Moscow to Stalingrad - Decision in the East [Illustrated Edition] (The Russian Campaign of World War Two Book 1) by Earl F. Ziemke & Magna Bauer III

Author:Earl F. Ziemke & Magna Bauer III [Ziemke, Earl F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2013-08-21T21:00:00+00:00

Soviet Strategy

The Soviet Condition

In mid-March 1942, Goebbels, as he did with nearly all of his best thoughts, confided to his diary, "Whether we shall succeed during the coming spring and summer in defeating the Bolsheviks—this no man can say. We know what we have and what we must risk, but we don't know what the Bolsheviks have and what they can risk."[921]There was—and is—the mystery. The Germans did not know then and the world does not know yet what the Soviet Union had and what it could risk. The Germans, it would appear from the result, must have been far off in their estimates. Soviet accounts, however, do not give sufficient information to support clear judgments about the extent of the German miscalculations.

The first five months of war had done enormous economic damage to the Soviet Union, particularly in the output of basic raw materials, and that would be felt more in 1942 than it had been in 1941. As the following table shows, output in most key categories during the first six months of 1942 would be less than half of that called for in the 1942 military-economic plan and substantially below 1941 levels.[922] The figures, of course, do not account for quantities in the production pipeline or stockpiles that may have existed.

On the other hand, unlike Hitler, Stalin had not hesitated to convert to a total war economy. By 1942, the metalworking industries (almost totally engaged in war production) constituted 57 percent of all industry in the Soviet Union, up from 36 percent in 1940 when the emphasis on military production had already been heavy.[923]In comparison, only 43 percent of German industry was devoted to metalworking, with only 30 percent of that engaged in armaments production.[924] The allocations of iron and steel for ammunition, which had been 830,000 tons in 1940, were 1.8 million tons in 1942.[925] Output of artillery pieces went from about 30,000 in the last six months of 1941 to over 53,000 in the first half of 1942. In the same period, output of mortars more than trebled, and production of hand weapons and machine guns increased substantially; however, ammunition production went up less than 5 percent. Output of combat aircraft, 8,300, was about the same in the first six months of 1942 as in the last half of 1941, but it exceeded the German production, which was approximately 7,200.[926]

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.