A Germany-Soviet Military-Economic Comparison by Arvo L. Vecamer

The Soviet Union was the single most important factor in the defeat of Nationalist Socialist Germany. Germany essentially lost the Second World War on the Eastern Front and the key to that loss can be directly attributed to the different economic and industrial factors of both the Soviet Union and the Third Reich.

To win in an armed conflict, a nation must be able to optimally supply one’s own forces both in offensive and defensive situations. Germany was able to (reasonably) supply her forces with military supplies in the early years of the war, when she fought a series of small, quick action campaigns. But after 1942, Germany could no longer provide her armed forces with the needed military supplies. Quick campaigns gave way to a prolonged war. The Soviet Union however could supply her army with the needed materials and the United States was indeed the global Arsenal of Democracy.

Since Adolf Hitler and the German Nationalist Socialist party came to power in 1933, Germany was both economically and militarily preparing for war. German military officials studied the failures of the last World War, recommended corrective measures and developed new combat techniques, which would deliver a proverbial deadly knockout punch as early as possible in any future conflict. German propaganda specialists made sure that all of Germany’s future opponents also believed that Germany was militarily superior to one and all.

In reality, Germany was not prepared for war in 1939. The German economy of the 1930’s continued to satisfy both civilian and military requirements, even after September of 1939 when production should have shifted to military needs. Hitler believed that he could have it both ways, “Kanonen und Butter” - that is, satisfying the civilian population at home by not placing restrictions on their consumer product consumption, while at the same time satisfying the production needs of Germany's military forces. In fact, Germany was not geared for total war production until 1944. This indicates that German economic and military resource management efforts were not optimally configured for a nation at war previous to that time, and in 1944, the tide had already long since turned.

For example, in FY 1942, Germany produced 30 million tons of steel - but only 8 million tons of that was directed towards military production efforts (airplanes, guns, munitions, supplies, tanks, etc.). The following chart highlights German steel production allocations for the fourth quarter of 1939:

Heer - 3.060.000 tons
Marine - 1.250.000 tons
Luftwaffe - 2.220.000 tons
Military construction - 2.060.000 tons
Total military - 8.590.000 tons

Civilian sector - 7.320.000 tons
Export - 1.730.000 tons
Total civilian - 9.050.000 tons

Total steel - 17.640.000 tons

The civilian sector thus consumed 41.5% of the total German steel production in the fourth quarter of 1939. By the fourth quarter of 1940, the civilian sector “only” consumed 40.8% of the steel output. When Speer reorganized the German economy when Fritz Todt died and he replaced him, it is clear to see where the slack came from.

In terms of human resources, Germany should have increased the hours of a workday to way beyond a regular “9-5” day early in the war. Women were not considered as a serious alternative work force until late in the war either. In 1939, German industries utilized 2.62 million women. In July of 1944, German industries still only utilized 2.67 million women. This average was maintained from 1939 to 1944.

In terms of manufacturing/production related intricacies, the Germans too made a number of long-term calculation errors. For example, the Germans would begin to produce one type of a weapons system (say a Pz IV), then, for whatever reason, added to or modified the basic production model within a very short period of time (the Pz IV came in a myriad of variants as time progressed). This “upgrading” only served to slow down the total number of units which could be produced in the long run. Standardized production equals mass quantaties. The Germans should have produced the Pz IV in just one or two variants and produce them as much as possible, just like the Soviets with their T-34 production. German tanks utilized more complex gasoline engines (higher maintenance and production costs); Soviet tanks ran on very basic diesel engines (and also less flammable when hit). Here too, the Germans realized their error in 1941, but it was too late to convert the German economy over to diesel engines.

From 1939 to 1941, Germany used her now well refined Blitzkrieg tactics to conquer Poland, Denmark, Norway, the BeNeLux nations, France, the Balkan, and so on. The end goal was to obtain a German victory through the utilization of the minimum quantities of men, materials and supplies as possible, and in the shortest time. This worked quite well in the early years of WWII. If there was a chance to win the war, it was most probable during the summer and fall of 1941 provided that the existing resources were not squandered or misused.

But in 1941, the Germans came up against a proverbial brick wall - their summer and fall offensive against the Soviet Union stalled. The winter season arrived with bitterly cold temperatures. Interestingly, on 16 August 1941, General Keitel and the Wehrmachts-Waffenämter agreed that Germany reduce its military production efforts in the fall of 1941. Both were so sure that Germany had defeated the Soviet Union, and Hitler concurred. Then came November and December of 1941. In short, the Germans had not adequately prepared for an extended winter campaign. One of the negative consequences was that many Wehrmacht infantrymen and tankers suffered accordingly (of note is that the Luftwaffe and the KM had sent proper winter clothing to most of their troops in the east).

In the end, Germany’s excellent military leadership and her many technical advantages were not enough to overcome the economic advantages of her enemies. From the very beginning, Germany should have been able to exploit many of her economic and technology advantages far more optimally. Placing Herman Göring in charge of domestic economic planning was not the wisest of selections either. While Albert Speer did achieve some very impressive production increases in 1943, 1944 and 1945 (he became Armaments Minister on 18 February 1942, replacing Fritz Todt), the German efforts were essentially a day late and a dollar short.

Germany lost the Second World War not because of any single military action, she lost it primarily to a war of economic and human attrition.

The Soviet Union took a different approach to the economic situation of the pre-war era. According to I.K. Malanin, a Soviet military history writer; the following six factors determine a nation’s ability to win or lose a war:

# The economic base
# The technological competence of the nation
# The established military doctrines and existing military traditions
# The geographic environment
# The ability and the experience of her personnel
# The comparative power of the enemy

The economic base: An economic base must be sufficiently developed to survive a prolonged conflict. The Soviet Union had built up a much more effective and reliable economic infrastructure since the 1920’s when compared to the German economy. It was more optimally geared for mass production of simple, yet reliable (military) goods and products. Throughout the Second World War, Soviet military forces never really suffered from serious supply problems, Soviet production centers continued to pour out what was needed on the front lines. But the Germans often suffered from supply shortages. In addition to their own production capabilities, the Soviet Union also obtained significant quantities of U.S. and British lend-lease aid as can be seen a few paragraphs down.

The technological competence of the nation: Technical expertise must be available to run existing equipment and to develop “this generation and the next generation” of military hardware. In this field, the Soviet Union obtained the needed expertise from abroad. Many state-of-the-art military technologies were in part, provided to the Soviet Union by the Germans. One need only recall the secret German-Soviet military bases, which operated in the Soviet Union in the 1920’s. While the Germans certainly learned much from those experiences, so did the next generation of Soviet military leaders. In addition to the secret bases, both Germany and the United States provided the bulk of the industrial and technical production competencies to the Soviet Union through the myriad of “economic assistance” contracts signed by the Soviet government with such American industrialists as Armand Hammer, Henry Ford, etc. Actual combat competence in the Soviet military was obtained by fighting the Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Finnish and German armies.

How significant was the American contribution to the Soviet war effort of WW2? Let us look at the Soviet car manufacturing industry of the pre-war era as but one example. The following table might help to place some U.S. contributions into a more optimal perspective:

AMO vehicles - Moscow plant - assistance through Brandt.
GAZ vehicles - Molotov Nr. 1, Gorky plant - assistance through Austin and Ford.
GAZ vehicles - Nizhni-Novgorod plant - assistance through Austin and Ford.
YAZ vehicles - Yaroslav plant - assistance through Hercules.
ZIS vehicles - Kuznetsk plant - assistance through Autocar and Brandt.

