Chapter 1663 Soviet-German Military Situation
Crown Prince Frederick said, "The Empire still holds an overwhelming advantage over other countries in steel production, which is determined by our population and market."
Here, Crown Prince Frederick is referring to the domestic market.
The size of East Africa's market is closely related to its large population; among the world's major powers, only East Africa has a population exceeding 200 million. It is impossible to rely on overseas markets to support East Africa's current massive steel production.
The overseas steel market can be simply divided into two parts: industrialized countries and non-industrialized countries. The former have a relatively strong steel industry and are able to be self-sufficient.
Countries like East Africa and the United States produce enough steel not only to meet their own needs but also to export it, importing almost no steel.
Countries like France, Japan, and Italy have developed steel industries but lack raw materials, so they have a greater demand for raw materials such as iron ore and coal.
Non-industrialized countries have underdeveloped steel industries, resulting in a high demand for steel, but their purchasing power is very low.
Take the Far Eastern Empire as an example. Currently, the population in the area controlled by the Far Eastern Empire is as high as 300 million. It is also mentioned that the steel industry in the Far Eastern Empire is very backward and the steel output is pitifully small.
However, their annual steel import figures were not as high as one might expect, at least not in the eyes of a major industrial nation like East Africa.
According to data from East African intelligence agencies, the Far Eastern Empire imported approximately 600,000 tons of steel in 1936, and even at its peak in 1930, the total imports were only around 700,000 tons.
Even the Far Eastern Empire, the world's most populous country, only imports 600,000 to 700,000 tons of steel. How much market can other non-industrialized countries create?
East Africa's largest overseas market, South America, has a population of less than 100 million. Moreover, the South American market is not entirely controlled by East Africa, which still faces competition from American and European companies.
Therefore, steel exports cannot establish East Africa's position as the world's largest steel producer. The main force supporting the development of East Africa's steel industry is still the domestic market of 200 million people.
Crown Prince Frederick said, "The world still has a surplus of steel production, especially for major industrialized countries, including ourselves, which are creating demand through various means."
"Because of tariff barriers, countries basically accumulate funds within their own sphere of influence and invest them in infrastructure and military industry development."
"Germany, in particular, with its high investment in the military industry, will inevitably impact the entire European region through war."
Ernst nodded and said, "Germany only has war as an option, unless they can withstand all the internal pressure themselves."
In this regard, we can refer to Japan in the past. The United States turned off Japan's tap through the Hiroshima Agreement, and Japan's development almost came to a standstill.
In fact, Japan's economy was able to survive in its previous life thanks to the fact that the United States did not completely shut off Japan's financial resources. Although Japan lost its competitiveness in the American market, it could still provide financial support to other countries in the world.
Take the Far Eastern Empire for example. It can be said that the opening up of the Far Eastern Empire's economy at that time greatly relieved the pressure on Japan and gave many of Japan's industries a much longer life.
Although East Africa is also facing significant economic pressure due to the collapse of the international order, it is clearly in a much better position than countries like Germany, Japan, and Italy.
On the one hand, East Africa itself has a large sphere of influence, and on the other hand, East Africa can alleviate its influence by gradually encroaching on the colonial markets of countries such as Britain and France.
In this respect, East Africa has a great advantage over other countries, after all, the British and French colonies were too close to East Africa.
Therefore, European countries such as Britain and France, which had colonies in Africa, along the Indian Ocean coast, and in Southeast Asia, could not be too tough on East Africa.
"With the outbreak of a full-scale war drawing ever closer, the key question is Germany: how is their military buildup progressing?"
Ernst shifted the topic to Germany, as Germany had become a key factor in when World War II would fully break out.
Although Japan's war against the Far Eastern Empire had already begun, this can only be considered the starting point of World War II. If it had fully broken out, the entire Eurasian continent would have been involved!
Crown Prince Friedrich said, "Germany's army has expanded to more than four million. In addition to the original German army, Germany has also integrated the Austro-Hungarian army and is conscripting soldiers throughout the country."
