Download Soviet Command Economy

WWII: American Security and Britain and a Note on the Soviet Command
Economy
By Richard Sale, author of Clinton’s Secret Wars and Traitors.
A reader of my comments about WWII, Mark Rodgers Esq., said of my remark
that the United States has always been drawn into wars where Britain’s Navy was
under siege in the North Atlantic, and loudly denounced the remark as erroneous –
asserting that the U.S had intervened in WWI but not WWII. Regrettably, the
observation of Mr. Rodger is entirely incorrect.
Through President Franklin Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program, we began to
intervene in the Battle of the North Atlantic before Pearl Harbor bought us into the
war. But throughout much of our history, American security has rested on the
position of Britain in Europe and the maritime supremacy of the British Empire
around the world. Our policies up to the beginning of World War II rested chiefly
on Britain and its position in the European balance of power. British policies were
fiercely determined to ensure that no power on the Continent would overrun and
rule the European landmass, and British naval supremacy was key to securing that
aim. In other words, Britain would not tolerate conquests of the sea-bordering
nations in Europe by any European power that would endanger its navy and shatter
its position in the world.
At the time of the late 19th century, our reliance on Britain was far more clearly
understood then it is today. The U.S. naval expansion that threw Spain out of
Cuba, seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and invaded and occupied the Philippines, was
in many ways “sheltered” (in George Kennan’s phrase) by Britain’s Navy and its
continental policies which at the time were neutral towards American naval
expansion because British policy makers did not see it as threatening its own
interests. Had it been seen as hostile, the expansion probably would not have taken
place. Thus by the beginning of the First World War, any Continental power, such
as Germany, who posed a threat to Britain’s Navy, would have been seen by
Britain as a very grave threat indeed. Historian George Kennan has had made this
point clear in a series of brilliant lectures.
By the time of World War I, America and Britain were increasingly dependent on
the strategic position and resources of the other. With Germany’s’ new and
powerful navy, allied with Turkey, among others, the alliance of the Central
Powers made Britain extremely fearful of a setback that would damage its position
in the world, and it feared that the hazards posed to its position by a German
victory which would eliminate Britain’s superior position in the world’s balance of
power. It was because of this U.S. dependence on Britain that President Wilson
watered down U.S. neutrality, not just as a matter of policy, but also because
America was raking in enormous profits selling arms to the British. We were not
selling arms Germany, and America was “neutral” only in name. In May of 1915,
when the German sub U-20 sank the Lusitania, Wilson almost went to war over the
Kaiser’s unrestricted submarine warfare. In response to American anxieties and to
prevent war, the German naval staff imposed severe restrictions on its submarines
in the weeks that followed. But Germany continued to wage a vicious war on
Britain’s shipping, with Britain losing something like fifty to one hundred ships a
month. In another war measure, responding to Germany attacks, Britain imposed a
war blockade on Germany that denied it any trade with the world beyond Europe
and reduced the German population to desperate starvation lasting a year after the
conflict ended. (The blockade lasted a year after the close of the war.) As John
Keegan said, “the geography of the German-speaking lands, however configured
into states, denies the Germans maritime power.” The Germans had little access to
the North Sea, and even less access to the Atlantic. Germany, laboring within the
fiscal limits imposed by the maintenance of a large army, could not out-build
Britain in producing capital ships. It was then hardly a surprise that the US
intervened on behalf of Britain. It was done out of strategic necessity and almost as
a reflex.
World War II
By World War II, the land and air and sea power of the world lay in the hands of
Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. Britain’s sea power had lost
some of its luster because of the advent of mechanized warfare which proved that
power in the world flowed form a country’s place on the map, its position in the
world island – Europe, Asia and Africa. In the past, the maritime states like Britain
and Holland had exercised power out of all proportion to their populations.
Geographers like Mackinder and Haushofer attributed this to their navies that were
used to quickly transport assets around the world island.
