From: Charles Gray


Here's a question--until I got to college, I recall reading all
these books about german wartime production, how incredible it was,
etc. Every movie has a secret german production, etc, etc.
why is that, given that Germany had perhaps the LEAST effecient
system of R&D and most especially, of allocating resources of any fo
the major powers of WWII?

The short answer was that Hitler controlled the purse strings and that the
generals had to stand in line to kiss his corroded ass. Furthermore Hitler was
a legend in his own mind and made decisions which had no bearing on reality.

Example of the former: he watched a V-2 launch and was unimpressed so it got no
serious money. He put more money into the V-1 because his favourite butt buddy
Goering talked him into it. By the time he changed his mind it was too late.

Example of the latter: Hitler decided that all Me-262s should be bombers until
it was too late. Had he authorized the fighter version first and earlier in the
war they might have put the money into making it a better airplane instead of
wasting it on projects like the Me-163.

Another thing was he had his generals and admirals conviced the war was not
going to start until 1947 or 1948. He decided to not go with advanced
technology as early as he could have for that reason.

Grand Admiral Raeder, head of the navy, believed him and had planned a balanced
navy to include the u-boats Doenitz wanted and aircraft carriers. In reality
only one aircraft carrier was built but never went into service because fatso
Goering convinced Hitler the Luftwaffe could cover all the navy's needs. There
were experiments with carrier aircraft early on, but the R&D monies were taken
away for other projects.

Basically the R&D monies available to the Reich were spread out on various
useless programs which only got more hairbrained as the war went on.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired