My father even remembers seeing Grand Central “as empty as if it were just opened” during the Depression of '46.
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I’m sorry, but 'The Recession of ‘46’ wasn’t the greatest depression ever. It barely even registered as such and it wholly depends on what you measure. In terms of GDP, yes, it was a large decrease. In terms of unemployment, it barely reached 5.6%. It was entirely due to the speed of the US demobilization and factory retooling. Canada deliberately chose to demobilize slower. Full demobilization didn’t happen until 1947. There was no post-war recession in Canada. It’s not a central planning issue at all.
" 2. Can you please bring your source to say that Nazi Germany did not rely on central planners for their economy? Because The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze shows that their economy was entirely managed by central planners before the war even began. And they already had shortages of goods in Berlin by the start of the war when the world’s market was still open to them. That’s not the sign of a stable economy."
That was dealt with by Sparatcus in an episode. Central Planning does not equal shortages and at best Germany went for corporatism, cartels and monopolies, not central planning as such by government degree with hard rationing. The US also went for cartels through government regulation, price-fixing and protectionism. The American system is best termed “regulated competition” and in wartime the emphasis was put on regulated.
One can view corporatism as soft central planning, but any economic system with a large degree of corporate concentration will take on the appearance of soft central planning.
" 1. The US did not nationalized their railroads in WW2. They did it in WW1 because it needed standardization between too many competitors. But they reverted back to a free market economy after WW1. If central planning was better in wartime, why wouldn’t the US government take back control of the railways again rather than letting the private companies adapt their business themselves to maximize efficiency and thus profits like they did?"
Because the railroads HATED nationalization. Until 1920 Railroads represented 80% of the stock market. Nationalization was intended in WWI as a way around anti-trust laws to allow equipment pooling and route coordination. In WWII, the railroads promised to abide by steep discounts for military traffic (no profiteering) along with legislated discounts for railroads which had received land grants (almost all big lines) as long as the government permitted railroad equipment pooling and schedule coordination, did not enforce anti-trust laws and allowed the railroads to remain in private hands. This was done.
It was a deal: no nationalization in return for no profiteering while permitting traffic and route collusion and coordination.
Thank you for getting back to me I was really curious as to your sources and opinion.
This source about American railways claims that WW2 saw railroad companies making record profits. Allowing them to repay 2 billion dollars in debt:
https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4013coll8/search/searchterm/War%20journal%20of%20Franz%20Halder/field/title/mode/all/conn/and
Wrong copy paste of source, this was for Halder’s diaries. I wanted to share this one:
I believe this is accurate since a private for profit company would not accept a deal were there is no profits unless forced to by something like nationalizing the industry.
Did you watch the video shared by Norman? It explains this in greater detail and shows the Great recession of ‘46’ was the recession started in the 1920s that ended in 1950.
This Canadian Newspaper and the HBC bank claims there was one: Here’s How Canada’s Economy Has Performed Over The Past 150 Years | HuffPost Business
I’m going to have to put back the same source and refer to Tik’s video in Norman’s post:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/preparing-the-economy-for-war/
The central planners job is to remove resources and currencies from the civilian market to put it in the War effort. By its essence, this job will destroy the economy if pushed to the limit. It stand correct that the US only was in a good condition because the war ended before they had to take more drastic measures. Russia, Germany, France and the UK did not have that chance.
When a country takes such measures to make sure all it’s industries follow the economic plan of the state. That is central planning. And Germany went further, establishing production quotas, pay control, Nationalizing sweeping amounts of industries and companies.
Nazi Germany had hard rationing from 1939 until its defeat: Impact - Life in Germany during World War Two - CCEA - GCSE History Revision - CCEA - BBC Bitesize
I can also reference Panzer ace by Richard Von Rosen which also mentions these hard rationing throughout the war.
That’s because we never had a true capitalistic country in history. All counties always had rules and regulations to make sure companies conform to the state goals and values. For better or worse.
My source to say it does will be: Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikotter
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It’s called regulation.
There was absolutely no free pricing in the US railroad industry in WWII and there wasn’t any in peacetime either, see the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Interstate Commerce Acts.
