Never get involved in a land was in Asia
The point of the lesson isn’t that Germany went about conquest inefficiently. It is to highlight the self-destructive nature of Nazi ideology itself.
People often say, “what if the Nazis weren’t wasting time, energy, and resources on the Holocaust, or didn’t backstab the Russians and invade until after fully dealing with France and England?”
But the fact is, such suggestions run directly counter to the motivations of the actual Nazis, which is important to understand if we seek to understand their or similar ideologies. To the Nazis, the murder of the Jewish people and the enslavement or displacement of the Slavic people was a central pillar of the war effort itself, as much as building factories or bombing Britain.
This is true, perhaps more so. I always thought it fortunate that the right men - great people like Churchill and Roosevelt - were in charge at the time. This saddens me because the values that (Canadian) men died for are then still extremely important. The vicissitudes of memory and the vichyssoise of social media make people forget how much was at stake. We can forgive, perhaps, but never forget.
Maybe take up painting.
William S. Knudsen, an automotive industry executive who was made Chairman of the Office of Production Management to organize war production, said, “We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible.”
So, yes, we like to geek out about the different airplanes, and sure, performance was important, but boring things like production and shipping, not to mention boots, trucks, and quonset huts, win wars.
As the old saw goes (often attributed to Gen. Omar Bradley, probably apocryphally) “Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics.”
This has been true for a long time. I recall reading a book about General Wellesley’s campaigns in the Peninsular War (for which he was make Lord Wellington), and his correspondence with the generals under his command was almost entirely about logistical concerns. Yeah, yeah, he had some small tactical innovations that he deployed against Napoleon’s generals to great effect - deploying on reverse slopes to mitigate incoming artillery fire, meeting enemy advances in column formation with enveloping fire from troops deployed in line, etc. But he won the campaign because he took great pains to secure his own logistics and equally great pains to work with Spanish partisans (whence guerillas get their appellation) to disrupt French logistics.
Another story: During the slog up the Italian penninsula an embedded reporter watched an artillery battery fire round after round and finally asked the captain in charge if it didn’t seem kind of profligate. “I’m letting the US taxpayer take that ridge,” was the reply.
This chart reenforces the point quite dramatically.
Rumors spread among German troops that the Americans had invented an automatic artillery gun.
Artillery was the primary weapon of World War II, a thing often forgotten. It doesn’t make for good movies.
The increases in German aircraft production in '43 and '44 are actually quite impressive, given that their factories were constantly being bombed. But of course the Allies had 3 new planes for every new German plane, and the situation with pilots was even worse.
I highly reccomend George Blackburns 3 autobigraphical books
Where the hell are the guns?
The guns of Normandy
The guns of Victory
Blackburn was a Canadian forward observation officer and was on the front line from Normandy until the end. He must have pissed someone off badly that he was on the front line so long.
A fascinating view on the impact artillery had , and its tactical importance and the command and control methods used by the UK / Canadian / Commonwealth countries along with describing what things were like on the front lines. The Canadian push up through the scheldt is quite harrowing.