Quote:
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Originally Posted by cmdrk
Atlantic Theater:
Allied cost in shipping, escorts, and planes - $17 billion
German cost in subs - $2.7 billion
Cost ratio 6 to 1
Pacific Theater:
Japanese cost in warships and merchants - $18 billion
US cost in subs - $873 million ($0.873 billion)
Cost ratio 20 to 1
Note:
Atlantic cost is for sunk merchants and cost of escorts/planes used during the battle. The sunk merchant tonnage cost was about $6.2 billion. The Allies spent $14 billion to replace then increase total merchant tonnage.
The Japanese cost is based on Dollar to Yen exchange base on the cost per ton to build a destroyer in the respective countries ($1.8 per Yen). The costs are from warship and merchant tonnage sunk, plus cost of escorts built.
Per info from Cmdr. M. Poirier's analysis at http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87...campaigns.html |
Granted. Submarines are a very cost-effective means of waging war. Except that we could afford the cost and much more. The Japanese could not. The Germans could not. Similarly, we could absorb a number of casualties that would cost the Axis powers the wars and come back for more. We fought two years in the Pacific without winning a single battle, losing tens of thousands, caught our breath and spent more, lost more men and won. Victory comes only to those who are willing and able to pay the terrible cost.
The Kriegsmarine was willing but not able. If they had another 100 submarines, they would not have had enough crew to man them. One of the reasons the Type XXI never got into combat was their inability to train crews. Topp talked about that in a famous interview where he said the Type XXI couldn't have turned the tide. Numbers of subs don't win wars, the qualified and well-trained people in them to.
Hitler as part of the equation makes sense also. For my reasonable plan for Germany to work, Hitler would have had to be sane. A sane man wouldn't have even begun WWII to get to the point where they could consolidate their victory on the Continent, mollify Britain and then attack Russia at their leisure and with British and American aquiescence (the next step in my logic). After all, British and American supplies were instrumental if the survival of Russia. As it was, victory was initally by a small margin for the Russians. The unknown is how cohesive Russia would be if deprived of Stalingrad, Moscow and Kiev, losing the entire European part of Russia. Would the Asian Russians fight to regain Europe, or would cultural differences result in the Asians saying good riddance to their European oppressors? I can't begin to guess the answer to that one.
And you can meld the crazy ruler is the reason for defeat with my weird theory if you wish. A sane Hitler would (if he was still crazy enough to start the war:rotfl
not have used U-Boats in unrestricted warfare, realizing that they had no choice but to attack American shipping and realizing that U-Boats were utterly powerless as a weapon against the United States. Once the US entered the war the Germans were losers.
@CaptainHaplo I agree with you about how amazing the discussion has been. I had some misgivings when I launched it as evidenced by my last paragraph about the spirit I hoped the discussion would have. It has had better than I dared to hope. It just shows what a great place SUBSIM is.
My theory is really more of a thought experiment than a reflection of reality because as others have said, it was the insanity of Naziism that caused the war to begin with and was responsible for the lousy choices Germans made throughout the war. If you believe my theory about consolidating victory on the continent, coopting America and Britain and then whipping Russia, you have to believe in a total reversal in the mindsets of Hitler and his henchmen. Of all the military leaders in Germany, only Admiral Donitz would have been capable of such imaginative thought and abandonment of Nazi doctrine to achieve victory.
I hadn't thought of your point that if you consented on any terms to be led by Nazis, you were one of them regardless of your personal beliefs. Maybe it's ownership of that lousy truth that has made the German people the great people they are today. If we Americans are smug about not being that stupid, I would counter by saying that there was another country in the world that could have gone that wrong: the United States of America. It's possible that Germany just beat us to it. Who knows. I just know that if Naziism happened in a country with the cultural richness of Germany, it could have happened elsewhere.