Given the technology of the 20th century: tanks, cars, planes, highways, railway
networks, a nation could consolidate power in spite of naval opposition. Their most
formidable forces were out of reach of the sea. Thus, the land-locked power of the
Germany and its allies was formidable. President Roosevelt was quick to see the
threat posed by Nazi U-boats to Britain’s security and began to offer ships and
other aid, using the U.S. Navy to secure Britain and make the case for U.S.
intervention. When Germany declared war on Dec. 8, 1941, the event triggered a
huge flow of arms and men that began to arrive in Britain in preparation for the
attacks on North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, along with the 1944 cross-Channel attack
on German-occupied France. The other urgent task for American aid was to land
enough aid and supplies to defeat Nazi submarines in the North Atlantic and, using
the railway from Persia into Russia, deliver U.S. supplies that would be used to
defeat German forces in Russia and in the occupied countries.
A Note on Russia’s Command Economy
“It is absolutely fundamental that the Soviet economy was (before and after the
war) wildly inefficient, esp. given (that) the vast resources in the Soviet Union.
Germany was (sic) far more efficient in industrial production and military
effectiveness.” (My emphasis.) “Stalin was forced to deploy 'blocking battalions,'
i.e., soldiers designated to shoot retreating Russian soldiers. I had to read this bit
four times to impose some sense on it,” etc, etc.
This statement was made again by one Mark Rogers, Esq. Unfortunately, Mr.
Rodgers either has misunderstood his fundamentals, or he has not learned them.
The last of the above statement is not entirely correct, but we will pass over it in
order to deal with his comments on the Soviet wartime economy. When World
War II began, the Soviet Union was the world’s third largest economy. By 1941,
that economy was near collapse. One third of the Soviet rail network was lost,
along 40 percent of its generating capacity, while the lifeblood of its industry –
coal, steel, and iron ore -- had been reduced by three quarters, taken by German
forces.
According to Richard Overy, an outstanding analyst of the war, the Soviet Union
had been a centrally planned economy, but its initial defeats in 1941 unraveled the
Soviet program. But by 1944, the Soviets were again operating a centrally planned
economy, and Overy noted that Russia had “repaired the fractured the web of
industry, transport and resources so that by 1942, (the Soviets) produced more
weapons than the year before…more weapons than the enemy.” Plus the Soviet
weapons were superior in quality to the German ones. This scholar also says that in
1943, the gap between Soviet and German production “widened further” in favor
of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was producing three aircraft or every two
German aircraft produced. It produced double the number of tanks produced by
Germany. “The Soviet Union operated a command economy, directed by the state
and centrally planned,” Overy said, pointing out that Russia’s centrally planned
economy operated unimpeded by the pressures of the free market, and workers
were, of course, brutalized: for example, being tardy or not showing up for work
could end with the state shooting or imprisoning workers.
Overy’s views on this are shared by every historian of the war I have read
including John Keegan, Max Hastings, Wilmont, Gatzke, Porter and White. (In
fact, C. Jones Porter authored a superb account, Moscow in World War II that
reaches the same conclusions at the rest.) These same sources make clear that the
German wartime economy was by far inferior to the Soviets, chiefly because the
Germans were used to a production system of technical sophistication and were
reluctant to embrace the techniques of mass production as the Soviets and
Americans did. Hitler issued in 1941 an edict calling for “Simplification and
Increased Efficiency in Armaments Production” that had little effect on German
industrial leaders.
Under the driving leadership of Albert Speer, the German industrial leaders then
pledged to deliver the sort of production totals enjoyed by America and the Soviet
Union, but the German military continued to disrupt long production runs and defy
standardization. The German military regarded Speer as an “inexperienced
intruder” and resisted him at every step. This is indeed very odd. Germany
possessed a wealth of resources, skilled entrepreneurs, industrialists, a skilled work
force, technical genius -- all at the disposal of a brutal authoritarian system that
killed or imprisoned dissenters. But as Overy points out, the German economy fell
between two stools – it was not capitalist enough to recruit private enterprise as
America did, and it wasn’t enough of a command economy to coerce the German
military dissenters who often stifled Germans industries attempts at improvement.
On the T-34.
I noticed one reader said that the Soviet T-34 tank was not American in design. In
fact, it was. It was designed by the American inventor J. Walter Christie, who in
1931 designed an armored vehicle known as the T-3, which, tracks removed, could
travel over 60 miles per hour. Although his design “revolutionized tank warfare”
according to one account, it potential was ignored by the American military. The
Russians locked onto it. They purchased several 10 ton T-3, relatively light tanks,
and incorporated them into their own designs, ending in the BT Medium Tank. In
1938, the BT group was replaced by the A-20 which eventually became the
legendary T-34.