As an European and ex-USSR-citizen, I know a lot about WWII in the Eastern Front. While I know next to nothing about the Pacific theatre, Southwestern Asia and the Japan-China war.
WWII was huge, and most of us only get taught about the events that happened near them or affected their country.
If you have 26 hours to spend on that topic, there is a 6 parts podcast from Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History called Supernova in the east.
It covers the rise of the Japanese Empire and the military conflict in the Pacific during World War II, spanning from the 1930s up to the atomic bombings.
The Soviets did get involved in the Pacific theatre at the very last minute (like after the nukes) and claimed a couple Japanese islands as spoils of the war, these claims are still highly contentious
This thread is entirely a western centric take. Reddit constantly overlooks the entire half of the war in Asia. More people died in countries like China, the Dutch East Indies, Phillipines and Korea than most countries in Europe except Russia.
First off, US fought the entire war in both the European and Pacifc theaters. US inflicted about 70% of all Japanese casualties and were solely responsible for the vast majority of Japanese elite units deaths. How many Japanese aircraft carriers did the Allies outside of the US sink without US help? ZERO. During the enitre war, China only sunk one merchant marine vessel from what I recall. The war in the Pacific and Asian theater was a massive naval and marine battle that was overwhelmingly won by the US without question. All of Japan's military ran on oil, which the US destroyed in huge naval and marine battles to cripple the entire Japanese military. The US shot down the most Japanese planes and sunk the vast majority of their battleships. The US was also responsible for cracking the Japanese purple machine, which was their enigma, but you hardly ever hear about that.
The US didn't join the war "late" as Europeans always like to claim. Japan was at the peak of its power when the US joined. If anything, Europe and the rest of the Allies joined the war late when you consider ALL OF WW2, including the Pacific. The rest of the Allies didnt even turn full effort to Japan until the US had.basically done all of the heavy lifting by purging them from the entire Pacific.
And yes, US had 300,000 deaths while USSR had insane millions. US still had more deaths than Britain, which just goes to show you how intense of combat US saw,.especially in the Pacific which arguably had multiple fold worse fighting conditions than most battles in Europe. ....truly hellacious conditions. Maybe US casualties were lower simply because the US was better supplied and better supported.
Again, these post trying to downplay US contributions to WW2 allllllllways come from European centric takes that completely ignore the other half of the entire war.
I actually know about the cracking of the purple machine :)
I will ask around tomorrow to see if my friends or colleagues do.
The Japanese activities in China and corresponding casualties are immense. And as much as I have read about it, the war in Asia was even more brutal and inhuman than the fronts in Europe.
I'd imagine. They were just throwing people at the front. When you look at the death count between ussr and germany it's astounding how poorly they must have been equipped and managed. Kept going, at least, but that's a wild k/d ratio
I think a lot also had to do with the very large number of soviet POW early during Barbarrossa, and well, German prison camps had rather low survival rates
Stalin’s devastating purges of military leadership, catastrophic surprise losses during Operation Barbarossa, a rigid and centralized command structure that lacked tactical flexibility, and a continuous, high-cost offensive doctrine against a technologically proficient enemy are the primary reasons
And there is still people who glaze the fuck out of Stalin somehow. He was shit, lol. Some of Russia's tactics at the time almost makes the MAGA administration look competent... almost.
Of the 25 million, the majority of those killed were either civilians or prisoners of war. The ratio of military casualties on the Eastern Front was approximately 1:1.3–1.5.
I’m American. I’m pretty sure most of us who have even a passing understanding of WW2 know the efforts we put in were mostly in the pacific theater. I’d replace “Americans” with “uneducated MAGA yokels” and not have any arguments.
Yeah i think theres a thing where its like, the American impact is way overdone.
But also the solution to that isnt to turn around and downplay the hell out of it. It was a big contribution. we need to be more comfortable with not turning the dial all the way one way or the other.
Yeah. The war isn’t won in the fashion it was without all 3 major powers.
The British/American bombing of German industry is also something that gets overlooked. Soviets did not have that capability at all due to how far in the east they were fighting.
Edit so I don’t have to reply to everyone who says it: Germany still loses eventually. No US intervention just means it takes a few more years and probably 10 million more total deaths
Polish cryptographers did break early enigma but were not able to do so after changes made to the code in 1938. Polish findings helped the work at Bletchley Park but the idea that the critical breakthrough made later in the war is stolen credit is just flatly incorrect.
