German material stockpiles and shortages

[timobrienwells]

Hi rich.


"Farm Labour" Well,all I can say is that ALL of the other belligerents reduced their rural workforces during the war,and the germans did as well,so I dont understand the problem here.

"Maid Servants" No Speer makes a definite distinction between domestic servants and Gastarbeiter[eg Ukrainian girls].Whether domestic servants also formed a part of the rural workforce is fairly speculative I think.

Sauckel-"Speer tried to get him fired".Yes because Speer had proof of his disloyalty in conjunction with that snake Bormann.

"he denigrated Sauckel's efforts" No he didn't.It was just that Sauckel,who actually reported direct to Hitler,only cared about the raw numbers and not the quality of the labour he was supplying.He also gave no consideration to the state of these people when they arrived at the various labour sites,and as such much productivity was lost due to disease,ill-treament etc.Speer agreed with the principle of imported 'slave' labour,but in his opinion,the methods used left a lot to be desired.

"why such a decree was needed" Because Speer had proposed the mobilisation of german women in march of 42,and both Goering and Sauckel refused to contemplate it.As Speer was Saukel's superior,Saukel then went to Hitler to get a decree to de-limit Speer's authority over his [labour]area of responsibility.

"conclusively shown Speer's self aggrandizement" Whenever I hear things like 'conclusively shown',I start to get very suspicious that there maybe some kind of agenda lurking somewhere! If i have not worked on a farm[actually I have]then I would venture to say that you have not read Inside the Third Reich.Because if you had read it you could read for yourself that Speer does NOT credit himself with the increase in armaments production so much as the people in industry that actually made the stuff.Infact he downplays his role.The only thing he really takes credit for was the new industry organisational plan that he produced in march of 42.Now if you want to debate what these two 'prominent' economic historians have say about Speer-then let the games begin!
Regards Tim Wells

[Qvist]

"Farm Labour" Well,all I can say is that ALL of the other belligerents reduced their rural workforces during the war,and the germans did as well,so I dont understand the problem here.

No, they didn't. 11.2 million Germans were employed in agriculture in 1939, and the figure in 1944 was similar. Since the total number of Germans employed in the economy decreased, agriculture's percentage share actually increased, from 28.5% in 39 to 30.9% in 44.

From what I have been able to find elsewhere, in Britain, 950,000 people were in the agricultural sector in 1939, in 1945 there were 1,041,000. According to Hugh Rockoff, there are no accurate data for the US. In Japan, 14.4 million people were employed in the primaries in 1940, 14 million in 1944. The only combatant which appears to have significantly reduced its agricultural sector is the Soviet Union, where 49.3 million were employed in agriculture in 1940, against 36.1 million in 1945. Here it is however neccessary to bear in mind the effect of large scale warfare on Soviet territory, and the fact that the overall size of the Soviet labor force (as well as the number of people to be fed) declined steeply - 86.8 million in 1940, 75.7 million in 1945. Nevertheless, the agricultural share of the workforce does decrease markedly.

The reason being is that hundreds of thousands of german women registered as 'working'were actually just domestic servants.

To be precise, 1.3 million German women were employed in the "domestic service" sector in 1944. Since this amounts to less than 10% of the 14.8 million employed women, and to 3.8% of the overall workforce I have some difficulty in seeing how exactly this makes the overall picture "misleading". You can take them out of the workforce statistics altogether, and it would still leave Germany with a much higher female participation than, f.e., the US.

Germany had the hightest percentage per capita of this type of labour of any of the belligerents

1. Did they? Could you quote some data to underpin that? What statistics I can find for the other combatants do not separate out domestic service as a separate sector.

2. Have you considered what the 70% or so of american women and the roughly 50% of German women who did not have paid work during the war were likely to be doing? With the exception of the Soviet Union, "domestic service" of some sort was in every country what the majority of work-able women were engaged in. That a relatively small number of German women got paid for doing it makes little difference.

3. As has been mentioned, it is highly possible that employment in domestic service freed up other women to fill war-important positions - someone has to watch the kids, after all.

4. Most importantly, it is a question of exactly what point Speer is making here. To me it appears obvious that he is pointing to women in domestic service as an example of what he considers to be an insufficient will to prioritise scarce resources and general obstructionism confronting his own efforts. To Speer it is simply an example of the sort of politically sensitive bad management Germany could not afford. As such he may have been right, but he is not making women in domestic service into a make or break issue of German economy, something which it is plainly evident that they were not. This however has not stopped the sort of historians who are happy to base their conclusions on imperfectly understood anecdotal comments rather than on a basic grasp of the whole from absurdly overstressing what is in effect a point of relatively marginal importance.

5. No doubt improvements in the use of female labor could have been made. But Speer's statements must inevitably also be seen in the light of the indisputable fact that the German economy DID mobilise women to a much higher extent than any other combatant except the Soviet Union.

