Military excellence. Harnessing innovation to deliver a clear technological edge. Exquisite weapons and equipment. How did Germany lose?⬇️
Freedom’s Forge author Arthur Herman has a great short read in the latest First Breakfast substack that revisits some of the reasons Germany was unable to match the might of the Allies despite having the edge in so many areas. Wonder weapons don’t win a war – coupling technology that can scale with a large manufacturing base gave the Allies the advantage:
“Germany lacked what the United States had and was able to bring to the other Allies: an industrial base large and flexible enough to scale production of the military technologies that did give the Allies their decisive edge: tanks, trucks, conventional fighters and bombers, artillery pieces and machine guns, submarines and destroyers and aircraft carriers—by 1944 eight a month—as well as the freighters needed to carry all this material to battlefields across two oceans.”
During World War II Australia focused on a number of key areas to contribute to the Arsenal of Democracy. Indeed Australia was the only nation to give the United States more in lend-lease than we received back. We scaled our industrial base to allow this small nation to make an outsized contribution to munitions and material for the Allied war effort.
Today Australia has long made a bet that the quality of our forces – both in equipment and manpower – will give us an edge over regional forces that possess a larger quantity of both but to a lower standard. We continue to put our faith in just in time globalised supply chains. Our economy has deindustrialised at a rapid rate since the end of the Cold War. Our seaborne trade is in effect completely reliant on international shipping.
Now Australia needs to consider what role to play in a new Arsenal of Democracy. It will require reinvestment and prioritisation as we rebuild resiliency and reshore select industrial and manufacturing capability and capacity. We need to focus on how we can contribute, how we can share the burden and once again give more than we take to tip the strategic balance in freedom’s favour:
“New defense technologies, no matter how advanced, don’t change the strategic balance. They express the strategic balance, reflecting the material resources in men, machines, and production that created that balance in the first place. Even the atomic bomb was used when the war was already won in Europe and effectively won in the Pacific. By the time Germany’s jet fighters and V-2 rockets became operational, Germany was all but defeated. It was Allied armies and industries, not secret weapons, that determined the tide of war.”
A link to this great read from Herman is in the comments – his new book ‘Founder’s Fire’ is on our reading list as well!
📷 colourised WWII picture of Germany declaring war on the United States.