Did the US really save Britain's arse in WWII?

Factual Questions
21

Here is what a Historian from the Office of the Chief of Miltary History, Department of the Army says about the eastern front in WWII:

“In sheer material and human destructiveness the Russian campaign had no equal in World War II. The total German dead, either as battle casualties or as prisoners of war, probably numbered about 3,500,000. Soviet losses were at least twice as great and may have gone much higher without even beginning to include deaths among the civilian population resulting from German or Soviet action. That Germany lost the campaign can be attributed primarily to its being forced into a conflict of mass against mass which far outran its industrial and human resources. Unable from the first to compete with the Russians in expending human life, the Germans were eventually crushed by the weight of Soviet arms. After 1941, Soviet war materiel production quickly overtook and surpassed that of Germany. [underline added] Additionally, the USSR received lend-lease aid, mostly from the United States, valued at over $11 billion. Among the more significant items were 409,526 trucks, 12,161 tanks and self-propelled guns, 14,000 airplanes, and 325,784 tons of explosives. Furthermore, the Soviet Union was able to commit more than 90 percent of its military strength against Germany, while the Germans were forced to retain a large part of theirs (35 to 45 percent in the years 1943 and 1944) in other theaters.”

This web page gives a good, short summary of the eastern front during WWII. To say the US “saved the rest of the world” seems to me to be nonsense.

22

If anyone saved our bottoms it was the Russians.

Thank you Russia

23

Isn’t this a debate?

24

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.

25

Okay people, apologies for this being a bit long - feel free to berate me for it afterwards.

It’s possible to say that Hitler would not have been able to invade and conquer Britain - as was mentioned above this has been much debated already. This is due to factors such as the failure of the Luftwaffe over Britain, the sheer logistical nightmare of planning a successful seaborne invasion (look at the Normandy Landings) and other factors - such as the fact that we can be a stubborn and bloody-minded people sometimes.

With the fear of invasion removed, then i think its fair to say that there was little or no chance of Britain falling or surrendering to the Nazis.

BUT

Without some form of overseas aid from the US then whilst Britain could have “survived” there is no way it would have been able to continue to wage war in Europe - even with the not insignificant (and constantly underestimated) help of Canada, Australia, India and the rest of the former empire.

In this situation Britain would have been faced with no choice other than to come to some sort of peace with Germany. Yes Churchill would never have been a party to it - but Churchill gambled everything on US involvement, and if that gamble had failed (luckily it didn’t) then he would probably have found himself removed from office anyway. He’d have been replaced with someone more amenable to a German peace such as Lord Halifax (who interestingly, had actually been offered the position of PM before but turned it down. The position had then been offered to Churchill instead.)

The peace would probably not even have been on bad terms.
By 1941 Hitler had pretty much accepted that Britain could not be beaten and he also possessed a known admiration of the British. Plus you can factor in that (with a bit of persuading) Britain could probably be brought into the war against Russia (don’t forget that Britain possessed no great love for the communists) and that Germany had no real ambitions with regards to an overseas empire to threaten the British.

In fact, just as there is often the hypothetical debate amongst historians over “would britain have been able to win without US support?” there is also another hypothetical debate which goes along the lines of “given that WW2 effectively ruined Britain, would Britain actually have been better off making peace in 1941?” (i actually had to write an essay on this as part of my degree)

At the end of the day i think its safe to say the following:

  1. Britain could not have saved Europe from Fascism without US help.

  2. Britain would not have been defeated - even without US help.

  3. Without US help Britain would have had to make peace with Germany.

  4. Without Britain as an ally, the US could not have saved Europe from Fascism either.

I think that pretty much (in my mind) answers the question, but i think its worth mentioning one last thing:

Neither Britain nor America had to fight against Germany. Both stood to lose nothing by standing to one side and letting events run their course.

But they didn’t

Britain had the courage and strength to stand up against Hitler - even when it seemed by 1941 that all hope was lost, and when it meant risking everything - its empire, its freedom, its citizens, and even its future.

And as a Briton it fills me with pride (and a not inconsiderable amount of patriotism) when i remember that.

America had the courage and strength to stand up to Hitler as well - even though it meant fighting in a far-away war that it had not started, against a country that posed no risk to itself, and that would cost it hundreds and thousands of lives and an untold amount of suffering.

And Americans should be bloody proud of that too.