The next largest portion of women workers, the number of which I have somehow mislaid Sad , was in retail and office administrative work (secretaries as they used to be called), while the number of domestic workers, although large compared to other countries, was actually quite small in proportion to the total number of women workers

Female labor in 39 and 44 respectively:

Agriculture 6.1m/5.7m
Industry and transport 4.0 m/4.1m
Trade and banking 2.1m/1.7m
Civilian administration .9m/1.2m
Military administration .1m/.6m
Domestic service 1.6m/1.3m

In agriculture, women were 54.5% of the workforce in 39, 65.4% in 44. In Industry and transport, they increased from 21.9% to 32.9% of the German workforce. In trade and banking from 45% to 63.5%, in civ.adm. from roughly 30% to more than 50%, in military adm. from a paltry 15% to more than 40%.

In 1939, 66% of employed women worked in the production sectors (agriculture, industry and transport), some 23% in service and administration (trade, banking, administration) and 10.6% in domestic service. In 1944, the proportions were very similar, the main difference being a marginal flow of women from agriculture, trade/banking and domestic service into civilian and military administration.

Again I would suggest that the large scale figures can be misleading.Agriculture is a prime example.By it's nature Farming is a seasonal activity,and therefore the large % of women employed in that sector were by no means either 'fully' employed or employed all year round.

Sorry Tim, but you know, you can't actually put cows and pigs into storage in November and come back in April. Agriculture is not a seasonal activity, not even today, when it is often a part-time job for those who work on a small scale (something which it was not in the 1940s - and certainly not on farms where the man was frequently not present due to military service). In any case, the figures represented in employment statistics aren't harvest-time farmhands (a task for which POWs and to an extent even German soldiers were routinely employed) but just full-time employees.

cheers

All figures from Mark Harrison (Ed.), The Economics of World War II. Six powers in international comparison. The essay on Germany is by Werner Abelshauser.

[phylo_roadking]

The only combatant which appears to have significantly reduced its agricultural sector is the Soviet Union, where 49.3 million were employed in agriculture in 1940, against 36.1 million in 1945. Here it is however neccessary to bear in mind the effect of large scale warfare on Soviet territory, and the fact that the overall size of the Soviet labor force (as well as the number of people to be fed) declined steeply - 86.8 million in 1940, 75.7 million in 1945. Nevertheless, the agricultural share of the workforce does decrease markedly

How much of this is skewed by the fact that for a couple of years a sizeable part of what could be descibed as the agricultural land of the Sioviet Union wasn't actually in the Soviet Union? Apart from just the effects on it - if you see what I mean.

[Epaminondas]

Read Wages of Destruction.

Facinating, and very well researched book.

I don't think you have a good conversation about Germany's WWII economy with out reading it.

[Qvist]

How much of this is skewed by the fact that for a couple of years a sizeable part of what could be descibed as the agricultural land of the Sioviet Union wasn't actually in the Soviet Union? Apart from just the effects on it - if you see what I mean.

Difficult to say, but obviously it had a large impact. Note though that on neither of the two points quoted were Soviet territory under German control.

cheers

[Rich]

"Farm Labour" Well,all I can say is that ALL of the other belligerents reduced their rural workforces during the war,and the germans did as well,so I dont understand the problem here.

As Qvist said...."they did"?

"Maid Servants" No Speer makes a definite distinction between domestic servants and Gastarbeiter[eg Ukrainian girls].Whether domestic servants also formed a part of the rural workforce is fairly speculative I think.

Okay, thanks to Qvist that was cleared up. But it still begs the question as to what proportion such work was for the female workforce in other countries. Just because Speer thought it was high in Germany doesn't mean that it was. So for example I find that in the US in 1940 the proportion of women employed as domestic servants to the total of women over the age of 14 was 3.78 percent, but as a proportion of the total employed female workforce it was 16.09 percent.

Sauckel-"Speer tried to get him fired".Yes because Speer had proof of his disloyalty in conjunction with that snake Bormann.

Really? What proof was that?

"he denigrated Sauckel's efforts" No he didn't.It was just that Sauckel,who actually reported direct to Hitler,only cared about the raw numbers and not the quality of the labour he was supplying.He also gave no consideration to the state of these people when they arrived at the various labour sites,and as such much productivity was lost due to disease,ill-treament etc.Speer agreed with the principle of imported 'slave' labour,but in his opinion,the methods used left a lot to be desired.

Everybody denigrated Sauckel, because he looked and acted like a country bumpkin. But he wasn't. And Sauckel was well aware of the problematic nature of some of the labor he was bringing in and tried to alleviate some of the worst problems - not for humanitarian reasons BTW - but the reality was that numbers were required and he was prepared to produce them.

"why such a decree was needed" Because Speer had proposed the mobilisation of german women in march of 42,and both Goering and Sauckel refused to contemplate it.As Speer was Saukel's superior,Saukel then went to Hitler to get a decree to de-limit Speer's authority over his [labour]area of responsibility.

But the German female labor force was already mobilized to a greater degree than just about anyone else?

