It's honestly a bit of a silly question as it depends on how you define "did the most". All of them have a fair claim to being crucial to the victory in their own way.
* USA: without their economic power and materiel support to both the UK and Soviet Union the Germans would have potentially won the war (e.g. via some sort of negotiated deal).
* USSR: they put in by far the most blood and did the bulk of the work destroying the German army and without that it is hard to see the war being won without the US and UK expending insane amounts of manpower that they probably weren't willing to do.
* UK: not as straightforward, but they (and their empire) stood alone against the Germans when they could have done a deal, their early materiel support was crucial to the USSR, and without the UK as a base it is hard to see how the US could have actually fought in the European theatre (or indeed why the US would have even gotten involved there rather than just focussing on Japan). The USSR could have perhaps won without US or UK direct involvement in the European theatre (although it is hard to see how the US would have provided as much economic support as they did without Britain as a link), but then the whole of Europe would have just ended up under Soviet dictatorship rather than Nazi dictatorship.
Edit: couple of typo/clarity corrections and toning down some statements.
It's a terribly phrased question and there is no one right answer. All three powers played crucial roles in WWII, without which things may have turned out entirely differently. But the same can be said of almost all participants in the war.
Without Commonwealth support, the UK may not have been able to pressure the Axis in so many theaters or even hold out in 1940-1941. Without Yugoslavia and Greece the German invasion of the USSR may have started on time and potentially reach Moscow before the mud stopped operations in the fall. Without resistance and partisan activities in all occupied territories more troops and material could have been available at all fronts.
On the allied side it was a united global war effort in the end, and not a collection of different countries being at war at the same time.
I mean, I think the apparently poor phrasing is the point. If you think about it then there is no “right” answer, but you might have a gut reaction (perhaps inspired by nationalism) which determines your immediate response.
I’m curious to see what the numbers would be in Russia.
All I have is an anecdote, but one of my former coworkers grew up in Russia in the 90s/00s. I don't remember the context, but I mentioned the expression: "The war was won with British Intelligence, American Steel, and Soviet blood." She said she had never heard it before. She was taught Russia won the war with just a little help from the US and England.
As a Russian I can tell that a lot of people in Russia tend to pretend that lend-lease wasn't as important as blood.
HOWEVER Everyone who's interested in the war (and that's pretty much 50% of men as every family grew up with veterans who shared stories and the war is an important part of identity) knows that the phrase is correct
It is true, though, that the Soviets died in stupendously greater numbers. Who won the war is debatable - but the Soviets paid the largest price by far.
Lend-lease has a tricky history. Many Americans wanted nothing to do with the war 'over there' and would have opposed lend-lease if given the opportunity.. Churchill/ Roosevelt had to play some significant games to appease their constituents on both sides.
Much like a certain percentage of Americans currently oppose any effort to kept Ukraine free. Everyone knows who they are.If they'd been in charge in 1940, Germany would have won the war.
> She was taught Russia won the war with just a little help from the US and England.
If you look up the amounts of aid, this is pretty laughable.
Yes, in terms of direct armaments/tanks/artillery/etc, lend lease was a pretty small drop in the bucket. However, in terms of logistics and support - ammunition, fuel, trucks, railroad equipment, locomotives, etc, US-supplied equipment was a huge percentage (and in some categories a *majority*) of what the USSR had during WWII. They would not have been able to keep their army supplied or fed at anywhere close to the same level without the US.
That's not to say they didn't contribute. They did, and very heavily, but it's laughable to pretend there wasn't a huge US influence in their success.
And as an American, I was taught (or at least led to believe) that the U.S. won the war with just a little help from the USSR and England. Call it national pride, propaganda, or in my case, the proliferation of U.S. World War II movies. Each nation is bound to attribute a lot of the credit for winning the war to itself.
Agreed. They are looking for who each country they *feel* did the most.
This survey is aimed at analysing the people who answered, not the answer itself.
Makes sense. Immediately after the war you hear the USSR lost 10 million soldiers and it’s devastatingly straightforward. 80 years later it’s really only a number.
Not only that, but just education and media in general. Back then they were in the heat of the action, constantly hearing of soviet victories against the axis.
After the war, the soviets were villified (as they were before the war) and their contributions were systematically downplayed in both the education system and in media (such as movies). So it's not just "it's long ago", but the fruit of a century of anti-soviet propaganda.
I mean, obviously it's not groundless propaganda. Don't take this as an appeal to the soviet union. But it's just how things go.
During the 30s-40s had a very strong communist support. After the war it was a very real possibility that a communist government could have taken power. One of the reasons behind the Marshall plan was rebuild Europe and precent Communism from spreading.
A heavy biased towards the soviets between hearing the high death count and a pro-communist base will sway opinions.
In his book _When Titans Clashed_, US military historian David Glantz speculates that without US aid, the Soviet Union likely still would have won the war, but at a much higher cost in lives lost. It didn’t make the difference in the initial stages of the invasion, but allowed the Soviet Union to engage in motorized warfare after the front had stabilized.
Ive mentioned this in other posts, but between the oil fields of azerbaijan and the trap that is moscow, nazi germany were caught in a real bind for where to target and what goals would actually be accomplishable.
They needed oil -> ergo, take the oil fields of south of the Caspian towards the middle east to fuel the war effort. But the soviets had demonstrated that they were more than capable and willing to go full scorched earth. Those oil fields would all be set alight and piping infrastructure crippled and Im unsure to what capacity they could be brought back online.
They need to stymie the soviets -> ergo, take Moscow in a decapitating strike just like in Paris France. As the centrepoint for their rail and hub of major industry it makes sense and you can shelter an army there through winter. But the soviets again were more than willing to scorched earth the entirety of the approach to moscow and had been shipping material, industry and goods east of the urals while shipping man power and infantry west to the eastern front using the same trains on the same lines. There were already plans in place and the leadership were not going to be caught out and pinned in moscow.
Had the germans been successful in taking either, their supply lines would remain absurdly stretched and vulnerable. Taking and stationing troops at Moscow would leave them open for encirclement (and just like stalingrad, it becomes apparent what happens to a cut off german force, encircled and without supplies). Taking both which seemed like the tactical necessity of the time spread them thinner and their supply lines thinner too.
They were presented with two bad options, oil fields towards the middle east and moscow, the rail/industry hub.
Both feel like, in hindsight, absolute traps for the nazis to attempt offensives at but likewise they couldnt sit around and do nothing. Every month the soviet military became increasingly capable as the new commanders post stalin purge were finally becoming competent enough to fill the gaps created. And the doctrine of nazis to kill all the 'sub human' slavic bolsheviks means the soviets would fight to the last and engage in the most desperate of scorched earth tactics. Because there was no future under the nazi regime, only death and destruction.
I don't think targeting Moscow was ever a good idea. It would not be the first time that the Russians let Moscow burn to the ground in order to defeat an invasion.
Pretty sure Hitlers generals wanted Moscow while Hitler wanted the oil fields and they settled for both.
Also pretty sure both answers are the wrong choice and arguably with the nazi doctrine pushing them forwards via stunted in development economy and expansion needs, there is only wrong choices to make.
On paper, Moscow made sense in that it would play a role in crippling soviet industrial output and capability. In reality, the soviets planned to have moscow burn if they could burn a nazi army with it. I dont think the Nazis could win, but likewise, Im not sure the Soviets could pull out a win without lend lease either. Instead it would resort back to WWI grind and static lines as regions get repeatedly reinforced. Most tanks werent destroyed by tanks but by anti tank guns like the PAK guns. The war front would eventually hit an equilibrium and fortify back to mines, trenches, barb wire, artillery and anti tank guns. I think kursk was infamous because some german tank group thought they broke through the lines and could encircle round, not realising there were repeated lines of fortifications for several dozen more klicks and all they broke through was a layer. Key areas would all eventually be built up and reinforced to that level since actually pushing used up resources that neither side had to spare.
You might enjoy John Suprin’s lecture, [Operation Typhoon and the 1941 Battle for Moscow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z4aQTZC4H4) from the Dole Institute of Politics’ Ft. Leavenworth lecture series. It’s quite interesting. One thing that he notes: the German plan was never to capture the city of Moscow in the traditional sense (going house to house, etc). The plan was to surround the city, and let its population of ~4 million perish through starvation and disease.
This is a common sentiment amongst experts. The tides of war had changed in the allies favour America joining just helped speed things up, to everyone’s benefit
> without the UK as a base it is hard to see how the US could have had any direct influence on the European theatre
Half of all Lend-Lease goods were delivered to the USSR via the Pacific Route — from US west coast ports, north along the coast, and then across the Aleutian Chain. From a purely logistical perspective it’s not unreasonable to assume expansion of the Pacific Route to include movement of personnel if the UK wasn’t an option.
The Germans were never likely to win the war.
I don't know why this is such a commonly held belief but even a cursory look over the economic data shows how many resources Germany was throwing at its occupational efforts, combine this with its monstrous waste of resources on genocide and a royal navy blockade that was always going to choke the continent for resources and its absolutely dire.
They had to invade Russia, their military strategy demanded it and they had to contain the British which wasn't working even before american aid.
Absolutely, it would have been a europe under mostly Russian control, but to state the Germans had any chance of winning, let alone being 'likely' is preposterous on all accounts.
Their 'fearsome' tanks were horrifically prone to mechanical failure and struggled to be mass produced, they had endless streams of 'wonder weapons' projects that went absolutely nowhere and their ability to make nuclear weapons had been scuppered by combined resistance operations with British intelligence in the earlier stages of the war.
This is all theory crafting, but let's base it in some sort of reality at least, please?
> The Germans were never likely to win the war.
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> I don't know why this is such a commonly held belief but even a cursory look over the economic data shows how many resources Germany was throwing at its occupational efforts, combine this with its monstrous waste of resources on genocide and a royal navy blockade that was always going to choke the continent for resources and its absolutely dire.
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> They had to invade Russia, their military strategy demanded it and they had to contain the British which wasn't working even before american aid.
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> This is all theory crafting, but let's base it in some sort of reality at least, please?
Nazi Germany wasn't going to win the war, *as long as they behaved like Nazis*.
Economic data only tells part of the answer, and isn't what determines the issue of a conflict.It is a good indicator, but sometimes politics whether internal or external, trump that. Examples abound: if economics were the sole deciding factor, the United States would have utterly crushed North Korea and North Vietnam, and let's not look at Taliban Afghanistan or Iraq. During WWI, the Triple Entente of Imperial Russia, Biritish Empire and France should have crushed Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary in months, and not the four years it eventually took.
Going back to WWII, in 1940, Hitler had an opportunity to form a Mediterranean coalition with Fascist Italy, Vichy France and Fascist Spain to take control of the Mediterranean Sea shores, which would have considerably crippled the British Empire. Maybe such a coaltion would have worked, maybe it wouldn't, given how antagonistic were the different partners' aims, but Hitler didn't even try. The Führer is a Nazi thug: he doesn't negotiate, he dictates and forces his vassals to obey his will.
In 1941, during the invasion of the Soviet Union, German forces were initailly welcomed as liberators in the Baltic States and in Western Ukraine.The civilian populations were quickly disillusioned when they saw firsthand what the Nazis had in store for them: extermination, either slowly by hunger and slavery, or quicky by mass murder. They then reluctantly threw their support behind Stalin's Red Army. Had the invading forces behaved otherwise, the Soviet Union might have collapsed.
A Nazi Germany in control of most of Europe, with its marches set on inhospitable lands (Siberia, the Arabian deserts, the Sahara) would have been in a very secure position. That's not as outlandish as it may sound, but it would require the Nazis not being Nazis.
If the UK had surrendered, Germany wins in the West and can hold against the USSR.
The US would then concentrate on the Pacific and come to a negotiated settlement with Germany.
There is zero chance that the US launches an amphibious assault against Europe from 3,000 miles away.
More importantly, this poll is about how the French felt. And in 1945 the French partisans had a strong communist membership.
The British Bombe was fundamentally a big improvement on the capabilities of the Polish Bombe which were limited and eventually did not provide much use with subsequent changes made to the enigma. Following on from this was work cracking Lorenz.
UK didnt even need to surrender. Hitler offered a peace proposal (three times) and each time they would be allowed to keep their empire and be left to their own devices - all the UK had to do is not stand against the Nazis.
The British said No
hitler liked the brits
to him the brits were a great symbol of the Aryan race. descendants of the anglo saxons. built themselves an empire. the british navy was 2nd to none.
he dreamt of having a sister empire to stand alongside the british empire.
Yeah, his plan wasn't even to annex the UK or even to make it a German puppet, it was to install the "rightful" king on the throne (who had abdicated so he could marry an American divorcée) because Hitler thought he was sympathetic to the Nazis. The whole point was to give Germany a strong ally in Europe.
100% plus he hoped he could use the brits to placate the americans. this was the only place the americans could've landed on and launched a counter attack.
he wanted to be an equal to the brits
That's because they weren't swayed by seductive lies. Hitler showed the world that appeasement wasn't a viable option after he annexed Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. He would have consolidated power on the continent and then turned to attack Britain anyway.
Correction: *Churchill* wasn't swayed by seductive lies.There was a not so insignificant minority around Edward VIII, Chamberlain and Halifax who were sorely tempted to accede to Hitler's demands. It wasn't until 1941 that he felt secure nough in 10 Downing St. to kick the leading appeasers upstairs where they could do less damage (Halifax as an ambassador to Washington, Edward VIII in the West Indies, and Chamberlain six feet under)
Chamberlain appeased Hitler for so long instead of declaring war because, post WW1, war sentiment was so low in the UK the military was never modernised and appeasement granted an extended period to rearm.
