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We notice one historian after another making the point that the war in the East (Ostkrieg) dwarfed the war in the west. And the data they present to prove their contention is almost always manpower. Now here they are correct. The size of the Red Army and Ostheer dwarfed the forces in the West. Both the number of combatants and casualties were enormous, both Axis and Soviet. This is absolutely true. The forces deployed were immense as were the losses. The Red Army essentially tore the heart out of the German Heer in the savage fighting on the Eastern Front. But as any military historian should know, manpower is not the sole factor in generating combat power. World War II more than any war in history was an industrial struggle. And the deployment of manpower does not mean that the commitment of industrial power is identical. In fact there were gross disparities between German industrial support for the Ostheer and its western forces. As a result, the vast majority of the Ostheer was unmotorized infantry on foot using horses and bicycles as we see on the previous page. And there is very little industrial output required to equip these divisions with horse-drawn carts and bicycles. German infantry divisins had very bfew vehucles. Allied infantry divisions in contrat has sizeable nehicle allotment. The Germans had powerful motorized Panzer divisions in the East, but the problem for the Germans was that they were such a small part of the Ostheer, only about 20 percent. The reason for this was in large part the war in the West. At the beginning of the War, both the Red Army and the Ostheer were largely unmotorized. But as the War progressed the Germans largely because of fuel problems became less motorized while the Red Army became more motorized, in part because of American Lend Lend deliveries of trucks. And while the War in the West involved far fewer combatants, unlike the Ostkrieg, the effort in the West required the commitment of the bulk of German industry output. This included not only equipping German combat forces, but also massive construction projects such as the West Wall and Atlanic Wall. All of this industrial effort going to support the War in the West meant that the Ostheer fighting the decisive battle of the War was poorly equipped and supported--a major reason for their failure.
Hitler was thinking about another war from the moment he was appointed Chancellor (January 1933). He had given considerable thought to why Germany lost World War I. And high on the list was the British naval blockade which had cut Germany off from imports of food, raw materils, and oil. He realized that pol would be more important in the war he was planning than had been the case in World War I. He introduced a policy of autarky which included domestic oil production. And because Germany did not have an oil resource, this meant the development of a synthetic fuel industry, producing oil from coal. At the time of World War II, synfuel plans were providing nearly half of Germany's peacetime oil needs. The War would greatly increase Germany's oil requirements. The synfuel process was both complicated and expensive. The massive plants required huge quantities of steel and other scarce raw materials. This was all necessary because the coming war in the West. It was not the Soviet Union that would block Germany's ability to import oil, it would be the Western Allies. In fact the Soviet Union would supply the NAZI war machine vast quantities of oil (1939-41). Even as German Panzers crossed the Soviet frontier moving (June 22, 1941), Soviet tanker rail cars were crossing the frontier moving West, delivering oil to the Germans. The whole synfuel was the first of many efforts which entailed orienting German industry to the war in the West. Also important, it raised the cost of fuel. It would provide fuel for the NAZI war effort, but at a far greater cost than the fuel available to other World War II combatants.
The West Wall was the largest construction project in German history. It is one of the many examples of industrial and material resources being used to fight the war in the West and not the East, in this case preparations for the War. The Allies called in the Siegfried Line. It was a German defensive line built opposite the French Maginot Line. It was not as elaborate as the Maginot Line, but and featured more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels, and tank traps. Unlike the Maginot Line, it did not end at the Belgian border, but continued along the Dutch border to Kleve where the West Wall joins up with the Rhine River. Most of the West Wall and the most elaborate fortifications were built west of the Rhine. The Wall stretched more than 630 km (390 mi) from Kleve south to Weil am Rhein on the border with Switzerland. Very little work to militarize Germany's western border was done until Hitler made the commitment to war. His first targets was Czechoslovakia and Poland in the East. He realized that if he was to commit the Wehrmacht in the East that western Germany would be vulnerable. So he launched a crash program to build the West Wall before launching the War. It proved to be a massive effort. e are not sure yet how it compared to the Atlantic Wall built during the War. It did not involve slave labor like the Atlantic Wall, but did involve conscript German labor. It was a crash program completed in a little over a year just before the War. Working conditions were poor and very little heavy equipment was available. Enormous quantities of concrete, timber, and steel were used to build the West Wall. The French after Hitler and Stalin launched the War by invading Poland did not attack the West Wall (1939-40). As a result, when the Germans began building the Atlantic Wall, they moved much of the artillery (1942-44). After D-Day and the collapse of German forces in France, Hitler ordered another crash effort to reactivate and rearm the West Wall (August 24, 1944). 【McNab 】 Some 20,000 forced laborers and members of the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service), largely 14-16-year-old boys, did their best to re-equip the West Wall to prepare for the massive Allied armies headed toward western borders of the Reich. Nothing like this existed in the East. Local civilians were conscripted to dig anti-tank ditches. Unlike the 1939-40 period, there was intense fighting along the West Wall as mostly American armies began approaching the borders of the Reich (September 1944). The Allies finally began breaking through these defenses in force and moving toward the Rhine (January-February 1945).
