Carrying fear before them and expectation behind – Hitler's panzer arm

Materiel deficiencies within the army were in no way a sudden or surprising occurrence, having dogged it since the start of the war. They could hardly be attributed to battlefield losses which had been relatively light. Instead, the lack of coherent overall direction, systemic inefficiency, corrupt officialdom, rivalries between the armed services, stifling bureaucracy, and the poorly co-ordinated actions of economic planners, military commanders and industrialists led to the army's predicament. Added to this was the inherent shortage of manpower, raw materials and specialised machine tools. The result was plain; while the Soviet Union and Britain almost doubled their armament production in only the second year of the war, and the United States tripled theirs, Germany's armament production stagnated and achieved no further growth between 1940 and 1941.

Beyond administrative complexities, Germany's armament industry also suffered from structural flaws owing to the specialised assembly process which, as a rule, turned out technically advanced, high-quality weapons in a daunting multiplicity of makes and designs, but for these reasons proved unsuited to the demands of mass production. Underscoring the extent of industrial dispersal and accordant organisational overlap is the bewildering array of armaments being constructed which at its height saw 425 different models of aircraft in production, and equipped the army with 150 different makes of trucks and motor-cycles. Eventually the gross impracticality of this confused and inefficient system drew a harsh rebuke from Hitler, who insisted in May 1941 that ‘more primitive, robust construction’ must follow with the introduction of ‘crude mass-production’. Even if immediately enacted such measures would have been too late to have any bearing on the assembling invasion force. However, they do reflect the lamentable state of the German war economy and its inability to come of age before the crucial turning point of the war was reached. Indeed, true reform of the armaments sector proved to be another whimsical flirtation of Hitler's erratic mind and soon succumbed to his over inflated self-assurance in the success of Barbarossa. Accordingly, War Directive 32 (issued 11 June 1941) opened with the conceited claim: ‘After the destruction of the Soviet Armed Forces Germany and Italy will be military masters of the European continent.’ It then went on to formally direct the main industrial effort towards the air force and navy.