On 31 May 1929, Henry Ford and the Ford Corporation signed a contract allowing the Soviet Union to construct GAZ-A cars and GAZ-AA trucks at the Nizhni-Novgorod plant. U.S. engineers directed the construction of the factory and Ford provided most of the tools and jigs. Soviet engineers were sent to Ford’s Rogue River plant near Detroit to study U.S. automotive engineering methodologies (Ford basically told the Soviets the economics behind mass production techniques, American style). The Austin Company, Cleveland, OH, provided the Soviets with assistance for the construction of the AMO-3 two and a half ton trucks.

The ZIS-5 and ZIS-6 trucks were copies of the U.S. Autocar trucks. Holley carburetors (Holley Carburetors Co., Detroit, MI) were built at the Samara carburetor and motor plant after 1932. The Yaroslav tire plant was patterned after the Seiberling tire plant in Akron, OH. Of interest is that 34% of all trucks manufactured by the Soviet Union during the war were made at the Molotov Nr. 1 plant in Gorky; the GAZ-M trucks produced there being a direct copy of the 1934 Ford truck.

Because of the United States and all of the economic help it (and Germany to a lesser extent) provided to the Soviet Union during the 1930’s, the Soviet Union essentially advanced technologically 50 years in only an eight to 10 year span. When the U.S. engineers and specialists were forced to leave in the late 1930’s (some were never allowed to leave the Soviet Union despite the fact they were U.S. citizens), the Soviets were really only left with one realistic economic option - continue to utilize the basic systems and the mass production methodologies the Americans had left behind. And that is what they did during the Second World War. They were understandably crude copies of their American counterparts, but never-the-less, they were effective copies.

The Germans were not able to copy the American production methodologies; though they clearly analyzed and studied them very extensively. German factories were not designed for “mass” mass production. The American and the German economies of scale were so much different. In addition, the Allied air war forced the Germans to increasingly scale down the size of all of their production facilities and disperse them to prevent them from being bombed. By 1942/1943, just when the Germans needed it most, it was no longer possible for them to produce “one item” from start to finish under one roof.

The aviation sector can serve as but one example. From the European perspective in 1939, flying 400 miles (640 km), from Frankfurt to London - that was a “long” distance flight. And thus, many European fighter a/c of the early World War Two era were built with these “long distance” flights in mind. From the American perspective, flying 400 miles (640 km), from Los Angeles to San Francisco - that was a little puddle hopper flight. Flying 2.500 miles (4.000 km) from New York to Seattle - that was “long distance” flight. And thus, U.S. a/c were built primarily with U.S. type distances in mind.

The established military doctrines and existing military traditions: This was a rather unique situation for the Soviets in 1939. A great percentage of their soldiers had been trained during the Czarist era. The Soviets melded many traditional Czarist era military traditions with new, “Soviet” ones; as the war progressed, more and more older “traditions” were re-introduced into the Soviet military. Mobile warfare was learned by reading and studying western (primarily British and German) combat philosophies and learning from actual combat situations, such as fighting the Spaniards, the Japanese, the Finns and the Germans.

The geographic environment: Not much one can say here. A nation has what it has in terms of geographic features and that’s pretty much it. But, one can use geographic advantages to help alleviate military disadvantages. If you can, draw the enemy deep into your country - extend his logistical capabilities way beyond the norm - trade land for time to rebuild you armed forces, etc. - these thoughts and more were prime Soviet methodologies of the pre-war and war era.

The ability and the experience of her personnel: While the Soviet military truly worked on reforming itself in the 1930’s, the many purges also severely weakened the aggregate experience level of her military personnel. This placed the Soviet Union at a severely disadvantageous position in June of 1941. Only by 1943 and 1944, did the Soviet soldiers reach general parity with their German counterparts; and even then, the average German soldier held many competence and experience advantages over many of opponents.

The comparative power of the enemy: Since the 1930’s, the Germany and the Soviet Union were engaged in an arms race. After first investing heavily in building up an industrial base, starting in approximately 1937, the Soviet Union’s economy switched over to the production of military goods. But the Germans had a bit of an early lead - they started the arms race in 1933 (earlier in secret). From 1939 to approximately 1941/42, the German military economy retained a distinct advantage in both quality and quantity when compared to same of her opponents. By 1943, the Soviet Union had caught up and began to surpass the German production capabilities.

Allied lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union during the Second World War was also a factor in the Soviet economic and military situation during WWII. The United States provided the Soviet Union with approximately USD 11 billion in aid. Great Britain and Canada provided the Soviet Union with an additional USD 6 billion in aid. Both figures are for USD values in 1945. Since 1945, Soviet historians have tended to downplay the significance of Allied lend-lease efforts - it is unequivocably accepted that in the end, over 20 million Soviet citizens needlessly lost their lives in the conflict, lend-lease aid or not. But Allied lend-lease aid did make a difference, even if only a small one, to the Soviet war effort, as can be seen in the below paragraphs.

As soon as the German Army crossed into the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Stalin asked Churchill (and Roosevelt) for military assistance. Both agreed to provide it (not only in the form of military supplies, but after December of 1941, also in the form of opening up a “second” front in the west). The first lend-lease convoys to in fact depart for the Soviet Union, did so before any formal document had been signed between the Soviets and the Western Allies. It need be noted that although the United States was not officially at war with Germany, the U.S. agreed to help supply the Soviet Union with lend-lease aid. The promised supplies were agreed to in a series of protocols. The Soviet Union would receive goods and supplies up front, and it could repay its debts at the end of the war in cash or negotiable bonds (plus a small interest charge for late or non-payments).

On 06 October 1941, Winston Churchill advised Josef Stalin that a British convoy would depart from the west every 10 days. The first official convoy, PQ 1, departed from Iceland bound for Archangel (Archanglesk). It carried 20 tanks and 193 fighter a/c. It, as well as the next few PQ’s made it safely to and from the Soviet Union with their freight. It need be noted that in February of 1942, British lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union received a higher priority level than supplying British Home-Guard units and Commonwealth forces operating in the Pacific with military goods. Thus, badly needed Hurricane fighters went to the VVS, not to the RAF in Burma.

The Allied lend-lease aid effort was truly a monumental undertaking. During the course of the Second World War, the Western Allies sent 811 ships to Soviet ports filled with lend-lease aid. The Germans sank 58 of those ships. 33 of the 811 ships returned to port (mechanical breakdowns; damaged by a German attack, but able to proceed under their own power; etc.).

Murmansk and Vladivostok were among the most utilized ports. The route over the Pacific was safer, but it also took longer. Allied convoys had to first cross the Pacific, then the lend-lease aid goods had to traverse Siberia via train. Initially, Iran was hardly used as a trans-shipment route. The existing infrastructure needed to transport lend-lease goods to the Soviet Union was not optimal. After 1943, when the Allies developed better transportation networks in Iran and the Middle East in general, the Persian route became a more critical link. Of all the lend-lease aid, approximately 50% was delivered via the Pacific, 25% via Persia and 25% via the northern route to Archangel and Murmansk.

