Ivanov

@Saint_Fuller equipment maintenance is under the category "other", right? Also if you're looking at the chart, there's only a marked difference in the equipment spending between Germany and France.

Again, the magic of statistics If anything, in context of this discussion ( low readiness and poor shape of BW in general ), you should be looking how much is spend per soldier, not per capita of general population. You shouldn't compare medium size country to US, with it's global reach and commitments of a super power. UK and France are also separate cases being more active on the international stage. The issue if Germany should be more involved militarily on the global stage, if their armed forces should be bigger ( pitiful 220 tanks against resurgent Russia ) and if they should meed their alliance commitments are a matters for another discussion. I appreciate your input.

Now you can provide some hard data to back up this claim. I mean the supposedly low numbers, that are devoted to maintain the equipment readiness. BW is not a big army and it doesn't have thousands of tanks and hundreds of planes to maintain like it was during the Cold War. Do they spend all the cash on salaries and kindergartens for soldier families? You can convince me if you show me the numbers ( I don't have them ). In my opinion the current situation is caused by organizational and maybe cultural issues, not by insufficient funds.

I think we need some meditation and spiritual healing

Good news

Where did I say something contrary to your statement? According to what is leaking to the media, the main issue is the low readiness of the equipment. The most important question is what caused this situation? Some here have been arguing, that it's because of too low military expenditure. What I've been saying, is that given the size and it's mission, the German military budget is not too small. This issue have been puzzling me, that with a military budget a little smaller than the one of UK, the German army is in such a poor state. Also it's worth reminding my American friends here, that not every problem can be solved just by throwing cash at it. In case of Germans, it has to be due to the bad management of available resources. Give those 40 billion euros from German budget to the Baltic States or Czech Republic and apart from conventional the forces, they'll manage to build Death Star from it.

In your meal example the ratio matters. But in the world military expenditure the hard currency is more important. Modern military equipment cost the same for Germany and for Baltic States. That's why Germans have combat aircraft, tanks and air defence and the Balts don't. The problem with Bundeswehr, is not that it has obsolete equipment but it's low readiness. And this is mostly a matter of bad management.

Be specific. What info are you looking for?

Ah the magic of statistics... With the massive GDP Germans don't need to spend 2% on the defence. Even with their 1.3%, they spend little less than UK and only 30% less than Russia, which is suffocating itself with an unsustainable military expenditure. Also keep in mind, that unlike those two countries, Germans don't need to maintain nuclear forces or a big navy. Sure Federal Republic could spend a little more, but IMO their current problems don't originate from an insufficient military budget. As to the equipment expenditure, they spend less because unlike the Baltic states they have the equipment. If you compare German APC's, tanks or helicopters to what Poland has ( 2% of GDP spending on the defence ), it's like comparing modern army to a museum exhibition. I'm not saying that Bundeswehr is in a great shape, but you have to look a little further than the raw statistics or press articles with a clear political aim.

In your first post you were commenting about the state of the troops on the video, not Bundeswehr overall. I'm not disputing the fact, that presently German armed forces are in a pretty bad shape. I also think the stories are slightly exaggerated and it also makes sense to me ( remember the "they must pay rhetoric" ). I'm just not agreeing with the grooming criteria and some other anecdotal, fun, little stuff about the broomsticks. I know it feels nice and warm to hear that kind of stories from like minded people, but it shouldn't prevent you from the independent thinking.

I see that you really believe that. Below some vehicles with the broomsticks attached instead of machine guns. BTW, low equipment readiness is problem of all NATO armies nowadays.

Lax grooming standards don't mean that the army is ineffective or the other way around. I'd expect less superficial comments on this forum. Or maybe not. They look the way they do, because it's a company sized unit, but it comprises of platoons from mechanized infantry battalion and from a paratrooper unit. It's the same with all the NATO contingents during those mini deployments in the Baltics. Overall Bundeswehr is not in a great shape, but for sure they able able to deploy a well trained company.