Such railroad profits came from volume, which exploded, but the discounts blunted the impact.
TIK espouses Austrian economics; this school has been disproved mathematically and experientially. It is of no merit. Anyone who posits a “Great Recession” from 1920 to 1951 is indulging in heterodox economics and heterodox history.
There were no sweeping German nationalizations, again see Spartacus episode on this site.
If you can’t tell the difference between the full employment economy of 1943 and the despair of 1933 then I can’t help you.
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The war against humanity series also talk about many businesses being seized by the Nazis. That many business owners got everything taken and sent to concentration camps. This is nationalization since it is the state seizing these businesses. The railways were 100% nationalized. Did you read the sources we found?
What I don’t understand in your posts is how you claim on one hand that what happened to the US economy was nationalization. And on the other that what happened to the German economy was privatization.
The sources I have claims that Germany was heavily nationalized while the US was to a lesser degree. And Germany being heavily nationalized is also the basic of the National Socialist party. They wanted the nation to control every aspect of life including the economy.
Did you take the time to read the source I provided? Profit rose per mile throughout the war. In other word, not only was there a rise in volume but the cost to move 1 unit of volume also rose at the same time.
Here is another source. This one show profit per mile on a better graph, it rose during the war and dipped sharply after. U.S. Railroad Track Miles & Revenue By Year
There were no free pricing on in Nazi Germany either. The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze.
I never compared both years. All I said was:
I know you don’t like TIK personal opinions. But I’m not saying he is right. I’m saying the sources he found give a pretty good picture of the recession from 1920 to 1950, and I recognize that a tank factory is an economic drain, not a boon. You can’t sell them to civilians, you can’t sell the shells and I never saw a tank start producing consumer goods. They kind of have the habits to actually remove potential consumers.
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[quote=“liessem_tobjorn, post:45, topic:7196”]
Your sources are Austrian economics inspired, which are, as I said, without merit.
For example, German railways were placed under single management and in government ownership in 1920. 1937 has nothing to do with it. So why should we consider this source when it gets basic facts about Germain railway management wrong?
Second, I never said what the US has was nationalization. I said it was a trend towards cartelization. The US government took a large hand in the economy through its war powers, forbidding production of civilian automobiles and also severally curtailing production of diesel locomotives, for example.
Germany, already heavily cartelized by US standards did not see further nationalization under the Nazis, who as Spartacus notes cozied up to the cartels the minute after they got into power and got rid of the Strasserites. The Nazis gave the profits to the cartels, they did not appropriate them for the government.
On the topic of the Holocaust, that was liquidation, not nationalization. Nationalization is when the state assumes the undertaking as a going concern; what you are referring to is a liquidation. Further, you can’t nationalize something in occupied countries.
See the expulsion of the Strasserites. The Road to Serfdom narrative is so wrong as to be laughable.
lastly, please don’t confuse profits per mile with prices. Railroads have large fixed capital costs which dissipate with higher traffic levels. US Railroads did not make as much money as they could have as they had to discount their freight rates for military traffic due to government mandate. They still made money because traffic exploded. But had they not had to abide by government-mandated freight rates, they could have made a lot more. They did not have pricing power.
What you are looking for, and did not provide, was revenue per ton-mile, which is revenue from moving one ton of goods one mile.
Since when are German non-jewish business owners part of the holocaust? Businessmen got arrested and placed in concentration camps while their properties and companies were seized.
Of course they appropriated them for the Government. Which is Hitler and his cabal in the case of Nazi Germany. Even the WW2 channel you trust as a good source cover this.
They were a political party not aligned to Hitler’s view. Not business owners. seems out of context.
Please provide it yourself then. I will be very happy to see your source.
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So I just realized that I copied the wrong source there. I wanted to share this one:
Which covers ton miles revenus and more. I think it is quite interesting and clear:
Revenue Car Loadings Total (Thousands)
1939: $33,911
1940: $36,358
1941: $42,290
1942: $42,826
1943: $42,440
1944: $43,500
Revenue Ton Miles Total (Millions)
1939: $333.44
1940: $373.25
1941: $475
1942: $637.99
1943: $727
1944: $740
Revenue Passenger Miles Total (Millions)
1939: $22.65
1940: $23.76
1941: $29.35
1942: $53.66
1943: $87.82
1944: $96
So while car loading revenues rose by a good 40 to 50%. Ton miles revenue exploded by 100% and passenger miles revenue rose by a ludicrous 500%. With the other source we can confidently say that these revenues fell sharply after the end of the war.