The Z-Plan was the Kriegsmarine plan to reach parity with the British Royal Navy. It was drawn up by Admiral Raeder and his staff. It was prepared after the Munich war scare (1938). Hitler who knew nothing of naval warfare simply accepted it, partly because in 1938-39 it was the British that were his main obstacle. The competition date was set at 1946-48. And to achieve even this, Hitler gave the Kriegsmarine priority to scarce resources like steel and copper (January 1939). The Heer commanders were furious. And in the lead up to the War, tank and other armament production was affected. The Kriegsmarine was the junior service, but resources devoted to it were substantial even before the Z-Plan was adopted. Just calculate the number of tanks that could have been built with the material that went into Bismarck, the massive battleship that the Germans constructing in 1936. Or the carrier Graf Zepplin. But for a time before the War, the Kriegsmaine had priority. Hitler was sure that his invasion of Poland would not result in a major War in 1939. He was positive and Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, assured him that Britain and France would not declare war. They of course did and with genearl mobilization, the Z-Plan was suspended. Hitler became disenchanted with big surface ships early in the War beginning with the Graf Spee incident (December 1939). After Bismarck was sunk, he wanted nothing to do with them (March 1941). But for a short time the Kriegsamrine had a priority. And again later in the War, U-boat construction was given a high priority for material.
The first tanks appeared in World War II and made an important contribution to the Allied victory. Tanks came to the forefront in World War II. German Panzers played a major role in the success of Blitzkrieg victories (1939-41). At first they faced Poland which did not have a significant tank force. The British and French had tanks, in some cases better tanks, but they lacked an effective tactical doctrine (1940). The first real opposition was in the Soviet Union (June 1941). The Soviets had huge numbers of tanks, some 10,000 (mostly light BT series tanks or obsolete T-26 models), but the Germs were using many tanks like the Czech tanks which were not much better. Stalin had, however, arrested and murdered most of the officers associated with Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the innovative Soviet commander. Most Soviet tanks were poorly designed, but the real problem was tactics. Endorsing Tukhachevsky Deep Battle tactics could get you shot. The highly effective T-34s were just beginning to appear. A critical question that has to be asked is why did the Soviets out produce the Germans in tanks when the Germans has a larger steel industry and the Germans overran the Western Soviet Union where much of Soviet heavy industry was located. Some plants were shipped East, but masny were not. It is important to note that even after launching the War that Hitler did not fully mobilize the Germany economy. And after the spectacular early victories believed that what he had was more than adequate to wage the short summer campaign that he thought would destroy the Red Army. In the month that Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht in to the Soviet Union, German factories only produced 250 tanks. That was not sufficient to even replace tanks lost from normal wear and tear, let alone combat losses. The Germans did increase tank production, but no where near the level of Soviet expansion. The Battle of Kursk (July 1943) was the greatest tank battle of the War and will surely never be equaled. there was nothing like it in the West. This might suggest that the bulk of German industry was committed to the Ostkrieg and building the tanks, trucks, and other equipment they needed. But in fact this was not occurring. The German and Soviets had roughly comparable economies in GDP terms. (This is admittedly difficult to measure.) While the overall GDP was comparable. the Germans had a much larger heavy industrial sector. This can be seen in steel production. Which should have meant that the Germans would out produce the Soviets in tanks. Just the opposite, however, is the case. The Soviets massively outproduced the Germans. Soviet tank production was pheromone. Why was this? There seem to be two major reasons. First, German industrial policy. Second, the Germans had to use their steel in other areas, primarily areas to fight the war in the West--meaning the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe as well as artillery to protect German cities from Allied bombers. While the Soviets, fighting on only one front, were able to concentrate their industrial effort on tank production.
