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Comment by diogenescynic | Hacker News Reader

We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.

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Is that really true regarding what we know of WW2? I thought their designs had major flaws, not just the goldplating issues you mention. Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.

Wars between great powers are won and lost on manufacturing base. The classic book on this topic is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great...

Same goes for logistics, which is an extension to your point:

https://walton.uark.edu/clc/posts/when-supply-chain-is-the-b...

yep... other factors do matter in determining the length of the war, whether the manufacturing base can be defended / get the raw materials it needs, etc. The enigma machine is estimated to have reduced WWII by a few years.

but there's really no winning when the enemy can put more planes, tanks, guns, boats and troops than you by a large factor, if they are even somewhat competent at using them.

Hm, is this still true in the age of nukes?

Would Russia/China/US not use their nukes if in risk of being overrun by conventional forces of another superpower?

It's true my abiding thought after reading the book was what about nuclear weapons. The great powers would absolutely use their nukes if in danger of being overrun, and I think long before that, in a total war.

German tank and aircraft design and logistics had their own issues that made things worse, but largely, the biggest issue was just not being capable of keeping up with American manufacturing and Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight.

Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.

Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.

"Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight."

Russia also build some tanks while being invaded, ~90k at the end of the war outcompeting german output at 3:1 (I suppose they are included in your allied 276k number?)

with the help of US industrial advisors who helped them set up factories / production lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrclztGCg6M is a decent watch, though really only tells the "US out produced everyone" part of the WWII story.

I recall seeing a better article that talked about WWII tank production but I can't find it right now.

The USSR was also able to protect most of their factories from bombing raids by moving them to the Urals. Germany and Japan never had that luxury.

Exactly. Iran is beating us with balsa wood (paper airplane) drones. We're outspending them, but they can produce them faster and cheaper. We have to spend hundreds of thousands/millions per drone and missile. They are producing them for a fraction of that. We're being sold an expensive military industrial complex that actually is going to fail when put to the test of reality.

It is and isn't. I think even if the germans had switched to making mass quantities of Sherman or T42 style tanks, it would have failed because they had shortages things like labor and fuel. The allies essentially had huge industrial bases in the US and Russia that were safe from the threats of bombing and attacks. The entire German supply chain from the factories to field repair sites were constantly being attacked.

"Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country."

The whole point of the war for the Nazis was to conquer new land in the east (and destroy the bolshewists). They initially did not wanted to have war with UK or France or US. They wanted to fight with them against the inferiors. It was a racist war - the aryans against the slavs - to establish the right place for the aryans as rulers (it was also not so much about "german", it was about race).

Also it was not just the US fighting and winning against them - I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).

And technically it was mixed. Some german designs were quite good, reliable and mass producible, others overcomplicated and too heavy. I doubt the war can be reduced to this question, nazi germany had enough weapons and its war industry was working full power, it was just so stupid to get itself into a war on all fronts (and for example declare war on the US in solidarity with Japan, but did not demand Japan to declare war on soviet untion in return).

They have seen French and Brits also as not-aryans. Below aryans, above slavic.

The western front was a choice, not something they did not wanted to do.

"They have seen French and Brits also as not-aryans"

Not so simple, they also divided the german population by aryan and non aryan tried to "improve" by breeding programms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn) and well hunting down all "inferior jews" and less so other people like sinti and roma.

And it is pretty established that Hitler wanted the UK as ally (who have been pretty racist at the time as well).

See also the flight of Rudolf Heß, which he did to make a favor to Hitler. (pretty interesting story, showing the delusion of the whole thing)

I mean sure, it was about race, not about passport. German Jews were not seen as of german race. None of that contradicts what I said.

Hitler wanted UK as ally, just like he wanted Russians as allies as step 1. The plan was not to treat them as equals in step 2. UK jist was not dumb to fall into that trap.

Rudolf Heß was his initiative and attempt to avoid war, he was very much in minority.

"The plan was not to treat them as equals "

I think the honest plan was to accept UK as sea power and germany as the mainland power. Later .. open how things developed.

"I mean sure, it was about race, not about passport. "

But we agree it seems. I was just arguing against the common missconception of trying to understand the Nazis as Ultra-nationalists, while they were mainly thinking in racial terms. Not germany should have ruled the world, but the Aryans. (With germany at it's heart, but that was more a side point)

A parallel mistake is the widespread belief taught in schools that the essence of the Nazi ideology was anti-Semitism, rather than anti-Communism.

Which is hilarious given that calling Germanics "Aryans" (i.e., Indo-Iranians) makes no sense, while Slavs are just as closely related to Indo-Iranians as the Germanics (as another sister lineage from the Proto-Indo-European-derived Corded Ware culture).

> I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).

