@CWO:
A quote attributed to Eisenhower (I’ve seen several different versions of it, but containing the same elements) states that he considered the following four items to be the key war-winning weapons of the Allies: The bazooka, the jeep, the atom bomb and the C-47 Dakota transport plane. The jeep and the C-47 might seem surprising choices at first glance – and indeed might not even be considered weapons in the strict sense – but they gave the Allies tremendous battlefield mobility and logistical capacity. Both these things are critical in modern warfare. Richard Overy, in his book Why The Allies Won, makes the same point. He notes that during the war, Germany produced highly advanced next-generation weapon systems like cruise missiles (the V1), ballistic missiles (the V2) and jet fighters (the Me262), but neglected to pay much attention to such unglamorous basics as providing its army with enough trucks to break free of its continued large-scale use of horses.
Another factor Overy mentions is the technical fussiness of the Wehrmacht. Its weapon specifications and quality-control standards were so exacting that they got in the way of efficient mass production. The Panther, for example, was an adaptation of (an in some respects an improvement over) the T-34, but it was more complex and time-consuming to build, so the Germans never had enough of them. The Russians stuck to the philosophy of “make it simple, make it work, and make more of it.” The British applied the same approach to manufacturing the early versions of the Sten gun, which was intended to be a simple, cheap weapon which could be produced in vast quantities to meet the emergency Britain faced after Dunkirk. The Sten Mark III, which looked like a piece of scrap iron, was probably the ugliest gun ever used by the British Army, but it got the job done, and the British were sensible enough to realize that the second half of 1940 was not the time to get sentimental about having to give up finely polished walnut rifle stocks and carefully blued gun barrels.
People interested in this general topic might like to read a sci-fi short story by Arthur C. Clarke called “Superiority,” the inspiration of which he said would be clear to anyone familiar with the Second World War. It describes how a galactic war takes an unexpected turn when one side becomes obsessed with developing fancy new high-tech weapons, while the other side sticks to producing huge numbers of good old-fashioned “primitive” ones.
This is a very solid post. Just to add to what you’ve written, during WWII Canada produced more military trucks than the entire Axis combined. One reason why Germany didn’t do more to mechanize its supply lines was its lack of oil. You can have all the military trucks in the world, but if you can’t fuel them they are useless. A strong effort was made to gear its logistics system around the resources it did have, which in this case meant coal. Supplies would be shipped by coal-powered trains to drop-off points, and then via horses the rest of the way.
During the '20s and early ‘30s, Germany had fallen behind the U.S., Britain, and even the Soviet Union when it came to implementing mass production techniques. That was partly the result of the Versailles Treaty, which helped cause economic stagnation in Germany while the Allies moved forward and advanced their own economies. Hitler sought to reverse that stagnation upon taking power. But building up industrial capacity and mass production expertise takes time. Notably, Germany produced nearly three times as many military aircraft in 1944 as it had in 1942. That increase demonstrates that Germany was at last catching up to the Allies in terms of industrialization and the implementation of mass production techniques. However, the Allies’ sheer size and access to raw materials allowed them to significantly outproduce Germany even in 1944.
Toward the end of the war, efforts were underway to allow Germany to simplify its tank designs to make them more easily mass produced. The goal of the Entwicklung program was to replace all of Germany’s tank designs with simplified yet improved E-series designs. The E-25 was to replace all Mark III and Mark IV designs; the E-50 Standardpanzer was to replace the Panther and Tiger I designs, and the E-75 Standardpanzer was to replace the Tiger II design. The main benefit to this program would have been tanks that were simpler, more mechanically reliable, and more easily produced. Improvements were also made to the tanks’ combat ability. For example, the E-75 had better armor and a more powerful weapon than the Tiger II, as well as better long-range accuracy.
However, the war ended before the Entwicklung series program had resulted in wide-scale production of new tanks.
