Join the TimeGhost Army: bit.ly/WW2_SPECIAL_074_PI This war is so immense that sometimes you can only understand it on the microlevel. What is your favourite small fact about the war that you think gives you a window into understanding it as a whole? Be sure to read the community guidelines before commenting: community.timeghost.tv/t/forum-rules-and-guidelines/5
Hey, just a small criticism from an european guy, can use metric units ? Or at least put metric units next to the imperial units, because it is a bit annoying to have to pause and convert square feet in square meters =)
It's really amazing to see the numbers and realize the absolutely staggering production of... well, everything fed into the warmachines of the warring nations.
German tanker: Herr General, it will take a month to get replacement parts. German General: Don't worry, the way things are going, we'll meet them halfway.
2:45 I never knew the profit margins for the B-17 Flying Fortress were that lucrative. No wonder Boeing was so reluctant to share the manufacturing for it with Douglas...
@@ShamanKish there were very few, if no strikes during the war, the unions chose to put strikes on hold as part of the "popular front" against fascism. It was only after the war that strikes erupted, which the US government, through the Republican-dominated congress after 1946, cracked down on hard.
I recently read an account from a german poet/banker who was drafted into the wehrmacht. He describes that he and a few comrades with five machine- and a PAK-gun were ordered to hold a railwaystation building during the sowjet winter-offensives in 1941 after the failed drive on moscow (also pretty telling how he was literally marching months in ever deterioating condition (while steeling/"requisitioning" food from the local peasants) before they had their baptism of fire. And this railwaybuilding was literally kilometers away from the nearest german position. He describes how at the end there were just a few men left, who could barely walk away from the building, the rest was either killed or wounded (a few had also deserted due to sheer exhaustion and hunger). This group was so exhausted after their harrowing retreat with no food through the snow from this position, that they decided to surrender when hearing tank motors. Unfortunatly those motors turned out to belong to german tanks and they were again forced to return to the line. As he describes it there was no "frontline", instead the german soldiers occupied a few strongpoints, mostly villages or other buildings with kilometers seperating each point. It was quite common that sowjet cavallry rode through those gaps and raided deep behind the supposed frontline. As a sidenote he describes how he and two comrades got seperated from their unit, encountered some sowjet soldiers in the snow who threw down their weapons (they let them go, because they had no idea what to do with POWs). Then they walked by a village, occupied by sowjet soldiers and their horses, who watched the germans walk by with their binoculars, but did not engage them.
Numbers are really staggering, especially the USA air and navy production, and Soviet tank production. Thanks for another great and informative episode.
@@DL-ij7tf No they didnt, they were close which considering the amount of food, clothing, trucks, trains, planes, and ships the US were building is crazy, but the Soviets outproduced them in tanks and SPGs.
@@connorbranscombe6819 Yeah a little cursory googling seems to show that you're right. I think a Factory Wars documentary (great series) said the US outproduced Russia in tanks despite the common thinking. Maybe I misheard or they were referencing something slightly different (I know we supplied the majority of their trucking and tons of other stuff). It's probably kind of hard to say exactly depending on what time period you include and how you factor in the role the US played in making the Russian factories and the raw material and support supplied and such. I believe Russia started mass producing tanks like the T34, modified from a British tank design, before the war started, while the US didn't do much until after the war started. Either way, both made crazy amounts of materiel. I know the Russians don't often get credit for their massive air force production.
@@DL-ij7tf Yeah on the topic of Russian Air production, I still find it insane that the Il-2 is the most produced combat aircraft ever, and one of the most produced aircraft ever, only beaten by the Cessna 172, which is basically the iconic bush plane.
I read what logistics were required to mount a 1,000 plane raid and I was flabbergasted at what was required right down to the food the crews required and this was just for the flight crews not the ground support. I can't even begin to imagine what the daily cost for a country would be. It's interesting stuff so *Thank You!*
The military pre-eminence, by the end of this awful thing, of the United States really cannot be overstated. At the battle of the Philippine Sea the US navy deployed nearly 1000 CARRIER BASED aircraft on the far side of the Pacific... think about the logistics around that.
Thats why Vietnam war was so costly for US, while their counterparts used AKs with limited light artillery and rocket launchers, and lived off the land often starving with only a handful of rice a day, so the $$ cost of a long war must be unimaginably higher for the the US army than VietCong, even though the latter takes the price in casualties.
@@UrosKovacevic91 After 1968 the war was mostly fought by NVA regulars because the Viet Cong irregulars were almost wiped out in the Tet Offensive. Supplying them in the south was still a Herculean task, but they were much better equipped than Viet Cong guerrillas. And by the end of the war, after the US had left, the North Vietnamese had a large quantity of artillery, tanks, and other vehicles supplied by the USSR - much more and better equipment than the ARVN had. The myth of peasants in black pajamas with rifles and improvised weapons winning the war is just that. (North Vietnam also has the third largest and most technologically advanced air defense network in the world by 1973, behind only the USA and USSR themselves. The Soviets used them the same way the US used the Israelis, as test subjects for weapons and tactics they were developing for the WW3 that thankfully never happened.)
My family is from Michigan. My grandma helped build bombers at Willow Run while my grandpa flew fighters in the pacific theater. Pretty amazing to think about that generation. Much respect.
Rick Atkins in his book "The Army at Dawn", relates how American Industry in 1942 was able to replace 1,000,000 tons of supplies. They were sent to the UK in preparation for "Torch". But, because of mislabeling, lost in warehouses, etc., Eisenhower was forced to ask for replenishments. Which was done in time for the sailing of the UK task force sailing to North Africa.
In one of the few interviews he gave, late in his life Japanese Admiral Kurita when asked why he did not take his fleet into Leyte Gulf to sink the US invasion supply ships more or less responded "What would the point have been. Anything I could have sunk the American's could replace within 48 hours."
Good point made about mislabeling/lost in warehouses. One of the biggest challenges of supply chain management is inventory management after distribution bottlenecks. One has to marvel the supply chain system of the US, then the UK and to give some credit to the USSR to send supplies of tens of thousands of different types of items to millions of people (not only soldiers) located around the world, on time. This was when computers did not exist and people did things on registry books manually.
@@sztypettto that’s true, however, whenever government, runs something, it’s inherently going to be inefficient to some degree because of all the bureaucracy and regulations involved in running an operation.
@@HateTheIRS Business has a lot of inefficiencies and waste too. Fixation on the bottom line as the "one size fits all solution" leads to all kinds of blindnesses too. Business also tends to reflect the culture that it operates in, including all of its biasis and other shortcomings.
The amount of food a division requires and the amount of time and earth they would have to move to make a position somewhat defensible blew me away. When you see such numbers of such “basic” things it truely shows the indescribable scale of the war and how much stuff is being moved and done, all by physical labor too, not a whole lot of it especially on the front would’ve been done with machines. I can’t wrap my head around it!
Back in college, I took a US Military Traditions class and I fondly remember one of the lectures. The professor asked "How many Aircraft carriers could the US produce a year?" I grew up with the history channel and in the military, so I guessed first: 4. Others were like: 1-2 a year. One person even said "I thought those took decades to build? So 0?" The professor smiled and wrote "Try one a month, every month, of every year of the war..." Now he was including smaller light carriers, but the point still stood: we could make anything and everything - one of America's greatest military components was our vast economic capacity. Loved this episode!!!!
As a British National what comes across is the professionalism and inventiveness of the American Navy and Army. In my opinion the Pacific campaign demonstrates this well. I think America’s industrial might is legendary. A carrier a month is staggering. I just feel for every son, brother, husband or friend that died for our freedom each month.
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a German Field marshal, who when asked for his opinion of the greatest general of WWII, supposedly replied, "General Motors".
during ww2 British empire and usa build 3.7 milion light and heavy trucks (jeeps included), by comparison germany build only 159k none fighting vehicle during the war, but even with more produced they wont be able to supply them of fuel...
@@Tonyx.yt. Yeah, more than that would've been pointless, Germany was starving for fuel and what they had went to planes and tanks. Which made them reliant on horses and trains for logistics.
Another staggering statistic: The fact that this channel doesn’t have more that 600k subscribers. It should easily be double as it’s the best channel on TH-cam by far!
10:45 Also, the requirement for "loss" is that the tank is damaged to a point in which it cannot be repaired on the spot, requiring repairs that last more than 24 hours. In comparison, the Germans count as "loss" when the tank is damaged beyond repair, that is: it's so damaged it cannot be repaired at all.
I believe it was Joseph Stalin who quipped, "Quantity has a quality all of its own." Fortunately for the Soviets, the T-34 tank had its own good qualities other than speed of manufacture.
True but the T-34 had a LOT of serious flaws. Of the ~50,000 T-34s built during the war, over 85% of them were destroyed in combat beyond salvage-ability.
You can find movie clips on TH-cam of Soviet tanks going into battle with a spare transmission strapped to the back. It was third gear or a Pak 42. Whichever came first
@@Whatisthisstupidfinghandle as well as quality of steel. Spalling was common with soviet tanks. It wouldn't have hurt is used synchronizors in their transmissions. Those T-34s seldom saw 3rd gear almost never saw 4th gear. (I question their speed for this reason.)
