Overy\'s Ideas Professor Richard Overy\'s

Overy's Ideas

Professor Richard Overy's Ideas

the ability of the Red Army to re-mobilize, 2) the ability of the American economy to shift into wartime production, and 3) the success of the Allied air forces over Fortress Europe. While Professor Overy's thesis focuses narrowly on the German enemy, it is his contention that victory over Germany was the key to the war as "Italy and Japan never posed the same kind of threat as the European superpower they fought alongside."

The Germans believed that the Red Army was a "primitive force," and yet, through the course of the war, the Soviets showed an unexpected adaptive ability. They were able to learn from their own mistakes and also from the successes of their enemies. They re-invented themselves into an effective fighting force; for example, late in the war they reorganized their own air and armored cavalry divisions around the more effective German model. The Soviet military command was also reorganized to reflect the lessons learned by excessive political meddling in military affairs. "Given the freedom to work out their own salvation, the Soviet General Staff demonstrated that they could match the Germans on the battlefield." The third factor crucial to the Red Army's turn around was the ability of Soviet economy to quickly re-tool and become a more modern economy. Hitler himself made this possible with his invasion of the western USSR; 16 million workers and some 2500 major production enterprises were displaced by the German advance and proved instrumental in building a more modern, more war-ready economy behind the Soviet line. In short, while the German economy and army remained stagnant beneath their victories, defeat led the Soviet economy and the Red Army to the dynamic change necessary.

Overy believes that the primary American contribution to the war effort was not troops but rather materials. As the world's largest industrial economy of the time, and a leader in logistical support, America was able to field their own well-equipped armies as well as keep the Soviet and British forces fighting. Hitler believed that the American economy, while formidable, would not be an obstacle as it was in a peace-time state, he believed it would be years before the Americans were able to re-tool and field an effective force. This was not the case. Overy contends that the socio-economic planning experience gained by the U.S. government during Roosevelt's New Deal was important to the re-tooling. He also cites an American "can-do ethos" as a spiritual driving force behind the re-tooling. Finally, the very fact of the Great Depression had left the American economy in a position where it had a lot of room to grow. The German economy, by contrast, was already operating at full employment levels by the time of the war's start.

The final factor Overy cites is the success of Allied air power. Allied bombing campaigns in Europe were effective in stifling German war-production and also in demoralizing the German populace. The success of Allied air operations behind German lines also forced the German Luftwaffe into a defensive role, preventing counter-attacks in Allied territory by German bombs. While in America factories chugged along un-molested, in Europe the Germans were forced to de-centralize production and spend vast resources on improbable projects for safeguarding factories.