90% of US war resources v the European Axis is a signficant exaggeration. It was Germany first, but not that much.
Exactly how one would calculate this for all forces and development efforts is unclear, but it’s clearly way too high sampling various measures.
In ground forces the US Army ultimately deployed 69 divisions to Europe (including Italy) and 22 to the Pacific. But the Marines also had ultimately 6 divisions all in the Pacific, 71% Germany.
At the end of 1944 the USAAF had 148 combat groups v Germany, 66 against Japan (per USAAF Statistics Digest), 69% Germany.
Naval forces were, obviously, the other way around, major fleet units of all types predominantly in the Pacific by the time of peak war effort in 1944. This was somewhat offset by the large number of minor ASW types in the Atlantic throughout and big build up of smaller amphibious vessels for the 1944 invasions. And in a few unusual cases US Pacific Fleet forces engaged German subs, and Atlantic Fleet forces Japanese ones. But overall USN effort in the Pacific exceeded that in the Atlantic.
Many other efforts, like the A-bomb can’t be meaningful apportioned between opponents. Likewise lots of other resources were devoted to developing new weapons potentially suitable for either theater.
I think it has to do with how Americans viewed Japan in 1940s. Remember in the the 40s there was no instant communication, people got their information from newspapers, books and maybe a radio (remember not everybody had a radio or even electricity at that time).
Most Americans didn’t know anything about Japan. It was a country ruled by warlords, a feudal country based on the samurai sword, not particularly well developed.
The only Americans who knew a great deal about Japan were guys like MacArthur and Nimitz, who had spent years studying the Pacific, China, Japan.
Remember the 40s were a different time, Japan and China were not well developed, both politically or industrialized.
I’m not sure how this is relevant to the beginning of the war. At the outset, the Japanese were rolling over the US, the UK, and the Chinese. The fact that Russia signed a nonaggression agreement with Japan early on should be sufficient evidence on Russia’s true thoughts on how quickly the Japanese could be defeated in a protracted war.
That was informed by Japan’s successful war against Russia before WWI, shocking the Western powers, who became aware - decades before WWII - that Japan was quite capable of waging a modern war and potentially at length should it get access to resources.
Yes, Russia was able to cut through Japanese land forces in Manchuria rapidly in 1945, but then again everybody else was capable of it at that point as well - they just needed to get some troops over there. Experience gained in Europe and a tremendous supply and logistical advantage told plenty by the end of the war. The situation was quite different before that point.
The idea that anybody in a position of authority considered Japan a laughable opponent incapable of a sustained war at the outset is contradicted by essentially every bit of documented history we possess.
Maybe the average person might have thought this, though even this is questionable in light of a successful Japanese war against Russia earlier. The military planners knew differently and did so for decades before that point, as above.
Yes but what I’m saying is that knowledge of Japan was limited by most war leaders in Washington at that time. Who were FDR’s top war advisors? Weren’t they all Army/political/Wall Street/ types like Dean Acheson and Henry Stimson? They knew about Europe, not Asia.
I think people underestimate how little was known about Asia at that time. When the Korean War happened, most Americans had 0 clue where Korea was and had to find it on globe.
This is clearly contradicted by the fact that the US was expecting some kind of attack before Pearl Harbor. And a fairly major one at that. The military brass were actively warning about potential war with Japan for decades.
It’s also contradicted by the actions the US took against Japan in the years before the war. Japan was increasingly active across Asia for years. Note Asia/Oceania was the only region the US had any colonial territory outside of North America at the time. The US enacted increasingly restrictive trade embargoes. There were several attempts to reduce the chance of hostilities, including direct meetings involving the Secretary of State. And the expectation even among them was that the Japanese were gearing up to hit US interests over there - the Philippines or one or another of the American interests in Oceania.
You mention Stimson, of the Stimson Doctrine, instituted directly as a result of Japanese aggression.
None of this indicates the civilian or military leadership were ignorant of Japan nor that they underestimated Japan’s military or economic power at the time. Whether or not their strategies were the most effective can be argued but there is no historical basis for the idea the Japanese were underestimated in the least.
This idea of Japanese stereotypes in the US influencing decision making seems more like a post-hoc “just-so” story rather than anything backed by the facts.
The US had a Germany first plan since before war. At the ABC-1 conference in March 1941 the US and the UK agreed on a strategy of defeated Germany and a strategic defense against Japan. This was known by all parties since the war plan Rainbow 5 was leaked right before Pearl Harbor. Once the US was in the war the Germany first plan was affirmed at the Arcadia Conference in Dec-January.
