Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Non-naval discussions about the Second World War. Military leaders, campaigns, weapons, etc.
Guchi
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Guchi »

neil hilton wrote: but India chose WW2 to really start clamouring for independence, incited by Ghandi. Fair enough. But the fact Ghandi used the war as an opportunity to sew dissention shows the 'Great Soul' had a mean streak.
Maybe you should read some Indian history before making statements like that and it's Gandhi not Ghandi.

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neil hilton
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

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My mistake spelling Gandhi oops. The rest of my statement was correct.
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RF
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by RF »

Tne move towards Indian independence started well before WW2, indeed it goes back into the nineteenth century and before the famous Indian Mutiny which came around the high point of the Raj.

That WW2 was a major factor in itself in the drive for independence is debateable. A small minority of Indians did sign up to fight for the Germans and Japanese, but the great majority remained loyal to and fought for Britain. They didn't have to.

What did push India to independence was that India became too big for Britain to rule effectively. Not merely the size of the country and its population, but a Britain greatly weakened by the war and its worldwide commitments. And British weakness was plain to see, as India under British rule became ungovernable and lost its legitimacy. India was then abandoned by Britain and torn apart by racial and religous strife that was only solved by creating an artificial double state: Pakistan. And Pakistan eventually split into two, when East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
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neil hilton
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by neil hilton »

Also add to this the political and economic pressure put on Britain by the US to break up the empire.
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Dave Saxton
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Dave Saxton »

From another thread:
In fact, one very prolific poster on navweaps who like dunmunro has lots of references to quote considers US participation in WWII to be irrelevant. The British and Soviets could have won it without them.
That's a ridiculous. I can't see the British winning the Battle of the Atlantic, which all hinged upon, without US help. How successful would the Russians be without Lend Lease which was transported across oceanic trade routes? How would the Jagdwaffe be brought to heal without the US daytime bomber offensive?
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Mostlyharmless
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Mostlyharmless »

My take is that Britain and Russia could perhaps have defeated Italy and Germany but it would have been a long hard fight. If Japan had joined in against Britain and Russia without America becoming involved, I believe that the Axis Powers would have won. We had a very long discussion about this on the Armchair Generals Forum which I can recommend for bedtime reading http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/s ... p?t=135208. There was a poll in that thread which was very interesting in that most Americans voted that America was necessary and most of the former British Empire voted that they would have won without them.
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RF
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by RF »

That's a ridiculous. I can't see the British winning the Battle of the Atlantic, which all hinged upon, without US help. How successful would the Russians be without Lend Lease which was transported across oceanic trade routes? How would the Jagdwaffe be brought to heal without the US daytime bomber offensive?
More significantly there would have been no D-Day landings in France and quite possibly no invasion of Sicily let alone mainland Italy.
The British would have been stalemated in the West and would ultimately have watched the Red Army cross over the Rhine and sweep on to Paris. The Iron Curtain would have been along the English Channel.
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Steve Crandell
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Steve Crandell »

Probably no Manhattan project.

How well would the Russians have done without US logistical support?

Could the Australians hold out against the Japanese by themselves?

A poster on the other board claimed British carriers were essentially immune to Japanese air attack because of their armored flight decks, but of course PoW had better deck armor than any of the British carriers. They weren't as vulnerable to Kamikazes as US carriers, but the USN didn't lose many carriers to Kamikazes.

I suppose one alternative non participation scenario is if the US supported the UK and Soviet Union logistically but didn't declare war on the Axis.
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Matrose71 »

RF wrote:
That's a ridiculous. I can't see the British winning the Battle of the Atlantic, which all hinged upon, without US help. How successful would the Russians be without Lend Lease which was transported across oceanic trade routes? How would the Jagdwaffe be brought to heal without the US daytime bomber offensive?
More significantly there would have been no D-Day landings in France and quite possibly no invasion of Sicily let alone mainland Italy.
The British would have been stalemated in the West and would ultimately have watched the Red Army cross over the Rhine and sweep on to Paris. The Iron Curtain would have been along the English Channel.
The Russians had never won the war without lend lease, take a look at the delivered goods, especially trucks and weed at 1942 and forwood, without the trucks and the weed, most of the Red Army and the people of the big industrial cities would have been starving since autumn 1942. Also without the trucks and the delivered goods no offensives from the Red Army and no building of reserves would be possible at 1942.. Also the communications which were delivered were essential for the Red Army.
Matrose71
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by Matrose71 »

Some more informations

The supply with lend-lease from October 1941 to June 1942 was decisive.
The first Moscow Protocol was signed in highly embattled situation of the Red Army on 1.10.1941.
The commitments of the Protocol for the period Oct 41 to June 1942, for 9 months (until the required connection protocol):

1,5 Mio. tons wheat and goods for1 Milliarde $,
among them:
1.800 a/c's (Total inventory of the Red Army 1.1.42: roundabout 12.000 a/c's)
2.250 tanks (Total inventory of the Red Army 1.1.42: 7.700)
1.000 AA guns, among them 152 90mm and 756 37mm (Total inventory of the Red Army 1.1.42: : 7.900)
5.000 Jeeps
85.000 trucks (The total production of the SU 1941-45 was 205.000 trucks, thereof 150.000 for the military)
108.000 field telephones
562.000 miles of field telephone cable
9.000 tons armor plates
30.000 tons explosive Toluol und TNT
15.000 tons chemicals

maximum possible number of machine tools (industrial lathes, milling machines, drilling presses etc.), delivered: 3.253 pieces
1.6 Mio. Pair of military boots (for the mobilization and reorganization of the Red Army)
1 Mio. yards. military fabric
~ 1000 tractors
45.000 tons barbed wire

The agreed goods were delivered almost entirely in the 9 months, minus some war losses during transport.

The SU got 85000 trucks till June-July of 1942 and 1,5 million tons of wheat

Wheat gross harvest of the SU 1940-42:
1940: 36.446 million tons.
1941: 24.298 million tons.
1942: 12.516 million tons.

My sources are Glantz and Alexander Hill (The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-45)
OpanaPointer
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by OpanaPointer »

Matrose71 wrote:My sources are Glantz and Alexander Hill (The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-45)
And this is probably part of their sources.
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neil hilton
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Re: Was US participation in WWII superfluous?

Post by neil hilton »

I don't think its a question of whether the USSR could have won on the eastern front without lend lease, it is whether nazi Germany could have won, which I don't think was possible, they were far too overstretched, just like Napoloeon. Germany did not have the resources to blitzkrieg all the way to the urals and wage a maritime war against Britain, Russia would have just waited until it's industry was completed beyond the urals and then would have been able come westward, lend lease only made it easier imo.
As for a possible British commonwealth/free French invasion of Vichy France, if Indian manpower could have been more effectively mobilised the commonwealth could have easily fielded more troops than the USSR! The main problem would have been equipping them. This is only if Imperial Japan stayed out of ww2.
Germany would have had to concentrate all their resources and effort either East or west to have any hope of winning on that front only, by dividing their effort they lost. Britain would have won the battle of the Atlantic on its own eventually, simply because of its greater investment in sea power. The USSR would have won eventually in the east simply because of the immense landscape and environmental conditions.
Imperial Japanese entry into ww2 widened the conflict and made US involvement in ww2 inevitable and essential.
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