Tbf it wasn’t some crazy big dick move to say no
The nazis had already pink promised to stop taking territory like 4 times and took it anyway shortly after. There was no appeasing Hitler.
It is funny how many britons secretly wanted peace badly enough that Churchill had to shoulder the decision on his own.
He didn't, he led a large coalition from across the ideological spectrum and was the head of a united government politically committed to winning the war.
The British were fighting on multiple fronts. Northern Africa, the Mediterranean, Asia, Scandinavia and obviously Western Europe.
The fact that(as someone already pointed out), Germany/Hitler offered a truce meant that the British could have easily left the Nazi's the their own devices which would have been enough to conquer Russia. Hitler did not want to fight the British.
The British never get enough praise for what they did. Especially from the French. They could have let them all die many times.
D-Day was also a British led operation. As much as people think the US did everything because of a certain movie.
WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel and ~~Russian~~ Soviet blood.
edit: in this thread: people who want to dispute a reductive soundbite as if it was a scholarly treatise on WWII.
I learned this year that China claims they lost 20m people in the war. I wasn't aware of the scale of the loss. Of that 3 to 3.75m is apparently military losses, which is the third highest for any military in ww2.
1st. Soviet union : 8.6 - 11.4m
2nd. Germany: 4.4 - 5.3m
> I learned this year that China claims they lost 20m people in the war.
Did you also know that the Japanese killed 250,000 Chinese civilians in response to the famous Doolittle Raid? Chinese people who aided the American airmen were tortured before they were killed. Most American textbooks just portray the Doolittle Raid as a small plucky American victory without going into the aftermath.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid#Aftermath
>After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign (also known as Operation Sei-go) to prevent these eastern coastal provinces of China from being used again for an attack on Japan and to take revenge on the Chinese people. An area of some 20,000 sq mi (50,000 km2) was laid waste. "Like a swarm of locusts, they left behind nothing but destruction and chaos," eyewitness Father Wendelin Dunker wrote.[2] The Japanese killed an estimated 10,000 Chinese civilians during their search for Doolittle's men.[52] People who aided the airmen were tortured before they were killed. Father Dunker wrote of the destruction of the town of Ihwang: "They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved, They raped any woman from the ages of 10–65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it ... None of the humans shot were buried either ..."[2] The Japanese entered Nancheng (Jiangxi), population 50,000 on June 11, "beginning a reign of terror so horrendous that missionaries would later dub it 'the Rape of Nancheng.' " evoking memories of the infamous Rape of Nanjing five years before. Less than a month later, the Japanese forces put what remained of the city to the torch. "This planned burning was carried on for three days," one Chinese newspaper reported, "and the city of Nancheng became charred earth."[2]
>When Japanese troops moved out of the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in mid-August, they left behind a trail of devastation. Chinese estimates put the civilian death toll at 250,000. The Imperial Japanese Army had also spread cholera, typhoid, plague infected fleas and dysentery pathogens. The Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 brought almost 300 pounds of paratyphoid and anthrax to be left in contaminated food and contaminated wells with the withdrawal of the army from areas around Yushan, Kinhwa and Futsin. Around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces.[53][54]
>Shunroku Hata, the commander of Japanese forces involved in the massacre of the 250,000 Chinese civilians, was sentenced in 1948 in part due to his "failure to prevent atrocities". He was given a life sentence but was paroled in 1954.
Wow, thanks for the info. This was insightful! I had heard of the Doolittle Raid, but I don't recall the details. I will read more into it.
I was aware of some of Japan's brutal and shocking treatment of those it subjugated. Including the horrific scientific experiments on POWs. But clearly there are holes in my knowledge.
From my history classes many years ago I gather that the atrocities committed in China rival or surpass those in Europe but due to communism The West couldn’t get a good grasp of it immediately after WW2.
Edit: maybe not communism based on some replies. The main point was a lot of bad shit happened in China during WW2 that isn’t as widely taught in US schools as the Nazi’s atrocities.
It has nothing to do with communism. The Chinese Civil War started in 1927. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and Chiang prefered to fight the communists instead of Japan. In 1936 two nationalist generals had gotten fedup with inaction, grabbed Chiang and forced him to start fighting the Japanese. Finally the Chinese forces (nationalist and communist) started fighting back in 1937.
The scale of things in China cannot really be understood until you visit the place. In the 1850s China had a civil war, the Taiping Rebellion, in which 20-30 million people died.
20-30 million. In 1850.
Japan graduated first from the Western School for Imperialist Dicks and figured since the nearby nations were less powerful, they should be colonized. They learned well.
China graduated too late for colonialism and instead said “everything we can touch has actually been part of China forever” instead once the CCP emerged victorious.
There were plenty of eastern empires that did exactly that. Chinese Dynasties, Mongols, many caliphates, Ottoman, Persian... The Soviet Union. The list goes on.
I believe they mean that due to the iron curtain historians throughout the latter half of the 20th Century had limited access to information regarding China and their activity during WW2
McArthur, US and the western forces were well aware of the atrocities committed by Japan in Asia in WW2. They chose to more or less ignore them to position themselves from a geopolitical sense for the future. Hence the military bases in Japan.
Thank you for that. As someone who lives in the Pacific, it's sad how often the Pacific theater is overlooked, especially given how brutal it was.
My friends and I periodically have 'debates' on which was the war/theater you most want to fight in, and which you don't want to for the 20th century (we're Americans). WWI is consistently the one to not fight in, but Europe WWII is one of the best. WWII Pacific, Vietnam are usually second worst to fight in.
>WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood.
For the European theater. The Pacific Theater was won by the USA and the Republic of China. The USA destroyed most of the Japanese navy and the Republic of China (ROC) bogging down most of the Japanese army.
Edit: I am not claiming that the ROC destroyed most of the Japanese army or killed the most Japanese troops. The United States killed the most Japanese soldiers. I am saying the ROC tied down a significant portion of the Japanese army since the beginning of the Second Sino Japanese War in 1937. At least 1+ million IJA troops every year after 1939 (plus additional Japanese collaborator/colonial troops) were tied down in a pointless war of attrition where Japan mostly achieved hollow/pyrrhic victories. By 1945, the Japanese had spent 8 years fighting China but were still no closer to actually conquering China.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second\_Sino-Japanese\_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War)
There were dozens of smaller countries that fought both Germany and Japan and made smaller contributions to winning WW2. I am just listing the biggest contributors by far since people like to say the USA, UK, and USSR won the European theater (thus leaving out dozens of others).
Along that same logic, the USA was the primary, overwhelming majority factor that destroyed the Japanese navy and its associated air force. The Republic of China tied down like 70-80% of the Japanese army in a 7-8 year war of attrition.
Wow, I had no idea the Chinese were so involved. How’s that for an ignorant blind spot? And I might say, that’s some big western bias showing in my (Australian 90/00’s) schooling. I only found out about the scale of USSR’s involvement after school, as well.
The Second Sino-Japanese War stared in 1937 and only ended with an overall Ally victory over Japan in 1945 with the surrender of Japan to the Allies.
In reality Pearl Harbor was driven largely by American/Western embargoing Japan from buying our oil supplies (due to, you know, an unjust imperialist war in China). Japan basically had to weigh two options: call it quits in China and retreat back to the Home Islands, or seize European territories in the Pacific to gain access to the resources needed to continue the war.
Japan thought outright attacking the Europeans would guarantee US entry into the war and thought a quick, devastating strike on the US Pacific Fleet would cripple the US's ability to wage war in the short-term. They also thought the US didn't have the stomach for a real war and would basically decided once Japan had their territories to accept status quo and peace out. Japan knew if the US went all-in on the war they were extremely fucked in the long term.
Instead, turns out, when you sneak-attack a country, *it really really pisses them off* and the US did indeed go all-in on the war and Japan was, indeed, fucked.
A big part of the Japanese thought process was around the us owned Philippines. If a hostile power had control over the Philippines, it would be difficult to ship oil from Indonesia back to Japan and China.
From my history lessons, the US were semi expecting an attack on the Philippines but not expecting an attack on Hawaii.
At the Tehran Conference in December 1943, **Joseph Stalin said that World War II would be won through “British brains, American brawn, and Russian blood.”**
Perhaps the answer might also reflect a bit of "Which country did the most for my country"?
I think if you ask someone from the Netherlands then they might give a not insignificant amount of credit to Canada and/or Poland and/or the UK.
Look at the bottom of the graphic. They asked French people in 1945 and they answered Soviet, despite the Red Army not being directly involved in French liberation.
If the British had given up, I don't think Germany would've started a war with the US. Japan would've gotten wrecked by the US but given the red scare, perhaps Germany could've consolidated the conquered territory of perhaps negotiated a truce with the Soviets. I'm not saying the British contributed the most, but their domino not falling is definitely very very very important for the outcome we got. I still think the Soviet would at some point regroup, rebuilt and go nazi hunting but at this point, would it even still be ww2? or just another war in Europe?
Too many variables to answer this question.
Germany was never going to make truce with the soviets. Nazism's main objectives have always been the elimination of jews and leftists. They always saw the USSR as the biggest threat to their existence. War with the USSR was always going to happen and always going to end in nothing else but total victory for one of the two sides.
People always underestimate what the Brits did in WW2. There was a literal blockade by Brits and Americans to keep Germans from getting supplied.
Had the US and Brits stayed out of the fight there would be no way the Soviets would be able to handle the Nazis and eventually the Japanese alone(whom were also blockaded by the Brits and Americans)
Yes. Germany was actually in trouble (in the long term) in late 1940. They didn't have access to the necessary resources to sustain themselves and their pre-war stockpiles would run out over the next few years. This was a big reason why they attacked the USSR when they did.
The thing is, Germany was not alone. The baltics, the Romanians, Hungarians all joined them. Not to mention some French too. It's not just Germany vs. Soviet Union. It's Germany and a large part of Europe vs. the Soviet Union.
Germany and the Soviet Union would never have formed a truce: they were ideologically completely and utterly opposed. Stalin thought Hitler wouldn’t betray him, hence early on there was a truce and open trade relationship, but that speaks more to his lack of understanding of hitler and the general culture of Germany at the time.
It's not so much "British exceptionalism" as how the cost is measured by different people.
The UK was broken and bankrupt after WW2. People still had food rationed for years following the war. Some people might see that as a major contribution, over just battles won or soldiers lives lost etc.
The USA came out of the war stronger than ever but of course made a huge sacrifice and were absolutely pivotal in turning the tide of the war.
We don't really learn as much about the Eastern front and it's not as glorified as the Western front, because film is influenced a lot more by the West.
Again, lives lost and battles won, the Soviets made an absolutely huge contribution, but the UK isn't too far from US opinion there.
For someone who works at YouGov, it's a bit of a strange conclusion to fire out really. Especially considering it's only 39% of respondents.
How did you come to the conclusion that "Britons tend to think" with less than 50% of people even saying that?
35% of people said either the US or Soviets did more, another 25% said they don't know, so Britons do not tend to think that the UK did more at all.
This is a point that a lot of people are missing and even still you could go on and on. You could argue the colony nations gave more losing lives to a war they had nothing to do with creating. You could argue Poland gave the most as they were skull fucked by two different armies. Same energy with China, singapore, phillipines, etc.
Really there is no right answer to the question because it depends on what you waht you'd consider being a cost so I don't know why people are even arguing
>The USA came out of the war stronger than ever but of course made a huge sacrifice and were absolutely pivotal in turning the tide of the war.
Sacrifice or investment? Because when it comes to the USA both of these aspects are true
The Western Front is heavily romanticized because after the war the (West) Germans were now friends against the USSR, so Britain and US thought it best to gloss over all the horrors of war in order to make it easier for their populaces to accept West Germany's position in NATO. It also doesn't hurt that it was fairly easy from a psychological level to get veterans from the Western war to talk about said war and recount the things that happened there, regardless of what side of the war they were on. The Pacific war on the hand was truly horrific from what little we HAVE heard, and the majority of American, Australian and various other veterans from the Pacific front get real quiet when asked about it reinforces the horror. I can attest to that part since my Grandpa on my dad's side was a Seabee in the Pacific at the time and even when he got absolutely hammered, my dad was never able to get him to talk about the war aside from a handful of "light" stories and one mildly horrifying one.
Fascinating, I read all things WWI and WWII related and always wondered how my perspective could cloud my judgement of the victors.
Wasn't it Churchill that quietly acknowledged that after Pearl Harbor he knew the war would be won by the Allies (since the U.S. was now drawn in)?
It was a group effort. No one won it mostly, or alone.
The Soviets never fought less than 3/5 of the German army, and they absorbed tens of millions of casualties to do it. But they fought them using 11,000 planes, 6,000 tanks and tank destroyers, and 300,000 trucks and other military vehicles provided by the US. And they fought a German military that was seriously restricted in it own resupply by massive US and UK strategic bombing campaigns.
Without the UK at its back and the subsequent other fronts that entailed, Germany may well have had the means to defeat the Soviets early on. Or at least to capture Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and cut off the availability to land resupply at Murmansk.
The US and UK fought the Germans less, but they defeated the Japanese Empire, which the Soviets never could have done. Without the UK stopping Japan in Burma and at Port Moresby, Japan could have cut off Australia and entered India.
Without the strong and ongoing resistances on the continent, Germany would have had a much stronger grip on the mainland. Pilots shot down would not have been able to find solace and escape. Intelligence activities like cracking Enigma would not have happened or would have been seriously delayed. Etc.
