11th December, 1941*; Hitler declares war on the United States. Very foolish. Churchill wrote later ‘So we had won after all…Hitler’s fate was sealed.’
But on what kind of timescale were they thinking that Nazi German and Imperial Japan would be finally and crushed, when the Americans had joined? Nobody could credibly think that the United States could be defeated, shielded as she was and is by two vast oceans. As Churchill knew, victory now was only a matter of time.
I know the correct answer is that the Allied powers anticipated being at war indefinitely, until the job was done, but nobody thought that the war would last, say 50 years and nobody thought it would be over in months either, so between those two figures there must have been contemporary estimates.
After D-Day there was a lot of talk about ‘over by Christmas’, likewise I’ve read in Sir Max Hasting’s All Hell Let Loose that after their first clashes in Africa there was a thought it could drag on to 1947 or even 1948 (!), thankfully the Eastern Front had ground the Wehrmacht to a fine red mist before then.
I know I ask a lot of questions about this period. My name is Mr. K. and I’m a World War IIaholic. I’m hoping to get treatment for my addiction, but until I do I’ve got to feed the habit.
By February 1945, the allied leadership had time to schedule and arrange security for a conference (the Yalta conference) explicitly for planning for the post-war reorganization of Europe, at the latest, in late 1944, the allied leadership’s list of concerns had moved from the war to the post-war.
I think in Europe they had a fairly honest timeline from mid 1943 once they began to get serious about D Day. Obviously their assumptions where based on a successful invasion.
From the beterans I’ve talked to, by 1944 they were thinking the Pacific war would go on at least until 1948 to 1950. Everyone was thinking invasion of Japan after a long naval blockade and bombing campaign.
There were though Jody Calls that referenced the war lasting into the 1970s (seriously) and while people took it as a joke it wasn’t until 1945 that everyone could see the humor in it.
From what I’ve gathered through reading, mid-1943 was when the average soldier or citizen (on either side really, except maybe in Japan) knew the Allies would win, even if it was going to take a few more years.
Yes, late 1944 thru 1945 and a Allied victory seemed likely , but since both the Axis powers kept pulling nasty tricks from up their sleeves, it was never a foregone conclusion.
IIRC Manstein was one of those who was woken up by Stalingrad and thought that, at best, the Soviets could be made to acknowledge a stalemate.
Even earlier, in 1942, Operation Sledgehammer was to invade Europe and build up in France before a breakout. Fortunately it was shelved, although Stalin put relentless pressure on Churchill to invade the continent before '44. Roosevelt rather rashly promised the Soviet leader a cross channel invasion in '43, something that Stalin didn’t forget in a hurry.
You’re quite right that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it, to paraphrase Orwell.
True, it’s easy to forget that even Roosevelt and Truman didn’t know whether or not the Manhattan Project would work. ‘Babies successfully delivered’ as it was put. I recall reading somewhere that anger was among some contemporary opinions on the bomb. Not anger that it had been used, but if we had it, why did the hard fighting on Okinawa need to happen.
I agree with Sir Winston that it was over the day that Hitler declared war on the US. Had he not done so, and he was not obliged to as it was a defensive pact, the US people would have insisted on focusing on Japan, shifting most of the US navy to the Pacific.
When the Russians halted the Germans short of Moscow and its train hubs, it was over and the Russians could then grind the Germans down, even without US help, but it would have taken years longer. The German refusal to retreat from Stalingrad took at least a year, if not years off the war.
As late as July 1945, U.S. plans for a Japanese invasion estimated the Japanese had at least a half-million troops ready to fight a defensive action. The Joint Chiefs of Staff predicted (perhaps optimistically) that an invasion would take six months.
In eastern Europe the Germans successfully defended much of the Eastern Front until the fall of 1944. It was actually the uprisings in Warsaw and Slovakia that diverted German efforts enough for the Soviets to punch holes in the front lines. In western Europe, the Battle of the Bulge defied Allied expectations, at least for a couple of weeks.
Churchill had great hopes that the manufacturing capabilities of the U.S. and the determination of the U.S. soldier and sailor would help overcome the manufacturing and determination of the Nazi war machine. Which was one of the reasons why Churchill had spent so much effort trying to draw the U.S. into the war.
Hitler assumed that the existing (1940 and 1941) U.S. military would be no match for his Nazis.
I would be hard pressed to determine between Hitler or Churchill, as to whom was more pleased that the U.S. had entered the war.
Generally-speaking, speculation during the WWII was popular and rampant. We can do this, they can do that, they can’t possibly do this, they would never do that, etc., etc., etc… While speculation can certainly help with the planning stage, it’s the ability to adapt and overcome, plus a bit of luck, that wins battles. Win enough battles, and you should win the war.
The Allied assumption that the war in Europe would be over by Christmas '44 should have been the assumption that the war in Europe SHOULD have been over by Christmas IF the Nazi had been more cooperative with the Allies goals.
The US was already de facto at war with Germany and had been all summer. The US Navy was escorting British convoys with orders to shot on sight any U-boats encountered. Hitler had nothing to lose by declaring war, and by taking the gloves off and directly attacking shipping along the US coast they were able to sink enormous amounts of shipping in Operation Drumbeat:
The Germans were being ground down by the Russians before they even launched Operation Typhoon at Moscow. Barbarossa wasn’t cheap for Germany, regardless of its success.
W/regard to the war in the Pacific, I’m not so sure such anticipation resulted from the Battle of Midway. However, Japan’s loss of its carriers, aircraft, pilots and support personnel, certainly eliminated most, if not all, doubt as to the war’s eventual outcome.
I have heard that Branch Rickey traded Johnny Mize, who was 28, four days after Pearl Harbor because he thought the war would last five years (pretty close) and Mize would be washed up when it was over (wrong). Rickey got 3 players and $50,000…people say Rickey got 10% of any cash received in a trade.