Just a quick note guys, I’m actually ill right now, so that’s the reason I won’t
be appearing on camera today. Sorry about that. Anyway, one of my Patreons, John, has
challenged the conclusion I came to in a previous video, which is great because history lies
in the heart of the debate, so let’s get on with the debate. He says:
“Regarding your video on the Axis population outnumbering the Soviet Union's population,
did you consider how many soldiers it took to pacify the various Occupied countries?
One of the other WW2 YouTube channels reported that Germany had to keep ~400k troops stationed
in Norway to keep the Country pacified. I would expect that Yugoslavia was of a Similar
magnitude. Add in Greece and Crete, and France, Belgium, and The Netherlands. A totally separate
question is just what proportion of that population is military material.”
So what he’s referring to here is what I said in a previous video on the Axis population
outnumbering the Soviet population in 1942. I said that when you add up the European Axis
population, you get 147,000,000 people. And when you take the USSR’s population of 1938,
and subtract the population that was occupied under the Axis, you get 104,600,000. So the
Axis population outnumbered the Soviet one in 1942. This then makes the idea that the
Soviets had unlimited manpower and resources, or that they outnumbered the Germans a bazillion
to one, questionable.
John’s now saying, okay but the Germans had to occupy Norway, France, Belgium, Greece
etc etc, and therefore he’s saying that it’s not a fair comparison because the Soviets
didn’t have to occupy other countries like the Germans did. So the conclusion would be
that they still outnumbered the Germans (at least, militarily). However, I don’t think
this really adds up for the year 1942.
In late 1943, the Germans increased the number of divisions in Denmark from two to six, bringing
their occupational forces there to 130,000. Doing some quick math, that’s about 21 thousand
men per division, meaning that prior to late 1943, there were only 40 to 50 thousand men
in Denmark.
“In December 1941 there were 100,000 German troops in France; by spring 1942 that number
had dropped to 40,000; by spring 1944 it had risen to a million men. By 1942 these soldiers
were gravely needed on the Eastern Front and divisions in France were often older men,
less physically capable of contributing actively to the war effort in the east.”
Wikipedia (which I don’t normally like to use, but in this case I couldn’t find better
numbers - so I’m using it as a last resort) says that in Poland, there were 300,000 troops
in the February of 1942, increasing to 450,000 in April 1943 and generally staying around
half a million until the front reached Poland in late 1944. What this suggests is that the
amount of troops in occupied Europe actually decreased in 1942, and only peaked later in
1944 as the threat of an invasion in the west increased.
So when John said that there were 400,000 troops in Norway, this may have been true
later on, but not in 1942. According to some authors, twelve German divisions were stationed
in Norway in early 1943, and these were not at full strength. Earlier, the German general
in charge of the army in Norway, Falkenhorst, was promised 20 fortress battalions (totalling
18,000 men), consisting of old men with captured weapons (so, second-rate troops). It’s not
clear if he received them or not, but it is certain that his divisions were not at full
strength as he had to request a further 12,000 men to bring them up to scratch. The garrison
divisions were mostly classed as ‘static’ divisions, and had to be replaced by more
offense-orientated divisions in preparation for the planned attack on Sweden. The 25th
Panzer Division was also a hodge-podge of units rather than being a proper panzer division,
and was only brought up to full strength once it was sent to France in the August of 1943
(due to other crises going on at the time). Later, some of the other infantry divisions
were transferred away too, resulting in the end of the planned attack on Sweden.
The point is that, if there were 12 divisions in Norway in early 1943, and the six divisions
in Denmark totalled 130,000 men, then it’s safe to estimate that perhaps 260,000 men
occupied Norway in 1943, not 400,000. And it’s clear that these were old men who were
less fit for action than the ones being sent to the east. We do know that in mid-1944 (when
the threat of an Allied invasion was at its peak), there were 372,000 men in Norway, and
this is probably where the other YouTube channel John mentioned got the 400,000 figure from.
