# Did the US really save Britain's arse in WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 13, 2002, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444 "2002-12-13T05:02:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/41 "2002-12-13T14:23:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Deptford \* > \*\*But without the transport, the tanks have no fuel or shells, the aircraft no fuel or bombs.Without the clothing , you’ve no soldiers , they’re feet are falling apart from frostbite.The food they need to fight is rotting in a warehouse a 100 miles away. > There’s an old saying “Amateurs study Tactics. Professionals study Logistics”. > The support that America provided for the USSR was absolutly essential for the Russian victory. \*\* Fair point, but I was responding more to the idea that the Russians provided the manpower, the US the equipment, which wasn’t accurate. Perhaps I could have phrased the response a little more clearly. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9d8465/32.png) [@Go\_alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_alien)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/42 "2002-12-13T15:12:07Z")
I seem to have implied that the US supplied the USSR with significant volumes of combat equipment. Didn’t mean to. The most significant contribution was probably the trucks. The tanks were OK for Britain but then British tanks were crap so slightly less crappy but lots of US tanks were a bonus. Now if the USSR had exported T34s to Britain… Unfortunately, no chance. Once the US was in the war and helping the USSR, the last thing Stalin wanted was to give the any help to his allies. After all, he knew as well as Churchill that it was just a matter of time before defeating Germany, so the harder he made it for his allies, while taking all the help he could get (even the crappy stuff), the better his position in the post-war situation. ---
**Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/43 "2002-12-13T15:47:26Z")
Combining the best of the Sherman and the T-34 might have produced a tank to shorten the war. Shame it didn’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/44 "2002-12-13T16:06:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Go alien \* > \*\ ***Dave Simmons** , I think your quote actually serves to indicate that the USA did save the rest of the world. It is a (presumably) partial list of what the USA supplied to the USSR, which is in addition to what it supplied to the UK. I don’t think the USSR supplied any of its allies with anything. > > The USSR supplied men, sure, tens of millions of them and millions of the poor sods died, but the USA supplied the means. > > \*\* Did you actually read the underlined quote that said: _After 1941, Soviet war materiel production quickly overtook and surpassed that of Germany?_ ---
**Author:** ![dudemanjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/49beb7/32.png) [@dudemanjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dudemanjack)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/45 "2002-12-13T16:10:00Z")
If the U.S. didn’t save Britain from Hitler, then surely you can make a case that the U.S. and Britain saved a lot of Europe from Stalin by opening up the western front. ---
**Author:** ![andymurph64](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e57/32.png) [@andymurph64](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andymurph64)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/46 "2002-12-13T16:20:13Z")
I am an American and take pride in U.S. role in WWII. But I truely feel that people greatly underestimate the Soviet Union. I strongly believe that the Soviet Union could have defeated Germany and its allies without U.S. or even British help. It would have taken longer but the Soviet Union was extremely strong. Much stronger than people give them credit for. WWII was won in the Soviet Union. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9d8465/32.png) [@Go\_alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_alien)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/47 "2002-12-13T16:32:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by David Simmons \* > \*\*Did you actually read the underlined quote that said: _After 1941, Soviet war materiel production quickly overtook and surpassed that of Germany?_ \*\* I did read it and it was news to me, but I don’t think it invalidates my comment. As I said in a previous post, I never meant to imply that the USA gave the USSR the same level of help that it gave the UK. That the USSR’s production levels exceeded Germany’s doesn’t refute the fact that the USSR took everything it could from both the UK and USA nor that the most importand aid given by the USA was probably the trucks. Considering the scale of losses suffered by the USSR in 1941 and 1942, I’d suggest that without its own enormous arms industry and internal supply of raw materials, there was no way the USSR could have continued fighting. Their war effort could not be supported through the level of supplies entering by the Arctic convoys and overland route through Persia. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/48 "2002-12-13T17:13:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Go alien \* > \*\* > Considering the scale of losses suffered by the USSR in 1941 and 1942, I’d suggest that without its own enormous arms industry and internal supply of raw materials, there was no way the USSR could have continued fighting. Their war effort could not be supported through the level of supplies entering by the Arctic convoys and overland route through Persia. \*\* We can certainly agree on this. It took enormous effort by many British ports, and there are a lot of them, to build up over a period of two years a force sufficient to invade Europe. And at the time this force was not fighting, . After the invasion our lack of ports in France where we only had Le Havre, Brest, St. Nazaire and some others on the Brittany peninsula, was a severe handicap and we were constantly short of supplies. For a short time in early 1945 artillery shells and fuel were so desparately needed that C-47 transports were flying into hastily scraped out landing-mat strips so close to the front that they were taking small arms and machine gun fire in the traffic pattern. The idea that all the USSR supplied was the bodies while we supplied the materiel is ludicrous when, as you say, virtually all of it had to come through Murmansk and in winter be carried all the way to Crimea over a rail system than mainly runs east and west. ---
