By Oliver Green
Prior to Germany and Italy’s declaration of war on the United States on 11th December 1941, Churchill was having to continually lobby Roosevelt for material aid and only got Roosevelt to agree to send Britain 50 Destroyers in return for handing eight of Britain’s overseas bases to America, coupled with the dismantling of our preferential trading system with the Empire, making it uneconomical. That said however, it was not in America’s interest to allow Britain to fall, because to do so would have left her entirely isolated with no realistic prospect of staging any sort of successful landings in North Africa or Europe and the overwhelming industrial might of the United States could not have been brought to bear. We should then assume that the Soviets would not have been able to triumph on their own without the tying up of Axis forces in the west, or of British intelligence given to the Russians, or of the material aid via the British arctic conveys into Archangel and Murmansk, as well as the American supplies of Lend Lease delivered via the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok and later on via the Iranian port and Railway constructed by the Americans from Abadan into Southern Russia, then the Russians would also have been hard pressed. This could then have granted the Axis Powers the ample time, space and resources necessary to sustain a long war and fight to a standstill, and isolate America.
Prior to Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States in December 1941, Roosevelt drove a hard bargain with Churchill for delivering aid because he had to politically, having to cope with a very divided and isolationist American public prior to Pearl Harbour. In addition, I would say that Churchill allowed him to get away with it to a certain extent, as Politics and Military matters were his primary skills and talents, and so he failed to call Roosevelt’s bluff. Whereas, the Soviet Union by far contributed the most in blood and treasure to the defeat of Nazi Germany, absorbing the vast bulk of its fighting power on land, accounting for 75% of the Wehrmacht’s casualties throughout the war, and at a cost of no less than 20 million Soviet casualties. However, the Soviets wouldn’t have been any more capable of defeating Nazi Germany single handily, without the immense Anglo-American logistical and strategic support. Furthermore, quality intelligence proved immensely instrumental in the Soviet victory at the battle of Kursk in July 1943, when the Red Army consequently received prior knowledge of the exact time and placings of the German counter offensive, and so successfully repelled an attack which involved two thirds of the Wehrmacht’s entire armoured forces, and left the German army on the defensive for the rest of the war on the Eastern Front.
In addition, were it not for the campaign and presence of the British Eighth Army in North Africa from 1940-42, Hitler would have gained access to the oilfields of the middle-east once Britain had capitulated, along with free reign of the Mediterranean and Suez Canal, this would have enabled Germany to be self-sufficient in petroleum instead of having to resort to its stocks of synthetic oil, granting it the lifeline to sustain a long war, coupled with the fact that they would then have been able to outflank the Russians by sending Rommel’s now unhindered desert rats through Egypt and up through Persia and Turkey to seize control of the Caucasus Oil fields in southern Russia. This would then have enabled Rommel to move north and do a link up, cutting off Soviet Forces from their lifeline whilst greatly adding to their own. Also, Stalin was practically screaming at Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front, and the successful landings in North Africa, Italy and France succeeded in dividing, tying down and diverting a crucial weight of Axis forces away from Stalin, granting him the relief, time and space that he needed.
The Soviets also greatly benefited from the $11 Billion of Lend Lease which the Americans provided them with, that included 500,000 Studebaker trucks from Detroit that enabled them to move their artillery around effectively, 450,000 radios that they relied upon for their communications, 991,000,000 rounds of ammunition, 3 million gallons of fuel, and thousands of aircraft and other vehicles. The combined allied effort also ensured that we far exceeded the Axis powers in their output of Tanks and most significantly Aircraft throughout the war. Firstly as an example, German Tank production in 1944 totaled 17,800, while American, British and Russian production combined totaled 51,500. But most significant was global aircraft production throughout the war, which proved essential as nothing could be achieved on the ground without first gaining supremacy of the air. From 1939 to 1945 the total and combined aircraft production of Germany, Japan and Italy reached 207,004. However, the total and combined aircraft production of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and her Commonwealth over the same period was more than triple, reaching 635,142.
Consequently, we can now see that from the commencement of Operation Barbarossa on 22nd June 1941, the Axis powers were engaged in a war of escalation that they could not possibly win, not logistically, materially or strategically, especially given the vast territorial depth and population of the Soviet Union, coupled with the overwhelming might of America’s industrial and financial capacity, all of which dwarfed those of Germany and its Axis satellites of Italy, Romania and Hungary combined. Furthermore, by contrast there was not the cooperation, trust or coordination between the Axis powers as there was with the combined industrial output, mobilisation and intelligence of the Allied powers from late 1941 onward. To sum up then, neither America, Britain nor the Soviet Union would have been in any position or had the means to defeat the Axis powers on their own. We all needed to cooperate with each other and act in concert to rise to the challenge!
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