Why Nazi Germany lost?

[Guardia Rossa]

I have no good books about the issue, and the only people I can learn with are right-wingers (generally liberal-conservatives and semi-fascists)

I do know about all the overextention thing, the inner disputes for "power" (the Führer saying good job makes you a demi-God thing) and I have heard of Nazi Germany being out of money to buy stuff from the humongous corporations they created and blablabla.

What is the socialist view of it?

[Cliff Paul]

They lacked the resources to invade and defeat Britain, let alone carry out a war on two fronts.

[Antiochus]

Basically:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/WorldWarII-GDP-Relations-Allies-Axis-simple.svg

And by chance of geography, none of the Axis powers had large oil reserves in their native territory. Except for Romania. Neither did Britain, however Britain's dominance of the seas in the European/African theater meant this wasn't a huge problem. With the U.S's entrance all of these problems above were magnified two-fold.

[cyu]

I would say their ideology was fundamentally flawed - in the same way you'd expect a society where murder was encouraged, would degenerate into constant fighting that depletes resources and leaves the country in shambles - Nazi ideology wasn't much better than that. Maybe all the cells in your body aren't attacking each other, but if random organs were attacking one another, your body would be doomed as well.

...reminds me of a discussion on morality in an online video game I once played. My argument was basically that whatever behavior was cooperative between parties involved, was labelled "moral" - and it was these behaviors that were selected for, and allowed their societies to pass their ideas on to others.

[Just to be pedantic, obviously murder and genocide are not cooperative behaviors, therefore would not be labelled "moral" in this system, and these ideas are not destined to survive and be passed on to other societies.]

[ñángara]

By the same token, was Stalin really indispensable for the USSR's victory over Nazism?

[Sewer Socialist]

Cyu - are you saying that it was mostly genocide which did Nazi Germany in? The logical conclusion of that would be to say that a society which encouraged class collaboration (which Germany did) and did not engage in genocide would be extremely stable, and thus able to win the war. I do not think that Germany could have won even under those circumstances.

It's a common answer that they were fighting too many enemies, and on too many fronts. Why is this answer not sufficient?

[Antiochus]

Ideology did play some role. For example, the Soviet economy was slightly smaller than Germany's but they better used their resources. For example, far more Soviet women were used for factory work and battlefield combat, allowing for the USSR's demographic power to be maximized.

Also the Axis tended to be isolated from one another while the Allies coordinated their efforts far more effectively. Japan for example was handled by a combination of 2nd rate American units, British colonial troops and Nationalist/Communist Chinese forces. Which meant that the brunt of American production (over twice Germany's) was focused in the European theater. Finally the demographic aspect: The Allies just outnumbered the Axis by too much.

Germany did almost everything right. She won great victories, neutralized powerful enemies early on (France). The defeat at Stalingrad for example was less disastrous than the Minsk pocket was for the Soviets. But the USSR could afford such a defeat, Germany couldn't. In short, the Axis could have won some sort of favorable peace if they took out Britain in 1940 or mid 1941 and then focused all their efforts on the USSR. But that is about it.

[giordanobr]

I have no good books about the issue, and the only people I can learn with are right-wingers (generally liberal-conservatives and semi-fascists)

I do know about all the overextention thing, the inner disputes for "power" (the Führer saying good job makes you a demi-God thing) and I have heard of Nazi Germany being out of money to buy stuff from the humongous corporations they created and blablabla.

What is the socialist view of it?
Lost because the bourgeoisie correctly observed that even fascism could lose control and turn against itself.

[cyu]

With stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum I see Nazi ideology as a branch from Social Darwinism - the fight over limited resources (as opposed to cooperative ideologies in which people work together to make more advanced use of existing resources). If they believe they need to fight to control limited resources, that itself is a flaw in their ideology, leading to competitive behavior like warfare, instead of cooperation with neighboring countries. In other words, if they didn't have a fundamentally flawed ideology, they wouldn't have used war as a political tool in the first place.

[Qbill harris]

The Red Army simply won the war; the western theater was small potatoes.

Otherwise, the Red Army won with massive material assistance from the USA. Without, although the Soviets won at Stalingrad and Kursk (& Gomel/Bielgorod) on their own, they would be crossing the Dnieper and taking Kiev...about right now.

[Invader Zim]

There are, of course, whole lists of factors which could be compiled to explore why the Allies won and why the Axis powers lost. And there is an essential book on the topic, aptly titled Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy, which is the bane of university historians setting questions on the military history of the war - because it answers most of them and does nearly all the work of the students for them (a bit like Ian Kershaw's The Nazi Dictatorship regarding the big questions about Nazi Germany).

But like most here, I would tend to look at the big economic factors. The Allies had much larger recruitment pools and vastly higher economic output. The result being that they could put more troops in uniform, supported with more tanks and aircraft, than the Axis powers could. The result was that the Allies could afford to take losses than the Axis powers could not. Thus, in the case of the Battle of Britain, as an example, because British aircraft production was greater, and British pilot survival / evasion of capture higher, and the churning out of pilots faster, every loss suffered by the RAF was that little bit less painful than the problem of wastage for the Luftwaffe.

