Did the LW achieve air superiority over the 8th AF after the Schweinfurt missions?

[stona]

And now try explaining the above point of view to Stalin and the Soviet Union. There is a political as well as military aspect to this (Clausewitz/Foucault).

I fail to see how, if Britain spent more on establishing and maintaining Bomber Command than Germany did on its air defences that it's a win for Germany, except in some kind of arithmetic way. That's far too simplistic.

In this case, and it is not always so, I agree with Overy, quoted above, that we are asking the wrong question. I'm not sure about the second bit but Bomber Command's contribution was still significant.

Cheers

Steve

 

[OldSkeptic]

Sorry meant to get back to this.

50% with 120+ divisions in Russia? All the U-Boats, etc. No chance.
Typical, if does come from official statistics (?) NAZI nonsense (numbers was a bad issue with them, got in the road of 'spirit' and 'anti Jewish science').
Hitler in the end days, ordering non-existent armies around.....

Maybe Goering was adding in his art collection activities???

 

[stona]

Typical, if does come from official statistics (?) NAZI nonsense (numbers was a bad issue with them,

That is not so. Germany, like most developed economies, kept excellent records. These were not kept by the Nazis particularly, but by the same people who had been keeping them for years.
You can't run an economy without statistics and those of the German economy throughout the period largely survived and are available. The USSBS even copied all this material which is now available in the US, as well as Germany.

For example we have "Statstisches Shnellbereichte zur Kriegsproduktion" of the Ministry for Armament and War Production from 1938 until February 1945.

At least two years of the "Statistisches Jahrbuch fur das Deutsche Reich" survive.

There is much more too.

Hitler may have ordered non existant armies about, or at least armies which no longer really existed as effective fighting units, but the men receiving the orders were not as deluded as he was and understood this particular "Nazi nonsense" for what it was.

Cheers

Steve

 

[parsifal]

Steve is absolutely correct. The idea that german economic records are a manufacture is just not supported by known facts.

We need to get some basic information on the economics of the war

Here is a good start

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/e...rison/public/ehr88postprint.pdf&embedded=true

There is an intersting table that looks at ammunition production that you might want to have a look at. I found the Table on page 2 of the paper intersting.

Other hard copy data relating to this subject can be found in a wide variety of sources. Westermanns "Flak - German Anti-Aircraft Defences" is very extensive, but his set out of findings is poor. If you read the whole book you will get a good idea of his analysis. For example, however, in analysing the flak arms performance in the last quarter of 1942, the Westermann says the flak arm consumed 28% of the armed forces budget on ammunition expenditure (over 90% of which was expended in Germany itself), and a further 15% of the total budget for all services on new procurement. Thats a staggering 43% of German military receipts, just on flak alone. How much more was being spent on the air arm?. I dont exactly know, but to put it into some persepective, the Germans produced about 40000 AFVs with armament of 50mm or over, compared to close to 190000 a/c of all types. It might be a reasonable straw poll to say that the typical cost of an AFV was RM70 K, and an aircraft 30K (a Stug III cost RM50K, an 88mm Flak gun and carriage about RM15K, a Panther Tank somewhere between RM120K and RM170K. An Me 109 cost around RM25K. If my guesstimate is even half right, then the Germans were spent around RM280000000 on AFVs and RM570000000K on aircraft. Thats roughly 2 units of currency on aircraft, compared to 1 unit of currency on AFV production. And then we can look at the other big ticket items of production if you like, such as ammuntion expenditure and gun manufacture. The amounts spent on air defence are staggering.

Hayward also gives a pretty good incidental account of this issue in his "Stopped At Stalingrad" which looks at the Lufwaffe operations and strategic issues in a great deal of detail. He puts LW allocations of the defence budget at arround 60% in 1942-3. Some of this expenditure was used at the front obviously, but it gives a bit of a snapshot of just how much the Germans were investing in air defences.

Saying that the figures are dodgy is your perogative, but you will then need to back it up with your own figures to make the claims that you are. Otherwise, demolishing, or attempting to demlish the veracity of the german figures is lacking its own credibility. You have no basis to discredit our positions, and none also to validate your own claims