I feel like also just the fact the US joining had to be extremely demoralising and any real chance of a victory was squashed. Had the US not joined the war could have lasted far longer and more devastating. Its like 2 people were fighting, and one of the guy has a massive body gaurd. The guy with the body gaurd gets knocked to the ground and the body gaurd steps in and says let him get up first, and after him you get me. The guy without the body gaurd would quickly realise theres no winning.
I don't understand why people pretend that the Americans were just some bit player in World War 2. The fact that we were on another continent and were mostly insulated from the worst of the war (on both fronts) does not reduce the impact American manpower and manufacturing had on the war effort.
America supplied much of the hardware for the European theater and most of the fighting in the Pacific. The war would have been very different without the United States.
1) Britain would basically starve without the convoys, at the point where Britain was the only Allied country standing against german. Germany still would not be able to invade and defeat britain, they would never cross the channel with Royal navy in place
2) Soviets would loose much more territory, but ultimately, Stalin was going to put every man, woman and child between him and the germans. Germany was never going to win that front, especially after they failed to capture the oil fields near Caucases.
In the end, the final result would be the same. Germany is too small of a country with too little resources to take on (without USA for the sake of this argument) two of the 4 biggest economies at the time. Would it take longer and perhaps slightly differently at certain points without USA? Definitely. Would it end the same? Yes
That's a good question but it certainly is not a slam dunk. If Germany had no other distractions other than the Soviets there also can be an argument that they would have to sue for peace at some point.
There’s so many what ifs already on YouTube. Germany had a good chance against Russia if it wasn’t for a couple huge blunders. Stalingrad being a big one
Don’t forget the British Navy completely blockading Germany by sea, and resupplying the USSR by sea.
The Axis powers really stood no chance against the Allies outside of France. France materially could have defeated Germany in 1940, but it lacked the political and military will to do so. Understandable after World War 1. The Germans had no way of beating the British due to the logistics of an amphibious invasion of the British Isles. The Germans never had the manpower to overcome the USSR. And they could do nothing at all against the US. It’s mad when you look back at it that Hitler felt he had a chance.
For a while, Japan remain the only dominant force in the Pacific, as while the US recovered from Pearl Harbor, the British withdrew completely leaving much of its colonies under US protection.
That doesn't align with the america bad crowd though. But seriously it's pretty known America had the goods, the Soviets had the bodies. (Very simplistic way to look at it)
I’d argue that the interpretation of the American “beast” awakening after Pearl Harbor is a correct one, but specifically in reference to American industry, which is how the analogy was originally intended.
Idk if the Soviets could’ve won without US intervention, but the American capacity to develop and equip their military, a military better equipped than any other military on earth, mind you, in record time with the surplus to also build and ship tanks, vehicles, weapons, ammo, etc to the Soviets, while also fighting the war in the Pacific is difficult to overstate.
Further, this manufacturing capacity and access to raw materials was also pretty critical in securing Allied air superiority, something that I think was totally out of the question in Europe without US intervention, and which enabled the allies to cripple the German industry by targeting factories, destroy their dangerous Tiger and Panther tanks efficiently and relatively safely, protect Soviet heavy tanks from German air strikes, and smash German fortification networks from the air.
To reiterate, not trying to undercut the contributions of the Soviets, they absolutely took on the bulk of the fighting against Nazi Germany, just wanted to stress that the origin of the “Pearl Harbor woke the American Beast” metaphor was specifically in reference to American industry, and in that sense I’d argue it’s a valid metaphor.
Also, while the Italian and Japanese campaigns might’ve been small compared to the German campaign, they weren’t nothing and shouldn’t be undercut.
For context the US spent
$341 billion on defense and machinery in WW2, by far the most out of any country and more than double what the USSR spent which was 90 billion. They also have 11.3 billion to the USSR in military aid in the form of machinery, to the point where
Roughly 80%
of all new locomotives, one to two thirds of trucks and jeeps, 12% of all aircraft and 6% of all tanks used by the Soviet war effort during WWII were American-made via lend lease. Not counting aid contribution by other western nations.
This is what I hate about these BS history post. People like to bash America for not having as many casualties etc but then conveniently ignore or have no clue about how much the US provided manufacturing wise to everyone and especially the Soviets. The war was won with Russian blood and American parts.
