You are basing your claim on a difference of ~100,000 vs. ~90,000? And if you think that tanks won the war, you got another thing coming. WWII was a war that took place in the air, above all else (pardon the pun). I know it isn't as exciting as the movement of ground troops, but the air forces and plane production was the key materiel in WWII. Hell, most of the great naval battles of WWII didn't even happen with the fleets coming into contact! At Midway, I don't think a single ship from either side spotted each other. And the later bombing runs on Germany and Japan are what crippled both of those countries. The only time that tanks played a crucial role was when Germany was the only country at arms, and the only country with tanks. The Blitzkrieg attacks were decisive because they were one-sided, and the defensive plans were made with WWI in mind, a stagnant war, not a war of movement. Besides... you are talking about a 10% difference in a materiel that was tertiarary to the outcome. With all respects, what is your point?
http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=23631 Great Britain received 7,411 aircraft, 5,128 tanks, 4,932 antitank weapons, 4,005 machine guns, 9 torpedo boats, 4 submarines, and 14 minesweepers. Great Britain's aid was in the thousands but the USSR's was in the millions. Beginning in the summer of 1941, the United States contributed the following materials to the USSR: 2,680,000 tons of steel 170,400 tons of aluminum 29,400 tons of tin 240,000 tons of copper, 330,000 telephone sets and some one million miles of cable 2,000 radar sets 5,000 radio receivers 900,000 tons of projectiles and explosives 3,786,000 tires 49,000 tons of leather 18 million pairs of shoes more than six million tons of provisions three million tons of gasoline 900,000 tons of chemical products and 700,000 trucks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease US deliveries to USSR The list 1 below is the amount of war matériel shipped to the Soviet Union through the Lend-Lease program from the beginning of it until September 30, 1945. Aircraft.............................14,795 Tanks.................................7,056 Jeeps................................51,503 Trucks..............................375,883 Motorcycles..........................35,170 Tractors..............................8,071 Guns..................................8,218 Machine guns........................131,633 Explosives..........................345,735 tons Building equipment valued.......$10,910,000 Railroad freight cars................11,155 Locomotives...........................1,981 Cargo ships..............................90 Submarine hunters.......................105 Torpedo boats...........................197 Ship engines..........................7,784 Food supplies.....................4,478,000 tons Machines and equipment.......$1,078,965,000 Non-ferrous metals..................802,000 tons Petroleum products................2,670,000 tons Chemicals...........................842,000 tons Cotton..........................106,893,000 tons Leather..............................49,860 tons Tires.............................3,786,000 Army boots.......................15,417,000 pairs
Wrong on the first count (the above poster beat me to it), and the second point is not a very good one. The only reason Russia threw so many men at the Germans was because it was the only resource they had, not because it was a good idea. If they had the production might that the US had, they would have been training pilots and bombing the German position in Poland. Just because they threw 35 million people to waste doesn't mean that they contributed more or less to the war effort, it just means that was all they could do. And a single bomber can not be equated with even a few thousand men. There is no easy ratio to figure out there. What we do know is that three years of combat with their men did nothing until the Americans floated an massive amount of "stuff" across the Channel. It was then that the Germans contracted towards the West, and the Russians made a breakthrough in Poland. And it was still another year before Berlin was had by the Russians. Look, all of the stuff you are posting is classic revisionist history. It comes from a group of intellectuals that were raised in the 60's to hate all things American, and to promote the greatness of Mother Russia. It had a huge impact in the history literature in the 80's and 90's, but it didn't do anything to really change history. We have had anti-revisionist movements and anti-anti-revisionist movements. It takes a ton of weeding through this nonsense to get an overall picture of just about anything. But whether or not the materiel from the U.S. had a decisive (THE decisive) impact on the outcome is not really something that has gone back and forth. As a matter of fact, the revisionist historians love to lament the industrial might of the Americans, and see this as a downfall, and a chickenshit contribution to the war effort. And Eisenhower's phrase "Military Industrial Complex" has become a denigrating battle-cry of leftist fanatics that still echos around this very forum. So even the people that lie about the history of WWII still don't possess the imagination to support your side of this issue.
