I dunno about the other stuff.
But I will say this. Britain or Germany developing the atomic bomb while in an actual state of war with each other seems highly unlikey. IMO its a near miracle the USA did it and the conditions we did it in were WAY better than Britain or Germany would have had. Hell, I’d say our conditions for doing it under war time conditions were nearly as good as Britain or Germany would have had during PEACE time.
If the OP posits no modification of the Neutrality Acts … then no. No machine tools, no raw materials, no orders for aircraft.
Even with the cash-and-carry modifications, Britain’s dollar reserves, and hence her financial capacity to continue prosecuting the war, were just about about exhausted by the beginning of 1941. Without the prospect of payment, US manufacturers refuse to continue working on British orders.
Kruschev famously credited American aid with making the Soviet victory possible, although I can’t find the quote right now. The US supplied 500,000 deuce-and-a-half trucks, to name just one (desperately needed) item; enough food to feed every Soviet soldier every day of the entire war, and huge gobs of telephone wire, rails, locomotives, millions of boots, and practically everything else needed to run a modern army and keep it mobile.
It’s even more impressive when you consider 6 percent of the Murmansk Convoy ships were sunk outright – the US sent more than arrived, and what arrived was phenomenal.
Let’s also bear in mind that defeat is to a large extent psychological; Stalin started the war very intimidated by Hitler and that’s before the 1.2 million-man surrender in the center of his front. It’s true that he stayed in the war for six months even without knowing that America was coming; but it’s also true that Hitler’s declaration of war on the US (December 11th) must have been an inestimable morale-booster. The Soviet counteroffensive outside Moscow had just started December 5th, but the battle 's final result could not have been known at that time. It’s impossible to say for sure, but getting a power like America for an ally right when your back is pressed against your capital might have put just a little more steel in Uncle Joe’s spine…enough to keep the Sovs in the war through the next campaign season, maybe? Which was, of course, Stalingrad.
While I agree the UK was necessary, this specific claim is a historical “urban myth.” According to historian John Keegan, the spring rasputitsa, or muddy period, lasted longer than usual in 1941, and the Germans could not have operated armored forces significantly earlier than the third week of June, which is when they did start – the moment the roads were dry enough.
Very interesting. I had not heard this before. This still leaves an unsavaged Luftwaffe able to quickly shift its forces east.
I was unaware that so much aid got through. I knew it was substantial, but not that substantial.
I think a case could be made that America’s entry into World War I was more important than it was in World War II.
You might want to check your own blindspots. While you’re complaining about how emotional and ignorant Americans are, you’re marginalizing the Soviet war effort.
Britons often say how El Alamein was a major turning point in WWII. There was another battle fought at the same time - Stalingrad. But there were 17,000 Axis casualties at El Alamein and 841,000 Axis casualties at Stalingrad.
This can only ever be empty speculation, but my gut tells me the Nazis would eventually have been defeated. There were thoughtless mistakes made on all side, but this was more of a pattern for Germany than for the Allies. Add to that the “homefield advantage”–the idea that the Allies had more to fight for–i.e., if the Allies lost, they’d lose their freedom; if the Nazis lost, they’d have to stop killing Jews. The stakes were higher for the Allies. And Third, Hitler grew increasingly irrational, and it’s likely that more of his own officers might eventually have turned against him, as in the most widely known–but hardly the only–example of this, Operation Walküre.
It’s possibly naive to consider which side was “right” as a factor, but morale is not irrelevant in such a fight, and the Allies had far more to fight for, and far more to lose, than Germany.
I was envisioning something like “Withdraw past these lines on the map and stay there, or cities X, Y, and Z get destroyed next”.
Even after Stalingrad… without aid and without the Germans being distracted all over Europe and the MidEast…
Whoo boy. The Soviets might have pulled it off, but I wouldn’t put money on it. At best, it would have been a 50/50 fight.
By 1945, the US managed to make a total of two atomic bombs. Unless you invoke the “wizards did it” clause, there’s no way Britain made even one. And what’s the delivery system? A Lancaster could have carried the bomb, but it flew too low and too slow to avoid the blast. Suicide attacks aren’t really the British way of doing things.
The Germans invaded the SU in three movements going for Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad and ending up either in sieges or a few dozens miles from the objective.
What if they hadn’t lost two months helping the Italians in Greece (therefore giving two more months of good weather) and either had concentrated their forces in 1 swoop and gone straight for Moscow (could the SU be administered competently without Moscow?) or gone to Leningrad and used it as a supply point to bring supplies from the Baltic to then go South taking/cutting off Moscow?
What pushed the Germans to go for 3 objectives that were so far apart at the same time ? Were they confident they would get 3 out of 3 in a few months?
In what region was SU equipment manufactured, mainly?
No, I wasn’t ignoring the Soviets, in fact I’ve argued the very same thing in other threads here. 80% of Nazi casualties were on the eastern front. Without the Soviets, the western allies (US included) would not have been able to drive the Nazis out of western Europe, at least until nukes got developed.
I didn’t say much about them there because I was talking specifically about the the Battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain was fought by Brits, Irish, Commonwealth, and quite a lot of escaped European airmen, such as the French, Dutch, Belgians, Poles, Czechs, etc. And a handful of Yanks. I’m pretty sure there were no Soviet citizens in that particular battle. The Soviets weren’t even in the war until well after the Battle of Britain was fought and won.
And I said some Americans. My actual words there were: Really, it’s only those Americans who have an emotional attachment to the “we saved your asses” myth that say any different. I clearly said that I wasn’t talking about ALL Americans. So: straw-man fail.