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I think you are overestimating the German economy here. It had never fully recovered from the great depression and only the massive investments by pro-nazi businesses, extortion of jews and later on the looting of foreign countries could sustain the amount of war economy they already had at the start of the war.
Also, the medium tanks required very heavy machines for lifting their parts, and i’m not sure if there were enough in Germany before the war to massively pump their numbers up to the levels you propose.
Lastly, as many mentioned, Germany had massive amounts of workforce drafted into their armies, which made massive increases in production numbers even harder.
On the question if the war had played out differently: i don’t think so, even had they overrun moscow in Operation Typhoon, Stalin would have just retreated further east and forced his countrymen to fight from there, and the people of the USSR wouldn’t really be able to surrender and support the germans since there was no future planned that included them by the leading Nazis and Wehrmachtgenerals.
It would’ve just been a lot more blood and lifes wasted for a longer period of time.
Short note for some other commenters here: it’s Fall Blau (Case Blue), not Fau Blau.
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I apologize for the long time away, just been very busy, not so much away… Anyways I find it interesting that despite you really trying to answer my question directly which I appreciate, you seem a bit hesitant to say the Germans would have gained more with even more force. I think there is no doubt they would have performed even better with more tanks but also other things lacking for the German army in 1941. Here’s a section from one of my WWII books, The West Point Military History Series The Second World War Europe and the Mediterranean :“the Germans neglected to initiate all-out war production, despite the impression they gave abroad. Instead, German factories produced relatively modest amounts of first one weapon, then another in response to various needs of several campaigns. Even as Barbarossa began, Hitler was planning a shift to production of planes and ships to defeat Great Britain. As a result, the Germans were unprepared for a protracted war in Russia. To take the most important example, they did not produce the armor which would be needed. The Panzer III equipped with a short 50-mm gun which served as the main battle tank during 1941, was produced so slowly that only 1,090 were ready for the invasion of Russia. At the same time, over 800 Pzkw! and over 1,000 Pzkw II tanks remained on active service although the germans knew them to be obsolete. Although it was already in service during the summer of 1940, only about 550 Panzer IV’s were ready for Barbarossa. Rather than produce more armor, the Germans expanded their force by reducing the authorized strength of a panzer division. Each 1940 panzer division gave up one regiment which formed the nucleus of a new panzer division which was authorized only 190 tanks. Other crucial arms and equipment fared even worse than armor. The Germans produced few tracked prime movers, and their production of heavy infantry weapons and field artillery even declined during 1941.” I’m not exactly sure what the original size or 1940 size of a panzer division was but I’m gonna guess a regiment bigger would mean somewhere between 225 tanks to 300 tanks. Not only did my book point out that Germany had the room to produce far more tanks and of better quality, but the Germans could have used more heavy infantry weapons, field artillery and tracked prime movers. So yes the most critical area the Germans should have been better prepared in was Panzers. Getting rid of the obsolete Panzer 1 and II’s, and producing significantly more III’s and IV’s for Russia. Instead of 550 Panzer IV’s ready for Barbarossa like the book said, I imagine somewhere between 1200-1500 would have been adequate. Just did the calculation of tanks based off of this section of the book, 3,440. So if were are just going by that, how things played out, but with more III’s and IV’s produced and ready for combat by June 1941, I would actually believe the German numbers should be 1500-2000 Panzer IV’s and the other 1440-1940 tanks Panzer III’s… This is if the Germans had just produced the better quality tanks and still mustered out around 3500 tanks as they did in June 1941 for Barbarossa. If we are not assuming the Germans failed to realize they needed an all-out war production economy for WWII in September 1939, than surely the year between the fall of France and the start of Barbarossa is when we should mark their failure to realize they would need this type of economy. So if they had started producing for Russia in late June/early July 1940 as they should have, it would make sense that they would have had even more tanks for Barbarossa than the 3500 they had. Now a year is still definitely not a lot of time, especially for planning to invade Russia but there is no doubt the Germans should have been even more prepared and powerful heading into