Oh my god! I was wondering if we were gonna get one of these numbers episodes, like we did with The Great War, just the other day. I hope we can get more of these for the remainder of the war, maybe even some for previous years. I think it would be interesting to see how manufacturing changed from 1939-1942, plus that would help to show how the scope of the war changed
Fun Fact (at least for me it is 😁). One of my Grandmothers worked at the newly opened Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft plant in Downey CA. This plant later changed hands to North American Aviation where the Apollo CSM was built. Later taken over by Rockwell International, this same plant built the first Space Shuttle Enterprise then parts for the next 6 Shuttle's. The plant is now gone with a Kaiser Permanente hospital and shopping centers in it's place.
Excellent statistics analysis. I wish there would be “two thumbs up” feature! P.S. Waiting on a second, and maybe third part of tank episode. First one was a such a “cliff hanger”.
Hi Indy This numbers episode is interedting to watch.. What struck me is america's production of aircraft and german armies requirement of food... Seems like how they handled so much logistics.. This was right reason for german army losing eastern front.. Please do more number's episode.. I know how much input you had put to collect these data.. Kudos to you all.. Thanks so much..
Thanks to Indy and the rest of the team for providing such in-depth coverage of this conflict. Your attention to the minutiae is what keeps me coming back, and I’m excited to say that as of today I’ve become your 7,000th patron!! Hope to submit a question for Out Of The Foxholes in short order. Keep up the stellar work!
They must be on a World War II-style learning curve with their production cost in man-hours per episode steadily dropping, as happened with the B-17s. Either that or they are increasing their manpower and square footage of industrial production space. By the end of the war they will be producing more episodes than the world has ever seen, with another episode rolling off the line every hour and straight into TH-cam combat.
When discussing the entire Merchant Marine situation during the whole war, PLEASE remember the brave merchant sailors - who never got any medals - but were absolutely essential to run the ships !!!
@@simonwaldock9689 Tower Hill near the Tower of London. The Merchant Navy "lost" over 32 000 men in WW2 and had a higher percentage loss rate than the Royal Navy, the Royal Airforce or the Army,. When your ship was lost you were off wages until you joined another s hip.
Was some preparation of war the uk built shadow factory one is still in use by Land Rover Plus uk made use of underground tunnels and use railway workshops and car plant
at the beginning of the war the UK was pretty much out produced by Germany in everything except fighter planes. by 1942 German air raids were not so widespread or effective and the UK economy was well on to recovering. Germany still outproduced mainland UK in everything except aircraft in general and ships (merchant and military) - bear in mind though that a lot of war production was now taking place in Canada (UK designed tanks, planes etc) and being shipped to the UK by the cargo fleets now being produced there and in the US.
Yes the numbers don't lie, the armies of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia were very weak, they had very few tanks, very few planes and were dependent on weapons received from Germany.
@@dragosstanciu9866 Bulgaria resisted Axis pressure to join the war against the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941, but did declare war on Britain and the United States on 13 December 1941. Wackipedia
You almost feel bad for Germany with what crappy allies they had. The Italians had quality manufacturers like Beretta (the oldest active firearms company in the world) but they could never produce on a massive scale needed for a global war
One point that we've brought up on the TimeGhost forum before is that Stalin and Zhukov certainly didn't think this time period(late '42-early '43) was the decisive turning point that present-day historians think it is.
Although this only touches slightly on the costs of war, it's an excellent episode to help those with little understanding of these costs apart from the human losses that we know. Great episode guys. War is expensive, especially the logistics part.
I'm reading "Pacific Crucible " by Ian Toll. Yamamoto resisted the Japanese Army's ceaseless push towards war against the United States through the 1920s, 30s and early 40s. Nearly all the senior admirals thought a war against the US would be hopeless, yet they let themselves be dragged into it. Tojo, the Prime Minister, was an Army general. At one point in the run up to war, naval troops were deployed in the streets to protect the admirals as they rightly feared assassination - the fate of so many Japanese leaders who resisted the march to war.
What if they had been assassinated? Or what if Yamamoto had lost one more finger at Tsushima? If the army had been allowed to charge headlong into folly by waging a war against the US without the tactical skill that Yamamoto possessed the situation would have been dramatically different.
The Ian Toll Pacific war trilogy (including Pacific Crucible) is one of my favorite book series on WWII. Toll does a great job of giving background from before the war, as well as convey both the strategic and tactical situation as the war goes on. The books are truly all encompassing. Im hoping that a quote or two will make it into one of the episodes from Indy and the gang soon.
WWII is a great case study in the dynamics of institutional insanity - how a collection of otherwise largely sane people can end up committing to a strategy that defies any rational test. It appears that the odds of this go up when a government is authoritarian/dictatorial and thus lacking in separation of powers.
@@spikespa5208 Yes. It's not that Yamamoto was at all a pacifist, he was just one of the few to understand that the scale of US industry was absolutely impossible for Japan to compete with in a total war, and that the US public was not as likely to cave in after initial setbacks as the militarists liked to think.
Maybe a good time to pop in the quote "Infantry win battles, logistics wins wars". The Germans focused a lot on railways to bring in the main supplies, but the final 10 to 50km fell back on horse drawn carts and small light trucks. The Germans captured a lot of equipment from various nations, but by 1942 the spares and replacements of these were becoming more difficult to source. A note on tanks; the victor on a battlefield gets to recover their damaged armour and the chance to return it to service. If you lose the area of battle, then your tank is a complete loss as it is now in the hands of the enemy. The tank recovery and repair crews were the unsung keys in many armies. Winter 1941 and then again in later 1942 started to see the Germans getting pushed back in a number of areas. There are famous photos of the tanks and various vehicles from Stalingrad collected awaiting repairs/ collection/ scavenging. The Soviets and Americans opted for a number of standardised designs, which greatly aided repair. Many German tanks, even of the same type & model often required machining to have spare parts fit due to differences from various factories. Lend lease supplies from the US in later 1942 were starting to include numbers of reliable trucks - Driven (also rail) in from Iran loaded with supplies into the southern Caucasas Rostov/ Staliangrad area. These trucks would start to give the Soviets a massive logistical advantage and flexibility in getting men & material en-masse to varying fronts at a pace that the Germans could not replicate. By wars end, over 400,000 trucks & jeeps had been directly sent to the Soviets, as well as designs & tooling for them to make their own. It is still possible to see today vehicles in the former Soviet Union that were made in the '60's that greatly resemble WW2 era US fords, bedfords and the like. Edit: fixed the truck & jeep count.
Surprised there was no mention of "The Sleeping Giant". Yamamoto kinda predicted the US output but I think he was surprised by just how fast the "war time economy" became a thing.
You got me to look up something I always wondered about the most common medium tanks. Germany made over 8000 Panzer 4s. Russia made 84000 T34s. The US produced 50000 Shermans. It is complicated by variants.
One thing to be mindful of with the 84k T-34's, is that number is in no small part produced AFTER 1945. Wartime production is actually much closer to the number of Shermans produced.
Lend Lease almost the entire production run of Studebaker 6x6 most went to the Soviet Union and some went to Australia. The ENTIRE production capability of International Harvester went to the USMC . 3/4 ton up to and including 10 ton trucks and halftracks. What's also remarkable is that IHC was the only company to make ALL its own axles/engines/transmissions . All the other companies relied on outsourcing for driveline components. (Except for engines with the big 3).
I know of about 65,000 T-34's produced. That includes about 4,000 built outside the USSR in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Production in the USSR ended in 1946(with about 3,000 built that year). So wartime production was about 58,000. But there were also tank destroyers/self-propelled guns produced on the same chassis. The SU-122(640), SU-85(2,750), and SU-100(3,241). Older models had their turrets removed and they were turned into Armored Recovery Vehicles when possible. Some chassis were built as TM-34 engineering bridge vehicles.
@@UrosKovacevic91 They did very well against T-34s in Korea. Of course you could argue that T-34s were obsolete as well, but the primitive infrastructure and rugged terrain in Korea made their heavier successors harder to employ.
I hope this helps people understand a couple of challenges. First, the war in the Pacific. If you think the area on the Eastern Front is big, it is dwarfed by the Pacific Campaign. Just look at some distances: Berlin to Moscow is 1000 miles (1200 to drive). Honolulu to Tokyo is 3850. San Francisco to Tokyo is 5140. Second, is the Sherman Tank. The video talks about the time to get spares for German Tanks in weeks. Imagine having to project that across either the Atlantic or Pacific.
@tyler thomas It was also designed to be much easier to maintain. The Germans did a good job on this with many of their planes, particularly the Fw 190, but not so much with their tanks.
In a recorded conversation during a meeting between Hitler and the Finnish Field Marshal Mannerheim, Hitler said that if he had known that the Soviets would have manufactured and fielded so many tanks, he would have not invaded the USSR.
yeah, i watch the video too. in early 1941 URSS showed germany his best fighter plane to deter a german attack trying to impress them with "look how advanced we are" but this had the opposite effect on germany, germans want to rush against URSS before they can build up too large and too advanced military equipment.
