Summary 2: Germany Prepares for War

Description

Surveys Germany’s 1930s rearmament, from the quiet dismantling of Versailles limits to the rebuilding of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine.

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Transcript

Summary - German Rearmament

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Summary Episode 2 - Germany Prepares for War. Summary episodes are where I talk an entire series of episodes and condense them down into a single episode to help bring important information back to the forefront before it is needed. In this case this episode is being released before the episodes on the Invasion of France. If you want to hear far more about this topic you can go back and listen to episode 78 through 84 which were released in January and February 2022. the original episodes were focused on Germany’s path towards war, and what the German military was doing to prepare for the coming conflict. This would be a critical time for the later events of the Second World War because while there would continue to be arms production and development, the decisions made in the late 1930s, and the rearmament efforts of the 1930s would largely set the course for the first few years of the war. This summary episode will focus on the impact that the Versailles treaty had on German rearmament, the rearmament efforts of the three primary German armed services, and then the general state of those rearmament efforts and the Germany economy in 1939 when the war started.

As with everything related to interwar Germany, a conversation about Germany’s rearmament efforts during the 1930s has to start with at least some discussion of the treaty of Versailles. As a part of the treaty the German military almost ceased to exist, with only a small number of troops allowed for internal stability. Along with the dismantling of its military there were also many different types of modern military hardware that Germany was not allowed to build in the future, most importantly tanks, military aircraft, and submarines. All of these restrictions were combined to completely shake up the views of the German military during the 1920s. It was forced to plan for the possibility of a defensive war with its meagre resources which in retrospect might have been a good thing because it forced Germany’s military leadership to rethink conflict in a way that some other nations would not during those years. Even with these plans, there was always an eye to the future and to a time when the shackles of Versailles would be lifted from Germany and it could pursue rearmament programs once again and so efforts were constantly being made to circumvent those shackles. The German government would partner with the Soviet Union to help both nations push forward tank development at a base near Kazan in the Soviet Union. This allowed the Germans to get some practice with armored vehicles and begin to work out their armor theory and it allowed the Soviet Union to benefit from German technical knowledge. This cooperation would break down, but only when both sides felt that they did not need the assistance of the other any longer. Along with this illicit training there were efforts as early as 1926 to begin the design and development of a new generation of tanks, using the code name Grosstraktor, which is just Large Tractor in German. There were also efforts to build a smaller and lighter tank, the Lichttraktor, or light tractor. The design and development of these early armored vehicles were important steps on the paths to the Panzers of late 1930. For military aircraft, the method of circumvention generally revolved around training of future pilots through the use of gliding schools around Germany and commercial airlines. In the modern day the design and development of commercial and military aviation has greatly diverged, but in the interwar period the overlap was much more pronounced. This meant that German pilots who were flying commercial aircraft could very easily transition into the light and medium bombers of the late 1930s. Now, there was no official German air force, but there were efforts to work with German airline companies to ensure that the correct pilots were chosen that were best for the future of German aviation. Another major area of circumvention was around submarines. Given their role during the First World War the reason that Germany was not allowed to build submarines is obvious, but they would still work to get around those limitations throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The major way that this was accomplished was through the use of a new company created in the Netherlands which acted as a design office for Krupp, the German arms manufacturer. This new company worked on designs and even sold some to other nations which gave them an excuse to test their designs. Efforts would also be made in the early 1930s to prepare for the return of rearmament by building up all of the pieces that Germany would need to commission new U-boats, allowing for a quick burst of construction as soon as the Anglo-German Naval arms treaty was signed which allowed the German navy to begin to expand. In all of these cases, and others, the goal was always to do everything possible to prepare Germany for a return to military construction without openly breaking any of the agreements made in the treaty due to fears that breaking the Versailles agreements would result in a military conflict that the German military was simply not ready for.