**Author:** ![lokij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/5e9695/32.png) [@lokij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lokij)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/49 "2002-12-13T17:17:36Z")
Don’t forget that other American contribution to our Soviet allies… something so powerful, so important to the war effort that even Stalin and Krushchev acknowledged that it kept them in the fight. Trucks? No… although they desperately needed what we sent and our trucks were the best in the world at that time. Tanks? No… soviet tank design was arguably the best in the world. Planes? No, the soviets produced more than enough to overwhelm the technically superior Luftwaffe… What was this mighty contribution to mother Russia? Spam. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/50 "2002-12-13T17:32:44Z")
Could Hitler have fought two protracted campaigns at once? Operation Barbarossa, we all know, was one of the most draining enterprises of the century for both sides, and it eventually wore Germans into the ground in that theater. Once the winter of 1940 set in, the Germans had settled in for the ultimate Eastern Front Rematch against forces just as driven, just as terrified of their higher-ups, as they were. After the Battle of Britain, the Western Front halted at the English Channel. It has already been said that Hitler had no good way of invading Britain, and instead had to rely on wearing them down with U-Boats and blitzes. Simple and low-risk, but it doesn’t put braunschwager on the table. Given that what Hitler knew about economics would just about have filled his nutsack, could he have managed a war economy with a bloodbath to the east, a simmering naval battle to the west, and no hope of breaking free and invading anyone? I myself doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/51 "2002-12-13T17:56:52Z")
By the time the US entered the war, Hitler’s invasion plan for Britain had already been defeated, infact in many ways Britain was more important to the defeat of Hitler than the US as if britain had been invaded there wolud of been no way that the US could of opened up a Western front. The US’s real contribution to the the war in Europe was not military, as the Soviets were far more important to the eventual overthrow of Hitler in that respect, but the economic support (loans, weapons, etc.) it provided to the UK and the USSR before and after it joined the war effort ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2002, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/52 "2002-12-13T18:04:32Z")
For almost exactly a calendar year, from the surrender of France (June 22, 1940) to the invasion of the USSR (June 22, 1941), Britain and her former colonies were the only significant declared enemies of Germany and its allies. According to spy novelist and occasional writer or history, [Len Deighton](http://www.geocities.com/wetaluft/fighter.html), in that intervening year Great Britain actually exceeded Germany in aircraft and naval production. After the [Battle of Britain](http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/bobhome.html) the strategic parity between the U.K. and Germany actually began to lean in favor of the Brits. In other words, the failure of Germany to enact [Operation Sea Lion](http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWsealoin.htm) in the fall of 1940 more-or-less guaranteed the survival of the United Kingdom and the eventual defeat of Germany, and that feat is almost entirely to the credit of the United Kingdom alone. Now, that doesn’t mean that Britain and her allies could have singlehandedly defeated Germany, but historically Britain has _never_ attempted to do such a thing. Britain has always maintained her power and position by isolating continental Europe from the rest of the world in times of war through the use of sea power, and then enlisting the help of allies for prosecution of the land war. And that’s just what she did in World War II, as she did in World War I and the Napoleonic wars and others prior to that. The strategic power that Great Britain held over continental Europe in World War II is evidenced by the fact that although the official policy of Britain and America was “[Germany First](http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/70-7_01.htm),” the bulk of American naval production was actually fed into the war in the Pacific. Britain was strong enough to contain Germany almost entirely on her own–although the Battle of the Atlantic was certainly a close-run thing. The containment of Germany in Europe (and briefly, North Africa) may have been the singlemost important strategic factor in the winning of World War II, and though the Americans helped, it’s impossible to consider the war as a whole without that critical factor which for a long, desperate time was the sole province of the United Kingdom. And I thank you for that, my friends across the pond. We couldn’t have done it without each other. ---
**Author:** ![armit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@armit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armit)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2016, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/53 "2016-01-23T17:03:24Z")
> [@owlstretchingtime](#): > > If anyone saved our bottoms it was the Russians. > > Thank you Russia Stupid limeys …The US saved Britain from starvation in ww2… 40 million tons of supplies have been sent to Britain until D-Day, 15 million tons were destroyed by German subs but the remaining 25 million tons kept Britain alive…Even before Pearl HARBOUR the US were saving British ass in Battle of Britain. The Spitfire could only compete with the ME 109 after the introduction of 100 octane fuel from America…D-Day would never have been possible without the US… ---
