How would you have used the IJN?

[RF]

My understanding is that Hitler and/or his high-staff worked vigourously towards deminishing un-employment in Germany (in Berlin 1931 it was ~ 40%. In 1934 it was about 20% or lower, IIRC). He/them also worked towards building a trusty partnership with several US industry-giants (Ford and GM are the first taht come to mind), which relocated important production facitilies on German soil. This is not solely the Reich's merit, however, since the first contacts between Ford and the German government were established in early 1928.

These were not directly Hitler's doing but those of the industrialists who financed the NSDAP. The German economy was very much in the hands of Hjalmar Schacht and these industrial combines who used deficit financing in an economic depression during the 1930's to use up the spare capacity in the German economy, including the unemployment. Hitler took no interest or involvement in this and let them get on with it, taking of course the credit for the success.
Schacht himself realised that such policies were ultimately inflationary, and when he tried to warn Hitler in 1937 that the deficit would have to be reduced the Fuhrer sacked him for no longer being the compliant poodle. Hitler did not understand what he was saying and didn't want to know.

Even the road building, the autobahn wasn't Hitlers' idea. It was copied from the Italian Autostrada, another aspect of fascism that the nazis copied from Italy. Incidently many of these types of road building schemes were already being put into effect in other countries, including Britain. For example the main dual carriage roadway between Wolverhampton and Birmingham, 14 miles long, was constructed in 1926 and opened by the future King Edward VIII in January 1927, built at cost of a mere £600,000...... This road is still there today.

[RF]

Again, only reading about Antonescu and Hitler's meetings, and what they had to discuss about, is enough to convince me of the fact that Adolf had a good grasp of several key concepts (production facilities, employment, currency rates, trade agreements, and the inlfluence of various policies and politics over them).

On precisely what evidence? What was actually said?

I would refer you to Hitlers' visit to Finland on 3rd June 1942 - the same day as the Battle of Midway - to talk to Marshall Mannerheim about the failure of Operation Barbarossa to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941. Mannerheim had the conversations secretly recorded, without the Germans knowledge.
Afterwards, both Mannerheim and the Finnish government ministers thought Hitler was talking a load of b******t and they had the recording to prove it. The Finns began to realise they were backing a loser, and the long process towards the agreement with Stalin in September 1944 began.

[RF]

As for the war strategy: conquering France, the low countries, Norway, Poland, and the Balkans, winning over Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, aren't important economic achievements ... ? Which could serve very well into an overall economic program... ?

Hitler did not plan for any of these. The ''cut of the sickle'' in May 1940 was not even his idea but that of Manstein, and carried out by Guderian and Rommel. And while the Panzer commanders were racing towards Amiens and Abbeville there was the Fuhrer, pacing up and down in his headquarters, terrified that the French would counter-attack the long, exposed southern flank of the German advance......An attack which the Panzer commanders realised was not a serious proposition, and Rommel dealt with the only counterstroke made by the British.

Hitler was only led into the Balkans by firstly the Soviet incursion into Romania in the summer of 1940, which threatened Germany's oil supply, and then by Mussolini's assault on Greece, or rather the fiasco that unfolded as the Greeks invaded Albania and the Romanian oilfields came within the range of British bombers based in Greece. It was Bismarck who was right about the Balkans....and Hitler who loaded himself up with allies who were nothing but military and economic liabilities....

[alecsandros]

RF, I appreciate your comments, but I feel you are not taking some elements into perspective, and hence you do not accept some important aspects...

As I have WRITTEN ABOVE, this discussion needs sources, and I can't sit all day translating Romanian documents into English to post them on the forum.
Just some quick facts: during Antonescu-Hitler meetings, they frequently talked about the oil capacities, refineries, and other underground resources Romania had. They also talked about imrpviing the transport infrastructure, and "dispensing" of dubious government contracts, which were under way for serveral years prior to 1940. (Disastrous contracts, such as the aquisition of Skoda cars for many staff, at 8-10 times the normal price for a car... Or selling wheat at 50% lower costs, just because some minister got a good comission out of it). Those projects should have been carried out with German engineers and supervisors, and financed by the RO government.

And that's not all: Antonescu usualy brought up the aspect of the need for industrialisation in Romania (in 1938, only 20% of Romania's population leaved in towns/cities, and most of them were employed in the oil and gas industry. This made my country a highly-rural one, with all the drawbacks associated with it...). Hitler usualy accepted his point of view, and from his replies and arguments, I take him as a reasonable man. At least in his relationship with Antonescu.
It's very, very interesting, that Adolf behaved very differently when in contact with various people. He had a good relationship with Antonescu, and worked well with him.

Furthermore, the countries selected for attack by Germany were selected firstly by Hitler. The way in which they were conquered is a secondary matter. What is important for this discussion is that Adolf understood their significance.

