Was Nazi Germany circa the late 30s/early 40s only a middle power?

Power or Nazi Germany?

  • Great Power

    Votes: 14 70.0%

  • Middle Power

    Votes: 6 30.0%
  • Total voters
    20
Offspring

Offspring

Joined Mar 2013
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Sephiroth said:
I don‘t know? And it doesn‘t matter as Hitler and company would have not known how much they had to pay.
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Do you not get the point about 1932?
Lausanne Conference, (June–July 1932), conference that was held to liquidate the payment of reparations by Germany to the former Allied and Associated powers of World War I. Attended by representatives of the creditor powers (Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Italy) and of Germany, the conference resulted in agreement on July 9, 1932, that the conditions of world economic crisis made the continued reparation payments impossible. Germany, however, was to deliver to the Bank for International Settlements, established in 1930, 5 percent redeemable bonds to the value of three billion Reichsmarks. The creditor governments canceled war debts as between themselves but made a “gentleman’s agreement” that the Lausanne Protocol would not be ratified until they had reached a satisfactory agreement with respect to their own war debts to the United States. Although the agreement was never ratified, the Lausanne Protocol in effect put an end to attempts to exact reparations from Germany.
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Why do you think it wasn't brought up for 7 years? Your first post was this:
Sephiroth said:
Still being burdened by the treaty of versailles, I think Germoney had a lot of debt
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So, you thought the Nazis were still paying. They paid nothing, and you're now grasping at another argument. Go ahead and show me some sources saying they went to war in 1939 because of a debt that was effectively cancelled in 1932.
 
Sephiroth

Sephiroth

Joined Feb 2015
7,536 Posts | 1,053+
Germany
Why do you think I thought they were paying? I said Germany had debt (suspended or not). They were obviously not paying duh.
 
Sephiroth

Sephiroth

Joined Feb 2015
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Germany
What do you want? A citation of some historian telling it was one of the reasons?
 
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Offspring

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Sephiroth said:
What do you want? A citation of some historian telling it was one of the reasons?
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I'm fine with a secondary source, but I would prefer a primary source. There are plenty of those from the Nazi regime.
 
Sephiroth

Sephiroth

Joined Feb 2015
7,536 Posts | 1,053+
Germany
Nope, but maybe there is. I am not gonna bother looking up sources for you. That Germany still had debt (well suspended I guess) is fact and it might diminish its status as a greater power, thats why I brought it up.
 
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Chlodio

Joined Aug 2016
12,409 Posts | 8,403+
Dispargum
Versailles held the Germans back by shrinking their military between the wars. We've had plenty of threads on Historum about Germany starting WW2 with too few submarines, too few tanks, no strategic bombers, etc.
 
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Nick the Noodle

Joined Nov 2018
2,547 Posts | 1,884+
Wales
Chlodio said:
Versailles held the Germans back by shrinking their military between the wars. We've had plenty of threads on Historum about Germany starting WW2 with too few submarines, too few tanks, no strategic bombers, etc.
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And yet they very nearly won, and the world would have been a vastly different place today..
 
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Offspring

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Last edited:
Part 1.
Chlodio said:
Versailles held the Germans back by shrinking their military between the wars. We've had plenty of threads on Historum about Germany starting WW2 with too few submarines, too few tanks, no strategic bombers, etc.
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Power can only be relative.

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Looking good comparatively no? Keep in mind the Brits and the French have their Empires to look after.

As for their problems, they cannot be reduced to Versailles.

If you don't like this format, there's also a link to the pdf at the end:
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Part 2.
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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, by Paul Kennedy, available here:

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 | Paul Kennedy | download

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 | Paul Kennedy | download | Z-Library. Download books for free. Find books
2lib.org 2lib.org
The table is from page 296, the pages are from 303-310, tho it might be good to read about the others (especially France and Britain, starts after the last paste).
 
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Offspring

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Of course the Treaty wasn't great for Germany, it wasn't meant to be, but France also had problems. All the Great Powers got impacted by the Great Depression. All of Germany's pre-WW2 problems cannot just be reduced to TV.
 
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Nick the Noodle

Joined Nov 2018
2,547 Posts | 1,884+
Wales
Offspring said:
Part 1.
Power can only be relative.

View attachment 45692

Looking good comparatively no? Keep in mind the Brits and the French have their Empires to look after.

As for their problems, they cannot be reduced to Versailles.

