Tank Production Cost a meaningful Factor for Comparison?
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- Опубліковано 15 лис 2018
- Is tank production cost a meaningful factor for comparing tanks at all? How about production time? In this video I talk about the various problems using this value. The data I have seen so far is extremely limited, yet, even with far more data, there are many different aspects to consider.
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» SOURCES «
Zaloga, Steven: Armored Champion. The top Tanks of World War II. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, US, 2015.
Pöhlmann, Markus: Der Panzer und die Mechanisierung des Krieges: Eine deutsche Geschichte 1890 bis 1945. Ferdinand Schöningh: Paderborn, 2016.
Tooze, Adam: The Wages of Destruction. The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. Penguin Books: United Kingdom (2006).
Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg - Band 5 / 2
ENGLISH VERSION: Germany and the Second World War Volume 5 / 2
Jentz, Thomas L.: Panzertruppen - The complete guide to the Creation & Combat Employment of Germany’s Tank Force - 1933-1942. Schiffer Military History: Atglen, USA, 1996
Spielberger, Walter; Wiener, Friedrich: Die deutschen Panzerkampfwagen III und IV mit ihren Abarten 1935-1945. J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, München, 1968.
English Version: Spielberger, Walter: Panzer III & Its Variants
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Wars are ultimately fought on a budget. If you're building super tanks but only a one at a time and the other side is building ten tanks that are inferior tanks you're going to loose simply because they can attack you in the 9 places your super tanks aren't.
Great channel great chats. Am I right? Only two factors to compare cost are: cost of resources and quantity of work hours?
@@nikodemdyzma9330 Yes. Reduce component count and reduce the number of operations to manufacture each component. In addition reduce amount of material used and use less costly material/kg.This is how manufacturers reduce costs. This in its essence is an engineering question requiring assessment of the build methods materials and complexity for each tank type. It would remove the issue of questionable accounting., but leave the question of tooling/plant availability unanswered.
Now who has the time and resources to do the study?
When Speer cooks the books people call him a miracle worker for increasing productivity; When I cook the books it's called fraud and I get into trouble
You need to be licking the Führers boots more and claim" non political".
20 years in Spandau wasn't a good trade off for being a "miracle worker"
When the govt. does it, it's called "statistics".
@@fazole
When the UK government does it, it's called "Financial Restructuring"..
Maybe the Tiger sold to Japan was priced including delivery?
Also the Japanese wanted to modify it so said Tiger could become a Mecha Tiger...
And also the price for single tank does not include whole sale discount. ;)
Amazon in those days was really a thing. did they use Prime delivery?
Shipping and handling is where they get you.
Technology is not free either
D.K. Brown's books about ships are even worse for this sort of thing. Going by the accounting he uses (which I think is REALLY messy), it seems like the British shipyards were twice as effective as American ones (mostly I think, because of how hours were calculated and wage differences "funny money"), while being comprehensively out-built. I think the actual important numbers in these sort of cases is probably a matter of "constraints/bottlenecks" That is, what factors are preventing materials X from becoming object Y? This helps explain why certain factories would be switched. The Canadians couldn't make "Grizzlies" fast enough to keep their own units supplied (with a slightly non-standard tank). So the line was changed over to make only Sextons (which didn't have near the loss-rate, AND were near supplies of 25 pounders). The British tried to use pre-fab in ship building, like the US and Germans (U-boats), but kept running against hard limits. Firstly, a shortage of Heavy-duty Cranes, and later a lack of electricians to fit the late-war electronics. "Craft" production seems to breed this sort of issue,
There is yet another factor not mentioned, in addition to the myriad listed - opportunity cost. What did they have to choose to not do by choosing to employ time, resources, etc... to produce the given vehicle?
I think a German General of the artillery actually did an infographic on tanks vs. artillery production to show that tanks are too resource intensive, especially when on the defense.
Military History not Visualized I see it how it could make sense. In a defensive situation, one must get the highest firepower per unit of resources available. Mobility and armor protection become relatively less important since defenses are more static by nature, and protection can be provided by something as simple as earthen works, which only cost a few hours of labor to provide protection against almost any conventional weapon.
The "guns and butter" dilemma... Main resource in a tank is steel, so what else could one make out of all that metal - how many guns, etc? EDIT - how many VW Beetle cars could you make instead of a Panzer?
I thought the saying was Guns, not Butter!
Tristan Morrow you could probably make a lot of 12,8 and 10,5 field guns out of the steel needed to make even just 1 panzer IV, much less the Panther or Tiger.
At the very least, man hours can give a ballpark estimate. No one is disputing that a T-34 required less resources than a Tiger I.
The question is how many
T34 was made to only short lived tank since they knew on the battlefield a few weeks mostly for the tank and crew
The Germans tried to make tanks last longer and be a survival vehicle for their crews
Raymond Kisner make tanks and crew last longer by making bigger targets for air and artillery which both sides of the allies had superiority in, and constantly having engine maintenance and problems so that target even sits for them
Survival 101
@@xbronykillerx6987
Making tanks/vehicles last longer is what is done in modern military, as it is overall cheaper in the long run.
Besides, if spare parts are lacking every Tank breaks down, when it is constantly in combat situations.
Iron Jockel you’re saying the t-34 wouldn’t last longer? On a strategic and operational perspective their cross country performance, as we all know so far, was exceptional, especially with constant Soviet advancing during all seasons. Meanwhile, there are reports of Tiger crews having to stop have 10 km for maintenance, modern military tanks can at least make operational maneuvers without too much issue
Having worked as a cost accountant for many years I understand the issue. While there are standards in this country (USA) for consistently accounting for costs, so that at least very similar comparisons can be made, they are not internationally accepted. Now move the process back in time 80 years, with reporting that in many cases was intended to serve political purposes. And as you say, add currency issues.
It would still be possible to calculate costs and make meaningful (if rough) comparisons, IF one were not dealing with incomplete data. The unavailability of data sort of kills the whole process.
So other elements, manhours, weight, etc, which themselves are subject to all the same factors, are used as stand-ins.
I Agree, but I can also see a way to prepare (enough) reliable production times and resource usage.
The same way compatitor products is estimated. Experienced factory ingeneers take a look at all parts. Then they assigen production processes to each part and to the assambly. In the least step they use standart timeframes and material "losses".
The 2 biggest issues I would see with this method are: Figuring out the availability of processes (in comparable effitiencies) before the 70th. And the falues would be "international" (a localisation would require reverse ingeneering of the mashines them self and the availability of their materiales)
I think A big problem that is overlooked is the earliest vehicles (or anything) are the most expensive, whereas the latest units produced are the cheapest, so giving an “average” is good for the median of units, but not applicable to the latest or earliest units, which affect that time periods costs and benefits
Money is cheap in total war - alternatives are expensive. let me illustrate:
Do you want one Panzer 4 or 10,000 Mauser 98K rifles?
If you REALLY need those 10,000 rifles because of equipment losses, then that tank is very very very expensive no matter whether it is 5 dollars or 5,000,000,000 dollars.
However, if you have plenty of rifles, then you can easily afford the tank.
Just looked it up: Measured in Reichsmark the Bismarck(196,8 million RM) did cost as much as 2,8 million 98K(70 RM) rifles..😱
Garomcfbgdd Churchill makes similar comparisons in his Memoirs. He compares a single battleship to an armored division! He doesn't use money for his calculations but tons of steel. Taking the construction time into account (at least 4 or 5 years), his conclusion is cristal clear: you should not launch the building of a new battleship during wartime. You have to do with your prewar navy and the ships already under construction.
So much for the strategical importance of first line ships: huge firepower in a very small number of units, with almost no possibility of replacement.
I guess it is good to have different tools in the tool box - a hammer, a screwdriver, a plier and so on. Only focus on one type of weapon seems like a toolbox with only hammers in it. It can be good sometimes, but unpractical most the time.
Furthermore can one good weapon become garbage pretty fast when the enemies invent new weapons to counter it. Mitsubitchy A6M Zero fighters might be great weapons early in the war, but later on in the war would their oppurtunity cost not be much worth it.
Using the same logic, how much did a Tiger cost in K98 rifles? How much was a Sherman in '03A3 rifles? The k98, Springfield, and the SMLE all cost roughly the same to the economy regardless of where produced. This would give a truer comparison.
It’s basic Econ 101 - the true cost of anything is not the monetary cost, but the opportunity cost. It matters little how much currency you give up for the thing, it’s all the other potential uses of that money, time, resources, etc... that tells you the true cost of any product, service, or activity.
You do an excellent job analyzing complex issues with limited data. Well done good sir.