By the way, have you read Hitler's so-called "political testament" ? If the document is genuine, I don't think you can say he did not think about the economic matters: he thought about them alot...

Finaly, "the industrialists" which re-built Germany in the 1930s couldn't have done that without the parties support. The inflationary process was well known and taken into account. Speer's reports to Hitler showed that the German economy couldn't have run on it's own more than 1943-44. Hyperinflation was expected to occur in those years.
That is one of the reasons they started invading Europe in the first place

Ford, GM and the other US manufacturers COULDN't HAVE GOT so powerfull in the 30s in Germany without Hitler's direct support and cooperation. It may surprise you to know that Henry Ford senior was a great admirer of Hitler, and vice-versa. In fact, Hitler had a picture of H. Ford in his office.

My impression is that you eagerly accept a certain perspective about the nazy leader: some sort of retarded freak, who could barely tie his shoe-laces, but who could command respect and fear through his speeches. This is a distorted perspective, popularised by a certain elite, which I won't bring into light here.

[RF]

alecsandros, my view of Hitler is based on the documented and witnessed historical evidence, and that includes the psychological profiles that the OSS prepared in 1943. It is not based on personal predjudice.

I have yet to see any evidence of any analytical workings by Hitler. He could certainly talk the talk and go on at length on abstract concepts, but anybody with professional or academic training can see that Hitler's skills were as a politician (or as Churchill would have it, a gangster) and wordsmith, not as a general or a technocrat.

If of course you do have evidence to the contrary I would be quite happy to see it.

But ultimately you have to answer my fundamental question - if Hitler was such a competent leader, why did he start a war and lead Germany to such absolute defeat?

[Dave Saxton]

Concerning Old Henery Ford's anti-semitism, Ford held the typical anti-jewish predudices of many under educated men of his generation. This wasn't a Nazi level of anti-semitism though. Old Henry had been a peace activist during WWI and had not been convinced that the Germans were the villians in that episode. He developed a suspision of the British based on WWI and also Versailles. He became sympathetic to the German plight following WWI. Henry had supported a few anti-semitic propaganda rags and this was how Hitler became aware of his anti-semitism. Also Henry was anti-communist and not being well educated had believed the propaganda about an under ground alliance between communists and all Jewish interests. Ford eventually saw the error of his ways before his death as a result of the holocaust. Shown the inteligence and evidence of the ongoing holocaust Henry became very remorseful and repentant about his former misguided anti-semitism.

US firms had strong connections to both Germany and also to Britain pre-WWII. For example, Ford Motor Company UK built most of the RR Merlin engines used by the Allies during WWII at their Manchester plant. When RR needed to find another source of mass producing Merlins they approached Edsal Ford, Henry's son. Ford then built their large Manchester plant specifically to build Merlins, producing the first engines in May 1940 (or was it 1941?). When RR QC people began to pull engines off the line at random and test them they were estatic to find that they were well built engines. Edsal, who always got along well with the Brits and who was strongly anti-Nazi, also agreed to build Merlins by Ford in America. Old Henry, who was a bit unstable in his old age, nixed this agreement because of his anti-British views. He said that if the engines were to be used by American warplanes, then yes, but no if they were to be used by British warplanes. The British then made agreements with Packard to build Merlins. Ford USA then built most of the P&W R2800 engines during the war after Pearl Harbor. BTW, I recently learned that Packard built Merlins, were rather unreliable and many P-51's in Britain had their fitted engines pulled and exchanged with a Ford UK re-conditioned version, while the Packard built Merlin was sent to Manchester and overhauled.

[Dave Saxton]

- if Hitler was such a competent leader, why did he start a war and lead Germany to such absolute defeat?

I concur. The more I learn, the more I realise how totally incompetent Hitler was a both a political leader and as a self appointed general/admiral.

[RF]

US firms had strong connections to Germany......

And of course the Germans seized all the US assets on mainland Europe under their control in 1941, including the Opel Motor Company...to that extent Hitler didn't do too badly from the Americans.

But note, alecsandros, that Hitler's admiration for Henry Ford didn't extend to his learning the benefits of mass production and standardisation of production tooling. The German armaments industry was in such an organisational mess in the middle of WW2 that Speer had to sort it all out just to keep Germany in the war.

[dunmunro]

Concerning Old Henery Ford's anti-semitism, Ford held the typical anti-jewish predudices of many under educated men of his generation. This wasn't a Nazi level of anti-semitism though. Old Henry had been a peace activist during WWI and had not been convinced that the Germans were the villians in that episode. He developed a suspision of the British based on WWI and also Versailles. He became sympathetic to the German plight following WWI. Henry had supported a few anti-semitic propaganda rags and this was how Hitler became aware of his anti-semitism. Also Henry was anti-communist and not being well educated had believed the propaganda about an under ground alliance between communists and all Jewish interests. Ford eventually saw the error of his ways before his death as a result of the holocaust. Shown the inteligence and evidence of the ongoing holocaust Henry became very remorseful and repentant about his former misguided anti-semitism.