The Kriegsmarine was the junior German service in World War II. It involved a small fraction of German manpower. Unlike Ostheer, however, building the KM's ships required an enormous industrail effort. And these ships, both surface vessels and U-boats required huge quantities of steel and other critical materials, especially copper. And virtually all of this effort was devoted to the war in the West. Take just the battleship Bismarck. While Bismarck was one of the largest of the German surface ships, there were other battleships, battle cruisers, and heavy cruisers. And the German surface and U-Boat fleets required a major industrial commitment. They were competing against the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy--with far greater resources for the vital struggle for control of the North Atlantic sea lanes. Bismarck had a displacement of 50,000 tons. The mainstay of the German armored force were the Mark IIIs and IVs which weighed about 25 tons. The Bismarck alone was enough steel and other critical materials to build 2,000 Panzer Mark IIIs. The Germans built less than 6,000 during the War. The Mark IV was only slightly heavier and produced in slightly larger numbers--about 8,500. An amateur historian points out, "In 1942, the Soviets built 15 warships- submarines and destroyers and torpedo boats. Germans built nine destroyers and torpedo boats, and 222 submarines. That many submarines is worth more than 800 million Reichsmarks of industrial effort, as much money as another 8,000 Panzer IIIs." 【Arslan 】 And 1942 is the year that the War was decided on the Eastern front. Of course the primary naval vessel built by the Germans during the War was the U-boat. There were several types of U-boats, but an average tonnage would be about 900 tons and the Germans built round 1, 150 U-boats. That would mean over 40,000 Mark III and IV tanks. That is very close to the 47,000 tanks the Germans built during the War. The point being that while relatively small in manpower terms, the Germans had to devote huge resources to the Kriregsmarine, almost exclusively to fight the war in the West. Without the naval war in the West, the Germans could have easily doubled their tank production. approaching the level of Soviet tank production..
In addition to the Panzers, the Luftwaffe was the other critical component of Blitzkrieg. The Luftwaffe is particularly important because a huge portion of German industrial war production went toward producing aircraft. Data available for the early years of the Wars suggest that about half of industrial output of weaponry went for aircraft. Thus the disposition of the air units significantly affected the industrial support provided to the Eastern and Eastern fronts. The Luftwaffe was different than the Heer and Kriegsmarine. It was significantly deployed in both the West and the East, but it was primarily deployed in the West. For nearly the first 2 years of the War (September 1939-May 1941), it was exclusively used in the West. And during this time there were two major developments. First Soviet deliveries of oil strategic materials played a major role in both the construction of aircraft and the conduct of the Western Offensive (May-June 1940) and (July 1940 -March 1941). Second, the British RAF during the Battle of Britain significantly damaged the Luftwaffe, affecting German air support during Barbarossa. Beginning with Barbarossa (June 1941), the Luftwaffe was primarily, but not exclusively deployed in the East. The Luftwaffe destroyed the large Red Air Force largely on the Ground, meaning however that most of the pilots survived (June 1941). But what the Luftwaffe could not do was provide the same level of support to the ground forces that they had in the West. This dominant deployment in the East lasted only a little over a year. RAF Bomber Command began receiving the Iconic Lancaster long range heavy bomber (February 1942). This was the beginning of the significant phase of the Allied Strategic Bombing Campaign. And then the American Eighth Air Force which and been building up in Britain joined in and the Around the Clock bombing of occupied Europe and the Reich began (August 1942). It was subsequently announced by Churchill and Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference. This is significant because as a result, the Luftwaffe began pulling its forces back from the East to defend German cities. As a result the bulk of the Luftwaffe was in the East for only about a year and a half (June 1941-December 1942). We can see this in operational losses. It is in the West that the Luftwaffe was destroyed in air battles over German cities (early-1944). This of course means that the vast resources (technological effort, steel, aluminum, copper, and other strategic materials) lavished on Göring's Luftwaffe were primarily used to fight the war in the West. (And remember that Göring as head of the Four Year Plan had a great deal to say about the allocation of resources.)
