Reading notes for Chapter 6 of The meaning of the Second World War by Ernest Mandel [Verso: 1986]

The meaning of the Second World War

by Ernest Mandel

Verso: 1986

Chapter 6 Weapons

....Germany and Japan were overwhelmed by the sheer superiority of America's industrial capacity. The Wehrmacht had used 2,700 tanks on the Western front in May 1940, 3,350 in its invasion of the USSR in June 1941. The US government decided to produce 45,000 tanks in 1942 and 75,000 in 1943. Germany's annual airplane production amounted to around 11.000 in 1940 and 1941. The US government decided to build 43.000 airplanes in 1942 and 100,000 in 1942. Its output of merchant ships rose from 1 million BRT in 1941 to 7 million in 1943 and 10 million in 1944. The German and Japanese governments made desperate efforts to overcome this handicap after Stalingrad and Midway respectively.

....quantity of weapons produced in Germany and Japan could not catch up with the American conveyor belt, let alone the combined output of the USA, the USSR and Britain. Under the guidance of Albert Speer and in a context of increased war effort from the second half of 1942, Germany concentrated instead on trying to beat the enemy with qualitatively superior weapons rather than to overwhelm him through sheer quantity.

....Japan's attempt at producing qualitatively superior weapons largely failed, although the navy maintained its advance in the field of sea and air torpedoes, probably the most efficient used on either side throughout the war. 

[Submarine warfare]....the 'pack' tactics - attacks on convoys by many submarines, But while inflicting a lot of damage, in the end they did not stop the transatlantic flow of goods thanks to the massive use of antisubmarine aircraft, sonar and other sophisticated means of submarine detection, and especially the amazing achievements of the US naval yards, which built new ships considerably faster than Doenitz could sink the old ones.

....According to some estimates, over thirty per cent of the soldiers who died in battle were killed by artillery. The hollow charge and the proximity fuse were the two big innovations in this field introduced by the German and American army respectively.

....aid extended by the USA through Lend Lease and otherwise to all its allies was relatively small: some fifteen per cent of its military output and an even smaller percentage of its food production.

....detonator of the third technological revolution, three of whose main components - the electronic calculating machine (out of which grew the computer), nuclear energy and automation, - actually originated in weapons production.

....improvement in communications systems, in the first place in the use of two-way radio transmission and radiotelephony

....most revolutionary advance in weapons production was of course the development of the atomic bomb at the end of the war