But then Hitler came to power and things began to change quite rapidly. Obviously Hitler coming to power had many ramifications for the future of Germany, but around rearmament his most important contribution was simply not caring about the limitations placed on Germany by the treaty of Versailles. In his own words “The future of Germany depends exclusively and only on the reconstruction of the Wehrmacht. All other tasks must cede precedence to the task of rearmament . . . In any case, I take the view that in future in case of conflict between the demands of the Wehrmacht and demands for other purposes, the interests of the Wehrmacht must in every case have priority.” Over the first several years that Hitler was in power the amount of military spending in Germany would skyrocket, with total government spending increasing by 70% by 1935, and most of that increase going to the military. The spending would be so large that it would require entirely new ways of financing the spending because the German government would not until 1935 acknowledge publicly that they were entering into rearmament programs. The system of finance was complicated, but really it just a system that worked on government credit, with Germany’s largest industrial firms like Krupp and Rheinmetall working on credit with the assurances that the government would repay their money in 5 years, with interest. These accounting games could only conceal Germany’s actions for so long, and on March 16, 1935 the German rearmament programs and the reintroduction of German conscription was publicly announced to Germany and the world.

A critical part of all of the rearmament discussions in Germany and in other nations during the 1930s was when each nation planned on fighting a war. This decision was critical for a nation like Germany, which was almost certainly going to instigate a war by its own actions. The reason that this decision was so critical is that during the early part of a rearmament plan, when war is still many years in the future, the most important thing to spend money on is infrastructure. Raw material processing, factories, machine parts, design, testing, everything that has to happen before a weapon is actually manufactured for the military. All of this early spending helps to expand the capacity to later start churning out military goods when it is really required, immediately before and after the start of a war. Many of the decisions taken in German rearmament during the mid 1930s the theory was that a war would not be fought until at least the early 1940s, giving the German economy plenty of time to prepare itself for war. This timeline would inform the first German Four Year Plan which was announced by Hitler in September 1936. This wide ranging plan had a few important pillars that it hoped would help to assist in Germany’s rearmament efforts. The most important was that all domestic production should be maximized to reduce the need for foreign imports. This included a tremendous amount of government spending on industries that were critical to the German rearmament and war efforts but had been under developed due to cost. The most famous of these was the production of synthetic oil, a process that was possible through the use of coal and a very specific bit of processing, but it was ruinously expensive to actually do, and so investment in the process had been tiny because it was cheaper to just import oil. By pouring government funds into various industries to reduce the reliance on foreign imports there was more foreign exchange available to import goods that Germany could not produce domestically, like more food or other raw materials. The injection of funding into various industries saw German rearmament begin to rapidly increase, but it would also become a showcase for what was ultimately wrong with these efforts. Throughout the Four Year Plan the mantra was that there was no price ceiling, anything that could be done should be done regardless of the cost. This is great in theory, but in reality there is a limit on the amount of resources available, and removing any cost ceiling meant that the resources available were not always used as wisely as possible. It also meant that instead of a thoughtful plan that tried to take available resources and maximize their utility to the German military the German rearmament efforts became and uncoordinated battleground between the various German military services as they all tried to outdo one another with massive plans for expansion, each of which would often call for more steel, oil, or other materials than Germany produced every year. Circling back to the when the war would be fought, the problem for German rearmament efforts is that many of the plans put in place in 1937 and 1938 would not be complete until 1942, it was only then that the German armed services felt that they would be ready to fight the war. This gave them time, and resulted in a lot of effort and resources being put into longer term projects like production capacity and new manufacturing methods, rather than just churning out equipment which would have been best for the German war efforts in 1939 through 1941. Of course, this criticism only really works in hindsight, because they did not know that the war was going to start in September 1939, although the fact that German rearmament efforts were just getting started at that time maybe should have put more caution into Hitler’s decision making.