They also have this astonishing amnesia that this World War was actually a World War, not just a European war, and that the Soviets declined to participate at all in the Asian Theater, where with a nod to China, Britain, ANZACs, Filipinos, Gurkhas, etc., the US largely had to fight and defeat Japan all by itself, all the while supporting the European Western Front and providing literally two-thirds of all Allied war materials.
Yeah, and whether or not the Soviets could have won without Lend Lease doesn't really matter when they definitely couldn't have won if the Axis had complete domination over the oceans, as would have been the case without the US or UK
Lend-lease was USA's greatest contribution and they gave a herculean effort in Europe and the Pacific as well. The Soviets were still getting rolled up for a while on the Eastern front and making the German's fight on two fronts helped win the war for Soviets and Allies alike. Nobody's efforts should be downplayed.
And we leveraged that capability to get Great Britain to send us literal boatloads of patents and prototypes and cede favorable trade deals with all of their colonial holdings. Basically cementing US hegemony, globalization, and freedom of the sea for decades after.
WW2 and the desperate state it pushed Britain into was the most important catalyst for US superpower status.
You forget: "Without the Great Britain, Germany wins".
Good luck to do all the bombing raids, the D-Day, the logistics and the troop movements without the bases provided in England and Northern Ireland.
Even the African front would not have been possible without Gibraltar, or at least not on this scale.
And between June 1940 (fall of France) and June 1941 (Invasion of USSR by Germany), the British Empire fought more or less alone against Germany.
I just looked it up because I was not aware of how much support the Soviets got from lend lease, they received about 22% vs 63% to the Commonwealth countries.
Vladivostok's main benefit to the war, was being a place to easily ship in goods to hop on that trans-siberian railway to the front. Stopping to drop off other supplies along the way. Was so far from German lines and stations, that they had no way to really convoy raid like the were the Brits.
Yeah and they sent souls. But actually look at total productions of everything and you’ll see it’s like 10% of shit, tops. Aircraft fuel was the only one that was significant, but you never really hear much of the Soviet Air Force. It was actually decent, but it’s not what won.
Just tell me who you think said the following on June 24th 1941;
If the Germans are winning, we ought to help the Russians.
If the Russians are winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible
It was an alliance. The Soviets inflicted most of the casualties on the ground. The US/UK inflicted most of the casualties in the air and sea. Dipshits (not you) arguing about “who really won the war” 80 years later are exhausting.
It’s fucking stupid and disrespectful to not appreciate everyone and everything that contributed, and pretend like one aspect deserves anymore respect or honor.
Thats underselling the American involvement in the west or overselling its involvement in the east. The USA had more troops in the Europe than in the island hopping campaign. And just like we often under represent the Soviets involvement in the west, we do the same for the Chinese involvement in the east, as they are completely absent from either picture but had the 2nd most (or possibly the most) casualties. You can certainly argue that America was more instrumental in the defeat of the Japanese than the Nazis but I would say its wrong to say the effort was mostly in one theater or the other.
The US ability to simultaneously conduct significant operations in both theaters was unmatched such as the invasions of the Marianas and Normandy occurring within weeks in June 1944.
It's hard to fit very many troops on islands and boats. How many ships did the US contribute in the Pacific front? The US also supplied China in the back half of the war. (USSR supplied China in the first half, then formed a neutrality pact with Japan in order to prepare for a German invasion)
You are incorrect as a deliberate Germany first approach was adopted in 1942. Seventy-five percent of the US Army was in Europe (68 divisions vs 22). The Navy (including USMC) was the only service that had more in the Pacific than Europe.
I mean that's not completely true either. We focused primarily on Europe when we came in. And while the Soviets bore the brunt of the human cost of course they were only able to do it because of American supplies. The war is a lot harder for either of us without the other.
We absolutely supplied the war. It's so weird that people try to dismiss us from the western front. We didn't win the war but the war was won because of us. They would have run out of supplies and lost before Japan got froggy with us.
"We didn't win the war but the war was won because of us"
It's impossible to know for sure, and we can say the same for the Soviet Union so your point is moot. I think people dismiss the US involvement because they're overcorrecting the propaganda that Holloywood gave us for decades that amounted to "The US singlehandedly won both World Wars", so now they're shitting on the US that didn't really contributed much in personnel compared to other countries, but absolutely did contributed in logistic and material aid. The "Arsenal of Democracy" is a 100% deserved moniker.