26

garius, hear, hear. Britain sacrificed a lot in two world wars to save Europe from tyranny. Probably more than any other country. And before anybody mentions the sacrifices of Russia, they were sacrificed by Stalin to save Stalin, not Russia.

27

David Simmons is right - Hitler’s life-long ambition was to get “lebensraum” in the East. Of course in the long run, what he intended to do was to use that as a base from which to dominate the whole of Europe, and eventually, since he was a raving lunatic, the whole world. He was very surprised when the Brits honoured their pact with Poland by declaring war - he counted on Perfidious Albion to do what they had done so well until then, make a lot of noise, but take no action.

There’s no strong evidence that the Germans ever developed a serious battle plan for invading England. Sealion was cooked up more or les ad hoc, but the real concentration went into the intended battle, which was Case White - the invasion of Russia. It is much more likely that the strategy was to let England freeze and starve to death as the u-boats went on shooting off the buckets of the chain of supply from the Dominions and the US.

As for the main question, you need to bring into focus the reality that the opponent who beat Hitler was not Churchill, but Roosevelt. By the end of 1940, Britain was finished - it had run out of foreign currency with which to buy war material and food, and the intense isolationist feeling (backed by the Neutrality Act) in the US was making it impossible for Roosevelt to come openly to their aid. The famous quote “when your neighbor’s house is on fire, one does not bargain with him over the sale or renting of the garden hose he needs to put it out. One gladly lends him the hose, so as to keep the fire from one’s own house” was a masterpiece of salesmanship, but it was essentially dishonest. What you do, when your neighbor’s house is on fire, is go over and help him put it out, but the American people were in no mind to get back into a European war after the carnage of 1917.

I’m not all that convinced that the Brits would have been a unconquerable obstacle. After all, the Frogs lay down and the shit-covered Vichy crawled out of their hole to eat. There were plently of pro-Nazis in England, and a high-up member of the royalty who believed the sun shone out of Hitler’s arse. A change of government and surrender was always a possibility, and the more brutal the Germans were, the more likely it became. The only things keeping this scenario at bay were Churchill’s power, and the fact that the US came through with Lend Lease. This was Roosevelt’s genius, and it is to him that the Western World owes a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.

28

Britain if without any help from the US, would have established a Europe wide alliance of resistance parties (even bigger than the ones that were there even when Britain wasn’t invaded), I think, even with Germany invading the Island they would be thrown out Vietnam style.

I think that It would have taken Britain along with the Soviets, longer say 8-10 years without american military support. There would be more reliance on guerrilla tactics and ‘resistance’ than the larger offensives.

29

Sorry, while I was gushing on, garius posted his excellent piece. I would like to take him up on one bit, though …

Germany at the start of the war was a relatively weak country with virtually no natural resources - don’t forget it was just 20 years out of total ruin. It possesed industrial power, and fanatical leadership, but its ability to sustain a long war was limited. It needed the east for access to the things it was missing - oil, minerals, iron and cheap manpower.

Britain and the US could make a choice, they could fight Germany from this weak start, or they could fight it when it had 200+ million people under its control, virtually unlimited resources, and the inestimable advantage of secure borders from the Atlantic in the West to the Pacific in the East, with the Mediterranean as an inland lake.

BTW - the same argument goes for justifying the war against Japan - fight them when they’re weak, or wait until they have a billion people and unlimited resources under their control.

30

Hmm… Had Germany suceeeded in invading Britian, they might have done what they did in Poland: Send in the Death Squads (these are the brutal “knives” of the government and don’t care whom they are ordered to kill) and take out every educated person who might be a threat.

Kill the head, the snake’s body dies…

31

Churchill had instead invested in the SOE which was armed to the teeth and knowledgable in sabotage and resistance, this was a better idea than arming a few aged and vunerable farmers. And Britain is not a barren Island, where were you thinkg of, Scotland?The outer hebrides? Britain has huge quantities of coal, iron, steel and other minor resources,Britain was self sufficient in some basic food requirements but Britain needed arms faster than it was producing them. Also Britain had built many planes, but didn’t have enough people to fly them.

32

rampisad - its a fair cop guv. :slight_smile:

in seriousness - you are absolutely right. i agree completely i was getting a bit paranoid about my post length so kind of skipped over that point - but you’ve put it better than i could anyway.

