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>Whatever advantage they gained by being absurdly and annoyingly aggressive, they slowly lost as the Allies gained the technological advantage I think there wa

>Whatever advantage they gained by being absurdly and annoyingly aggressive, they slowly lost as the Allies gained the technological advantage I think there was also a lag between when the Nazis committed any given strategic blunder, and when the real consequences of that blunder came due. Hitler's obsession with Stalingrad in particular, bailing out Mussolini's adventurism, the constant and maddening obsession with complexity in their war materiel, etc Its also not that the Allies were more technologically advanced per se, its that they had a much better understanding of design for manufacturing. The Sherman tank and the T-34 were, in most every respect, inferior tanks to the Tiger. But in the time it took to build that 1 tiger, American factories churned out 6 Shermans. Soviet factories churned out 6 T-34s. The entire German offensive strategy hinged on blitzkrieg, and their economy was barely able to sustain that, let alone a besieged economy with limited resources, supporting increasingly bogged-down and defensive campaigns. A lot of hay is made out of the Nazi superweapons, but not many people reflect on the fact that only about 50,000 Kubelwagens were ever produced, while the US shipped that many Jeeps to the Soviets, then built another 550,000 for themselves. Because of all of this, Germany basically lost the war when they failed to hold any of their objectives on the Ostfront, it just took years for the whole train to come to a stop. I think a similar analysis can be applied to Japan regarding their failure to end the Pacific carrier fleet at Pearl Harbor (I recall reading that as Japanese industrial capability failed through the war, A6M "Zero" fighters had to be moved by horses because Japan could not afford the cars necessary to move them around at the factory).

kouru225 3y ago
My understanding is that the Nazis lost the technology war because their scientists weren’t given much power and didn’t have representation in high command like they did with the Allies. The Nazi politicians were deciding which technology to fund and their decisions were dumb. They lost air superiority at the end of the war because the Allies had better technology… that I know for sure.
- c_crank 3y ago
  It seems odd to say the Nazis lost a technology war when the Allies worked very hard on recruiting Nazi scientists as soon as the war ended to harness their expertise in fields like rocketry. They had their strengths and weaknesses.
  - kouru225 3y ago
    Like I said, the Nazi scientists were very capable. They just didn’t have any power or control. The movie Oppenheimer correctly points out that the Nazi politicians saw a lot of important ideas as “Jewish science” and didn’t take critical scientific innovations seriously, underfunding them in favor of more conventional innovations like “big powerful rocket.”
    - c_crank 3y ago
      The movie overdramatizes history to make Einstein seem more significant. Einstein never worked on the Manhattan project, and the Nazis were earnestly working on their own attempted nuclear device. They just didn't finish it first. The "big powerful rocket" would have been quite valuable if they did.
      - kouru225 3y ago
        There was a post on here a day or two ago that linked to a transcript of ex-Nazi scientists: https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf As you can see, most of them were convinced that it wasn’t possible in the current time frame and seem to be thinking the nuke was more along the lines of decades away rather than years away. They also argue that there was no possible way they could’ve developed the bomb because they didn’t have even close to enough funding.
- petsfed 3y ago
  Its not as simple as that though. The Nazis fielded the first jet fighter, and it was overwhelmingly dominant. But because of maintenance issues and material shortages, wikipedia claims that less than 100 were operational at any given time. One hundred! I'll concede that the mainline fighters of the Allies were superior to the mainline fighters of the Nazis, but my claim is that manufacturing at scale is a technological advantage all by itself. If the Me262 is worth 3 P-51s, then one way to defeat it is to build 3 times as many P-51s (which the US did). I do wonder, maybe the reason strategic bombing of Nazi industry was ineffective was because Nazi industry (apparently) relied so heavily on manual labor. If that is true, the destruction of a factory would be less the destruction of expensive, complicated machinery, and more the destruction of a place to sit down.
lostlogin 3y ago
I’ve read arguments that the real mystery of WW2 is why it took the allies so long to win. If you count The Empire in Britain’s total, economic output for Britain was considerably larger than that of Germany. Adding in Russia and the US dwarfs the axis powers. Looking through stats in the below link, the relentless increase in industrial output of the US is incredible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_W...

kouru225 3y ago

My understanding is that the Nazis lost the technology war because their scientists weren’t given much power and didn’t have representation in high command like they did with the Allies. The Nazi politicians were deciding which technology to fund and their decisions were dumb. They lost air superiority at the end of the war because the Allies had better technology… that I know for sure.

c_crank 3y ago
It seems odd to say the Nazis lost a technology war when the Allies worked very hard on recruiting Nazi scientists as soon as the war ended to harness their expertise in fields like rocketry. They had their strengths and weaknesses.
- kouru225 3y ago
  Like I said, the Nazi scientists were very capable. They just didn’t have any power or control. The movie Oppenheimer correctly points out that the Nazi politicians saw a lot of important ideas as “Jewish science” and didn’t take critical scientific innovations seriously, underfunding them in favor of more conventional innovations like “big powerful rocket.”
  - c_crank 3y ago
    The movie overdramatizes history to make Einstein seem more significant. Einstein never worked on the Manhattan project, and the Nazis were earnestly working on their own attempted nuclear device. They just didn't finish it first. The "big powerful rocket" would have been quite valuable if they did.
    - kouru225 3y ago
      There was a post on here a day or two ago that linked to a transcript of ex-Nazi scientists: https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf As you can see, most of them were convinced that it wasn’t possible in the current time frame and seem to be thinking the nuke was more along the lines of decades away rather than years away. They also argue that there was no possible way they could’ve developed the bomb because they didn’t have even close to enough funding.
petsfed 3y ago
Its not as simple as that though. The Nazis fielded the first jet fighter, and it was overwhelmingly dominant. But because of maintenance issues and material shortages, wikipedia claims that less than 100 were operational at any given time. One hundred! I'll concede that the mainline fighters of the Allies were superior to the mainline fighters of the Nazis, but my claim is that manufacturing at scale is a technological advantage all by itself. If the Me262 is worth 3 P-51s, then one way to defeat it is to build 3 times as many P-51s (which the US did). I do wonder, maybe the reason strategic bombing of Nazi industry was ineffective was because Nazi industry (apparently) relied so heavily on manual labor. If that is true, the destruction of a factory would be less the destruction of expensive, complicated machinery, and more the destruction of a place to sit down.

lostlogin 3y ago

I’ve read arguments that the real mystery of WW2 is why it took the allies so long to win. If you count The Empire in Britain’s total, economic output for Britain was considerably larger than that of Germany. Adding in Russia and the US dwarfs the axis powers. Looking through stats in the below link, the relentless increase in industrial output of the US is incredible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_W...