Misconceptions of German Power

On Monday, a friend of mine showed me a video explaining the stealth technology of the B2 bomber- America's current-generation stealth bomber. At the end of the video, the speaker described how the Nazis had invented a working version of a stealth plane in 1943-1944. The next day, I did a little research in a few war encyclopedias I own. As it turns out, the Nazi stealth plane was genuine, and the stealth components functioned almost perfectly.... just before it crashed on its test flight. They started to rebuild, but it was never truly completed.

I hear a lot of similarly erroneous claims online and in conversation. Many people seem to believe that the Nazis were vastly more technologically advanced than they really were, and possessed fully-functional weapons of incredible power. To make things worse, the idea of Nazi super-development has been sensationalized by the media: Hitler clones, Nazi fusion cannons, advanced German computers, and enormous underground complexes in the Sahara (often housing super-weapons) have all been covered by ostensibly serious documentaries. Hollywood spins even more outlandish stories to boost this sentiment- Holy Grails, Arks, Norse technology, and jet-packs are just a few of the technologies that Nazis have employed in fictional films. Let's just leave the Nazi zombies alone.

But why do people believe wild claims about the Third Reich's technology? What makes everyone think that they were so advanced?
Partially, the answer has to do with our cultural memory of the war. As more and more of the people who actually lived the events have died away, the "truth" of the war has given way to legend, and sometimes even myth. Just consider how we think about the war: the Nazis are seen as the ultimate villains of history- the purest manifestation of hatred, subjugation, and objective evil. Often, people label them as "monsters", and it is believed that these "monsters" were only defeated through dedication, bravery, intelligence, and commitment to a moral cause. The Allies were heroes. "It was their finest hour." Even it's name, "the World War", suggests incredible grandeur- the largest stage and stakes there are: our planet. So, the very way we describe and think about the war has shifted our interpretation of it from history to epic legend- something like Homer's Iliad, half way between history and myth. Exploring why the war as become legend in our society will be a topic for another post. The point here is that our concept of the Nazis has shifted with our thoughts about the war to become more and more extraordinary and surreal- making sensational theories all the easier to swallow.

But, of course, the more reasonable theories are only shadows of the truth, and the others are (more often than not) extraordinary exaggerations or downright lies. Were the Nazis advanced in military technology for their time? Absolutely. There is no doubt that the 1936-1945 German Wehrmacht between 1936-1945 was (in its time) one of the finest and most technologically advanced fighting forces ever assembled. Military historians often note that the Germans "tried to fight a war with technology of the future". At the end of the day, however, this was an entirely unrealistic military strategy and economic doctrine. The Germans failed- and in their quest for conquering the world of their present with the weapons of the future, they doomed themselves to defeat.

Let's quickly look at a few of the more realistic specifics.  

Were German tanks more advanced than their Allied counterparts? Mostly yes, but also no. If you've studied the second world war, you know that the tank unit was the defining and foundation feature of the tactical and strategic landscape of the war. The Germans, who knew that tanks would play such an important tactical and strategic role, worked tirelessly to develop advanced tank models like the Panzer IV, Tiger I, Panther, Panzer VIII Maus, and many others. These models were especially powerful: the Tiger and Panther were capable of taking on numerous enemy tanks simultaneously. Due to their superiority in 1941 and 1942, Nazi tanks destroyed 6-7 Soviet tanks for every single tank lost. These statistics were similar for the Americans late in the war, especially in the 1944 Operation Cobra, where American Sherman tanks were ill-equipped to fight Panthers and Tigers in the French countryside (though ultimately, American tactical minds overcame inferior weaponry.) Put simply, German tanks were superior weapons, and the advanced models noted above were extremely deadly. But this advantage was really only half-reality: while they were superior in combat, they showed grave weaknesses in a number of other areas, mostly due to over-engineering. For example, most of the individual pieces in each tank were unique to the tank type, and there were too many to carry spares. Even if there were spares, each tank was so complicated that an engineer with specific working knowledge of that tank type needed to make repairs himself. If there was any issue with the tank at any time (especially in combat), and the replacement pieces or technician were unavailable, it would be crippled and need to be abandoned temporarily. German tanks saw a number of other difficulties, such as tread jams, exposed fuel lines (famously exploited with Molotov cocktails on the Eastern front by the soviets), turret malfunctions, and others. Allied tanks, on the other hand were easy to produce, intuitive to operate, simple enough for a tank crew to maintain and repair, and rarely suffered serious mechanical problems. Of course, heir light armor and lack of heavy cannons generally made them inferior to the German tanks- but their advantages in production made it easy for the Allies to send more into combat than the Germans could destroy. The German tanks had the opposite problem: they were so difficult to produce, and so weak in all areas but combat, that they could not provide the battlefield with enough tanks to defeat the Allies.

