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Mobilization of the Economy y 133

of the German Wehrmacht was the Pz-II, equipped with 20-mm cannon. ere was only 5
percent of the needed supply of shells required for four months of war, meaning only enough
for six days of combat. 10
Despite all this, Hitler was not eager to mobilize the country’s industry toward war.
e German army waged a war, which began as a European conflict and turned global, but
German industry remained operating on a peacetime regime.
For fifty years the Soviet government has been persuading us that in 1939 war was
unavoidable, the world was headed for war, and Stalin could do nothing but sign a non-
aggression pact with Germany. An analysis of the conditions of German industry in general,
and in the area of ammunition production in particular, allows us to assert that the situation
was not at all so critical. e world was not headed for inevitable war, and a war could have
been averted, if Stalin had wanted to avert it. And what is more, if in September 1939 the
Red Army had intervened on the side of Poland, Stalin would not have lost anything, while
Hitler could have suffered a devastating defeat simply because he did not have enough am-
munition. But Stalin did not capitalize on the German weakness.
When the war began, the German situation regarding ammunition did not improve,
but in May 1940 Hitler delivered a fatal blow to France. ere were enough shells and mis-
siles to carry out the attack, but if Stalin had attacked Germany in 1940, there would have
been nothing left for Germany to use in fending off his attack, because her industries had
still not been mobilized. After this followed the Battle of Britain, and once again the German
air force was engaged in a war but German industry was not. en Hitler invaded the Soviet
Union. Here, he had tremendous luck—at the very border he was able to take huge quantities
of Soviet supplies. Without these supplies he would not have been able to reach Moscow.
e seizure of Stalin’s supplies was a tremendous achievement for Hitler, but he had to
also think of shifting his own industry to a wartime regime. Hitler, however, was in no hurry
to do this. e war in Russia was serious business, and the German army had to spend more
shells than ever before. e production of ammunition did not in any way correspond to the
expenditures required by the army. Major General B. Muller-Hillebrand cites entire pages of
clear-cut statistics. Here are some figures randomly chosen from many thousands like them.
In October 1941, the German army engaged in ferocious battles with the Red Army and
used 561,000 75-mm shells, while the industry during that period produced only 75,000 of
those shells. In December, 494,000 were used and 18,000 received from the factories. 11
is could not have lasted for very long. But Hitler was in no hurry.
In December 1941, Stalin carried out powerful attacks against the German army near
Moscow. In December, Hitler declared war on the United States of America. It would seem
to be the perfect time to shift industry from a peacetime to a wartime regime. But Hitler
still waited. Only in January 1942 did he make the decision to gradually begin the shift of
German industry to fulfill wartime needs. e difference between Stalin and Hitler was that
Hitler first waged a war against the entire world, fought for over two years—and only then
began to mobilize his industries. Stalin, on the other hand, acted in the exact opposite man-
ner. Stalin tried with all his powers to delay the moment when the Soviet Union would have
to enter into the war, but he began mobilizing the industries and setting them on a wartime
regime back in January 1939.
During the course of World War II, the Red Army had the most powerful artillery
in the world. e artillery was used correctly, meaning that it was secretly concentrated in