Russia. Considering this, I would guess that 2500 Panzer IV’s, 2000 Panzer III’s, and however many I’s and II’s the Germans still felt like throwing into the mix, lets just say what they had in reality, 1800. This is 6,300 tanks, this would mean considerably more Panzer divisions and likely a balanced amount in each of the three Army Groups heading into Russia. I would even consider the Germans strong enough to do better if we leave out the 1800 Panzer I and II’s but I digress. If the production had met the levels needed for an all-out war production economy, to me this would have changed Army Group North’s approach on Leningrad. With greater panzer divisions they surely would have attempted to take the city not try and starve it into submission. They also would have gone beyond Tikhvin and would have pushed all the more to link up with the Finns. If the first six months of Barbarossa play out the same strategically, it is open to debate whether or not the Germans could have linked up with the Finns east of Lake Ladoga, but I feel with the greater force they would have taken Leningrad and linked up with the Finns north of the city. With more field artillery this would have added to the misery in Leningrad and would have done even more to bring about the cities surrender. As far as the big debate that played out in reality, should the Germans have pushed on ahead to capture Moscow earlier in the summer of 1941 and not turned south, I guess it’s conceivable with greater Panzer divisions and more balance of panzers in each army group and great shift of resources to help Army Group South would have been necessary. So lets go from a if you’re better prepared the better you will do standpoint. If the Germans had the numbers of Panzers I described earlier, Guderian and others wouldn’t have been needed for a shift south, therefore they continue to head for Moscow in Army Group Center. This still needs huge debate though because theories of how the Russians would have responded need to be taken into account. But it’s true that when the Germans were ready to start going for Moscow in late September they had more force than the Russians could muster, basically a 2-1 superiority in Army Group Center. With a more powerful German Army in August/September 1941, a big push on Moscow I believe would have been more successful. In addition with the areas I mentioned the Germans needing to produce more I want to mention this certainly would have meant more aircraft for Barbarossa as well if they had adopted an all-out war production economy earlier on. The same book I mentioned earlier stated that by the start of Barbarossa, the Germans had 4300 first line aircraft, of which 1530 remained at western air bases at the start of Barbarossa. So if more planes were produced, I’ll guess the Germans should have had at least 4000 aircraft ready for Barbarossa instead of the 2,770 they had. This also would have highly contributed to more German success than they had in the way the war played out. Certainly more of a punch from the Luftwaffe would have also helped Army Groups North and South keep advancing along with Center. Now while I agree that the logistical situation for the Germans was a nightmare, clearly they had the potential and capability to be a much more well rounded force heading into Russia despite this and/or their fuel shortages. So wrapping this up and responding to points you brought up, would the Germans have taken Leningrad? Yes, I just don’t see how more tanks and field artillery wouldn’t have meant a much more successful Army Group North. Does Moscow fall? I believe it does, and before December, maybe even before November or in the beginning of November. Considering the loss of these two vitally important cities, especially Moscow, things would have played out quite differently in the East. Now from then out come the vast Russian hordes from the East, and many freshly trained armies… In the long run I would still feel that the Germans best bet was a treaty in which they control western Russia but the invasion had hit the Russians as Pearl Harbor hit us. Maybe they would have never stopped. But with better numbers and more success for Nazi Germany, This would mean by the time the Tigers and Panthers were introduced to the war Leningrad and Moscow would be in German hands… No doubt the war in the East would have been far longer and even deadlier than it was had the Germans been realistically prepared for Barbarossa in 1941.
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So why didn’t the US start formulating a plan for switching to civilian economy immediately after the Yalta conference? You know the countries you are at war with are gonna lose and you immediately need to switch to the civilian economy for all the people you have “employed” for war.
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That level of planning was, and is, anathema to the United States. Industry and Commerce would tolerate rationing, wartime price and wage controls and eye-watering tax rates only on the premise that they would be withdrawn after the war, that the economy would be private and left primarily to them.