Another metric mentioned was Lend Lease. That totaled around $48bil v a total financial cost of WWII to the US usually quoted around 300bil (in then year 's). That was perhaps more skewed toward the effort against the European Axis than any other broad measure but still might have fallen short of 90%.
More than 90% of LL went to countries mainly fighting Germany. The top 3 UK, USSR and France comprised around 92%. But, some LL was used by the UK and USSR against Japan. In particular a significant portion of the ~1/2 of LL to USSR which went to the Soviet Far East was stockpiled for the Soviet entry into the war on Japan rather than shipped all the way west. And some % (though maybe less than 10%) of British LL was used against Japan too.
So even LL might have fallen a little short of 90% Germany. The whole US war effort was clearly well below that. 2:1 is probably a fair broad side of barn estimate of the division of the total US war effort. But this is compared to what impression any even moderately serious student of WWII would have? Obviously the effort was more against Germany because when the US buildup began in earnest in 1940 a total Nazi takeover of Europe was possible*, and that was a more grave strategic threat to the US than any from Japan. At an operational and tactical level, underestimation of the quality of the Japanese military was a problem in early execution of Pacific plans. But the basic strategic assessment that Japan was the lesser threat was correct. That wasn’t a misconception based on cultural Euro-centrism.
*which is why even Very Long Range bomber programs can’t be viewed as 100% aimed at Japan. When started, those programs were also to cover the possibility (however feasible it might have actually turned out) of having to bomb Germany without bases in the UK. Although, the large production effort on the B-29 during the war, as opposed to the semi-shelving of the even longer ranged B-36, was Japan oriented. The basic development though of such a/c was not entirely Japan oriented (of course the purpose of the B-36 later became to bomb the USSR directly from the US).
Look at the German fighter pilots in WW2, the top 350 fighter pilots in the war were all German. They produced some excellent fighter planes, bombers and tanks. The only thing they lacked is oil (Germany, like Japan is oil poor so they needed to develop synthetics and go for Romania, Baku).
The one thing America had was plenty of oil, that’s before we used up all our proven reserves and needed to rely on the Middle East.
All the battles against Japan were very lopsided, with 10:1 or 20:1 ratios in favor of the Americans.
Germany has managed to destroy 2/3rds of the industrial regions of Russia and get his forces within sight of Moscow before his offensive ran out of steam. That was considered a grave threat to America. Remember nobody considered the Red Army of 1941 a joke, even with the great purges and Stalin’s blundering. They had been preparing for war for years before Germany invaded.
The other statements have some correlation with fact though not perfect, but that one is completely wrong about the early stages of the Pacific War. It’s too basic to be worth going through here. I recommend any basic history of the war to see how wrong that is.
To be sort of fair but not really, those ratios were reached in the re-taking of the Philippines. The vast majority of the Japanese deaths were attributed to starvation and disease, rather than directly to combat fatalities. Planning on your enemies losing more troops to jungle rot than to bullets is not usually a good strategy.
So, not hardly “all” the battles. Or even close.
Also, the US has never run through its proven reserves of oil (actually, we’re hitting new records in domestic production), so that’s flatly incorrect as well. We only briefly fell below our 1940 level back during the recession in 2008 and are now higher than at any point since the early 1970s.
The reports from the meetings by military planners in early 1942 are online. I’ve read them but don’t have time to look them up again right now. As can be expected, it was a period of a lot of confusion and trying to decide where to do what first.
The basic idea by the military planners and President Roosevelt was indeed to have a Germany first policy, but just not at a 9 to 1 ratio. Germany was seen as a greater threat, but no one believed that Japan was “laughable.”
By late spring of 1942 the pendulum had already signed back and many people believe to Japan to be stronger than it actually was.
In this discussion, introducing ideas about what happened by the end of the war is really irrelevant. The question was what were Roosevelt in the military planners thinking in January 1942.
I think the OP has some info right, but misunderstands the situation.
FDR & US military planners chose a “Germany First” plan early on. Two main reasons:
Germany seemed the most dangerous enemy. At that time, Germany had already conquered most of continental Europe, and was still aggressively attacking in the East against Russia. Meanwhile, in the Pacific, Japan was mostly stagnant.
What the US had available quickly was more useful in Europe. We had masses of soldiers to send there, anti-submarine escorts for Atlantic convoys, Lend-Lease material to contribute, and short-range planes useful in Europe. In the Pacific, there was nobody to send Lend-Lease to, convoys weren’t a big thing, and short-range planes couldn’t reach Japan.
So it seemed obvious to spend most of our resources inb Europe in the early part of the war. At that time, it probably was near the 90% the OP mentioned.
But this shifted as the war went on. Much of the newly-built material went to the Pacific. The new naval ships, the landing boats, the long-range aircraft were heavily used in the Pacific war. And of course, in the last few months, all the offensive action was in the Pacific.