If the Allies were not well prepared to initiate lend-lease support to the Soviet Union in 1941, so was the Soviet Union not in an optimal position to accept the aid. Interestingly, in August of 1941, the heaviest crane at Murmansk could only lift an 11-ton load. The British had to quickly supply the Soviets with a heavier crane to help speed up the lend-lease off-loading efforts. The RAF also provided aerial support to protect Murmansk from the Luftwaffe. With VVS approval, the 151st RAF Wing arrived at their new base in Vaenga (about 20 miles out of Murmansk) in August of 1941 with 24 Hurricanes (15 additional Hurricane a/c were shipped in crates to Vaenga).

The first PQ’s arrived safely in the Soviet Union with their precious freight. But the Germans reacted quickly by sending both Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe units against the new threat. The first major loss was inflicted on PQ-13 in March of 1942 (PQ-13 lost five ships). PQ-14 and PQ15 also took heavy losses. Churchill wanted to increase the spacing between the departing convoys as a measure to offset losses. The Royal Navy wanted to stop all lend-lease aid during the summer months. The sun was out nearly 24 hours a day in the far northern Arctic waters and this would make any ship easy pickings for the Germans. For political reasons, the British could not select either option. The convoy schedule had to continue. PQ-16 was given a heavier escort and was increased in size to 35 merchantmen. The Germans sunk seven merchantmen and damaged one in PQ-16. PQ-17 was delayed in departing because the RN had to first protect its convoys going to Malta - it did not have enough escort vessels to go around. The U.S.Navy also could not provide escort assistance at that time because the USN was engaged in escorting U.S. merchantmen off of U.S. waters. PQ-17 sailed in June of 1942; it was a disaster for the Allies. The Germans sank 23 of the 36 ships. PQ-18, which departed on 02 September 1942, lost 13 out of 40 ships.

Here is an example of PQ convoy. In January of 1944, an American lend-lease convoy left Seattle bound for Vladivostok. Its manifest read as follows:

46 merchantmen (all 8-10K ton ships); built by McCormack Ship Yards; Soviet flagged (to avoid being torpedoed by the Japanese who could attack U.S. flagged vessels but who could not attack Soviet flagged ones) and Soviet crewed.

Six of the 46 ships were loaded with ammunitions and small arms. Four of the 46 ships were loaded with foodstuffs. Two of the 46 ships were loaded by Dodge (presumably with trucks). One ship was loaded by Westinghouse (presumably with communications gear).

They carried:

# 22.000 tons of steel provided by U.S. Steel.
# 3.000 truck chassis, by Ford (the Soviets also assembled U.S. trucks from parts).
# 3.000 truck differentials from Thornton Tandem Co.
# 2.000 tractors by Allis Chalmers Co. (agricultural and military use)
# 1.500 automotive batteries from the Price Battery Corp.
# 1.000 aircraft provided by the North American Aviation Co.
# 612 airplanes from the Douglas Aircraft Co.
# 600 trucks from Mack.
# 500 Allison aircraft engines.
# 500 half-tracks from Minneapolis Moline Co.
# 400 airplanes from Bell Aircraft
# 400 electric motors from Wagner Electric Co.
# 400 truck chassis by GM (see Ford above)
# 310 tons of ball bearings from the Fafnir Company.
# 200 aircraft provided by the U.S. Navy
# 200 aircraft engines by Aeromarine
# 100 tractor-trailer units by GM (trucks)
# 70 aircraft engines by Pratt & Whitney

In the end, Ultra and more dedicated Allied naval efforts helped to secure the northern lend-lease routes from German attacks. The Kriegsmarine lost a number of heavy ships for their efforts as well.

The following table, not an inclusive one by any means, shows the extent of lend-lease aid the Western Allies provided to the Soviet Union from 01 October 1941 to 31 March 1946 (not a typo, aid went on well after WWII ended). CW - Commonwealth contribution; US - American contribution:

Aircraft - 7.411 (CW) + 14.795 (US) = 22.206
Automotive:
--- 1.5 ton trucks 151.053 (US)
--- 2.5 ton trucks 200.662 (US)
--- Willys Jeeps 77.972 (US)
Bren Gun Carriers - 2.560 (CW)
Boots - 15 million pairs (US)
Communications equipment:
--- Field phones - 380.135 (US)
--- Radios - 40.000 (US)
--- Telephone cable - 1.25 million miles (US)
Cotton cloth - 107 million square yards (US)
Foodstuffs - 4.5 million tons (US)
Leather - 49.000 tons (US)
Motorcycles - 35.170 (US)
Locomotives - 1.981 units (US)
Rolling stock - 11.155 units (US)
Tanks - 5.218 (CW) + 7.537 (US) = 12.755
Tractors - 8.701 (US)
Trucks - 4.020 (CW) + 357.883 (US) = 361.903

In the early 1930’s the U.S. helped lay the foundations for a formidable Soviet truck production capability. During the war, Soviet production efforts were augmented through lend-lease aid. In terms of truck usage, U.S. lend-lease trucks generally went directly to front line combat units. Soviet built trucks were generally used in rear areas. Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, Studebaker, etc., all could be found on the eastern front. The Soviet Union ended the Second World War by having over 650.000 trucks available for use. Of those, 58% were Soviet in origin, 33% British or U.S. and the remaining percentage captured from the Germans.

U.S. lend-lease food supplies were sufficient to supply 6 million Soviet soldiers with one pound of (quality) consumables for each day of the war. Also, U.S. food supplies, such as canned Spam, had a seemingly indefinite shelf-life and could be stored anywhere without spoilage when compared to one of the standard Soviet military staple diets, dried fish (consuming dried fish causes one to drink more - this in turn increases the number of "breaks" one has to take - and that is not a desirable condition if one is close proximity to enemy lines).

Lend-lease aid amounted to approximately 10-12% of the total Soviet war production effort. While this does not seem like a significant amount, having 10% more key supplies available could make the difference between holding the line to going on the offensive.

From the Soviet geo-political perspective, Germany was enemy number one; especially after 1933. In order to defeat Germany, the Soviet Union would first have to establish the economic and the military infrastructures that would lead to the primary goal (the defeat of Germany). The Soviets searched high and low for the best of everything the west could offer; Christie tank designs from the U.S.; U.S. industrial production know-how; Czechoslovakian and German military hardware; etc. The Soviets also made a “top to bottom” review of their military supply system to seek the most efficient solutions. Western armies of the World War Two era were still modeled on the old Napoleonic way of thinking - provide each combat division with ample service and supply capabilities so they can draw upon rear area stocks as needed. The Soviets reversed that order - army depots and army transportation units would (more efficiently) deliver supplies to the troops; more combat troops could then be placed at the front lines. Of note is that the Soviets military transportation system was far more mechanized than the German one (though no one in WW2 beat the nearly 100% mark of the U.S. transportation system). The German military transportation system still relied on horses in May of 1945.

Mention is often made of the fact that Soviet weapons were crude or simple in design and manufacture. While many were clearly so in appearance, they nearly always worked. German weapon systems, for the most part, became more complex as the war progressed and they did not always work as expected (such as the new Pz V’s at Kursk). There were never enough German service technicians on hand to keep all of the German military hardware operating at peak strength. Building complex military technologies often requires having a larger pool of technicians available to fix the inevitable breakdowns.

