US in World War 2

From Communism? yes. But the americans think that they won the war all by themselves. Which is so far from the truth its not even funny. Russia Could have beaten Germany without any help.

If by save you mean save them from defeat I would say no. If you mean save by them saving them from a long drawn out war against the Nazi’s then yes definetly.

If we are talking about pre December 7, 1941 the Soviet Union was on the back foot but considering the Germans failure to consider a long drawn out war, long song supply lines and inadaquate equipment for winter battles they were still a way aways from victory. It was definetly an acheivable victory but considering the failures of Hitler to listen to senior generals and military advisors that handicapped the German war effort. Stalin made the same mistakes, but considering the sizeable pool of Soviet manpower and the war making ability of Soviet industry they were mistakes he could afford to make.

In late 1941 the war was Germany’s to lose but a series of wrong decisions from the Nazi leadership doomed their war effort. If Nazi Germany had of mobilised all of their industry for the war effort in 1938 we would of seen a very different Wehrmacht in 1941, a much larger and much more well equipped army that would of crushed the Soviet Union underfoot. Another mistake Hitler and the Nazi government made was not mobilising the women to work in the factories so the men could be freed up to join the army like the Allies did. With the factories working at 100% cranking out tanks, guns and aircraft coupled with the extra manpower of millions of soldiers the Germans could very well of won.

But I suppose thats missing the point of the thread. The German navy in late 1941 was in no posiiton to take on the might of the Royal Navy head on, nor was the Luffwaffe in any state to destroy the RAF, so the invasion of Britain would of been impossible. The British people would of fought on, with the help of their empire in both man power and industry Britain could of fought on more or less indefinetly. With the Canadians cranking out hundreds of Corvette’s a year to escort the Atlantic convoys, Britain would not go hungry. The empire would of fought on and like Churchill so famously said “Never Surrender”. Without the German invasion of the Soviet Union or the involvement of the United States in WW2 there probably would of been some sort of negeotiated peace down the road, because for the forseeable future it was a war neither side could win.

A German general wrote in his diary “after six weeks of war we have inflicted 3 million casualties on the Soviets, in both loss of life and prisoners. If they can afford to keep going with that sort of loss of manpower and life we are going to lose this war” (just for the record that is paraphrasing I cant remember the exact words)

And that was exactly the case, the Red army abosrbed those casualties and kept on going, the factories kept making machines of war day and night. The Soviet war machine was probably the largest war machine in all of human history, when we are talking about ground and airforces the number of men and machines they could bring to the battlefield they could of brought any country they could get to by road to its knees.

What people forget about WW2 is the fact that at any given time no more than 25% of German forces were fighting on the Western front against the Anglo-American alliance, the rest were all on the Eastern front fighting the Russians. So without any American intervention the Soviets would of eventually prevailed.

@calvinhobbesliker:

To clarify, I’m asking if the UK and the USSR could have survived(not necessarily won) without the US’s help.

Definetly, they both could of survived without American intervention. Like I said in my previous post, the USSR had the massive manpower and industrial advantage over Nazi Germany. And Britain had its isolation on its island and of course its empire to keep it supplied with both food and arms for the the future. Eventually the industrial might of the British empire would of faciliated aerial superiority over the skies over northern France and southern England. Nazi Germany just could not match the industrial output of the entire British Empire, nor did they have the manpower pool the British have access to in Canada, Australia, India in particular and the rest of the empire. So Britain would of triumphed in the air war against Nazi Germany. Eventually a peace would of been forged, so Britain definetly would of survived.

I would have to agree with Octospire.  The west takes an undue amount of credit for ‘winning’ WWII.  The lend lease program really didn’t pass as a percentage, that much equipment on the allies.  The 50 destroyers lent/leased to the brits were of WW I vintage.  It did allow the USSR to not have to concentrate on building small numbers of transport planes and utility equipment but rather concentrate on building their excellent stormovik (sp) ground attack plane and the steller T-34 tank.

By the time the US was ready to do some fighting it was mid -42 and they got their nose bloodied fighting in west africa as they did not care to learn the lessons the easy way from the other allies with 3 years of fighting experience.  Moreover the initial daylight bombing raids over Germany in 42 early 43 were a disaster!

Dispite all the allied bombing, the germany GDP continued to INCREASE and only started to decrease when Germany started to lose France in mid 44.

I have said it many times, 9 out of 10 germans killed in the war were killed by russians.  So that means the US, Britain, Canada, and all the rest get to split the other 10% of inflicted casualities and from that take credit for winning the war?

No doubt, without US industrial help the War probably would have ended in 1947 with the USSR controlling all of europe including France.

Well Japan and Germany never had a world conquest pact.  Japan would have been happy with control of the near pacific and access to oil and resources.  Britain could have signed a peace treaty with Japan, Japan never entered the war against the USSR and it was only after Germany gave up that the USSR declared war on Japan.  Hence the use of the a bomb to pre-empt the eventual military conquest of Japan by Russia.

