The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway

The German industrial economy was extraordinarily dependent on the timely, adequate distribution of coal by railroad and inland waterway. The German National Railway in particular was the pivot of the finely balanced armaments production and distribution system created by Albert Speer. But Allied strategists did not immediately recognize this. Only in late 1944, when Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Sir Arthur Tedder built a new strategic consensus, was this vital coal/transport nexus severed. The result was the rapid paralysis of the Nazi war economy.

Mierzejewski measures the economic consequences of the bombing by considering broad indices such as armaments and coal production, railway performance, and weapons deliveries to the armed forces. In addition, he shows how individual companies in each of Germany's major economic regions fared. By drawing on previously unexamined filed of private German manufacturing companies, the Reich Transportation Ministry, and Allied air intelligence agencies, Mierzejewski creates a rare combination of economic analysis and military history that provides new perspectives on the German war economy and Allied air intelligence.

In 1942 and '43, the U.S. and Britain attacked arms factories and housing respectively. The Germans kept fighting and war production kept going up.

In 1944, the Allies increasingly turned to synthetic petroleum plants and the German transportation system. The result was a catastrophic breakdown in all areas of the German war economy.

We'll never know what would have happened if the railyards serving the Ruhr's coal fields had been hit starting in 1940, but Mierzejewski makes a good case that it would have seriously weakened Germany much sooner, and quite possibly ended the war in 1944.

This is a very good study, well worth reading and thinking about. I recommend it to all my fellow armchair strategists.