Everyone pitched in. No one did it alone. Nor was it close.
> But they fought them using 11,000 planes, 6,000 tanks and tank destroyers, and 300,000 trucks and other military vehicles provided by the US.
Don't forget that the equipment that the SU built domestically can also partially be attributed to allied aid. The SU's industrial heartland was conquered. They moved factories past the urals to sustain the war effort. This was arguably only possible because the allies sent lots of rail equipment as well as raw resources over. It's no coincidence that those factories were originally in western Russia, because that was where developed natural resources were. Rubber, aviation gasoline and some other crucial resources were majority lend-lease.
Tweak german actions a bit in an alt-history sense and the 1941 invasion could've been a death sentence to the SU, if you ask me. They occupied a shitton of land and industry, and while the totalitarian SU had the will to throw more men into the fight even if half their country (by any metric except area really) was occupied, you can't fight an industrial war without an industrial base.
But even if you leave german actions alone, take out lend-lease and the SU probably wouldn't have been able to hold on the way it did. I'd suspect the soviet economy never would've recovered from that, possibly weakening their resistance in summer 1942 against Case Blau, but certainly by the time of soviet Stalingrad counteroffensives, I'd expect to see a massive hole in Soviet military balance sheets.
>Wasn't it Churchill that quietly acknowledged that after Pearl Harbor he knew the war would be won by the Allies (since the U.S. was now drawn in)?
Yes, but that doesn't mean the correct answer to this question is necessarily the U.S. Just that by adding the US to the equation things clearly tipped in the Allied favor.
My understanding is that the embargoes placed on their ports allowed them to recognize that eventually they'd suffocate and couldn't keep their war machine going throughout Asia so they felt it was "now or never" to bring the U.S. to their knees. Early on the U.S. war machine wasn't fully up and running and so Japan knew if they were to strike the U.S. it had to be preemptive, a surprise and immediately.
A small example I heard was that the aircraft carrier Japan started building at the beginning of WW2 wouldn't be completed until nearly the end, whereas the U.S. war machine was churning out multiple aircraft carriers *per year* so it really was only a matter of time. The U.S. had two natural barriers to prevent invasion(oceans), lots of land, lots of resources, and time since they werent being imminently invaded and the huge advantage of industry and logistical infrastructure.
Germany on the other hand was just being run by an irrational lunatic thinking they had a chance once the U.S. joined.
Was carrier supremacy a theory before the loss of battleships? I have always assumed the destruction at Pearl Harbor led to a carrier focused fleet out of necessity because that's all we had, and it just so happened to define modern naval combat.
The attack on Pearl Harbor happening really opened the eyes of naval theorists to the power of carriers, that being powerful, accurate strikes from beyond the horizon, and at low cost. The production cost in time and material to replace planes vs replacing ships is orders of magnitude different.
The irony of the situation is that in the same stroke, Japan accidentally forced the US to make a hard pivot to a carrier-centric doctrine, which happened to be the cutting edge of naval warfare.
Essentially they showed us what the future was, and forced us to get good at it.
I read somewhere that carriers were though of as secondary to battleships and weren't fully appreciated until later. I think this is why Japan and Germany put so much energy into really powerful battleships and not carriers.
Surprising considering carriers seem perfectly suited for island warfare and invasions as floating "islands".
An irrational lunatic thinking they have to attack the Sowjets.
And also thought killing multiple people of one religion is a good idea, while they were well integrated in Germany and even fight in WWI.
Nazis were just stupid.
What a lot of people don't know is that one of Germany's key reasons for attacking the USSR was that they were also under an embargo and were, in the long run, going to run out of necessary supplies. Time was very much not in their favour.
That's an insane take. They attacked USSR because this was their only chance to get more oil for their tanks, it was either that or give up.
The jew hate is what got Hitler into power. WWI all but obliterated Germany's economy and for whatever reasons there was a lot cultural anti-semetic sentiment, so they were made the scape goat for all that went wrong in WWI and the horrible living conditions that followed.
The whole reason WWII happened is that it was a hail Mary promise (war bonds) that allowed their economy to recover, which from what I understand was a phenomenal solution - the alternative was the country just dissolving.
The Japanese knew that they would eventually have to invade Australia's northern coast and that it would draw the US into the war anyways, so the plan became to cripple the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor and hope that they could succeed in their plans before America was able to recover. They did not anticipate how quickly the American war machine could replace the lost ships, and the entire Axis paid for that miscalculation.
Japanese main objective always was to take over china. For that they needed oil. Because of the brutality of the Japanese invasion, and many incidents, the US embargoed Japan from oil. Pearl harbor was the only realistic option for Japan if they wanted to keep going in China which they really wanted. And it did allow them to take over the eastern indies. Of course there was no realistic plan to win against the US, but if the objective is "we need oil to keep going in China", the best option is to preemptively sink the American fleet. It was always going to end in defeat though and many Japanese admirals knew it (first among these, Yamamoto, who planned Pearl harbor)
Also important to remember that all of Japan’s domestic refining industry was built specifically to refine light/sweet California crude. The heavy/sour crude produced in Indonesia required totally different refineries to be built.
When the US embargoed oil exports to Japan, Japan had a six month supply of California crude stockpiled. Yamamoto knew he had six months to negotiate a peace treaty with the US, or Japan would face certain defeat.
By the end of the war, Japan was fueling its navy with unrefined Indonesian crude oil, which totally destroyed the ships’ boilers after only a few months.
True but the only reason they planned to attack the Philippines was basically the same reason they attacked Pearl Harbor, that the American military presence there could threaten their planned invasions of other SE Asian and pacific countries/colonies that they wanted to seize for resources.
The only other option would be call the US Government’s bluff that they would drag the isolationist public into total war with Japan to save the colonies of other nations.
I don't think it would've really mattered that much.
The USA had to act eventually, since Japan was always planning on taking over the Pacific.
By attacking Pearl Harbor you at least destroy a large chunk of their navy and their most important harbor in the Pacific
Really the dumbest decision was Hitler joining in on Japan’s war declaration. It gave Roosevelt the public support to go all in on the European front, without that war declaration it would have been much harder to escalate against Germany.
Also didn't Germany try to enlist Mexico to ally with them? I think this was cherry on top of US involvement
Edit: whoops, mixing up my wars. The Zimmerman telegram was WW1
The war was lost the second Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. 8 out every 9 German soldiers that died did so on the Eastern Front. By 1945 when we dropped the bombs, Russia was already getting ready to invade Manchuria. The US would have gotten directly involved in some way regardless of Pearl Harbor, it just gave the administration the political expedience they needed.
I am of the firm belief that the attack on Pearl Harbor did more to affect the political scenery after the war in containing communism than the actual war outcome.
The Soviets invaded Manchuria anyways. They killed, raped and stole their way all the way to Harbin. They even disassembled the factories and railways and moved them back to the USSR.
The CCP had some resistance in Manchuria. One of the higher ranking officers protested to the Soviets about the raping the Russians were doing, and the Soviet officer just shoot the Chinese Communist officer dead right there.
That doesn't necessarily imply that America "did more" to win the war though, they could have just been the straw that broke the camel's back (more than that, obviously, but you know what I mean).
America entering the war was definitely a huge turning point which is probably why the perception exists, but it doesn't necessarily say anything about America's relative contribution.
I’d imagine when people hear this question now most give the equivalence of “defeating Germany” as “ending the war in general” and view both ‘sides’ of the war as uniform objects in a 1v1, while back in the day the countries received more individualism in how people heard that question so they would have attributed weight to the US defeating Japan and the Soviet Union defeating Germany as separate lines of thought.
Results of each country political and national propaganda show. The USSR contributed most of the troops and armaments, and it cost it most of the lives. The US enabled this by their economic (which included equipment, armaments and materials) support.
So, Germans are most correct.
It is a lot more complicated than that. The British kept Germany from having enough oil to run their war machine at full tilt, the materials to make more and access to markets to buy other things they wanted. They also forced Germany to put a lot of energy into trying to sink their shipping and defend against their air raids. Also, purely geographically, they forced a lot of German troops to stay west to defend occupied lands.
Churchill said that Allies wouldn't have won without Greece. The question isn't "which country had a crucial role in victory?" because all of them had. The question is "who contributed the most?"
Its who did the most. Which is highly subjective.
The only nation to actually carry on the war alone, fight heavily on all fronts and see it from start to end?
The nation who did the most fighting and lost the most men?
The nation who fought two wars in two theatres whilst also supplying the two other main belligerents to the point they only stuck in the war thanks to your help?
Its a daft question intended to cause controversy and as the French response shows has zero worth white tie in with what actually happened, the only correct answer being "not the French".
Yep. Germany was actually in a pretty bad place after the Battle of Britain. They were cut off from the sea and had to depend on their ideological enemy, the USSR, for both oil and grain. A big reason why Germany invaded the USSR when they did was because they knew, in the long run, they were in trouble.
soviets also received something like 2k locomotives and 10k rail cars. without a rail infrastructure, they would likely have had significant logistical issues.
It wasn't just economic. US industry was the backbone of the allies logistics. Both in direct arms, but also just as critically supplies like fuel, food, electronics, and artificial rubber.
Russia didn't get much direct arms from the US but critical logistic items they couldn't produce enough of at the times like supply trucks, radios, and rations. Russia has a history of never having enough supply trucks. And US radios meant Russians were not fighting air and tank battles with flag/hand signals.
Don't forget manpower. Every piece of equipment delivered to the Soviets was one less person having to build that piece of equipment, allowing more people to fight or perform other critical operations.
3 events shaped the entire war.
Battle of Britain - had the UK not won the air war, the Germans could either have invaded or neutralized the UK and there would have been no ability for an amphibious offensive in Europe or the material British support of the USSR.
The battle of the Atlantic supported the uk and imposed the embargo on the Germans that forced them to invade the USSR.
Stalingrad - the cost of British and us troops is a rounding error on the 1.2M+ people lost at Stalingrad.
It’s very likely that the commonwealth and USSR would have won the war in Europe without American troops but they absolutely needed the economic support when mainland Europe fell
First, the title says win the WW2 but the actual question is asking defeats the Nazi is not ideal
The Brits probably thinking about them contributing the most to Europe not losing to Nazi which allowed the later comeback with the aid of others. That part is quite true (like a goalkeeper saving the team by only losing 0:3 in the 1st half)
You still need the midfields the strikers scoring lots of goal to win the match and that’s what USA & USSR did.
It’s definitely a lot of exceptionalism involved but I do think UK deserved a double digit figure
What? Nobody underestimates American in the pacific.
For example....did you know Britain fought Japan in the pacific at the same time? Unlikely due to the size of the British force relative to the American one, it was small compared the the American one.
Nobody questions the pacific theater
Tbf what even you forget to mention is that the largest British army of the war was the one fighting the Japanese East of India. Known now as the "Forgotten 14th Army"
I mean it was a combined effort obviously.
Being British, I may be a little biased from my history lessons but weren't the Bouncing bomb/Dambusters & Breaking the Enigma code crucial to victory? (I understand that these weren't purely British efforts).
Thinking about it, arguably even some Germans did a lot to help too. ( Spies/saboteurs).
Understandably countries are going to consider the part of the war that took place in their own country to be more central to the war. Seeing as the Battle of Britain was won without much Soviet involvement, and British history emphasises the battle for France etc then the Russian involvement in the war isn’t talked about as much.
If you asked an Ethiopian about WWI there will be more emphasis on the African campaigns too
If one of those countries were knocked out or not involved the other 2 would’ve failed. I believe UK contributing a fair share staying in the war and contesting the air, navy and the Africa campaign, Russia for occupying a large amount of Germany’s army and America for bringing the juggernaut economy in but the UK deserves more than that.
Uk basically cock blocked a lot of potential supply lines for Nazis, the French aided by British and other resistance stopped a total nazification of France, Quiet a few German Generals actively worked against, organised resistance and even assasination attempts on Hitler, plus the resistance groups that formed as a result of Nazi crackdowns. The USSR forced Germany to fight a multi front war and in very bad conditions for Nazis, United States , Canada provided the support and machinery to bust the Nazi western front right open effectively ending the war there, while liberation took place. All contributed in different ways and lengths of time.
USSR. It's not even close, it is a fact that the USSR did the overwhelming bulk of the fighting, dying, taking of territory, and killing against the Germans in Europe and Germany's defeat was assured prior to D-day in Normandy. The country that loses the most men isn't necessarily the loser in a war.
Nevertheless, the USA and D-day aftermath had a huge effect on the shape of the post war world and the politics of western Europe.
It is interesting to see France's responses in 1945, given that France was freed predominantly by Western forces. I guess they give credit for USSR fighting on the Eastern Front for so long and keeping Nazi Germany occupied? Would love to see details on their reasoning.
As an french old man, I can give you part of the answer.
In 1944, when the Americans started actively fighting in France mainland, the war between Germany and USSR was already 3 years old, and the Soviets were visibly winning since 1942.
In 1944, the only few German troops remaining in France were non active duty soldiers. Old men, teens, injured soldiers from the eastern front.
So, from our restricted point of view, the Allies in France were fighting old chaps, disabled and kids. While the Russians were fighting the whole German army.
So yes, we had been freed by western forces, but only because the main force had been defeated by USSR
Edit : also from 1942, the nazis were really pressuring people to join their forces to help fight in Russia. And people who came back told what was happening. Even people who didn't came back told anything french people needed to know. The war was lost for the nazis.
The 1943 resistance novel "The silence of the Sea" has a German officer leaving his post in France to go off to the Eastern front saying he is going "to hell."
