Who or What Won (Or Lost) World War II - For Real

[Eric R.]

Lets take a shot at getting a good historical topic going here, we have had a few good ones in the past and I have enjoyed them.

So with that said:

Who (nation or even personality) or What (weapon and/or event) won (or lost depending on your point of view) the Second World War. Now you can limit this to your own nation for instance an American can say American Industrial power led to US victory in the war or they can be more broad and say that it was American Industrial Power that led to Allied victory.

So lets get going

[Capt. Anderson]

I'm going to say there too many factors on both sides that contributed to the allied victory in WW2. It wouldn't honest to place it on a single event, person, or industral output of one nation.

[Sea Tyger]

I agree that there are too many contributing factors to the Allied victory.

Some of the many factors include:

1. The might of the American Industrial Machine: Even before we entered the war, the US production capability was already providing the British, French and Russians with much needed supplies, vehicles, weapons and ammunition. The Liberty Ship program alone was a triumph of industry; we were literally building them faster than the Germans could sink them.

2. America Entered the War: Had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbor, the US would have taken much longer to get into the fray, and there might have been an attempt to sue for peace before we did. Most of Europe would have been in the hands of fascists for many, many years.

3. British Resolve and Russian Fortitude: One common man defending his home is worth many trained soldiers. I think that's the truth. The bravery of the British in the face of an overwhelming German attack was, in my opinion, the first turning point of the war, one that proved the Germans were beatable. Of course, the common man or woman in Russia may have been a simple conscript forced to fight for the glory of the Soviet Union, but heroes arose from those ranks, and it was that army that drove the Germans back through Poland.

4. Growing Incompetence of German Leaders: Hitler, it appears, was suffering a syphillis (or other contracted disease, I can't remember at the moment)-induced psychosis as the war went on. Goering was a tin-pot dictator who chose designs based on favor, more than function. The rose on dogma, but that dogma wasn't able to sustain them in the face of failure. Good officers (like Rommell) were killed (or forced to commit suicide, either by order or fear of reprisal) after a failure, rather than allowed to overcome their mistakes.

5. Japanese Overconfidence and Desperation: The Japanese (in general) underestimated the anger and determination of the United States following the attack, and our ability to recover. Later in the war, the kamikaze pilots, in a desperate attempt to horrify the Americans into withdrawing from an invasion of Japan, quickly decimated the ranks of the flying corps and probably quickened the nation's defeat.

6. Some Lucky Breaks: Thank God that the American carriers were not at Pearl on Dec. 7, 1941. We would have had a tougher time recovering from the attack had we lost them, too. Thank God the Japanese ambassador couldn't get the declaration of war to the Secretary of State on time. Thank God for the wonderful code breakers who were able to decipher German and Japanese codes. Thank God Hitler decided to go to war four years before the military was ready.


As I said, that's probably only a few points, and they're definitely not in any order of importance.

[First of Two]

I say Adolf Hitler.

The man's skills as a politician and orator (albeit an evil one) were exceeded only by his incompetence at strategy.

The man made ONE good tactical move in his entire career (the Blitzkrieg into France), and he thought that made him a military genius.

But there are literally dozens of blunders he made, ideas, strategies and decisions of his far more militarily talented generals and underlings, that could have won the war for the Axis (or at least made the cost of it far higher, or ended it in a stalemate with the Germans still having all they wanted) that he rejected.

Secondly, whoever was responsible for holding up the German atomic program. Which may also have been Hitler, primarily.

[Imagus]

I think Sea Tyger got most of it

When it came down to it, it was a combination of factors:

American industrial muscle - both the Japanese and the Germans thought America would take far longer to shift into a war economy before fighting back. Their big mistake was that America didn't need to be in a war economy.

On a related note, Roosevelt's determination to be on the Allied side even before Pearl Harbor, in spite of Congress. I think the USA would have been in before long, regardless. Churchill wasn't above editing intelligence to manipulate his allies!

The determination of a number of peoples to avoid being conquered, not just the Brits and Russians. The French, Polish and Czech undergrounds kept a lot of troops tied up who might otherwise have been in battle.

The SS/Nazi obsession with racial purity. A huge number of elite troops and resources were involved in the Final Program and with rounding up the victims. A number of German intellectuals were Jewish, and were driven out by the regime before the war.

The lack of resources for the Axis powers - Japan went to war to expand her sphere of influence, Pearl was supposed to disable the US Navy long enough for her to exploit the new territories, while Germany's attacks on Greece and Russia were both motivated by the need for oil, rubber and other industrial resources. My A-level History teacher pointed out that the Nazi economy would have consumed itself if Hitler's empire did not keep expanding.