Years ago, in his book "Bomber Command" Max Hasting briefly mused about the actual cost of a state of the art Lancaster bomber with all of the advanced communication, navigation, bomb aiming, and jamming equipment on board before one tosses in the cost of things like fuel and oil and training the flight crew, when, during the worse part of the bombing campaign the aircraft would be lucky to survive 90 days in combat. That sounds like far more than the 60,000 pounds average cost which is often quoted. The B-29 program cost almost as much as the Manhattan project, and it came close to failing until LeMay switched to low level fire bombing raids on Japanese cities. Only the the US had the resources to see the proximity fuse through to its successful deployment. And none of those things: the proximity fuse, the B-29, or the atomic weapons were guaranteed to work just because a lot of time, money, effort, and brain power was expended on them. In time of war or total war, the actual cost of producing equipment becomes irrelevant because the goal is to win the war at all costs. If one one wins, the fact that weapons could have been produced more efficiently or more cheaply doesn't really matter.
You know, I'd intially made jokes about not having money in games like HOI4, but after this I can see the logic of calculating industry in terms of factories and their production. In a total war is anyone going to be counting the cost of items? Its simplistic but using production and rescourses could make more sense in dire straits.
However I want to hear more about the Soveit and German "funny money" during the war. Did they try to print the money they needed and lock prices too? Were their arrangements made to keep goods flowing without payment upfront? How did the NASP pay for the war (or dodge the bill)? All the war material should've cost a fortune especially in Germany but they kept making panzerfausts to the bitter end.
Read "wages of destruction " by Tooze... I am sure there are more detailed and constrained accounts on it but perhaps nothing that tries to give such a broad summary of so much of German economic activity. I don't want to ruin the conclusion but there is a very real punchline.
@@pietersteenkamp5241 I do not think it gave good insight of Nazi economy. All it said essentially was economy in crisis. Workers are getting a lot of money, but being unable to spend it. Book focused mostly on large scale resources.
@@REgamesplayer I author in fact drew very many conclusions and at least one of the things you mentioned isn't even one of them! I don't want to give away the punchline but i can at least agree that i actually expected more from the book or at least a different focus after the great hype around it.
@@REgamesplayer Isn't it arguably the case that the workers were able to spend too much of it, rather than too little? The point is made that the Reich didn't cut down on production of consumer goods until well after "total war" had been initiated. British and American workers were also operating under heavy rationing and could not really spend most of their wages.
I would argue that the real problem for the Germans was more that the degree to which the Nazis set prices by fiat (to make the numbers look better) made it impossible for them to effectively identify the real cost of various production items and by extension, to optimize their production to their military needs.
True that. Especially when you have limited to no access to international trade, like Germany had due to the Allies surrounding it and controlling the seas. No amount of money (funny or not) gets you beyond the physical limit of how much stuff your factories can produce. Nor will lack of money keep you from getting your factories producing at that level in a total war situation, where the government has its pick of keeping them running through funny money, direct seizure of the means of war production, war bonds, straight-up coercion or whatever else, all which has various detrimental effects on the civilian economy, but keep the war machine rolling.
One issue that complicates things is the investment that went into building the "means of production" for the tanks. The T-34 and M4 Sherman were built in enormous factory complexes that could exploit the advantages of machining for economies of scale. The Tiger was more craftsman heavy and built in smaller factories. Therefore Tiger definitely took loads more man hours to make than the mass produced Allied tanks, but that doesn't give the entire picture of its "cost" because it doesn't give the capital upfront investment into the production process. You can see this in the T-34 production statistics where the costs go through the floor, a result of its simplification, but also of investment done into improved manufacturing. So even comparing a more equivalent tank like the Panzer IV, per unit it will still be a lot more "expensive" than a T-34 just because they lacked economy of scale, but the T-34 factory is more expensive to build than the factory that made the Panzer IV.
Thing is, these enormous factories can only be afforded rich nations with lots of resources. Germany was neither of those compared to the Allies. Therefore they couldn't just set up their Tankograd equivalent to churn out their T-34 equivalent, their economy was already stretched to the limit through peacetime and in wartime. Given the limitations on the investment they could make into mass producing tanks, the direction of building qualitatively superior units is sound because they were never going to produce even close to the number of tanks the Allies made. A a better quality unit is more efficient at destroying enemy tanks, even if they're more expensive per piece, and they could only hope that these better quality tanks could offset the material advantage of the Allies.
What about human-hours and resourses used?
This can vary. A German worker has to receive decent wages. A forced laborer from an occupied country or a POW will cost less or even nothing but will have little enthusiasm for either quality or quantity and may even be able to commit acts of sabotage that won't be discovered until it's to late for the operator at the front and unlikely to ever be tracked back.
similiar issues as discussed, I had tried to track down the resources needed for a Panzer III or IV (or any Panzer needed), since I found some data in Senger-Etterlin's book, where he had like 5-10 values for different metals for the Panzer III and IV, yet, no source added, couldn't find anything even remotely related to that so far. I think the leading work in Germany is Panzerproduktion from Knittel, which I had gotten from the library a few times, either I missed that part every time or there is also no info on the resources in there.
man-hours is the similar to cost, as mentioned in the video.
Resources is equally as complicated. Some may be domestically obtained or imported. During different time periods, various countries started using substitute materials. Some features were deleted, Different variants of the tank... etc. Not only that, if the factory has been renovated, processing method may change. That can affect how much useful material you can get from a ore. Fuel is a good example, depending on the fuel type and refining process, you can get more or less from the same about of oil drilled. And of course, different factories and different drilling sites will all use slightly different equipment and methods based on what is available.
Ted Archer an excellent book to understand the production is OKH toy factory by Michael Winninger, detailing the Nibelungenwerk. Initially they produced parts for Krupp. As explained it is difficult locking down a specific cost. Their first order for 100 Mark 4 F was 71,000 RM a unit. Then it gets complicated waiting for missing parts. Once production volume is in place unit cost on Group Price II 49,400/ vehicle, 1132 delivered, 1943 the average price I have seen for Mark IV G, combat ready 115,962RM. So as Bernhard explained, it is difficult to lock down specific cost given the complicated distribution and billing approach. To manufacture a Jagtiger, 7 major suppliers provided the key hull, gun, transmission and engine components for them to assemble.Then there is the fascinating story and cost of the VK4501 (P) Tiger which ultimately became Ferdinand. One of the bests influences on Allies tank production was Albert Kahn, who design the Detroit Arsenal for the Sherman and his company the Soviet Tractor Factories, which ultimately produced the T34 and KV series, the approach was to manufacture as much as possible on site. It is now interesting that the German distribution approach for tank production, is now typical of modern just in time manufacturing ironically developed by the Japanese.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized - Berhnard, I came across this reference -"Waffen und Geheimwaffen des Deutschen Heeres 1933-1945" by Fritz Hahn.
An important cost is tank crew training. A tank is useless without a crew. Vehicles that are easy to use are effectively cheaper.
crew training is hard to quantify... The Tiger used a steering wheel which same it pretty simple to drive. But would the large size and weight offset this? What about maintenance. The crew still need to know field maintenance. How would you quantify these variables compared to a Panzer IV and Panther for example? People also learn at a different rate and style. Some instructors are better than others. It's just like schooling, people graduate at different times, so how can we say that specific course/tank is harder?
Just like resources, production costs, time of production, that will only provide a general idea but nothing specific.
Instead of money I would make a value of "industrial cost" that would include production time, resources necesary and so on.
For the Soviet production costs halfed, I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that it was due to simplifying its production layout.
A big factor most people leave out is lend lease. While I think many people overplay it's effect in specific areas I think it's effect is underestimated by most. John parshall mentions in one of his lectures that people often cite the 500 million trucks but forget about all of the trains and railroads we supplied to them, and I think that sums it up quite nicely. The soviet union lacked much of the heavy industry, and by heavy I mean the equipment to make heavy forgings and dies or the equipment used to manufacture equipment (Just imagine what it takes to build a railcar, than imagine the equipment used to manufacure the equipment that machines said railcar). They struggled to refine petroleum beyond 85 octane of to manufacture high strength steel.
The USA also sent over manufacturing experts to help set up factories such as the people behind prewar GM, and who converted GM into the super tank factory it became. The soviet union was still in the process and thus was heavily reliant on imports due to the lack of heavy industry, compounding that was the loss of whatever they failed to pack up and move east. I think something that speaks to that fact well is that prewar they struggled to produce more petroleum than Venezuela even though they had the caucuses which as we know today were some of the most oil rich areas in the world. Let alone refine it into high octane fuel or high quality lubricants and so on. They also would have had similar problems with high quality steel production, forgings, castings and so on.
Just for a second imagine the equipment used to make the dies, molds and jigs to cast a T-34 turret. The USA helped them in great ways in those respects by supplying them with high quality prefab parts like raw engine block forgings, steel alloy additives, machinery used in steel mills and so on.
I think a good analogy is as follows. Early in lend lease the USA supplied them with aircraft such as the P-39 and others but the USA soon found that they had to supply the high quality lubricants, fuel and replacement parts for said planes as the USSR struggled to refine petroleum fuels above 85 octane, so once this was learned we instead supplied them with prefab or mostly completed aircraft parts for the La-5 as an example. So all the soviets had to do was assemble it. There was also many tools and dies supplied along with manufacturing tools like mills, lathes, rifling machines etc. So lend lease made it so the USSR could most efficiently use the machinery they had to produce what they needed without needing to build the industrial base normally needed to make those parts.