In the end, I’d estimate that it was close to a 50-50 split on resources; not more than 10% +/- lean to either Atlantic or Pacific.
Germany was the judged the greater strategic threat when the US started its military build up in earnest in 1940, no doubt about that. As some other posts have mentioned, the perception of this changed somewhat when Japan was anything but ‘stagnant’ in Dec 1941-ca. March 1942 when it made a series of lightening conquests over an enormous area, large distances even compared to Germany’s thrust into the USSR, though not anywhere near as large land forces involved. But the US plan remained, basically, Europe first, as it played out over the rest of the war (why it’s relevant to consider ultimate US force deployments by '44-45, the full realization of earlier paper plans). This was not 50-50, though also not 90-10. Some measures were given above. The US war effort overall was tilted something like 2/3’s toward Europe.
But this isn’t right. The US had a somewhat more serious army in December 1941 then it had had in April 1917, but not very serious by the measure of any other major WWII combatant in late 1941. And not nearly as big a difference in preparedness v WWI if you wind it back to even 1940. Whereas like WWI the US had a serious navy before the war, on paper the peer of the leading navy, the RN, though it proved poorly prepared in some important ways as was painfully demonstrated early in WWII. One of which was not anywhere near an adequate number of ASW escorts, which is why German submarines had such a field day along the US east coast then gulf coast and Caribbean in sequence during much of 1942.
Then, the force the US Army had ready to send to North Africa by late 1942 was quite small by later standards (6 divisions there by early 1943 of almost 70 eventually deployed v Germany) and proved it also had a lot to learn in combat with the Germans starting only in late November 1942 in Tunisia. There was less ground fighting by US forces in 1942 v the Germans than the Japanese, not true in any later year.
Likewise the small (by later standards) USAAF contingents in the Pacific saw more action in 1942 than the very small beginnings of the US air effort v Germany from the UK, with the British Desert Air Force in Egypt, and again from Algeria/Tunisia from the end of that year.
As earlier plans were realized, then deployed air and ground forces v the Germans began to heavily outnumber those deployed against Japan, though the main strength of the USN was always in the Pacific during WWII.
A lot of the kills racked up by German pilots were early in the war against the Soviets, whose skill was charitably described as minimal (training being more concerned with preserving the aircraft than actual fighting).
Frankly, there weren’t many German planes for Allied fighters to shoot at mid-to-late in the war. You can be the best pilot in the world but you won’t get numbers if you never see an enemy plane.
So did the allies. By mid-to-late war pretty much everything Allied was better than what the Axis produced, with the possible exception of ‘stupid big’ (and stupid unreliable) tanks. Even then the Soviets were matching and beating them.
Germany lacked a lot of things: manpower, material resources, unified command (why did the Luftwaffe have a tank division?!), operational security, proper intelligence & counter-intelligence.
If the Russo-Japanese war didn’t make the average person aware of what Japan was capable of, then their violent plowing through numerous other Asian countries doubtless did.
A lot of the ‘Pacific starved to beat Germany’ is also overhyped to make blowhards like MacArthur look more impressive. When you look at things like our shipbuilding campaigns (especially aircraft carriers, which were exclusively for Pacific use) that kind of falls flat.
AIUI, Japan had an awakening when Commodore Perry sailed over in the 1850s. Starting then (or shortly after), the Japanese decided they’d better up their game. So Japan began their industrialisation in the mid-19th Century and continued for nearly a century. Japan was a bit of an economic and industrial powerhouse by the 1890s, and continued into the 20th Century. During WWI the Japanese (who were allies of England, France, and the U.S.) exported a dozen destroyers to France, which served until the 1930s. By WWII the Japanese had a very formidable fleet, and their aircraft outclassed anything in the Pacific.
It’s true that once the war in the Pacific started, they could not keep up with the United States; but I would not call them industrially ‘not well-developed’.
Would you really compare America to Japan industrially in the 40s though?
America had a huge industrial network going on, coal being transported from mines via rail to blast furnaces, those furnaces being used to make steel, then the steel being turned into car bodies, planes, ships, etc… America had industrial development on a scale not seen in other countries… look at the ford river rouge plant, a marvel of vertical integration and production techniques, truly state of the art, raw materials being turned into finished cars in one single complex, on a gigantic scale.
From what I know of Japan, they were far behind in industrial development, like REALLY far behind. Even Germany was far behind America in terms of assembly line techniques.
Fishing still a large part of Japans economy at that time. In fact when American planes were bombing Japanese water in 1945, there were many complaints that they were doing damage to Japanese fishing boats, and hurting the main part of japans economy