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Poopyhead -> RE: How did the Germans do it? (2/15/2016 12:03:26 PM)
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The opponents the Germans faced were each deluded into complacency by their own strategies. All were negatively affected by the carnage of WW I.
The Polish pinned their defense on action by England and France. After Hitler took over the remaining Czech state, the Poles had too long of a border to defend until the Allies arrived. The Molotov-Ribbentropp sealed Poland's fate.
The French spent most of their defense efforts on the Maginot Line. For the same price, they could have built more armored Divisions than the Germans possessed.
The English thought that long range bombers would win any war. IIRC, Hobart refused to use these aircraft to close the gap in the Atlantic with patrols to spot U-boats. This nearly allowed the U-boats to starve the U.K. while Bomber Command was dropping their loads on empty German fields at night.
Stalin had created an enormous military, but he then distrusted it's leadership. His paranoid purge decapitated the army that might have protected the Soviet Union. Stalin ran the state and thought he could run the army.
The U.S. was the arsenal of Democracy. So we produced 24k obsolete Stuart tanks and even more Shermans long after these were also behind the power curve. Adm King stubbornly refused to use convoys on the east coast, allowing the U-boats to have a "happy time". I hardly think that the Allied merchantmen that were dying were happy to hear that we were building Liberty ships faster than the U-boats were sinking them.
Essentially, and fortunately, the world's three great industrial powers, the U.K., U. S. and USSR crushed the Germans with numbers.
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