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The Luftwaffe was in a very good position to take advantage of German rearmament efforts to build up its strength during the 1930s, thanks mostly to the position that Goring played in the rearmament projects. However, they would have some challenges of their own that would have important ramifications on the events of the war years. On the positive side, by the late 1930s the Germans already had some of best aircraft in the world, with the Bf-109, He-111, and the Ju-87 Stuka are some of the examples of these aircraft that were at or near the best in the world after they were introduced. Many of these aircraft were introduced early enough to be built in large numbers before the war, with the Bf-109 being the last of those three to be introduced into military service in 1937. This provided Germany manufacturers years to build and improve aircraft and years for pilots to provide feedback for improvements, feedback that was punctuated by the use of Luftwaffe resources during the Spanish Civil War. All of the aircraft that were available in 1938 were planned to be built in massive numbers, to then be joined by some of the next generation of designs like the Ju-88 medium bomber. In 1938 the plans were to build upwards of 7,000 of these new medium bombers with the goal of having 21,000 aircraft ready for action by 1942. There is a certain unreality though in these plans in 1938, the numbers were massive, and also largely unattainable for the Luftwaffe. They simply needed more factories and more raw material, with steel being one of the limiting factors given how sought after it was by all of the German armed services. This put the Luftwaffe in an awkward spot in 1938, just a year before the war, because during that year the number of military aircraft that were produced in Germany actually dropped from the previous year. There simply were not enough resources to go around and so the Luftwaffe found it very hard to meet its targets. But that was also a blessing in disguise in some ways, a larger aircraft would have required a much larger volume of fuel to keep it in the air, and that was aviation fuel that would be hard to come by in Germany. If it had reached some of Hitler and Goring’s loftier its expansion goals in 1942 it would have required a large portion of all of the world’s production of aviation fuel. Outside of just cranking out aircraft there were two important decisions that would be made around the Luftwaffe in the years running up the war: the focus that it had as an institution on always prioritizing front line strength and the decision not to pursue a heavy bomber program. Due to the very lofty goals that the Luftwaffe leaders had in terms of the number of aircraft they wanted, during 1938 and 1939 there was a growing disconnect between what they wanted and what was actually rolling off the assembly line. To try and reduce the difference between the two there was reduced emphasis placed on the stockpiling of spare parts for the machines that were available. This has the short term benefit of increasing the number from front line aircraft, but reduced the ability of those aircraft to be consistently combat capable over the course of a campaign. This issue was not truly felt during the first campaigns of the war, just because they were not long enough to make mechanical issues a large enough problem. The other problem would be a similarly long term problem, and that was the lack of a 4 engine heavy bomber. Germany’s missing strategic bomber is a much discussed problem that the Luftwaffe would have during the war, particularly due to there being two scenarios where it really would have come in handy: the Battle of Britain and the attack against the Soviet Union. During the years before 1936 they were working on such an aircraft, with both the Dornier Do-19 and Junker Ju-89 being prototypes of such a bomber. These aircraft were held back by engine problems, with the engines available being neither powerful or reliable enough to fit the bill. It is very likely that these engine problems would have been solved, but in June 1936 Germany’s greatest strategic bombing advocate General Walter Wever would die in a flying accident. The removal of such a high placing voice for strategic bombing resulted in a re-emphasis on the Luftwaffe’s medium bombing fleet which would serve it so well early in the war. I think that the strategic bomber problem is generally over emphasized, because as would be shown during the Allied bombing campaigns of Germany during the war years to execute an effective strategic bombing campaign an air force had to drop a lot of bombs on the enemy, and I do not think the Luftwaffe would have ever been able to build up the required numbers of strategic bombers to find success.