We spilt our efforts, and despite the British commonwealth’s heroic efforts, their actual significance was fairly low in the pacific (but F fighting in Burma/new guinea, that shit was awful).
To the point where it pissed off the Brit’s and Soviets.
Google the Europe First Strategy. America did primarily focus on Europe the moment they entered the war and it was an actual agreed upon policy decided in 1941.
I think this is mostly accurate. But the emphasis is definitely on our financial support and then D-Day invasion. And how the US saved Europe. Which is not like technically wrong but there was so much happening and sacrifice by Europeans it sorta mitigates the other contributions.
But in my head we defeated Japan single handedly with maybe a bit of an assist by China. I don’t know exactly how accurate that representation is but that’s the feeling I have about it.
That's not true. A big part of the US' industial output went towards bombing the shit out of everything and anything within Germany. Without german industry being sent back to the stone age every other week, the soviets would have had an even worse time.
Except your understanding is completely wrong apparently. The US agreed to focus on Europe first. It was called the Europe first strategy and agreed to at the Arcadia conference in 1941. The majority of American manufacturing and troops was allocated to Europe.
America just fought differently and from a different position than the Soviets. Mostly because there was never any possibility for any axis powers of invading America at any point ever. So instead of massive land battles America could just out produce and overwhelm the axis in aerial and naval combat to such a degree that there was almost no peer fighting at all.
Just look at how the US out produced Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan combined when it came airplanes, tanks, and navy vessels. And then realize that the Germans practically weren't producing any naval surface vessels and the japanese werent producing any tanks at all at the same time. And both axis powers were using double the percentage of their GDP for war production that America was.
The most devastating and expensive weapon America produced in ww2 was the B-29 bomber. Less than 4% of the b-29s produced by America were shot down and they could operate from so far away from enemy front lines that they couldn't be targeted by enemy airforces when not actively engaging. American doctrine was just entirely different than any other combatant and could deal devastating blows without risking its people in the same way as the Soviets.
What it really boiled down to was America just had the most devastating technological advantage of the war by far, the assembly line. We don't tend to think about it because it is so ubiquitous today, but it was baffling for the axis when they finally wrapped their heads around it. Before American involvement they thought the assembly line was incapable of producing such advanced war machines. But they were entirely wrong.
America was the only nation in the war who could repair their machinery without master mechanics because they were the only country that could mass produce identical parts and they could do it on a scale that was unimaginable for the Germans and Japanese. Every replacement part for the luftwaffe had to be from the exact same factory and production run as the part it was replacing otherwise it needed to be modified to be inserted into the plane it was going into. The tolerances their artesian produced parts were just wildly inferior to American industry standards and parts needed to be masterfully filed down and shimmed into place to be operational. The US didn't have that issue.
America contributed far more through lend lease than actual fighting. Not discrediting the sacrifices made by American soldiers at all. Both of my grandfathers fought in the war, one in Europe and the other in the pacific. I remember when I was a kid and my mom bought a new Mitsubishi and drove us kids to go see him in it. He couldn't even look at that car. He said you know they're the ones that built the tanks that shot at me right? That was probably the most emotion I remember seeing from him growing up. But anyways. America helped win the war bc the Axis couldn't touch our manufacturing and it was our guns, tanks, ammo, planes, that is what really turned the tide in the Allies favor. The Russians have always won through meat waves, but sending men to run to their death doesn't mean shit if they can't take somebody out before they die.
It was actually closer to 50/50 in favor of the European theater. It would’ve been less if the Nazis did take Moscow because they would have been spread too thin and spent too much to take it. But they didn’t and the Soviets where able to not only break the siege but launched a counter offensive that went straight to Berlin, the Soviets beat the western allies to Germany, that was almost the worst case scenario for the US, Russia occupying Germany.
Compared to the Pacific theater, which while tough as hell and had many casualties, the US and Allies were much more confident in their ability to eventually win that front especially once the Nazi’s were defeated. In fact the pacific campaign was so much more successful than originally anticipated that the US had made 500k Purple Hearts more than they needed. Granted the atomic bomb changes that significantly it was always going to end in US/allied victory against Japan without Nazi Germany.