Artillery is a difficult issue to assess. For much of the first 2 years of the War, the bulk of German artillery was deployed in the West. With the Barbarossa invasion (June 1941), German artillery was mostly in the East, but as a result of the Red Army Winter Offensive (December 1941), a substantial part of German artillery was captured or destroyed by the Soviets. German artillery was not very mobile and much of it was moved by horse-drawn units. Thus a great deal of it had to be abandoned when the Red Army struck. Some of this had been replaced for the 1942 Spring offensive, but again huge quantities were again lost with the another Red Army winter offensive (November 1942). Thus by 1943 Germany artillery had been substantially reduced. At the same time because of the expanding Allied Strategic Bombing Campaign, huge quantities of artillery was not being supplied to the Ostheer, but rather used to amass extensive anti-aircraft defenses around German cities. We have not yet found any detailed assessment of the number of artillery tubes available to the Germans month by month and on what front. Soviet sources report that the Soviet Union substantially out produced the Germans in artillery. 【Kurtukov 】 This is a remarkable achievement given the German occupation of so many industrial cities in the Western Soviet Union (1941). Even so the Germans apparently fired more shells. (We are not sure it this refers to the Eastern front are the huge number of shells fired by German AA-gunners around German cities.) This is all complicated by the number of different artillery pieces. The high-velocity German 88 is perhaps the best known artillery pieces of the War. It was used by the Germans throughout the War. It was designed as a anti-aircraft gun, but soon found it to be a remarkably effective anti-tank gun. The Germans built over 22,000 of these impressuve remarkable guns. But most were shifted to defending defending German cities as anti-aircraft guns as the Allied strategic bombing campaign expanded (mid-June 1942). This started when RAF Bomber Command began receiving the Avro Lancaster. Soon the American joined in the campaign, first with the 8th Air Force (1943). The Americans had two heavy bombers, the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-24 Liberator. Thus most German 88s by the end of 1942 were-not stopping Soviet tanks in the East. 【Westermann 】 The vast majority of the Reich's FLAK defenses were these 88 mm guns.
Throughout the entire war, most the German 88 were used in their original anti-aircraft role, most within the Reich in vast AA-gun oarks around German's industrial cities. 【Westermsn 】
The financial costs associated with the AA FLAK effort was huge. And actual hits compared to ammunition expended was much slower than with fighter aircraft. Germany has data on military expenditures, month by month. This data shows the relative importance of the various fronts. And it shows that a time when Germany was desperately fighting to regain the strategic initiative in the East it had to face an increasing bombing campaign in the West. Remarkably – expenditures for anti-aircraft defenses were 39 million Reichsmarks in one representative month, some 40 percent of all the remaining weapons and munitions production of 93 million (February 1943). This includes the 20 million of the navy budget and only 9 million of the aircraft-related budget. 【Westerman 】
There was a contentious debate about the use if resources, given apparent ineffectiveness of anti-aircraft defenses. Some wanted the guns and ordinance transferred from air defense FLAK units in the Reich to anti-tank defenses in the East. Given the increasing toll of the Allied bombing on German cities, however, this move was never made.
The German 88 was arguably the most effective artillery piece of the War, but it was very expensive to produce and operate--the greatest expense being ordnance. Manpower was not a problem because the Germans manned much of the fearsome FLAK defenses with Hitler Youth boys. While the FLAK gunners brought down many Allied planes, it was at enormous cost. And by cost we are referring to industrial effort. This meant that a great deal of German industry was being to defend German cities rather than fighting the Red Army in the East. The 88s were effective a great deal of ordinance had to be expended to bring down a single plane, even after radar aiming systems were developed. Luftwaffe fighter aircraft were much more cost effective. One resource reports that in one month alone (January 1943), expenditures on anti-aircraft defenses were 39 million Reichsmarks, whereas all the remaining weapons and munitions production amounted to 93 million (including 20 million of the navy budget and only nine million of the aircraft-related budget). 【Westermann 】 And that was at a time when the Allied strategic bombing campaign was just beginning.
The Atlantic Wall was largest construction project of World War II. Mothng like it was attempted in the East. Hitler's Atlantic Wall is perhaps the most massive fortified position in history, far more extensive even than France's Maginot Line. It extended from Norway to the Bay of Biscay. Enormous resouces had to be commited to its construction. It was a formidable obstacle that Allied planners had to confront. The Germans poured 17 million cubic meters of concrete, strengthened with 1.5 million tons of steel. Steel was a critical war material. The use of such a large quantity mean that steel was not available for other purposes. Much of the construction was done by French workers conscripted from local towns and villages. The concrete went into massive bunkers of up tp 3.5 feet thick which could withstand direct hits. There were also many smaller bunkers and pillboxes of varying size. Construction was ordered by Hitler in Führer Directive No. 40. German newsreels in 1943 show Albert Speer inspecting Atlantic Wall building sites. Building supplies were unloaded as the construction of heavy-gun emplacements is continued. It cost the 3.7 billion Deutschmarks in France alone. Had the Organization Todt paid a real wage to the workers, the cost would have been even greater. The Wall was, however, built with slave and other forced labor. Given that the Bay of Biscay slowed the Allies down about 6 hours, it has to be the most colossal waste of money in World War II history. And it was also German industrial output that was all directed to the war in the West.
