I have always been a history buff. I enjoy learning about people and the lives they led during different periods in history. I often spend my free time reading biographies or watching documentaries and historical dramas.
I recently was attracted to a documentary series that delved into some of the reasons why Germany lost World War II. Of course, it dealt with the usual problems found in a totalitarian state, where one dictatorial leader makes all the decisions. It also pointed out that, reflecting the megalomania of Adolph Hitler, the Nazi regime had a group of senior leaders who had to constantly compete for the Führer’s attention. This internal infighting limited their abilities to make the best use of their individual strengths and to work as a team.
Beyond those constraints—and the fact that the forces of the moral world had risen up against them—the documentary also revealed another key reason why the Germans failed in their attempt to take over the world: Their supply chains were too complex and, as a result, greatly hindered their ability to produce, store, and move materiel.
German engineering is admired worldwide, but in their quest to develop new technologies and create wonder weapons, German scientists didn’t know when to stop. Often, they had a good, workable, and repeatable model that they then kept attempting to improve upon to the detriment of what they had already accomplished. On top of that, their advanced technology far surpassed the abilities of their manufacturing to keep up. In their drive to develop superior weaponry, they forgot the practical.
For instance, the German military had more than 100 models of trucks for transporting men and materiel, with multiple versions of each. Similarly, they had multiple iterations of each tank. To accommodate their constant tinkering with each model’s parts, manufacturing had to be retooled every few months to adapt to the latest version while also producing enough replacement parts for older models to keep them from becoming obsolete.
It was a similar story with the Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf aircraft, which the Nazis redesigned so often that it was nearly impossible to stock enough repair parts for every forward position. The complexity also made it difficult to train pilots or enable them to move easily from one aircraft model to another. By way of comparison, Southwest Airlines flies only Boeing 737 aircraft to simplify parts storage, repairs, and pilot training.
Superior tech does not help if it can’t be deployed. Sometimes simple and repeatable is better—and it makes managing supply chains a whole lot easier.