With numbers like these I don't see any reason why this war won't be over by Christmas. I know I was wrong the last couple years I said it, but I got a good feeling this time.
Indy, I noticed the wall clock behind you. This video is 13:50 long, and the wall clock shows no more than about 13-15 minutes elapsing. That means you must have had near zero outtakes. And I didn't see any jump cuts, so any edits happened underneath the b-roll. That's not at all easy to do. Nice job!
Slight gripe, the B-24 was not a more complicated design than the B-17. It was the opposite, in fact, which is why the B-24 was produced in larger numbers despite the fact that the B-17 was generally preferred by the Air Force.
I really like this episode. It’s great to see all these numbers in one place. Please do more of this! Also maybe do similar numbers episodes on air and naval combat? I would like to know the logistics and supply issues of keeping a task force equipped, etc.,
Oh boy, the Japanese really did poke a sleeping giant. The rapid growth of the US war economy after Pearl Harbour is truly insane, probably unmatched in human history.
Part of the explanation for the rapid expansion of the US war economy after Pearl Harbour can be attributed to the earlier preparations under the "Arsenal of Democracy" by Roosevelt. In fact it had started before that speech but it takes time to get the wheels in motion.
The Japanese high command knew this though, they knew they couldn't win in a war of attrition with the US. That's why they were hoping for a quick victory.
Here's another interesting stat: According to some analyses, the USA had 51% of all of the world's manufacturing capacity in 1940. More than all of the other combatants and neutral nations put together.
Sound quality issues in the "new" studio. Indy's voice isn't as "present", more distant and echo-y. No idea of the technical terms or how to fix, just my 2 cents worth of feedback.
My dad often talked about the war in terms of (generalized) numbers as well. As he said, "Did the USA have the best tanks? No. Did we have the best planes? No. Did we have the best ships? Probably not. But we could outproduce anyone on Earth and that was what we did -- we buried them with sheer capacity."
But in many areas, the USA did have the best "stuff" and "systems", including aircraft. M1 Garand infantry rifle, Essex-class aircraft carrier (many of which served decades after the war), Iowa-class battleships that finally were retired only in the 1990's, B29 Superfortress bomber, Willys Jeep, P51 Mustang fighter aircraft, .34 Automatic Colt Pistol, Thompson submachine gun, F6F Hellcat carrier fighter plane, F4U Corsair carrier fighter aircraft, Dodge WC series trucks (most German soldiers marched to battle on foot), and more. And, unlike the Russian or German armies, the U.S. had to transport its entire land fighting forces across two oceans and land them ready to fight and win. So, I'd include "best logistics" in the "systems" category. It wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it got the job done and gave the world Coca Cola and Spam. Eisenhower and Khruschev both ate a lot of Spam and commented about it after the war. In "Khruschev Remembers": "There were many jokes going around in the army, some of them off-color, about American Spam; it tasted good, nonetheless. Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army. We had lost our most fertile lands." Yes, you can cite the "bests" of our allies and opponents. But we had many "bests" ourselves. And, as you noted, "best" of all was our ability to finally overwhelm our enemies with our productivity. By January 1945, the U.S. Pacific Fleet was larger and vastly more effective than all the rest of the world's navies taken together. Nimitz, Spruance, Halsey, Mitscher, McCain, Burke, Turner and the other Navy admirals in the Pacific had unmatched power and could "go in harm's way" and dish it out in a way never seen before or since.
There was a lot of technological leapfrogging during the war, with one side gaining a technological advantage in one area only to be surpassed by the other side, and then flipping again. The main exception was Japan which started with technological advantages in aircraft, night fighting, torpedoes, etc. but failed to keep pace with Allied advances. By 1944 the USA had reached technological parity or superiority in weapons systems virtually across the board vs. Japan, in addition to numerical advantages. The only Japanese counter was to become progressively better at digging, forcing the Americans to pay heavily to blast and burn Japanese defenders out of their caves and tunnels late in the war. And there was the kamikaze, an early guided missile which used an expendable human brain as the guidance system. It would take Americans until late in the Vietnam war to field their first laser-guided bombs that were as accurate. And of course after the German surrender, teams of Allied intelligence officers fanned out to collect as many German scientists, engineers, blueprints, prototypes, and working examples of technology as they could find. Even though the vaunted German Wunderwaffe (wonder weapons) failed to half the Allies, many of the forward-thinking ideas would go on to influence subsequent weapons well into the Cold War and beyond. Not to mention helping the USA put a man on the Moon.
I would argue that the US had the best planes by the end of the war. In terms of pure combat performance the F4U-4 was the match of any other piston-engine fighter in the war, with an earth-shaking 2450 hp of pure engine power with water-methanol injection, and while the P-51 Mustang may not have been superior to the later Spitfires, Bf109-Ks, or Fw190-Ds in combat performance, as one pilot noted, it could do anything those planes could do, but it could do it over Berlin flying from bases in England. And while the B-29 had plenty of teething troubles it and the Lancaster were the only planes in the world capable of delivering an atomic bomb 2,000 km or more from their base, which made strategic bombing orders of magnitude greater in its destructive power and a weapon so terrible that no nation since 1945 has dared use it - or to put another nuclear power in a position where it felt it had to use it. The Germans had the most technologically advanced weapons like the V-2 and Me-262, but they couldn't field them in sufficient numbers (or provide fuel to fly them and train their pilots, in the case of jet fighters) to influence the outcome of the war significantly. The American planes could be and were put into combat in massive numbers with highly trained pilots and the logistical backing they needed to be decisive.
At 4:00, the square representation is misleading : we’re talking about area, so the areas of the squares (not the side of the squares) should be proportionate to the numbers. It seems to me that your big square can contain at least 100x the little one! (Compare to the numbers : 9.5 vs 165)
For a detailed comparative look into tank production of Germany, USSR and the USA, check out Jonathan Parshall's recorded lectures, he has one from 2013
For industrial production, the US had massive production in the Great lakes Midwest. Not only was it close to raw materials and workforce but this area was absolutely untouchable by the axis. Then on top we were building planes in California and Washington. Japan couldn't even get one bomber mission to the west coat.
I remember other places throughout the Midwest, like Omaha and many other spots in Kansas and Nebraska, also booming because of WWII production for the same reason you stated
@@ScottyShaw my old hometown of Milwaukee was absolutely booming. Lots of industrial giants had ramped up for wartime production. All throughout ww2 Hitler and Hirohito dreamed about getting bomber missions there and that was impossible.
Manufacturing on the east coast was also on a massive scale, particularly shipbuilding, guns (small arms and artillery) and ammunition, and the chemical industry. The shipyards in Virginia and New York alone produced more warships by tonnage than every other nation on the planet combined, including eight battleships and _26_ aircraft carriers completed between 1940 and 1945.
A fact that I found extraordinary (though not mentioned here) was that during 1944, at their peak, the United States was launching a new aircraft carrier on average every NINE days
This was amazing to watch and deeply insightful in a way that only raw numbers can be. You guys should do retrospective episodes like this for 39, 40 and 41. It would make a fascinating mini series by the end of the war
Whoops - the graphics at 3:55 are wrong. It should be a 17.4-fold increase, but the one shown is a 17.4^2 = 301-fold increase. Great job otherwise - march on!
The entire WW2 was designed as a 14 times dice throwing. Each time the Germans threw 6 they won, all other times they lost. They managed to throw a 6 seven times in a row, by surprising the enemy - their only chance. Then the Soviets secretly swapped the false German dice for ordinary dice. The Germans only got a 6 at the Battle of the Bulge.
Even the '44 Ardennes attack '6' was with loaded dice, not noting just how big the Allied armies and logistics backing were. Came nowhere near succeeding.
Where does this idea come from that the Germans threw a 6 in the 1944/5 Ardenne offensive? It was a massive strategic defeat for the Germans which effectively prevented them from engaging in any more offensive actions on the western front. Yes, the statistics were slightly in their favour when measured by losses of tanks, aircraft and so on, but what was lost in the German case was proportionately far higher whilst the Allied forces were back up to strength very quickly, something that the Germans were never able to do. If the Ardenne offensive was a 6 on the basis of absolute numbers of losses of equipment and men, then the Germans must have thrown a 7 at Kursk which still didn't stop it being a major strategic defeat.
Your final statement at around the 13 minute mark is only partially correct. Of course the numbers did matter, but so did the improved training and tactics of the Allies. After being pummeled by the Wehrmacht for almost 2 years, both the British and the Soviets are getting the equipment, trained soldiers and tactics required to defeat the Germans. In effect, the quality of the Axis soldiers is declining (by the addition of less well-trained replacements) while that of their opponents is increasing, effectively leading towards a levelling of the playing field. So while having a quantitative advantage is important, so too is "education" that the Allies have received at the hands of their German counterparts.
what an excellent comment! you are absolutely correct. as the war wore on, the quality of the German soldier, (I'd say at around the 1943 mark), began to decline. it showed on the battlefield. after the 3rd battle of Charkow in February/March 1943, the German wehmacht never again won another battle on the eastern front, (nor anywhere else for that matter, unless you want to count the, 'battle of the bulge', & that was only temporary).