My problem with the attitudes of some Americans - not all of them - about the history of WW2 is the insistence on taking all of the credit. The US was a massive help, and the war would certainly have turned out differently without that help, but claiming ALL of the credit, and minimising or disparaging the massive and heroic efforts of the US’s allies, is highly offensive.
To me, it’s on the same level as Holocaust denial.
Hitler was an insane megalomaniac who thought (like all of his ilk) that he was infallible, that most of his generals were incompetent cowards, and that he needed to personally direct troop activity from Berlin despite inadequate fuel, supplies, and fresh troops. Had the generals been running the war, Germany may well have won. As it was, Rommel and the others were hamstrung at every turn, both by Hitler and Mussolini (when Rommel was in Africa). Germany lost the war in large part because of a long series of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
America entered the war full of bluster and bravado, assuming that its armies would roll over the Germans and Italians in no time. Instead, the troops were undertrained, under-supplied, and untested in combat except for some old warhorses from WWI like Patton. The American army lost far more battles than it won, and seriously bad strategic decisions were made that allowed the German army to recoup and return for the Battle of the Bulge. Had it not been for Hitler’s incredibly poor decision-making abilities, reliance on non-existent “secret weapons”, and the collapse of German industrial complex from RAF bombing, they might well have pushed the allied forces back to the coast.
Eventually, strength of numbers from two fronts overwhelmed the Wermacht, which was exhausted and in disarray after the war of attrition with Russia. The allies probably could have won the war without the USA, but it would likely have taken far longer. Remember: the British army was also exhausted, and the will of the British people to send another generation to its death in another trench war was just not there. The USSR, in the absence of the eventual successful addition of American manpower to allied forces, would eventually have rolled over Germany and likely claimed the entire territory as its own.
Which is why I reported it. Apologies if someone else already did that.
Pretty much. Hitler was sure that the Soviets would collapse so there was no point in planning for a long campaign.
A lot of it was far away from the battles. The Soviets had a planned economy which means they didn’t have to worry about what was inconvenient to its workers. They figured it was easier to build factories close to the sources of the raw materials. There were numerous factories built east of the Ural mountains. Magnitogorsk, for example, was a major industrial city that was 900 miles east of Moscow - the Germans never got within 600 miles of there.
I remember seeing in the “Word at War” documentary that indeed they didn’t have to worry about inconveniencing the workers. However, most of the factories with the workers were shipped east of the Urals to be set up again over there when the war started.
Getting closer to the raw materials was a bonus. Magnitogorsk was at first just the steel mill, setup by Stalin even before the war already with the idea to be far away from any European invader. When the war started most of the war industries were moved “lock stock and barrel” including their workers to cities like Magnitogorsk as reported in this Life article of the day:
They probably would have had only one or two bombs, but did the Germans know that? We managed to bluff the Japanese into thinking that we had an abundant supply with only two dropped; it’s not out of the question that the UK might have pulled off the same bluff with only one.
I don’t know much about the aircraft, though, so I’ll take your word for it that the English didn’t have any effective delivery vehicle.
Cite?
I’ve got to offer my respectful disagreement on the Holocaust denial with respect to the UK. The Soviets lost one-quarter of their population. The UK was never in such a danger that they could not have asked for peace from the Nazis and been given it in exchange for an armistice. And most of the Brits knew it. It was Churchill who personally rallied war resistance, and there was opposition. If there ever was a Great Man theory of point of history needing proving, it was Churchill who was convinced that America would continue the supplies and credit and who lead when there was significant pressure to sue for peace. The Brits backed Churchill, and Churchill had far better a friend than he suspected or hoped for in Roosevelt and Roosevelt until Pearl Harbor called the program Lend/Lease, but it truly was all on credit and a conviction that Hitler was just as dangerous as he appeared. Until Pearl Harbor it was not a given that the US could come into the war, opposition was very high.
Now, my fellow Americans take all too much credit for the fighting in Europe. They went, they were brave and they finally beat superior equipment and more experienced soldiers, with the help of British Empire soldiers and the French. There were victories on the Western Front for the Allies to crow about, but it wasn’t the big show. And as painful as the war was to the Brits on the Western front, it was nothing compared to the annihilation of the Eastern front. We all lost relatives in the war. But nobody except the Jews lost as many people as the Soviets. One in four Soviet citizens died in the war.
Most Americans do not know this because we weren’t taught it and because we spent more than four decades in Cold War with the Soviets downplaying their accomplishments. But not ever being taught something is not the same as Holocaust denial.
All of the Allied nations’ citizens can take pride in defeating the Axis. I notice this thread leaves out the Pacific theater of the war. The American war effort made the European theater its top priority and sent more troops and supplies to its allies in the European war. At the same time this was going on the US was fighting the extensive Japanese empire over an area of the earth larger than any other empire in history. The US did it without any Soviet help at all, and only modest British Empire help. The Japanese army had wiped out all land army resistance, and their navy was the largest and most effective in the world at the start of the war. There was great doubt they could be defeated on land and more doubt about the sea. The Japanese Army had not properly understood the development of machine gun warfare and maneuver from WWI, and without radar was at a slight disadvantage to the US Navy. Nevertheless, Pearl Harbor showed a level of execution that was unsurpassed up until that time. It was a combination of the Japanese putting honor attacks before strategic attacks and a breaking of the code at Midway that shortened the Pacific War by years.
The entry of America into the war was inevitable given the collision course of the Japanese in insisting on subjugating the Asian Pacific countries. They were doomed once they attacked the United States as Yamamoto explained to them.
It was Hitler’s declaration of war against the US that diverted what would have been a US war effort aimed only at Japan and not the Atlantic. It would have been very difficult if not impossible for Roosevelt to continue supplying the European war without that declaration of war by Hitler.