Why are 2nd World War,German subjects the most popular? (1 Viewer)

[Combat]

Combat,
Are you going to Fall In the weekend of November 10th through the 12th; I'll be there set up in the dealers area, but I really just wanted to go to Gettysburg to see the battlefield once again. I can't get enough of the whole experience of just being there. If you come by, look me up. One of my customer is running a huge Pacific game with K & C figures and painted terrain done up by yours truly..........

Will you have any HB stuff? I might be interested in the Winter Field Kitchen or one of the BergeP's.

 

[Warrior]

I expect a restock on the Bergepanthers and my order of kitchens to arrive shortly, in time to bring to the show.............

 

[Toy Soldier Brigade]

The reason I have German soldiers is so my GI's have something too shoot at !

 

[Rob]

Louis re your earlier post,spot on mate,spot on.Because of the sacrifices of that generation i live a free and happy life.All i have to moan about is the weather and the size of my credit card(kc's fault!)I will never tire of reminding myself and others of the debt we owe.I know if i want to i can go to Hyde park corner on a sunday stand on my soapbox and bemoan my government an act for which if we'd lost i would have been shot.This world despite its problems is still a wonderful place,if those young men and women had not fought and won there would have been hell on earth.

Rob

 

[binder001]

Interesting discussion. This often comes up in modeling circles. As stated there are a number of reasons for the abiding interest in German stuff...

- Quite colorful - The Germans had a number of camouflage schemes and systems for vehicles, aircraft and uniforms. For modelers or toy collectors that allows a colorful display. Allied stuff tended to be more drab.

- Innovative - the first assault rife, initiation of the gun/armor race in tanks, first jets, etc.

- "sexy" - German equipment has a "cool" appearance that many people love

- There's a strange fascination with the "bad guys". With Halloween coming in the US notice the number of Darth Vaders or Freddie Kruegers. Angel costumes seem to disappear after 5 years old. I'm not a psychologist to be able to comment on tapping into our darker sides, but it sure is obvious that it's there.

- GREAT PR machine. The Germans are/were great image builders and have spent a lot of effort since 1945 telling us how good they were.

Gary

 

[steveo]

Well its maybe we should be thankfull that the Germans produced the multitude of tanks they did instead of producing one that was easy to manufacture and mass produce,something i believe the Tiger and the Panther were not ,and they were also over enginered and not without their major problems.
Agreed nobody wanted to fight the Tiger or the Panther,I am led to believe in armoured engagements the Shermans kill ratio was a 3to1 advantage in favour of the Germans?
The Germans lost because of the Allied and Russian abilities to mass produce their main battle tanks ie Sherman and T34 in vast numbers .whilst the Germans were unable to replace their own crews and tanks fast enough to compete.
I will try and get total war time production for each Main Battle Tank and post later
steve

 

[panda1gen]

Just to be awkward, some of my most favourite sets are not German!

I love the tommy patrol, bren carrier, staghound and don't forget the entire anhem and 8th army series, plus especially the many US paras - if more were made I would buy them.

14th Army anyone?

 

[steveo]

Hi managed to find some production figures:
58,000 T34s, estimated total production 84,070 used up until end of cold war.
40,00 Sherman tanks till end of 2nd World War.
Total German war time production.
1350 TIGER 1
500 TIGER2
6724 PANTHER Tank all variants
hope this helps
Steve

 

[Louis Badolato]

Steveo,

You make an excellent point. While the German Tanks had a higher kill ratio, the allied tanks, particularly the T34 and Sherman could afford high loss rates, because they were exponentially outproducing the German armor. This had a great deal to do with the fact that Hitler was enamored of super-heavy tanks.

Had the Germans focused on producing a large number of Panzer IV longbarrels with sideskirts (a tank which could compete with the T34 and outclassed the Sherman, and was much easier to mass produce) it might have served them much better. Indeed, one of the most successful armored vehicles, which knocked out literally thousands of Russian Tanks on the eastern front, was the extremely simple and easy to produce StuG III. This turretless vehicle (hence the ease of production), which had a profile of only 6 and a half feet, could be hidden almost anywhere, and with the long barreled 76mm gun, could take out any Allied tank.

Once again Hitler's predilictions cost the German's dearly.

 

[Combat]

Steveo,

You make an excellent point. While the German Tanks had a higher kill ratio, the allied tanks, particularly the T34 and Sherman could afford high loss rates, because they were exponentially outproducing the German armor. This had a great deal to do with the fact that Hitler was enamored of super-heavy tanks.


Once again Hitler's predilictions cost the German's dearly.

Guderian was in charge of tank design from 1942 onward. It is a valid point in that the allies standarized tank production and therefore they could be produced and repaired more quickly than German tanks. The Germans also wasted tremendous resources on projects such as the V-1 and V-2 rockets.

 

[OzDigger]

The Panzer IV was in fact their main battle tank with over 12,000 of the different variants being made, including about 7,200 with side-skirts.

It is true that the larger German tanks lacked the mobility of the Mark IV etc but they were more difficult to destroy, especially when you consider that most heavies were situated in defensive postions late in the war.

It should also be remembered that Allied airpower played a major role in the destruction of German tanks in the late war and made daylight movement and concentration of German armor very risky.

 

[Louis Badolato]

Combat,

While Guderian, the father of the Panzer divisions, was nominally in control of tank production after he fell out of favor with Hitler over operation Barbarossa, as in all other areas of German design and production, Hitler had the final say.

Hitler constantly encouraged the development of superheavy tanks like the King Tiger and Maus, and wasted German resources on terror weapons (like the V1 and V2). Hitler even meddled in aircraft production, insisting on aircraft designed to his specificiations (holding up production of Jet fighters for years by insisting they be designed to serve as fighter/bombers).