In fact the only reason Japan went to war with the allies was due to the oil embargo by the US starting in the spring 41 I think.  Has the US kept up the supply of oil, Japan would have NEVER attacked the US or other western nations and would have been happy to rape and pillage China.  Obviously, the US did the right thing but the allies should have been more prepared for the consequences.  You tell a starving person to just roll over and die so I can eat my dinner….well just don’t turn your back on that person and expect them to just roll over and die.

@calvinhobbesliker:

Is it true that the British were working on the A-bomb in Canada?

Quoted From http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Uk/UKOrigin.html

“Britain was the first country to seriously study the feasibility of nuclear weapons, and made a number of critical conceptual breakthroughs. The first theoretically sound critical mass calculation was made in England by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls in Feb. 1940. Inspired by this finding the MAUD Committee (a code name chosen from the first name of one member’s nanny) was founded. Headed by Sir Henry Tizard, from 10 April 1940 to 15 July 1941, this committee worked out the basic principles of both fission bomb design and uranium enrichment by gaseous diffusion. The work done by the MAUD Committee was instrumental in alerting the U.S. (and through espionage, the USSR) to the feasibility of fission weapons in WWII. A high level of cooperation between Britain, the U.S., and Canada continued through the war, formalized by the 1943 Quebec Agreement. Britain sent the “British Mission”, a team of first rank scientists to work at Los Alamos. Among the scientists who made this journey were the pioneer of shock wave physics Geoffrey I. Taylor and a protege - William G. Penney. The mission made major contributions to the Manhattan Project, and provided the nucleus for British post-war atomic weapons development effort.”

So given that the British mainland was under the threat of possible invasion moving a nuclear weapons program to Canada would of been a likelyhood as to not let the technology end up in Nazi hands. So even without American involvement it is quite possible that Britain could of obtained an atomic weapon and ended world war 2 in Europe with a bang.

The uranium ore was produced in Canada.  I’m not sure that Canada supplied many or any of the top tier theoretical physicists but doubtless many mid-level and lots of engineering types were involved.  True, many brit brains at top levels were involved.  I would suggest the contribution of Alan Turing in cracking the enigma machine probably was a greater contribution to winning the war, seeings as the A-bomb was in response to a german threat and came a bit late for use there.

Theory is all fine but it did take enormous resources and long term industrial development/investment which only the US could have done.

Ugh more Canada junk? seriously? No The UK and the USSR could and would have survived without the US assistance

Somebody implied or asked if the a-bomb production could have been moved to Canada.  My suggestion perhaps was a but too nuianced.  Basically I said Canada had ZERO high level contribution and MERELY supplied the ore and some technicians.  If this is bragging in your mind I would suggest your country has rather modest achievements.

By the way, I did not mean to imply Alan Turing was Canadian.  He was Brit, so again, the ‘bragging canuck’ points out how a foreign nations contribution were key, how arrogant….

The U.S help in Europe allowed for a secend front. Had the U.S not got involved the U.S.S.R would have ‘liberated’ all of Western Europe. This would have caused a situation that would have led to a 3rd World War.

@ABWorsham:

The U.S help in Europe allowed for a secend front. Had the U.S not got involved the U.S.S.R would have ‘liberated’ all of Western Europe. This would have caused a situation that would have led to a 3rd World War.

Would it of led to world war 3 though? its quite the interesting scenario. Post 1945 Communism conquered a large part of Asia, including China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia as well as Stalin’s aquisitions in Eastern Euripe and that didnt cause WW3 so i’m not really sure that the U.S would of got involved especially given the possibility of facing off on two fronts against both in the Pacific and Europe. Most likely the islationist policies would of continued as well as the anti- communist operations in Latin America, but beyond that I dont think they would of been willing to commit they’re entire armed forces for something that for the majority wasnt their war.

If the Americans would have intervened before the end of 1941, the second world war would have been less long.

Probably that there would have been less death.
Then, the Americans did not save the world!
In fact, the hesitation of the US government caused the death of million human beings.

Its a bit hard on the Americans to lay and blame for them not doing anything to stop WW II.  They actually did, wildrow Wilson (sp) was against the treaty of versailles which the French and Brits forced on the Germans.  It is often said WW II started the day that treaty was signed.  Nobody did much to promote democracy in Germany post WW I which they did get for awhile.  Remember, Hitler was elected…… reichstag fire rally cry notwithstanding

Had the Brits and French done something in 36 I believe when Hitler re-occupied the ruhr valley it would have been game over for the Nazis.  The Americans came to the rescue of the european colonialist once in WW I.  Many americans believed if the europeans didn’t learn their lesson then a pox on both their houses.