US firms had strong connections to both Germany and also to Britain pre-WWII. For example, Ford Motor Company UK built most of the RR Merlin engines used by the Allies during WWII at their Manchester plant. When RR needed to find another source of mass producing Merlins they approached Edsal Ford, Henry's son. Ford then built their large Manchester plant specifically to build Merlins, producing the first engines in May 1940 (or was it 1941?). When RR QC people began to pull engines off the line at random and test them they were estatic to find that they were well built engines. Edsal, who always got along well with the Brits and who was strongly anti-Nazi, also agreed to build Merlins by Ford in America. Old Henry, who was a bit unstable in his old age, nixed this agreement because of his anti-British views. He said that if the engines were to be used by American warplanes, then yes, but no if they were to be used by British warplanes. The British then made agreements with Packard to build Merlins. Ford USA then built most of the P&W R2800 engines during the war after Pearl Harbor. BTW, I recently learned that Packard built Merlins, were rather unreliable and many P-51's in Britain had their fitted engines pulled and exchanged with a Ford UK re-conditioned version, while the Packard built Merlin was sent to Manchester and overhauled.

Do you recall your source for the unreliability of Packard Merlins? Henry Ford's refusal to build the Merlin in the USA was a real blow to the Commonwealth war effort (Canada had invested heavily on a large plant to Build Hawker Hurricanes, for example), and delayed Merlin engine production in the USA for many months at a very critical time of the war. There were calls in the Canadian Parliament to seize all of Ford's assets in Canada, and I suspect that Henry was a persona non grata in Canada after that.

[Dave Saxton]

Hi Duncan, The unreliability of Packard Merlins is known among the small community of Merlin mechanics and P-51 restoration and historical experts. I was informed of this by some knowlegable people involved with restoring and racing Merlin Mustangs. If you can, you seek out a Ford or a RR built one or parts.

To the recent trend that this thread's topic has evolved to: Admiration of Henry Ford by the top Nazi certainly seems strange. Ford was an advocate of free enterprize and capitalism and the Nazis certainly were not. National Socialism means just that. I think the only common link was the shared (to a degree only) anti-semitism. But I don't think Hitler held true to economic and political, or military doctrines, other than those governed by his pathological hatreds.

Maybe they did have something in common as both were nationalistic in their own, but very different ways, and both seemed to become control freaks as they aged. They both employed henchmen to carry out their interests by proxy. Henry 's actions became more and more strange as he aged with a loose grip on reality. It was if he did not want his company to survive himself as well, as most of his actions became increasingly counter productive. It was only the actions of his son that kept the company competitive and progressing, and Edsel was also well respected by most in and out of the industry, even in Canada. Edsel died of cancer during the war. It was the others in the family (mostly the women) that held enough shares to finally force Henry to turn over control of the company to his grandson Henry II. Henry Ford II was released from active duty by the USN to help bring order back from chaos after Edsel departed.

[alecsandros]

....
I have yet to see any evidence of any analytical workings by Hitler. He could certainly talk the talk and go on at length on abstract concepts, but anybody with professional or academic training can see that Hitler's skills were as a politician (or as Churchill would have it, a gangster) and wordsmith, not as a general or a technocrat.

Hello RF,
No, I don't think he had any analytical works :) And I don't know how and when he gathered his knowledge, in various intellectual fields.
But I do know that he had mood swings, and that in some discussions with high-staff he was brilliant, while in others he was just erratic and furious...

But ultimately you have to answer my fundamental question - if Hitler was such a competent leader, why did he start a war and lead Germany to such absolute defeat?

I don't know how competent of a leader he was. But I do know he was not the "lucky functional retard" Discovery, National Geographic and the historical revisionists are trying to portray him to have been.
Again, this discussion can be endless...

I'll like to add only one more thing:
Judging a leader by the outcome of the war(s) he fought is not quite fair. Think about Richard IIIrd. Wasn't he a competent military leader? Wasn't he admired by his troops? Didn't he had a higher vision, a higher cause to unite all Christians.. ?
And dind't he won several brilliant victories in the Middle East?
But, in the end, wasn't he captured, and didn't England had to pay his way out of jail for a huge sum of money ?. And then didn't he died during a siege, leaving his country in political turmoil ?
So Richard -the-Lion-Heart wasn't a great leader.. ?

