If the USA had shouldered the brunt of Nazi Germany’s war machine and still won, what would that be like? Would there be a generation gap? Would our outlook on war and/or the Cold Wars arms race have changed - assuming the Soviets survived this hypothetical WWII?
Would the U.S. public, even after Pearl Harbor prodded the country into war, support the war after nine million servicemen had died? Even four million? How strong was our resolve?
I’m not farming out a paper to the sdmb; I’m just curious.
The US industrial power was so great by the end of WWII, the US was producing more goods than the rest of the world combined, and we weren’t really trying. The nation wasn’t close to being on strict rations and such.
The USA was producing 3 ships for every 1 the Germans sank in the aid to Great Britian. It got to the point it was easier to make a ship than to stop the Germans from sinking them.
The thing was Lend Lease won the war against the Germans. In reality Germany even without the US help couldn’t have beaten the Soviets or Great Britain. They would’ve at best forced a stalemate with Great Britian still in control of the home islands and the Soviets safely behind the Ural mountains.
The Japanese with their limited resources hadn’t a hope in hell. Their goal was to sieze as much land as possible then hope the Allies would negotiate and then they’d get to keep most of what they siezed.
Even in China the Japanese only held the urban areas and that was a tight military control they couldn’t keep up forever.
The lowest support for the war ever was at 85%. Most of the time the war was in the 90% or above for support.
Certainly more deaths would’ve resulted in lower support, or an actual invastion of the mainland by the Germans or Japanese would’ve boosted support not lowered it. Bombings of the cities without invation may have cut into it.
If you like WWII “What if” type questions you may also want to check out the Axis Forums. It covers all forums not just Axis and not just WWII. It is a great place for history reads.
We never would have hit that level of casualties. Period. Safe behind 2 oceans, we wouldn’t have ever put that many troops in harm’s way that badly. If we really screwed the pooch in a campaign, we would just pull back and regroup, while the enemy starved for resources. As Markxxx noted, it was our productivity that won the war.
And if somehow the Germans or Japanese figured a way to invade the US, which is a huge if to begin with, they’d relieve us of the major problem of the huge logistical tail the US military had to operate to have troops fighting in Europe, Africa, the Pacific, and Asia. There was a statistic I picked up in college years ago that I have since forgotten, but the gist was that our combat forces, very small compared to some others in the war, was simply the tip of the iceberg. We had far far more of our resources poured into supporting our troops in a literal since than we did in actually fighting the Axis Powers. Move the war to North America, and now many of those resources are being used more directly to fight our enemies.
Also, if you make it into the Heartland? You don’t know hell until you’ve survived a Kansas winter.
Even more extreme mauldlin patriotism from Americans would be the likely result. If we had lost 4 million or more, we’d be unbearable. Probably more Lee Greenwood and Dennis Madalone type songs too.