While the Luftwaffe was having challenges meeting its very lofty rearmament goals, the German Navy, the Kriegsmarine, was having some challenges meeting any of its goals. The core of the problem for the Kriegsmarine was the disconnect between the resources that it had available to it, and its goals as a military force. During the mid-1930s Admiral Raeder and the other leaders of the navy would choose to pursue a very orthodox path towards rearmament. This meant building big ships with big guns, just like other navies had been doing for over 50 years. This would result in the famous German ships of the war years, the Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Bismarck, and Tirpitz. However, it also presented a rearmament challenge because if the Germans really did want to challenge the Royal Navy on the high seas they needed many ships, and those would take time and a lot of steel to build, both of which the navy was short of. The lack of resources did not prevent major plans from being put in place for the expansion of the Kriegsmarine, with the expansion plan being labeled as Plan Z. Plan Z was enacted on April 28, 1938 and it sought to achieve nothing short of making Germany one of the world’s preeminent naval powers. Over the course of 6 years, if Plan Z was completed, Germany would build 4 H-class battleships, which would be even larger than Bismarck class, 4 new and improved Panzerschiffe ships which would improve upon the Deutschland’s that were already in service, 2 aircraft carriers, 4 new heavy cruisers, and then a whole list of smaller ships. During the initial 6 year construction window 194 U-boats would also be built. The reason that the six years, taking the plan out to 1944, was so important was because it was only in 1944 that the Kriegsmarine planned to fight war. The plan extended beyond that date, with large numbers of every ship being built over the following 4 years as well. This was a truly massive proposed construction, and essentially none of it would actually happen. The start of the war in September 1939 derailed all of the planned construction in Plan Z, other than the continued focus on U-boats, as the Kriegsmarine shifted its focus to short term construction projects that could meaningfully impact the course of the war in the immediate future, instead of a decade in the future. Plan Z is easily the best example of how the war started before the German rearmament plans believed that it would, because even though all of the construction would quickly wind down when the war started, in just the year between the introduction of the plan and the start of the war countless man hours, and no small amount of resources were spent on these long term projects that would never come to fruition. There were countless areas where those resources and man hours would have benefited German rearmament efforts, and one of those was even in the Kriegsmarine, the U-Boats. The way that Raeder and the Kriegsmarine leadership treated U-boats in the years before the war is really interesting. No one could seriously doubt the ability of the U-boats to have an impact on the war, with the performance of the German submarines during the First World War showing the entire world what a concerted commerce raiding campaign could do. This performance would then spiral into clandestine efforts to continue to grow and evolve German submarine designs during the 1920s and 1930s through the use of shell companies, primarily in the Netherlands. But then when it came time to actually start building U-boats, an essential part of German war plans, the resources placed into the efforts were a bit disappointing. As soon as rearmament began there was a quick burst of German U-boats launched, as they assembled the stockpile of pre-built sections that had been accumulated over the previous years, but then there was a major lull. In 1938 just 9 medium sized U-boats were built, with medium U-boats being the smallest that could reach out into the Atlantic and into the prime regions of British trade. Then in 1939 there were initially only 12 planned for construction, although the start of the war would change this. These very small numbers were set against the fact that the head of Germany’s submarine forces, Karl Donitz, believed that it would take 300 U-boats to actually accomplish the goals of the fleet, which was the destruction of all British trade through the sinking of its merchant fleet. The small number of U-boats built, and the relatively low priority placed on U-boat construction during the war resulted in entire months during the first year of the war where there were basically no U-boats in the Atlantic shipping lanes. Overall, the Kriegsmarine’s rearmament efforts were incomplete and confusing. Raeder and the naval leadership believed they simply had many more years to prepare than they did, and that left them with a fleet in 1939 and 1940 which was a confusing mess of contradictions. There were dedicated surface raiders in the Panzerschiffe, but then a small number of very traditional surface ships in the Scharnhorst class and the Hipper class heavy cruisers that were not really designed for surface raiding, there were two large battleships being built, but none to follow which was destined to leave the German surface fleet small enough that it would always be at risk of being destroyed by the Royal Navy without truly impacting the course of the war. Meanwhile the one weapon that was known to be effective against British trade, the U-boats, were languishing at a lower construction priority. It is a fleet, it had ships, but that fleet did not have a unifying vision for what it wanted to do, and it was caught in its transition to being a major traditional and orthodox surface fleet mirroring the Royal Navy, the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the American Navy. With all three of those navies possessing the resources, and national focus, that the Kriegsmarine could never hope to have access to.