The bottom line - the ultimate question is one of simple economics and opportunity costs. How does a nation allocate its existing economic resources? What could one do instead if one changed one’s econimic priorities? One could produce a mighty slick looking and most effective Jagdpanther V with all the bells and whistles or one could opt to produce five shoddy looking, but most functional and reliable T-34’s instead. And so the equation goes. The Soviets opted for the latter scenario and they essentially defeated Germany in May of 1945. The Soviet Union produced great quantities of very basic weapons systems to counter the exceptional skills of the German military command. The Germans elected to go for the Jagdpanther V type scenario - they thus lost the economic battle of the war, and thus the war itself.

Sources : feldgrau

East Germany-The Group of Soviet Forces in Germany

The westernmost and most formidable concentration of Soviet armed might outside the borders of the Soviet Union is the GSFG. In 1987 this force of about 380,000 men, organized into 20 ground force divisions and one air army and stationed entirely in East Germany, was over twice the size of the NVA.

The importance that the Soviets attach to their position in East Germany is underscored by the disparity in size between the GSFG and the other Soviet groups of forces in Eastern Europe. The Northern Group of Forces in Poland, for instance, comprised three divisions, the Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia numbered six divisions, and the Southern Group of Forces in Hungary had four divisions. The other groups totaled slightly more than half the size of the GSFG. The GSFG dominated not only East Germany but also the rest of Eastern Europe, not to mention the image that it projected into Western Europe. In 1987 the GSFG, under the command of General Valerii Aleksandrovich Belikov, had its headquarters in the former Wehrmacht command center in Zossen-W�nsdorf, south of Berlin.

In 1987 the ground forces of the GSFG were organized into five armies, which had been strengthened continually during the 1980s. These forces were fully motorized, equipped with tactical nuclear weapons, and provided with high operational mobility. The ground forces included about 5,000 to 6,000 main battle tanks, the majority of them T-72s. The First Guards Tank Army, headquartered at Dresden, included four tank divisions and one motorized rifle division; the Second Guards Army, at F�rstenberg, had one tank and two motorized rifle divisions; the Eighth Guards Army, at Weimar-Nohra, had one tank and three motorized rifle divisions; the Twentieth Guards Army, at Eberswalde, had three motorized rifle divisions; and the Third Shock Army, at Magdeburg, had four tank divisions and one motorized rifle division. In addition to the necessary artillery units at army and division levels, artillery support was provided by an independent division of rocket troops and artillery--the Thirty-fourth Artillery Division--stationed at Potsdam-Elstal and directly subordinate to the GSFG. A Spetsnaz (see Glossary) company was assigned to each army, and an independent Spetsnaz brigade was stationed in Neuruppin. Air support was provided by the Twenty-fourth Air Army, with headquarters at W�nsdorf. It is considered the best-equipped part of the Soviet air forces. In 1987 about 80 percent of the 1,000 to 2,000 aircraft were potential carriers of nuclear weapons.

The GSFG conducts its own maneuvers and training independently of the NVA. There is a program, however, called Brotherhood-in-Arms, which promotes contacts and cooperation between the East German and Soviet troops. Both the NVA and the GSFG participate in the various joint Warsaw Pact maneuvers and exercises.

Sources : mongabay

The Battle Of Stalingrad

Background to the battle of Stalingrad
By mid 1942, the German invasion had already cost Russia over six million soldiers, half killed and half captured by the Germans, and a large part of its vast territory and resources. With the help of its arctic winter, it stopped the exhausted Germans just before Moscow and pushed them back a bit. But in the summer of 1942, when Russia was still very weak from its tremendous losses, the German military was again ready to demonstrate its formidable fighting force.

Hitler's Generals wanted to attack in the direction of Moscow again, in order take Russia's capital city, its heart and nerve center, and to crush most of Russia's remaining military forces while doing so, but Hitler now personally commanded the German army, and he listened to his Generals much less than before.

In April 1942, Hitler issued "war directive 41", which detailed his plan for the Russian front for summer 1942, code named Operation Blue. The plan was to concentrate all available forces in the southern flank of the long front, destroy the front line Russian forces there, and then advance in two directions to the primary and secondary objectives, which were the two most important remaining industrial centers in South Russia:

1. Advance far South-East, through the mountainous Caucasus region, to capture the rich oil fields on the Caspian Sea.
2. Advance East, to Stalingrad, a major industrial and transportation center on the West bank of the wide Volga river, the main waterway of inner Russia, that runs all the way from North of Moscow to the Caspian Sea in the South.

It's important to note that Hitler's directive did not demand to occupy the city of Stalingrad. The directive was "to reach Stalingrad itself, or at least to cover it with heavy artillery, so that it will no longer be an industrial or transportation center". The German army achieved this objective with minimal losses in the first day of the battle of Stalingrad. It was the stubborn battle to occupy the city itself to the last ruined meter, and later Hitler's refusal to retreat from Stalingrad, that cost him his entire southern campaign, and horrible losses to both sides. Once his forces entered the city named after Stalin, the Soviet dictator and Hitler's arch enemy, Hitler became obsessed with occupying Stalingrad, and remained obsessed with it despite everything, until the large German force in and near Stalingrad was destroyed to the last man.

The German attack in South Russia began on June 28, 1942, a year after the invasion of Russia began. The Germans advanced rapidly in a Blitzkrieg of armor and air power, and were followed by their Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian allies, whose task was to secure the long German flanks. The Russian front collapsed and the Germans rapidly advanced towards South Russia's last natural line of defense, the Volga.

On July 28, 1942, in a desperate attempt to stop the collapse, Stalin issued "order 227" that "every granule of Soviet soil must be stubbornly defended to the last drop of blood.", and secret police units were placed behind the Russian front units to kill anyone who deserts or retreats. However, order 227 also appealed to the Russian patriotism, clarifying how severe the situation was.

Despite their effort, the Russian 62nd and 64th armies West of Stalingrad could not stop the advancing Germans before the city. The empty arid prairie was perfect for attack, and they were pushed back towards Stalingrad, which was an urban stretch along the West bank of the Volga.

On August 23, 1942, the spearhead of the German 6th army reached the Volga just North of Stalingrad and captured a 8km wide strip along the river bank, and the German tanks and artillery began to sink crossing ships and ferries. On that day, other units of the 6th army reached the outskirts of Stalingrad, and the hundreds of bombers and dive bombers of the Luftwaffe's 4th air fleet began to heavily bombard the city, and would continue to do so daily for weeks, destroying or damaging every building in the city. The battle of Stalingrad began.
The ferocious urban battle in Stalingrad
In the first days of the fighting, the Germans were confident that although Stalingrad's defenders fought fanatically from the beginning, they will quickly occupy the city. From the Russian side things didn't look better. There were initially 40,000 troops in Stalingrad, but mostly ill-equipped reserve soldiers and those of the local population who were not evacuated, and it was assumed that Stalingrad might be lost in a few days. It was desperately clear to the Russian leadership that the only thing which could still save Stalingrad from falling, is a superb commander with a combination of the highest military skill and an iron will, and every possible reinforcement.

Actually two such commanders were selected and given the task of saving Stalingrad:

In the national level, Stalin ordered General Zhukov to leave the Moscow front and simply go to South Russia and save what he can. Zhukov, the best and most influential Russian General of World War 2, practically served as Stalin's military "crisis solver".