@@stanbrekston No, you're being ignorant or deliberately misleading. The Germans continued to win victories all the way to the end of the war, just not enough of them to turn the tide. They were capable of defeating major Allied offensives and launching successful counter-attacks, but they were never able to regain the strategic initiative that they lost in 43. The Battle of Bautzen ended on April 30 1945 and was a big German victory, mere days before the end of the war. Germans inflicted very heavy losses on the Polish-Soviet forces and halted their drive on Dresden, while also recapturing territory which remained in German hands until the war ended. They won victories on every front, but since you bring up the Bulge (NOT a German victory), I'll give you another one you might have seen in a movie or videogame since this is where you seemingly get your information. Operation Market Garden was a major Allied offensive that failed to achieve its objectives and had the UK's most elite airborne division get surrounded and destroyed in September 1944, halting the Allied efforts to cross the Rhine and enter the German industrial heartland. Doing even cursory research will reveal plenty more Axis victories on every front of the European war, all the way up to the surrender. If you actually care and are not just trolling, you can take a look at Hurtgen Forest, Warsaw Uprising, Dodecanese Campaign, and plenty more besides.
Hey Indy hope you and Sparta and the gang had a good Christmas. I recently got the book “Operation Barbarossa” by Jonathan Dimbleby and am looking forward to reading it. I already have a pretty good idea how it all went thanks for your channel though. Happy New Years you guys!
Especially in America, the Soviets get mis-represented as the country with numbers and lots of land but nothing else, when in fact by the end of 1942 the soviet command was becoming very competent and more independent from Stalin, not to mention effective army reorganisation and doctrine improvement. By the end of the war the Soviets really had an excellent army all round, and they didn't do so well with manpower alone.
When WW2 ends, you should do a short series on exactly how we managed to pull off the manufacturing miracle we did. Our manufacturing in WW1, was absolutely horrible, and a disgrace to the country. They did some planning during the interwar years.
I only looked up this year the overall expenditure of the axis and allies after reading reading Sicily '43 and its impression of US logistical superiority. I was staggered to see that the Allies outspent the Axis by around 10:1 over the course of the war. I think any time I have a handle on the scope of WW2, I end up reading/viewing something else that understanding is still not even close to the scale in my mind.
Japan, mentioned once here, with its lack of natural resources and overstretched industrial sector is, by the end of 1942, surely starting to lag in all forms of production. Every ship, plane or tank destroyed is likely to take over twice as long to replace than its American counterpart.
This was great. What would be really interesting would be an episode on the horses of the German 6th Army. From the beginning of Fall Blau through to the end (spoiler). Not only would this show the reality of warfare at the time, but it would show why Paulus's options were so limited after Uranus started.
This video really explains why the Second World War was really the most expensive war in human history and let's hope that something like that will never happen again.
As I listen to the production statistics of the U.S. back in that era, it occurs to me that today (it seems) China would assume that role of "production master". It also occurs to me that the German strategy of superior weapons, as opposed to quantity of weapons, has been assumed by the U.S. military today... I sense that the lessons of WWII have been lost on many.
I learn so on this channel.. nothing else like it. I love the format of your videos. But I do miss the roll top desk behind you.. you bring to the war to life and the people behind it.
The Boeing/Douglas set up sounds like the British Shadow Factory scheme where the Govt set up additional factories for manufacturers to increase production, give access to a different pool of workers and distribute production as Bombing was obviously a factor in the UK Fun fact our local Airport - Leeds Bradford Airport was a Shadow factory for Avro and produced Lancaster Bombers - the aerodrome runway was extended and massive factory buildings were erected. Those buildings are still there if you approach the airport by the back roads, they are still in use mainly for warehousing.
"Seems empty, only 7M ppl in 200k km2" lol, my country (Paraguay) is double that size and has about that number of people, and ive always considered it to feel a bit on the crowded side
Once again, Indy, please turn to the enormous amounts of supplies poured into the Soviet Union by the USA under Lend Lease. A famous quote, from several sources: "Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics."
Yeah, a lot of Soviet production could focus on T-34s because we produced everything else they needed, like trucks and parts and food and medical supplies, which allowed them to focus heavily on producing T-34s rather than having to diversify their production. We literally subsidized their ability to focus on T-34s.
I like the mentioning of Willow Run! They were producing 1 B-24 every 1 and 1/2 hour!!!! They even moved part of the factory left to keep it from going into another county which had higher taxes! Kaiser ship builders had a funny joke! There was a women looking for the library ship and the admiral said just start swing lady!! By the time she finished the whole ship popped in front of her and was successfully launched!!! The last draw dropper was a lipstick company took a contract for making ammo!!!! There were ordered too make a million rounds in three months they did it in less than 60 days!!!! Operating in three shifts the government renewal of the contract was 100 million rounds of ammo in a six month period! They surpassed that in three months and that was in early 1942!!! It was a war of the factories and in numbers.........
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This war is so immense that sometimes you can only understand it on the microlevel. What is your favourite small fact about the war that you think gives you a window into understanding it as a whole?
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That I am one life trying to quantify the lives of millions lost .. and will always fall short of the totality of it all
One thing I find interesting is that ~1/3 of Red Army trucks were built in the US.
Hey, just a small criticism from an european guy, can use metric units ? Or at least put metric units next to the imperial units, because it is a bit annoying to have to pause and convert square feet in square meters =)
@@f-35enjoyer59 And most of them were delivered in 44-45
but near Moscow the Germans were defeated with practically no lend-lease
It's really amazing to see the numbers and realize the absolutely staggering production of... well, everything fed into the warmachines of the warring nations.
German tanker: Herr General, it will take a month to get replacement parts.
German General: Don't worry, the way things are going, we'll meet them halfway.
The panzergeneral might have in mind to conquer the area where the factories constructing the replacement parts, are located.
@@Tramseskumbanan Won't be easy to push past the urals looking at how Stalingrad is doing..
@steve w - that was awesomely brutal ...
😂
2:45 I never knew the profit margins for the B-17 Flying Fortress were that lucrative. No wonder Boeing was so reluctant to share the manufacturing for it with Douglas...
And lots of strikes during that time because of inadequate wages.
@@ShamanKish there were very few, if no strikes during the war, the unions chose to put strikes on hold as part of the "popular front" against fascism. It was only after the war that strikes erupted, which the US government, through the Republican-dominated congress after 1946, cracked down on hard.
The margin wouldn’t be the same for Boeing, Douglas didn’t have R&D, tooling, and factory cost.
@@Juliusthebastard I think there were more than usual. It can be easily checked.
@@ShamanKish There were "Wildcat" strikes but no large official strikes held
I recently read an account from a german poet/banker who was drafted into the wehrmacht. He describes that he and a few comrades with five machine- and a PAK-gun were ordered to hold a railwaystation building during the sowjet winter-offensives in 1941 after the failed drive on moscow (also pretty telling how he was literally marching months in ever deterioating condition (while steeling/"requisitioning" food from the local peasants) before they had their baptism of fire. And this railwaybuilding was literally kilometers away from the nearest german position. He describes how at the end there were just a few men left, who could barely walk away from the building, the rest was either killed or wounded (a few had also deserted due to sheer exhaustion and hunger). This group was so exhausted after their harrowing retreat with no food through the snow from this position, that they decided to surrender when hearing tank motors. Unfortunatly those motors turned out to belong to german tanks and they were again forced to return to the line.
As he describes it there was no "frontline", instead the german soldiers occupied a few strongpoints, mostly villages or other buildings with kilometers seperating each point. It was quite common that sowjet cavallry rode through those gaps and raided deep behind the supposed frontline.
As a sidenote he describes how he and two comrades got seperated from their unit, encountered some sowjet soldiers in the snow who threw down their weapons (they let them go, because they had no idea what to do with POWs). Then they walked by a village, occupied by sowjet soldiers and their horses, who watched the germans walk by with their binoculars, but did not engage them.
Thanks for sharing
Just because there is a line on a map, it doesn't mean that you can clearly define it's location in the field.
*Sowjet*
Thanks for sharing. Where can I read this account?
That last paragraph certainly paints an interesting picture.
Numbers are really staggering, especially the USA air and navy production, and Soviet tank production. Thanks for another great and informative episode.
yep. Parshal's part in the YTB video "Kursk" is another good one.
The US produced more tanks than the Soviet Union as well.
@@DL-ij7tf No they didnt, they were close which considering the amount of food, clothing, trucks, trains, planes, and ships the US were building is crazy, but the Soviets outproduced them in tanks and SPGs.
@@connorbranscombe6819 Yeah a little cursory googling seems to show that you're right. I think a Factory Wars documentary (great series) said the US outproduced Russia in tanks despite the common thinking. Maybe I misheard or they were referencing something slightly different (I know we supplied the majority of their trucking and tons of other stuff). It's probably kind of hard to say exactly depending on what time period you include and how you factor in the role the US played in making the Russian factories and the raw material and support supplied and such. I believe Russia started mass producing tanks like the T34, modified from a British tank design, before the war started, while the US didn't do much until after the war started. Either way, both made crazy amounts of materiel. I know the Russians don't often get credit for their massive air force production.
