How long would the german economy have lasted if they didn't invade Poland in '39 or a single country at all...

How long would the german economy have lasted if they didn't invade Poland in '39 or a single country at all considering they spent like 60% of all their resources on the military? Would they have been able to keep their economy afloat without the new territories?
I'm thinking about this because people all too easily claim here on Veeky Forums that "if hitler didn't attack poland then he could've won". Well he certainly couldn't have won if their whole economy collapsed in like 1941 without invading anything.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht#Widespread_plunder_and_theft
reason.com/archives/1999/08/01/nazi-economics
telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky
panzerworld.com/truck-production-numbers
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

By 1939, the German economy was fully committed to rearmament. They were running a HUGE budget deficit, spending something like 50 times more than they were taking in. They kept this secret through some fancy accounting tricks, because they didn't want people to realize the full extent of their rearmament, and also because you'd never want people to know you're running a tremendous budget deficit like that. The Nazis also had a fairly generous welfare state to keep the German people from turning against him. One of Hitler's pet theories about Germany losing World War 1 (alongside "muh jews") was that he felt that shitty conditions for German civilians during the war caused morale to break down, resulting in Germany losing its will to fight. Hitler wanted to make sure that this breakdown of civilian morale wouldn't happen again. All of this is quite expensive, and unsustainable unless you're plundering other countries to pay for all of it.

Where did the money spent beyond their revenue come from?

So in the upcoming years the nazis would've apparently crumbled without a war. Interesting.
It is really fascinating that even with all of their resources committed to rearmament they still had a very nice orderly nation before the war and up till 1943. (after seeing many of the footages from back then.) I wonder then what could've hitler achieved if he didn't even invest in military? How rich could germany possibly be?

The krauts spent the money they borrowed from foreign countries for their own gibbs me dats and rearmament.

It's like a bank lending someone $1000 to start a business, but instead of paying it off he buys a gun and tries to rob the bank itself.

The German re-armament program precedes the Nazi Party's ascension to party. Pretty much from the moment the treaty of Versailles was signed, the German military began looking for ways to circumvent the treaty in any way possible. Chemical weapons, bombers, tanks, and submarines were all developed in clandestine projects. Of course, the re-armament program was massively after Hitler seized power, but it was started during the Weimar Republic-era.

>Where did the money spent beyond their revenue come from?

Banks were forced to buy government bonds, and the government took money from savings accounts and insurance companies. Keep in mind, they were still running an enormous deficit despite their income. Now, deficit spending isn't exactly uncommon, it is a pretty normal and healthy thing for a government to do so long as it doesn't go too far. Fake corporations were created to hide the money that was being spent. One of the most prominent of these fake corporations was known as "The Society for Metallurgical Research." Sounds innocent enough, doesn't it?

Hitler was obsessed with achieving autarky and believed that Germay could never achieve American living standards without gaining a territory-to-population ratio equivalent to the US. Otherwise Germany would be relegated to the level of "Switzerland or Holland."

Of course, after the war Germany did achieve US living standards with even less territory and is a superbly competitive economy. And what fucking sperg looks at Switzerland and says "no, this is a terrible thing to be"?

Basically, it needed war to survive, but was made to survive a war. It was made/gambled that way specifically and intentionally. You'd have to go back further and have the German government slow rearmament to a fraction of it was.

You'd still have an economic miracle, but a much different and more muted one. Something more akin to post-war Japan.

For eternity.

> And what fucking sperg looks at Switzerland and says "no, this is a terrible thing to be"?

lol did he really think this?

So going to war with Poland because they were oppressing German minorities was all bullshit? Why would you even go to war with a nation for treating minorities like shit? Wouldn't it be easier to bring those minorities back into the fold, adding more people to participate in your economy?

>So going to war with Poland because they were oppressing German minorities was all bullshit?
100%, the invasion of Poland had been planned for months, it was not a reaction to some "outrage" when the entire german army just so happened to be on the border

How can stormniggers defend this? How can they defend any of the things ITT? Could have Germany stood a better chance if it had stopped at annexing Czechoslovakia instead of invading Poland?