You sure seem enamered of old Adolf's military capacities, something only the author you cite, Alan Clark, otherwise appreciates.

 

[Combat]

Combat,

While Guderian, the father of the Panzer divisions, was nominally in control of tank production after he fell out of favor with Hitler over operation Barbarossa, as in all other areas of German design and production, Hitler had the final say.

You sure seem enamered of old Adolf's military capacities, something only the author you cite, Alan Clark, otherwise appreciates.

Louis-
Hitler was undoubtedly an evil man. As a result, I think it is extremely difficult to concede that he had certain talents. It creates the dangerous possibility that it might be used to mitigate his otherwise colossal crimes. History has to be objective though if it is to have any meaning.

Intro from "Hitler and his Generals - Military Conferences 1942-1945"

"one must grant that many of Hitler's military decisions until very near the end, were in the technical sense throughly reasonable -- more reasonable, in any case, than the usual version of events would lead one to believe. In the published transcripts that follow there are a number of examples of Hitler's decisions that are usually thought of as insane, overly confident, or based on blind emotion at best, but which were actually rooted in considerations that at least at the time seemed plausible, even when in hindsight they cannot be judged as completely objective. And as already mentioned, there were also decisions that were fundamentally correct -- even in hindsight -- and which were successful or averted disaster."

"Whatever one credits or does not credit Hitler with as a military leader, and whatever pieces of the mosaic are missing from this collection that would complete his portrait, one point should not be overlooked under any circumstances: the German Armed Forces were not defeated in WW II because Hitler led them poorly and continually handicapped his generals, nor because the clever instincts of the Fuhrer were diluted or sabotaged by this generals, who were at the very least narrow-minded if not downright evil. ...militarily the war could not have been won after 1941, and it wasn't won before 1941, despite dazzling battlefield victories."

Hitler's War - David Irving (on Stalingrad defeat): "The blame for the disaster was diverted onto Hitler. In later years memoirs were fudged by field marshals, fake diaries were concocted, guilty sentences were expunged from the OKW's war diary, and contemporary judgements on Hitler's leadership were slotted in."

 

[boot51]

This is from 'Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Speer, Hilter's Minister of Armaments, who was probably a little closer to Hitler than Alan Clark and thus a little more likely to be a better judge of his military capabilities.
"The victories of the early of the war can literally be attributed to Hitler's ignorance of the rules the game and his layman's delight in decision making. Since the opposing side was trained to apply rules which Hitler's self -taught, aotocratic mind did not know and did not use, he achieved surprise. These audacities, coupled with military superiority, were the basis of his early sucesses. But as soon as setbacks occurred he suffered shipwreck, like most untrained people. Then his ignorance of the rules of the game were revealed as another kind of incompetence, then the defects were no longer strengths. The greater the failures became, the more obstinately his incurable amateurishness came to the fore, now it speeded his down fall." Hilter's only "talent" appeared to be an uncanny ablitiy to recite abtruse facts and figures, hardly a qaulification for military genius. The list of his blunders is endless from switching from bombing airfields and radar towers in England to bombing cities whe the RAF was just about finished, to throwing away nearly 100,000 men in Stalingard, to insisting on bombers instead of fighter production when his own cites and factories were being leveled and to produce super heavy tanks instead of Mk IV's and panthers, by the time he approved the panther for production he had added so much weight to it, it was as heavy as the Tiger I was when originally planned. One of his worst failings was that he did not understand the need for supplying the armies with sufficient spare parts, Guderian tried to point this out, he argued that tanks could be repaired much more quickly and at a fraction of the cost of building new ones, but Hilter insisted on production. I'm certainly not saying Germany could have won the war, but with someone more competent than Hitler running the military it would have been a much more difficult task to defeat them.

Fred

 

[Rob]

That made interesting reading Fred.He also could have added not supporting Rommel in supplies and tanks that were promised.

Rob

 

[jazzeum]

Another point to be made was his obsessiveness with refusing to give up any territory at ridiculous costs whereas a mobile fighting force not necessarily wedded to inflexible principles might have served the German armed forces better.

As in any profession, it is best to leave things to professionals not amateurs.

 

[Combat]

This is from 'Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Speer, Hilter's Minister of Armaments, who was probably a little closer to Hitler than Alan Clark and thus a little more likely to be a better judge of his military capabilities.

Fred

Of all the self-serving revisionist accouts, Speer's would be near the top of the list. He was hardly a trustworthy source on any matter, but military tactics in particular since he had no direct involvement. His post-war strategy was to save his own skin by writing what he knew the allies wanted to hear. It worked. Couple of interesting books:

Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth
by Gitta Sereny, Peter Dimock (Editor)

The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer
by Dan van der Vat, Dan Van Vat
"This is the story of Albert Speer, manipulator of history and architect of his own legend."

 

[boot51]

Everyone has their own agenda, Doug and can bend the facts to fit their view, but to suggest that Hitler was anything other than a total military buffoon is ignoring history. Why people are always trying to rewrite it is beyond me.

Fred

 

[Combat]

Everyone has their own agenda, Doug and can bend the facts to fit their view, but to suggest that Hitler was anything other than a total military buffoon is ignoring history. Why people are always trying to rewrite it is beyond me.

Fred

There is a commonly held notion that historical accounts - particularly of controversial subjects - should not be written until at least 50 years after the event. This allows the historian to be more objective in respect to the actual events. We are just now coming into that period for WWII. In addition, the opening of the Soviet archives has provided both Russian and German documents not previously available. So it should be viewed as an exciting time to revisit many issues from the war. That may or may not require reconsideration of some preconceived ideas. Anyway, it is an interesting topic and I appreciate hearing so many well thought-out opinions.

 

[Fubar]

Interesting ,but
Off course.Please post reasons why you like the Krauts in miniature.That is all.

FUB