From a pragmatic and strategic perspective if Hitler had been left alone any longer then who knows what would have happened and how many more millions would have suffered and died.

i think the only additional point i’d like to add is that it is important not to underestimate the ability of nations, politicians and individuals to bury their heads in the sand and wait for “things to work themselves out”. The whole process of Appeasement stands as evidence for this, and there were plenty of arguments at the time along the lines of “eventually he will run out of steam” or “The people of Germany will stand up to him soon.”

and it would have been just as easy for Britain to cave in and go the Vichy route - “if we can’t beat him then we may as well try and be his favourite pet nation”

both Roosevelt and Churchill, and Britain and America should be looked upon favourably for resisting the urge to turn a blind eye.

33

Yes and no. US (and British) equipment helped stem the tide in 1941, but it didn’t contribute much to the victory. The stuff we flogged them was usually dodgy, unreliable and second-rate with the exception of US motor transport. It wasn’t British Hurricanes or US M3 Grant tanks that won the war in Russia.

34

The SOE wouldn’t be much use against a few dozen infantry and panzer divisions. And those wonderful natural resources wouldn’t last long in factories against concerted air raids and commando attacks.

The UK’s best chance of repelling a German assault was on the beaches, and everybody knew it. The Germans were terrified, justifiably, of the Royal Navy and couldn’t establish complete air superiority either. Without effective protection against naval assault any invasion was a dicey prospect. Add in the British army forces preparing for such an event and the chances of success were almost nil, as historians and war-game simulations (proper ones, not computer games) have shown since the 1950s.

However, had the Germans been able to establish a strong base on the south coast I wouldn’t fancy the UK’s chances. The RAF’s airfields could be overrun quickly, and some key munitions factories were also located in the south (was it Supermarine who were based in Southampton?).

35

Crusoe

No and no and yes.
The lend-lease stuff (that didn’t end up on the bottom of the North Sea) fed and clothed the Red Army while the Germans were occupying the bread basket of eastern Europe. Without it, the Russian soldiers would have starved and frozen, and the second German attack would have swamped Moscow.

Factually, they didn’t flog anything, that was the whole point (and greatness) of lend-lease. No accounting, no demands for payment.

Yes, the US put the Russians on wheels, just when the Germans were going back to horses (those than “winter Fritz” didn’t eat).

36

Sorry. Misuse of the phrase “flogged”; I knew it wasn’t paid-for. Still, the point remains, the equipment provided helped the Russians cling on but didn’t win anything, and it was mostly clothing and transport rather than weapons, tanks or aircraft.

37

It has to be said that Hitler did not have much understanding of economics, and it is economics and resources that pushed him into certain courses of action.

He had to secure sources of oil, and other raw materials but the pressures caused by the re-arming, and the use of industry in military rather than economic growth always meant that once Germany was held for any length of time their nation would grind to a halt.

Hitlers Germany was pushed into manufacturing absolutely everything, being unable to import, and unable to pay either.

Some idea of the financial turmoil can be found here,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/battles/hitler/hitler_2.shtml

and in more detail about the immediate pre-war years,

http://www.alternatehistory.com/gateway/essays/NaziEconomy.html

It may seem ludicrous at first to consider that economics would have crushed Germany, but even today, the threat of war can cause financial markets to fall dramatically, even when the worlds most powerful economy is involved.

The only way Hitler could finance Nazi plc was simply to steal and rob other nations, and that imperative would never have ended, the German industrial machine was not at all efficient, and the requirement for further injections of capitol would never have ended.

Put simply, even if Hitler had subdued all those nations in Europe, he would still have had to keep going, just to keep his country afloat, and sooner or later he would have come a cropper.

38

I think it has to be said that they DID save our asses. But it should also be said that they didn’t start to get their hands dirty until they had been attacked themselves at Pearl Harbor.

Interestingly there was a programme on British TV only this week about how the British might have reacted to a successful Nazi invasion. Apparently plans for a resistance movement had been in place for months and it is generally thought that the network would have been the most sophisticated and well equipped of any in Europe, better by far than the French resistance.

However it was pointed out that the probable Nazi tactic of retaliation against resistance by obliterating whole villages, would have meant that the general population would lose heart for resistance after a while.

39

A couple of things spring to mind:

Given that it would have been pretty unlikely that Germany could have invaded us, it seems probable that we would have hit a stalemate, a small scale cold war.

i find it hard to believe that Nazi-ism would have continued in it’s initial form for ever.

Given that, it is likely that Britain would eventually agree to a certain amount of German influence in Britain and peace would have been made.

Hold on, that’s what’s actulally happened!

40

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.