However, this was the absolute peak. By the end of that summer, 80,000 of them were transferred
elsewhere. In addition, five more divisions were transferred out of Norway between late
1944 and early 1945, with a sixth due to leave as well (but then got bogged down because
of a lack of coal and wood to power their trains, preventing them from leaving). So
I would say that the 400,000 number is simply too high.
And then we know that most of Greece was occupied by the Italians, with the Bulgarians taking
a chunk of it as well, so the majority of this country wasn’t even occupied by German
troops in 1942. I do know that about 70,000 German troops occupied the islands of Crete
and Rhodes after the Italian surrender due to a fear of an Allied attack, but I’m not
sure of the overall numbers for the whole of Greece in 1942. Based on these numbers
though, I can’t see it being much more than about 100,000. There were 300,000 German troops
in the former Yugoslavian territories in 1944, but again, I suspect it was less than that
in 1942 prior to the Italian capitulation, since the Italians occupied half of the country.
So, let’s just total these numbers up: in spring 1942, there were only 40,000 German
troops in occupied France, and about the same number in Denmark. Perhaps 260,000 men garrisoned
Norway, 300,000 in Poland, and a guesstimation of about 100,000 in each of Greece and Yugoslavia.
So, if we add all of this up, we have a rough estimate of about 840,000 men. Obviously this
is just a ballpark figure, but what’s interesting is that I can get close to this figure using
another couple of sources.
According to this internet source, the Germans had a total of 239 Army or Waffen-SS divisions
in July 1942, and Liedke says that the German Army (and SS) had a total of 5,940,000 men
on the 1st of July 1942. If we divide 5,940,000 by 239, we get 24,853 men per division. This
is way too high - none of the divisions had that many men in them. But the extra men could
account for other battalions or brigades in the area, and if we take the 11 divisions
we know were in Norway in the June of 1942 and times them by 24,000, we get a figure
of 264,000 men - which is roughly the number of men the historians say occupied Norway
later in 1943 when they had 12 understrength divisions. So I do think we’re pretty close
here.
According to this source, there were 50 divisions in Axis-occupied Europe in the July of 1942.
This includes the Western countries, Norway, the South Eastern areas, and Germany. (It’s
worth noting that Denmark is classified as being part of Germany in this chart.) Assuming
that these 50 divisions had 24,000 men each (taking into account other units and some
units being understrength), then that’s a total of 1,200,000 men in occupied Europe.
Therefore we have two ballpark figures for the number of men in July 1942 that garrisoned
occupied Europe. The first is 840,000 men. And the second is 1,200,000 men. Obviously,
if someone has more accurate figures, then great, but for now it’s likely that the
number of men garrisoning German occupied Europe is somewhere in the region of these
two numbers.
Now, of course, this is a lot of men. And had the Germans not had a million or more
men occupying Western Europe, then they could have sent them to the Eastern Front, where
they would have had a major impact on the fighting. And if this was a chess board, or
Hearts of Iron 4, then you would be correct. But this isn’t an ancient board game or
a paint the map a bunch of pretty colours simulation. The Germans couldn’t supply
the troops they already had on the Eastern Front, let alone supply another million men
on top of that. This, therefore, isn’t a manpower issue, it’s a logistics issue.
German logistics was a disaster, and I’ve been over this before, so I won’t go over
it all again. But I will give you a couple of examples just to confirm that they were
struggling to supply the men that they had in the East.
“The battle in Stalingrad is currently taking place in conditions of shortage of ammunition.
In 51st Army Corps, [2nd Werfer Regiment] can no longer take part in the assault on
the city due to this shortage. Arrival of small loads of ammunition possible in the
next 6-12 days. Also, there are few shells left for light and especially heavy howitzers,
which are very actively spent in city battles and on the northern front. There are not enough
shells for assault guns (long-barrels), which is especially important given the composition
of 50% of the Army’s assault guns.”
One German soldier from the 24th Panzer Division explained:
“We could no longer shoot with the machine-gun because ammunition was too scarce. Whoever
had a dangerous target was allowed to draw a cartridge out of the machine-gun belt and
fire with the rifle. Every shot must count…”
And as the Official German History states:
“Supplies of ammunition and fuel had long been insufficient to cover day-to-day needs;
any long-term stocking up was therefore out of the question.”