"Germany's current military size is the largest in the world, far exceeding that of other countries. Even the Soviet Union currently only has more than three million troops."
Both Germany and the Soviet Union now have larger armies than they did in the previous era.
In 1937, Germany's total military strength was less than three million, about 2.7 million, while the Soviet Union had even fewer, only about 1.5 million.
After annexing Austria-Hungary, Germany's total population exceeded 100 million, so Germany had a more abundant pool of manpower than in the previous era. Currently, the German army is at least one million larger than in the previous era.
The astonishing changes in the German army forced the Soviet Union to follow suit, resulting in the Soviet Union's current standing army being almost twice the size of its previous one.
However, the growth of the Soviet army was almost simultaneous with that of Germany, that is, after Adolf, the "dangerous figure," came to power and launched an arms expansion.
Before Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union considered itself to have a good relationship with Germany. Even before Germany had made all its military preparations, Joseph did not believe that Germany would attack the Soviet Union in a short time.
In this timeline, Joseph and the top Soviet government officials obviously dared not make such a "presupposition".
Since the end of World War I, Germany has been the biggest threat to the Soviet Union. In the previous life, the Soviet Union and defeated Germany had a very warm "honeymoon period".
This shift in relations is also why Joseph chose a relatively lenient approach to domestic policies.
After Adolf came to power, the Soviet Union had to increase and maintain a large army, and the expansion of the army naturally increased the demand for officers.
This made experienced officers an even scarcer "resource," and Joseph naturally dared not "squander" this precious resource in a situation where war could break out at any moment.
Crown Prince Friedrich said, "As things stand, the size of the German army should have reached a limit unless they intend to start a war immediately."
"But with a massive army of four million, plus numerous allies, Germany is already capable of confronting and gaining the upper hand against the rest of Europe."
"Germany's army and air force are among the most advanced in Europe, and its navy is also quite strong, thanks to Germany's strong industrial base and abundant talent pool."
Germany's powerful industrial base undoubtedly ensured that its military was among the most advanced in Europe in terms of weaponry, both on land, sea, and air.
Even if the German Navy was only smaller than the British Navy, it certainly employed more new technologies than the British Navy.
The development of the German Navy was mainly limited by Germany's own maritime environment; otherwise, the Adolf government would not have given up the naval competition with Britain and would have surpassed the British Royal Navy in size.
Even so, the German naval power is now enough to put immense pressure on the British, given that the British navy is relatively more dispersed compared to the German navy.
Apart from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, it is impossible for Britain to be completely undeployed in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
"The German army is a highly mechanized force, equipped with a large number of cars and armored vehicles, and it would be hard to find a match for it throughout Europe."
"However, Germany's level of mechanization is certainly not as high as that of the Empire, but the Empire's current army size is smaller than that of Germany."
"The most important reason that limited the mechanization of the German army was Germany's lack of energy, so Germany could not achieve the same level of mechanization as us."
The German army was constrained by the lack of oil resources, which greatly limited the number of mechanized troops. This did not change even after Germany annexed Austria-Hungary. In fact, the annexation of Austria-Hungary made the German army's level of mechanization slightly lower than in the previous era.
Because the number of German troops increased, but the number of mechanized units increased relatively little.
Continuing to increase the mechanization of the army would not be of much benefit to Germany, unless Germany could acquire new oil-producing areas through war.
In comparison, the only countries in the world that do not need to worry about energy issues are the Soviet Union, East Africa, and the United States.
However, due to the limitations of its industrial development level, the Soviet Union's army was clearly less mechanized than Germany's.
As for the United States, isolationism prevails there, so it doesn't pay much attention to the development of its military, and the U.S. Army receives almost no resources.
East Africa does place great importance on its army, but this importance is only relative. The East African army is only a little over one million strong, far smaller than that of Germany and the Soviet Union.
Ernst said, "The German army's level of mechanization is clearly difficult to catch up with ours, as can be seen from the German automotive industry."
