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Old 11-20-2015, 11:19 PM
RN7 RN7 is offline
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Not wanting to offend anybody's national honour here about WW2 but I think I would be on the side of those who think that America's contribution was the key element in defeating Germany and Japan. Sometimes wish we had some Russian members on this site, or even better some Germans and Japanese to give their views.

As Raellus has stated American war material production figures were simply staggering, and the US economy was barely affected by the war. It is just impossible to ignore the contribution of the US economy to the Allied victory.

Some points.

Soviet manpower and war production beat the German Army in Europe. Soviet war production matched America in many statistics, although generally not in technology. It has been pointed out that America (and to a lesser extent Britain and Canada) mechanised the Soviet Army through Lend Lease, but the Germans were also far less mechanised than the US and British Army and they devoted the lion share of their land and air forces to fighting the Soviets on the Eastern Front. The concentration of manpower and materials in battles on the Eastern Front were larger than the west after 1940 and until 1945.

Soviet mechanised forces and tactics in China in the late 1930's shocked the Japanese Army so much that Japan never attacked Soviet forces again for the remainder of the Second World War..

The British Empire was vulnerable to disruption by a powerful and determined foe. The British Empire was not industrialised outside of Canada, and contributed manpower and raw materials that were reliant on British shipping to transport it. Also the British-Indian Army raised over 2 million troops in the war but contributed far less than ANZAC, Canadian and South African forces. I don't think the British trusted or rated the Indian Army that highly.

The North African Theatre was only peripheral in material terms compared with the Eastern Front and Western Europe after D-Day. If the Germans had taken Suez then they would have marched into the Middle East with its oil reserves, or the southern Soviet Union with its oil reserves.

British technology greatly contributed to the Allied victory. Britain invented radar and sonar (ASDIC) and remained ahead of the curve in computers and electronics, and they were the only ones even near the Germans in jet engines.

After D-Day statically something like 70% of the Allied divisions in North-West Europe were American, but British armoured divisions were bigger than their American counterparts and the British also had a number of independent armoured brigades that were about half the size of an American armoured divisions but were not counted in the statistics.

The British largely won the Battle of Atlantic despite the later contribution of the US Navy. German tactics and advances in submarine and torpedo technology were consistently countered by British advances in anti-submarine technology.

The Pacific War was won by America, and the fact that it was a sideshow compared to the war in Europe makes it all the more remarkable. Most of America's war effort was directed against Germany and supporting the UK and USSR. Burma, China and New Guinea were important theatres but the war at sea and in the air was won by American military power. After 1941 the Royal Navy disappeared from the Pacific Ocean and no heavy British warships were sent back to the Pacific until 1944.
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