Looks more like SOF.

It was PAC-2 ( MIM-104C ), basically a Gulf War era hardware. If the Saudis signed a deal in 2015, I'm not sure if the new missiles have been even delivered, not to mention being operational. Few days ago Poland purchased two PAC-3 batteries and they are going to be delivered in 2022.

Again, the Gulf War era Patriot missile capabilities have nothing to do with modern, anti-ballistic PAC-3 versions of the system. It's like comparing the first versions of Abrams with 105mm gun to the incoming SEP v4 with greater firepower, protection and digital networking technology.

Yes I assume that they estimated the trajectories and saw the warheads and debris images on social media. There aren't reliable analyses available to the public. Do you think that it's possible find everything on the internet? My point is, that drawing conclusions based on the fragmentary materials available on the open source, is equally unprofessional, as drawing conclusions that Abrams, Leopard 2 or for that matter T-90 tanks are worthless, because there are videos on the YT, where those tanks explode after being hit by an ATGM. Such "analyses" are good to incite the general public, the author has an obvious agenda here. But they are worthless from the point of serious assessment of the weapons system effectiveness.

This article is a piece of garbage based on a "social media images" interpretation. Patriots used during during GF1, with MIM-104 missiles were not designed to counter ballistic threats. Another reason why their effectiveness was low, was due to the fact that Iraqis were using modified Scuds with extended range, so the warhead often separated itself accidentally from the main body of the missile, presenting more targets for air defence. Regarding the recent Saudi experience, for some reasons they also seem not to use the most advanced anti ballistic missiles. Yet it also seems that they managed to shoot down most of the incoming missiles, except for some singular cases of failure or missile malfunction, that immediately cause ****storm in the internet. No weapon system is 100% effective but drawing conclusions from singular cases of failure based on incomplete data is amateurish at best, which is so typical to modern day self proclaimed internet experts. The anti balistic, hit to kill PAC-3 missile has been consistently successful, at least during the tests. Comparing it to older variants of Patriot missiles is like comparing two different weapon systems.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon an impressive series of books dedicated to Operation Barbarossa. Here the author takes one of TiK's videos. Pretty impressive stuff if you ask me: http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/an-essay-on-why-i-believe-a-tik-u-tube-presentation-is-incorrect-in-regards-to-losses-and-strengths-on-the-east-front/ http://www.operationbarbarossa.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Essay-alt-view-TIK-presentation.pdf Pretty good summary of TIK: "Overall, the video made some good points. However, on its own it definitely gives the average person (who may have a cursory, or no significant, knowledge of the War on the Eastern Front) the completely wrong impression".

@Bozowans everything you'd like to know about the Nazi war economy ( but you were afraid to ask ) can be found in a book "Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy" by Adam Tooze. Achtung! There's no youtube, short version available. I'd recommend also Hitler's biography by Ian Kershaw. It's very good in showing the decision making proces and dynamism with the Nazi leadership. I'd recommend also "Why the Allies Won" by Richard Overy. it's a lighter book than the two previous ones, but Overy is a real historian. I see that the internet personalities like Tik already do more harm than good. Well, the guy from Military History Visualised is more often right than wrong. He's just very boring and his accent makes it's hard to follow him. But he tends to see always more than one side of the coin and he seems to understand, that no easy answers are possible. I think he actually studied history and it shows in his critical and analytical way of thinking. My recommendation - start with some credible, mainstream historians. They will make you immune to the internet, then over the time, you may encounter something groundbreaking. But first you have to spent at least 20 years on reading. There's no workaround for it