The soviets were largely responsible for their excellent tank factories on their own barring outside help designing them, but part of what made them so successful was the industrial base behind them such as imported/ lend lease railcars. Over 90% of railroad production for the USSR was supplied via lend lease. The soviets only produced 42 railcars during the war, and of those produced most of them were of the lighter variety. Lend lease supplied pretty much all of the heavy railcars (like 100 ton railcars) which the USSR was incapable of making. Without that base supplied by lend lease they wouldn't have been able to make tanks so effectively as they would struggle to move raw materials for manufacturing; let alone deployment of tanks to the front.
Congrats if you made it through my wall of text, but to conclude, the soviets had the light and medium industry to manufacture aircraft and tanks, but lacked the heavy industrial base to support those factories let alone to build those factories, or to build the steam engines to power them. The same applies to petroleum refineries or steel mills. Lend lease allowed the soviets to support the industry that they had, and prevent material shortages and logistical issues like the germans encountered. Lend lease allowed the soviets to greater focus on the "assembly line" type of manufacturing without requiring the heavy industry to support it. It's a lot easier to build a La-5 when you start with parts 50%-75% done allowing you to not require things like massive forging presses. Tank production is easier when you don't have to build the equipment to make massive castings. Fuel is easier to supply when you don't have to refine specialized additives. Machinery is easier to maintain when you have the specialty lubricants and fluids provided for you. Just think how much more difficulty the Soviet air force would face without having the hydraulic fluid, quality lubricants, or durable steel supplied for them.
I think one way to look at it would be to compare the early T-34 to the late T-34 and I don't mean in fightability, I mean in quality. You can find photos of early T-34s going to war with a spare transmission tied to the engine deck of the thing because it would probably need replacing. Initially the soviets couldn't increase the material quality of the tank because it would greatly disrupt the production even though the actual geometry of the tank parts would remain the same. It was largely the importation of specialty products like steel additives to make stronger alloys, prefab transmissions made of higher strength materials, along with importation of better transmission fluid that made the T-34's transmission more durable.
I think to sum up my summary, one should ponder the fact that even though soviet production increased dramatically, their tank production could never hope to rival M4 Sherman production, even with the more rigorous demands on M4 quality even with the M4 being a newer design for the reasons mentioned above, they just didn't have the heavy industrial base to hope to match us in that aspect. And finally, for the same reasons I mentioned we aided the USSR in, Germany suffered in a contrasting way. Germany suffered from a lack of imports which crippled them even with the massive industrial base they had.
I suppose that aircraft engines are also made of wood. When I said rival the US I meant in terms of efficiency and quality (soviet tank quality was no doubt greatly improved by the import of raw alloying materials), not in total numbers. But if you look up the wartime production numbers the soviets barely made any railcars, and even fewer locomotives. On top of this we sent them road building equipment, etc etc. Lots of logistics aid.
The La-5's engine was an improved and re-engineered version of an american licensed engine which was specifically designed to help curb their reliance on imports in that sector.
The source on the lend lease is more from a collection of knowledge from years of reading and things like that, I don't have a collection of books to reference for your benefit, but I suggest you look at wikipedia for a start, than scroll down to the bottom of the page and go from there. I also would be very interested in the wonderful invention of a wooden aircraft engine.
For sources, start with Major Jordan's Diaries. The USA sent the soviets Millions of pounds of railroad spikes, seriously. You'd think with the ingenuity to make wooden combustion engines they'd be able to easily make hundreds of thousands of railroad spikes with all of that heavy industry they had laying around, oh wait. Why build aircraft out of wood if you have the industry to support superior materials?
Perhaps prefab wasn't the most appropriate word to describe it, and rough or raw forgings/castings would be more appropriate. I remember reading about this many years ago. I also heard it again from john parshall at one of his events, I don't remember but there were other historians there, It's also been mentioned in a couple war college lectures I attended. An archival researcher also mentioned that some of this is just being uncovered more recently as much of those parts went on without being specifically documented, but instead sometimes mislabeled or put under misc parts. Airplane engines are complex things requiring high strength parts and it requires very specific machinery and tools to make parts out of high strength materials. So say just 2 tons of small high strength parts would make a tremendous difference in assembling a reliable engine. Also just look at the amount of alloying components were supplied. And a few high strength gears go a long way in in making artillery barrels.
I read many books when I was getting my stats degree. I also worked in a machine shop in my younger years and have an understanding of how difficult it is to make certain specialty parts, especially those made out of high strength alloys. If you're using old or poorly calibrated equipment you will have a flawed end product along with many tool breakages. Think about the complexities in manufacturing a 25 ton milling machine, things have to have tolerances within +- 5 thousandths of an inch for some very large parts that require complex machining processes. Importing a button rifling machine to replace old broach or cut rifling machines would drastically increase the productivity of rifled artillery manufacturing.
I was much more interested in these topics than, as you can imagine taking a look at the soviet situation from a machinist's lens can bring a different perspective to the situation. I got some answers to my questions from speakers and books. While my mind is no less flawed than yours; I'm sure you could remember many details from a thesis you wrote 7 years ago. Looking into this was a 2 year casual project of mine in the sort of a quest for personal knowledge.
@@galaxy_canon6039 Sources, please. Sources, please.
@@galaxy_canon6039 wrote: "While I think many people overplay it's effect in specific areas I think it's effect is underestimated by most. John parshall mentions in one of his lectures that people often cite the 500 million trucks but forget about all of the trains and railroads we supplied to them, and I think that sums it up quite nicely."
-- Oh, boy! Seriously? Everyone knows it was 450 000 trucks, and not overplayed amount like 500 000 000!
"The USA also sent over manufacturing experts to help set up factories such as the people behind prewar GM, and who converted GM into the super tank factory it became."
-- What factory exactly are you talking about? Also were they USA "government" personnel, or private citizens that been hindered for profit to build factories?
-- If anything Henry Ford build factories in Germany and well as in Soviet Union, same can be said about GM subsidiary Opel in Germany.
"Just for a second imagine the equipment used to make the dies, molds and jigs to cast a T-34 turret. The USA helped them in great ways in those respects by supplying them with high quality prefab parts like raw engine block forgings, steel alloy additives, machinery used in steel mills and so on."
-- Seriously? Where do you get this info(I know you just making it up!)? It just wrong on so many different levels. FYI - tank engines that was build in US of A was completely different that was used in Soviet Union. In Soviet Union engineer Konstantin Cheplan developed direct injection 12 cylinders 38.8 litters aluminum block diesel 4-stroke engine, that for the most part is in use to present day in modern MBTs, while none of American engines used in Sherman tank are 12 cylinders diesel engines. Soviet variant of M4A2 had twin(two independent) 2-stroke diesel engines, but for the most part it was gasoline nine cylinder aircraft radial engine or Ford V-8, there were whole bunch of other engines, but none was 12 cylinders diesels like Soviet had(not even Germans)!
*** I'm sorry you making so many profound mistakes, and falsies, whether is that deliberate trolling, or you just don't know subject that you are talking about. So why are you talking about?
What are you talking about La-5 and why? La-5 70-80% wooden airplane, that did not required "massive forging presses", so why are you talking about something that you don't know about?
T34 was veey expensive tank against common supperstitions.
Now you see why Controlling and Logistics are such interesting topics! Your problems read like directly out of a textbook for those subjects.
Happy Tanksgiving
I believe it is possible to compare individual statistics if the data is available (for example metal input per tank, worked hours per tank, etc.) but as you point out, it is very difficult to near impossible to make a full-on comparison.
If we have the information for every little detail and the context behind everything. Yea... but the world isn't so perfect.
This is so good. This shows how qualified you are to talk about WWII, when you just blow up in doubt the whole thing. Thinking freely and being honest with yourself.
omg, man you opened my mind, thx you !
Very interesting and informative.
0:02 I counted 25 "So" throughout the 8:49 minutes of the video, making an average of a "So" pronounced every 21,16 seconds, or 2,8356 "So" per minute.
One thing is for certain the Krauts were all over the place with production of armored vehicles. They probably would have been better off sticking with one design like the panzer IV and making evolutionary improvements to it and pumping it out in large numbers, instead of all the different models. That concept seems to have worked pretty well with the T-34 and the Sherman.
Very valuable vid, if only that I can quit wishing for accurate figures and getting upset about not being able to get them easily.
WW2 seems like an acid test of the biggest national economies. Designers like Messerschmit designed airplanes like the 109 with production as a first order consideration. Whatever each 109 cost, producing 35,000 of them is impressive. The design of the Spitfire, whatever it cost, took roughly 3 times the worker hours to produce. This difference in industrial culture tells us something about how German and British industry reacted to limited budgets. Wouldn't it be great to be able to accurately compare costs of war production? Too bad! Maybe historians will sort this out for us one day using some kind of metrics for costs! It's disappointing, even counter intuitive, to think we can't nail down and compare the cost of basic production. Nice Job of explaining!
