• Dolores [love/loves]
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    its population was nearly 350 million people

    don't get to count occupied europe as nazi germany's "population", but it can be pointed out that the nearly 80 million of nazi germany on the eve of war was nothing to sneeze at, and the addition of italy (42 million), romania(20), hungary (14), and bulgaria (5) very nearly made the axis at parity with the USSR in population. but of course the resources of these countries including germany were not exclusively committed against the USSR.

    60 divisions in the western front

    this is a complete nonsense number, the nazi commitment against Wallies varied very widely thru the war, from as low as 36 to as many as 150 in the Battle of France to 107 toward the end of the war. the only way you get to pretend the Wallies occupied such a pittance of the Nazi war effort is by only counting (post fall of france) nazi commitments in France. i suppose all those nazis in italy were fighting greeks or something, mainly

    • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      11 months ago

      don't get to count occupied europe as nazi germany's "population",

      Why not? There were at least half a million non Germans in the Waffen SS. Certainly Germany would were more careful about who they recruited from occupied territories but they still did recruit from them and have a reasonable amount of support.

      • SoyViking [he/him]
        ·
        11 months ago

        And in addition to recruiting the nazis had access to the labour and resources of the occupied countries to feed their war effort

        • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]
          ·
          11 months ago

          Yeah, occupied Europe might not be prime recruitment grounds, but that doesn't matter when you're going to force the population to produce for your war effort whether they're ideologically comitted or not.

      • dinklesplein [any, he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        i accidentally cancelled and deleted a huge ass writeup on why i think @Dolores@hexbear.net is correct and i cba retyping it so instead just think a moment on the fact that this 130 million worth of occupied population somehow only contributed 500.000 soldiers to germany's war effort, and consequently what that says about the effective value of those occupied populations.

      • Dolores [love/loves]
        ·
        11 months ago

        they required military occupation and mass slavery to exploit these territories, most of which had not insignificant military insurgencies.

        equivocating Soviet territorial limits with Nazi occupied europe is not a good look