Germany in 1939: Ready For War-or Not?

[mlees]

@ralph124c

Dissonance makes a good point-because of the huge losses suffered by the German Army, the Germans resorted to drafting men from industrial jobs. To do this, they replaced these men with slave labor- Russian POWs, French POWs, italians, and even (in rare instances, Jews).
Which brings up an interesting point-the Germans spent all kinds of precious resources on murdering and cremating the Jews-when they could have used them as slave labor! I have even heard that trains carrying desperately needed supplies to the Eastern Front, were held up to allow trains carrying Jews (to the death camps)! Talk about stupid!
According to Tooze (2006), by 1942 the German Army was losing 60,000 men (killed) a month in Russia!
Which leads to another question: throught the 1920’s and early 1930’s German and Russian militaries cooperated-German glider pilots trained from Russian airfields. How did the Germans not notice the tremedous power of the Red Army? The Russian T-34 tank was better than any German tank-and it must have been quite a shock to encounter them.

The German-Soviet military cooperation ended when Hitler rose to power in '33. German–Soviet economic relations (1934–1941) - Wikipedia

The design on the T-34 wasn’t started until 1937.

[Dissonance]

@ralph124c

Dissonance makes a good point-because of the huge losses suffered by the German Army, the Germans resorted to drafting men from industrial jobs. To do this, they replaced these men with slave labor- Russian POWs, French POWs, italians, and even (in rare instances, Jews).

While the Germans used vast numbers of slave laborers from countries they had occupied, that really wasn’t my point. Among the what-ifs of WWII a common what-if is what if the Nazis weren’t such umm - Nazis on the Eastern Front and recruited Russian/Eastern manpower against communism. The obvious problem with this what-if is that the very precepts of Nazism gets in the way. The other problem is that despite this they actually did utilize this manpower on a massive scale not just as slave labor but in the military. For example, fully 1/3 of the rifle strength of the 709th division that fought from the D-day landings at Utah beach to the fall of Cherbourg were Ost (East) battalions formed from Russian/Eastern manpower; most German infantry divisions in France by this time had at least one Ost battalion attached. From here on Osttruppen:

The forerunner of the volunteer formations was a voluntary auxiliary service, of a para- military character, which was started in the autumn of 1941 by the German Commands on the front. On their own initiative, they organized auxiliary units of various services, made up of Soviet deserters, prisoners, and volunteers from among the local population. These so-called “Hilfswillige,” or “Hiwi,” were employed as sentries, drivers, store- keepers, workers in depots, etc. The experiment surpassed all expectations. In the spring of 1942 there were already at least 200,000 of them in the rear of the German armies, and by the end of the same year their number was allegedly near 1,000,000.(2)

The next step taken by the German Commands in the east behind Hitler’s back was the organization of voluntary military troops, called “Osttruppen,” clad in German uniforms and designed to guard communication lines, fight Soviet partisans in the rear of the German armies, and sometimes even hold less important sectors of the front. These troops seldom exceeded the strength of a battalion. In the middle of 1942, there were already 6 such battalions in the rear of Army Group Center alone.

There’s a pdf here listing the rather lengthy number of German Ost troops on the Eastern front on 25 March 1943.

[Malthus]

@Dissonance

While the Germans used vast numbers of slave laborers from countries they had occupied, that really wasn’t my point. Among the what-ifs of WWII a common what-if is what if the Nazis weren’t such umm - Nazis on the Eastern Front and recruited Russian/Eastern manpower against communism. The obvious problem with this what-if is that the very precepts of Nazism gets in the way. The other problem is that despite this they actually did utilize this manpower on a massive scale not just as slave labor but in the military. For example, fully 1/3 of the rifle strength of the 709th division that fought from the D-day landings at Utah beach to the fall of Cherbourg were Ost (East) battalions formed from Russian/Eastern manpower; most German infantry divisions in France by this time had at least one Ost battalion attached. From here on Osttruppen:There’s a pdf here listing the rather lengthy number of German Ost troops on the Eastern front on 25 March 1943.

And it isn’t simply a matter of utilizing manpower. A credible Nazi alternative to Stalin’s overlordship would have made the Communists’ struggle infinitely harder in any number of ways - it could have undermined the great swelling of patriotic fevour which, to a large extent, enabled them to stave off defeat.

Of course, the words “credible” and “Nazi” don’t go well together - it is an amazing fact you detailed that, in spite of their murderous bigotry, the Nazis were still able to recruit some more or less willing help from some eastern europeans. Imagine what could have happend if they had not behaved with murderous bigotry.