"conclusively shown Speer's self aggrandizement" Whenever I hear things like 'conclusively shown',I start to get very suspicious that there maybe some kind of agenda lurking somewhere! If i have not worked on a farm[actually I have]then I would venture to say that you have not read Inside the Third Reich.Because if you had read it you could read for yourself that Speer does NOT credit himself with the increase in armaments production so much as the people in industry that actually made the stuff.Infact he downplays his role.The only thing he really takes credit for was the new industry organisational plan that he produced in march of 42.Now if you want to debate what these two 'prominent' economic historians have say about Speer-then let the games begin!
Regards Tim Wells

"Conclusively shown to my satisfaction" then. Does that make you happier?

And no, I haven't read "What a Good Boy was I in the Third Reich" in about 25 years. But ISTR that he declared his "new industry organisational plan" as the cause for the splendid increas in aircraft production after March 1942? And ditto for the tank industry? Or is my memory playing tricks on me?

BTW, if you want to "debate" Tooze and Harrison wouldn't it be better if you read them first?

According to Hugh Rockoff, there are no accurate data for the US.

Huh! What's wrong with the US Census data?

[Qvist]

Hi Rich,

Huh! What's wrong with the US Census data?

According to Rockoff (who authored the essay on the US in the quoted work edited by Harrison), agricultural and household workers were "not accurately counted in the data underlying this breakdown of the labor force because it is based on a survey of businesses". He seems to refer to US Census Bureau data throughout, so I assume that this comment also pertains to that. He doesn't go into any more detail I'm afraid.

cheers

[Rich]

Hi Rich,

Huh! What's wrong with the US Census data?

According to Rockoff (who authored the essay on the US in the quoted work edited by Harrison), agricultural and household workers were "not accurately counted in the data underlying this breakdown of the labor force because it is based on a survey of businesses". He seems to refer to US Census Bureau data throughout, so I assume that this comment also pertains to that. He doesn't go into any more detail I'm afraid.

cheers

That's something of an odd comment? The census in the US is conducted by state and is done by full and part-time (in the sense they only work the census itself, which is every ten years) census takers. And in that day they actual did the census in large part by canvassing neighborhoods rather than by mail as they do - mostly today? And I'm not sure why to obtain a breakdown of "agricultural and household workers" you would survey "businesses"? Something seems fishy to me? Especially since the census is easily accessible to anyone who wants to take the time to look at it (although personal data will not be released until 2012)? I hadn't recalled that in the US essay, but then I read the other nations a bit more closely.

[Qvist]

Hi Rich,

Well, I can really only speculate, but I would think the Census Bureau collected data in addition the Census taken every ten years? After all, that's not much good for statistics showing how US Labor developed during the course of the war, which is what Rockoff quotes. Surveys of businesses is if my impression is correct a fairly standard approach to much economic statistics.

And I'm not sure why to obtain a breakdown of "agricultural and household workers" you would survey "businesses"?

Clearly, but I presume that obtaining that was not the principal object of these surveys. It is possible that his comment pertains only to the data he has used and not to the general statistical basis, though in that case one wonders why he hasn't simply used other data in addition. Alternatively, his comments seems to imply that while there are good labor data for most parts of the economy on the basis of business surveys, there is not reliable similar data for agriculture and domestic service due to the limitations in the way in which labor data were collected. I have no idea of course if he is right. It's on p. 101-103, if you have the book available.

cheers

[Rich]

Hi Rich,

Well, I can really only speculate, but I would think the Census Bureau collected data in addition the Census taken every ten years? After all, that's not much good for statistics showing how US Labor developed during the course of the war, which is what Rockoff quotes. Surveys of businesses is if my impression is correct a fairly standard approach to much economic statistics.

Hi Qvist,

Okay, I think I see what he must mean. Since the full census in the US is only taken every ten years then he is speaking as to the war-year data 1941-1945. And there I would expect he is relying on Department of Labor and Department of Commerce economic statistics, which would include 'survey' data for businesses including farms and so forth. So of course in that sense he is correct and the demographic data would not be as accurate as the full census.

OTOH I have to question why he seems to imply that is somehow unique for the US data? Or does every other nation on the planet do a full demographic census every year? In fact all of these data are more or less reliable. I understand that Soviet census data was regularly manipulated, while the German census that I am aware of were conducted in 1933, 1937, and 1939? But I expect that it was somewhat easier to conduct a census in the Reich than in the US given the state issued identity documents and so on?

[Qvist]

OTOH I have to question why he seems to imply that is somehow unique for the US data?

Oh, I don't think he does. His essay is concerned solely with the US economy and he makes no comparison on the point.

cheers

[kanzel]

Germany also 'imported' around 14,000 aircraft during the war from the US and England. There were lots of various metals acquired and recycled from those aircraft parts. Think of the scrap value in metals of one B-17.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Kanzel,

A very interesting point.

Where did Germany get its aluminium from for aircraft construction during the war? Were there any natural sources within occupied Europe?

Cheers,

Sid.