I don't think you can blame Hitler's leadership problems on a disease - he just wasn't a very talented coordinator. All of his plans were created by underlings, but because he ran his government on a competitive basis (different departments competed for the same resources for the same jobs), which plan got implemented was dependent on who was being nice to Bormann at any given moment. Hitler was prone to responding favourably to whoever told him what he wanted to hear.

TBH First, the German nuclear plan was never anywhere near completion - and they had no way to deliver one beyond Britain anyway. Most of the best scientists had already fled the increasing discrimination before the war and Nils Bohr was utterly convinced by some bad data he received early on - as far as he was concerned, Germany needed alot more uranium to set off a nuclear chain reaction than was practical. This was the primary hold-up, as it led to continual holding back of funds.

This should be fun, well done Eric!

[tmutant]

It was a combined effort. Early in 1942, the British were helping the U.S. defend her East Coast sea lanes against German U-Boats. The Germans were sinking ships from Maine to Texas, and the U.S. didn't have a coordinated anti-submarine warfare program. Without the assistance of the British, it would have taken much longer, and cost many more lives. There is a graveyard and memorial for British sailors killed in action in my home state of North Carolina. Later in the war, U.S. escort carriers insured the supply line to Europe would remanin open. And throughout the war, the Russians suffered horribly, but would not yield.

Sea Tyger is right about Hitler going to war too early. It's a good thing, too. Imagine the world if the Battle of Britain had been lost.

[Greg Smith]

Winning the Battle of Britain. If the Luftwaffe had beaten the RAF, Britain would have been conquered easily. Hitler would have been able to concentrate all his forces on Russia and the US would probably never entered the war in Europe.

"Never has so much been owed by so many to so few."

[Tas II]

Just my ideas on the subject :-)

(I tend to ramble, so apologies for the somewhat disjointed look to this long post!)

:-)

Britain started the war with an almost obsolete range of weapons and tactics. Americas army was in a similar shape. The advent of the Blitzkreig showed the European nations and the US the flaws in their armies. Fortunately, Hitler loved Britain, and did not really want a war with her. He was in love with the British way of life, it's colonial Empire, the works. What one has to remember was that The British Empire was the largest political entity in the world at the time. Had WWII not happened I reckon approximately 75% of the Commonwealth would still be under British control. Personally, I dont think that would have been good, so some of the victors of WWII were those who had been under colonial rule. Hitler also had to delay the invasion of Britain, as he wanted a peaceful solution. His other major problem of course, was that Germany did not have the resources in 1940 to mount Operation Sea Lion (The invasion of Great Britain). Possibly his biggest military blunder was to open up a front against Soviet Russia. Whilst being amazingly under-armed and under the rule of someone almost, if not as, crazy as Hitler (e.g. Stalin), the Russian Army was huge. They soon caught up on technology (Soviet Tanks being arguably the easiest to maintain and manufacture in WWII, as well as being formidable in their own right). Stalin, for all his faults, understood that the US needed to be able to enter the European theatre. To that end, British convoys re-inforced the Soviets with material they were sorely lacking. So, whilst the Soviets provided manpower and weapons, the Brit/US convoy system provided them with a helluva lot of material too, enabling the eastern Front to function.
A lot is made of the Battle Of Britain in 1940, and rightly so, but what is often missed out is the Royal Navy's actions in the Mediterranean in the early part of the war. Admiral A. B. C. Cunningham was out-gunned, and out-numbered for a long time, and fought an amazing campaign to ensure victory in North Africa, by enabling the convoys to re-inforce the 8th Army in Africa.The first Allied land victory of the war was at El Alamein. This paved the way for the Anglo-US operation Torch later on. This was all possible due to the British capturing an Enigma device (Not a US operation! :-D) and the decoding work at Bletchley House, enabling the Allies to de-code Axis intel traffic at will.
In the pacific, the Japanese blundered by not totally crippling the US fleet at Pearl Harbour. She was a small nation with imperial desires. Her army was well equipped, but was spread too thin. Although the US committed approximately 80% of her effort to europe, they still had enough manpower to squeeze the japanese against the British troops in the far east (supprted by Commonwealth troops). In the end, the Axis powers were outnumbered by the Allies. Two of the largest nations on earth, and the largest political entity went to war with the Axis. It was never going to work, once America joined the Allies, and Hitler turned on Russia.

In the end, it was an excellent TEAM effort on the Allies part.

IMHO, we all won

:-)

Cheers

Tas

[Capt. Anderson]

Radar and the land-lease act were two other factors the helped the British in the Battle of Britain and beyond.

