Gleinster wrote:Yootopia wrote:Gleinster wrote:Why do people think that the USSR would necessarily have beaten the Germans anyway?
Larger production base, much higher population, more diverse natural resources and a command economy that provided a smooth(ish) transition to a wartime economy, esp. since in the latter half of the 1930s the Russians were already spending a vast amount on military production and R&D.
Did they not have all these things in June 1941?
Well no. The Germans didn't have a larger population than the USSR at any point in the war, nor did it have comparably safe areas to produce arms, it lacked oil and natural gas and the economy wasn't quite as easy to control by the German authorities.
Technically the population of Germany and her allies and her occupied territory in 1942 was quite similar to the portion of the USSR that remained in Stalin's hands.
OK, if we're adding allies to this as well, then the British Empire plus the USSR is pretty much overbearing against Germany and its allies, occupied territories etc.
The only natural resource that Germany was short on in 1942 was oil and it didn't become a REAL problem until 1944.
I dunno, they were pretty low on tungsten by 1943, which impacted on AT shell efficiency. Plus the lack of natural gas fields and oil also meant that Autarky operations took up a lot of time and effort which they probably could have been used better elsewhere.
I also think the Germans spent quite a lot on military production and R&D
Undoubtedly.