5 ms·

I'm no American flag waver, but I think the primary reason Germany had better weapons was that they had years of head start in developing them. It makes me wond

by TwoBit 14y ago

I'm no American flag waver, but I think the primary reason Germany had better weapons was that they had years of head start in developing them. It makes me wonder if this is why the US has since spent trillions trying to stay ahead of the weapons curve.

shareme 14y ago
US first spent a trillion developing nuclear weapons during WWII..imagine that the US spent more than $1 trillion in WWII
smacktoward 14y ago
I don't know about that. The Germans had the same head start on Russia that they had on the US, but when the Russians came into the fighting in 1941 they were already fielding the T-34 tank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34), which outclassed any German panzer in a one-to-one engagement and may have been the finest tank in the world. The best US industry could turn out in 1941 was the abysmal M3 Lee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee), which would go on to get absolutely chewed to pieces by the Germans in the North African campaign. Even the next American attempt, the iconic M4 Sherman, which was the US' standard medium tank by 1944, was unimpressive compared to contemporary Russian and German designs. The big lesson of WW2, though, was that in modern all-out warfare the quality of individual tanks didn't really matter. What mattered was the quantity those tanks could be turned out in. The Germans, stung by the unexpected quality of Russian tanks, had turned their efforts toward building absolute monsters like the Tiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_I) and Panther (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_tank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_tank). Those tanks individually outclassed any Allied tank of the era, even the Russians'. But they were so complicated to build that the Germans could only turn out a few thousand of them, which was peanuts compared to the swarms of T-34s and Shermans the Allies were cranking out. The tactical doctrine in 1944 was that it would take five Shermans, acting together, to knock out a single Tiger; but US industry turned out 12,000+ Shermans that year, while German industry would only turn out around 1,000 Tigers, so five-to-one numerical superiority wasn't hard to put together. No matter how fearsome the German tanks became, they eventually got stung to death by swarms of less impressive enemies.
- newbie12 14y ago
  Well put. Additionally, German industry was under heavy strategic air bombardment, further complicating their ability to mass produce tanks. And Tigers were vulnerable from the air, and the U.S. had nearly complete tactical air superiority from D-Day forward.
  - smacktoward 14y ago
    True, but the Russians had their own production problems too, namely the loss of nearly the entire industrialized area of their country to the enemy in 1941. The great virtue of the T-34 was that it was so simple to manufacture that it could be built in numbers in the ad-hoc, open-air factories the Russians set up east of the Ural Mountains, and maintained even in facilities directly under enemy attack, like the famous Tractor Factory in Stalingrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volgograd_Tractor_Factory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volgograd_Tractor_Factory).
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    Fuel was a big (bigger?) problem. Albert Speer was an organizational genius and plane production (unsure about tanks etc) was actually increasing despite the bombardment. Lack of fuel and pilots scuppered the air force. I'd love to post the graph I can't find, but this Wikipedia article gives GDP versus year. Until 1945 German output was increasing. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#section_1 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wo...
    - josephcooney 14y ago
      Same with u-boat production. They still managed to build a lot in 1944, and in the first few months of 1945 they built nearly 100.
- mc32 14y ago
  I don't know about "T-34 tank... which outclassed any German panzer in a one-to-one engagement and may have been the finest tank in the world" It beat panzers the same way American tanks beat panzers --by swarming them. It's not like Americans didn't know about sloped armor --they did. We even provided the Russians with armor --if I recall my history channel stuff. Also, the Russian tanks were prone to quality defects but they made that up with production numbers. Also their effective firing range was dismal --but again, in a swarming tactic, range is unimportant.
newbie12 14y ago
Ironically, the German war plans were geared towards the conflict starting in 1944. If they had held off and gone to war later with vastly greater numbers of submarines, jet fighters (Me 262), and perhaps even a nuclear weapon...
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Realistically the German's had zero chance of developing nuclear weapons. That wasn't known at the time, but we know enough about their program now to say that with certainty.

by TwoBit 14y ago

shareme 14y ago

US first spent a trillion developing nuclear weapons during WWII..imagine that the US spent more than $1 trillion in WWII

smacktoward 14y ago

I don't know about that. The Germans had the same head start on Russia that they had on the US, but when the Russians came into the fighting in 1941 they were already fielding the T-34 tank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34), which outclassed any German panzer in a one-to-one engagement and may have been the finest tank in the world. The best US industry could turn out in 1941 was the abysmal M3 Lee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee), which would go on to get absolutely chewed to pieces by the Germans in the North African campaign. Even the next American attempt, the iconic M4 Sherman, which was the US' standard medium tank by 1944, was unimpressive compared to contemporary Russian and German designs. The big lesson of WW2, though, was that in modern all-out warfare the quality of individual tanks didn't really matter. What mattered was the quantity those tanks could be turned out in. The Germans, stung by the unexpected quality of Russian tanks, had turned their efforts toward building absolute monsters like the Tiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_I) and Panther (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_tank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_tank). Those tanks individually outclassed any Allied tank of the era, even the Russians'. But they were so complicated to build that the Germans could only turn out a few thousand of them, which was peanuts compared to the swarms of T-34s and Shermans the Allies were cranking out. The tactical doctrine in 1944 was that it would take five Shermans, acting together, to knock out a single Tiger; but US industry turned out 12,000+ Shermans that year, while German industry would only turn out around 1,000 Tigers, so five-to-one numerical superiority wasn't hard to put together. No matter how fearsome the German tanks became, they eventually got stung to death by swarms of less impressive enemies.

newbie12 14y ago
Well put. Additionally, German industry was under heavy strategic air bombardment, further complicating their ability to mass produce tanks. And Tigers were vulnerable from the air, and the U.S. had nearly complete tactical air superiority from D-Day forward.
- smacktoward 14y ago
  True, but the Russians had their own production problems too, namely the loss of nearly the entire industrialized area of their country to the enemy in 1941. The great virtue of the T-34 was that it was so simple to manufacture that it could be built in numbers in the ad-hoc, open-air factories the Russians set up east of the Ural Mountains, and maintained even in facilities directly under enemy attack, like the famous Tractor Factory in Stalingrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volgograd_Tractor_Factory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volgograd_Tractor_Factory).
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Fuel was a big (bigger?) problem. Albert Speer was an organizational genius and plane production (unsure about tanks etc) was actually increasing despite the bombardment. Lack of fuel and pilots scuppered the air force. I'd love to post the graph I can't find, but this Wikipedia article gives GDP versus year. Until 1945 German output was increasing. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#section_1 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wo...
  - josephcooney 14y ago
    Same with u-boat production. They still managed to build a lot in 1944, and in the first few months of 1945 they built nearly 100.
mc32 14y ago
I don't know about "T-34 tank... which outclassed any German panzer in a one-to-one engagement and may have been the finest tank in the world" It beat panzers the same way American tanks beat panzers --by swarming them. It's not like Americans didn't know about sloped armor --they did. We even provided the Russians with armor --if I recall my history channel stuff. Also, the Russian tanks were prone to quality defects but they made that up with production numbers. Also their effective firing range was dismal --but again, in a swarming tactic, range is unimportant.

newbie12 14y ago

Ironically, the German war plans were geared towards the conflict starting in 1944. If they had held off and gone to war later with vastly greater numbers of submarines, jet fighters (Me 262), and perhaps even a nuclear weapon...

InclinedPlane 14y ago
Realistically the German's had zero chance of developing nuclear weapons. That wasn't known at the time, but we know enough about their program now to say that with certainty.