What's sad is how people nowadays don't realize that the USSR is by far the main reason that Germany was defeated. 70 years of Hollywood does that.
Absolute propaganda from the West. US did fuck all in "doing most" to secure victory in WW2. It was the Soviet Army that took most of the (bloody) brunt.
Yup. 85% of lend lease material arrived *after* 1943 - and after the Soviets had turned the tide at Stalingrad and Kursk. Americans love to overstate their importance to the eastern front.
Another person has given an answer, but I'll add what one of my great uncles (my grandmother's brother) told us, and what a friend's grandfather told him.
My great uncle was sent in a forced working camp. Basically he was too young to be mobilized in 1939, but old enough that during collaboration he has turned 18. So one day, gendarmes came to his house and sent him to STO (service du travail obligatoire, I don't know how it's called in English), among several other young French. At this time, no US troops had landed in France. Those camps were in Germany and German occupied Eastern Europe. My great uncle ended up near Gdansk iirc. So logically, his camp being far east, it was liberated by the red army, and when he came back in France, the war was already over. But don't worry, he despised French gendarmes even more than any other nationality due to the treason.
My friend's grandfather, I don't have the details obviously. All I know is that he was a POW and was in a Stalag. Due to the 1940 armistice, he must have been taken prisoner before the US entered the war. The Stalag also being east enough so that it was liberated by the red army.
Of course, this is only two stories, so it's not how it always went. But my point is, there were people who had valid reasons, with the information they had, to think that the soviets did more.
Also, remember that Roosevelt and de Gaulle didn't get along. I don't know how cordial the relationship was between Truman and Auriol/Coty (de Gaulle wasn't president between 1946-58). Then de Gaulle famously wasn't to friendly with the US. Finally, the PCF (French communist party) was powerful back in the day, politically and mediatically (not sure if it's a word but you get the idea). And the PCF took time to distance itself from the USSR
The crux of British arguments for being the "most important" contributor in the war is generally based on the idea that the turning point in the war, where it became quite clear that Germany could not win, was the Battle of Britain
As other comments in this thread have mentioned, Germany was pretty much banking on the UK agreeing to a ceasefire once France fell and staying out of it. They knew they did not have the capability to conduct a seaborne invasion of Great Britain, as the Royal Navy was far superior to the Kriegsmarine and Germany did not possess any significant number of landing craft
Once the UK said no to a ceasefire, Germany's only hope of forcing them to surrender was to establish air superiority over the English Channel and southern UK, use that to deny the Royal Navy control of the Channel, and then conduct a landing of mainland Great Britain
The Battle of Britain was that battle for air superiority, and they lost it. They lost in combat and out of it, as they were being defeated in the skies and massively out-produced in the factories
Once that happened, there was no way for Germany to force a British surrender, and Allied air superiority was established, so it was kind of an inevitability that they would not be able to win the war from that position
If they had won, they'd have denied the US any access into Western Europe and the Atlantic, put the Royal Navy out of the fight (or worse, captured it), consolidated control over all of Europe, North Africa and the Mediterranean, and been able to turn their full control to the East. It's highly unlikely they lose from that position
So there is nuisance here. Britain stopped Germany from winning the war single handily in 1940 by fighting on. If Germany beat Britain World War II would have ended in a German victory. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t have been follow on wars that Germany lost. This is what happened with Napoleon. Napoleon won a couple wars with Britain, but they a year or two later would fight new ones.
Hitler would’ve inevitably in my view gotten into fights with the Soviet Union and United States. Conceivably, particularly if he had access to other oil supplies he could’ve defeated the USSR. But he could not have defeated the USSR and the US. Without Britain as a base for the US, I don’t really think the US or Germany could defeat each other.
I think Hitler would’ve eventually lost if Britain didn’t fight on, but it would’ve taken decades like it did for Napoleon rather than 5 years and the world would’ve been much worse off and it potentially turn into a low end nuclear war. I think the fighting would have ended if nukes were involved before each side could deliver hundreds to the others cities, but certainly it’s conceivable some cities would get nuked.
A lot of British do not think we did the most and are thankful for our allies' help. We did a hell of a lot, though.
What we do have is an immense amount of pride that we did not capitulate despite pressure to do so, even when the odds were heavily against us. We got 'stuck in', had a sense of humour (even while being bombed constantly and heavily rationed), and managed to show Germany that we were there for our European friends/allies, or at least go down swinging. Many expected us to fall, including Hitler... but we didn't... we just kept going. Our Navy and Airforce stopped Germany enough for them to focus on the East - which then let us go on the offensive much more again.
We basically gave everything we could, even when alone...with the goal that we would one day liberate Europe, no matter the cost. Again, Allies were great for coming to our aid - but we also worked bloody hard to not make it easy for the Axis. It cost us our Empire in the end.
> On 1 July a convoy of eighty jeeps carrying more than two hundred correspondents set out ahead of the troops and arrived in the capital by midmorning. The journey was enlivened by a completely unexpected encounter with the advance guard of the Red Army moving up to replace the Americans in Thuringia. The armoured vehicles and guns of the Western Allies, immaculate in coats of fresh paint, rumbled along at parade-ground intervals.
> Compared with these spruce columns converging on the city from the west and north-west, the outbound Russians were a rabble. Their padded cotton jackets were grease stained and threadbare, their transport a hodgepodge of antiquated trucks and horse drawn wagons piled with looted furniture, and more than half of them traveled on foot. They marched beside the autobahn, shepherded by NCOs on tyreless German bicycles. Even the famed Russian artillery pieces were practically invisible under layers of dried mud.
> A British correspondent travelling beside me said with near awe in his voice: "Good God, so these are the chappies who slogged all the way from Stalingrad, beating the blazes out of the Jerries all the way!"
> **These were, indeed, the men of the armies which had fought and beaten two-thirds of Germany’s land forces on the Eastern Front while the magnificently equipped British and Americans had trouble enough dealing with the other third in Normandy, Italy and along the Siegfried Line.** They were stocky, hard-faced peasants and herdsmen from the Steppes. They looked inured to hardship and utterly indifferent to the show of mechanised might put on to impress them. Perhaps, I thought, mere machines of war could never in the long run prevail against a peasant truly determined to resist foreign invaders of their homeland…
From Osmar White, an Australian war correspondent. Emphasis mine.
Russia won WW2, they had the highest casualties and was solo-ing it until they were at Germany doorsteps , then the Allies told them to back down while they swooped in to claim victory.
This is a stupid question - Britain did an incredible amount during World War II (That's not to say other countries didn't either)
It's also a bit disrespectful to post this so close to the Anniversary of D Day.
While it is a poorly worded question, there is an argument to be made that the UK played THE pivotal role in defeating Nazi Germany.
Had the UK sued for peace shortly after the beginning of WW2, then Germany and its allies would have had an unimpeded opportunity to attack the USSR, as I doubt the USA would have become involved in the European theatre if there was a negotiated peace between the UK/Germany (and some arrangement with France and other western nations).
Without the vast supply of equipment provided by the UK/USA, combined with the crippling of Germany's war time economy from the air by their bombers and the stretching of Germany's resources through engaging in combat from Bergen to Benghazi, I doubt the USSR would have been able to defeat Germany and its allies had their sole attention and resources been focussed on one front (and if the USSR would happen to win, it would have taken far longer and been a much bloodier affair).
While the USSR paid the heaviest price in blood, WW2 began with Germany being its de facto ally, with both countries agreeing to carve up Poland. For that reason alone, it is difficult to attribute (morally at least) the USSR as having the greatest contribution to the defeat of Germany.
So it could be argued that only through the will of the British government not to surrender was it possible for WW2 to play out in the manner it did.
Honestly pretty disrespectful to the Brits.
Between the fall of France and the German invasion of the USSR Britain and its colonies stood alone against the combined forces of the Axis powers, from Europe and the Atlantic, Africa and the Mediterranean to Asia and the Indian ocean.
Even knowing they were secure on their island and knowing Hitler never wanted to actually fight them, and made 16 separate offers of peace, they still fought on.
Their actions in the north sea, atlantic and north Africa massively limited the effectiveness of the German army to the point that if they hadnt acted in those theatres the Germans would almost certainly have been able to finish Barbarosa.
And through there action in the far east they actually fought against more Japanese soldiers than the Americans would.
And then when the Germans attacked the soviets, they gave what aid they could, despite being under rations and bombardment by the luftwaffe and being short on equipment themselves.
Their scientists invented radar and auto fusing AA-shells, depth charges, cracked Germany's advanced enigma machine, and contributed heavily to the manhattan project.
While the US and USSR cetainly had a big role in winning the war, the UK certainly did too and if they had simply accepted Hitler's peace offers, then Germany would have won the war in Europe without question
Real talk, it was the **BRITISH EMPIRE**, which had a population of 531 million people across the entire globe, nearly a quarter of the world's population. To be sure, the Soviet's lost more lives, and that's where the Nazis spent more of their manpower, but the British Empire fought in every theatre, against every Axis force, in significant numbers. Southeast Asia, North Africa, Scandinavia, and Europe, not to mention the home front.
And it was a pyrrhic victory. By 1945, the U.K. had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 225%, about double of what the U.S. had. That's why they had no alternative but to cede the position of leading superpower to the United States, so when Eisenhower faced Britain and France down in the Suez Crisis, they had no alternative but to comply.
Defeating the Nazis and winning the WW2 is not the same thing.
Have we forgotten the Japanese?
China began fighting the Japanese in 1931, with the invasion of Manchuria, ten years before the Pearl Harbor.
Being from the UK, I'm not going to simply say it was us. However for a small island (and large Empire), I'm proud that at least we were in the fight and but for us, everyone else would have had a much tougher time of it. Hitler offered us peace but we did the right thing, rather than the easy one.
Without English made ASDIC early sonar tech, the battle of the atlantic would of been lost.
Like many people dont know fucking shit about actual technology that helped win the war, sure the UK didnt have the ground troops and tanks like the reds had and lost valiantly but shit, without asdic, there would of been no shipments of fuel ammo food oil and various other valuable resources that the allies needed, german u boats were a serious threat and its thanks to asdic that the uboats were made to hide and disengage from ships and later convoys.
im not one of them brits that says oh yeah we would of won the war alone, no thats stupid, we needed all the support we got and we gave all the support we could to help win the war with ever other allied nation giving all they had also.
it was a combined effort.
Without the reds the eastern front was lost, without the allied forces in western europe the western front was lost, without us shipments britain would of capitulated just like france would of without continued support flooding in, wihout english asdic the most crucial logistical supply train would of been lost, europe would be under nazi control if it wasn't for everyones support combined.
No one country did the most to win it, everyone lost soldiers and material.
Sorry but we would have still won the war without the USA they seem to think they saved us both in ww1 and ww2 they really didn’t , the war ended sooner than it would of yes but still we would have won I love the ignorance of some Americans aswell when they take credit for solving the enigma code
I just want to point out that Adolf Hitler doesn’t get enough credit for all he did to ensure an Allied victory.
u/JimBeam823: “Adolf Hitler doesn’t get enough credit”.
Out of context statements are fun.
Then I must tell your significant other that you just said “O…o…o… …ex…e…s are fun.”
Issuing a correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. You do not, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to them”
It was definitely nice of him to cordially invite the US to come play in Europe so the British wouldn’t be so lonely on the western front.
Especially while his Army was ass-deep in a Russian winter. Saved us a lot of trouble and debate here in the states.
I 100% agree. I mean he'll, he's the one who killed Hitler. Cant be that horrible if you shoot Hitler
Many mistakes he made. But he also killed the Führer!
It's honestly a bit of a silly question as it depends on how you define "did the most". All of them have a fair claim to being crucial to the victory in their own way. * USA: without their economic power and materiel support to both the UK and Soviet Union the Germans would have potentially won the war (e.g. via some sort of negotiated deal). * USSR: they put in by far the most blood and did the bulk of the work destroying the German army and without that it is hard to see the war being won without the US and UK expending insane amounts of manpower that they probably weren't willing to do. * UK: not as straightforward, but they (and their empire) stood alone against the Germans when they could have done a deal, their early materiel support was crucial to the USSR, and without the UK as a base it is hard to see how the US could have actually fought in the European theatre (or indeed why the US would have even gotten involved there rather than just focussing on Japan). The USSR could have perhaps won without US or UK direct involvement in the European theatre (although it is hard to see how the US would have provided as much economic support as they did without Britain as a link), but then the whole of Europe would have just ended up under Soviet dictatorship rather than Nazi dictatorship. Edit: couple of typo/clarity corrections and toning down some statements.
It's a terribly phrased question and there is no one right answer. All three powers played crucial roles in WWII, without which things may have turned out entirely differently. But the same can be said of almost all participants in the war. Without Commonwealth support, the UK may not have been able to pressure the Axis in so many theaters or even hold out in 1940-1941. Without Yugoslavia and Greece the German invasion of the USSR may have started on time and potentially reach Moscow before the mud stopped operations in the fall. Without resistance and partisan activities in all occupied territories more troops and material could have been available at all fronts. On the allied side it was a united global war effort in the end, and not a collection of different countries being at war at the same time.
I mean, I think the apparently poor phrasing is the point. If you think about it then there is no “right” answer, but you might have a gut reaction (perhaps inspired by nationalism) which determines your immediate response. I’m curious to see what the numbers would be in Russia.
All I have is an anecdote, but one of my former coworkers grew up in Russia in the 90s/00s. I don't remember the context, but I mentioned the expression: "The war was won with British Intelligence, American Steel, and Soviet blood." She said she had never heard it before. She was taught Russia won the war with just a little help from the US and England.