Plus it wasn’t clear Japan would be defeated that soon; the US Army expected to still be xampaigning in Japan in 1946.
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The gas perspective as always is supremely stupid. The oil shortages were always self-inflicted and political. All they needed to do was invade Turkey and secure the Middle East oil supply through the Berlin Baghdad railway, using anti-Turkish counter partisans from the Balkans to “counter” any Tuks who got in the way. This would also put them within striking range of the Caucusus in any Barbarosa so that the Soviets would early on have to torch the oil well there depriving them of freedom of maneuver with their tank armies if not also paralyzing their tractor armies for their remaining collective farms.
As to other material, I advise anyone who wants to run their mouths about other war material lookup German merchant submarines from world war I. These things made a total of I think four trips in 1916 and extended the German war effort before hyperinflation set in by at least a year, at least according to war economists by importing critical war assets from the United States.
I personally did back of the envelope calculations and if the Germans used their type 9s (they’d need more obviously) to import lard at 1940s prices they could have provided the caloric needs for everyone in the occupied territories for a year at half the cost of the V-2 project and gotten a much bigger production bonus in workers not dying and getting sick from hunger and black market activities, and also not stealing food from peasants. And that before buying rubber from Brazil, Uranium from smugglers across the border in VIchy Congo, Tungsten from wherever.
Probably a much better investment than the Battle of the Atlantic, if only from lack of attrition. This is why you DON’T piss off neutral nations. Another lesson Nazi Germany failed to learn from World War I.
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“All they needed to do was invade Turkey” ROFL.
It’s a very, very big country, starting with the Bosphorus, with a hell of a lot of really bad terrain. And, assuming that you actually manage to get to somewhere there is oil, how do you get it back to where it’s needed? There are no pipelines, you have no tankers.
The whole Nazi economy was buggered from the start, with sod all mechanisation and no intelligent central planning. Raping the conquered territories was never going to be a long term success.
The Nazis lost the war in 1940, when they failed to destroy the RAF. Or when they failed to build enough U boats early enough. The fact that it took another five years of slaughter to destroy them is an obscenity that must never be forgotten.
Never forget.
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Dude Michael, Turkey is a country the size of France with a bunch of hills between a steppe and a fairly flat highland. It’s good cavalry country and has been for thousands of years, only exceptions are the Taurus mountains, the Pontus south of Trebizond and of course the Caucusus.
And the whole point of this counterfactual is talking about how to UNFUCK the German economy and there are plenty of ways to do this, merchant subs bypassing the allied blockade and giving the Nazis infinite more bang for their buck for their war loot would help immensely.
And besides…you put the tankers ON THE RAILCARS. I don’t know if you come from a country where you’ve never seen them but rail tankers are very common and very easy and cheap to make. If you then take the Panzers, overrun Egpyt, and keep going west until you “convince” the Vichy let you use airfields in French Morroco and bomb Gibraltar to bits and take it via air assault with Royal Italian Naval Support you can also safely ship the shit out of Adana(?) and or other ports in the Tarsus region.
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You can’t unfuck something as fucked as the Nazi economy.
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You say that, but the fundamentally even worse fucked up Soviet economy ran for 70 years giving away billions of dollars to every crank revolutionary under the sun, not just in AKs but also in “social development” money which the revolutionaries piteously stole for the hierarchies own luxuries just as the anticommunists stole the money just as rapaciously 95% of the time from the Western powers. It’s the power structure of dictatorships.
The unbelievable corruption we see in Nazi Germany in the War Against Humanity and Between Two Wars Episodes is actually perfectly normal for any dictatorship according to Bruce de la Mequista’s Dictator’s Handbook. It’s not just that power corrupts, i’s that corruption is a means to power and absolute corruption is a means to absolute power, which is why so many African dictations can simultaneously run their countries into the ground and remain in power for their entire natural lives. So have no doubts that this level of corruption existed in the Soviet Union too, as a matter of shoring up loyalty in the power structure.
As to the Dictator’s Handbook, despite the title and the really depressing first half, it’s actually the best systems leve defense ofl Democracy I’ve ever read. Democracy, when used correctly, is the best anti-corruption device we’ve ever come up with and that serves the people best in so many ways. It’s also free to listen to on Youtube and I cannot encourage everyone enough to listen to it.