Where dose one start recording the cost & by what metric?
The cost accountant in me finds this stuff really interesting. (nerd) And I want to say that yes, times spent waiting around for resources to arrive, or the power to come back on counts. As does infrastructure costs.
But... this information is a huge amount of work to pull together at the time, when manufacturing is happening and the data is theoretically available. It is an exercise in futility trying to gather the data 70 years later when so many records have been destroyed, lost, or weren't recorded accurately (or at all) in the first place.
I remember reading that at one point Speer and the OKW were considering scrapping all other tank production and just building Tigers. But when they calculated that their entire Tiger production would amount to only 24 Tigers a month they dropped the idea.
Very good video to illustrate what war-management (economic strategy?) is all about. I think there is even a further issue you did not yet touch: the problem of judging decisions of production on bases of the price. The Panzer III and Panther comparison illustrates this very well. Imagine you are in a position to decide if the Panther shall be started to be produced or not. There are so many factors to take into account as you listed here plus tactical and logistical considerations. Of course the Panther is a far better tank (if it does not breake down and this is a big if), but you have to consider all this factors you enumerated plus operational costs (change of spareparts in the depots, i.e. logistical issues; training of the crews and mechanics(!) with the new model and loss of proficency advantages with the old modells; the so called 'Kinderkrankheiten' of new modells and so on). So it is really a tough thing to decide when to introduce a new modell. And this problem becomes even bigger to judge from hindsight, when you consider that the cost of a tank in a specific point in time is also the result of the decisions taken at an earlier point in time. The decision to press for production early on can lead to a low price 16 months later, which then can lead to the hindsight-judgement that they should have pressed even earlier for production of this modell. But if one takes into account the costs resulting from the change one could arive at a different conclusion. Furthermore often enough troops fight better with older modells they are used to than with newer ones they do not yet know so well (or would the Chieftain disagree).
tl;dr Price is the result of processes, that are extended in time and thus influenced by human decisions, and not an static value.
The problem with the tank prices is they were not sold on a public market durnig WWII, so you cannot directly compare them.
You make many good points - that an economic analysis is very difficult - it isn't as simple as looking up a few numbers. One thought might be the percentage of overall military expenditures. ? How much of the WWII German budget was devoted to armor fighting vehicle production? How many production lines were in operation say in 1943? We know the Pzkpfw IV was still in production, Pzkpfw V (panther) and Pzkpfw VI (tiger). Were the Pzkpfw III still in production? Or had their lines been converted over to Stug III production and other vehicles based on the Pzkpfw III chassis.
In 1936 the USA had 87% of the worlds automotive industry. It's factories were safe from bombing, there was no problems with parts supply, no down time during bombing and an educated population. The US in particular had studied methods for the mass production of quality products and it's large consumer base allowed it to exploit this advantage. The only strategic resource it lacked was rubber (world production based mostly in South East Asia). Five giant artificial rubber factories were eventually completed. Before then it was able to make do by recycling rubber form domestic items, tire dumps etc, the re-establishment of Amazonian production from wild trees and vines in the Belgium Congo.
Hi, could you do something about Italian tanks? Especially the heavy one. Thank you
I think I've lost count of the amount of times in books that the Tiger I is used as the example of why German Tank production was so problematic. There are indeed nice round figures, seemingly based around 3's for cost in Reichsmarks and hours to build.
But really the most significant one really was the refusal to use a production line, which was the same with the Tiger, therefore the Tiger had to be lifted from work station to work station, usually from above. This added to time as well as cost. Great idea for building a Rolls Royce, not sure with a 56 ton tiger.
Soviet and US tank production seems to indicate that having a production line, but also cheap to build and repair tanks, reliable, even if not masterpieces in design, optics, fire control with the most amazingly trained crew just to be taken out by a hand held rpg wielded by a child from a shell crater.
Right ideas on paper to have quality over quantity, but in modern industrial warfare, sadly the one with no class who churns out the basic, easy to make, use and maintain materiel wins.
Do you not also count being carpet-bombed relentlessly day and night as well as a factor, or the difficulties getting chrome for ball-bearings, or tungsten for AP? Speer's ideas were not that glamorous, but he extended Germany participating in the war by about 3 years, with hindsight ideas like missile aircraft defence and not HJ kids in ikea-style jets seems like a good idea.
There is only one way to cost things across different time scales. That is the number of man hours needed to manufacture one unit. Costing this way also allows one to factor in the benefit of automation.
And you could also add the cost to develop the tank as well.
That's a interesting note since many forget that aspect. Although development may drag on for a long time due to politics and economic issues. That can inflate the development time and cost. So should we factor that in? Would that be considered unfair as that is outside of the original intended plan? It is an outside factor but it affects it just as much.
We can try to calculate the cost of a tank. But factors outside of the tank affects said cost. If we take that in to context and factor that in, is that fair judgement? After all we are now calculating costs outside of just the tank. So it isn't the cost of just the tank anymore. But if we don't, it lacks context and that value becomes practically meaningless.
I think I had critiqued you on this point long ago. Glad to see you citing sources which I had read too. The answer, outside given in comments comparing costs in resources is correct one, but there is another too. Money is meaningless in war. Money becomes quite literally how you calculate energy or more precisely, time and effort required to produce something. High money cost means that you need expensive materials which cost a lot of money, because they are very needed. You then use your wokforce which is again a resource. All equipment in war in truth can be quite easily quantified. As I had wrote to you before. All equipment's efficiency will be reduced linearly which peaks at roughly 1000 units produced. You can expect at very least that cost of any prototype or first series production models will cost at least double that they will be worth later down the line. Thus, considering this you do have money which merely represents cost in time and resources after which every piece of equipment falls neatly in table. Any out of ordinary vehicle can very reliably be sliced down to your given figures as theoretical calculations are almost as a hard rule. You only consider how much resources and how fancy of the tech, man-hours wise it is.
Another aspect as was said are resources. For example, people talk nonsense about battleships. Yet, battleships do not use a lot of resources. In fact, the only thing they really use is money. Now compare this to fleet of submarines, they use a lot of resources and a lot of rare resources, but are cheap to build in comparison. When you compare the two you think which you need most. Battleship needs a lot of time and so you need to commit way before start of war for it. It will tax your budget, but not your raw resources. Submarines on the other hand will tax rare resources, but they will be cheap to build during peace time as said resources will be highly available. Yet, you cannot build battleships during war nor submarines are very useful during peace time, especially massive fleet of them. You see how calculation got far more complex on whole different level? This stands true for all nations. Soviets could produce aluminium tank engines which even USA could not afford. Available resources and focus on heavy industry instead of civilian one. Do you want to mass produce stuff in peace? Do you know that Germans were short of steel and a lot of other resources to the point they got serious delay in all of their build up plans? So, why you are talking nonsense about German craftmanship? In an environment of limited resources against opponents who have far greater quantitative qualities, people are suggesting that Germany needed to enter war of strategical attrition and produce inferior quality troops and equipment for more of them. Nor they consider that for example 3 Stugs instead of 1 Tiger will use more fuel due to 3 engines instead of one. Will use 3 times more crew, thus vastly different investment into tank schools. Lower quality vehicles will require more replenishment in terms of replenishing crews and fixing, maintaining vehicles which would be especially problematic on strategic scale in low supply situations like USSR. Lower quality vehicles also can be more easily be knocked down. Lets say you can have 2 Pz.4 vs 1 Panther. Panther will not be knocked out in combat so easily as Pz.4 would. Yet, if your superior vehicle manages to score 1 total kill, this is already extra resources and manpower lost which would repay by itself. Like T-34. 30 tons of steel, manpower, engine, suspension, engineering. Tank costed a lot to build either way and when we compare effort to build one or the other tank, said comparison becomes murky, because mass produced Panthers would not end up so much more expensive than T-34 tanks. Nor for example breaking down means a lot when tank is recovered and fixed. No resources are lost and tank can fight another day.
Low slung, hard to see, turret less self propelled guns killed far more allied tanks on both the eastern and western fronts than panzers did. And the SPs were less expensive to produce than conventional tanks. There was no guarantee that the the AVERAGE Tiger or Panther crew was going to "repay" the costs of building their super tanks by racking up numerous kills before their vehicle was knocked out. In fact, tank versus tank combat is not primary mission of any tank. The Germans didn't have the resources to build a balanced panzer force with the right percentages of true tanks and SPs with each doing the role it was best at.