@@DL-ij7tf Yeah on the topic of Russian Air production, I still find it insane that the Il-2 is the most produced combat aircraft ever, and one of the most produced aircraft ever, only beaten by the Cessna 172, which is basically the iconic bush plane.
I read what logistics were required to mount a 1,000 plane raid and I was flabbergasted at what was required right down to the food the crews required and this was just for the flight crews not the ground support. I can't even begin to imagine what the daily cost for a country would be. It's interesting stuff so *Thank You!*
The military pre-eminence, by the end of this awful thing, of the United States really cannot be overstated. At the battle of the Philippine Sea the US navy deployed nearly 1000 CARRIER BASED aircraft on the far side of the Pacific... think about the logistics around that.
And done all before modern computers. Amazing.
Thats why Vietnam war was so costly for US, while their counterparts used AKs with limited light artillery and rocket launchers, and lived off the land often starving with only a handful of rice a day, so the $$ cost of a long war must be unimaginably higher for the the US army than VietCong, even though the latter takes the price in casualties.
@@UrosKovacevic91 you could probably outfit an entire regiment of VC irregulars for the cost of a single sortie in an F4 Phantom.
@@UrosKovacevic91 After 1968 the war was mostly fought by NVA regulars because the Viet Cong irregulars were almost wiped out in the Tet Offensive. Supplying them in the south was still a Herculean task, but they were much better equipped than Viet Cong guerrillas. And by the end of the war, after the US had left, the North Vietnamese had a large quantity of artillery, tanks, and other vehicles supplied by the USSR - much more and better equipment than the ARVN had. The myth of peasants in black pajamas with rifles and improvised weapons winning the war is just that.
(North Vietnam also has the third largest and most technologically advanced air defense network in the world by 1973, behind only the USA and USSR themselves. The Soviets used them the same way the US used the Israelis, as test subjects for weapons and tactics they were developing for the WW3 that thankfully never happened.)
My family is from Michigan. My grandma helped build bombers at Willow Run while my grandpa flew fighters in the pacific theater. Pretty amazing to think about that generation. Much respect.
What did your grandma think about such a massive factory and how did it impact her?
I live just down 94 from Willow Run it's still an airport
My Grandfather was a Pharmacist during the day and a Security Guard at a shipyard at night during the war.
Rick Atkins in his book "The Army at Dawn", relates how American Industry in 1942 was able to replace 1,000,000 tons of supplies. They were sent to the UK in preparation for "Torch". But, because of mislabeling, lost in warehouses, etc., Eisenhower was forced to ask for replenishments. Which was done in time for the sailing of the UK task force sailing to North Africa.
In one of the few interviews he gave, late in his life Japanese Admiral Kurita when asked why he did not take his fleet into Leyte Gulf to sink the US invasion supply ships more or less responded "What would the point have been. Anything I could have sunk the American's could replace within 48 hours."
Good point made about mislabeling/lost in warehouses. One of the biggest challenges of supply chain management is inventory management after distribution bottlenecks. One has to marvel the supply chain system of the US, then the UK and to give some credit to the USSR to send supplies of tens of thousands of different types of items to millions of people (not only soldiers) located around the world, on time. This was when computers did not exist and people did things on registry books manually.
@@sztypettto that’s true, however, whenever government, runs something, it’s inherently going to be inefficient to some degree because of all the bureaucracy and regulations involved in running an operation.
@@HateTheIRS Business has a lot of inefficiencies and waste too. Fixation on the bottom line as the "one size fits all solution" leads to all kinds of blindnesses too. Business also tends to reflect the culture that it operates in, including all of its biasis and other shortcomings.
@@dpeasehead but government is worse
Less incentive to save money
The amount of food a division requires and the amount of time and earth they would have to move to make a position somewhat defensible blew me away. When you see such numbers of such “basic” things it truely shows the indescribable scale of the war and how much stuff is being moved and done, all by physical labor too, not a whole lot of it especially on the front would’ve been done with machines. I can’t wrap my head around it!
I find the same thing when reading about the production side of things as well. It all makes my head spin.
Back in college, I took a US Military Traditions class and I fondly remember one of the lectures.
The professor asked "How many Aircraft carriers could the US produce a year?"
I grew up with the history channel and in the military, so I guessed first: 4.
Others were like: 1-2 a year.
One person even said "I thought those took decades to build? So 0?"
The professor smiled and wrote "Try one a month, every month, of every year of the war..."
Now he was including smaller light carriers, but the point still stood: we could make anything and everything - one of America's greatest military components was our vast economic capacity.
Loved this episode!!!!
What a dumb class.
As a British National what comes across is the professionalism and inventiveness of the American Navy and Army. In my opinion the Pacific campaign demonstrates this well. I think America’s industrial might is legendary. A carrier a month is staggering. I just feel for every son, brother, husband or friend that died for our freedom each month.
Let’s get that up to 10 a month.
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a German Field marshal, who when asked for his opinion of the greatest general of WWII, supposedly replied, "General Motors".
during ww2 British empire and usa build 3.7 milion light and heavy trucks (jeeps included), by comparison germany build only 159k none fighting vehicle during the war, but even with more produced they wont be able to supply them of fuel...
@@Tonyx.yt. Yeah, more than that would've been pointless, Germany was starving for fuel and what they had went to planes and tanks. Which made them reliant on horses and trains for logistics.
Another staggering statistic: The fact that this channel doesn’t have more that 600k subscribers. It should easily be double as it’s the best channel on TH-cam by far!
10:45 Also, the requirement for "loss" is that the tank is damaged to a point in which it cannot be repaired on the spot, requiring repairs that last more than 24 hours. In comparison, the Germans count as "loss" when the tank is damaged beyond repair, that is: it's so damaged it cannot be repaired at all.
And that is also part of the reason why the loss figures of German vs. Soviet tanks seem so lopsided.
I've read an article long ago about the Willow Run plant, and how at its peak production it churned out a B-24 every *hour*
Makes me think of Webster's tirade at the German prisoners in Band of Brothers. "You have HORSES! What were you thinking?!?"
I believe it was Joseph Stalin who quipped, "Quantity has a quality all of its own." Fortunately for the Soviets, the T-34 tank had its own good qualities other than speed of manufacture.
True but the T-34 had a LOT of serious flaws.
Of the ~50,000 T-34s built during the war, over 85% of them were destroyed in combat beyond salvage-ability.
Common misattribution. Stalin never said that, though he certainly seems to have had a callous disregard for the lives of his own people
You can find movie clips on TH-cam of Soviet tanks going into battle with a spare transmission strapped to the back. It was third gear or a Pak 42. Whichever came first
@@Whatisthisstupidfinghandle as well as quality of steel. Spalling was common with soviet tanks.
It wouldn't have hurt is used synchronizors in their transmissions. Those T-34s seldom saw 3rd gear almost never saw 4th gear. (I question their speed for this reason.)
I've heard this saying attributed to Napoleon. Probably one of those anonymous sayings that has no known origin but many attributions.
You need to do a video focusing on Romania, Bulgaria, Romania or Croatia. They are often forgotten for their contribution to the axis
Not hungary and finland?
@@giozh1137 he’s covered Finland already and yes Hungary too. You’re missing my point
After one week of watching WW2 week by week i'm finally in the "present" time! great content and great Indy
It only took a week to go through 300+ videos?
@@ryanwagner656 it took me like 4 months
@@ryanwagner656 180~ videos cuz i've watch only few special and 0 WAH
@@TheRifild i did the same thing this week. It's been such a fresh way to study the history we know.
Welcome to the front. Get in your foxhole and sing out when you see something.
Oh my god! I was wondering if we were gonna get one of these numbers episodes, like we did with The Great War, just the other day. I hope we can get more of these for the remainder of the war, maybe even some for previous years. I think it would be interesting to see how manufacturing changed from 1939-1942, plus that would help to show how the scope of the war changed
How anyone can expect to win a mechanized war without an uninterrupted supply of oil is insane.
Dictators are not the sharpest pencils in the box.
It's up there with the 1914 French thinking élan would overcome artillery shells and machine gun bullets.
Fun Fact (at least for me it is 😁). One of my Grandmothers worked at the newly opened Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft plant in Downey CA. This plant later changed hands to North American Aviation where the Apollo CSM was built. Later taken over by Rockwell International, this same plant built the first Space Shuttle Enterprise then parts for the next 6 Shuttle's. The plant is now gone with a Kaiser Permanente hospital and shopping centers in it's place.
Consolidated Vultee later became Convair (B36/B58/F104-F106 etc) and later General Dynamics (think F16) . A great heritage.
Its, not it’s.
7:34
1.7 million pieces of bread
2 thousand cows
18 thousand pigs
37 thousand sheep
Correct me if I'm wrong
Each day. Each and every day.
@@haviiithelegogunner907 It comes out to a bit under 7 million pigs a year
Excellent statistics analysis. I wish there would be “two thumbs up” feature!
P.S. Waiting on a second, and maybe third part of tank episode. First one was a such a “cliff hanger”.
Hi Indy
This numbers episode is interedting to watch..
What struck me is america's production of aircraft and german armies requirement of food...
Seems like how they handled so much logistics..
This was right reason for german army losing eastern front..
Please do more number's episode..