In the local level, General Vasily Chuikov, the deputy commander of the 64th army South of Stalingrad, and an aggressive and determined commander, was called to the regional command post. The severe situation was presented to him, and he was appointed the new commander of the Russian 62nd army, which still held most of Stalingrad. Before he left, he was asked "How do you interpret your mission?". Chuikov's answer was "We will defend the city or die". His personal leadership during the following months, which projected catching determination and fatalism to Stalingrad's defenders, shows that he meant it.

When General Chuikov came to Stalingrad, the 62nd army already lost half of its troops, and it was clear to its soldiers that it became a death trap, and many tried to escape across the Volga. General Chuikov knew that the only way to keep holding Stalingrad was to buy time with blood.

Stalingrad's defenders were informed that the secret police guards all crossing points on the Volga, and everyone crossing the river without permission will be shot on the spot. In addition, a stream of fresh reinforcements, including elite units, began to arrive and cross the Volga under German fire into Stalingrad. Most were killed, but they enabled Chuikov to keep holding at least part of Stalingrad despite the tremendous German pressure. The average life expectancy of a reinforcement soldier in Stalingrad was as low as 24 hours !!. Whole units were sacrificed in Stalingrad's desperate defense. One unit which perhaps sacrificed most in the battle of Stalingrad was the elite 13th Guards division, which was sent across the Volga into Stalingrad just in time to repel a German attack that reached the Volga near the center of the city. 30% of the 10,000 warriors of the 13th division were killed in the first 24 hours of their arrival, and only 320 survived the battle of Stalingrad, a horrible 97% death rate, but they saved Stalingrad in the most critical moment.

The concentration of forces and the intensity of the fighting in Stalingrad was unprecedented, with divisions attacking along a front line just a mile wide, or less. General Chuikov had to move his command post in the city from place to place to avoid being killed or captured, usually in the last possible moments.

Just sending more reinforcements to replace the dead was not enough. In order to reduce losses, Chuikov's strategy was to narrow the gap between the Russian positions and the German positions to the absolute minimum, so close that the German Stuka dive bombers will not be able to drop their bombs on the Russian positions without risking the German soldiers. As a result, the fighting in Stalingrad was reduced to an endless series of small battles for every street, every building, every floor, and sometimes for every room in a building. Some key positions in Stalingrad changed hands up to fifteen times during the battle, with terrible bloodshed. The Russians had an advantage in night fighting among the ruined buildings and factories, sometimes using just knives or grenades instead of guns. The ruined city was a perfect killing zone for a large number of snipers, of both sides, including the head of the German army's sniper school who was sent to Stalingrad to hunt the Russian snipers and was killed by one of them. Some highly successful Russian snipers became famous heroes. One of them killed 224 Germans by mid November.

The Russians nicknamed the city "the Stalingrad street fighting academy". They also starved most of the time, because the German artillery made crossing the Volga so dangerous that what was shipped across the river was mostly more soldiers and ammunition, not food. Many Russian soldiers were killed while crossing the river to Stalingrad or while being evacuated back after being wounded in the city.

The German advantage in heavy fire by tanks and dive bombers was gradually matched by Russian artillery reinforcements of all types, from mortars to rocket launchers, which were concentrated East of the Volga, where the German tanks could not sweep them, and were protected from the Stuka dive bombers by many anti aircraft guns. The Russian Air Force also significantly increased its attacks, with much more aircraft than before and better trained pilots.

For the soldiers and few remaining civilians in Stalingrad, life, while they lasted, were an endless hell of gunfire, explosions, the yell sounds of dive bombers and Katyusha rockets, smoke, dust, rubble, hunger, the smell of death everywhere, and exhaustion and fear. It was like that day after day and week after week, and it also significantly raised disease rate.

At the end of October 1942, the Russians held only a narrow strip and some isolated pockets in Stalingrad, and the Germans tried one more major attack in an attempt to take it before winter, but the exhaustion and rising shortage of ammunition stopped them, but fighting continued.

Hitler, increasingly frustrated with the standstill, pushed more divisions closer to Stalingrad and into the city, further weakening the long German flanks in the empty prairies West and South of Stalingrad. He assumed that the Russians were consuming their last remaining reserves and that therefore a massive Russian attack in the German flanks was not expected. He was wrong.
The Russian counter attack
The Germans again underestimated the Russian resources. The continued weakening of the German flanks behind Stalingrad, as more and more German units were pushed to the city, was the anticipated opportunity for which General Zhukov prepared since the battle of Stalingrad began.

Also, like in the battle of Moscow a year before, the harsh Russian winter returned, sharply reducing the German army's mobility and observation capabilities.

General Zhukov planned and prepared a massive Russian counter attack, code named operation Uranus, that would attack the German flanks at their two weakest points, 100 miles West of Stalingrad, and 100 miles South of it. The two Russian forces will meet far Southwest of Stalingrad and encircle the entire German 6th army near Stalingrad and cut its supply lines. It was a classic large scale Blitzkrieg plan, except that this time the Russians will do it to the Germans. Zhukov's goal was to win not just battle of Stalingrad but the entire campaign in South Russia.

The Russian preparations covered every operational and logistical aspect. In maximum secrecy, over a million Russian soldiers were gathered, now greatly outnumbering the Germans, and 14,000 heavy artillery guns, 1000 T-34 tanks, and 1350 aircraft. Zhukov prepared a giant surprise attack, and when the Russian concentrations were finally noticed by the Germans at the end of October, it was almost too late to do anything, but the disbelief at the German side, and Hitler's obsession, prevented them from significantly responding. When the German chief of staff suggested to abandon Stalingrad to shorten the German lines, Hitler shouted "I will not abandon the Volga!".

The Russian counter attack began on November 19, 1942, three months after the battle of Stalingrad began. It was the first fully prepared Russian attack in World War 2, and it was a great success. The Russians attacked the sectors of the German flanks held by the 3rd and 4th Romanian armies. The Russians knew, from interrogating kidnapped POWs, that the Romanian forces had the lowest morale and least supplies.

Under the sudden pressure of the massive Russian artillery and advancing tank columns, the Romanian lines collapsed within hours, and after two days the Romanians surrendered. German units moved to face the advancing Russians, but it was too late, and in four days the two spearheads of the Russian pincer movement met each other about 100km West of Stalingrad.
The besieged Germans
The entire German 6th army was now trapped in and near Stalingrad. To prevent the Germans from breaking the encirclement, the Russians expanded the corridor which separated the 6th army from the rest of the German military to a width of over 100 miles, and quickly moved 60 divisions and 1000 tanks there. But instead of breaking out of the encirclement, General von Paulus, the 6th army's commander, was immediately ordered by Hitler to remain in his position and hold it at all cost.

Hermann Goering, Hitler's deputy and head of the Luftwaffe, promised Hitler that his Luftwaffe will supply the 6th army, promising to fly 500 tons of supplies per day. Goering did not consult Luftwaffe headquarters about this and it was far beyond its ability, but it was what Hitler wanted to hear.

The air supply operation continued until the 6th army's surrender, but it flew less than 100 tons per day, much less than needed, and the Luftwaffe lost 488 cargo aircraft in it. The 6th army quickly ran out of fuel, ammunition, and food, and the German soldiers starved severely.