tanks produced; Tanks produced 1940 to 1945: USA 88,500 USSR 102,300 (T34 was best tank of the war) Germany 46,700 Japan 3,400 (you had to nuke that one). Airplanes: USA 301,500 USSR 157,500 Artillery includes anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons with calibres above 37 mm Soviet Union = 516,648 United States = 257,390 Mortars (over 60 mm) Soviet Union = 200,300 United States = 105,054 ships USSR didn't have need for that. 1. the USSR despite being not a classic industrialized country did quite fine producing a shit load. In fact: Did you read that last sentence? How did they do it then? Of course, the guy is just some professor. What does he know? http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/history/staff/overy.shtml 2. The USA joined the war when it was already over.
i don't quite believe this post of yours at the begining of ww2 britain had the biggest navy. if she indeed moved all of her ships to the atlantic why did the germans sink american ships at the ratio of 25 american to 1 british?
well, again, all of the information came from Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger, so if you have a problem with it I suggest you take it up with him. It's a bit hard to find corroborating evidence of this on the web, since the agreement was secret and nations don't tend to disclose the details of their military deployments (even 60 years after the fact). This is further complicated by the fact that almost all sources on WWII tend to start in Sept. 1939, months after the agreement and redeployment. By the same coin, however, I have yet to locate any sources which mention the Royal Navy doing anything outside of Europe from 1939 onwards. In particular, the Royal Navy was notably absent from the battles in the Pacific. Presumably because that figure includes American merchant shipping, not just the American Navy. Unless you can cite a source for that figure, there's not much else to say...
Because we had 25 ships to 1 in the merchant marine, and could build them fast enough to replace the loss's, you forget the convoys were escorted by both navy's and the greatest convoy loss was the PQ 17 convoy to Murmansk, which was a British show? 24 ships lost out of a convoy of 35, yes the Royal Navy was winning the war by it self. http://www.historynet.com/air_sea/naval_battles/3027451.html?showAll=y&c=y
Bullshit. Which oil reserves might those be? Opinion. TWELVE divisions? Do you know what a drop in the ocean twelve divisions would have been on the Eastern Front?
You should read a Pulitzer-Prize winning book called "The Prize". It is about the history of oil, and does a great job of covering how WWII was primarily a war about oil. All you have to do is look at every major player's journal to see that this was the case. Patton and Rommel were oil-mad due to their tank-lust. The only reason the Japanese started using Kamikazee tactics late in the war was because they had plenty of planes, but not enough fuel. When they sent their last battleships into the struggle around Leyte Gulf, they sent them with one-way fuel levels. The entire reason for Pearl Harbor was to crush the only thing stopping Japan from rushing down and grabbing their own oil reserves, and that was the US Navy. The entire N. African campaign was about oil, and even the world leaders at the time knew this. There was much talk about an oil embargo against Germany while Rommel was on the move, and it would have halted his advance (Rommel even says so in his diary, as does Hitler). But the United States refused to upset the balance, and France wouldn't go along with it either, so the pipes remained open. It was a very early chance to put the breaks on Germany, Hitler knew this, but took the gambe after watching FDR make several isolationist moves (like going off the gold standard and not showing up to an international economic conference to discuss the Great Depression).
A question about the dates and supposed history, Rommel and the Africa Corps, didn't exist until Feb. 21, 1941?
Rommel as commander of the Africa Corps didn't exist untill Feb, 21, 1941, that is when he was given command, so Rommel and the Africa Corps didn't exist untill that date.
G. F. Schleebenhorst, you lightly dismiss the force of Twelve Division, what would 2 extra division have done at Moscow, Leningrad, 8 extra Divisions at Kirks? it is amazing what a few extra divisions can do to change the balance of power in a fight.
Then just have the July Plot succeed, and the military take over from there. Without the politicians interfering, they could win the war.
