JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 955
This terrific 1933 pictorial display of quantitative data1
showing the comparative military capacities of eleven countries—it will become progressively
and aggressively more wrong in each passing year to the start of WWII. In 1933 the military giant was, basically, France—the same country that would be quickly
and completely overrun just seven years later by the country at the bottom of
this display with the micro graphs, Germany.
The German military forces underwent staggering change after
the end of WWI. The Imperial Forces were
completely done at the end of the war, limited to 100,000 men, left with no air
force and no tanks. There were wide
changes during the Weimar
Republic, the army seeing
three iterations (not to mention the hundreds of Freikorps that were
established with some of the disbanded remnant of the standing army) that
ultimate resulted in the formation of the Reichswehr (in 1921) and which in
turn would evolve into the Wehrmacht in 1935.
Germany
barely registers, barely forms bumps in the flatlines of measurements in
1934. By 1939, six years after the
election of Hitler, and fanned by xenophobic revenge and greedily speedy full-throttled
hate, Nazi Germany rushed at record
speeds towards the rape of the future. The German Wehrmacht stood at 4.7 men.in 1939
(6.6 million in 1940; 8.1 in 1941; 9.5 in 1942; 11.2 in 1943, 12 in 1944, and 9
in 1945), while the Luftwaffe was at 400,000 (growing to 1.7 million by 1943) and had enormous growths in quantity and quality
of armaments. It was all astonishing, and almost all gone again in another six years.
This is an exclusive graphic of German nothingness, an accurate graphic in 1934 and again in 1945, but in the middle, it was totally incorrect. Twelve years from nothing to nothing, with the disgust of Hell to pay in between.
It is simply extraordinary to see the disparities of the
Nazis displayed so
Notes:
1. Printed in Die Illustriete Zeitung, 1934.
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