I know how much input you had put to collect these data..
Kudos to you all..
Thanks so much..
Thanks to Indy and the rest of the team for providing such in-depth coverage of this conflict. Your attention to the minutiae is what keeps me coming back, and I’m excited to say that as of today I’ve become your 7,000th patron!! Hope to submit a question for Out Of The Foxholes in short order.
Keep up the stellar work!
My god, the number of high quality videos this channel releases every week is mind boggling. Do Indy and team even have time to sleep these days?
They must be on a World War II-style learning curve with their production cost in man-hours per episode steadily dropping, as happened with the B-17s. Either that or they are increasing their manpower and square footage of industrial production space. By the end of the war they will be producing more episodes than the world has ever seen, with another episode rolling off the line every hour and straight into TH-cam combat.
When discussing the entire Merchant Marine situation during the whole war, PLEASE remember the brave merchant sailors - who never got any medals - but were absolutely essential to run the ships !!!
There is a monument in London to the 20,000+ merchant seamen "who have no grave but the sea".
There is a nice display about them in the WWII Museum in New Orleans.
It takes real courage to go to war on a warship but to go to war on a cargo ship, that's next level.
@@simonwaldock9689 Tower Hill near the Tower of London. The Merchant Navy "lost" over 32 000 men in WW2 and had a higher percentage loss rate than the Royal Navy, the Royal Airforce or the Army,. When your ship was lost you were off wages until you joined another s hip.
They were absolutely essential to the war effort and they don't get the credit they deserve
A video about Lend Lease to the Soviet Union would be very interesting.
How does the British industry compare to the other nations? They were un-prepared in 1939 but how is it now late 1942?
The British industry is far superior to that of Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, but inferior to that of the USA and the USSR.
Was some preparation of war the uk built shadow factory one is still in use by Land Rover
Plus uk made use of underground tunnels and use railway workshops and car plant
at the beginning of the war the UK was pretty much out produced by Germany in everything except fighter planes. by 1942 German air raids were not so widespread or effective and the UK economy was well on to recovering. Germany still outproduced mainland UK in everything except aircraft in general and ships (merchant and military) - bear in mind though that a lot of war production was now taking place in Canada (UK designed tanks, planes etc) and being shipped to the UK by the cargo fleets now being produced there and in the US.
@@raverdeath100 I believe in 1941 Britain built 5,000 tanks which was actually more than the Soviet Union and Germany
British industry about on par with Germany's before Germany got bombed to oblivion.
Yes the numbers don't lie, the armies of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia were very weak, they had very few tanks, very few planes and were dependent on weapons received from Germany.
Italian industry was kind of pathetic too TBH
Bulgaria was neutral in the Great Patriotic War.
@@nickdanger3802 Bulgaria was not neutral, it was part of the Axis until September 1944.
@@dragosstanciu9866 Bulgaria resisted Axis pressure to join the war against the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941, but did declare war on Britain and the United States on 13 December 1941. Wackipedia
You almost feel bad for Germany with what crappy allies they had. The Italians had quality manufacturers like Beretta (the oldest active firearms company in the world) but they could never produce on a massive scale needed for a global war
One point that we've brought up on the TimeGhost forum before is that Stalin and Zhukov certainly didn't think this time period(late '42-early '43) was the decisive turning point that present-day historians think it is.
Hindsight is 2021.
Although this only touches slightly on the costs of war, it's an excellent episode to help those with little understanding of these costs apart from the human losses that we know.
Great episode guys. War is expensive, especially the logistics part.
I'm reading "Pacific Crucible " by Ian Toll. Yamamoto resisted the Japanese Army's ceaseless push towards war against the United States through the 1920s, 30s and early 40s. Nearly all the senior admirals thought a war against the US would be hopeless, yet they let themselves be dragged into it. Tojo, the Prime Minister, was an Army general. At one point in the run up to war, naval troops were deployed in the streets to protect the admirals as they rightly feared assassination - the fate of so many Japanese leaders who resisted the march to war.
What if they had been assassinated? Or what if Yamamoto had lost one more finger at Tsushima? If the army had been allowed to charge headlong into folly by waging a war against the US without the tactical skill that Yamamoto possessed the situation would have been dramatically different.
The Ian Toll Pacific war trilogy (including Pacific Crucible) is one of my favorite book series on WWII. Toll does a great job of giving background from before the war, as well as convey both the strategic and tactical situation as the war goes on. The books are truly all encompassing. Im hoping that a quote or two will make it into one of the episodes from Indy and the gang soon.
And wasn't Yamamoto transferred to fleet command to protect him from assassination?
WWII is a great case study in the dynamics of institutional insanity - how a collection of otherwise largely sane people can end up committing to a strategy that defies any rational test. It appears that the odds of this go up when a government is authoritarian/dictatorial and thus lacking in separation of powers.
@@spikespa5208 Yes. It's not that Yamamoto was at all a pacifist, he was just one of the few to understand that the scale of US industry was absolutely impossible for Japan to compete with in a total war, and that the US public was not as likely to cave in after initial setbacks as the militarists liked to think.
Here's a number that is hard to beat. Timeghost is the number one channel for world war II in real-time.
That's for sure! Remember we do day-by-day coverage on Instagram too, that's as real-time as it gets.
Maybe a good time to pop in the quote "Infantry win battles, logistics wins wars".
The Germans focused a lot on railways to bring in the main supplies, but the final 10 to 50km fell back on horse drawn carts and small light trucks.
The Germans captured a lot of equipment from various nations, but by 1942 the spares and replacements of these were becoming more difficult to source.
A note on tanks; the victor on a battlefield gets to recover their damaged armour and the chance to return it to service. If you lose the area of battle, then your tank is a complete loss as it is now in the hands of the enemy.
The tank recovery and repair crews were the unsung keys in many armies.
Winter 1941 and then again in later 1942 started to see the Germans getting pushed back in a number of areas. There are famous photos of the tanks and various vehicles from Stalingrad collected awaiting repairs/ collection/ scavenging.
The Soviets and Americans opted for a number of standardised designs, which greatly aided repair.
Many German tanks, even of the same type & model often required machining to have spare parts fit due to differences from various factories.
Lend lease supplies from the US in later 1942 were starting to include numbers of reliable trucks - Driven (also rail) in from Iran loaded with supplies into the southern Caucasas Rostov/ Staliangrad area.
These trucks would start to give the Soviets a massive logistical advantage and flexibility in getting men & material en-masse to varying fronts at a pace that the Germans could not replicate.
By wars end, over 400,000 trucks & jeeps had been directly sent to the Soviets, as well as designs & tooling for them to make their own. It is still possible to see today vehicles in the former Soviet Union that were made in the '60's that greatly resemble WW2 era US fords, bedfords and the like.
Edit: fixed the truck & jeep count.
I'm always interested in stats and logistics as well as WW2 and your content so this is just a video right up my ally. I hope there is more to come!
What's left of the Willow Run plant is still pretty damn impressive.
Surprised there was no mention of "The Sleeping Giant". Yamamoto kinda predicted the US output but I think he was surprised by just how fast the "war time economy" became a thing.
You got me to look up something I always wondered about the most common medium tanks. Germany made over 8000 Panzer 4s. Russia made 84000 T34s. The US produced 50000 Shermans. It is complicated by variants.
One thing to be mindful of with the 84k T-34's, is that number is in no small part produced AFTER 1945. Wartime production is actually much closer to the number of Shermans produced.
Lend Lease almost the entire production run of Studebaker 6x6 most went to the Soviet Union and some went to Australia. The ENTIRE production capability of International Harvester went to the USMC . 3/4 ton up to and including 10 ton trucks and halftracks. What's also remarkable is that IHC was the only company to make ALL its own axles/engines/transmissions . All the other companies relied on outsourcing for driveline components. (Except for engines with the big 3).
I know of about 65,000 T-34's produced. That includes about 4,000 built outside the USSR in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Production in the USSR ended in 1946(with about 3,000 built that year). So wartime production was about 58,000.
But there were also tank destroyers/self-propelled guns produced on the same chassis. The SU-122(640), SU-85(2,750), and SU-100(3,241). Older models had their turrets removed and they were turned into Armored Recovery Vehicles when possible. Some chassis were built as TM-34 engineering bridge vehicles.
Don't ever think you didn't do anything .You're a wise sage.History repeats it's self ,and you're the leader telling us what will happen.
Axis: man i really hope the allies dont have as much tanks as we tought
T-34: Prepare for trouble....
M4 Medium Tank: And make it double!
So many M4s that didn't really see battle, seems like US made a lot more than they really needed, and by Korean War they were obsolete.
@@UrosKovacevic91 They did very well against T-34s in Korea. Of course you could argue that T-34s were obsolete as well, but the primitive infrastructure and rugged terrain in Korea made their heavier successors harder to employ.
I hope this helps people understand a couple of challenges.
First, the war in the Pacific. If you think the area on the Eastern Front is big, it is dwarfed by the Pacific Campaign. Just look at some distances: Berlin to Moscow is 1000 miles (1200 to drive). Honolulu to Tokyo is 3850. San Francisco to Tokyo is 5140.
