How would US invade Europe without UK

[lwd]

I haven't finished Wages of Destruction yet but my impression is from what I've read already is that this would have been nontrivial at best and might not have been possible.

[RF]

OK, but don't forget that we are considering a rational Hitler here and what he could have done if he had been a better leader/commander. Wages of Destruction is concerned with what actually happened; what could have happened per my analysis is I think outside its ambit.

[lwd]

The German economy in that period had a lot of problems. A rational leader would have slowed down rearmemanet in and tried to build up the economy first. He would also probably not have pushed for a war over Poland in 39 which leaves us with a war starting sometime in the 40s if it does at all.

[RF]

This is quite right.

My assumptions for a savvy fuhrer is that he is savvy from 1933 onwards. The main problems with the German economy pre-war, unemployment aside, was inefficient allocation of resources, particulary skilled labour, stifling bureaucracy that affected smaller businesses, a lack of investment in railway rolling stock and infrastructure and above all a lack of planned re-armament. In a nutshell a phenomena that US economists back in the 1970's and early eighties called ''X-inefficiency'' arising from a lack of business enterprise culture. Managing inflationary pressure was another but less obtrusive problem.

Much of these problems in the structure of German economic planning were tackled successfully under the government of Adenaur in post war West Germany - albeit having to do so arising from the war devastation.

Ultimately a savvy fuhrer could have achieved most of his goals without having to go to war with Britain - certainly not before 1941. If Hitler was really clever he would have targetted the USSR before tackling Poland - and using Poland as an ally and a launching pad against the USSR....

[lwd]

Tooze seems to indicate that it was debt and a lack of foreign exchange. These impacted the resources available. There certainly seemed to be planning for a rearmament.

[RF]

The shortage of foreign exchange was in part alleviated by the use of barter trade agreements and import substitution, it would not have inhibited domestic growth in the German economy.
The 1930's was a period of protectionist ''beggar thy neighbour'' policies so pursuing an open economy based on foreign trade wouldn't be that much of a success. For that reason I wouldn't regard foreign exchange constraints that significant.

[lwd]

The shortage of foreign exchange was in part alleviated by the use of barter trade agreements and import substitution, it would not have inhibited domestic growth in the German economy.
The 1930's was a period of protectionist ''beggar thy neighbour'' policies so pursuing an open economy based on foreign trade wouldn't be that much of a success. For that reason I wouldn't regard foreign exchange constraints that significant.

Except Germany relied on foreign resources to a large extent. Coal was one of the few she was self sufficient in. Food was not. The price of food had a significant impact on the domestic economy as did the price of raw materials. Then there were things like the synthetic oil plants which consumed significant resources but produced oil at several times the going price on the world market. Necessary if one wanted to be more self reliant but very inefficient ecomically.

[RF]

There certainly seemed to be planning for a rearmament.

But the planning was haphazard and unfocussed, very largely based on propaganda requirements. There was no overall strategic plan, still less any cohesive means of organising resources for targeted national objectives.

To give one example - the Z Plan. It was a target list of large battleships and other prestige vessels. Little consideration was given to supply and construction logistics, shipyard capacity and construction labour productivity, allocation of steel and other raw materials. The Siegfried Line was another unfocussed and wasteful construction project.

For weapons and tank output little consideration was given to modernisation of production methods, machine tools and the needs for mass production as opposed to hand building (unlike in the USA). German labour productivity lagged way behind the USA and USSR. Failure to organise research and development projects of new weapons and technologies into collaborative teams, instead of wasteful projects often competing with each other was a major failing.
And not of particular importance to WW2 but certainly a growing problem for later on if WW2 was delayed to a later period was the reducing quality of technical education in German schools because the curriculum was wrecked by ministers like Rust who wanted education to be propaganda, not the acquisition of knowledge.

The list of planning failures can almost be endless.

[RF]

Except Germany relied on foreign resources to a large extent. Coal was one of the few she was self sufficient in. Food was not. The price of food had a significant impact on the domestic economy as did the price of raw materials.

But much of the food imports could be met from close to home, from Denmark and other neighbouring countries, again partly through barter trade agreements, which were also applied to Latin American countries like Mexico and Agentina - for the import of Mexican oil and meat and grain from the Pampas.
Longer term more capital investment in German agriculture - such as mechanisation and the use of fertilisers - could have been done.

[lwd]

Barter trade works well as long as you have something to trade. Germany however was rather limited in that score. The main thing she had to trade was high quality machinery but she also needed that for development of her own industries.

[RF]

Germany did have rather more to barter, particulary with the Soviets and the Japanese. A more balanced and more efficiently functioning economy would have far more to trade with anyway.

[lwd]

Then we are back to slowing the pace of rearmament at least at first. This would also allow diplomatic solutions to some of Germany's problems. The reperations from WWI were starting to be considered excessive at least in the US and Britain from what I recal reading and there was a chance of getting some relief from them via diplomatic efforts in the early 30's. My impression however is that if Germany takes this route they won't be ready for war until the mid 40's though. Of course they might be in a situation where France and Britain were willing to sit it out especially if it looked like it was just going to be the USSR and Germany butting heads.

[RF]

Reducing reparations was one of the British appeasement considerations, particulary advocated by Chamberlain's advisor on Germany, Sir Horace Wilson. The French weren't keen on the idea, but they kept their opposition muted, at least in public. Using diplomacy and appeasement together Germany under a sane leader like Adenauer could have achieved a very great deal between 1935 and 1940, especially without the anti-semitism to inflame opinion particulary in the US. And war (under Adenauer) would have been avoided - his Germany would have become economically dominant, no need for military conquest.

But, coming back to Hitler - Germany wasn't ready for war in 1939. When Poland was invaded, the Siegfried Line was incomplete and very undermanned. Hitler gambled that the French wouldn't attack, shouting down the generals who warned him of that threat. Unfortunately for the world Hitler got away with it. What worked for Hitler - his trump card - was that Britain and France were even less ready for war.