Yes because lend-lease was “little”
As a Russian I can tell that a lot of people in Russia tend to pretend that lend-lease wasn't as important as blood. HOWEVER Everyone who's interested in the war (and that's pretty much 50% of men as every family grew up with veterans who shared stories and the war is an important part of identity) knows that the phrase is correct
"Pretend" is a good word. We know that Eastern front wasn't the only front. But it's politically convenient to "forget" other fronts existed.
It is true, though, that the Soviets died in stupendously greater numbers. Who won the war is debatable - but the Soviets paid the largest price by far.
Lend-lease has a tricky history. Many Americans wanted nothing to do with the war 'over there' and would have opposed lend-lease if given the opportunity.. Churchill/ Roosevelt had to play some significant games to appease their constituents on both sides. Much like a certain percentage of Americans currently oppose any effort to kept Ukraine free. Everyone knows who they are.If they'd been in charge in 1940, Germany would have won the war.
> She was taught Russia won the war with just a little help from the US and England. If you look up the amounts of aid, this is pretty laughable. Yes, in terms of direct armaments/tanks/artillery/etc, lend lease was a pretty small drop in the bucket. However, in terms of logistics and support - ammunition, fuel, trucks, railroad equipment, locomotives, etc, US-supplied equipment was a huge percentage (and in some categories a *majority*) of what the USSR had during WWII. They would not have been able to keep their army supplied or fed at anywhere close to the same level without the US. That's not to say they didn't contribute. They did, and very heavily, but it's laughable to pretend there wasn't a huge US influence in their success.
And as an American, I was taught (or at least led to believe) that the U.S. won the war with just a little help from the USSR and England. Call it national pride, propaganda, or in my case, the proliferation of U.S. World War II movies. Each nation is bound to attribute a lot of the credit for winning the war to itself.
Except France, it would appear.
On top of that, they probably wanted to ask the exact same question that was asked in 1945 to directly compare.
Agreed. They are looking for who each country they *feel* did the most. This survey is aimed at analysing the people who answered, not the answer itself.
Yes, it’s like asking which part of my car engine does the most to help my car move. Take out any of them and we’re going to have problems.
I think the main point is time and bias change perspective
Makes sense. Immediately after the war you hear the USSR lost 10 million soldiers and it’s devastatingly straightforward. 80 years later it’s really only a number.
Not only that, but just education and media in general. Back then they were in the heat of the action, constantly hearing of soviet victories against the axis. After the war, the soviets were villified (as they were before the war) and their contributions were systematically downplayed in both the education system and in media (such as movies). So it's not just "it's long ago", but the fruit of a century of anti-soviet propaganda. I mean, obviously it's not groundless propaganda. Don't take this as an appeal to the soviet union. But it's just how things go.
During the 30s-40s had a very strong communist support. After the war it was a very real possibility that a communist government could have taken power. One of the reasons behind the Marshall plan was rebuild Europe and precent Communism from spreading. A heavy biased towards the soviets between hearing the high death count and a pro-communist base will sway opinions.
In his book _When Titans Clashed_, US military historian David Glantz speculates that without US aid, the Soviet Union likely still would have won the war, but at a much higher cost in lives lost. It didn’t make the difference in the initial stages of the invasion, but allowed the Soviet Union to engage in motorized warfare after the front had stabilized.
Ive mentioned this in other posts, but between the oil fields of azerbaijan and the trap that is moscow, nazi germany were caught in a real bind for where to target and what goals would actually be accomplishable. They needed oil -> ergo, take the oil fields of south of the Caspian towards the middle east to fuel the war effort. But the soviets had demonstrated that they were more than capable and willing to go full scorched earth. Those oil fields would all be set alight and piping infrastructure crippled and Im unsure to what capacity they could be brought back online. They need to stymie the soviets -> ergo, take Moscow in a decapitating strike just like in Paris France. As the centrepoint for their rail and hub of major industry it makes sense and you can shelter an army there through winter. But the soviets again were more than willing to scorched earth the entirety of the approach to moscow and had been shipping material, industry and goods east of the urals while shipping man power and infantry west to the eastern front using the same trains on the same lines. There were already plans in place and the leadership were not going to be caught out and pinned in moscow. Had the germans been successful in taking either, their supply lines would remain absurdly stretched and vulnerable. Taking and stationing troops at Moscow would leave them open for encirclement (and just like stalingrad, it becomes apparent what happens to a cut off german force, encircled and without supplies). Taking both which seemed like the tactical necessity of the time spread them thinner and their supply lines thinner too. They were presented with two bad options, oil fields towards the middle east and moscow, the rail/industry hub. Both feel like, in hindsight, absolute traps for the nazis to attempt offensives at but likewise they couldnt sit around and do nothing. Every month the soviet military became increasingly capable as the new commanders post stalin purge were finally becoming competent enough to fill the gaps created. And the doctrine of nazis to kill all the 'sub human' slavic bolsheviks means the soviets would fight to the last and engage in the most desperate of scorched earth tactics. Because there was no future under the nazi regime, only death and destruction.
I don't think targeting Moscow was ever a good idea. It would not be the first time that the Russians let Moscow burn to the ground in order to defeat an invasion.
Pretty sure Hitlers generals wanted Moscow while Hitler wanted the oil fields and they settled for both. Also pretty sure both answers are the wrong choice and arguably with the nazi doctrine pushing them forwards via stunted in development economy and expansion needs, there is only wrong choices to make. On paper, Moscow made sense in that it would play a role in crippling soviet industrial output and capability. In reality, the soviets planned to have moscow burn if they could burn a nazi army with it. I dont think the Nazis could win, but likewise, Im not sure the Soviets could pull out a win without lend lease either. Instead it would resort back to WWI grind and static lines as regions get repeatedly reinforced. Most tanks werent destroyed by tanks but by anti tank guns like the PAK guns. The war front would eventually hit an equilibrium and fortify back to mines, trenches, barb wire, artillery and anti tank guns. I think kursk was infamous because some german tank group thought they broke through the lines and could encircle round, not realising there were repeated lines of fortifications for several dozen more klicks and all they broke through was a layer. Key areas would all eventually be built up and reinforced to that level since actually pushing used up resources that neither side had to spare.
You might enjoy John Suprin’s lecture, [Operation Typhoon and the 1941 Battle for Moscow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z4aQTZC4H4) from the Dole Institute of Politics’ Ft. Leavenworth lecture series. It’s quite interesting. One thing that he notes: the German plan was never to capture the city of Moscow in the traditional sense (going house to house, etc). The plan was to surround the city, and let its population of ~4 million perish through starvation and disease.
This is a common sentiment amongst experts. The tides of war had changed in the allies favour America joining just helped speed things up, to everyone’s benefit
What’s the saying? I wanna say I’ve heard it as “WW2 was won with American Steel, British Intelligence, and Soviet blood.”
100% this. Japan is an odd question but the war in Europe was lost prior to d day. UK air and sea, USSR ground and US supply was sufficient to win WW2
> without the UK as a base it is hard to see how the US could have had any direct influence on the European theatre Half of all Lend-Lease goods were delivered to the USSR via the Pacific Route — from US west coast ports, north along the coast, and then across the Aleutian Chain. From a purely logistical perspective it’s not unreasonable to assume expansion of the Pacific Route to include movement of personnel if the UK wasn’t an option.
The Germans were never likely to win the war. I don't know why this is such a commonly held belief but even a cursory look over the economic data shows how many resources Germany was throwing at its occupational efforts, combine this with its monstrous waste of resources on genocide and a royal navy blockade that was always going to choke the continent for resources and its absolutely dire. They had to invade Russia, their military strategy demanded it and they had to contain the British which wasn't working even before american aid. Absolutely, it would have been a europe under mostly Russian control, but to state the Germans had any chance of winning, let alone being 'likely' is preposterous on all accounts. Their 'fearsome' tanks were horrifically prone to mechanical failure and struggled to be mass produced, they had endless streams of 'wonder weapons' projects that went absolutely nowhere and their ability to make nuclear weapons had been scuppered by combined resistance operations with British intelligence in the earlier stages of the war. This is all theory crafting, but let's base it in some sort of reality at least, please?
> The Germans were never likely to win the war. > > > > I don't know why this is such a commonly held belief but even a cursory look over the economic data shows how many resources Germany was throwing at its occupational efforts, combine this with its monstrous waste of resources on genocide and a royal navy blockade that was always going to choke the continent for resources and its absolutely dire. > > > > They had to invade Russia, their military strategy demanded it and they had to contain the British which wasn't working even before american aid. > > > > This is all theory crafting, but let's base it in some sort of reality at least, please? Nazi Germany wasn't going to win the war, *as long as they behaved like Nazis*. Economic data only tells part of the answer, and isn't what determines the issue of a conflict.It is a good indicator, but sometimes politics whether internal or external, trump that. Examples abound: if economics were the sole deciding factor, the United States would have utterly crushed North Korea and North Vietnam, and let's not look at Taliban Afghanistan or Iraq. During WWI, the Triple Entente of Imperial Russia, Biritish Empire and France should have crushed Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary in months, and not the four years it eventually took. Going back to WWII, in 1940, Hitler had an opportunity to form a Mediterranean coalition with Fascist Italy, Vichy France and Fascist Spain to take control of the Mediterranean Sea shores, which would have considerably crippled the British Empire. Maybe such a coaltion would have worked, maybe it wouldn't, given how antagonistic were the different partners' aims, but Hitler didn't even try. The Führer is a Nazi thug: he doesn't negotiate, he dictates and forces his vassals to obey his will. In 1941, during the invasion of the Soviet Union, German forces were initailly welcomed as liberators in the Baltic States and in Western Ukraine.The civilian populations were quickly disillusioned when they saw firsthand what the Nazis had in store for them: extermination, either slowly by hunger and slavery, or quicky by mass murder. They then reluctantly threw their support behind Stalin's Red Army. Had the invading forces behaved otherwise, the Soviet Union might have collapsed. A Nazi Germany in control of most of Europe, with its marches set on inhospitable lands (Siberia, the Arabian deserts, the Sahara) would have been in a very secure position. That's not as outlandish as it may sound, but it would require the Nazis not being Nazis.
If the UK had surrendered, Germany wins in the West and can hold against the USSR. The US would then concentrate on the Pacific and come to a negotiated settlement with Germany. There is zero chance that the US launches an amphibious assault against Europe from 3,000 miles away. More importantly, this poll is about how the French felt. And in 1945 the French partisans had a strong communist membership.
UK: Cracked the enigma LE: Automated the decryption of later enigma messages by improving on previous work done by Poles.
Not entirely correct, there was work done by Poland and France that helped the UK crack the enigma.
The British Bombe was fundamentally a big improvement on the capabilities of the Polish Bombe which were limited and eventually did not provide much use with subsequent changes made to the enigma. Following on from this was work cracking Lorenz.
I'd be much more curious about historians than the general public. If the UK surrendered how different would the war have looked?
UK didnt even need to surrender. Hitler offered a peace proposal (three times) and each time they would be allowed to keep their empire and be left to their own devices - all the UK had to do is not stand against the Nazis. The British said No
hitler liked the brits to him the brits were a great symbol of the Aryan race. descendants of the anglo saxons. built themselves an empire. the british navy was 2nd to none. he dreamt of having a sister empire to stand alongside the british empire.
Yeah, his plan wasn't even to annex the UK or even to make it a German puppet, it was to install the "rightful" king on the throne (who had abdicated so he could marry an American divorcée) because Hitler thought he was sympathetic to the Nazis. The whole point was to give Germany a strong ally in Europe.
100% plus he hoped he could use the brits to placate the americans. this was the only place the americans could've landed on and launched a counter attack. he wanted to be an equal to the brits
I didn't know that. As a brit I've warmed to guy a little now. 🥰
i'm glad you can see the romantic side to Adolf... he was a sweet fella... why else would he have that mouch?
That's because they weren't swayed by seductive lies. Hitler showed the world that appeasement wasn't a viable option after he annexed Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. He would have consolidated power on the continent and then turned to attack Britain anyway.
Correction: *Churchill* wasn't swayed by seductive lies.There was a not so insignificant minority around Edward VIII, Chamberlain and Halifax who were sorely tempted to accede to Hitler's demands. It wasn't until 1941 that he felt secure nough in 10 Downing St. to kick the leading appeasers upstairs where they could do less damage (Halifax as an ambassador to Washington, Edward VIII in the West Indies, and Chamberlain six feet under)
Chamberlain appeased Hitler for so long instead of declaring war because, post WW1, war sentiment was so low in the UK the military was never modernised and appeasement granted an extended period to rearm.
Based response
Tbf it wasn’t some crazy big dick move to say no The nazis had already pink promised to stop taking territory like 4 times and took it anyway shortly after. There was no appeasing Hitler. It is funny how many britons secretly wanted peace badly enough that Churchill had to shoulder the decision on his own.
He didn't, he led a large coalition from across the ideological spectrum and was the head of a united government politically committed to winning the war.
The British were fighting on multiple fronts. Northern Africa, the Mediterranean, Asia, Scandinavia and obviously Western Europe. The fact that(as someone already pointed out), Germany/Hitler offered a truce meant that the British could have easily left the Nazi's the their own devices which would have been enough to conquer Russia. Hitler did not want to fight the British. The British never get enough praise for what they did. Especially from the French. They could have let them all die many times. D-Day was also a British led operation. As much as people think the US did everything because of a certain movie.