Forgive me if this is all common knowledge but I'm barely finding out about all this

>tfw BTFO by Veeky Forums

>Could have Germany stood a better chance if it had stopped at annexing Czechoslovakia
That is debatable. German economy was definiltely unsustainable but it crumbled even faster because of the allies' actions. However, I don't think that the 3rd Reich would've lasted until the 1950s. It was built for war.

So what I hear from most people who defend Germany's actions is that war with Russian would've been inevitable, if the German economy was built for war, wouldn't Germany been better off fighting a defensive like Finland? I imagine that they could've invested in turning Germany into a veritable Fortress and kept the economy chugging on based on that.

Also I imagine that they wouldn't be as vilified as they are today if they had fought a defensive war instead of instigating a world war

It might survive but with inefficient and messy Maoist tier economy. Something like scraping the metals from the armaments into building materials, etc.

No. Even stormniggers are right once in a blue moon. The more time went on, the more industrialized Russia would become. Defending against a 1950s Russia would be impossible for Poland or Germany or really anyone else. The only hope was striking early.

Too bad Hitler was a methed out maniac.

>war with Russian would've been inevitable
USSR and the 3rd Reich had conflicting ideologies but no proof exists that the USSR was planning to invade Germany. In 1939 and in 1941 the USSR wasn't ready for war with Germany and the Winter War, which was a pyrrhic victory, proved that.
>If the German economy was built for war, wouldn't Germany been better off fighting a defensive like Finland
It would've been very hard for the Germans. One of the first things they did after conquering Poland was sending trains filled with food and machinery back to Germany. Would a country with an efficient economy do that?
>Until 3 November 1939 the Wehrmacht sent to the Nazi Germany 10,000 train wagons with stolen property including agricultural machinery, furniture and food
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht#Widespread_plunder_and_theft

>Also I imagine that they wouldn't be as vilified as they are today if they had fought a defensive war instead of instigating a world war
THey would still be hated because of the holocaust.

It also depended on other countries' gold reserves and future projects (e.g. lebensraum, Russian oil, etc.), or something like that.

It wouldn't. The only reason they spent so much on war was becuase they knew it was coming sooner or later. It's like asking how long a bodybuilder could remain fit on his diet w/o lifting. The only reason they're eating that much is because they plan on growing

Man JIDF runs this board eh?

Have a cry you little cuck.

switzerland was a lot poorer back then though, goign off what little i've read. it had rich parts but it was still primarily agriculutral even in the 30s with majority farming

>muh JIDF
reddit

American Jews also took part in this, new war to get money from arms and destruction of Soviet Union would be perfect for (((them))), so they financed Hitler.

A Germany/Nazi tread that haven't turned in to a Stormfaggot shitfest? With actual answers and not just ((((( ))))))? Fuck, there might still be hope left, even if its just 23 replies so far.

...

>it was coming sooner or later
Bullshit

He is not wrong, I suspect that the international jewry would've suffocated germany without a war economically after all that Hitler did and said about them.

They didn't have to, Germany had done a great job of that with MEFO bills

I mean even without MEFO bills

Even then American Jews happily invested in Krupp and other businesses because they quite frankly didn't give a shit about German Jews, it was more of a European Jew thing to boycott the Nazis

OP here's a nice article that can answer your question, even if anons already did, here you can find data and where the books the data came from if you are ever interested in reading them
reason.com/archives/1999/08/01/nazi-economics

I never understood Hitler's boner for wanting to attack Switzerland and I have no idea by what miracle did he get convinced not to attack it.

That isn't even the last of it.
War technically started the 1 September of 1939 right? Well the day before, a group of SS officers disguised as Polish resistance fighters kidnapped a polish farmer, drugged him and carried him to a german radio Station 4 miles from the Polish border.
The SS group then stormed into the building, seized control and one of them who knew polish announced "Attention! This is Gliwice. The broadcasting station is in Polish hands" and cut the power to the transmission.


telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/6106566/World-War-IIs-first-victim.html

Do you guys think that germany could've actually achieved autarky if they won agains the russians I mean with all of the land and oil and rare materials germany would've been buffed hard

They could have only achieved anything if they weren't totally autistic about race, if they properly courted local resistance to Stalin as their new regime instead of the shit concept of Reichskommisariats they MIGHT have had a chance of having a happy little economy for all involved in the neo-Mitteleuropa

Thats the thing I never understood about Hitler. If they were going all in against the russians wouldn't it be wiser to actually sway the locals to your side? I mean even if he eventually wanted to btfo all the slavs there you would think he would've faked it until the war was won in the east.