Second, is the Sherman Tank. The video talks about the time to get spares for German Tanks in weeks. Imagine having to project that across either the Atlantic or Pacific.
@tyler thomas It was also designed to be much easier to maintain. The Germans did a good job on this with many of their planes, particularly the Fw 190, but not so much with their tanks.
In a recorded conversation during a meeting between Hitler and the Finnish Field Marshal Mannerheim, Hitler said that if he had known that the Soviets would have manufactured and fielded so many tanks, he would have not invaded the USSR.
yeah, i watch the video too.
in early 1941 URSS showed germany his best fighter plane to deter a german attack trying to impress them with "look how advanced we are" but this had the opposite effect on germany, germans want to rush against URSS before they can build up too large and too advanced military equipment.
@@Tonyx.yt. The Soviets learned a lot from Henry Ford about assembly lines and industrial engineering when Ford manufactured cars in Russia.
With numbers like these I don't see any reason why this war won't be over by Christmas. I know I was wrong the last couple years I said it, but I got a good feeling this time.
damn, I hope nobody throws a spoiler. It is so exciting!
:- )
Excellent video! Thanks for making it, and making it available to the general public (not all of us can afford cable and subscription services)!
Indy, I noticed the wall clock behind you. This video is 13:50 long, and the wall clock shows no more than about 13-15 minutes elapsing. That means you must have had near zero outtakes. And I didn't see any jump cuts, so any edits happened underneath the b-roll. That's not at all easy to do. Nice job!
Slight gripe, the B-24 was not a more complicated design than the B-17. It was the opposite, in fact, which is why the B-24 was produced in larger numbers despite the fact that the B-17 was generally preferred by the Air Force.
I really like this episode. It’s great to see all these numbers in one place. Please do more of this! Also maybe do similar numbers episodes on air and naval combat? I would like to know the logistics and supply issues of keeping a task force equipped, etc.,
You guys are the best thing!!! How the hell do you not have 1 million subs yet?!? Keep up the great work!
Oh boy, the Japanese really did poke a sleeping giant. The rapid growth of the US war economy after Pearl Harbour is truly insane, probably unmatched in human history.
No doubt!
And he warned Tojo about this before Pearl Harbor.
Bangs Cutter Not only poked him but, with the screwed up timing of the PH attack, royally pissed him off.
Part of the explanation for the rapid expansion of the US war economy after Pearl Harbour can be attributed to the earlier preparations under the "Arsenal of Democracy" by Roosevelt. In fact it had started before that speech but it takes time to get the wheels in motion.
The Japanese high command knew this though, they knew they couldn't win in a war of attrition with the US. That's why they were hoping for a quick victory.
Here's another interesting stat: According to some analyses, the USA had 51% of all of the world's manufacturing capacity in 1940. More than all of the other combatants and neutral nations put together.
War is always about numbers. Great presentation, TG!
War is always about the human story. Well history really. Numbers don't mean shit without context behind them.
Great video. I like it when a channel looks at the logistics in a war. Most people underestimate how important logistics can be.
Sound quality issues in the "new" studio. Indy's voice isn't as "present", more distant and echo-y. No idea of the technical terms or how to fix, just my 2 cents worth of feedback.
Still working with the new mics, the sound will improve
A huge thumbs up to the Timeghost team and all the amazing work you do. Happy 1943!
I love good episodes about logistics, way to go!!
My dad often talked about the war in terms of (generalized) numbers as well. As he said, "Did the USA have the best tanks? No. Did we have the best planes? No. Did we have the best ships? Probably not. But we could outproduce anyone on Earth and that was what we did -- we buried them with sheer capacity."
But in many areas, the USA did have the best "stuff" and "systems", including aircraft. M1 Garand infantry rifle, Essex-class aircraft carrier (many of which served decades after the war), Iowa-class battleships that finally were retired only in the 1990's, B29 Superfortress bomber, Willys Jeep, P51 Mustang fighter aircraft, .34 Automatic Colt Pistol, Thompson submachine gun, F6F Hellcat carrier fighter plane, F4U Corsair carrier fighter aircraft, Dodge WC series trucks (most German soldiers marched to battle on foot), and more. And, unlike the Russian or German armies, the U.S. had to transport its entire land fighting forces across two oceans and land them ready to fight and win. So, I'd include "best logistics" in the "systems" category. It wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it got the job done and gave the world Coca Cola and Spam. Eisenhower and Khruschev both ate a lot of Spam and commented about it after the war. In "Khruschev Remembers": "There were many jokes going around in the army, some of them off-color, about American Spam; it tasted good, nonetheless. Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army. We had lost our most fertile lands." Yes, you can cite the "bests" of our allies and opponents. But we had many "bests" ourselves. And, as you noted, "best" of all was our ability to finally overwhelm our enemies with our productivity. By January 1945, the U.S. Pacific Fleet was larger and vastly more effective than all the rest of the world's navies taken together. Nimitz, Spruance, Halsey, Mitscher, McCain, Burke, Turner and the other Navy admirals in the Pacific had unmatched power and could "go in harm's way" and dish it out in a way never seen before or since.
There was a lot of technological leapfrogging during the war, with one side gaining a technological advantage in one area only to be surpassed by the other side, and then flipping again. The main exception was Japan which started with technological advantages in aircraft, night fighting, torpedoes, etc. but failed to keep pace with Allied advances. By 1944 the USA had reached technological parity or superiority in weapons systems virtually across the board vs. Japan, in addition to numerical advantages. The only Japanese counter was to become progressively better at digging, forcing the Americans to pay heavily to blast and burn Japanese defenders out of their caves and tunnels late in the war. And there was the kamikaze, an early guided missile which used an expendable human brain as the guidance system. It would take Americans until late in the Vietnam war to field their first laser-guided bombs that were as accurate.
And of course after the German surrender, teams of Allied intelligence officers fanned out to collect as many German scientists, engineers, blueprints, prototypes, and working examples of technology as they could find. Even though the vaunted German Wunderwaffe (wonder weapons) failed to half the Allies, many of the forward-thinking ideas would go on to influence subsequent weapons well into the Cold War and beyond. Not to mention helping the USA put a man on the Moon.
I would argue that the US had the best planes by the end of the war. In terms of pure combat performance the F4U-4 was the match of any other piston-engine fighter in the war, with an earth-shaking 2450 hp of pure engine power with water-methanol injection, and while the P-51 Mustang may not have been superior to the later Spitfires, Bf109-Ks, or Fw190-Ds in combat performance, as one pilot noted, it could do anything those planes could do, but it could do it over Berlin flying from bases in England. And while the B-29 had plenty of teething troubles it and the Lancaster were the only planes in the world capable of delivering an atomic bomb 2,000 km or more from their base, which made strategic bombing orders of magnitude greater in its destructive power and a weapon so terrible that no nation since 1945 has dared use it - or to put another nuclear power in a position where it felt it had to use it.
The Germans had the most technologically advanced weapons like the V-2 and Me-262, but they couldn't field them in sufficient numbers (or provide fuel to fly them and train their pilots, in the case of jet fighters) to influence the outcome of the war significantly. The American planes could be and were put into combat in massive numbers with highly trained pilots and the logistical backing they needed to be decisive.
Your approach to the subject matter is very well-thought-out and well-presented
We need more than one episode of this!!
At 4:00, the square representation is misleading : we’re talking about area, so the areas of the squares (not the side of the squares) should be proportionate to the numbers.
It seems to me that your big square can contain at least 100x the little one! (Compare to the numbers : 9.5 vs 165)
3:59, this graphic is misleading. The larger square should be √18 times bigger, not 18-times bigger :)
For a detailed comparative look into tank production of Germany, USSR and the USA, check out Jonathan Parshall's recorded lectures, he has one from 2013
Very high quality presentation. Love this.
Western public: Soviets were unsophisticated and only win by numbers
Soviets: tank driver training is 9 months
Nooooo!!! You're not allowed to say the soviets didn't just throw completely untrained troops into suicide charges
Closer to 9 days in 1942, as I understand it.
@@nickdanger3802 possible in 41, but not in 42.
I see the team still can't quit Conrad Von Hotzendorff! Lol! Love it!
'Quantity had a quality of its own'. That is a very thought provoking notion.
For industrial production, the US had massive production in the Great lakes Midwest. Not only was it close to raw materials and workforce but this area was absolutely untouchable by the axis. Then on top we were building planes in California and Washington. Japan couldn't even get one bomber mission to the west coat.
Japan had to use those wacky balloon bombs.
I remember other places throughout the Midwest, like Omaha and many other spots in Kansas and Nebraska, also booming because of WWII production for the same reason you stated
@@ScottyShaw my old hometown of Milwaukee was absolutely booming. Lots of industrial giants had ramped up for wartime production. All throughout ww2 Hitler and Hirohito dreamed about getting bomber missions there and that was impossible.
Manufacturing on the east coast was also on a massive scale, particularly shipbuilding, guns (small arms and artillery) and ammunition, and the chemical industry. The shipyards in Virginia and New York alone produced more warships by tonnage than every other nation on the planet combined, including eight battleships and _26_ aircraft carriers completed between 1940 and 1945.