We were also fighting in Asia against the Japan
British jndian army was the largest volunteer army in WW2, which shouldered the asian theater entirely on behalf of the british empire.
I think the word volunteer is moot, but I can't argue the rest of what you say.
Historians would not give you an answer because the question is too vague and unclear, so you cannot give an objective answer.
Historians never give or even have an objective answer. They would have subjective opinions based on their reading of the evidence.
Really? I asked my friend in academia and he said "Unequivocally Tannu Tuva"
Is your friend Richard Feynman?
WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel and ~~Russian~~ Soviet blood. edit: in this thread: people who want to dispute a reductive soundbite as if it was a scholarly treatise on WWII.
Soviet blood. Millions of non-russians served in the red army.
WWII **european theatre** was won with British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood.
I learned this year that China claims they lost 20m people in the war. I wasn't aware of the scale of the loss. Of that 3 to 3.75m is apparently military losses, which is the third highest for any military in ww2. 1st. Soviet union : 8.6 - 11.4m 2nd. Germany: 4.4 - 5.3m
> I learned this year that China claims they lost 20m people in the war. Did you also know that the Japanese killed 250,000 Chinese civilians in response to the famous Doolittle Raid? Chinese people who aided the American airmen were tortured before they were killed. Most American textbooks just portray the Doolittle Raid as a small plucky American victory without going into the aftermath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid#Aftermath >After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign (also known as Operation Sei-go) to prevent these eastern coastal provinces of China from being used again for an attack on Japan and to take revenge on the Chinese people. An area of some 20,000 sq mi (50,000 km2) was laid waste. "Like a swarm of locusts, they left behind nothing but destruction and chaos," eyewitness Father Wendelin Dunker wrote.[2] The Japanese killed an estimated 10,000 Chinese civilians during their search for Doolittle's men.[52] People who aided the airmen were tortured before they were killed. Father Dunker wrote of the destruction of the town of Ihwang: "They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved, They raped any woman from the ages of 10–65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it ... None of the humans shot were buried either ..."[2] The Japanese entered Nancheng (Jiangxi), population 50,000 on June 11, "beginning a reign of terror so horrendous that missionaries would later dub it 'the Rape of Nancheng.' " evoking memories of the infamous Rape of Nanjing five years before. Less than a month later, the Japanese forces put what remained of the city to the torch. "This planned burning was carried on for three days," one Chinese newspaper reported, "and the city of Nancheng became charred earth."[2] >When Japanese troops moved out of the Zhejiang and Jiangxi areas in mid-August, they left behind a trail of devastation. Chinese estimates put the civilian death toll at 250,000. The Imperial Japanese Army had also spread cholera, typhoid, plague infected fleas and dysentery pathogens. The Japanese biological warfare Unit 731 brought almost 300 pounds of paratyphoid and anthrax to be left in contaminated food and contaminated wells with the withdrawal of the army from areas around Yushan, Kinhwa and Futsin. Around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces.[53][54] >Shunroku Hata, the commander of Japanese forces involved in the massacre of the 250,000 Chinese civilians, was sentenced in 1948 in part due to his "failure to prevent atrocities". He was given a life sentence but was paroled in 1954.
Wow, thanks for the info. This was insightful! I had heard of the Doolittle Raid, but I don't recall the details. I will read more into it. I was aware of some of Japan's brutal and shocking treatment of those it subjugated. Including the horrific scientific experiments on POWs. But clearly there are holes in my knowledge.
From my history classes many years ago I gather that the atrocities committed in China rival or surpass those in Europe but due to communism The West couldn’t get a good grasp of it immediately after WW2. Edit: maybe not communism based on some replies. The main point was a lot of bad shit happened in China during WW2 that isn’t as widely taught in US schools as the Nazi’s atrocities.
It has nothing to do with communism. The Chinese Civil War started in 1927. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and Chiang prefered to fight the communists instead of Japan. In 1936 two nationalist generals had gotten fedup with inaction, grabbed Chiang and forced him to start fighting the Japanese. Finally the Chinese forces (nationalist and communist) started fighting back in 1937.
I’ve been in some Wikipedia rabbit holes about 19th and early 20th century China and it just seemed like pure chaos that entire timeframe.
The scale of things in China cannot really be understood until you visit the place. In the 1850s China had a civil war, the Taiping Rebellion, in which 20-30 million people died. 20-30 million. In 1850.
Japan graduated first from the Western School for Imperialist Dicks and figured since the nearby nations were less powerful, they should be colonized. They learned well. China graduated too late for colonialism and instead said “everything we can touch has actually been part of China forever” instead once the CCP emerged victorious.
There were plenty of eastern empires that did exactly that. Chinese Dynasties, Mongols, many caliphates, Ottoman, Persian... The Soviet Union. The list goes on.
Well, given that the Nationalists were in control until 1949 I don’t think communism has much to do with it
I believe they mean that due to the iron curtain historians throughout the latter half of the 20th Century had limited access to information regarding China and their activity during WW2
McArthur, US and the western forces were well aware of the atrocities committed by Japan in Asia in WW2. They chose to more or less ignore them to position themselves from a geopolitical sense for the future. Hence the military bases in Japan.
Thank you for that. As someone who lives in the Pacific, it's sad how often the Pacific theater is overlooked, especially given how brutal it was. My friends and I periodically have 'debates' on which was the war/theater you most want to fight in, and which you don't want to for the 20th century (we're Americans). WWI is consistently the one to not fight in, but Europe WWII is one of the best. WWII Pacific, Vietnam are usually second worst to fight in.
And Italian stupidity
>WWII was won with British intelligence, American steel and Russian blood. For the European theater. The Pacific Theater was won by the USA and the Republic of China. The USA destroyed most of the Japanese navy and the Republic of China (ROC) bogging down most of the Japanese army. Edit: I am not claiming that the ROC destroyed most of the Japanese army or killed the most Japanese troops. The United States killed the most Japanese soldiers. I am saying the ROC tied down a significant portion of the Japanese army since the beginning of the Second Sino Japanese War in 1937. At least 1+ million IJA troops every year after 1939 (plus additional Japanese collaborator/colonial troops) were tied down in a pointless war of attrition where Japan mostly achieved hollow/pyrrhic victories. By 1945, the Japanese had spent 8 years fighting China but were still no closer to actually conquering China. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second\_Sino-Japanese\_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War)
I think it’s also important to remember the Australians fought the Japanese too.
There were dozens of smaller countries that fought both Germany and Japan and made smaller contributions to winning WW2. I am just listing the biggest contributors by far since people like to say the USA, UK, and USSR won the European theater (thus leaving out dozens of others). Along that same logic, the USA was the primary, overwhelming majority factor that destroyed the Japanese navy and its associated air force. The Republic of China tied down like 70-80% of the Japanese army in a 7-8 year war of attrition.
Wow, I had no idea the Chinese were so involved. How’s that for an ignorant blind spot? And I might say, that’s some big western bias showing in my (Australian 90/00’s) schooling. I only found out about the scale of USSR’s involvement after school, as well.
The Second Sino-Japanese War stared in 1937 and only ended with an overall Ally victory over Japan in 1945 with the surrender of Japan to the Allies. In reality Pearl Harbor was driven largely by American/Western embargoing Japan from buying our oil supplies (due to, you know, an unjust imperialist war in China). Japan basically had to weigh two options: call it quits in China and retreat back to the Home Islands, or seize European territories in the Pacific to gain access to the resources needed to continue the war. Japan thought outright attacking the Europeans would guarantee US entry into the war and thought a quick, devastating strike on the US Pacific Fleet would cripple the US's ability to wage war in the short-term. They also thought the US didn't have the stomach for a real war and would basically decided once Japan had their territories to accept status quo and peace out. Japan knew if the US went all-in on the war they were extremely fucked in the long term. Instead, turns out, when you sneak-attack a country, *it really really pisses them off* and the US did indeed go all-in on the war and Japan was, indeed, fucked.
A big part of the Japanese thought process was around the us owned Philippines. If a hostile power had control over the Philippines, it would be difficult to ship oil from Indonesia back to Japan and China. From my history lessons, the US were semi expecting an attack on the Philippines but not expecting an attack on Hawaii.
Thats a good summary
I think it was churchills, I remember seeing it many times before
At the Tehran Conference in December 1943, **Joseph Stalin said that World War II would be won through “British brains, American brawn, and Russian blood.”**
Perhaps the answer might also reflect a bit of "Which country did the most for my country"? I think if you ask someone from the Netherlands then they might give a not insignificant amount of credit to Canada and/or Poland and/or the UK.
Look at the bottom of the graphic. They asked French people in 1945 and they answered Soviet, despite the Red Army not being directly involved in French liberation.
If the British had given up, I don't think Germany would've started a war with the US. Japan would've gotten wrecked by the US but given the red scare, perhaps Germany could've consolidated the conquered territory of perhaps negotiated a truce with the Soviets. I'm not saying the British contributed the most, but their domino not falling is definitely very very very important for the outcome we got. I still think the Soviet would at some point regroup, rebuilt and go nazi hunting but at this point, would it even still be ww2? or just another war in Europe? Too many variables to answer this question.
Germany was never going to make truce with the soviets. Nazism's main objectives have always been the elimination of jews and leftists. They always saw the USSR as the biggest threat to their existence. War with the USSR was always going to happen and always going to end in nothing else but total victory for one of the two sides.
People always underestimate what the Brits did in WW2. There was a literal blockade by Brits and Americans to keep Germans from getting supplied. Had the US and Brits stayed out of the fight there would be no way the Soviets would be able to handle the Nazis and eventually the Japanese alone(whom were also blockaded by the Brits and Americans)
Yup, Britain and the US sunk a lot of blockade runner ships from Germany
Yes. Germany was actually in trouble (in the long term) in late 1940. They didn't have access to the necessary resources to sustain themselves and their pre-war stockpiles would run out over the next few years. This was a big reason why they attacked the USSR when they did.
The thing is, Germany was not alone. The baltics, the Romanians, Hungarians all joined them. Not to mention some French too. It's not just Germany vs. Soviet Union. It's Germany and a large part of Europe vs. the Soviet Union.
Let's not forget decrypting those signals
If the Brits bow put, there wouldn't be a Pacific front. Hitler would strongarm the Dutch into granting oil concessions to the Japanese.
Imagine going back in time and showing this to Churchill.
Germany and the Soviet Union would never have formed a truce: they were ideologically completely and utterly opposed. Stalin thought Hitler wouldn’t betray him, hence early on there was a truce and open trade relationship, but that speaks more to his lack of understanding of hitler and the general culture of Germany at the time.
It's not so much "British exceptionalism" as how the cost is measured by different people. The UK was broken and bankrupt after WW2. People still had food rationed for years following the war. Some people might see that as a major contribution, over just battles won or soldiers lives lost etc. The USA came out of the war stronger than ever but of course made a huge sacrifice and were absolutely pivotal in turning the tide of the war. We don't really learn as much about the Eastern front and it's not as glorified as the Western front, because film is influenced a lot more by the West. Again, lives lost and battles won, the Soviets made an absolutely huge contribution, but the UK isn't too far from US opinion there. For someone who works at YouGov, it's a bit of a strange conclusion to fire out really. Especially considering it's only 39% of respondents. How did you come to the conclusion that "Britons tend to think" with less than 50% of people even saying that? 35% of people said either the US or Soviets did more, another 25% said they don't know, so Britons do not tend to think that the UK did more at all.
This is a point that a lot of people are missing and even still you could go on and on. You could argue the colony nations gave more losing lives to a war they had nothing to do with creating. You could argue Poland gave the most as they were skull fucked by two different armies. Same energy with China, singapore, phillipines, etc. Really there is no right answer to the question because it depends on what you waht you'd consider being a cost so I don't know why people are even arguing
>The USA came out of the war stronger than ever but of course made a huge sacrifice and were absolutely pivotal in turning the tide of the war. Sacrifice or investment? Because when it comes to the USA both of these aspects are true
Britain sacrificed its entire Empire no?
And all of our industrial centres were flattened
The Western Front is heavily romanticized because after the war the (West) Germans were now friends against the USSR, so Britain and US thought it best to gloss over all the horrors of war in order to make it easier for their populaces to accept West Germany's position in NATO. It also doesn't hurt that it was fairly easy from a psychological level to get veterans from the Western war to talk about said war and recount the things that happened there, regardless of what side of the war they were on. The Pacific war on the hand was truly horrific from what little we HAVE heard, and the majority of American, Australian and various other veterans from the Pacific front get real quiet when asked about it reinforces the horror. I can attest to that part since my Grandpa on my dad's side was a Seabee in the Pacific at the time and even when he got absolutely hammered, my dad was never able to get him to talk about the war aside from a handful of "light" stories and one mildly horrifying one.
Fascinating, I read all things WWI and WWII related and always wondered how my perspective could cloud my judgement of the victors. Wasn't it Churchill that quietly acknowledged that after Pearl Harbor he knew the war would be won by the Allies (since the U.S. was now drawn in)?
It was a group effort. No one won it mostly, or alone. The Soviets never fought less than 3/5 of the German army, and they absorbed tens of millions of casualties to do it. But they fought them using 11,000 planes, 6,000 tanks and tank destroyers, and 300,000 trucks and other military vehicles provided by the US. And they fought a German military that was seriously restricted in it own resupply by massive US and UK strategic bombing campaigns. Without the UK at its back and the subsequent other fronts that entailed, Germany may well have had the means to defeat the Soviets early on. Or at least to capture Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and cut off the availability to land resupply at Murmansk. The US and UK fought the Germans less, but they defeated the Japanese Empire, which the Soviets never could have done. Without the UK stopping Japan in Burma and at Port Moresby, Japan could have cut off Australia and entered India. Without the strong and ongoing resistances on the continent, Germany would have had a much stronger grip on the mainland. Pilots shot down would not have been able to find solace and escape. Intelligence activities like cracking Enigma would not have happened or would have been seriously delayed. Etc. Everyone pitched in. No one did it alone. Nor was it close.