Oh boy... I don't have time now to see the video but after your summary, I'm not sure if I want to devote 50 minutes of my life to it. This guy has to be some mad scientist Few quick points. Even in 1941 German industry wasn't fully mobilized for war and there was no rationing of oil for the civilian use. At that time, the restrictions imposed on German civilians were much less severe, than the restrictions imposed on the British civilians. German military production peaked in 1944, just as the oil production dropped for the first time during the war. So it's hard to back up the claim, that Germany couldn't produce enough of armaments because of lack of oil. In this case, the bad management of industry and bad policies in general were the key factors. The claim about the production of Soviet mortars vs tank is ludicrous. At the end of 1941 and through the first months of 1942, Soviet tank production dropped because of the industry relocation. Also ( surprise, surprise ), the production of mortars is much less costly and complex than the production of tanks, so they could produce them in larger numbers. The whole notion, that the Soviets preferred one type of weapon over the other ( completely different type of weapon, built for a different purpose ) pretty much explains to me, that this guy is an amateur if it comes to the military matters.

OK, I think we can wrap up the discussion about oil. If somebody is still unconvinced, well there's nothing to be added from me in this matter. Back to gaming.

Lack of sufficiently big pool of trained reserves, impedes the ability of waging a long, attritional war in a comparable way, as lack of sufficient oil reserves hampers the war effort in the long term. They both didn't have impact during the decisive campaigns of 1941-42, but from 1943 onward ( lack of reserves was actually felt quicker than the lack of oil ), when the war entered in the attritional phase. But don't cling to my my reserves theory - I made it up just to imitate the shallow oil theory from the video. War is just too complex to be explained it in such a simple way ( and "it's too important to be left to generals" ). You have to see it through in a multidimensional way, as a sum of factors that act simultaneously. One stop shop theory is laughable.

@Bozowans Hitler wasn't preoccupied with the oil because the war with USSR was supposed to be over by the end of 1941. The only mention of oil during the planning of Barbarossa, was curiously enough in the context of Crimea, which was supposed to be captured in order to prevent Soviets from bombing of the Romanian oilfields. I'm not saying that oil was unimportant. I'm just opposed to a simplification, that it was the main reason why Germany lost the war. And yes, I've watched the whole video and I think the author contradicts himself. The source he quotes most often is: "The First War for Oil: The Caucasus, German Strategy, and the Turning Point of the War on the Eastern Front, 1942", which I think is an article. To me it seems like a "one source syndrome": an enthusiastic amateur gets excited over one, maybe a little revisionist source and starts constructing his own narration. Back to Hitler - Kershaw or Snyder write at length about his aims for the upcoming war. It was an autarkic, agrarian empire in the east, that would allow Germany to be immune to the British or US naval blockades. He was too chaotic to be seriously preoccupied by some practical considerations, like getting enough of oil for his armed forces. Again, in the long run lack of oil was one of the biggest issues, that were affecting war waging capacity of the Third Reich. But there were few other, at least equally important issues. They assured German defeat, long before the oil shortages became critical. For example at least equally serious was the small pool of trained reserves, caused by the fact that until 1935 ( only 4 years before the outbreak of a major, world war against major powers ), there was no conscription in Germany. This lack of trained reserves ( especially in comparison to the Soviet Union ) was at least equally crippling as the lack of oil. Hell, I think I should grab now my camera now and make a video, claiming that Hitler lost the war because of insufficient reserves of trained manpower: "TIK destroyed - the shocking, real reason why Germany lost revealed"

Where did you get this information from? On 22nd of June 1941, USA wasn't involved in the war and it's industry wasn't fully switched to the war production. The first significant weapon deliveries to USSR took place in the autumn of 1941 and it were the British who delivered to the Matilda tanks and Hurricane fighters. They were distributed to the combat units in small numbers in the winter of 1941/42. Overall, the 1941-42 Lend-Lease deliveries comprised of about 15% of the whole materiel delivered during the war. The remaining 85% was delivered in 1943-45, which means that it helped the Soviets to conduct the offensives, when the outcome of the war was already decided. By the way, more important than the weapons, were the deliveries of raw materials and machines. It's worth noting than after the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, US introduced an embargo on sales of industrial machinery to USSR which significantly hurt Soviet industry.