The invasion of the 6-inch-tall nobodies. The trouble with our Liberal Socialist Communists is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

Note to the protesters in Great Britain since they haven’t been enlightened with their history or are these Soros’ paid protesters?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians

“If it wasn’t for the U.S., you’d all be speaking German”. Is there any truth to that statement? How is U.S. involvement in the European arena of WW2 taught in the U.S.?

Submitted 2 years ago by Ampersand55
There seem to be a large discrepancy between what I was taught in school and how it is generally portrayed in Internet discussions and U.S. based media.

For reference, I was taught (9th grade, Sweden) that the U.S. involvement was mainly supplying Allied troops through lending/leasing of fuel and materiel and supplying troops to the Normandy landings, which was just the coup de grâce of an all but defeated Germany.

Submitted 2 years ago by Ampersand55

There seem to be a large discrepancy between what I was taught in school and how it is generally portrayed in Internet discussions and U.S. based media.

For reference, I was taught (9th grade, Sweden) that the U.S. involvement was mainly supplying Allied troops through lending/leasing of fuel and materiel and supplying troops to the Normandy landings, which was just the coup de grâce of an all but defeated Germany.

[–]Jan_van_Bergen 491 points 2 years ago*

So there are a few questions here rolled into one.

The importance of the United States to the Allied war effort was absolutely immense, bordering on “absolute necessity” territory. There is a general consensus among military historians that the US’s ability to produce war materiel alone tipped the battle in favor of the Allies. Simply put, the US was able to produce war materiel (everything from bullets to trucks to tanks to airplanes to ships to ball-bearings to boots) faster than the Germans (or the Japanese, for that matter) could destroy it or sink it, giving the Allies, by the time of the Normandy invasion, overwhelming superiority of arms on land, at sea, and in the air. And Allied leaders knew this at the time and its importance for the allied war effort.

As Winston Churchill noted already in June 1940 (less than a month after the German invasion of Western Europe), winning the war against the Nazis was merely a matter of waiting it out until the Americans stepped in: “We shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island [i.e. Great Britain] or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World [i.e. the United States], with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

(“We shall fight on the beaches” speech). And Stalin famously stated in 1943 at the Tehran conference that “Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war.” Note that this statement was made a full 18 months before the German surrender, so that tells you the confidence Stalin had in the Allied superiority of arms.

So to an extent, one could argue, as you did, that:
the U.S. involvement was mainly supplying Allied troops through lending/leasing of fuel and materiel and supplying troops to the Normandy landings

But doing so would be a moderately unfair characterization of the importance of that effort to winning the war. It is not an overstatement to say that the war went from a probable Allied victory in November 1941 to a there-is-no-doubt-about-it Allied victory on Dec. 8, 1941. There was simply no likely military scenario in which the Germans would have been able to defeat an Allied coalition that included the United States.

The biggest problem with the basic outline that I’ve described above regards the roll of the Soviet Union, which is, basically, absent. This is also the major source of misunderstanding as regards how Americans are taught about the war – the role of the Soviet Union is not emphasized to the extent it probably should be. There is absolutely no doubt that the Soviet Union did the vast majority of the fighting (and dying) in support of the Allied war effort. More Allied soldiers died at the Battle of Stalingrad than did on the American side during the entire war (including the Pacific theatre).

If American war materiel was decisive in winning the war, then Soviet blood must also be given equal billing. But even without American aid, the longer the war against the Soviet Union went on, the more and more likely it became that the Germans would lose. While benefiting from American aid greatly, and not really measuring up favorably against its American counterpart, Soviet industry had already begun to rebound by 1943/44 and would have quickly reached a point where it could produce war materiel faster than the Germans could destroy it. Even without American aid, an ultimate Soviet victory was, I would argue, inevitable – a matter of when, not if. The real question is whether Stalin, who was notoriously paranoid, could have held out long enough without any outside aid – that’s a question for someone who knows more about Soviet history than I do.

In American classrooms, students are not, generally speaking, introduced to this level of depth regarding the military history of the Second World War until they reach undergraduate level. This isn’t necessarily a result of anything nefarious or overly nationalistic, so much as a result of having to cram a lot of material into very little teaching time, as history is rarely given the importance in classrooms that the folks on this sub might think appropriate.

American high school students are going to learn about the ‘-isms” (i.e. Communism, Socialism, Fascism, National Socialism, Anarchism, Trade Unionism, Syndicalism, etc.) that became so popular in the 20s, then the rise of dictatorships in Europe, the Great Depression, the New Deal and the Fifth Party System, World War II in Europe and the Pacific, the Holocaust, and the beginnings of the Cold War in a period of just a couple of weeks. That means if a student gets an hour of history instruction a day, over three weeks, that’s 30 hours to lecture, assign and discuss homework, test, review, etc. It just leaves for a very cramped historical narrative in which the teacher has to pick and choose what is most important to cover in limited time, and more often than not, they still fall behind. Under these circumstances, its not terribly surprising that the importance of the Soviet Union to the war effort, the very same Soviet Union who would become the enemy only a few years later, went under-emphasized.

[–]_TheConsumer_
I find it troubling that the extent of American involvement has been reduced to “materiel supplier.”
The United States had more casualties than England, Italy and France. The US had 410k losses, compared to 383k (England), 210k (France) and 319k (Italy). Those other countries were embroiled in the war for far longer than the US. So, the US suffered more losses in a shorter period of time.

Yes – American production absolutely carried the day. It was unprecedented and a true marvel. While the Axis powers struggled to create and float a single modern fleet, the US floated multiple fleets and created the equivalent of one complete navy every year. Similar statements can be made about the tanks, artillery and aircraft.
The production was astounding and should be spoken of with wide-eyed amazement. However, the US also paid for its victories with blood. Those sacrifices should never be overlooked.

I think that you could make a similar case for the UK and USSR.
Had the UK not played it’s part early on, gave the Luftwaffe a bloody nose and kept the candle of resistance burning and then kept it going throughout the war then we could well be speaking German.
Had the Soviet Union not destroyed the massive bulk of the German Army then similarly……
All the Allies played their part – Australia, Canada (massive contributions from Canada in men, materiel and training), New Zealand, India (massive numbers of men and materiel), the West Indies, British East and West Africa, South Africa, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, Norway….. Each played their own part in their own way.

Yes, the US contributed massively, they were the richest country in the world, had an industrial base far from the war and a massive population ready to build build build.
Tizard has been mentioned – but it was the UK that gave it’s hi-tech secrets to the US (not the other way round), Lend-Lease has been mentioned (but it was not free, the UK gave away bases/land and paid up for everything eventually), but the Uk also gave to the USSR before the US started it’s convoys to Russia. The UK sent fighters, bombers, trucks, tanks at a time when the UK needed them badly, but saw that the USSR needed them more to keep fighting.

kommonsentsjane

KO