>THey would still be hated because of the holocaust.
Can you even imagine what /pol/ would look like if Germany had to fight a "defensive war" because other countries found out they were kidnapping and murdering jews (and others)?

Too autistic, even Afred Rosenberg the ultimate master race memer considered the Slavs to be Aryans and had constant arguements with the SS about it

>So going to war with Poland because they were oppressing German minorities was all bullshit? Why would you even go to war with a nation for treating minorities like shit?
i keep hearing about this yet not a single person posts legit proof to back this up

Well yes that's why defensive war wasn't an option for mister adolf

If they keep it in Germany there would be no Holocaust as they would simply expel Jews(as they actually did) or Jews would leave on their own(and this happen too). Heck 250k German Jews(and half and quarter) fight in Wehrmacht and plenty of high ranking Jews serve in NSDAP or German bureaucracy as Hitler were rather eager to grant honorary Aryan certificate to ones that work for him.
Whole 'final solution' option wasn't a thing under they actually get plenty of Jews from Eastern Poland and Soviet Union. Before they were resettlement plans to exile all Jews to Madagascar using French fleet for shipping.
So if Germany were forced to fight defensive war on their own territory there would be no Holocaust.

Hitler wanted to reunite all german peoples under one Nation, and asking nicely for it isn't always going to work

When were Poles and Ukrainians German?

The funny thing is that the ukranians would view hitler today as a hero had he gone in as a liberator lol

Well they see him as hero as Ukraine is build at anti Polish and anti Russian sentiment.

Where did Hitler's mad anti-slav hate come from anyway? He was on the western front of WW1, so he wasn't fighting Russians during that time. Or was all that propaganda just an excuse for invading?

They did view him as a liberator, until they sent Stesko to die for declaring an independent state (i.e. liberation)

but that was anti-soviet propaganda, he could've easily invaded and not be jerk to slavs at all.
This could've helped him immeasurably as partisans would've been almost nonexistant if they were fighting for their freedom.

Vienna was a multi-ethnic city and Hitler hated it. I think he even mentioned this in Mein Kampf.

Hitler bought into the Ostsiedlung meme and took it to a retarded conclusion

Needed room for them to live

Sort of refuting your own argument user

So was there any scenario where Nazi Germany wouldn't have gotten their shit pushed in? Could they have not started a war and suffered through a depression but gone through it as a people?

No, even the Weimar regime was obsessed with rearmament and revanchism, they just pretended they weren't

it all comes down to russia.
If by some miracle or by something no one has thought about or by killing stalin they don't win they will get their shit pushed in

To add to user's statement:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky

Hindsight is always 2020.

Hitler the German high command and pretty much everyone else in the west all assumed that Germany was going to steamroll Russia even worse than they did in World War I, and given the Red Army's abysmal performance in the winter war, it wasn't entirely without prescedent.

They didn't court local resistance fighters until they realized just how many soldiers the Red Army could mobilize, and by then it was too late.

Do you think the men from those territories would've been enough say for a successfull capture of Stalingrad or a successfull defense of the romanian-hungarian-italian position that were outside of the city while the germans were inside?

>the madagascar plan
This was nothing more than a thinly veiled extermination plan. Think for a second about how well millions of Jews who have lived in urban Prussia all their life would adapt to a tropical island environment with effectively 0 modern infrastructure.

I'd say shitty Russian infrastructure also played a huge role, and the fact that German transport was mainly made of horses

This.

People like to tout German efficiency during WWII but logistically speaking they were still in WWI, they had to take trains and vehicles of all the countries they conquered and it STILL wasn't enough

Well Ukraine was a huge pool of very angry and disaffected manpower that wasn't tapped, it wouldn't have held at Stalingrad but it might have made Moscow a possibility in 1941 by freeing up reserves spent on occupation, mind you I don't think taking Moscow would end the war

just how much of a number are we talking about?

