A major factor that saved the UK was the English Channel, which posed surprisingly great logistical difficulties for the German navy. IIRC they did make some half-assed attempts to put together an invasion fleet but none of it turned out to be viable. And I’m pretty sure the Atlantic ocean is even bigger than the English Channel!
you know why i don’t like the germans? they’re always starting wars they can’t finish!!!
You really need a new keyboard. Now the ! key is starting to stick as well.
Hmm, I stand corrected, said the man in the orthopaedic shoes. Maybe I was thinking of all military branches, or muddled up with the WW1 Canadian contribution (where they also kicked a large amount of ass).
All the while struggling with a devastating famine, it’s a shame India’s history in WW2 isn’t more well known.
Abe Lincoln said it best;
“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.”
He said that in 1838, but it remained true 100+ years later. All the Axis forces combined had no chance whatsoever of occupying the United States. Nor was it their goal, the idea that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to ‘conquer the world’ is a common but mistaken impression.
A tad harsh, I think - even before Pearl Harbor the US was effectively fighting an undeclared war against the U-Boats in the Atlantic and supplying the UK with whatever they could. Their industrial might - near limitless production capacity - and wealth made the USA a powerhouse even back then, an “Arsenal of democracy” as FDR said. Churchill knew as soon as the US entered the war, we’d won.
“…this very moment I knew the United States was in the war up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all. . . . We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.”
True - but my understanding is that was also FDR’s “pet project” so to speak. I believe even just Lend-Lease was unpopular at the time with the home crowd who didn’t want to get dragged in another round of European slaughter.
Not quite what I meant, though I realize I chose my words poorly.
What I meant was that the scale of American involvement in world affairs back then, and well into the interwar period, was absolutely nothing like the global American economic, cultural, military hegemony we know and love today. Well, we know it anyway :p.
America was huge, and it was rich to be sure but it was also over *there *while, in European minds at least, all of the “real world” was down here. Plus there was an informal policy for either halves of the world not to butt in each other’s affairs. That all changed after WW2.
The Japanese were a bit more involved and directly antagonistic towards the US, seeing as it was primarily American trade sanctions that strangled their Fucking With China economy; and they certainly wanted Americans out of what they saw as their turf (which ran Petropavlovsk to Perth, more or less :)) but even then, not even in their wildest dreams did they ever consider landing in California or somesuch. Even just seizing Pearl would have been a crack dream and a logistical nightmare.
Ah right, we’re on the same page then - I just wanted to throw my two cents against an interpretation of your post that the US was considered at the time as some sort of third-rate power or unimportant in world affairs, which was certainly not the case.
Gallup polls provide some interesting reading, Lend-Lease was pretty popular while actually entering the war in Europe and fighting was definitely not, at least initially;
Huh. Interesting. I stand corrected, then.
No, the USSR would eventually have beaten Germany, just as they did in our timeline. It just would have taken longer, with crappier trucks.
Gallipoli would also have helped Newfoundland ‘forge a national identity’ if their regiment hadn’t then been destroyed at the Somme. Point being that if you’ve served as cannon fodder under the British during WW1, you’d probably be inclined to avoid it in WW2.
On the plus side, no member of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment died in combat between WW1 and 2010, so there’s that.
(from the “King’s Speech”)
[/QUOTE]
Well, that’s not how it was described at the time:
Why not? What is wrong with getting carried away? The USA has the 4th of July, which is fundamental your identity: few object to you making a big thing of it.
I mention this because you will win few friends anywere by downplaying events which are fundamental to national idendity.
Anyway:
On my guesstimates, Aus fatalities per capita were 2:1 greater than UK fatilities at Gallipoli, and that in spite of the fact that the Aus contribution was better managed at Gallipoli, and total war deaths higher for Brits than Aussies. Gallipoli is just a smaller event for the Brits.
When I came to this country, every large business, small church or small school had a WWI war memorial. The graves were far away, but the daily reminders were strong.
That site says 30,000 Jews were in the British Army:
“About 30,000 Jews served in the British army in 1939-1946, some in special units of Jews from Palestine, such as the Jewish Brigade.”
That does not make them all German. The UK had had a large Jewish population since the middle of the nineteenth century, coming from Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland and Russia. There were a quarter of a million in 1919. Jews in the Uk have assimilated quickly and many lost their original identification with ancestral homelands, even though continuing to speak Yiddish. Britain was not a great recipient of Jews fleeing Hitler.
Some of the Jews in the British forces in WWII may have been self identifying Germans but most would have seen themselves as British Jews.
On the other hand, the largest single group of immigrants in the 1880s and 1890s were Germans- not necessarily Jews- many just economic migrants attracted to skilled jobs in the British economy which offered better life chances. Most of these lost their German roots and surnames pretty quickly in 1914-1918. Whether their children and grandchildren would call themselves German is another question- and they would have served in WWII.
Complex!
The command structure was actually very similar in both wars. In WWI, the British had wanted the Dominions to supply troops, who would simply be added to the British Army, in the way envisaged by the OP.
The Dominions objected and insisted on keeping their troops under their own organization. Sir Robert Borden, the Prime Minister of Canada, was particularly insistent that the Canadian troops be kept together, in what eventually became the Canadian Corps with four divisions. The Canadian Corps fought under British command, but as a separate Allied force, not part of the British Army. The other Dominions insisted on similar arrangements.
During WWII, the same pattern was followed. The Dominion each insisted on their troops being kept together as Canadian/Australian/New Zealand etc. armies, but under Allied command.
Thus, what happened to the Newfoundlanders at Beaumont-Hamel, and to the ANZAC at Gallipoli, was not the outcome of a different command structure. In both wars, the Dominion troops were under the command of either the British, or the Allied command, which could ultimately be an American or a Briton, depending on the theatre.
I went to American public schools, and I sure learned a hell of a lot more about history than you did. Your recent threads on history indicate you may have been cutting classes a lot.
That was certainly true during World War II. But were there multi-national forces under American commanders during World War I? It seems unlikely. The Americans were a relatively small and inexperienced force in World War I and there was the issue of their associate status.
No, et al., the usual truncation of et alia, “and other (things)”.
In England too. I’ve said before – and I’ve never tested this theory, but I think the odds are good – that if you had to meet someone in a random English village known to neither of you, you could arrange to meet by the War Memorial, on the grounds that (i) there would be one, and (ii) it would not be hard to find even if you were in the village for the first time.
No. There were people from those countries that joined the British Army but Australia had our own army thank you, and I assume Canada did too.
A lot of countries put a lot of troops into the field during WWII, not just England and the USA (once they joined). Go ask some French people if Aussies are the same as Poms.
Just a nitpick: http://www.hnsa.org/ships/u505.htm
We already had many enigma machines and had broken the code by D day.
isn’t the poms a casino in vegas?
My mother was in Pescara during most of the War, and she told me about seeing an Australian parachutist.
Did that happen? (Not my Mother telling me, the parachute.)
Might have been Kiwi or South African. No Aussies ground troops were in Italy.