Did the Nazis ever acquire nuclear weapons? The Germans absolutely, 100%, unequivocally did not obtain nuclear weapons. I can't stress this enough- it didn't happen. Although work was done to develop nuclear technology, Hitler never viewed the program as particularly promising; nuclear physics bored him immensely, and he resented the lack of tangible physical progress available in development. As such, funding for the program was nowhere near the level necessary to successfully develop nuclear technology, and material requisitions were not a priority for the Reich. In fact, the program had started and stopped numerous times before 1942, and by 1945 the Germans had only begun to scratch the surface on the immensely complicated and expensive isotope separation process needed to yield weapons grade Uranium-235. The nuclear program was such a low priority, in fact, that the Nazis failed to produce a successful nuclear pile, or nuclear reactor- a feat that America accomplished in November, 1942. Nuclear piles are considered one of the first steps to nuclear weapons production, as fissionable Uranium-235 is produced in the process through neutron bombardment of Uranium-238. But the Nazis never got there, let alone to a bomb. In fact, resources were never even delegated to bomb creation- no department existed or engineers devoted. No scientific or engineering bomb concepts were ever produced.

Did the Nazis have advanced guided rocketry? Yes- but no, not really. This case is a bit like the stealth plane mentioned above- the rockets existed, but they never really did their job. The Germans did invent the first "guided" missiles: the "Vergeltungswaffe-2" ("Vengeance weapon-2") or V2. The project received massive funding from Hitler, who was boyishly enthusiastic about rocket technology. Unfortunately for the Germans, the idea of the V2 was too far ahead of its time. After 10 years in development, the Germans began to mass produce V2's in 1944 and began firing them willy-nilly at London and other Allied cities near Germany. But, the guidance systems in the rockets were so inadequate that only 10,000 people were killed in 3000+ missile strikes on Allied cities- a woefully ineffective average of around three kills per rocket. Each V2 cost the equivalent of around 3 million of today's USD. Hitler ultimately spent more money on the V2 program than the United States did developing the first fission bomb. It is worth noting that V2 models, smuggled out of Germany by the Russians in 1945, became the father of all inter-continental ballistic missiles and Inter-space rocketry.

What the Germans did have was the V1, famously known as the "flying bomb". The V1 was far simpler than the V2- it was essentially a small, jet propelled plane containing explosives which could be launched from mobile truck platforms. It did contain a simple guidance system (essentially no more than an advanced remote control), but nothing compared to the self-guiding V2. The V1 was easy to produce, cheap, and far more effective than its V2 counterpart. Unfortunately for the Nazis, Hitler was far more interested in the dramatic V2, and poured resources into that effort. Many historians feel that, if Hitler had decided to support the V1 over the V2, the war would have gone very differently. Again, it is worth noting that the V1 later became the basis for Cruise missiles.

How about Nazi tactics and strategy? Wasn't the Blitzkrieg a major tactical evolution that they developed?  Yes and no. Again, the Germans were an incredible fighting force. Their military strategists were among the finest in the world, and their tacticians were (for a time) entirely unbeatable. In 1939, the Blitzkrieg was an innovative and brilliant tactic that utilized the burgeoning tank unit. But, as the war dragged on, that quality faded and their reputation dissolved as both tactics and strategy got away from them. Tactically, they began to lose significant engagements across the Eastern front as the Russians adapted to their methods. The Americans and British also adapted to German tactics, perhaps even more quickly than the Russians. Ultimately, the 1942 tactical defeats in Russia translated to a failure of strategy, which culminated in the stagnation of the Barbarossa offensive at the gates of Moscow. Following this failure, the uneducated and capricious Adolf Hitler took the reins of the German war machine (from brilliant life-long strategists), and made numerous strategic errors that led to defeat in Russia and finally the war. So we can say with certainty that, by 1943, German tactical and strategic minds had been surpassed by those of the Allies. (As a side note: no- the Nazis did not invent the Blitzkrieg. They were certainly the first to use it effectively in wide-scale war, but the "Blitzkrieg" style attack was actually first used in the Soviet-Japanese border war of the mid-1930s by Russian forces under Georgi Zhukov. It is small wonder that Zhukov later went on to lead the Russians to victory against the Nazis.)

But what about super-weapons? You're only addressing stuff that we know existed. True. The point of this post isn't to discount the conspiracy theories of Hitler clones and Nazi fusion rifles. I'll do that in a later post discussing the importance of economics and industry to the waging of war, and why the Nazis dedication to "advanced technology" screwed that all up.  

Hopefully this post helps you to see one big point: the Germans were powerful and they were advanced-  but 9 times out of 10, the advanced technologies either didn't function properly, or didn't give a sustainable competitive advantage. In short, the Nazis moved too quickly towards the future without thinking about the actual usefulness and longevity of their advancements. The Allies focused on practicality and utility. And these were the qualities that won them the war.



*While much of this is general knowledge, I did consult one or two sources for some of the more precise details. Sadly, I'm far too lazy to site the source of every fact. Most of the more exact figures I refer to here can be found in Richard Overy's fantastic narrative, Why The Allies Won.