Of course, in other areas that Allies were also vastly better than the Axis powers, be it military intelligence or whatever. There is a new book out by Phillips O'Brien which looks like it is going to cause something of a storm in history nerd circles:

"World War II is usually seen as a titanic land battle, decided by mass armies, most importantly those on the Eastern Front. Phillips Payson O'Brien shows us the war in a completely different light. In this compelling new history of the Allied path to victory, he argues that in terms of production, technology and economic power, the war was far more a contest of air and sea than land supremacy. He shows how the Allies developed a predominance of air and sea power which put unbearable pressure on Germany and Japan's entire war-fighting machine from Europe and the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Air and sea power dramatically expanded the area of battle and allowed the Allies to destroy over half the Axis' equipment before it had even reached the traditional 'battlefield'. Battles such as El Alamein, Stalingrad and Kursk did not win World War II; air and sea power did."

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-War-was-Won-Cambridge/dp/1107014751

For those who like books of tables and stats, I heartily recommend John Ellis' The World War II Databook.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Overplayed their hand.

[Qbill harris]

The Japs were crushed because the American Navy of '43, in an open battle, could have put the entirely of the world's navies to the bottom of the Pacific in under an hour.

The Japs lasted for as long as they did because, basically, they were too chickenshit to challenge the American fleet until it became an absolute necessity.

Technology and industry? well, yes, of course. So who would say otherwise?

Ditto for the eastern land war, as Germany's entire strategy of blitzkrieg was based upon a fear of 'materielschact'--which is exactly what happened. In other words, it lost because it failed in '41 to deliver the knockout blow which was, in essence its only real chance.

So I suppose that what the author is saying is that the allies possessed no particular genius for dramatic moves and strategy. But this much was admitted by Eisenhower and Nimitz; the only way we'd lose it to try to get to fancy. Of course, Zukhov said as much, too in his implicit denunciations of Stalin-- who was far from the 'clever uncle Joe' as depicted by Deutscher.

To win the air battle of Britain, Goring massed 2,700 planes, split between fighters and bombers. England, oth, had 800 fighters. While a confident Germany simply stopped production to re-allocate material. Beaverbrook's factories pounded out more than enough Spits and Hurrys to cover losses.

In the end, the tally was:
England, 800 loses (197 pilots) 1200 produced, 800 active and 400 placed in reserve.
Germany, 2000 loses, (all pilots and crews loses), 700 remaining.

Otherwise, i'm not sure, really when air power did not figure into a massive land campaign. In this regard, it's been constantly emphasized that the Red Army's surge of late 43 was made possible by nearly total air superiority.

[cyu]

If I murder someone in my village, what are my chances for success? If everyone else in the village comes after me, most likely I will be defeated. My only chance would be to get other villagers on my side - then it becomes a political issue - which side can convince more people to join his side. However, the more fundamental question is, why are there even two sides in the first place? Are there more sides? What if there was only one side, and it included everyone? Then it starts changing from individual tactics, past propaganda, past alliances, towards morality and philosophy (and maybe social psychology).

[The Disillusionist]

Hitler was a nutjob and a tactical doofus who relied on German nationalist irrationalism to gain his position of power and then on European apathy to pull off his blitzkrieg, which overextended his military capabilities by a long shot. From then on, it was just a slow process of wearing the Germans back down to their point of origin.

A lot of people act like if only one or two little things had been different, the Nazis would have won that war, but it's not even remotely true, they had lost from the very beginning. It's just really horrible how much damage they managed to cause before finally collapsing.

[Sasha]

Again Cyu is rambling nonsense again... Dude...

[Guardia Rossa]

Well, but I find his Ideas interesting, and somewhat, fitting with mine.

[clyder]

Even when only fighting the British Empire, the Germans and Italians powers were economically and scientifically outmatched and hugely outmatched in population - British tank and aircraft production exceeded theirs, the population of the empire was around 500 million. Once the Germans attacked the USSR they were overwhelmingly weaker in men and material. Lunacy was piled on lunacy when Germany declared war on the USA as well. Had the Germans made concessions in 1940 and negotiated a compromise peace they might have avoided defeat, but it is unclear what they could have offered Britain to persuade the latter to compromise.

[Rafiq]

Even when only fighting the British Empire, the Germans and Italians powers were economically and scientifically outmatched and hugely outmatched in population - British tank and aircraft production exceeded theirs, the population of the empire was around 500 million. Once the Germans attacked the USSR they were overwhelmingly weaker in men and material. Lunacy was piled on lunacy when Germany declared war on the USA as well. Had the Germans made concessions in 1940 and negotiated a compromise peace they might have avoided defeat, but it is unclear what they could have offered Britain to persuade the latter to compromise.

The problem is that German fascism was literally built on the necessity for war. The war was where the test of fascism was to be had, its what all the political momentum was building up to. The germans wouldn't have been able to deal with its own internal social antagonisms, and even throughout its existence there's evidence that the Nazis feared a domestic uprising or mutiny, even long after the kpd was annihilated.