The answer is as stated in the video- you can't simply compare costs or manhours to work out comparisons, nor can the quantity Vs quality be simply applied, life is more complicated than that. For example 3 stugs can be in 3 places so 3 times the chance of 1 being in the right place or 3 stugs have 1 breakdown a week in retreat but the other 2 can tow the broken 1 for repair the single panther can't. My examples are massively simplified (double it to 6 stugs and 2 panthers and a tow is possible) but I stand by my statement that life and war are too complex to find the right answer in the comments section of a you tube video, the best hope is that video is factual, informative and unbiased.
No offense intended.
Kneecapper Why you cannot? Each individual tank cost certain amount to manufacture and fuel to maintain. When comparing equipment from a same category, it is quite easy to draw conclusions as basic resources are the same and complexity of the tank directly translates into man hours spent on it which then is directly represents cost of each individual vehicle. Military history visualized mentioned efficiency gain values, but why it matters when number remains consistent and highly predictable? You take the last and cheapest value meant to represent each combat vehicle.
You confuse opetational and tactical considerations with logistical and industrial ones. A single Tiger representals lower amount of resources invested per man hours due to quality of a tank and the scarcity of the crews. Not to mention that Stugs are likely to consume 3x vs 2x fuel. At the end we come to a concluson that when there is scarcity of resources it is better to invest into harder to replace equipment. Roughly 2x steel vs 3x in Stugs case. A Tiger saves steel and said steel can then be used to produces lets say a Puma. Otherwise you would not had had this vehicle because you would had lacked steel for it as was the case for Germany.
Kneecapper There is often lack of knowledge when it comes to German industry. It was mobilized far more early and to a greater degree than of all allies. The issue is what to do when you do not have industry to begin with? Germans chronically lacked people, resources and finances. Vast majority of military historians simply talk out of their asses when they critique low levels of production to German over engineering and quality. The truth was that Naui Germany was only a second rate world power in a lot of areas, especially in industrial and raw resources. If anything, Germans got extremely lucky and thus achieved insanely more than it should had had.
@@REgamesplayer As the video states there is no accurate figures available for manpower or steel or gun or radio or development costs or ratio of efficiency between building puma with force labour vs tiger in new efficient factory vs panther in old factory vs stug in repairing factory after bombing. The data is not available and even if it was you end up comparing apples to oranges ie the data would not be for equivalent situations. Even if the "cost" of building 100 tigers in a year was to be known, the cost to build 200 in the same year is unlikely to be twice, either making twice leads to efficiency improvements or the factory is too small and inefficiency results or lack of specialist parts/labour slows the build or any of a 100 other unknown factors occur. Real world is complex and this is what the video is about and why you can't compare tank "prices"
I think material would help.
Can you make relative comparisions though? Such as "1 tiger costs roughly as much as 2 T-34s"
Germany had not a lack of tanks because of capacities, it had a lack of fuel and therefore not the will to produce as many tanks as other factions did. The mortar by the way was way more important then tanks were as battles in Russia mainly were infantry vs infantry and maybe some light vehicles involved.
They had 6 months to knock out the russians before they ran out of fuel. It can be seen in the scale of the german offensivs in barbasrosa then case blue and lastly zitadel
Personally, I would look at person-hours to produce the tank and raw materials needed. The context might be different in different countries (e.g. shortages of some raw materials in Germany, especially in late-war), but these will give an indication of the effort needed to produce the tank.
Raw materials is probably the easiest to look at. For instance it’s obvious that a Panzer VI will need about twice the steel of an M4 Sherman or Panzer IV, because it’s about twice the weight. As a second level of detail, you could then look at more specialist materials used in the tank, but then context becomes more important (shortages of tungsten or whatever in certain countries, which were not constraints in other countries). Even if the data aren’t easily available, it would be possible to look at surviving examples of tanks in museums and see what materials are present and their approximate masses.
What is really needed is some practical measure of effectiveness per unit of production capacity. This is relatively easy when comparing bombers from the same country, where the measure of tonnes of bombs dropped per airframe in service is a useful measure. But this is more difficult when comparing equipment from different countries, because the forces that they were up against vary.
A similar measure for the effectiveness of tanks is much more difficult. It’s easy to measure the productivity of a bomber airframe in terms of what weight of bombs it dropped, but I can’t think of a similar simple measure for tanks. You could look at weight of opposing tanks destroyed per tonne of tank, but this measure is just as dependent on the effectiveness of the opposing tanks as the particular tank being assessed. And the real effectiveness of a tank is not measured in terms of opposing tanks destroyed, but in terms of battle advantage gained by its use. (An obvious example of this is the British use of tanks in WWI, where there were almost no tank v. tank battles, but the tanks were moderately important in helping the Entente forces to win the war, especially in the final Hundred Days).
*"Person-hours"?* for fuck sake, if you are going to butcher the English language at least do it properly, Man meant human, it was gender neutral, back when the Anglo-Saxons thought you needed to specify between humans, elves, dwarves and giants.
So the *correct* term would be *"Human-hours",* as that is what it always was regardless of 21st century revisionism, and not "Person", which is not a synonymous word for human.
Btw, Wer/Werman is the specific term for a Man of the male gender, which we still retain in werewolf, male-human-wolf.
😄
JUST TRAPSUKI English changes: sinister originally meant left-handed for instance. Person is the current gender-neutral word for a human in this context. Industrial workers in both world wars were of both sexes, so a gender-neutral term for worker effort is needed.
Nice hoi4 reference there
@Military History Not Visualized All fair point, particularly the one about comparing costs across different countries. Im interested in your thoughts on Zaloga’s comment in _”Armored Champion”_ on page 205 where he says that, taking acquisition cost and reliability together, the German Army could have fielded seven StuG IIIs or one Tiger. He made the point that seven StuGs represented far great combat power than a single Tiger. What do you think?
I found that passage interesting and still thinking about it. Additionally, I have to get more data since the Panzermuseum Munster gave far better reliability rates for the Tiger than Zaloga.
Well those figures are going to be partly timeframe dependent. He was talking about 1943 so, from that perspective, everything really has to be anchored there - probably in the late summer.
Comparing costs is difficult, but if reliable Input-Output tables exist that provides a possible way. Input-Output tables detail the inputs needed for outputs and are used in sophisticated modern macroeconomic models. Input-Output tables include intermediate inputs, like transportation costs. This method could answer the question you asked about a potential framework for thinking about this problem.
where do they exist, do you have a link or book table, because the best I found so far was like 5-10 values for Panzer III & IV, but with no bloody source or any useful commentary. Book was from an old General if I remember correctly.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized - WW2 input-output tables aren't my specialisation, I'm used to dealing with more modern data. My quick search found some for the Soviet Union warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/data/ww2/
I also managed to find an input-output table for Germany from 1936:
www.rug.nl/research/portal/publications/pub(a736f6af-340e-425b-b516-a743429969e5).html
I had a look for some US input-output tables. Wassily Leontief produced some very detailed tables for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1941 for 1939 (42 sectors). I couldn't find these. Leontief also produced tables from 1919-1929. Leontief won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work.
Even if you don't like the sources, the concept of Input-Output could help you answer some of the questions you asked. Should transport be included in production cost? Input output table answer - absolutely!, Which Panzer III should a Panther be compared? - Input output table answer - the one for the same year, because the opportunity cost of producing a Panther is some equivalent of a Panzer III (in terms of steal, man hours, etc.). However, this will only tell you what the cost is, it won't tell you the benefit. A Panther could cost twice as much, but be three times as effective. If that's the case, it makes sense to produce Panthers.
I wonder, is it possible to find information about the amounts of raw materials necessary to produce a specific tank as well as the amount of raw materials that the country in question can/could produce for it's manufacture?
I think you're onto something about criticising the use of "cost" in terms of money, due to the fact that the value of pure currency is unreliable during wartime.
So taking a hard look at raw material input in production and raw material output of the country is infinitely more relevant than a pricetag.
Basically, you need to look at the economy as if it was a game of Age of Empires rather than a game of money. :)
I think you're onto something here, but you're not quite right in saying currency can't be a reliable indicator of productivity. I think for Germany and the USSR this is so, but if you look at the USA for example I think you would find it pretty reliable as the USA had a hard gold backed currency along with good accounting. It would probably take some archival research, but if you can find data on the exact number of M4 transmissions were sent to europe, you could probably compare it with tank cost. Hell, you could even compare it to prewar automotive production in germany at least. I think it's not a valid strategy analyzing the USSR as Lend Lease was such a massive factor and there probably isn't any data on how that affected USSR production. But one thing to point out is that until Lend Lease was in full stride (late 1942) the germans weren't really outnumbered in terms of tanks on the front.
Just because the USSR started the war with 28k tanks doesn't mean that they were all deployed to the eastern front. I believe only about 60% of them were deployed to the eastern front in december 1941, remember the USSR still feared rebellion or even moreso invasion from japan. They were also in the process of moving their factories.