Because of the Allied bombing, the Germans attempt to harden their factories. This was done in two ways. First factories were built with more concrete or even more importantly blast resistant structures around the vital machinery. This diverted steel and concrete from other war uses. Secondly, the factories went overground. Carving out subterranean facilities required an enormous effort and diversion of resources. And once underground, the plants were not nearly as productive as they had been above ground. A more effective method was camouflage, but this too had costs because it often men locatibng factories in remote locations, adding to the strain on the transport system.
Germany made huge investments in new weaponry--Wunderwaffe meaning Wonder Weapons. This is why so many innovative weapons were developed by the Germans. The two most important were the V-1 and V-2. And the cost was huge. Again the cost is important because it is a measure of the industrial effort committed to the projects. The V-1 ram jet missile was a relatively low-cost weapon. A ram jet was ingeniously simple, low-cost weapon. It cost a lot less to build than a complicated piston engine, but the research effort and the cost of building a huge number of launch sites was sizeable. Those sites were a major construction effort and dead giveaway and easy to find and target because the Allies had gained air superiority over France. Only when the Allies began destroying the launch sites (December 1943) did the Germans developed modified launch sites that were quicker to put up. The V-1s caused roughly the same amount of damage as the Blitz. The V-2 ballistic missile was different. It caused much less damage at a much greater cost. Most of the deaths were due the brutal German treatment of the slave labor forced to build the missiles. SS General Hans Kammler, an engineer who oversaw the construction of several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality. He suggested the use of concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in V-missile program. The cost these two program was enormous as a result if massive industrial resources required. The two German V-weapons (V-1 and V-2) cost an estimated US$40 billion (2015 dollars). This was incredibly some 50 percent more than the American Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb. 【Ordway and Sharpe 】 And because the Germans used slave labor which was free, the raw industrial input was substantially larger that the Manhattan Project. (Manhattan Project costs included labor which was a substantial cost.) The Germans built 6,048 V-2s were built, at a cost of approximately 100,000 Reichsmark each. Only 3,225 were actually. One contemporary observer writes, "... those of us who were seriously engaged in the war were very grateful to Wernher von Braun. We knew that each V-2 cost as much to produce as a high-performance fighter airplane. We knew that German forces on the fighting fronts were in desperate need of airplanes, and that the V-2 rockets were doing us no military damage. From our point of view, the V-2 program was almost as good as if Hitler had adopted a policy of unilateral disarmament." 【Freeman, p. 108. 】 The costs in non-monetary measures were huge. The V-2 consumed a third of Germany's fuel alcohol production and major portions of other critical raw material because of the steel alloys needed. In practical terms, to distill the fuel alcohol for one V-2 launch required 30 tons of potatoes. And by this time, food was becoming scarce in a collapsing Germany. While these are the best known, there are a variety of other Wunderwaffe, primarily other missle and ricket weaopons. They all added to the imenses money and technological effort put into this effort--all without any important benefit to the war effort. And given the limittions of the German economy, this was an imprtant factor in the War.
Whatever the cost, the purpose of the V-weapons was almost entirely to wage the war in the West--specifically Hitler's demented obsession with destroying London. 【Irons 】
Arslan, Cem. Internet post (Septenber 13, 2020).
Dyson, Freeman (1979). Disturbing the Universe (Harper & Row: 1979).
House, Jonathn M. "Why Germany lost: The three alibis," World War II History Roundtable (January 11, 2014).
Irons, Roy. Hitler's Terror Weapons: The Price of Vengeance (Harper: United Kingdom, 2002).
Krivosheev, G.I. Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses. (Greenhill: 1997).
Kuehn, John. "War on the Atlantic, Not Battle of: Misconceptions & Clarifications" Dole Institute talk (2014).
Kurtukov, Igor, "Профессионалы изучают логистику"
McNab, Chris. (20 March 2014). Hitler’s Fortresses: German Fortifications and Defences 1939–45 (Bloomsbury Publishing: 2014).
O'Brien, Phillips Payson. How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cambridge Military Histories: 2015).
Ordway, Frederick I, and Mitchell R. Sharpe. (2003). Ed. Robert Godwin. The Rocket Team Space Series No. 36 (Apogee Books: 2003)
Speer, Albert. Richard and Clara Winston, trans. Inside the Third Reich (Avon Books: New York, 1970), 734p.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambrige Universit Press: New York, 2005), 1178p.
Westermann, Edward B. Flak: German Anti-aircraft Defenses 1914–1945 . Modern War Studies. (University Press of Kansas: 2001).
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