To be fair those Purple Hearts were made specifically for the invasion of Japans home islands and we made that many because of all the previous casualties and fighting in the Pacific theater so far
As a percentage of our efforts, most of our efforts were in Africa, Italy, and Western Europe, not the Pacific.
It's still dwarfed by the eastern front, that's just how big it was.
The Pacific front just never required the same number of land troops as Europe from any side.
Where Americans and Brits did put up the bulk of the effort was the strategic bombing campaign, no contest. We made more B24s than any four engined plane in world history and the B17 comes pretty close. The soviet's made more single and dual seat IL2s than any plane in history, but they were small and short range and never carried the tonnage of bombs the western allies did.
For a size comparison, the US 8th Air Force alone had more killed in action than the entire marine corps in the entire Pacific war.
I saw a documentary focused on USAs fighting Japan in the pacific and I learned not only how much fighting happened in the ocean (not just pearl harbor and the nuclear bombs we all hear about) but surprised how thoroughly the USA was kicking ass there.
the efforts we put in were mostly in the pacific theater.
This isn't really true. There were a lot more US ground troops and aircraft in Europe than the Pacific. The naval forces were a lot bigger in the Pacific but nonetheless, overall more manpower and resources went to Europe than the Pacific
Also semi-officially the US agreed with the British on a Germany-first policy. Unofficially when the US crunched the numbers and realized just how much equipment and materials they could produce and with Operation Overlord / D-Day being penciled in for 1944 (US originally want to invade France in late-1942) they also went full tilt against the Japanese and reallocated some forces that could've gone to Europe to the Pacific instead.
European theatre was the priority theatre for you guys too. The Nazis were the biggest threat especially as we were in a nuclear bomb race with them (they wanted to do a droppable reactor essentially which was a developmental deadend but we didn't know that at the time).
Your contribution was your industry. Without it the war would have been extended hugely. But it was won once the soviets held Moscow imo. I'm British and proud of our contribution. But the Russians won the war. They are the only entity that was completely necessary for the allies to win. In my opinion of course
True America put a lot of effort into the Pacific theater but Japan was going to surrender when the Soviets joined the effort against Japan. Don't believe me? Well surely you'll believe the vast American, Soviet, and Japanese primary sources (including letters from the Emperor himself) on this topic.
For a list of those sources, read the summary book:
Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
Yep, dipshit conservatives basically think the European theater of WW2 was just storming the beaches on D-Day and then Germany surrendered to us afterwards. Goes to show why our military hasn’t won any sort of significant conflict since 1945…
My education on WW2 as part of history class really emphasized Americas role. Even though the textbook technically told the truth, the lecture from the teacher "clarified" things about how the rest of the world wasn't able to halt the Germans until we finally decided to get involved and won.
This was in Wisconsin, though admittedly a it was a Christian school in the 80s. My denomination wasn't especially fundamentalist in its dogmatism. I think the way my school was teaching it was aligned with the public schools in my area. My public school friends also seemed to think America was the Big Damn Hero of WW2.
I think it's just the era (the cold war). We were being taught how awesome America is in general. It's not the they're uneducated - most of MAGA is my generation. We were educated normally in most things. But American pride was a priority. We were also taught that the evil brown people in the middle east hate us "for our freedom". To this day I'm still learning the truth about things I believed in school.
Fun fact the US actually mainly focused on Europe as Nazi Germany was deemed the much greater threat and maintained a 'Europe First' policy for much of the war.
You didn't have to put unedcuated in front of that MAGA statement. That is understood by virtue that they are MAGA. The yokels part is debatable because there are some MAGA's dwelling in the cities.
I wouldn't say our efforts were mostly Pacific Theater (manufacturing and logistics win wars), but our blood mostly was. D-Day helps skew the impression of that though, a LOT of dead US soldiers on those beaches.
Agreed, but worth mentioning the US’s biggest contribution to the soviets and Europe was ultimately logistical mobilization. Only about 1 in 10 of Soviet tanks and planes were from the US but by the end of the war 2/3rds of the Soviet trucks and freight were from lend lease. This is because the US sent an estimated 400,000 jeeps and trucks through the lend lease program. At the absolute peak in late 1944 the US was producing a jeep every 90 seconds.