Only three weeks later, Field Marshal von Manstein's army group finally attacked the Russian barrier on December 12, 1942, but it could not reach the encircled 6th army. The Germans advanced just 60 kilometers in the direction of Stalingrad, before they were pushed back by a Russian counter attack.

Despite their isolation and starvation, the German 6th army kept fighting, and fortified its positions as much as its could. Hitler demanded that they'll keep on even after it was clear that they will remain isolated after von Manstein's rescue attempt failed.

When the 6th army rejected an ultimatum to surrender, the Russians started the final attack to crush it. They estimated the number of besieged Germans at 80,000 while there were over 250,000 encircled Germans.

On January 10, 1943, 47 Russian divisions attacked the 6th army from all directions. Knowing that captivity in Russia will be very cruel, the Germans kept fighting a hopeless battle.

A week later, the large German pocket was shrunk by half, pushed towards Stalingrad, and only one runway remained in German hands, and it was under fire. On January 22, 1943, the starved, frozen, and exhausted 6th army began to collapse. A week later Hitler promoted von Paulus to Field Marshal, and reminded him that no German Field Marshal was ever captured alive, but von Paulus was captured the next day in a cellar in Stalingrad.
The results of the battle of Stalingrad
On February 2, 1943, the last German resistance ended. Hitler was furious, accusing von Paulus and Goering for the tremendous losses, instead of accusing himself. The Germans lost almost 150,000 soldiers, and 91,000 more were captured by the Russians. Only 5,000 of them returned home after years in Russian prison camps. Together with the losses of their Romanian and Italian allies, the German side lost about 300,000 soldiers. The Russians lost 500,000 soldiers and civilians.

In Stalingrad, in addition to its heavy losses, the German army also lost its formidable image of being invincible. Russian soldiers everywhere now knew that they were victorious, and their morale boosted and remained high until the end of the war, which was still 2 1/2 years away. It boosted British and American morale too. In Germany, the bad news were censored, but eventually they were released and shocked German morale. It was clear that the battle of Stalingrad was a major turning point of World War 2, that the direction of the war turned against Germany. The happy Stalin promoted Zhukov to Field Marshal. He made himself a Field Marshal too, although he was a civilian.

The surviving defenders of Stalingrad could finally leave the destroyed city, and the 62nd army was renamed a "guards" army, an honor indicating an elite unit. They deserved that honor. General Vasily Chuikov led his men until the end of the war, and because of their experience in "the Stalingrad street fighting academy", they led the Russian army into Berlin in 1945, and Chuikov personally received Berlin's surrender in May 1, 1945. He was promoted to Field Marshal, and was Russia's deputy minister of defense in the 1960s. He is buried in Stalingrad, with so many of his men.

Sources : 2worldwar2

Total war

Total war is a war limitless in its scope in which a belligerent engages in the mobilization of all their available resources, in order to render beyond use their rival's capacity for resistance.

The practice of total war has been in use for centuries, but it was only in the middle to late 19th century that total war was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and civilians than in other conflicts, and sometimes no such differentiation at all, as nearly every human resource, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of the belligerent effort

Etymology

The phrase can be traced back to the 1936 publication of General Ludendorff’s World War I memoir Der Totale Krieg ("The Total War"). However, the concept extends back as far as Clausewitz’s classic work On War. USAF General Curtis LeMay updated the concept for the nuclear age. He suggested total war in the nuclear age should be conducted by delivering the nuclear arsenal in a single overwhelming blow.

Early history

One of the earliest forms of total war occurred in the Warring States Period, when the State of Qín or Ch'in (778 BC-207 BC) enacted reforms that transformed the nation into a war machine.The population was divided between soldiers who actively fought in the armies and farmers who fed the armies. Industrial development was concentrated on war, resulting in the perfection of bronze weaponry technology: Qin had some of the finest weapons of that era despite using outdated technology (iron had largely replaced bronze in most parts of China). The Qin state's mobilization for total war was a decisive factor in its victory over its rivals and the subsequent unification of China.

An early example of total war, and possibly the first to be fairly well documented, was the Peloponnesian War, described by the historian Thucydides. This war was fought between Athens and Sparta between 431 and 404 BC. Previously, Greek warfare was a limited and ritualized form of conflict. Armies of hoplites would meet on the battlefield and decide the outcome in a single day. During the Peloponnesian War, however, the fighting lasted for years and consumed the economic resources of the participating city-states. Entire populations were executed or sold into slavery, as in the case of the island of Melos (now known as Milos). The aftermath of the war reshaped the Greek world, left much of the region in poverty, and reduced once influential Athens to a weakened state, from which it never completely recovered.

During the Middle Ages, the Mongols in the 13th century practised total war. The military forces of Genghis Khan slaughtered whole populations and destroyed any city that resisted during the invasions of Khwarezmid Empire, Kievan Rus', Baghdad, China, Armenia, Georgia, Poland, Hungary and northern Iran. During the sack of Baghdad in 1258 between 100,000 and 1,000,000 people were killed in the violence. Total war created the Mongol Empire which, by the death of Genghis Khan, would be the largest contiguous empire in history.

Many regions of 16th century Europe were subject to conflicts that could be described as total war. The descent into large scale violence at this time was partly due to population pressures, and partly the product of tensions caused by the Protestant Reformation. The German Peasants War of 1524-25 was an early example; Total warfare was also employed in the French Wars of Religion, with assassins being engaged wantonly by both sides in the conflict. The Elizabethan wars in Ireland, such as the Desmond Wars and the Nine Years War, were extreme examples of what is today known as total war.

The subsequent Thirty Years War may also be considered a total war.This conflict was fought between 1618 and 1648, primarily on the territory of modern Germany. Virtually all of the major European powers were involved, and the economy of each was based on fighting the war. Civilian populations were devastated—"the war nourished the war". Estimates of civilian casualties are approximately 25-30%, with deaths due to a combination of armed conflict, famine, and disease.The size and training of armies also grew dramatically during this period, as did the cost of keeping armies in the field. Plunder was commonly used to pay and feed armies.

After the Thirty Years War and up to the French Revolution most wars in Europe were smaller wars with limited goals, so called Cabinet Wars or Kabinettskriege.

French Revolutionary Wars

The French Revolutionary Wars reintroduced some of the concepts of total war. The fledgling republic found itself threatened by a powerful coalition of European nations. The only solution, in the eyes of the Jacobin government, was to pour the nation's entire resources into an unprecedented war effort—this was the advent of the levée en masse. The following decree of the National Convention on August 23, 1793 clearly demonstrates the immensity of the French war effort:

From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn linen into lint; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic.

Following the August 23 decree French front line forces grew to some 800,000 with a total of 1.5 million in all services—the first time an army in excess of a million had been mobilized in Western history. Over the coming two decades of almost constant warfare it is estimated that somewhere in the vicinity of five million died—probably about half of them civilians—and France alone counted nearly a million (by some sources in excess of a million) deaths—a considerably higher portion of its population than perished in either of the world wars.