**Author:** ![armit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@armit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armit)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/54 "2016-01-23T17:05:52Z")
> [@Go\_alien](#): > > **Dave Simmons** , I think your quote actually serves to indicate that the USA did save the rest of the world. It is a (presumably) partial list of what the USA supplied to the USSR, which is in addition to what it supplied to the UK. I don’t think the USSR supplied any of its allies with anything. > > The USSR supplied men, sure, tens of millions of them and millions of the poor sods died, but the USA supplied the means. > > Without the USA, the USSR and the UK may still have won. But I’d argue that the UK would have been forced out of the war when the money ran out and the USSR would have found a war with no allies against Germany (with Italy, Finland, assorted east European countries and possibly Japan) much harder to win. The UK would never have won anything…The only one that lost the war was the UK… it never regained its power and prominence that it enjoyed before the war… Hitler dealt the brits such a blow that they would never fully recover from… Germany is now stronger than the UK… as the UK fades away into obscurity … ---
**Author:** ![armit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@armit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armit)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2016, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/55 "2016-01-23T17:07:47Z")
> [@Go\_alien](#): > > There is no doubt that the USA saved the rest of the world, let alone Britain, in WW2. Britain was broke by mid 1941 and could not afford to buy any weapons, food or other resources. Without Lend Lease, even Churchill would have been forced to make peace with Germany. You can’t fight a war if you have no weapons. > > Lend Lease made US resources available to the UK. In 1941 US destroyers were escorting convoys in the Atlantic and attacking German U-boats. IIRC a US destroyer was sunk by a U-boat. My WAG is that Roosevelt would rather pay Britain to fight the war than actually get involved. I reckon he thought that the Japanese would back down and the US would watch from the sidelines as the UK & USSR ground down Germany between them. > > Japan, by attacking instead of backing down, got the US into the war and made the war shorter. Shorter? You ask. How? Easy, the USA turned itself from a peacetime to a wartime economy, putting all of its resources into fighting a war rather than just some, and making US manpower available. As an active ally and the largest, the US could now direct the war rather than let Britain do it its own way. As an ally, the US had the industrial resources to build liberty ships, to supply tanks, trucks, transport (especially) and combat aircraft to all of its allies. It also had the scientific resources to develop the later, more complex radars (major radar inventions were invented in Britain) and to build the A-bomb (with a lot of British physicists). Britain could do all of these, but not together and on the scale to fight a war. > > The Battle of the Atlantic was the key campaign but it was badly managed by the UK. Too many long range aircraft went to Bomber Command, where they dropped bombs on Germany, usually missing anything worth bombing, not enough to Coastal Command where, even if the aircraft never saw a U-boat, being seen by a U-boat kept it (the U-boat) underwater and unable to attack a convoy. Generally speaking, not enough resources were put into winning the Battle of the Atlantic, which is why it took until 1943. For all Churchill’s comments, he bears responsibility for not overriding the “bomber barons” and ensuring resources were correctly allocated. > > And a final point. Convoys were vital. Unescorted ships are easy targets. Sticking them in a convoy, they act as live bait, drawing the U-boats towards the escorts who are the best equipped ships for dealing with them. Convoys sank U-boats. U-boats sank unescorted ships. Brits do not like to be reminded of the fact that "their former upstart colony had to save their bacon. When people need help, whether it be money, or actually help, they usually end up resenting the fact…Inferiority complex ! ---
**Author:** ![armit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@armit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/armit)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2016, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/56 "2016-01-23T17:17:10Z")
One thing you AMERICANS need to understand. Britain and British people are and have never been your friend, the US liberated and pretty much saved everyone during and after WW2. Hard as it might be to admit being a brit but though the UK wasn’t liberated like France , they were broke (along with half the rest of the world) and would have been screwed without US financial aid. Brits and much of Europe would also have been at the very best under very serious threat of invasion from the Soviet Union without their assistance. This is a fact … The US also saved the British Empire is Asia from extinction…Brits surrendered to Japanese in Singapore without firing a single shot, handed over Hong Kong without a fight and without the US Marines stopping Japs in Guadalcanal Australia would have been invaded in weeks… ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2016, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444/57 "2016-01-23T18:14:52Z")
**armit** , we ask that old threads in General Questions only be revived to post new factual information. Since this thread is 13 years old and you seem to have revived it mostly to make insulting remarks about the British, I am closing it. Do not revive old threads pointlessly, and don’t make insulting remarks outside the Pit. Colibri General Questions Moderator [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-us-really-save-britains-arse-in-wwii/142444.md?page=2)