"Germany's car production is unlikely to exceed 400,000 vehicles. Even if Germany were to convert its entire automotive industry to serve the military, it would still be difficult to compare with automotive powerhouses like us and the United States."
Germany's automotive industry is not on the same scale as that of East Africa and the United States, so it is naturally difficult for Germany to match the mechanization of its military.
Without a doubt, even if the United States invested its resources in the army, its level of mechanization would far surpass that of Germany.
Crown Prince Friedrich continued, "Germany's energy problems also limit the development of the German Air Force, because aircraft takeoff and training also require a lot of resources."
"But apart from oil, there are almost no alternatives to the energy available for aircraft. Germany even has aircraft development projects that use coal as an energy source."
"This alone shows the predicament of Germany's energy sector."
"Even so, the development of the German Air Force was quite outstanding on a global scale. Apart from being smaller than the Soviet Air Force, the German Air Force far surpassed other European countries in other areas."
"The German Air Force now has about 400,000 personnel, second only to the Soviet Union's about 600,000, and its number of aircraft is far less than that of the Soviet Union."
"The Soviet Air Force may have had more than 10,000 aircraft, with about 7,000 combat aircraft, while Germany had less than 4,000 combat aircraft."
The Soviet Union had the world's largest air force, even surpassing East Africa. East Africa's advantage lay primarily in its civil aviation and aircraft manufacturing industries, rather than the size of its air force.
However, the East African Air Force was not much smaller than the Soviet Air Force in terms of size, because the East African Air Force's needs were not much less than those of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union maintained a large air force primarily to cope with the pressure of homeland air defense. After all, the Soviet Union was well aware that there was a certain gap between the quality of their aircraft and the skills of their pilots and those of Germany.
Therefore, the Soviet Union hoped to make up for the gap with Germany through sheer numbers.
Secondly, the Soviet Union itself had a vast territory. As the world's largest country by area, it also had a large airspace, which led to its high level of investment in the aviation industry.
Moreover, compared to the vast territory of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's weak transportation infrastructure and even its backward transportation development were also key factors.
Whether by rail, road, or shipping, the Soviet Union was unable to connect the entire country closely, especially the European part and Siberia, which relied almost entirely on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
As a result, airplanes became an excellent choice for countries like the Soviet Union, which had a vast territory but relatively underdeveloped transportation.
It is not as severely affected by factors such as permafrost, terrain, and environment as land transportation.
Moreover, some outposts in the Arctic region could also use airplanes as an important means of communication with the Soviet government.
The development of the aviation industry in East Africa is similar to that in the Soviet Union. As the world's second largest country by area, East Africa also has a considerable land area, which provides space for the development of the aviation industry.
However, East Africa boasts a highly developed land transportation system, with the world's third-largest railway network after Europe and the Americas, as well as one of the world's largest highway networks, and its expressways are the largest in the world.
The development of land transportation has led to stronger competition in East Africa's aviation industry compared to the Soviet Union. However, the East African aviation market remains very strong, especially in the northern and southwestern parts of East Africa, where the population and transportation routes are very sparse.
One of the key advantages of East Africa's aviation industry compared to the Soviet Union was the greater demand from overseas colonies and military bases.
The colonies in East Africa contain numerous islands, and air travel is a superior mode of transportation to sea travel between these islands.
In addition, East Africa's sphere of influence was far beyond what the Soviet Union could match. For example, South America, although many countries were not East African colonies, was an important market for East African aviation.
Ernst said, "The air forces of the Soviet Union and Germany are probably the least different branches of the military between the two countries. The Soviet Union's aircraft technology may be slightly inferior, but it was not far behind Germany."
"Given the Soviet Air Force's advantage in size and number of aircraft over Germany, there was great uncertainty if the two air forces were to clash."
"However, the gap between the two countries is huge in terms of the army, especially since Germany's mobilization capacity is no worse than that of the Soviet Union. This puts the Soviet generals' command ability to the test."
Because the Soviet army was not purged, Ernst found it difficult to assess the impact of the Soviet generals' command abilities on the Soviet army's operations against Germany.
(End of this chapter)
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