Of the three main branches of the German military, the Army, or the Heer, was probably the best prepared for the war as would be shown during the opening campaigns of the conflict. However, even the army was starting to experience some challenges with its rearmament in 1939, for example the number of machine guns ordered in 1939 actually dropped from 61,000 to 13,000 due to a shortage of material. Other weapon orders were cut as well, particularly as more steel started to flow towards the Kriegsmarine and its Plan Z. The most impressive area for the Army, and the one that is most well known today, were the armored and motorized formations that would be used to such devastating effect in Poland and in France. The Panzer divisions would become legendary due to their actions during those two campaigns, and it would be a legacy that would follow them to every major theater that they fought in for the rest of the war. But there was something very different about the early war Panzer armies, and it primarily came down to the tanks. By 1945 the Germans would be best known for some truly massive and powerful tanks like the Tiger, King Tiger, and Panther. But when the war began their tanks looked very different and instead of raw firepower primarily found success through their use of mediocre firepower but generally high mobility. This mobility would catch their enemies off guard time and time again. When the war began the Panzer 1 and Panzer 2 tanks were by far the most prevalent in the German armored divisions, and they were nothing like their late war relations. The Panzer 1 was armed only with machine guns while the Panzer two came equipped with a 2cm gun. Panzer 3’s were also present in Poland, along with a handful of Panzer 4s, but it wouldn’t be until the invasion of the Soviet Union that these later models would be the most numerous. I bring up these tanks just to help you set your mental picture correctly, not because the presence of the lighter tanks were bad. They were very capable machines, and the German troops would use them very well early in the war. The Panzer divisions would be joined by several motorized divisions as well, units that made heavy use of motor transport to help them keep up with the hard charging armor formations. But these motorized troops hid an important shortcoming of the German army, its general lack of motorization outside of just a few divisions. The German Army would be, for most of the war, primarily a horse drawn and foot marching army outside of the Panzer and Motorized divisions. This would create many problems early in the war due to the tendency of the more mobile units to run away from their foot slogging neighbors. It was a problem that could only be solved by more motor vehicles, primarily trucks, and there simply were not enough to go around. This was mostly down a the focus of rearmament, which much like for the Luftwaffe, put a heavy focus on the front line strength of the army and its ability to execute offensives with its armored troops. During the short campaigns that opened the war this problem would not really be strongly felt, simply because the enemies that Germany was facing would not put up the resistance required to really strain the German supply and logistics system, but after 1941 it would be a major problem.

To close out this summary, I guess the best question to ask would be: How should we evaluate the status of German rearmament at the start of the war? I think the only real answer is incomplete. The simple fact was that all of Germany’s rearmament plans pointed to a war starting at a later date. None of the military services felt that they were ready in September 1939, and instead they were aiming for a point several years in the future. But those plans also were not realistic, if you look at what the Luftwaffe was planning, and the Navy, and the Army, each of them were going to need a tremendous influx of resources which was simply impossible for Germany to attain during peace time. There wasn’t enough steel, oil, or a whole host of other raw resources to accomplish all of their goals, and in some cases any of them. The combination of these massive plans that simply were not possible, and the incorrect planning around when Germany might start a war, points to a deeper problem with German rearmament. It lacked a singular, unifying, driving vision that could get the entirety of Germany’s military and economy working towards one goal. When you look at the German rearmament efforts it seems to be driven by the goal of “making the most powerful military” which is too broad of a goal to be useful. It allowed their reach to so far exceed their grasp that it damaged their more immediate short term goals. Adding up all of Germany’s rearmament efforts also make it clear that they were not focused on reality, because when planning for massive economic and industrial projects it is really important to be realistic, and the German plans were not realistic. This created weird issues where some absolutely essential items were deprioritized to try and meet production goals that were impossible, and which were useless without the essentials like ammunition. Germany would prove during the war that its war industries could scale up to an incredible amount, but in the years before the war due to the coordination problems and a desire to try and maintain the public quality of life that had been built up over the 1930s would combine to hamstring German rearmament efforts. Fortunately for the German military their early campaigns would pit them against enemies that were far less equipped to actually fight a war, both in their material and doctrine, which would hide many of the German military’s flaws during the early years of the war.