US sent tons of war material to the USSR as well as experts to help them get their manufacturing up and running. The success on the eastern front was partially due to US support. I just saw a video claiming something like 2/3 of vehicles the Russians used were made in the US.

also as far as who was first to capture Berlin... pretty sure the western front commanders decided/were ordered to slow down and let the USSR get some parts of Germany for themselves.

"I just saw a video claiming something like 2/3 of vehicles the Russians used were made in the US."

Considering that 90 000 tanks were produced in russia alone, I really doubt those numbers, as it would mean Russia would have had 270 000 tanks on their own.

Vehicles, not only tanks. For instance, the mobility of the Red Army relied on Studebaker trucks. The US delivered about 115 000 of them. In total, including other types of vehicles like Jeeps, the USSR received about 400 000 vehicles.

Roughly 50-65% of Red Army's transport pool was US-made.

Yep that. Definitely far less share of tanks. Not sure if the red army had any American made tanks, I've never heard that talked about.

The USSR had already reached Oder (less than 70 km from Berlin) around the time the Battle of the Bulge ended. They stopped there for over two months to regroup and to secure their flanks, rather than advancing on relatively undefended Berlin. While taking the capital early would have been a symbolic victory, the Soviets didn't believe it would be enough to end the war at that point.

> Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.

If I'm not mistaken, one of the factors behind their Eastern Front collapsing was how their tanks suffered major design flaws, from failing to start in cold weather and their electrical components being vulnerable to rodents.

Also, their inability to mass produce their tanks is a critical design flaw.

I mean sure, the Eastern Front absorbed the vast majority of German manpower and materiel. But the conquest of Eastern Europe and European Russia was a central component of Hitler's ideology, so from his point of view at least it wasn't "pointless".

And ships. We ended the war with (EDIT: practically) none of the carriers we started out with.

Famously, of course, not at all the case, with Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger all surviving. Yes, losses of pre-war carriers were severe (Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp).

>I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status.

We were one poorly chosen voluntary conflict away from being shown to be a paper tiger. Now we've proved it, thanks to the fool in the White House and everyone who supports him.

Focusing our efforts away from mass produced drones is a huge mistake in my opinion. We need to produce drones by the million.

We also need both .50 caliber and shotgun sized proximity rounds by the billions to enable local defense against them.

Yep, the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine have shown how weak our strategy is. Iran is beating us with balsa wood drones. Cheaper is better in this case. But we still like buying the best/most expensive/most over-engineered option available. We should be figuring out how to design a supply chain that can mass produce these in the event of a real conflict from local materials... not building the most high spec exotically sourced version... which is what we are currently doing.

I wouldn't say "only". But the industrial advantage that the US brought to the allies made an Allied victory almost inevitable - in hindsight, the only way the Allies could've lost was if the situation looked so hopeless that the US chose to stop fighting - or never entered the war in the first place. Maybe if the Nazis had overrun Britain and either avoided engaging the USSR until they were ready to give it undivided attention, or somehow have conquered it, then maybe the US could've looked and said "we don't want to pick this fight" ... of course the moment Hitler declares war without actually being ready to invade the US, he's made a huge mistake.

Perhaps there's an alternative history where Germany was less incompetent with their production and had less stupid leadership. But even in those, as long as the US got into the war and the war continued until one side or the other was fully conquered - I think it would've been Nazi Germany being conquered. The US started at a huge disadvantage of not having much of a military, weapons or ammunition ready, but we got to ramp up production for a good ~4 years before going over to Europe to kick ass and ran circles around the Axis powers with our production.

American weapons, Soviet blood.

Both on the eastern front and the western front the soviets were responsible for the ultimate defeat of the Axis.

Note: I'm not pro russia or pro America... Unlike the current team putin / Trump / Zelinsky / Taylor Swift and they can't do anything wrong we should always strive to discuss events > people.

I think the USSR would have won the war regardless of US involvement, but it might have taken a few more years.

Maybe. They had the strategic depth and political will. But that forgets that they had major amounts of supply and industrial expertise brought in from the US. With none of that, perhaps they would've lost Moscow and the rest of the East. That could've given the Nazis significant more supply - especially if they got their hands on Soviet oil in the Urals - would could've made them hard to kick out.

We'll never know for sure.

Well, a lot of that US (and German!) industrial expertise was applied well before the war, in the 20s and 30s.

It's certainly plausible that Moscow could have fallen if Hitler hadn't diverted Army Group Center to Kiev etc., which would have been a major political/logistical setback, but I still doubt it would have changed the ultimate outcome (especially if it had left the units of the Red Army intact that were encircled and destroyed in that diversion).

The German tanks were superior when functioning but quite a few of them were difficult to produce, maintain, and use. Do better armor and weapons really imply a superior tank if it requires significantly more maintenance and breaks down more often. And that's ignoring the issues were the sheer weight of the tanks meant that they couldn't cross certain bridges or function in certain terrain.

The allies only won WW2 because the Soviets and China expended millions of lives weakening the Nazis and Japan.

Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.

The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.

The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.

Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.

It was very much Germany as such that lost WWII. Really.

> The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine.

What are you on about here. NATO never owned it, but member countries helped it. Except USA big NATO countries are still helping it.

It is fascinating that EU countries became "vassals" when they went against USA wish in a major way. No one called them vassals when they were allies, the word is thrown around when they visibly diverge. Trying to stir emotions?

The EU and NATO were always vassals.

The EU was created so that the US would have one entity to control instead of many.

NATO was created as a captive marketplace for US weapons.

Coming back to the Ukraine issue, Russia is facing off 50 plus countries supplying materiel and intelligence using the Ukrainian proxy regime.

I could not care less about your emotions. I'm not a romcom writer.

> The EU and NATO were always vassals.

No one used that word until Trump got pissed they did not invaded Iran.

> Coming back to the Ukraine issue, Russia is facing off 50 plus countries supplying materiel and intelligence using the Ukrainian proxy regime.

Russia is facing Ukraine that it invaded who is getting help from countries who find invasion disgusting or simply think Russia will invade them next.

Funny, USA moved to Russia side but the vassals did not.

Did you find the Iraq invasion disgusting? Libya? Syria? Venezuela?

Funny how oil rich countries can be invaded with impunity.

That's weirdly incorrect about most stuff. I guess you are in India and reading Russian propaganda influenced sources?

If Ukraine is a US proxy then how come when Trump told them to surrender and cut all funding they said yeah right and fought on?

And if they are losing why is Russia blowing up and losing 1400 soldiers/day?

Nothing I say is even remotely incorrect. Look it up.

I guess you're in a NATO vassal state or the US and are reading NATO propaganda influenced sources?

The Ukraine (use the correct term) is NATO proxy. One of the master manipulators are the British. Trump is nobody in this game. Read Gleason's book and get back to me.

As for the Russian losses, even the BBC sponsored mediazona propaganda NGO can't justify those numbers.

While the ukronazis publish video after video of their massive graveyards, ever expanding.

Who's Gleason?

https://archive.org/details/genesisofrussoph0000glea

Thanks for the link.

I'm a Brit and I wouldn't call it Russophobia but we do have a long history of opposing Russia like fighting Hitler when Stalin partnered with him to invade Poland and start WW2 and now when the slaughter civilians, set up torture chamber and abduct children of their peaceful neighbours in the name of some BS covering for their imperial expansion.

If opposing mass murdering dictators is a phobia though I'm all for it.

If Iran was winning strategically they wouldn't have lashed out last night wounding 63 civilians (many needing immediate surgery) by launching missles at the neighbors and killing one Indian national because they couldn't get an empty tanker in to pump/store crude in. The blockade they initiated has blocked 125 commercial ships from accessing Iran.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are so afraid they won't even allow families of people like Mojtaba Vaisi and Meysam Vaisi, two brothers and well-known cultural activists in Kermanshah who were killed by security forces, to hold funerals. To recruit people to their pro-regime nightly vigils they are having 'temporary weddings' as incentives.

In addition with the restoration of internet more and more videos are coming out of the murders the Shia Islamic theocracy conducted on their own people who no longer want to live under Islamic rule, be forced to wear hats under threat of beating/death/rape, and those videos will undermine the lame lego propaganda attempts shortly. https://eyesofiran.com/event/59879

Iran has been incredibly restrained. Notice how Israel keeps attacking civilians but Iran has been attacking military targets? Iran is letting Israel know (since they know Israel is the one driving negotiations...) that Iran can still attack them whenever they want--and they know Israel is running out of missiles for Iron Dome. Iran knows they just have to wait this out. Every day American support for the war decreases and people begin to resent Israel more and more for dragging us into the war. Iran is winning the war by every metric. This is the first war where the target ended up coming out of the war more economically powerful... it's a complete backfire.

> Israel keeps attacking civilians

Such as..?

> Iran has been attacking military targets

Maybe a few, but the vast majority of their strikes illegally targeted civilian infrastructure. Off the top of my head, there was Dubai airport (struck at least 4x), Kuwait airport, various residential neighborhoods of Tel Aviv (with high-altitude cluster munitions that couldn't possibly target military assets), civilian energy infrastructure in several neighboring Gulf states, an MSC container ship, etc. etc.

Whenever the US and NATO have attacked any country, they've always gone after power and water utilities first.

Iraq. Yugoslavia. You name it.

Use the same standards and the Iranians have been very circumspect.

Remind me how many Iranian civilians were slaughtered by the US. And I'm no fan of the cult which rules the country formerly known as Persia.

Let's just talk about ONE school: was it 160 school girls or more?

Iran - unfortunately- is winning. The Straits were open and thanks to your genius of a president, they are closed now AND have shown the Iranian regime that they can control it and monetise it.

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