Many of the soviet tanks were outdated such as the BT series. There weren't many outdated german tanks on the front compared to the soviet tanks. The germans were only outnumbered by about 33% in the early war. Also you must figure in the fact that the soviet tank divisions suffered from extremely poor readiness rates. The germans had mostly PzIII's with the occasional PzII and about 5% PzIV's, but if any PzI's served, they didn't have any major role. Remember the PzI was a training tank. In 1941 the soviets had around 4k light and extremely obsolete tanks, 450 medium tanks (not just T-34s) and 300 "heavy" tanks compared with around 800 panzers not including german light tanks.
TIK did an excellent Video on this subject and I suggest you watch it.
@@galaxy_canon6039 I didn't mean that money is never a reliable indicator. But it most certainly can be very unreliable when desperate governments start printing money like crazy to fund war efforts and basically circumventing regular markets when they acquire their raw materials to manufacture weapons and vehicles (like with slave labour or appropriating captured resources from enemies etc.)
Unless each and every part involved in a particular machine has been bought with currency through an open market, it's very hard to accurately describe it's actual cost.
Then there's the wealth difference between countries to consider, and the amount of tanks or planes that they need to field for the task at hand.
For instance, South Korea is usually credited as having the worlds most expensive tanks in service today (due to having the highest pricetag). But whether something is expensive or not is relative to whichever budget makes the purchase, what roles the tank is expected to fulfill and how many you intend to field etc.
So in the context of South Korea, maybe their tank isn't as expensive as if it would've been if they tried to manufacture it in the U.S or China.
@Seven Proxies I do understand what you said. The point of my comment was that a good starting point would be looking at the cost of US manufacturing of tanks as a starting point. You can look at how much the parts cost, how many man hours to assemble them and so on. Than look at similarly priced cars both from Germany 1935-37 and american cars as a starting point as one would assume that wages in Germany wouldn't differ that much from other western countries as they were a very developed nation comparable to France and other nations.
Your example with the South Korean tank is a bit silly. South Korea pays X for said tank, maybe it would be more expensive to produce it in the USA, who knows. It probably has a lot of US tech in it though... But all of that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if they required 10 or 10,000, they cost X per unit. It's unrelated to the question to which I posit a way of solving. My point is that when studying the relative values and costs associated in the production of specific items which accurate data for cost is unavailable or unreliable it's important to find a constant if you ever want to find a conversion factor. The reason that the South Korean tank is irrelevant to this problem is that we know the cost; it doesn't matter if South Korea tries to buy their tank with euros, the USD or their native currency, it has the same vale. We have conversion factors for modern currencies, but we don't have these for the 1941 3rd reichmark let alone Nazi Germany's annual military budget for tanks in 1941. In contrast if South Korea pays X of their native currency, we know they could pay xy in USD.
The thing you say about costs being relative doesn't need to be stated. It's a simple fact of basic economic function. The problem is we have little to no data on conversion factors, wages and the like, but a starting point for finding a constant would be to find an appropriate constant. If you read up on the economy on Nazi Germany and doing business in or with Nazi Germany you'll see what makes this such a difficult figure to find even though it may seem easy.
Even for the US you have the distortions of price controls and rationing, so prices (or in other contexts things like inflation calculations) can be unclear or misleading
Whatever it takes for victory, we're lucky so far that we haven't faced a formidable enemy,knocking out tanks And airframes. We need to expand our arms productivity or we'll be seriously lacking when it comes time to set up mfg factories, to replace equipment. Been saying this for years, since the end of the Cold War.
sold one tiger to japan? did they ever receive it? was it disassembled and packed into a u-boat?
What about factory volume/tanks a month?
Many German vehicles were built using slave labor. Does slave labor increase or decrease the man hours involved in building a tank? What is the effect on build quality if your labor force hates you?
This is actually a good point. Slave labor may be "cheap" in money but expensive in time and failure rate.
@@MakeMeThinkAgain: I saw a documentary on the rebuilding/restoration of a Panther tank. When they opened up one component related to the final drive, it was filled with cigarette butts! The slave laborers who assembled this component sabotaged it. I doubt this was an isolated incident. It probably explains a lot of the late war German tanks' tendencies to breakdown.
@@Bufoferrata i higly doubt that the slave laborers did that they had gurads wathcing their every move and would be punished and ordered to clean it up and well they were slaves the germans didnt trust them ao they had guards and inspectors all around the factories
@szolnok95: Somebody lose their Alsatian? Here boy!
@szolnok95: Not surprised.
I guess this issue also makes other calculation difficult. Like, IF Germany did not invest that much time and materials in to Kriegs Marine, what would that mean for other branches like Heer and Luftwaffe and how those things would reflect on Easter Front (Big debate what if Germany would fight 'only' Soviet Union).
Anyway. Good that you have pointed out how things are really complicated, even 'obvious' stuff like production time/cost.
that's unrealistic, that means the German literally give the British Royal Navy a free hand of doing what they want. And even more lend lease material flow to the Soviet Union. I mean, abandoning the Kriegsmarine means abandoning Italy in North Africa and Italy mainland. And literally economy suffocation to British Naval Blockade. You guys focus so badly against the Soviets that you forgotten British was the nation that carry on fighting against Nazi Germany while Stalin sued for peace first after they destroyed Poland. Would welcome the British to bombard Germany with its naval guns if the Kriegsmarine doesn't exist.
There is no realistic way that Nazi Germany could fight the Soviet Union as the only nation to fight. You completely ignoring the history that British was the nation that kept fighting Nazi Germany that forced Nazi Germany to invade the Soviet Union. Which means Nazi Germany had to never invade France, hell it can't even invade Poland. They had to wait the Soviets, ruled by a paranoia Stalin who just suffer major losses during the Winter War to invade Europe. Stalin is a monster, but he ain't stupid. He worries internal enemies than external one at that time. It was the Nazi invasion and atrocity that united the Soviets against the fascist beast.
You're right, "money" is not a good indicator. But the Germans didn't calculate cost that way. They knew that so many 0000's of tonnes of steel of a certain grade could be produced per period, and then juggled the allocation priorities according to need. A huge simplification, but that's the essential method. New subscriber BTW.
I think the fact that Panzer III was in production for much longer in 43 than Tiger tank, and thus has much better efficiency, does actually not matter. You are comparing the burden each individual tank has on the national economy. Reichsmark might have been a phony money, but it's still a general indication. A detailed breakdown of work hours by the worker category, machine hours by machine type category and materials used as a percentage of annual/monthly/weekly production of same material would have been ideal, but unfortunately even production costs are barely there for ww2.
Cost in terms of man hours and resources has some relevance. Cost in terms of currency within the span of WW2, not so much. This is mostly useful in terms of comparing armored vehicles being produced at the same point in time by the same country. It still is not a perfect comparison since you need to factor in the costs and delays to switch production, the relative utility provided by each vehicle in combat, maintenance costs, logistical support required, use of limited resources, and training requirements.
You also need to factor the scarcity of resource types and skills since they vary by nation. The constraints for Germany are not the same as for the Soviets
By mid 1943 most of Germany's allies and any westerner who had been interested in investing in Reichmarks must have realized that Germany would lose the war eventually, and that must've had a significant effect on the value of their currency.
The answer is as stated in the video- you can't simply compare costs or manhours to work out comparisons, nor can the quantity Vs quality be simply applied, life and the data is more complicated than that. For example 3 stugs can be in 3 places so 3 times the chance of 1 being in the right place or 3 stugs have 1 breakdown a week in retreat but the other 2 can tow the broken 1 for repair the single panther can't. My examples are massively simplified (double it to 6 stugs and 2 panthers and a tow is possible) but I stand by my statement that life and war are too complex to find the right answer to the video subject in the comments section of a you tube video, the best hope is that video is factual, informative and unbiased.
No offense intended.
perhaps, for production cost, one shouldn't use financial cost, but rather material cost of production? as a comparison between material usage vs. overall material availability?
I tried to find the price of a Volkswagen Beetle during WW2 and compare it to post war prices and than convert the prices to dollars and than do the same with tanks. I found out that the car cost was about 900 Reichsmarks and the Panther was about 100000 Reichsmarks, in 1960's Beetle cost was around $1100 dollars so in 1960's Panther would cost about $122000. I'm probably wrong but I tried :D
But have this calculation taken into consideration if improved production methods have changed the price of the car? What about the prices of raw materials, maybe the prices was different in war time Germany than in peace time in the 1960s?
Prices change for other reasons than inflation you know. And maybe thats why it is so damn hard to calculate what things costed in the past.
The price of bread, gold, iron, silver, copper, fish, corn, horses have always gone up and down in price throughout history. And inflation is about the general average price level.
And prices could change for all kinds of reasons, wartime shortages, more effiecent production methods, increased demand, lack of competition, technological progress that makes some products outdated (ie typewriters and analog cameras) that falls in price while modern products is more valuable.
just talk about curb cost. what did it cost to turn raw ore and petroleum into a tank. start with material expenditures.