Nah, theres a ton of non maga Americans who were fed the same lies in school and believe it till this day. Barely any really understand how the USSR carried us due to the efforts of the red scare (whoch everyone knows was a bunch of bs but still simultaneously see communism as a threat as a result of those same lies) and how much "Americas amazing" propoganda we were fed.
I’m an American… and i think a lot of Americans like myself simply don’t really have a nose for history.
Sure its taught in schools here, but if it doesn’t really interest you, and lord knows teachers dont exaclty make an effort towards making it appealing to kids, its a very easy class to phone in and keep the knowledge in your short term to pass the class. I mean it’s not like math and science and english classes where it’s really applied to your everyday life.
Almost 70% of the manpower on the western front for operation overlord were Americans. Piece of shit revisionists always push the boundaries beyond where they belong, making the new narrative just as bad as the old one.
Fun fact but early on the USSR was importing most of their trucks from the US while they got things setup farther away from the front lines. US trucks helped Soviets supply their armies during the early days of the Eastern Front.
We all know this. We also know that the Soviets would have been eaten alive if it wasn’t for America doing lend-lease. That was never paid back and instead had some debt settlement.
Part of that large casualty rate was the Soviets targeting civilians, something western forces actively tried to avoid, The Soviets also just didnt care for their troops lives as long as the job got done.
russia has a long history of gaining political stability through the spending of young mens lives (Fewer unemployed unmarried men means more political stability in that context) it is probably why they amped up ukraine when they did, can't have a revolution if they've already killed all the soldiers.
1,900+ locomotives & 11,000 railcars: Kept the Soviet railway system afloat while domestic factories focused almost entirely on tanks.
400,000+ Studebaker trucks: Provided the core logistics for Red Army offensives and served as mobile platforms for Katyusha rocket launchers.
57% of all high-octane aviation fuel: Powered Red Army fighters, as Soviet refineries couldn't manufacture high-grade aviation gas in required volumes.
1 million miles of phone cable: Supplied basic field communications that domestic factories couldn't produce fast enough.
300,000+ tons of aluminum: Provided roughly half of all aluminum used in Soviet wartime aircraft manufacturing after early losses of bauxite mines.
300,000+ tons of explosives: Accounted for about a third of all explosives used in Soviet artillery shells and munitions.
4.5 million tons of food: Delivered high-calorie rations (like canned tushonka) to feed millions of soldiers and factory workers after Ukraine's farmland was occupied.
War was fought with Soviet blood and American steel.
I think what is being forgotten in this current anti-West swing of the historic revisionism pendulum is how critical the US intervention actually was on all fronts. Lend-lease gave the allies access to a massive island of farmland and industrial capacity. Our logistical capacity delivered it to places that should have been impossible.
- the US accounted for about 50% of ALL global munitions produced by 1944
the US produced 75% of all logistics-related trucks used by the Soviets, which made up approximately 40% of the total vehicles
the US provided over 90% of the Soviet's railway equipment
the US supplied over 50% of the fuel, including nearly 90% of the aviation-grade fuel used by the Soviets
the US supplied over 50% of the aluminum and 80% of the copper used by the Soviets
the US supplied nearly 5 million tons of food to the Soviets
The Soviets agreed:
"The most important things in this war are the machines. The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
-Josef Stalin, 1943
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."
That completely forgets the fact that close to 3 million Germans surrendered to American forces. Why kill them if you can just surround them and make them surrender? The Soviets lost 25 million partially because of poor tactics, lack of equipment, and starvation/the cold.
There probably some historic correction needed to the US view of "won it alone", but the fetishisation of the East Front has gone too far too.
The Eastern front was a land war, thought with men, tanks and artilley. It naturally therefore resulted in big land battles with lots of men deployed.
But other theatres also consumed significant resources.
A single u-boat could cost 20X a tank or AFV and disproportionately consumed high quality materials and trained crews. Yes the Eastern Front chewed up 20X the number of tanks that the Battle of the Atlantic chewed up u-boats, but the actial value of the loss in resources and specialist soldiers isnt that different.
The Eastern Front was a bloody slogging match about trading vast numbers of men and basic machines. The naval and air wars were high tech, expensive arms races that resulted in fewer casualties, but far more material loss per death.
Both were necessary and neither was sufficient to win the war alone. "American steel, Soviet blood and British intelligence" as the saying goes.