If you don't like this format, there's also a link to the pdf at the end:
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Thank you for your recent posts. It explains why the Nazi's had to go to war when they did.

I would suggest two books on the economic aspect of WW2. Both are excellent, written with the benefit of hindsight.

Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze, which demonstrates why the Nazi's were going to lose WW2.
Britain's War Machine by David Edgerton, which demonstrates why Britain was always going to be part of the team that won WW2, even without USA help.

If Britain had been knocked out of the war, Germany would have beat the Soviets. The German economy was stronger.
 
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Chlodio

Joined Aug 2016
12,409 Posts | 8,403+
Dispargum
Offspring said:
Part 1.
Power can only be relative.

Looking good comparatively no? Keep in mind the Brits and the French have their Empires to look after.

As for their problems, they cannot be reduced to Versailles.

If you don't like this format, there's also a link to the pdf at the end:
Click to expand...

What conclusion would you like me to draw? As I read the Kennedy links you provide I'm seeing a Germany committing economic suicide to catch up from the deficit that Versailles imposed on them. If the German military had been allowed to remain at a normal peacetime size Hitler would not have had to spend so much in the 1930s to catch up to the rest of the world.
 
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Offspring

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Chlodio said:
What conclusion would you like me to draw? As I read the Kennedy links you provide I'm seeing a Germany committing economic suicide to catch up from the deficit that Versailles imposed on them. If the German military had been allowed to remain at a normal peacetime size Hitler would not have had to spend so much in the 1930s to catch up to the rest of the world.
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It was ahead of France and Britain, not catching up.

Hitler didn't respect the Versailles clauses.

Germany's issues in the 1930s were related to the aftermath of the Great Depression, not Versailles.
 
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Chlodio

Joined Aug 2016
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Dispargum
Offspring said:
It was ahead of France and Britain, not catching up.

Hitler didn't respect the Versailles clauses.

Germany's issues in the 1930s were related to the aftermath of the Great Depression, not Versailles.
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There's no argument that Hitler was bent on war and spent crazy amounts of money to get ready for it. My point is, How much larger would the German Army be in 1939 without the Versailles limits? In 1934 the German Army had aprx 100,000 men. By 1939 it had grown to 3 million. Imagine if Germany had an army of 1 million already in 1934? There was no German Air Force in 1933. Imagine how much bigger the Luftwaffe could have grown by 1939 if they already had an infrastructure in place in 1933 instead of having to build from zero.
 
Offspring

Offspring

Joined Mar 2013
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Chlodio said:
There's no argument that Hitler was bent on war and spent crazy amounts of money to get ready for it. My point is, How much larger would the German Army be in 1939 without the Versailles limits? In 1934 the German Army had aprx 100,000 men. By 1939 it had grown to 3 million. Imagine if Germany had an army of 1 million already in 1934? There was no German Air Force in 1933. Imagine how much bigger the Luftwaffe could have grown by 1939 if they already had an infrastructure in place in 1933 instead of having to build from zero.
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I get this, but how could that have been economically sustained?
 
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Nick the Noodle

Joined Nov 2018
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Wales
Chlodio said:
There's no argument that Hitler was bent on war and spent crazy amounts of money to get ready for it. My point is, How much larger would the German Army be in 1939 without the Versailles limits? In 1934 the German Army had aprx 100,000 men. By 1939 it had grown to 3 million. Imagine if Germany had an army of 1 million already in 1934? There was no German Air Force in 1933. Imagine how much bigger the Luftwaffe could have grown by 1939 if they already had an infrastructure in place in 1933 instead of having to build from zero.
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Didn't make any difference. Germany steamrollered every nation until the end of 1941. This was about military doctrine as much as kit and men. The Germans had been thinking about winning WW2 since the end of WW1, and had a 20 year head start on how to win it, in terms of strategy and tactics.

If they had knocked out Britain before Dunkirk, they would have won a one front war against the Soviets.
 
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terranitup

Joined Jul 2021
4 Posts | 2+
U.K
Sephiroth said:
Germany with Hitler went above and beyond and was fully geared for war. Nazi Germany‘s whole raison d etre was war, peace was never an option. The regime would have crumbled together because of the debts and so on, I think.
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I think Germany had too many irons in the fire for a massive war, with regards to weaponry they didnt seem to have a standard they were going after and mass produced them, they were always experimenting which is great but this came back to haunt them later on.
 
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