In the Russian campaign of 1812 the Russians resorted to destroying infrastructure and agriculture in their retreat in order to hamper the French and strip them of adequate supplies. In the campaign of 1813 Allied forces in the German theater alone amounted to nearly one million whilst two years later in the Hundred Days a French decree called for the total mobilization of some 2.5 million men (though at most a fifth of this was managed by the time of the French defeat at Waterloo). During the prolonged Peninsular War from 1808–1814 some 300,000 French troops were kept permanently occupied by, in addition to several hundred thousand Spanish, Portuguese and British regulars an enormous and sustained guerrilla insurgency—ultimately French deaths would amount to 300,000 in the Peninsular War alone.

Taiping Rebellion

The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) was one of the deadliest wars in history, and the first total war in modern China. About 20 million people died, many due to disease and famine.It followed the secession of the Tàipíng Tiānguó (太平天國,T'ai-p'ing t'ien-kuo), or Heavenly Kingdom of Perfect Peace, from the Qing Empire. Almost every citizen of the Tàipíng Tiānguó was given military training and conscripted into the army to fight against the Imperial forces.

During this conflict both sides tried to deprive each other of the resources to continue the war and it became standard practice to destroy agricultural areas, butcher the population of cities and in general exact a brutal price from captured enemy lands in order to drastically weaken the opposition's war effort. This war truly was total in that civilians on both sides participated to a significant extent in the war effort and in that armies on both sides waged war on the civilian population as well as military forces.
Roundhouse in Atlanta, Georgia following extensive damage from the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War

American Civil War

During the American Civil War, U.S. Army General Phillip Sheridan's stripping of the Shenandoah Valley, beginning on September 21, 1864 and continuing for two weeks, was considered "total war". Its purpose was to eliminate foodstuffs and supplies vital to the South's military operations, as well as to strike a blow at Southern civilian morale. Sheridan took the opportunity when he realized opposing forces had become too weak to resist his army.

Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman's 'March to the Sea' in November/December 1864 destroyed the resources required for the South to make war. Sherman is considered one of the first military commanders to deliberately and consciously use total war as a military strategy. General Ulysses S. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln initially opposed the plan until Sherman convinced them of its necessity.


World War I

Almost the whole of Europe mobilized to wage World War I. Young men were removed from production jobs to serve in military roles, and were replaced on the production line by women. Rationing occurred on the home fronts. Bulgaria went so far as to mobilize a quarter of its population or 800,000 people, a greater share of its population than any other country during the war.

One of the features of Total War in Britain was the use of government propaganda posters to divert all attention to the war on the home front. Posters were used to influence public opinion about what to eat and what occupations to take, and to change the attitude of support towards the war effort. Even the Music Hall was used as propaganda, with propaganda songs aimed at recruitment and portrayed in the play and film Oh, What A Lovely War!

After the failure of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the large British offensive in March 1915, the British Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal John French blamed the lack of progress on insufficient and poor-quality artillery shells. This led to the Shell Crisis of 1915 which brought down the Liberal government of Premiership of H. H. Asquith. He formed a new coalition government dominated by Liberals and appointed David Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions. It was a recognition that the whole economy would have to be geared for war if the Allies were to prevail on the Western Front.

As young men left the farms for the front, domestic food production in Britain and Germany fell. In Britain the response was to import more food, which was done despite the German introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare, and to introduce rationing. The Royal Navy's blockade of German ports prevented Germany from importing food and hastened German capitulation by creating a food crisis in Germany.
Founding Ceremony of the Hakkō ichiu Monument, promoting the unification of «the 8 corners of the world under one roof»

World War II

The Second World War can be considered the quintessential total war of modernity. The level of national mobilization of resources on all sides of the conflict, the battlespace being contested, the scale of the armies, navies, and air forces raised through conscription, the active targeting of civilians (and civilian property), the general disregard for collateral damage, and the unrestricted aims of the belligerents marked total war on a multicontinental scale.

Shōwa Japan

During the first part of the Shōwa era, the governments of Imperial Japan launched a string of policies to promote total war effort against China or occidental powers and increase industrial production. Among these were the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association.

The National Mobilization Law had fifty clauses, which provided for government controls over civilian organizations (including labor unions), nationalization of strategic industries, price controls and rationing, and nationalized the news media.The laws gave the government the authority to use unlimited budgets to subsidize war production, and to compensate manufacturers for losses caused by war-time mobilization. Eighteen of the fifty articles outlined penalties for violators.

To improve its production, Shōwa Japan used millions of slave labourers and pressed more than 18 million people in Far East Asia.


United Kingdom

Before the onset of the Second World War, the United Kingdom drew on its First World War experience to prepare legislation that would allow immediate mobilization of the economy for war, should future hostilities break out.

Rationing of most goods and services was introduced, not only for consumers but also for manufacturers. This meant that factories manufacturing products that were irrelevant to the war effort had more appropriate tasks imposed. All artificial light was subject to legal blackouts.

"..There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are everywhere to be seen. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage."
Winston Churchill on the radio, June 18 ; and House of Commons 20 August 1940

Not only were men conscripted into the armed forces from the beginning of the war (something which had not happened until the middle of World War I), but women were also conscripted as Land Girls to aid farmers and the Bevin Boys were conscripted to work down the coal mines.

Enormous casualties were expected in bombing raids, so children were evacuated from London and other cities en masse to the countryside for compulsory billeting in households. In the long term this was one of the most profound and longer-lasting social consequences of the whole war for Britain. This is because it mixed up children with the adults of other classes. Not only did the middle and upper classes become familiar with the urban squalor suffered by working class children from the slums, but the children got a chance to see animals and the countryside, often for the first time, and experience rural life.

The use of statistical analysis, by a branch of science which has become known as Operational Research to influence military tactics was a departure from anything previously attempted. It was a very powerful tool but it further dehumanised war particularly when it suggested strategies which were counter intuitive. Examples where statistical analysis directly influenced tactics include the work done by Patrick Blackett's team on the optimum size and speed of convoys and the introduction of bomber streams by the Royal Air Force to counter the night fighter defences of the Kammhuber Line.

Germany

In contrast, Germany started the war under the concept of Blitzkrieg. Officially, it did not accept that it was in a total war until Joseph Goebbels' Sportpalast speech of 18 February 1943. For example, women were not conscripted into the armed forces or allowed to work in factories. The Nazi party adhered to the policy that a woman's place was in the home, and did not change this even as its opponents began moving women into important roles in production.

"I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?"
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, 18 February 1943, in his Sportpalast speech

The commitment to the doctrine of the short war was a continuing handicap for the Germans; neither plans nor state of mind were adjusted to the idea of a long war until the failure of the operation Barbarossa. A major strategical defeat in the Battle of Moscow forced Albert Speer, who was appointed as Germany's armament minister in early 1942, to nationalize German war production and eliminate the worst inefficiencies.

Under his direction a threefold increase in armament production occurred and did not reach its peak until late 1944. To do this during the damage caused by the growing strategic Allied bomber offensive, is an indication of the degree of industrial under-mobilization in the earlier years. It was because the German economy through most of the war was substantially under-mobilized that it was resilient under air attack. Civilian consumption was high during the early years of the war and inventories both in industry and in consumers' possession were high. These helped cushion the economy from the effects of bombing.

Plant and machinery were plentiful and incompletely used, thus it was comparatively easy to substitute unused or partly used machinery for that which was destroyed. Foreign labour, both slave labour and labour from neighbouring countries who joined the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany, was used to augment German industrial labour which was under pressure by conscription into the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces).