How much water was used (water used in quenching krupp armor for instance)
how much petroleum in letters are used(for instance how many miles between factories)
How about the price in gold
I asked a question on the cost of two tanks while ago. Maybe other people did too. Anyway, this is a thought-provoking answer, since it raises questions about commonly held beliefs on cost. Maybe the Tiger and Panther tanks were too new to be produced 'efficiently' during the second world war?
The problem was that USA had the factories and knew how to massproduce millions of cars before the war. So they could just turn those factories into huge tank production facilities.
But Germany on the other hand started the war without any experience in massproduction. So Germany had to make many noob mistakes in the early stages in the war before it could realize how they could make massproduction of tanks easier.
So the cost of building tanks fell, and tank production became more effiecent. And the Panther tank began to be an excellent on the battlefield when its engine failure problems was solved.
But all this was too little too late for Germany. 6000 panther tanks produced is quite a high number of tanks produced compared to other tanks the Germans built. But 6000 tanks were never close enough to suffiecent to deal with 49.000 Sherman tanks or 50.000 T-34's.
Starting a modern industrial war without first taking a course in division of labour, fordism and Taylorism is never a good idea.
@@nattygsbord That's the kind of criticism I'm used to hearing. I've got the impression that German manufacturers didn't really adapt to modern industrial techniques, instead preferring an artisanal approach to manufacturing. I'm not an authority on this topic however.
@@righteousindecision2778 Well there are many things to talk about in the American way of production. But I guess I think division of labour is one such classic starting point.
And division of labour means that you divide up work and let people specialize in each separate tasks. And you see this thing in almost every society. People don't work as postman at the morning, and become a doctor on the middle of the day, and end the day by working as lawyer... and the next day work as a pilot and a school teacher.
Instead people specialize their skills in doing one type of job and become good at it, instead of being mediocre in everything. Another benifit of people specializing is that you don't have to waste time from going from one job to another.
And you can drive this division of labour even further at a workplace. Some guy can become a specialist at cut timber, and another person can turn that timber into tables, and third person can make the paint job.
And the point is that your team of experts togheter will work much more effiecently than if everyone on the job tried to do all kinds of work for himself and both cut the timber, assemble the parts and paint it.
And the more you can divide your job up into smaller tasks people can specialize in - the more effiency you get. And if you are only going to sell only one table, then it would be pointless to buy expensive machinery for your workers. But if you are going to sell many tens of thousands of tables, then you realize that cutting timber can be very time consuming without good tools like an electric saw.
And with better tools you get even more effiecent at making stuff. And you can make more tables in workday that you could do before. And you no longer need as many workers to work to produce the same amount tables as before, since the amount of tables produced per worker in a day have risen.
So what you always want to do is to seek out ways to divide work into smaller and smaller parts. And let people specialize in each separate easy task. And you give them tools and machines that are easy to handle even for a villiage idiot.
And then you position those machines in a sequential order inside a factory, and every guy along the assembly line adds his own little part to the construction of a car. And just like with Lego you add part after part until you finally get a car. And each worker produces his own little Lego brick to the car and nothing more or less.
And the benifits of this system is clear. You no longer need skilled labour to build cars and instead you can use cheap low skilled workers. And you no longer specialist knowledge to build cars, so the power the workers have against the capitalist is now broken.
And when the job of building a car have been so broken down into hundreds of small jobs, then you can also start using machines or robots to make them much of the parts and assemble them.
And with standardization you will always have components that fits with each other - like lego bits always fits with each other, and you don't have to tailor made every little goddamn thing. So you can just store screws, bolts and wheels in a depot and know that they will fit - which is nice, imagine if no ammunition could fit into your cannon so you always had to wait until a new shot was specifically made only for your gun.
Instead the military use some standardized sizes of the bullets they use in rifles, machine guns and cannons so solidiers easily can use the same ammunition for one pistol as for another pistol.
And that makes life easier and it makes it possible to cut down the cost of producing and storeing things. And you can also let other companies build all the parts for your firm, while all what you do is it put togheter all the pieces into a car, or a plane, ship, tank or what it might be.
The problem with German production was that it never really went over to Fordism and started to massproduce vehicles along fordist principles of using low skilled labour with specialized tools.
But instead German used craftsmen that kept on building tanks with overly complex designs. And standardization was not taken so seriously, and a panther composed of about 200.000 parts while a T-34 only had about 50.000.
And the proud German craftsmen kept their traditions of using the best high quality components for a tank, despite they costed more money money and took more time to make than other alternatives. The Russian tankmakers realized that it would be pointless to build engines that would last for 40 years, if their T-34 tanks they built were most likely soon a burning wreck, when the average life expectancy for a Russian tank was only 6 months.
So the Russians managed to drive down costs and building time of their tanks by removing all unecessary luxuries. But the Germans never did that, and as a result did they also not produce as many tanks as the allies.
One can of course speculate about the reasons why they never went over to fordism.
If it was because the lack of money in Weimar Germany that prevented
people from buying cars after the hyperinflation and the great depression, so that Germany never would build an automotive industry the same size as USAs?
Or was it other reasons, like stubborn craftsmen traditions, military traditionalism that wanted perfect tanks without backing on any quality requirements regardless of the wartime situation?
Or was it because German automotive industry was lazy and never forced by the nazis into any painful "structural rationalizations" that would force German companies to fire unnecessary workers and become better at making more cars per worker?
Personally I think Germany had problems with all these 3 things.
And it was only in the late war the tried to simplify their designs of their weapons. And the advanced MG34 got replaced with a more "Made in China" MG42. And the amount of components to make a Panther was reduced somewhat, just like the SdKfz 251 used a much simpler design at the end of the war.
But it was too little too late.
I agree. The bottom line, is the bottom line. The Tiger I and II were very expensive because Germany built so few of them. Look at the final production totals, and then work backwards.
5:12 - sounds like a few words from a foreign language. Does anybody know what was said there?
Funny money? Oh you mean like the dollar which is just worthless paper? And as for the Japanese Tiger, the price difference is because the price included ammunition, spares & crew training; all together.
have you given any thought about covering one of the lesser talked about facets of World War 2 foreigners fighting for major powers. Most prominently being the Ostlegionen for Germany?
kinda, I got a book on the smaller Axis members during Barbarossa, wasn't too happy with the book at the initial reading and postponed it, that was probably around April or something.
Sorry I may have worded that badly. I was referring to foreigners IN the armies of the major powers. Mass conscription of the populations of occupied territories or colonies. Like Korean's in the Imperial Japanese army ~12% of total man power or the Soviet POWs (Ostlegionen) ~5% of the Wehrmacht.
thank you for clearing that up. Maybe, if I come across something in my many books, yet, rather unlikely for now (and even likely topics might take years, since I basically come up with new topics every few weeks and postpone / scratch others).
I remember a Russian statistic that took their tanks and Germany’s and they calculated the expected time they would last in battle. Even though German tanks were lasting longer The Russian tanks would be able to cover the spread by producing enough.
ua-cam.com/video/N6xLMUifbxQ/v-deo.html&t=26m20s
2nd speaker at 26:30
Perhaps this is to look at it the wrong way? The problems you cite make it clear that we have no way of treating cost as a hard factor, like gun penetration or speed. But soft factors like ergonomics and visibility also matter to the vehicle's evaluation, and you haven't chosen to reject consideration of those factors because they can't easily be quantified. One has to at least account for the fact that German vehicles are expensive in the heuristic sense, because the Germans did not standardize production to the degree that their enemies did, and because the Germans produced so damn many models that they don't get to spread development costs over so many units like their enemies did.
It might be that the best way to look at it is in terms of logistical load rather than manufacturing cost--e.g. the most important sense in which the Sherman was cheaper than the Cromwell was because it required much less maintenance time (and therefore fewer support staff, and less time offline, to keep the thing operational)--whereas the Tiger was so expensive because it required a lot of those things, in addition to dedicated transport because of its short operational range and a large supply of fuel because of its weight.
For pretty much all of those "do you take x into account for the price" questions the answer is yes, you take into account all of the costs associated with getting the tanks made and delivered to the military.
So basically, there are too few sources for material needed (in mass or volume) and even just plain cost in whatever resource you pick?
I would look for some metric that exists for all nations. Whether it's time or something else, if they are all dealing with the same problems (ramping up production, different plants) you should be able to get values you can compare. Otherwise, yes, it's apples and oranges.
But those metrics mean differently to each nation. They also measure it differently. One nation may measure the steel used with machining tools included. Others may not. One nation may have plenty of steel while another have a shortage. Would the cost be relative to a nation? Or would a rich nation simply mean they don't care about cost?
@@neurofiedyamato8763 Regardless, the Germans would probably have been better off building more Nashorns than Tigers.