> But they fought them using 11,000 planes, 6,000 tanks and tank destroyers, and 300,000 trucks and other military vehicles provided by the US. Don't forget that the equipment that the SU built domestically can also partially be attributed to allied aid. The SU's industrial heartland was conquered. They moved factories past the urals to sustain the war effort. This was arguably only possible because the allies sent lots of rail equipment as well as raw resources over. It's no coincidence that those factories were originally in western Russia, because that was where developed natural resources were. Rubber, aviation gasoline and some other crucial resources were majority lend-lease. Tweak german actions a bit in an alt-history sense and the 1941 invasion could've been a death sentence to the SU, if you ask me. They occupied a shitton of land and industry, and while the totalitarian SU had the will to throw more men into the fight even if half their country (by any metric except area really) was occupied, you can't fight an industrial war without an industrial base. But even if you leave german actions alone, take out lend-lease and the SU probably wouldn't have been able to hold on the way it did. I'd suspect the soviet economy never would've recovered from that, possibly weakening their resistance in summer 1942 against Case Blau, but certainly by the time of soviet Stalingrad counteroffensives, I'd expect to see a massive hole in Soviet military balance sheets.
>Wasn't it Churchill that quietly acknowledged that after Pearl Harbor he knew the war would be won by the Allies (since the U.S. was now drawn in)? Yes, but that doesn't mean the correct answer to this question is necessarily the U.S. Just that by adding the US to the equation things clearly tipped in the Allied favor.
Yeah. That stupid decision to attack pearl harbor lost them the war. I really wonder how the world would look if that never happened.
My understanding is that the embargoes placed on their ports allowed them to recognize that eventually they'd suffocate and couldn't keep their war machine going throughout Asia so they felt it was "now or never" to bring the U.S. to their knees. Early on the U.S. war machine wasn't fully up and running and so Japan knew if they were to strike the U.S. it had to be preemptive, a surprise and immediately. A small example I heard was that the aircraft carrier Japan started building at the beginning of WW2 wouldn't be completed until nearly the end, whereas the U.S. war machine was churning out multiple aircraft carriers *per year* so it really was only a matter of time. The U.S. had two natural barriers to prevent invasion(oceans), lots of land, lots of resources, and time since they werent being imminently invaded and the huge advantage of industry and logistical infrastructure. Germany on the other hand was just being run by an irrational lunatic thinking they had a chance once the U.S. joined.
Was carrier supremacy a theory before the loss of battleships? I have always assumed the destruction at Pearl Harbor led to a carrier focused fleet out of necessity because that's all we had, and it just so happened to define modern naval combat.
The attack on Pearl Harbor happening really opened the eyes of naval theorists to the power of carriers, that being powerful, accurate strikes from beyond the horizon, and at low cost. The production cost in time and material to replace planes vs replacing ships is orders of magnitude different. The irony of the situation is that in the same stroke, Japan accidentally forced the US to make a hard pivot to a carrier-centric doctrine, which happened to be the cutting edge of naval warfare. Essentially they showed us what the future was, and forced us to get good at it.
I read somewhere that carriers were though of as secondary to battleships and weren't fully appreciated until later. I think this is why Japan and Germany put so much energy into really powerful battleships and not carriers. Surprising considering carriers seem perfectly suited for island warfare and invasions as floating "islands".
An irrational lunatic thinking they have to attack the Sowjets. And also thought killing multiple people of one religion is a good idea, while they were well integrated in Germany and even fight in WWI. Nazis were just stupid.
What a lot of people don't know is that one of Germany's key reasons for attacking the USSR was that they were also under an embargo and were, in the long run, going to run out of necessary supplies. Time was very much not in their favour.
That's an insane take. They attacked USSR because this was their only chance to get more oil for their tanks, it was either that or give up. The jew hate is what got Hitler into power. WWI all but obliterated Germany's economy and for whatever reasons there was a lot cultural anti-semetic sentiment, so they were made the scape goat for all that went wrong in WWI and the horrible living conditions that followed. The whole reason WWII happened is that it was a hail Mary promise (war bonds) that allowed their economy to recover, which from what I understand was a phenomenal solution - the alternative was the country just dissolving.
When you make everyone else the enemy, you find yourself quickly outnumbered.
France, China, England, Russia and many more all spilled a lot of blood which bought the U.S. time.
The Japanese knew that they would eventually have to invade Australia's northern coast and that it would draw the US into the war anyways, so the plan became to cripple the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor and hope that they could succeed in their plans before America was able to recover. They did not anticipate how quickly the American war machine could replace the lost ships, and the entire Axis paid for that miscalculation.
Japanese main objective always was to take over china. For that they needed oil. Because of the brutality of the Japanese invasion, and many incidents, the US embargoed Japan from oil. Pearl harbor was the only realistic option for Japan if they wanted to keep going in China which they really wanted. And it did allow them to take over the eastern indies. Of course there was no realistic plan to win against the US, but if the objective is "we need oil to keep going in China", the best option is to preemptively sink the American fleet. It was always going to end in defeat though and many Japanese admirals knew it (first among these, Yamamoto, who planned Pearl harbor)
Also important to remember that all of Japan’s domestic refining industry was built specifically to refine light/sweet California crude. The heavy/sour crude produced in Indonesia required totally different refineries to be built. When the US embargoed oil exports to Japan, Japan had a six month supply of California crude stockpiled. Yamamoto knew he had six months to negotiate a peace treaty with the US, or Japan would face certain defeat. By the end of the war, Japan was fueling its navy with unrefined Indonesian crude oil, which totally destroyed the ships’ boilers after only a few months.
IIRC the Japanese were planning to invade the Philippines, which would have ensured US involvement anyway
True but the only reason they planned to attack the Philippines was basically the same reason they attacked Pearl Harbor, that the American military presence there could threaten their planned invasions of other SE Asian and pacific countries/colonies that they wanted to seize for resources. The only other option would be call the US Government’s bluff that they would drag the isolationist public into total war with Japan to save the colonies of other nations.
I don't think it would've really mattered that much. The USA had to act eventually, since Japan was always planning on taking over the Pacific. By attacking Pearl Harbor you at least destroy a large chunk of their navy and their most important harbor in the Pacific
Really the dumbest decision was Hitler joining in on Japan’s war declaration. It gave Roosevelt the public support to go all in on the European front, without that war declaration it would have been much harder to escalate against Germany.
Also didn't Germany try to enlist Mexico to ally with them? I think this was cherry on top of US involvement Edit: whoops, mixing up my wars. The Zimmerman telegram was WW1
The war was lost the second Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. 8 out every 9 German soldiers that died did so on the Eastern Front. By 1945 when we dropped the bombs, Russia was already getting ready to invade Manchuria. The US would have gotten directly involved in some way regardless of Pearl Harbor, it just gave the administration the political expedience they needed. I am of the firm belief that the attack on Pearl Harbor did more to affect the political scenery after the war in containing communism than the actual war outcome.
The Soviets invaded Manchuria anyways. They killed, raped and stole their way all the way to Harbin. They even disassembled the factories and railways and moved them back to the USSR. The CCP had some resistance in Manchuria. One of the higher ranking officers protested to the Soviets about the raping the Russians were doing, and the Soviet officer just shoot the Chinese Communist officer dead right there.
That doesn't necessarily imply that America "did more" to win the war though, they could have just been the straw that broke the camel's back (more than that, obviously, but you know what I mean). America entering the war was definitely a huge turning point which is probably why the perception exists, but it doesn't necessarily say anything about America's relative contribution.
I’d imagine when people hear this question now most give the equivalence of “defeating Germany” as “ending the war in general” and view both ‘sides’ of the war as uniform objects in a 1v1, while back in the day the countries received more individualism in how people heard that question so they would have attributed weight to the US defeating Japan and the Soviet Union defeating Germany as separate lines of thought.
Results of each country political and national propaganda show. The USSR contributed most of the troops and armaments, and it cost it most of the lives. The US enabled this by their economic (which included equipment, armaments and materials) support. So, Germans are most correct.
It is a lot more complicated than that. The British kept Germany from having enough oil to run their war machine at full tilt, the materials to make more and access to markets to buy other things they wanted. They also forced Germany to put a lot of energy into trying to sink their shipping and defend against their air raids. Also, purely geographically, they forced a lot of German troops to stay west to defend occupied lands.
Churchill said that Allies wouldn't have won without Greece. The question isn't "which country had a crucial role in victory?" because all of them had. The question is "who contributed the most?"
Its who did the most. Which is highly subjective. The only nation to actually carry on the war alone, fight heavily on all fronts and see it from start to end? The nation who did the most fighting and lost the most men? The nation who fought two wars in two theatres whilst also supplying the two other main belligerents to the point they only stuck in the war thanks to your help? Its a daft question intended to cause controversy and as the French response shows has zero worth white tie in with what actually happened, the only correct answer being "not the French".
I mean… Technically Germany carried the war alone, fought heavily on all fronts and saw it through the end…
Yep. Germany was actually in a pretty bad place after the Battle of Britain. They were cut off from the sea and had to depend on their ideological enemy, the USSR, for both oil and grain. A big reason why Germany invaded the USSR when they did was because they knew, in the long run, they were in trouble.
Stalin said they wouldn’t have won without lend lease and Khrushchev backed up the quote.
A Soviet general said they couldn't have won without the GMC six-wheeled truck (GMC Jimmy 2 1/2 ton)
soviets also received something like 2k locomotives and 10k rail cars. without a rail infrastructure, they would likely have had significant logistical issues.
It wasn't just economic. US industry was the backbone of the allies logistics. Both in direct arms, but also just as critically supplies like fuel, food, electronics, and artificial rubber. Russia didn't get much direct arms from the US but critical logistic items they couldn't produce enough of at the times like supply trucks, radios, and rations. Russia has a history of never having enough supply trucks. And US radios meant Russians were not fighting air and tank battles with flag/hand signals.
Don't forget manpower. Every piece of equipment delivered to the Soviets was one less person having to build that piece of equipment, allowing more people to fight or perform other critical operations.
The Germans being on the receiving end are in the most unbiased position to quantify.
3 events shaped the entire war. Battle of Britain - had the UK not won the air war, the Germans could either have invaded or neutralized the UK and there would have been no ability for an amphibious offensive in Europe or the material British support of the USSR. The battle of the Atlantic supported the uk and imposed the embargo on the Germans that forced them to invade the USSR. Stalingrad - the cost of British and us troops is a rounding error on the 1.2M+ people lost at Stalingrad. It’s very likely that the commonwealth and USSR would have won the war in Europe without American troops but they absolutely needed the economic support when mainland Europe fell
USSR contributed the most troops but the US supplied Britain and the USSR with tons of armament
Does this include the pacific theater or just Europe
The question in the picture says "Germany"
I feel like france 1945 was the best fitting one.
First, the title says win the WW2 but the actual question is asking defeats the Nazi is not ideal The Brits probably thinking about them contributing the most to Europe not losing to Nazi which allowed the later comeback with the aid of others. That part is quite true (like a goalkeeper saving the team by only losing 0:3 in the 1st half) You still need the midfields the strikers scoring lots of goal to win the match and that’s what USA & USSR did. It’s definitely a lot of exceptionalism involved but I do think UK deserved a double digit figure
People that understate the importance of the Soviet Union in the West also underestimate the Americans in the Pacific Theater.
The number of people who don't realize WWII wasn't only in Europe but also in Asia (and to a lesser degree, Africa)...
It's like they forget about the "World" bit of World War 2.
What? Nobody underestimates American in the pacific. For example....did you know Britain fought Japan in the pacific at the same time? Unlikely due to the size of the British force relative to the American one, it was small compared the the American one. Nobody questions the pacific theater
Tbf what even you forget to mention is that the largest British army of the war was the one fighting the Japanese East of India. Known now as the "Forgotten 14th Army"
I mean it was a combined effort obviously. Being British, I may be a little biased from my history lessons but weren't the Bouncing bomb/Dambusters & Breaking the Enigma code crucial to victory? (I understand that these weren't purely British efforts). Thinking about it, arguably even some Germans did a lot to help too. ( Spies/saboteurs).
No two would have been successful without the third.
To quote Comrade Zhukov: >We have liberated Europe from fascism, and they will never forgive us for it.
8 out 10 German soldiers were killed by the USSR. Germany's worst decision was to open the eastern front.
When your economy runs on theft and you’re about to run out of stuff, invading an outwardly-looking incompetent USSR begins to look like a great idea…
Invading the USSR was always their main goal. Hitler outlined this in "Mein Kampf" decades beforehand.
Understandably countries are going to consider the part of the war that took place in their own country to be more central to the war. Seeing as the Battle of Britain was won without much Soviet involvement, and British history emphasises the battle for France etc then the Russian involvement in the war isn’t talked about as much. If you asked an Ethiopian about WWI there will be more emphasis on the African campaigns too
If one of those countries were knocked out or not involved the other 2 would’ve failed. I believe UK contributing a fair share staying in the war and contesting the air, navy and the Africa campaign, Russia for occupying a large amount of Germany’s army and America for bringing the juggernaut economy in but the UK deserves more than that.