You want to keep the authoritarians out of power, the real ones? Towards the end, there’s a bit of an action plan of how to actualy shore up the Instutions
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I’m sorry, the previous assertion about the Berlin-Baghdad Railway was a classic case of fighting from the Map, not reality.
It is impossible to envision Germany exploiting Iraqi oilfields and operating the Berlin-Baghdad Railway as a pipeline through thousands of kilometers of hostile country at any practicable level. The British, for a start, would only need to sabotage the Iraqi oilfields in their possession to render them useless for a year in more. Plus there would be ample opportunity to counterattack with Indian troops through the Persuan Gulf, in a repeat of the Mesopotamian Campaign of WWI, plus air raids from southern Iraqi airfields, or Jordan, or even Palestine if Lancasters are used.
The Royal Navy would have little trouble providing arms to Turkey to make Germany’s life miserable through the long Turkish coast.
Sounds good in theory, but it’s ridiculous in reality.
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No. Let me explain a couple of things:
In 1940 or 1941, it doesn’t matter if the British sabotage the oil fields or not because the oil crisis isn’t going to the Germans until 1942 and historically didn’t really bite them until 1943. This is an investment in case of a long term war.
Then you’ve got to consider in the chaos of war if the Arabs security forces would allow the British to do this which is a real possibility of being foiled. British holds over the mandates are not like the Soviet hold over the Baku oil fields. THey are not absolute in any sense and their manpower coverage is a lot thinner.
As to Turkish resistance, the Turkish population is significantly lower than Poland at this time, there are probably a number of cypto Christians of various Ethnicites who can be used as collaborators if put under Italian or self govering administration and that’s before we get to the Kurds.
Then considering this would be before Barbarosa, the Germans have plenty of manpower to garrison the country. Afterwards and even before: there is the crucial factor of Balkans and Anatolian history:
The Turks, especially under the Ottomans, were some of the most cruel and dickish Imperial overlords in human history and they were overlords for a LONG time. Their Muslim subservients hated them and they didn’t have their first borns collected as tribute to be raised as Janissaries. EVERYONE not Muslim in the Balkans hates the Turks. They don’t like each other, but they all hate the Turks, and have more or less since the Turks arrived in Gallipoli in the 1350s.
So, you can bleed off nearly every pro and anti Axis partisan group in the Balkans by offering them free farmland in Anatolia, especially in Greece where the survivors of the Greek Genocide could get first dibs on their historical villages and homesteads. If the Nazis are REALLY unmerciful and let the Balkan pioneers go whole hog you easily get a situation where there isn’t a Turkish partisan within a 100 kilometers of either side of the railway because there isn’t a Turkish man woman or child left alive within 100 kilometers of the railway. If the Hutu could do it, the Serbs and the Greeks could too, faster because they’d have guns.
This would also work really good in reconciling the Greeks in general to the Greek puppet government. Lose most of Thrace but get back provincial Asia maybe good chunks of Bythinia, maybe a self-governing Pontus under nominal Pontic Greek control.
And as I said before, the manpower thing, is illusory when you consider occupation is less intensive than fronts, and that it puts you right next to the Baku oil fields, which you can now bomb or threaten with mountain and airborne troops. Even if you can’t get them it means you can either neutralize them or force the Soviets to torch them, which means their vast tank armies are mostly paralyzed, which is effectively a huge force multiplier to the Wehrmacht.
Plus, just conquering the Middle East and Egpyt shuts down the Suez Canal and frees up the Afrika Korps which is something like 10% of the Wehrmacht’s motors pool. Yeah, look it up, it’s that extreme, it might be 15%, it was an enourmous machine comitment.
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The British could and did deal with recalcitrant Iraqi officers in the Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941. The British had the manpower advantage and shorter supply lines through Basra allowing reinforcement by troops from India.
The Germans would be unable to hold, let alone meaningfully exploit Iraqi oilfields, railway or no railway.
The logistics of supporting such an operation were clearly beyond Germany’s capabilities which were always modest logistically. Bleeding them the German Army with attrition was a useful strategy.
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