot ?), lower quality of soviet arms, LL and the ability to concentrate on producing tanks not railcars but it still feels like Soviets run circles around Germans in that department and that enabled them to survive and win.
US&UK were mostly sea powers, their land armies mostly non-existent at the beginning and after 1940, facing the terribly steep barrier of entry onto the european mainland. As such, it's not until 1944 that the Germans had to truly contend with 3 major powers bearing down on them. (2 of them being still engaged in asia too.)
The modern historiography has mostly has put aside this notion afaik. The rise of german production is to a large degree explained as a result of investments of 39-42 coming online, influx of slave labour, even Speer cooking the books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229
I had a book about Luftwaffes aircraft prototypes during WW2. They created tons of prototypes like the plane above.
I had a book about Luftwaffes aircraft prototypes during WW2. They created tons of prototypes like the plane above.
Even here, the Me-262 is a lot better on paper than in reality. The Germans built 1500 of these planes but they only ever managed to field about 200 at any one time. This isn't even a matter of attrition through combat losses since the Allies only shot down about 100 of them. It's quite possible that the Me-262 project consumed more resources than they managed to inflict against their enemies.
In general, I think that the Germans had a good run during the early war, but it was one that was largely expected of them. I'd contend that the overwhelming victory during the Battle of France still says a lot of good things about the Wehrmacht. They succeeded beyond all expectations and they did so as quickly as humanly possible. It's the high-water mark of German military accomplishment, and I don't think it should be downplayed.
If they hadn't won the campaign quickly, it's possible that they wouldn't have won at all since Germany didn't have the industrial capacity to sustain a long war. And with Stalin acting as a constant threat, I don't think that they could have committed the forces for long enough to grind down the France and Britain.
On the other hand, Barbarossa was a disaster, and the Germans should have known better going in. And all three Allies were committed to the Asian theater: the Soviets maintained about a million men on the border against Japan at all points during the war.
Tooze has really put his mark on industry during World War II.
Damn Americans actually being smart and building vehicles that were reliable and easy to fix. Tanks that also didn't catch fire randomly due to shit transmissions(panther), armor that didn't just shatter or spall killing their crew, or drive trains that just completely failed leaving the tanks useless(tiger 2).
Sherman tanks were great for what the U.S needed. Tank duels are exceptionally rare events, but all people want to talk about when comparing tanks. And even in tank fights, the person who shoots first usually wins anyways, which the Sherman was good at thanks to a fast turret traverse, good visibility etc...
Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II by Belton Cooper was a popular book that put the Sherman in a terrible light. ~97% of U.S tankers survived... I know let's call the book about the most popular tank they served in death traps!
There was tank nerds comparing specs 1v1, and a bad History Channel documentary. The Panther looks better in every way until you start looking at its problems.
Now we are going too far the other way. The Panther was a superior tank to the Sherman, especially the 75mm variant.
On paper. In the field, it was a lot closer than you'd think, due to the Panther's disadvantages. If every engagement was an open field at maximum range with infantry support and no enemy air power, the Panther would have been fantastic, but that's not how things go.
KillerMan91
Member
Well and it helps tremendously your industrial output that you don't have to fear about bombings of the manufacturing plants. US was only war participant that didn't have any fear of bombings of its mainland during any phase of the war. It actually amazes me that germans were able to produce more stuff in 1944 than during any previous year despite mass bombings of every german city.
Is it really superior if it's broken down before the front line? Or if its fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy where the quick turret traverse and unity gun sight of the Sherman lets the Sherman shoot first?
How about when the tanks are fighting AT guns or Infantry like a majority of the time where good HE shells are more useful then good armor penetration.
Once again, I feel like the tank that is in the field doing things is actually superior to the much fancier tank that is still in the factory or broken down on the road to the frontline.
They were comparatively easy to spot because of their unusual silhouette.
The Sherman was notorious for catching fire ("Tommy cooker") until it got some revisions to the design.
If you've left your tank in a position where it's silhouette is visible then that's your fuckup, not the tank's.
You kinda have to if you want to use them in an offensive capacity.
They were as liable to catch on fire as other comparable tanks it wasn't unique, unlike other countries the U.S actually fixed the problem with Wet Stowage, removing ammo sponsons and not letting crews carry extra ammo.
After the revisions its burning rate was well below comparable tanks.
It was also made out of wood and had durability issues due to shit wood glue. Honestly the most fascinating of the nazi jets, but it was a last ditch of last ditch efforts
And the petrol powered German tanks had it much worse in this regard.
The Panther is only better at facing off against other tanks. At everything else, the Sherman is superior, sometimes by quite a lot. And as these include things like strategic mobility, operational mobility, the infantry support role, and overall ergonomics, it's a pretty big deal. The Panther is a pretty cool tank, but it was a 45-ton tank that was conceptualized as a 35-ton tank. The disparity gave rise to all sorts of mechanical reliability problems that severely hamper it in most tank roles. I'd also note that while on paper, the Panther is a superior tank to the Tiger, the Western Allies feared the latter tank much more.
The French Army used Panthers after the war, and their experience with them was decidedly mixed:
https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/chieftains-hatch-french-panthers/
The Sherman is one of the tallest tanks in the war. It's one of the complaints that are entirely valid.
Panther shouldnt be compared to the sherman, it should be compared m26.
CyclopsRock
Member
The UK didn't have much force in 36. We've never been a country with a large army, and even into the late 30s our policy of appeasement was not much of a choice. After the huge cost of WW1 the military was put on the back burner in favour of investing elsewhere.
The Sum of Zero
Member
I'd forgotten about the H-class battleship proposals. H44 would have been a monster, and probably would have made the Yamato look like a kitten.