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This is all with the caveat that I barely even have a passing interest in history... but it's just not adding up.
You can tell me all about how they outran their logistics, and couldn't recover their tanks, but I still don't see how we get to a 6 year war, that got as far as it did, if one of the belligerents is an economic, horse and mule drawn, basket case. Either all of them are, and the fight went the way it did, for as long as it did, because they were more or less evenly matched, or this portrayal is itself propaganda.
My understanding is not that Germany was some sort of backwards pre-industrial nation. Germany was a technological innovator in many fields. It was a steel producing giant with a highly industrialized economy. German economy had some unique, and other not so unique, financial issues following WW1 but I don't know quite as much about that.
The German military more heavily relied on horse power due to oil shortages and supply allocation compared to its peers. All nations were limited by fuel to some extent. Germany to such an extent that it structured major parts of its strategy around the acquisition of oil sources and did lots of science to help alleviate fuel concerns. This author has written a dissertation on oil, Germany, and WW2. If Nazi Germany was built on Texas, or modern Saudi Arabia, it would have had lots of more motorized elements and supply. It could have fed its offensive operations for much longer, committed to more of them, and the big picture strategy may have be different.
It would have built a lot more trucks and had less horses. Whether more fuel and trucks wins the war for them is up to whatever fanciful counter-factual you'd like to imagine.
I see nothing objectionable in what you said here, but it doesn't sound to me like this is what the other posters were getting at.
You allude a couple times that you don't believe Germany was an "economic, horse and mule drawn, basket case." I believe you are correct. Oil and fuel shortage is one alternative explanation for "why does this technologically advanced nation still uses horses when its peers do not?" It is one of the most straight forward explanations, even.
Maybe it fits better elsewhere, or nowhere at all, but you say you have no interest in history so you're a juicy mark for information you did not ask for.
To be clear I do find the general topic interesting, but I don't want to portray myself as someone who spends his free time studying these things. I definitely appreciate the information!
Only three certainties in life: death, taxes, and WW2 counterfactual discussions with Well, I'm A Bit of a History Buff's on internet forums
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Both Germany and the USSR primarily used horses and mules for logistics in WW2 (about 2.5 million horses were used by the Germans, about 3.5 million used by the Soviets). This is why the US providing tons of trucks to the Soviets (and tons of fuel) under Lend-Lease was such a huge deal. Both sides tended to film their more highly mechanized divisions for their propaganda videos, which is why you don't see the horses in WW2 footage too much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_II
Yeah, and so did France as per your own link. The UK got early on the mechanization train - good for them - but that does not mean that everyone who didn't is a primitive economic basketcase, because that would include practically the entire rest of the world, and the word loses it's meaning. The second issue is that all that mechanization somehow didn't seem to help them significantly outperform Germany in terms of production. Those numbers should not be possible if this portrayal was accurate.
Ah, well I don't agree with those other posters' assessment there. I was just pointing out that Germany (and the Soviets) used far more livestock for their logistics than you would be led to believe from just seeing random photos/footage of their militaries in WW2
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