This, by the way, is the tip of the iceberg. So, it wasn’t the case that the Germans
didn’t have the manpower to send to the East in the 1941 to 1943 period. They absolutely
had that manpower. The reason they didn’t send it east was because they couldn’t maintain
more troops in the East. There’s no point sending soldiers to war if you can’t give
them ammunition to fight with.
Now yes, there are times where the Germans had a lot of guys in the west - specifically
1944 - but that makes sense. There’s going to be an Allied landing, so you can’t leave
the west undefended. This isn’t, therefore, ‘Madman Hitler’ garrisoning the west with
too many men and letting the Eastern armies rot, as some of the historians have claimed.
“The most frequent criticism directed against Hitler’s conduct of operations in the Northern
Theater, and in Norway particularly, is that he poured in troops and material there on
a scale which far surpassed the need and drained strength from more active theaters. His exaggerated
concern for an invasion of that area was one of his major errors as a strategist, besides
being a first-class example of the malfunctioning of his intuition.”
No, this isn’t true. One of my other Patreons, Steven Watson, also asked “why [there] were
so many troops locked up in Norway?” and it should be obvious why. Yes, we know in
hindsight that the Allies didn’t land in Norway after 1940. But Hitler had no way of
knowing that. He wanted to prevent the Western Allies from moving into Germany from the north.
In 1943, for example, after the Torch Landings in North Africa, Hitler believed that the
West wasn’t aiming to attack Germany directly, but instead wanting to battle them on the
periphery. So, he feared that they would strike Norway next, which was why he needed to station
troops there. And the problem with trying to defend Norway, of course, is that you have
this massively long coastline, making defense difficult. Worse, the enemy (both the Royal
Navy and the American Navy) had naval superiority and could land at any viable point along it.
This meant that the Germans had to garrison the country with several divisions, which
is where people say it was a strategic mistake.
And there were more reasons to garrison Norway than just these. Hitler wanted access to Swedish
iron ore supplies, which required that he take and hold the port of Narvik. He wanted
access to Finnish nickel supplies. And he wanted to keep Sweden neutral. So these are
the reasons there were so many men in Norway during this time. It was not a strategic mistake,
or the insanity of a madman. It was a necessary move.
The good news, though, was that they tended to use older men, or less-fit men, as garrison
troops, meaning that the best men were being sent to the East. Thus, having a million old
or unfit men in the West wasn’t much of an issue by itself, and it doesn’t take
away from the conclusion that I came to in the previous video.
The Axis had a larger population than the unoccupied Soviet Union in 1942, at a time
when the Western Allies weren’t really fighting on land (only three or four German divisions
were tied up in North Africa in 1942). Yes, they were outnumbered in the East, but they
had the manpower to maintain the divisions they had.
What happened though was an administrative failure in 1942, resulting in a drop of manpower
in the East that year, and then a rise again in 1943 to the highest number of the war.
Again, I will emphasize this: far from gradually losing soldiers over time, the Germans had
the most troops in the East that they ever had in 1943. So they actually gained troops,
showing that they had the manpower to replace their losses up to this moment.
And as I explained in a recent Stalingrad video, the manpower shortages you see in the
6th Army in 1942 were largely self-inflicted because the Germans sent their replacements
to Army Group Centre. I also think that logistics played a part in this as well, as I will explain
in a future episode of the Stalingrad series.
Therefore, it turns out that the Axis population outnumbered the Soviets in 1942, and the Germans
had the manpower to replace their losses up until the Battle of Kursk in 1943. After that,
yes, they began to struggle. But up until Kursk, the main problem for the German military
wasn’t the lack of manpower, or ‘Madman Hitler’, but the terrible logistical situation
and administrative errors that they struggled to cope with. And this is why the idea that
the Germans occupation forces in the west drained the manpower of the East doesn’t
add up, because they didn’t - at least, not in the year 1942. Thanks for watching,
bye for now.