WWII Facts for Tankies:
-Stalin, Khrushchev, and Marshal Zhukov all explicitly admitted the USSR would have lost without American industrial aid
-The Allies supplied over 21,000 combat aircraft and 18,000+ tanks and armored vehicles directly to the Soviet war effort
-The US shipped 4.5 million tons of food (accounting for up to half of all fats and proteins consumed by frontline troops) and 15 million pairs of combat boots to keep the Red Army fed and equipped
-The US delivered 400,000+ trucks and jeeps (2 out of every 3 Red Army transport vehicles) along with ~92% of Soviet wartime rail stock, providing the entire logistical mobility for deep offensives like Operation Bagration
-The Western Allies provided 55% of Soviet aluminum, 80%+ of copper, 57% of high-octane aviation fuel, and over a third of all wartime explosives, without which domestic T-34 and aircraft production would have stalled
-The Western bombing campaign and multi-theater war forced Germany to divert ~70% of the Luftwaffe and thousands of heavy 88mm guns to home defense rather than the Eastern Front
-The US waged a simultaneous two ocean global war, dismantling the Imperial Japanese military virtually solo while supplying the industrial and food base for both the UK and USSR
People really don't realize how dire things were for the Soviets on the Eastern Front. The entire depiction of the Red Army as an infinite "human wave" swarm was literally a postwar myth cooked up by captured Nazi generals (like Halder and Manstein) in their memoirs to save face for getting out-produced and crushed. The Soviets didn't win through endless meat grinders; they won through combined-arms Deep Battle doctrine motorized by Western logistics.
Any American with passing knowledge of WW2 knows this, that's not the reason for the outsized American pride regarding WW2.
The pride comes from the fact that the 300k American deaths were on a continent that was not home to those Americans, not for the survival of their own country, but for the survival of Western Civilization as we knew it.
That's the detail that Europeans can't understand from the same perspective because they were fighting for their existence.
75-80% of German casualties occurred on the Eastern Front - 25 million Soviets vs 300,000 American war deaths occurred
25 million includes the 17 million citizen deaths, American deaths were actually 400 thousand. Soviet deaths end up hugely inflated by very poor tactical decisions and straight up human wave tactics lol, frankly it's impressive American deaths were so low considering what they managed in the Pacific. America definitely got off lucky with geography and not having to risk it's infrastructure/civilians during the war
America gave insane amounts of resources to the USSR, basically sustaining them. Amounts were insane too, something like 350k trucks for example, half the fuel of the entire airforce, steel, food etc etc.
Bragging about soviet casualty counts is also not the right way to approach things, purges ensured command level of the USSR was varying levels of incompetent or too scared to speak up.
While revisionists in russia seem to champion the idea they did all the work, it's not true. Without help from the US, USSR would have probably fallen apart then and there.
Over 65% of Russia's trucks came from the US. Without those, the red army would not have been able to move or resupply.
90% of railroad locomotives, too.
12% of their planes.
12% of their tanks and field artillery.
~55% of their aviation fuel.
More than 50% of their aluminum and copper for soviet built tanks and planes. Massive amounts of soviet built planes and tanks only happened due to US raw material supplies.
Millions of boots supplied.
4.5 million tons of food supplied.
Every Red Army success that required movement and logistics was massively propped up by US supply.
In a vacuum, the Red Army would've struggled mightily without US assistance.
However, without the US funding the soviets and initiating a two front invasion late in the war, the soviets would not have done what they did.
Don’t forget that during the first half of the war, the Soviets were fielding cavalry against tanks and getting absolutely decimated. I can’t remember the exact general’s name, but he was a WW1 appointee and refused to modernize the army and recalled tanks from WW1 being questionably functional so he just refused to use them and instead would deploy Calvary charges against panzer divisions and got hundreds if not thousands of men and animals killed.
They also had virtually no airforce other than what we gave them in a lend-lease program.
As someone from a communist country, what we learned is the first picture but replaced the US with USSR, and add the US, UK, and France on the other side. Oh, and the Soviets definitely did not invade Poland or the Baltic states.