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union (USSR) was a command economy which already had an economic and legal system allowing the economy and society to be redirected into fighting a total war. The transportation of factories and whole labour forces east of the Urals as the Germans advanced across the USSR in 1941 was an impressive feat of planning. Only those factories which were useful for war production were moved because of the total war commitment of the Soviet government.

The Eastern Front of the European Theatre of World War II encompassed the conflict in central and eastern Europe from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945. It was the largest theatre of war in history in terms of numbers of soldiers, equipment and casualties and was notorious for its unprecedented ferocity, destruction, and immense loss of life. The fighting involved millions of German and Soviet troops along a broad front hundreds of kilometres long. It was by far the deadliest single theatre of World War II. Scholars now believe that at most 27 million Soviet citizens died during the war, including some 8.7 million soldiers who fell in battle against Hitler's armies or died in POW camps. Millions of civilians died from starvation, exposure, atrocities, and massacres.The Axis lost some 5.2 million soldiers in the east as well as many thousands of civilians

During the battle of Stalingrad, newly-built T-34 tanks were driven—unpainted because of a paint shortage—from the factory floor straight to the front. This came to symbolise the USSR's commitment to the Great Patriotic War and demonstrated the government's total war policy.

To encourage the Russian people to work harder, the communist government, controlled by Stalin, encouraged the people's love of the Motherland and even allowed the reopening of Russian Orthodox Churches as it was thought this would help the war effort.

United States

The United States underwent an unprecedented mobilization of national resources for the Second World War. Conditions on the home front were not as strained as they were in the United Kingdom or as desperate as they were in the Soviet Union, but the United States greatly curtailed nearly all non-essential activities in its prosecution of the Second World War and redirected nearly all available national resources to the conflict, including reaching the point of diminishing returns by late 1944, where the U.S. military was unable to find any more males of the correct military age to draft into service.

The strategists of the U.S. military looked abroad at the storms brewing on the horizon in Europe and Asia, and began quietly making contingency plans as early as the mid-1930s; new weapons and weapons platforms were designed, and made ready. Following the outbreak of war in Europe, and the metastasis of the ongoing aggression in Asia, efforts were stepped up significantly. The collapse of France and the airborne aggression directed at Great Britain unsettled the Americans, who had close relations with both nations, and a peacetime draft was instituted, along with Lend-Lease programs to aid the British, and covert aid was passed to the Chinese as well.

American public opinion was still opposed to involvement in the problems of Europe and Asia, however. In 1941, the Soviet Union became the latest nation to be invaded, and the U.S. gave her aid as well. American ships began defending aid convoys to the Allied nations against submarine attacks, and a total trade embargo against the Empire of Japan was instituted to deny its military the raw materials its factories and military forces required to continue its offensive actions in China.

In late 1941, Japan's Army-dominated government decided to seize by military force the strategic resources of South-East Asia and Indonesia since the Western powers would not give Japan these goods by trade. Planning for this action included surprise attacks on American and British forces in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, and the U.S. naval base and warships at Pearl Harbor. In response to these attacks, the U.K. and U.S. declared war on the Empire of Japan the next day. Nazi Germany declared war on the U.S. a few days later, along with Fascist Italy; the U.S., consequently declaring war on both, found itself fully involved in a second world war.
"It's a ticklish sort of job making a thing for a thing-ummy-bob
Especially when you don't know what it's for
But it's the girl that makes the thing that drills the hole
that holds the spring that works the thing-ummy-bob
that makes the engines roar.

And it's the girl that makes the thing that holds the oil
that oils the ring that works the thing-ummy-bob
that's going to win the war."
"The Thing-Ummy Bob", A British song made popular in the US by Gracie Fields

As the United States began to gear up for a major war, information and propaganda efforts were set in motion. Civilians (including children) were encouraged to take part in fat, grease, and scrap metal collection drives. Many factories making non-essential goods retooled for war production. Levels of industrial productivity previously unheard of were attained during the war; multi-thousand-ton convoy ships were routinely built in a month-and-a-half, and tanks poured out of the former automobile factories. Within a few years of the U.S. entry into the Second World War, nearly every man fit for service, between 18 and 30, had been conscripted into the military "for the duration" of the conflict. Strict systems of rationing of consumer staples were introduced to redirect productive capacity to war needs.

Previously untouched sections of the nation mobilized for the war effort. Academics became technocrats; home-makers became bomb-makers (massive numbers of women worked in heavy industry during the war); union leaders and businessmen became commanders in the massive armies of production. The great scientific communities of the United States were mobilized as never before, and mathematicians, doctors, engineers, and chemists turned their minds to the problems ahead of them.

By the war's end a multitude of advances had been made in medicine, physics, engineering, and the other sciences. Even the theoretical physicists, whose theories were not believed to have military applications (at the time), were sent far into the Western deserts to work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on the Manhattan Project that culminated in the Trinity nuclear test and changed the course of history.

In the war, the United States lost many soldiers, but had managed to avoid the extensive level of damage to civilian and industrial infrastructure that other participants suffered. The U.S. emerged as one of the two superpowers after the war.

Unconditional surrender

"Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things."
Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris, in a memo to the Air Ministry on 29 March 1945:

After the United States entered World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared at Casablanca conference to the other Allies and the press that unconditional surrender was the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Prior to this declaration, the individual regimes of the Axis Powers could have negotiated an armistice similar to that at the end of World War I and then a conditional surrender when they perceived that the war was lost.

The unconditional surrender of the major Axis powers caused a legal problem at the post-war Nuremberg Trials, because the trials appeared to be in conflict with Articles 63 and 64 of the Geneva Convention of 1929. Usually if such trials are held, they would be held under the auspices of the defeated power's own legal system as happened with some of the minor Axis powers, for example in the post World War II Romanian People's Tribunals. To circumvent this, the Allies argued that the major war criminals were captured after the end of the war, so they were not prisoners of war and the Geneva Conventions did not cover them. Further, the collapse of the Axis regimes created a legal condition of total defeat (debellatio) so the provisions of the 1907 Hague Conventions over military occupation were not applicable

Postwar era

Since the end of World War II, no industrial nations have fought such a large, decisive war. This is likely due to the availability of nuclear weapons, whose destructive power would offset any advantage victory might bring. Where full mobilization of a country's resources such as in World War II could take years, full mobilization of a nuclear arsenal would take minutes. Such weapons are developed and maintained with relatively modest peace time defense budgets.

By the end of the 1950s, the ideological stand-off of the Cold War between the Western World and the Soviet Union involved thousands of nuclear weapons being aimed at each side by the other. Strategically, the equal balance of destructive power possessed by each side situation came to be known as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the idea that a nuclear attack by one superpower would result in nuclear counter-strike by the other. This would result in hundreds of millions of deaths in a world where, in words widely attributed to Nikita Khrushchev, "The living will envy the dead".

During the Cold War, the two superpowers sought to avoid open conflict between their respective forces, as both sides recognized that such a clash could very easily escalate, and quickly involve nuclear weapons. Instead, the superpowers fought each other through their involvement in proxy wars, military buildups, and diplomatic standoffs.

In the case of proxy wars, each superpower supported its respective allies in conflicts with forces aligned with the other superpower, such as in the Korean War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Sources : wikipedia