NAZI FAILURE TO EMBRACE MASS PRODUCTION ENSURED GERMAN DEFEAT

The StuG assault gun, effective and easy to mass produce,

 Germany's neglected war winner.

After the unexpectedly quick victory over France in 1940, the Nazi leadership came to the conclusion that their army was a match for all potential enemies. Since the war against the last remaining enemy, Great Britain, was being fought in the air and on the water, the generals left the industrial resources to the air force and navy for the time being.

"To convert the land forces to new weapon systems and to modernize them comprehensively was apparently not a particularly urgent task," concludes German historian Rolf-Dieter Müller in Volume IV of The German Reich and the Second World War. 

The full equipping of the army units was classified as a long-term goal that would not be achieved before three years at the earliest. Bur a full-track vehicle was already available in mid-1940 that could easily have been produced in large numbers, namely the  Sturmgeschütz (StuG) assault gun. If that had been done, Germany's chances of winning the war would have been immeasurably increased.

The astonishing complacency with which the Nazi regime wasted time can be explained primarily by structural factors of the German economy that led to mismanagement. The armaments offices of the army, air force and navy, as well as Herman Göring in his role as leader of the "Four-Year Plan" and Fritz Todt as Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition, competed for funds and influence, while the various armaments companies, in their turn, vied for orders, materials, and labour. This polycracy, with its constantly changing requirements, fashions, and in-fighting, also paralyzed the organization of the economy in the occupied territories, so that production figures could only be increased slowly.

In addition, there was the smug certainty that stemmed from the Blitzkrieg. Germany's easy victory over the leading military power France had sufficiently "proven" the superiority of the Wehrmacht!

The superior French Char B1.

This conceit was especially true towards the army's most important weapon, the tank. The Western campaign had shown that the Allied models, especially the French Char B1 and Somua S-35, were actually technically superior to the German tanks, but the strategy of the German leadership in using their tanks in independent, concentrated units had been able to compensate for this deficiency, while their Allied opponents had dispersed their tanks, thus diluting their military and psychological impact.

The overwhelming majority of the 2500 tanks attacking in the west were light Panzer I and II Types, which were only equipped with machine guns and a light 2 cm cannon. Even the medium-weight Panzer III had a caliber of only 3.7 cm. This meant that the Char B could only be attacked from the side with a chance of success. There were also around 300 Panzer IVs with a 7.5 cm gun, but its short barrel offered only low penetration power.

But the first assault gun batteries were also used in France. This featured a 7.5 cm cannon on an armored self-propelled gun chassis with a four-man crew. 

As a colonel and head of the operations department in the Army General Staff, Erich von Manstein, later regarded as the Naz regime's most astute general, pushed for the development of this support weapon for the infantry in 1936. Since the tank generals preferred for their units to be used as separate units independent from the infantry, the assault guns were initially used and categorised as infantry support, for example being used against enemy bunkers.

But then it was found that the assault guns were also extremely effective against enemy tanks. This had to do with their construction. Mounted on the chassis of the Panzer III, they could also reach a speed of 40 km per hour with a range of 155 km. Since the turret structure was missing, the height was only two meters, so they could easily find cover. The target optics were superior to most allied tanks. From 1941 onwards, assault guns were to assert themselves as efficient tank destroyers in the war against the Soviet Union.

In order to be able to advance against bunkers, their original purpose, their front armor was up to eight cm thick. The rear armour however could be penetrated by light shells. The fact that the vehicle had to be aligned roughly at a target as a whole before gun alignment was completed using a ball joint was a disadvantage, as was the low muzzle velocity of the short gun barrel and the fact that - unlike in tanks - the commander had to take over the role of target acquisition.

As modifications later showed, however, these deficiencies could be remedied relatively easily. This allowed the StuG III to show its true strengths. These included, on the one hand, its powerful cannon and, on the other, the simplified production and the associated more economical price. Since the turret and the associated mechanics were no longer required, an assault gun cost only 82,000 Reichsmarks, compared to 105,000 for a Panzer III and 260,000 for a Tiger.

With the SturG, the Wehrmacht could have had a powerful armored vehicle available as early as 1940 that would have been easy to mass produce on giant assembly lines. As this vehicle never became obsolete throughout the entire war, that would have given the Germans an enormous boost. Various reasons, however, ensured that this did not happen.

On the one hand there was the fear of the tank generals. They were worried that the increased production of assault guns would come at the expense of their battle tanks, while also reducing their power relative to other Wehrmacht branches. This was because StuGs were originally classified as artillery and infantry support rather than tanks and therefore came under the control of infantry or artillery units rather than panzer units. Only after the high loss rates in the second half of the war, were the gaps in the panzer regiments filled with assault guns. 

At the end of the war, assault guns, in their various versions, were the most widely built full-track vehicles of the Wehrmacht, with 9,230 vehicles, compared to 8,861 Panzer IVs, around 6,000 Panthers, and 1,839 Tigers.  

While 50,000 of the American Shermans and 80,000 of the Soviet T-34s rolled off the production lines during the war, the Germans fell far behind. There were other reasons why efficient assembly line production could not be created in Germany. This was because there was a bias in favour of high-quality handcrafted tanks. A Panzer III, for example, required up to 1,800 hours of work. 

“This had its origins in the resistance of the Waffenamt (German Army Weapons Agency), which feared that it would lose its day-to-day control over production,” writes the Potsdam historian Markus Pöhlmann in his fundamental study “The Tank and the Mechanization of War.”

The Germans also rejected the “American” variant of mass production because the rapidly changing armament requirements of the war made the construction of such large scale production facilities problematic. This was partly due to Hitler's tendency to constantly change his focus from opponent to opponent, from land war to air war to sea war/ air war/ "revenge weapons"/ etc. and back again.

“Medium-term planning of the order situation, which is desirable from a business point of view, could not be implemented,” writes Pöhlmann. By the end of the war, only one assembly site with conveyor belt production - in St. Valentin near Linz - had been set up.

So, it came about that the Wehrmacht used improvisations to prepare for its war against the Soviet Union. The number of armored divisions was increased simply by reducing the number of their vehicles. The Wehrmacht opened "Operation Barbarossa" with just 2,000 tanks of Type III and IV, with some Type III's being improved by modifications. These included reinforcing the front armor and the installation of a short cannon with an increased caliber from 3.7 to 5 cm. These modified Panzer IIIs, however, were still inferior to many of the tanks of the Western Allies. Against the Soviet T-34s, however, the new cannon was to prove ineffective.

Rolf-Dietar Müller is damning in his judgment on Germany's inability to transition to an economy and mass production sufficient to the requirements of total war: 

“This was the decisive factor leading to the downfall of the army, which later took place on the battlefields of the east. Right from the start, the army command renounced the principle of opening a campaign with fully equipped units and a supply production running at full speed."