Posts by Simon Grigg
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
The point is that Nazi Germany was a world historical failure, and the `look at the German talent' misses the obvious fact they got royally owned, and that Nazism just didn't work.
which I think rather misses the point that it almost did work. It was a very close thing and only failed because of several disastrous decisions on the part of the Nazi leadership, and the luck of chance that Britain, thanks to it's leadership, decided to hold out rather than roll over. If Britain had sued for peace in 1940 the world would be a very different place.
-
It is possible to admire someone's technical proficiency without admiring the person or what they stand for.
I think admiration is very much the wrong word but if you walk away from the scope of what was achieved, and the way it was achieved, you walk away from the very important how question and that's as crucial as the why question.
-
This might be an appropriate thread to place this link.
-
When you pay a little attention to just what it was that underlay Nazi Germany's economic performance, things don't appear quite so miraculous.
But blaming it all on Nazi Germany rather than stepping back and working out why scares the fuck out of me. The use of Slave Labour to advance Germany was openly touted by the right, including parts of the Centre-Right, in Germany without much objection from that part of the political spectrum prior to WW1.
-
something that was glossed over until the opening of Soviet archives in the 1990's led to a re-assessment of the Eastern front.
And we are, from this distance, able to reassess so much common wisdom about the Second World War, and the years leading up to it, not only from the mass of data we have from the Soviet Archives (which in themselves have revolutionised the study of the era) but simply from the perspective of sitting in the next era looking back and pulling together all we know, once again as Joe says, bloodlessly. And in a way historians need to do so to garner fully the meaning of 'why?'.
As long as we never forget whilst doing so, hence I sat with my 14 year old recently and watched the 6 part BBC Auschwitz documentary which perhaps should be compulsory viewing at schools.
-
All, please excuse my terminology if it offends. I'm not at all attempting to defend or sidestep the horrors of Nazi Germany, nor that of it's perpetrators. Indeed I feel that one of the horrors of the Second War was that more were not held to account for what was perpetrated so evilly in it's name. The short phrase 'evil genius' was tossed into the mix above and it's mostly appropriate when one talks of Speer and wants to know exactly how they did it. I may not like how he did what he did, but it was a massive achievement in the face of all that confronted the state after 1943. I for one do not think we should walk away from the mass apparatus of Nazi Germany so easily if we want to ensure such never happens again.
Just thinking, I'm not following up with any excusing of Hitler thank you, but happily deferring to the works of the likes of Ian Kershaw and others, an analytical genius (there I go using words like that again, but Kershaw has some claim to that, as Joe says, overused word, and is absolutely no Nazi apologist) who has spent a lifetime studying Germany. It's so easy to feel the need to simply blame Hitler rather than pulling together all things that took Germany and Central Europe to that place. And I really want to know how it worked. Saying it was Hitler's doing is a terrifying cop-out. Anti-Semitism was a powerful force across Europe for centuries and became a core, and quite open, platform for the right in Germany after about 1890. Indeed almost all the policies of Nazi Germany, from Lebensraum, Racial Hygiene, global war, and Germanic superiority were touted by mass and powerful political movements such as the Pan German Party, The Navy League and so on, all of whom were either represented in the Reichstag or a part of the political mainstream pre-WW1. The Nazis did not come from nowhere, nor can we conveniently blame Versailles.
And when in power the Nazi machine was able, within days of Hitler being named as Chancellor, fully take over and control absolutely the second biggest economy in the world for 12 years, run a massive military machine which took it's economy far into the red whilst maintaining massive popular support, all of which which takes more than a few brownshirts and crazies, as is the common wisdom. Part of the horror of Nazism was that so many men of talent, intellect and, yes, genius were drawn to it and a core part of what happened. I'm not willing to excuse them either which simply blaming Hitler does so, so conveniently.
-
Tom, the problem with that is that German industry was increasingly centred away from the urban centres that Harris and the 8th largely targeted in 1944-5. Basically, they missed it in their rush to bring urban terror to the people of Germany. It was a huge strategic error only underlined by the effect sporadic targeting on things like ball-bearing works did have (although even that caused not much more than a hiccup).
I mostly but not completely agree with your opening paragraph. After 1936, well before the war, over 50% of the national budget was spent on the military. Speer's genius was, as you say co-ordination and removal of the waste in the economy, thus the vastly increased production, but he still had to deal with the petty rivalries of Göring and Himmler What truly impresses is that Speer managed to keep consumer production up to almost 1939 levels until the end. And of course there were also huge shortages of raw materials from late 1943 onwards so the climb in production of anything was an economic miracle.
I'm also fascinated with the theory, from amongst others, Ian Kershaw, that Hitler was almost an adjunct to the way Germany was governed post circa 1937, that he sat above it all and that the mass apparatus of government operated mostly to please what they thought would be his whims and wants, much of which he, sitting up there in Bavaria and rising at noon or later, was almost oblivious of. It does argue somewhat that his rivals kept themselves busy rather than any grand scheming on the part of Hitler.
-
but any history of German production is full of the delays and disruptions brought about by the need to repair, disperse and hide their industry.
As far as the Luftwaffe went, lack of production was never an issue. They produced more aircraft after the bombing began to hit in earnest, in 1943-45, than in all the years before combined. It was the lack of pilots and fuel that killed the airforce as a fighting machine, largely driven by the Soviet advance and the P-51s.
The GDP of Germany rose under the bombing, so the impact on industry, which was mostly dispersed and/oe underground by 1944, from bombing, was negligible.
As to the effect on the German psyche, the jury remains out on that. We know how other nations reacted to bombing and there are those, including Hastings in Bomber Command who argue fairly coherently using a multitude of contemporary sources that:
"The morale of the German people remained unbroken to the end,"
Indeed, the Battle of Berlin provides some evidence for that.
-
As a statement of intent, it is hard to beat that.
And it's light years ahead of the noxious mix of evil and buffoonery that was Bomber Harris. The Allied bombers may not have achieved very much as a strategic force but the waves of P-51s decimated the experienced pilot ranks of the Luftwaffe, effectively neutralising it.
-
But this:
During a dog fight in August 1943, he downed three German FW-190 fighters.
is impressive.
Surviving Soviet wartime military medical care is also pretty damn impressive, as is downing the FW-190, arguably the finest piston driven fighter aircraft of all time, let alone three in a one fight especially as the German fighters were still, in those pre-1944 P-51 turkey shoot days, still being flown by some of the most highly trained and experienced pilots on the planet.