[PLease don't take it the wrong way. I'm not trying to paint Adolf as a great leader, for that he must have been a great moral person in the first place, which he wasn't at all. I'm just tryign to give an example that judging a leader's competence by his final fate isn't to fair...]

[RF]

alecsandros, which King Richard are you talking about - the Crusades or Bosworth?

Anyhow neither of these King Richards' saw England invaded and occupied by a foriegn power.....

The ultimate ruination of the Third Reich has to be the final judgement on Hitler. It was the single most important event arising from his rule so far as Germany as a nation is concerned, and not just in pure military terms but also in the exposure of the crimes commited in his name.

[alecsandros]

The ultimate ruination of the Third Reich has to be the final judgement on Hitler. It was the single most important event arising from his rule so far as Germany as a nation is concerned, and not just in pure military terms but also in the exposure of the crimes commited in his name.

I have the same view, RF.
But we are not on the same page when thinking about the 12 years Hitler was in power (1933-1945). From what I undersstand, you tend to consider this time frame as futile for the entire German nation, and as a continous march towards destruction ("a doomed from the start system").
I do not think the system was so doomed or so badly managed, regardless of whom you or I designate as it's "managers".
Germany had it's chances of winning the war, and, provided a few domino pieces would have fallen the way Adolf envisaged them, the Reich would have emerged as teh dominant power of Europe, at least for several years post-1945.

Think about Churchill making a pact with Hitler to destroy the bolsheviks, in autumn 1940. Or think about the second Ribbentrop-Molotov pact actualy being signed (in 1943, before the battle of Kursk). Or about Italy not sucking so bad in North Africa. Or about a Japanese invasion of the USSR in the spring of 1941. Or Franco accepting to invade Gibraltar in 1940.

OF course we can't know if all those hypothetical events would have realy helped Germany to win teh war. Maybe they would have, maybe they wouldn't ? What I'm saying is they had their chances... And they weren't little at all

So, I don't think 1933-1945 was a wastefull path towards impending doom...

[lwd]

... Admiration of Henry Ford by the top Nazi certainly seems strange.

I don't think so. Ford built a very successful and modern business pretty much from the ground up. The Nazi's seemed to admire power and success and for that matter efficiency although they didn't always practice the latter themselves.

... National Socialism means just that. ....

Not really. There was a socialist wing tot he NAZI party but it was purged in the early 30's. Look how much support they got from German business leaders and their repugnace for communism.

[RF]

But we are not on the same page when thinking about the 12 years Hitler was in power (1933-1945). From what I undersstand, you tend to consider this time frame as futile for the entire German nation, and as a continous march towards destruction ("a doomed from the start system").

So, I don't think 1933-1945 was a wastefull path towards impending doom...

alecsandros, you are trying to third guess what I think of the whole Nazi period from the comments I have made about Hitlers' failure to win the Second World War.

As I have said above, Hitlers skills were as a politician. Above all else that involves using other people and their talents to achieve vaguely defined goals and then getting the credit for any success. The industrialists and military who thought they could use Hitler for their ends ended up being used by him because of the grass roots control of Germany Hitler obtained through the NSDAP and its multitude of agencies. That was the basis of Nazi totalitarian rule in Germany and the legitimation of that rule.
Hitler was a politician who based himself on propaganda and had no detailed forward plan. As an opportunist and gambler he didn't really need one, he had only to respond to events.And he was lucky - to start with - which ultimately proved his undoing. The only difference between the likes of Hitler and Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin or Bokassa is that Hitler did not seek to overthrow the existing order in his country but to use it and its highly educated, technocratic elites to further his ends; the other despots I mention didn't have such effective elites or a modern world economy to play with. He hit the jackpot over the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the invasion of Austria and then his biggest political coup, the peaceful invasion of Czechoslovakia. Had he stopped at that point he would have been hailed as Germanys' greatest leader.

But he didn't stop. He miscalculated over Poland, but got away with it because of the talents of the German Army panzerarm and the skills/fighting ability of the German soldier. That gave him the victories of the first nine months of the war. Again he could have been hailed as Germanys' greatest leader, not because of any stroke of brilliance on his part but because the likes of Guderian and the German soldier who did a competant and professional job.

Then in the summer of 1940 he came unstuck. He didn't have a clue on how to defeat Britain, and because there was no one able to quickly do it for him, he and Germany was left with the consequences. Hitler blotted out the problem of Britain - by turning on Russia. Then he declared war on the United States, a month afterwards confessing to Japanese ambassador Hiroshi Oshima that he didn't know how to defeat the US. Oshima, being Japanese, was probably the one person he could admit it to, as he posed no threat to Hitlers' position as Fuhrer.....

There is a saying - when you are in charge, with absolute say in what happens, you are on your own. So don't start something you can't finish, know your limitations.