I have never met a single American who thinks America solo'd the entire Second World War. They all know about the contributions of the British and the Soviets. In fact, in high school, people *loved* talking about the Soviets and their involvement in the Second World War.
i grew up in a deep red state. they definitely downplayed the eastern front, maybe a brief mention of stalingrad. but buy and large, they made it seem like the US carried hard
Not my experience at all at public school in a red state, we definitely learned about other countries on the allied side in the war like China, USSR, even normally-neglected places like India and Australia.
Grew up in the south and they did. In fact the Soviet involvement as well as their losses were emphasized quite heavily. But I guess people remember what they want.
This idea originates from Hollywood, because America makes the movies that the world watches and so most WWII movies are told from an American perspective.
If the USSR had a thriving film industry we'd seen more about the war from their perspective.
Many countries have a thriving film industry (UK, France, Japan, China, India etc.). The US exports the most, but that doesn't mean American movies overwhelm local markets. I've seen many more WWII movies from my country (France) than from the US. Each country's movies will focus on a perspective that favors them. In France we tend to focus on the French resistance. As a result there is a very romantic and idealized vision of the resistance in France, exactly the same as how US movies idealized the American role in the war. I'm not saying one is comparable to the other in scale, but both are overblown by their local movie industries.
The easiest way to score fake internet points is finding a way to make comments on every post about Americans making everything about America. The irony somehow goes unnoticed.
I mean there is definitely the hardcore group of idiots who'll tell any European that we "saved their ass back in dubleya dubleya too". Edit: yes, I am aware that US involvement, fiscally, industrially, and militarily, was instrumental to the allied efforts in world war 2. That wasn't the point I'm making. I'm referring to the sort of person who acts like they personally had a hand in it
We did, though. Without the land-lease agreement the Soviets almost certainly would have collapsed or at best fell into a stalemate with Germany. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to make any sort of serious counteroffensive. And the UK wouldn’t have been able to take back Western Europe.
That doesn’t underscore what the Soviets paid for with blood, but the Americans were pivotal.
Stalin and Khrushchev both stated quite directly that without the U.S. they would have lost. Realistically, it took both of them to defeat the Germans. The U.S. could have done it alone over time as they’d grind them down like they eventually did Japan due to massive logistical and resource advantages, but it’s unlikely the U.S. public would have supported that. They barely did for beating Japan, who directly attacked them.
Yeah, and while Britain had fewer "big moment" battles than either of the superpowers, one should not discount their contribution to the overall result.
For people interested: there's a very recent book called "1942: Crux of War", which in very accessible language shows how the war was to a large degree put on track for its conclusion over the course of this specific year - across virtually all of the various theaters around the globe.
The word choosing is what gets me. Soviets contributed and Brits contributed. But Russians sacrificed and fought 80% battles, and it's just a "contribution". It was the only and sole reason of the Nazi defeat.
You have to understand that US lost more people in Civil war centuries ago, than in WW2. That is called a contribution. Something minor, not a deciding factor.
..No WW2 is actually one of the things covered pretty well in the US. Or at least most area of the US
The events leading up to the war, the full timeline of the war (yes pre US involvement), the concentration camps and Holocaust, English class usually delves extra into Anne Frank, the US Japanese "internment camps", the whole island hopping campaign, the nuclear bombs. Post war Germany, and the Berlin wall. Pretty substantial part of our history classes actually
What we don't really teach are things like, the Vietnam war, Korean war, Gulf war,
Which is weird because everyone in my area of America knows WW2 was won with Brittish Intelligence, American Steel, and Soviet Bodies as the saying goes.
Yeah, I think they’re just extrapolating from the worst people who end up on YouTube videos or TikTok clips. The way I was taught WWII in high school was about the eastern front and everything in Europe. As far as USA, it was about Americas resistance to entering the war, and then entering the war in the context of the Great Depression, and how it happened at the end of the war overall. Heavy emphasis on learning about the Holocaust since middle school.
And I went to a shitty public school in a small town in a state with not a great education system. So I assume that was standard.
Soviet blood, American industry, British intelligence that's usually how it gets framed. The Soviets would have crumpled in the beginning if it weren't for the American lend-lease program, and the overall war effort would have been much worse if it weren't for British intelligence acquiring and cracking Enigma.
I graduated American high school in the early 1990’s and can’t remember spending more than a few days on WWII. I learned all I know from documentaries. I think that was a big gap in my generations education.
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u/CheapSecretary133 9d ago
"how *Americans"
There,fixed for you