[NFHale]

“...In Lima, OH, they were turning out a tank ever 4.5 HOURS....”

One wonders if, had we been subjected to continual air attack that decimated our factories and production facilities, as the Germans were, how different that would have been.

Enjoying the relative security of having two oceans between us and the Japanese and Germans, we were able to go round the clock production...

I think a real astonishing fact is that the Germans could continue producing war material at all in the face of American daylight precision bombing and British night bombing... plus the Russians hammering them from the East.

They were tough SOBs. My old man had a lot of respect for them... didn’t care much for the SS, though. Said “we NEVER took them prisoner, unless ordered to...”

[LS]

Careful on your admiration. Yes, German production increased slightly from 1942-44. The best source on this is Tooze, "Wages of Destruction." But one of the reasons was that German imported millions of slave workers, so even as they put more men as a % of their population into the field, they nevertheless increased their workforce by slave labor.

British bombing was next to useless.

One important reason we outproduced not just the Germans, but EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD put together, save Russia, and if you include Russia, we very nearly outproduced all others plus them too---is that we capped our infantry divisions at 89, where as the Soviets threw more than 100 divisions into a single battle and the Germans put in a very high % of their manpower into combat.