[Evan van Eyk]

Well the Battle in Europe was not won by Western countries to a large percentage it was a Russian victory.
The real important victory of Western countries however was the Battle of Britain and without this victory most probably the war could not have been won by the allied or at least would have taken much longer. With an invasion of Britain there would have been no base left from which to launch bombers for the mass bombardments seen in the later parts of the war.
Not less important was the war in the Pacific, thus the US did a lot to prevent the war in Europe from being lost. A soon as Japan had won this war they had planned to land on Russia's East Coast - which would have left the Russian troops a two frontier war and ripped them of their production facilities in Siberia.
The turning point of WWII however was Stalingrad - at the latest. It was completely insane to sacrifice so many troops although the battle was already lost. Since Hitler himself took command of the army around this point - the fate was sealed. ( Oh and Blitzkrieg was not Hitlers idea, it was Marshall Manstein who invented it. Hitler was actually the one who made him stop prematurely, since Manstein had planned to further invade Europe with that strategy ). He was simply an insane man.
After Stalingrad the Battle against Russia got worse and worse and German troops were forced back even beyound their original borders. On several meetings Stalin had asked the Western Allies to open up a second frontier in the west - but they denied it. Only when they saw that Russia was actually winning the war they decided to intervene to prevent a whole communist Europe.
But it was not Pearl Habor which made the US enter the war in Europe - a Japanese attack would not have justified that. In reality not the US declared war on Germany but the other way around. Hitler declared war on the US ( it was part of a treaty with Japan, Hitler joined them against the US and they would join him against the Russians ).
I think what completely surprised Germany were the mass bombardments of German cities. While it was "invented" by Mr. Goering when he attacked London I do not believe he had expected such an immense response in the later parts of the war. He once said the moment an allied plane is seen over Berlin he wants to be called Meyer - well it took no long and people called him Meyer, although of course not openly.
Besides the casualties among the civilians which most probably ruined morale of the troops, large parts of the industry were destroyed which crippled Germany's war machine. Another point is that I think germany spread its resources too much.
Hundreds of "secret weapons" were researched along with other constructions, e.g. an aircraft carrier. However by not concentrating on one of the weapons none of them were ever finished, which left the money and material investments along with the man power lost.

[JonA]

One thing that a lot of people tend to forget is the breaking of the Enigma codes at Bletchley Park.

The contribution of the codebreakers in the war was invaluable for determining the Allies military plans.

Sadly - the codebreakers were also able to work out the German plans for attack but the government could do nothing to minimise the loss of life for fear of revealing the extent of their intelligence.

[ComaBoy]

A few thoughts:

I'm not sure that Japan ever actually had the resources required to win the war in the Pacific. As I understand it, one of the big reasons Japan was so expansionistic was in order to secure the resources it needed/wanted.

I have to agree that the code breakers and the folks who managed to obtain Enigma machines contributed hugely to victory.

Last, this may not sit well with some but one of the significant weapons of WWII was the A-bomb. An invasion of the Japanese home islands would have been very nasty.

[Capt. Anderson]

One has to remember that Russia achieved what it wanted to gain before Germany deleclared war on Soviets and would have delcared peace with Germany if the United Nations (or Allies if you perfer) did not step in and offered payment to USSR if the Soviets continued the push into Germany.

Japan did not want a full scale war with the USA. JP's was hoping the US would not counter attack and allow Japan to keep the territory gained.

[Phantom]

Originally posted by Capt. Anderson
Japan did not want a full scale war with the USA. JP's was hoping the US would not counter attack and allow Japan to keep the territory gained.

Don't really agree with this. How could the Japanese not expect a declaration of war from the US after Pearl? Even if the plan had gone the way Japan wanted the US could have replaced most of its losses within the year, if they didn't want war then they had some short sighted people on the General Staff. Then again Adm. Yamamoto was vocal in his disapproval of the attack, some people did see what would happen if they "woke the sleeping giant." To use the Admiral's words.

[Jem'hadar]

Originally posted by Phantom
Don't really agree with this. How could the Japanese not expect a declaration of war from the US after Pearl?

The Japanese High Command, w/ the exception of Admiral Yamamoto, did believe a swift strike that eliminated America's aircraft carriers would scare the US into signing a peace treaty. Part of that belief was based on Japanese misconception that Americans were too soft & didn't like war and partly on Japanese overconfidence in their own purported racial superiority. But Yamamoto had visited the US & was aware of America's actual & potential industrial might, and he didn't think Americans were a bunch of softies; however, he was overruled.

That belief might seem strange to us today but it was a fact that this is what Japan believed at the time.