You measure the ‘cost’ by seeing how many of the vital resources they consume. Skilled Man hours, non skilled man hours, raw steel, oil, and coal. Having studied war production models of that era for any meaningful comparison of peak efficiency is 8-12months after production begins. The reason for this is after 12-18 months they start becoming outdated rapidly. Ironically enough this general production model also applies building iPhones. Also, there is an integrated efficiency bonus factor for tanks/products that borrow more than 50% of the previous versions parts and/or assembly lines.
yeah, but we have bascially just a handful of values for each tank and/or one particular factory, e.g., for the Soviets the man hours differed widely across depending on the factory.
Military History not Visualized maybe but no one can hold you to rocket science precision on this. As a project engineer that’s responsible for bidding out some major projects I can tell you that you should be able to come up with numbers within an order of magnitude of accuracy. Someone might say that if that’s the best accuracy you can come up with thing it’s meaningless but I beg to differ. Another way to test your numbers is that you publish the source data for your analysis but don’t publish the results. Then have other consultants independently put in their bids along with their detailed analysis of how they came up with those numbers. It’s at that point you then grade the bids/submissions and narrow it down to the best two, three, or four then debate it out in a scientific fashion. We generally like to narrow it down to two or three but if their is a forth that’s well founded then we may have two rounds of debate before setting on a bid. This process also helps us establish where we were with projecting the original budget and sometimes we have to revise our numbers after this process.
The American's had to build ships to field all of their tanks... Hard to account for that aspect in a comparison.
Germany produced too many fighting vehicles. Training was a nightmare and so was spare parts. In my view, it should have produced only 2. The Stug 3/4 and the improved Panzer 4. All the resources devoted to the Tiger, Panther etc should have been allocated to produce the maximum quantity of these two vehicles.
Can we get a couple of these tanks and go knock on obozos front door???
Would you ever do video about Operation Unthinkable? I think that allies would have beaten the soviets considering better industry, tanks, aircraft, possibly more manpower (back then there was a lot, and I mean A LOT of people who really hated communism), possibility to open more fronts (Scandinavia, Iran, Russian Far East), Soviets had rather uncertain allies, etc.
America had only lost 600,000 men by April 1945, whereas a rather telling statistic about Soviet losses is that if you were a Russian male born in 1923, you had an ~80% chance of dying in WWII. I can't remember where I got that statistic though, so don't quote me on it. It is only meant to illustrate the sheer losses that the USSR suffered. I think that Operation Unthinkable might have worked, but only if the Americans had time to ship more men across the Atlantic, as there were more Soviet soldiers in Germany than Allied at the end.
The Russians would not really be recovering any significant manpower during that time anyway, so a few months of transport time are available. In this time more American tanks and British aircraft could be moved to the frontlines, and Churchill had also planned to re-arm German POWs to fight the Soviets.
In short, I agree.
In 1945 the USSR stood no chance against the western allies because of nuclear weapons. The USAAF would have been dropping a nuke every few weeks until the USSR surrendered or there was nothing left.
The world was literally destroyed (except the US) by end of WW2 in Europe - the US was still fighting Japan - and once that was done - there was 0 interest amongst the vast majority of US citizens much less the majority of the citizens of Western Europe interested in fighting the USSR - so it was totally infeasible from a political point of view.
I kind of think you are on to the awnser but. the question is. when It comes to battles their is three things, Speed, armour and firepower. Speed It´s good to be where you need to be and if things go south get away. its also good to put metal on target first. Armour it´s good ta be able to survive hits. Fire power, It´s no point to hit something if you can´t destroy it.
You said 'so' 17 times. Brb gonna go get super learnt.
When you watch a ad about elephants and rhinos before a tank video lol
Now if your argument is valid then the same argument might be extended to other war time production... at least for weapons?
*Compare weight.* _And multiply by a coefficient for local steel prices_
Tanks are made out of steel. Weight is a great proxy for how much steel a tank has. The cost of steel was maybe different among the different countries in WWII?
Yes, there _are_ nuances of design and production, but it aggregates out - across countries and throughout time!
Another factor is that money =/= resources. Resources either imported or domestically produced also costs quite a bit. And the distribution of such resources for guns, tanks, planes, trains, ships etc. Using it on a tank may take up resources for another. Having money doesn't always mean you have the materials to build the vehicle.
There's a lot that goes in to production. I find the time for production and costs are just largely general idea and not anything you should use as if its God's words or something.
Very insightful, everything in the world gets so complicated. Would be so much better if the world was black and white. (Who knows, if the multiverse is real, such a world exists!)
7:09 If you actually were Donald Rumsfeld the channel would be called 'Military Reality not Visualized'.
St. Valentine is now known for freqency festival 😂
This reminds me of silly comparisons of American, Russian, and Chinese hardware today, where planes which are clearly equivalent with similar hardware don't cost similar amounts.
Richtig, richtig - ganz allgemein kam mir die Argumentation mit den Produktionskosten schon immer etwas seltsam vor. Ich meine: die waren irgendwann im totalen Krieg.
Wenn sie am Ende gewinnen, sind solche Zahlen völlig wurscht...und wenn sie am Ende verlieren genauso.
Wie aufwendig die Produktion ist, ist das dann wieder was anderes. Da sind die Mittel halt wirklich endlich. Geld kann man aus dem Nix erschaffen.
But you don't need precise numbers for an international comparison; the only figure you need is the total number of tanks produces, and then you can say that the German had X Panthers compared to the Russians who hat Y T34s and the Americans, who had Z Shermans. I'm too lazy to look up the numbers myself, but as far as I remember, there were substantially more Shermans and T34s then German tanks. Was this is concious strategic decision by the German Army? Have less tanks, but higher quality? If so, was this decision a mistake and did it contribute significantly to the German defeat? Or was German tank production due to political, ideological, economic or technical factors simply not as effective as the Unites States' and the Soviet's? These are questions that can be answered based on the available sources.
So, after listening to this video, I still don't know what the approximate costs of the two tanks were, so, a waste of time.
look at the title: "Tank Production Cost a meaningful Factor for Comparison?" ...
This is as complicated as the reliability topic.
First different countries had to use different materials and producing methods. Us and soviets used casting which was faster and cheaper. However germans could not cast huls or turrets as the lack of equipment. Also the germans in fact used very time consuming and primitive methods to produce tanks not to mention the different firms making different parts. only one delay and the whole process is doomed.
Even you find out that it is more time consuming or requires x man hours what about it? Man hour is irrevelant because if some can afford some 100,000 workers it will still have hinger uotput than the one with 10000 workers even if the "man hour" for a single unit is 4 times higher.
Cost: almos impossible to compare countries currencies. And prize alone does not matter too.
- "Having 4 panzer IVs instead of a Kingtiger is cheaper and more smart" -Not yet. It is cheaper to produce but more expensive to keep them. in 1km the KT eats 5l fuel the 4 panzer IV
3x4 12 liters. 4 times the crew etc. Not to mention different use and purpose of the equipment.
-Even higher cost could brings back the ectra effort taken in them. The Tiger bring back their cost. But things like Schwerer Gustav were absolutry waste of resources
I liked more those old videos without your face in them, not because you're ugly or anything ahahha, in fact you're quite good looking(no homo lol), but I feel like you feel uncomfortable in front of the camera, but if you want to do these kind of videos I support you and I hope you gradually get more and more comfortable doing videos this way. Cheers!
I can see the narrator in this video, im confused.
this video should have been about F-35 vs F-16 ....
I think this is a major overkill
You're basically reinventing the wheel here.
We're not comparing how much would it cost the Soviets to produce tiger tanks vs how much it cost the Germans, we're comparing cost on the situation that was real at that time not on a what if situation.
As such, production costs identified by different countries for their various tanks is all that needs to be taken into consideration, as all other factors you identified were already taken into consideration by those governments to come up with the price they provided.
The work is already done. Those governments identified exact how much it costs to produce each of their machines, so now all we need is just compare those already identified prices
Perhaps we should not venture into funny money or resource availability because in that case we are talking about strategic and economic evaluation of countries, which is just over complicating the question about tank prices for nothing but what if scenarios, while the answers for the real world scenario that did happen already exist
How the fuck did the Japanese recieve the tiger ? How did they ship it and through which route
Simply, compare all the aspects of production efficiency And Its duration in context of how well they did on the front. Never make it statement of economics first. What do you think?
Heil Bundesrepublik Tschechien
Why is the Reichsmark "funny money." In 1943 an ounce of gold was worth c. 80 RM. This was c. 2 weeks work for an average German worker. An average worker in the USA today couldn't buy an ounce of gold with 2 weeks wages. The real value of money is how much gold it buys, ergo, the German RM in 1943 was still a valuable commodity.
What isn’t clear to me is Why you would compare the production cost of different countries’ tanks at all. What question are you trying to answer, and to what purpose? Until you have a definitive answer for that, any comparison or discussion of methodology is pretty pointless.
Also how much do you charge for a slave worker worked to death?
How much do you charge for workers killed and products destroyed mid completion while the factory was bombed ?
Interesting if you're really into it but kinda wanted to blow my brains out after 6 mins lol
I wonder why the modern Austrian Air Force's fighter capabilities are such a joke.