These are my favorite! I'll add them to my logistics playlist
A fact that I found extraordinary (though not mentioned here) was that during 1944, at their peak, the United States was launching a new aircraft carrier on average every NINE days
This was amazing to watch and deeply insightful in a way that only raw numbers can be. You guys should do retrospective episodes like this for 39, 40 and 41. It would make a fascinating mini series by the end of the war
Whoops - the graphics at 3:55 are wrong. It should be a 17.4-fold increase, but the one shown is a 17.4^2 = 301-fold increase.
Great job otherwise - march on!
The entire WW2 was designed as a 14 times dice throwing. Each time the Germans threw 6 they won, all other times they lost. They managed to throw a 6 seven times in a row, by surprising the enemy - their only chance. Then the Soviets secretly swapped the false German dice for ordinary dice. The Germans only got a 6 at the Battle of the Bulge.
Even the '44 Ardennes attack '6' was with loaded dice, not noting just how big the Allied armies and logistics backing were. Came nowhere near succeeding.
They already lost in 1940 by throwing a 5 during the battle of England
The bulge wasn't a 6. What a strange comment.
Where does this idea come from that the Germans threw a 6 in the 1944/5 Ardenne offensive? It was a massive strategic defeat for the Germans which effectively prevented them from engaging in any more offensive actions on the western front. Yes, the statistics were slightly in their favour when measured by losses of tanks, aircraft and so on, but what was lost in the German case was proportionately far higher whilst the Allied forces were back up to strength very quickly, something that the Germans were never able to do.
If the Ardenne offensive was a 6 on the basis of absolute numbers of losses of equipment and men, then the Germans must have thrown a 7 at Kursk which still didn't stop it being a major strategic defeat.
@@nickdanger3802 Kind of. Considering the odds.
Thank you Indy this show is fantastic!
Ooooo a logistics episode.... numbers!!!!glorious numbers!!!!!
As a total history nerd who loves HOI4, I just dig the numbers and logistics in this war.
Your final statement at around the 13 minute mark is only partially correct. Of course the numbers did matter, but so did the improved training and tactics of the Allies. After being pummeled by the Wehrmacht for almost 2 years, both the British and the Soviets are getting the equipment, trained soldiers and tactics required to defeat the Germans. In effect, the quality of the Axis soldiers is declining (by the addition of less well-trained replacements) while that of their opponents is increasing, effectively leading towards a levelling of the playing field. So while having a quantitative advantage is important, so too is "education" that the Allies have received at the hands of their German counterparts.
what an excellent comment! you are absolutely correct. as the war wore on, the quality of the German soldier, (I'd say at around the 1943 mark), began to decline. it showed on the battlefield. after the 3rd battle of Charkow in February/March 1943, the German wehmacht never again won another battle on the eastern front, (nor anywhere else for that matter, unless you want to count the, 'battle of the bulge', & that was only temporary).
@@stanbrekston Extremly simplified and inaccurate assesment
@@DrJones20 thank you. I try to make things simple so that people like yourself can understand.
@@stanbrekston No, you're being ignorant or deliberately misleading.
The Germans continued to win victories all the way to the end of the war, just not enough of them to turn the tide. They were capable of defeating major Allied offensives and launching successful counter-attacks, but they were never able to regain the strategic initiative that they lost in 43. The Battle of Bautzen ended on April 30 1945 and was a big German victory, mere days before the end of the war. Germans inflicted very heavy losses on the Polish-Soviet forces and halted their drive on Dresden, while also recapturing territory which remained in German hands until the war ended.
They won victories on every front, but since you bring up the Bulge (NOT a German victory), I'll give you another one you might have seen in a movie or videogame since this is where you seemingly get your information. Operation Market Garden was a major Allied offensive that failed to achieve its objectives and had the UK's most elite airborne division get surrounded and destroyed in September 1944, halting the Allied efforts to cross the Rhine and enter the German industrial heartland. Doing even cursory research will reveal plenty more Axis victories on every front of the European war, all the way up to the surrender.
If you actually care and are not just trolling, you can take a look at Hurtgen Forest, Warsaw Uprising, Dodecanese Campaign, and plenty more besides.
@@stanbrekston See there? ^ You got schooled son.
Hey Indy hope you and Sparta and the gang had a good Christmas. I recently got the book “Operation Barbarossa” by Jonathan Dimbleby and am looking forward to reading it. I already have a pretty good idea how it all went thanks for your channel though. Happy New Years you guys!
Especially in America, the Soviets get mis-represented as the country with numbers and lots of land but nothing else, when in fact by the end of 1942 the soviet command was becoming very competent and more independent from Stalin, not to mention effective army reorganisation and doctrine improvement. By the end of the war the Soviets really had an excellent army all round, and they didn't do so well with manpower alone.
After Stalingrad Stalin began to give his generals much more freedom to plan battles and even deferred to them.
When WW2 ends, you should do a short series on exactly how we managed to pull off the manufacturing miracle we did.
Our manufacturing in WW1, was absolutely horrible, and a disgrace to the country. They did some planning during the interwar years.
I only looked up this year the overall expenditure of the axis and allies after reading reading Sicily '43 and its impression of US logistical superiority. I was staggered to see that the Allies outspent the Axis by around 10:1 over the course of the war. I think any time I have a handle on the scope of WW2, I end up reading/viewing something else that understanding is still not even close to the scale in my mind.
Japan, mentioned once here, with its lack of natural resources and overstretched industrial sector is, by the end of 1942, surely starting to lag in all forms of production. Every ship, plane or tank destroyed is likely to take over twice as long to replace than its American counterpart.
Not to mention the US strangled the Japanese supplies sent back home from South East Asia with their unrestricted submarine spam.
This was great. What would be really interesting would be an episode on the horses of the German 6th Army. From the beginning of Fall Blau through to the end (spoiler). Not only would this show the reality of warfare at the time, but it would show why Paulus's options were so limited after Uranus started.
War is always about economy, numbers, logictics, tactics and technology. In that order.
This was awesome, we needed that :)
This video really explains why the Second World War was really the most expensive war in human history and let's hope that something like that will never happen again.
These sorts of pure statistical information of build times etc are really quite interesting!
I'd love to see more of this kinda stuff
As I listen to the production statistics of the U.S. back in that era, it occurs to me that today (it seems) China would assume that role of "production master". It also occurs to me that the German strategy of superior weapons, as opposed to quantity of weapons, has been assumed by the U.S. military today... I sense that the lessons of WWII have been lost on many.
It's hard to comprehend, but the United States Navy, by mid 1944, had more ships at sea than the entire axis had tanks on the field.
Nice Video Indy!!
I learn so on this channel.. nothing else like it. I love the format of your videos. But I do miss the roll top desk behind you.. you bring to the war to life and the people behind it.
5:08 These numbers are astounding. The Luftwaffe was no slouch either.
because it's still 1942. Just wait till the 1944 numbers.
Greetings from Detroit. You're welcome.
He threw in one of my favorite quotes. "Quantity is a quality all of its own"
The Boeing/Douglas set up sounds like the British Shadow Factory scheme where the Govt set up additional factories for manufacturers to increase production, give access to a different pool of workers and distribute production as Bombing was obviously a factor in the UK
Fun fact our local Airport - Leeds Bradford Airport was a Shadow factory for Avro and produced Lancaster Bombers - the aerodrome runway was extended and massive factory buildings were erected. Those buildings are still there if you approach the airport by the back roads, they are still in use mainly for warehousing.
very interesting, well told and extraordinarily well documented, BRAVO!
By the end of World War 2, Australia had the 4th largest air force in the world.
Not bad for a nation of like 7 million.
Not bad, but hardly sustainable either.
How many of those aircraft were produced domestically, though?
"Seems empty, only 7M ppl in 200k km2" lol, my country (Paraguay) is double that size and has about that number of people, and ive always considered it to feel a bit on the crowded side
Due to urbanization the average person lives in an area of above-average population density, in probably every country of the world.
Once again, Indy, please turn to the enormous amounts of supplies poured into the Soviet Union by the USA under Lend Lease.
A famous quote, from several sources: "Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics."
Yeah, a lot of Soviet production could focus on T-34s because we produced everything else they needed, like trucks and parts and food and medical supplies, which allowed them to focus heavily on producing T-34s rather than having to diversify their production. We literally subsidized their ability to focus on T-34s.
Great episode 👍👍
I like the mentioning of Willow Run! They were producing 1 B-24 every 1 and 1/2 hour!!!! They even moved part of the factory left to keep it from going into another county which had higher taxes! Kaiser ship builders had a funny joke! There was a women looking for the library ship and the admiral said just start swing lady!! By the time she finished the whole ship popped in front of her and was successfully launched!!! The last draw dropper was a lipstick company took a contract for making ammo!!!! There were ordered too make a million rounds in three months they did it in less than 60 days!!!! Operating in three shifts the government renewal of the contract was 100 million rounds of ammo in a six month period! They surpassed that in three months and that was in early 1942!!! It was a war of the factories and in numbers.........
Friendly advice: Try to write and space out your story a bit more, and do not end every sentence with '!!!'.
@@paulverse4587 sorry so flunk me on my writing skills?
Armies win battles, logistics win wars