Hi Selectric II; No, convoying is what got the materiel across the Atlantic. Intelligence is useful for reducing losses, but intelligence is a second order effect, (and probably below a bunch of other second order effects such as officer training).
It makes for a wonderful PBS TV special to accent the contributions of the intelligence agencies, but the basic fact is that the U.S. alone produced weapons to easily defeat the Axis powers:
"The greatest contribution the United States could make to the Allied cause was to put to military use its vast industrial plant. One year after Pearl Harbor the American production of armaments equaled that of Germany, Italy, and Japan put together, and by 1944 it was double that. The consumption of men and machines in World War II was enormous. For example, during world War II the Soviet Union received from the U.S. over 400,000 trucks, 12,000 tanks, 14,000 planes, and an large quantity of other goods, totaling 17.5 million tons. The Soviets themselves built approximately 100,000 tanks, 100,000 aircraft, and 175,000 artillery pieces during war. About two thirds of this material was destroyed in the fighting and 20 million Russians died. At first it looked as if the Germans, with their blitzkrieg that could rapidly penetrate an enemy's front by a large force of tanks, closely assisted by ground-attack aircraft and followed by motorized infantry and artillery, had found a way around the terrible slaughter of trench warfare. Once through the front line, the tanks would push on at high speed to the enemy's higher command posts and vital communications centers deep in the rear and spread chaos behind the front, which would then collapse almost of its own accord when the troops holding it found themselves cut off from their own headquarters and supplies."
jmu.edu
For that matter, it makes for a wonderful story to suggest that if the U.S. hadn't won at Midway we'd all be speaking Japanese now, but it just was never the case. It is human nature to magnify the power of our defeated enemies. By doing so, it makes us feel that our victory was more significant. The fact of the matter is that it is well known that the (Japanese) architect of the attack at Pearl Harbor predicted that the United States would be humbled for only 6 months.
By contrast, it makes for a boring story to say that the war was won the moment that the U.S. entered, but that is exactly the way it was. The Allies damn well knew that they were in for a long hard war, but they damn well knew that they were going to win. Here's Churchill's words:
Churchill wrote: "To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!...Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."
ibiscom.com
Here's what Yamamoto said after Pearl Harbor, (and he was on the attacking side!): "I fear all we have done is waken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
The guys in power knew that the United States had sufficient production to win the war regardless of what happened to any other participant. The war was over on December 7, 1941, but the killing was not.
In case I haven't repeated this enough, no, enigma did not save the Allies in the Atlantic. Nor did our translation of the Japanese codes save the Allies in the Pacific. What those things did was save the lives of some of our soldiers. The war would have been won even without that.
Even if Hitler had refrained from attacking Russia we had more than enough production to win.
Even if Stalin had come in on the side of Hitler and Tojo we would have won, though we might have ended up fighting into the 50s, and ended up using H-Bombs instead of A-Bombs on them. The fact is that even by late 1945 we were capable of making 100s of Atomic Bombs per year. That would have ended the war in our favor regardless of who was on the other side. And even if nuclear weapons wouldn't have worked we were still able to produce enough materiel to defeat them.
WW2 was not close. It was a walk-over for the Allies. That's why Churchill said what he did after Pearl Harbor. Anyone who has played war simulations where the actual production of the nations involved is proportional to the historic numbers knows this. Production beats intelligence. Here's the aircraft production, by year, of the main belligerents:
Country 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
UK 7940 15049 20094 23672 26263 26461 12070
US 2141 6086 19433 47836 85898 96318 46001
USSR 10382 10565 15735 25436 34900 40300 20900
Germany 8295 10826 12401 15409 24807 40593 7540
Japan 4467 4768 5088 8861 16693 28180 8263
From the above you can see that from 1941 onwards, UK + US production of aircraft was larger than the total production of USSR, Germany and Japan. The U.S. figures were pre war! After that time the numbers exploded for the Allies. Even if Russia had come in on the side of Hitler they would have eventually been defeated by the US/UK juggernaut. Production of other armaments were (more or less) similar.
For total steel production see this:
nber.org
-- Carl
P.S. No relation to any other poster, as far as I know. |
