soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Feb 18, 5:41 pm, eunome...@yahoo.com.au wrote:

(stuff deleted)

> > - Political ideology. Nazi Germany tended to favor small shops for
> > final production, with larger industries producing parts on demand for
> > each shop. Consequently, they had a standardization problem,
> > hindering mass production. It took time to realize and address the
> > problem, and by then they were already bogged down in the USSR, and
> > had declared war against the US.

> Surely, that reflects not on Nazi ideology but on the state of German
> manufacturing that came out of
> pre war economic realities that the Nazi government had to work
> with.

Weimer era economics were stressing the smaller shops, as the bigger
industries could mass-produce standardized equipment more cheaply and
efficiently (a similar trend was occuring throughout Europe and North
America). The Nazis made it a practice to reward contracts to the
smaller shops, who would then buy parts from the larger industries. I
am not claiming the Nazis were the only ones to do this, but the fact
remains it was one of the things the Nazis did.

(stuff deleted)

> Apart
> from items that need to be produced in big factories such as iron and
> large forgings the tendency would be towards smaller shops. (Something
> that would have helped dispersal in the end). German exporters
> today tend to be specialists that dominate niche markets which was
> probably true then as it is now.

My point was the small shops were under no directive to conform to the
larger shops. Forcing the larger industries to conform to a multitude
of smaller industries hindered production.

(stuff deleted)
(regarding German late war tank design)

> In understanding these tanks one must start from the assumption that
> the Germans or Nazis driving these decision were not totally
> delusional.

(rest of post deleted)

I made no such assumption. As a matter of fact, I did point out that
the Germans had reasons for designing heavier tanks. The fact that
their heavier tank designs did not work out as well as they hoped was
something they had to discover the hard way.