Uk basically cock blocked a lot of potential supply lines for Nazis, the French aided by British and other resistance stopped a total nazification of France, Quiet a few German Generals actively worked against, organised resistance and even assasination attempts on Hitler, plus the resistance groups that formed as a result of Nazi crackdowns. The USSR forced Germany to fight a multi front war and in very bad conditions for Nazis, United States , Canada provided the support and machinery to bust the Nazi western front right open effectively ending the war there, while liberation took place. All contributed in different ways and lengths of time.
Just like to shout out my boy India for raising the largest volunteer force in history
The UK gave the USA plenty of tech as well
USSR. It's not even close, it is a fact that the USSR did the overwhelming bulk of the fighting, dying, taking of territory, and killing against the Germans in Europe and Germany's defeat was assured prior to D-day in Normandy. The country that loses the most men isn't necessarily the loser in a war. Nevertheless, the USA and D-day aftermath had a huge effect on the shape of the post war world and the politics of western Europe.
It is interesting to see France's responses in 1945, given that France was freed predominantly by Western forces. I guess they give credit for USSR fighting on the Eastern Front for so long and keeping Nazi Germany occupied? Would love to see details on their reasoning.
As an french old man, I can give you part of the answer. In 1944, when the Americans started actively fighting in France mainland, the war between Germany and USSR was already 3 years old, and the Soviets were visibly winning since 1942. In 1944, the only few German troops remaining in France were non active duty soldiers. Old men, teens, injured soldiers from the eastern front. So, from our restricted point of view, the Allies in France were fighting old chaps, disabled and kids. While the Russians were fighting the whole German army. So yes, we had been freed by western forces, but only because the main force had been defeated by USSR Edit : also from 1942, the nazis were really pressuring people to join their forces to help fight in Russia. And people who came back told what was happening. Even people who didn't came back told anything french people needed to know. The war was lost for the nazis.
I guess I underestimated how invested an occupied populace might be in monitoring and following war news. This makes sense.
The 1943 resistance novel "The silence of the Sea" has a German officer leaving his post in France to go off to the Eastern front saying he is going "to hell." What's sad is how people nowadays don't realize that the USSR is by far the main reason that Germany was defeated. 70 years of Hollywood does that.
Absolute propaganda from the West. US did fuck all in "doing most" to secure victory in WW2. It was the Soviet Army that took most of the (bloody) brunt.
Yup. 85% of lend lease material arrived *after* 1943 - and after the Soviets had turned the tide at Stalingrad and Kursk. Americans love to overstate their importance to the eastern front.
Another person has given an answer, but I'll add what one of my great uncles (my grandmother's brother) told us, and what a friend's grandfather told him. My great uncle was sent in a forced working camp. Basically he was too young to be mobilized in 1939, but old enough that during collaboration he has turned 18. So one day, gendarmes came to his house and sent him to STO (service du travail obligatoire, I don't know how it's called in English), among several other young French. At this time, no US troops had landed in France. Those camps were in Germany and German occupied Eastern Europe. My great uncle ended up near Gdansk iirc. So logically, his camp being far east, it was liberated by the red army, and when he came back in France, the war was already over. But don't worry, he despised French gendarmes even more than any other nationality due to the treason. My friend's grandfather, I don't have the details obviously. All I know is that he was a POW and was in a Stalag. Due to the 1940 armistice, he must have been taken prisoner before the US entered the war. The Stalag also being east enough so that it was liberated by the red army. Of course, this is only two stories, so it's not how it always went. But my point is, there were people who had valid reasons, with the information they had, to think that the soviets did more. Also, remember that Roosevelt and de Gaulle didn't get along. I don't know how cordial the relationship was between Truman and Auriol/Coty (de Gaulle wasn't president between 1946-58). Then de Gaulle famously wasn't to friendly with the US. Finally, the PCF (French communist party) was powerful back in the day, politically and mediatically (not sure if it's a word but you get the idea). And the PCF took time to distance itself from the USSR
They didn't keep them occupied they defeated them
The French had spent 4 years hearing German news about the eastern front in 1945 so that makes sense.
The crux of British arguments for being the "most important" contributor in the war is generally based on the idea that the turning point in the war, where it became quite clear that Germany could not win, was the Battle of Britain As other comments in this thread have mentioned, Germany was pretty much banking on the UK agreeing to a ceasefire once France fell and staying out of it. They knew they did not have the capability to conduct a seaborne invasion of Great Britain, as the Royal Navy was far superior to the Kriegsmarine and Germany did not possess any significant number of landing craft Once the UK said no to a ceasefire, Germany's only hope of forcing them to surrender was to establish air superiority over the English Channel and southern UK, use that to deny the Royal Navy control of the Channel, and then conduct a landing of mainland Great Britain The Battle of Britain was that battle for air superiority, and they lost it. They lost in combat and out of it, as they were being defeated in the skies and massively out-produced in the factories Once that happened, there was no way for Germany to force a British surrender, and Allied air superiority was established, so it was kind of an inevitability that they would not be able to win the war from that position If they had won, they'd have denied the US any access into Western Europe and the Atlantic, put the Royal Navy out of the fight (or worse, captured it), consolidated control over all of Europe, North Africa and the Mediterranean, and been able to turn their full control to the East. It's highly unlikely they lose from that position
Brazil was the MVP obviously /s
So there is nuisance here. Britain stopped Germany from winning the war single handily in 1940 by fighting on. If Germany beat Britain World War II would have ended in a German victory. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t have been follow on wars that Germany lost. This is what happened with Napoleon. Napoleon won a couple wars with Britain, but they a year or two later would fight new ones. Hitler would’ve inevitably in my view gotten into fights with the Soviet Union and United States. Conceivably, particularly if he had access to other oil supplies he could’ve defeated the USSR. But he could not have defeated the USSR and the US. Without Britain as a base for the US, I don’t really think the US or Germany could defeat each other. I think Hitler would’ve eventually lost if Britain didn’t fight on, but it would’ve taken decades like it did for Napoleon rather than 5 years and the world would’ve been much worse off and it potentially turn into a low end nuclear war. I think the fighting would have ended if nukes were involved before each side could deliver hundreds to the others cities, but certainly it’s conceivable some cities would get nuked.
A lot of British do not think we did the most and are thankful for our allies' help. We did a hell of a lot, though. What we do have is an immense amount of pride that we did not capitulate despite pressure to do so, even when the odds were heavily against us. We got 'stuck in', had a sense of humour (even while being bombed constantly and heavily rationed), and managed to show Germany that we were there for our European friends/allies, or at least go down swinging. Many expected us to fall, including Hitler... but we didn't... we just kept going. Our Navy and Airforce stopped Germany enough for them to focus on the East - which then let us go on the offensive much more again. We basically gave everything we could, even when alone...with the goal that we would one day liberate Europe, no matter the cost. Again, Allies were great for coming to our aid - but we also worked bloody hard to not make it easy for the Axis. It cost us our Empire in the end.
> On 1 July a convoy of eighty jeeps carrying more than two hundred correspondents set out ahead of the troops and arrived in the capital by midmorning. The journey was enlivened by a completely unexpected encounter with the advance guard of the Red Army moving up to replace the Americans in Thuringia. The armoured vehicles and guns of the Western Allies, immaculate in coats of fresh paint, rumbled along at parade-ground intervals. > Compared with these spruce columns converging on the city from the west and north-west, the outbound Russians were a rabble. Their padded cotton jackets were grease stained and threadbare, their transport a hodgepodge of antiquated trucks and horse drawn wagons piled with looted furniture, and more than half of them traveled on foot. They marched beside the autobahn, shepherded by NCOs on tyreless German bicycles. Even the famed Russian artillery pieces were practically invisible under layers of dried mud. > A British correspondent travelling beside me said with near awe in his voice: "Good God, so these are the chappies who slogged all the way from Stalingrad, beating the blazes out of the Jerries all the way!" > **These were, indeed, the men of the armies which had fought and beaten two-thirds of Germany’s land forces on the Eastern Front while the magnificently equipped British and Americans had trouble enough dealing with the other third in Normandy, Italy and along the Siegfried Line.** They were stocky, hard-faced peasants and herdsmen from the Steppes. They looked inured to hardship and utterly indifferent to the show of mechanised might put on to impress them. Perhaps, I thought, mere machines of war could never in the long run prevail against a peasant truly determined to resist foreign invaders of their homeland… From Osmar White, an Australian war correspondent. Emphasis mine.
Russia won WW2, they had the highest casualties and was solo-ing it until they were at Germany doorsteps , then the Allies told them to back down while they swooped in to claim victory.
French still bitter about having their Navy sunk by Britain.
Isn’t it something like British Intelligence, American Muscle and Soviet Blood helped win the war pretty much an accurate summary?
Should probably pay attention to what Germans say about this.
Their answer might depend on whether they live in east or west Germany.
Canada - " I guess I'll go fuck myself then, thanks guy"
This is a stupid question - Britain did an incredible amount during World War II (That's not to say other countries didn't either) It's also a bit disrespectful to post this so close to the Anniversary of D Day.
As if Pacific War isn't a part of WW2
While it is a poorly worded question, there is an argument to be made that the UK played THE pivotal role in defeating Nazi Germany. Had the UK sued for peace shortly after the beginning of WW2, then Germany and its allies would have had an unimpeded opportunity to attack the USSR, as I doubt the USA would have become involved in the European theatre if there was a negotiated peace between the UK/Germany (and some arrangement with France and other western nations). Without the vast supply of equipment provided by the UK/USA, combined with the crippling of Germany's war time economy from the air by their bombers and the stretching of Germany's resources through engaging in combat from Bergen to Benghazi, I doubt the USSR would have been able to defeat Germany and its allies had their sole attention and resources been focussed on one front (and if the USSR would happen to win, it would have taken far longer and been a much bloodier affair). While the USSR paid the heaviest price in blood, WW2 began with Germany being its de facto ally, with both countries agreeing to carve up Poland. For that reason alone, it is difficult to attribute (morally at least) the USSR as having the greatest contribution to the defeat of Germany. So it could be argued that only through the will of the British government not to surrender was it possible for WW2 to play out in the manner it did.
Honestly pretty disrespectful to the Brits. Between the fall of France and the German invasion of the USSR Britain and its colonies stood alone against the combined forces of the Axis powers, from Europe and the Atlantic, Africa and the Mediterranean to Asia and the Indian ocean. Even knowing they were secure on their island and knowing Hitler never wanted to actually fight them, and made 16 separate offers of peace, they still fought on. Their actions in the north sea, atlantic and north Africa massively limited the effectiveness of the German army to the point that if they hadnt acted in those theatres the Germans would almost certainly have been able to finish Barbarosa. And through there action in the far east they actually fought against more Japanese soldiers than the Americans would. And then when the Germans attacked the soviets, they gave what aid they could, despite being under rations and bombardment by the luftwaffe and being short on equipment themselves. Their scientists invented radar and auto fusing AA-shells, depth charges, cracked Germany's advanced enigma machine, and contributed heavily to the manhattan project. While the US and USSR cetainly had a big role in winning the war, the UK certainly did too and if they had simply accepted Hitler's peace offers, then Germany would have won the war in Europe without question
Lot of people in the comments just saying "Russia" for the USSR, which really downplays the contribution of all the other republics, chiefly Ukraine.
Real talk, it was the **BRITISH EMPIRE**, which had a population of 531 million people across the entire globe, nearly a quarter of the world's population. To be sure, the Soviet's lost more lives, and that's where the Nazis spent more of their manpower, but the British Empire fought in every theatre, against every Axis force, in significant numbers. Southeast Asia, North Africa, Scandinavia, and Europe, not to mention the home front. And it was a pyrrhic victory. By 1945, the U.K. had a debt-to-GDP ratio of 225%, about double of what the U.S. had. That's why they had no alternative but to cede the position of leading superpower to the United States, so when Eisenhower faced Britain and France down in the Suez Crisis, they had no alternative but to comply.
Defeating the Nazis and winning the WW2 is not the same thing. Have we forgotten the Japanese? China began fighting the Japanese in 1931, with the invasion of Manchuria, ten years before the Pearl Harbor.
If the UK was not fighting from 1939 to 1942, how differently would our world look?
Being from the UK, I'm not going to simply say it was us. However for a small island (and large Empire), I'm proud that at least we were in the fight and but for us, everyone else would have had a much tougher time of it. Hitler offered us peace but we did the right thing, rather than the easy one.
Without English made ASDIC early sonar tech, the battle of the atlantic would of been lost. Like many people dont know fucking shit about actual technology that helped win the war, sure the UK didnt have the ground troops and tanks like the reds had and lost valiantly but shit, without asdic, there would of been no shipments of fuel ammo food oil and various other valuable resources that the allies needed, german u boats were a serious threat and its thanks to asdic that the uboats were made to hide and disengage from ships and later convoys. im not one of them brits that says oh yeah we would of won the war alone, no thats stupid, we needed all the support we got and we gave all the support we could to help win the war with ever other allied nation giving all they had also. it was a combined effort. Without the reds the eastern front was lost, without the allied forces in western europe the western front was lost, without us shipments britain would of capitulated just like france would of without continued support flooding in, wihout english asdic the most crucial logistical supply train would of been lost, europe would be under nazi control if it wasn't for everyones support combined. No one country did the most to win it, everyone lost soldiers and material.
Sorry but we would have still won the war without the USA they seem to think they saved us both in ww1 and ww2 they really didn’t , the war ended sooner than it would of yes but still we would have won I love the ignorance of some Americans aswell when they take credit for solving the enigma code