In fairness this was because the Russian railway system used a different gauge of track from Germany. This was an intentional defensive measure.

Speaking of, does anyone have any links showing the detail and structure of German logistics? As in, how many horses are we talking about? Ratio of trucks compared to the Allied nations? Railway capacity and so on?

How does uniting german people conflict with getting more room for them? Or was he supposed to increase the population w/o increasing the country size?

If they actually assaulted Moscow Germany would have just ended up getting stalingraded in 41 instead of 42. Moscow was much more heavily fortified than Stalingrad, it's not like the Germans were just going to walk in and take it.

Wouldn't they just capture Russian trains and use them, then?

Or is there something I'm missing here.

It sounds genius, but I feel like it'd be easier to capture Russian trains than crane yours onto the tracks.

Russians were doing a scorched earth strategy I believe so the Jerries wouldn't have gotten much anyway

No they went to war with Poland, because majority of Poland was East Prussia until the dissolution of the Empire and the establishment of Poland.

Ironically, the Germans had a plan during WWI to establish a Kingdom of Poland and eventually dissolve it at war's end and then genocide the Poles. It was known as the Eastern Land Strip.

I be upset too if I was a Prussian and my Eastern half just fucking went away. I would invade Poland to restore Prussia.

According to The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945, the German army used in total 2.75 million horses and mules, compared to the Soviets' 3.5 million. The Soviets could rely on 400,000 lend lease trucks, half of them Studebakers, along with around 230,000 domestically produced trucks. Any Allied army landing at Normandy is almost completely motorized. For the Germans, this site could be illuminating:
panzerworld.com/truck-production-numbers
Critically, in the year of 1941, only 39,000 trucks were produced by Germany, when 150,000 were needed to maintain the entire stock of trucks. The Heer at the start of Barbarossa had on hand relatively large numbers of requisitioned trucks from countries like France and Czechoslovakia, which were seen as not suitable to the Russian terrain and required different spare parts, putting more strain on supply; over 2,000 types of vehicles were used. A million different spare parts were required in the area covered by Army Group Center. 84 divisions had at least some number of captured vehicles. Combined with the breakdowns and other mechanical problems caused by the terrain, this led to a logistical nightmare.
As for rail transport, the Germans had to lay their own track with railway engineers due to the differences in gauges, the fact that the Soviets had evacuated 85% of their trains, and scorched earth tactics where rail lines and trackside structures like water towers were destroyed in retreat. Resources needed to lay new track put even more strain on the supply system, sometimes so severe that the process took days instead of a couple of hours. The railroad engineers were expected to work quickly, in some cases placing single tracks in double track sections. Their reports on railroad capacity were optimistic, not taking into account station capacity or the railway's own needs of coal and other materials. Army Group North needed 34 trains a day to meet supply needs, but only 18 arrived in rare cases.

Rundstedt in Army Group South received only 14.5 trains per day, instead of the 24 needed. von Bock in Army Group Center needed 30 trains a day, and in August 1941 rarely received more than 18 a day. The stockpiles, depots, and transport vehicles for the army in the East were managed by the OKH, while the trains that operated there, including their timetables, were under the authority of the OKW. This led to problems, as OKH and OKW did not always agree with eachother. There was also the issue of trains being used to send resources back to Germany, which was often heavily protested by the military. In the winter of 1941, five trains a day were sent to Germany from Ukraine containing cattle. The civilian administration of Ukraine then sent 12 cattle trains a week to Army Group South in the beginning of 1942 after complaints from the army, but the processed meat could not be sent out due to a lack of nails for crates.

"The supply of the army in the East until the failure at Moscow", in Germany and the Second World War, volume IV, provides a great view on how logistical problems were fucking over the Wehrmacht from the very start of Barbarossa. Supplying War also looks at the logistics of the Eastern Front, along with other conflicts.

I don't think he had mad hate for them, he probably just saw them as an annoyance when independent and a useful subject race when their numbers were controlled.