Returning to this forum in a slightly different guise after some computer / cyber problems, might I say:
Some of you blokes need a reality check.
Don’t confuse how the war played out in the middle and how it ended up with how it started out. The USA and USSR didn’t start the war opposing the Nazis in any military sense. Their positions helped the Nazis toward victory. After all, they were both trading enthusiastically with the Nazis. As would have elements in Britain who thought that Hitler was the best thing before sliced bread was invented.
The USSR’s biggest contribution to the possibility of an Axis win was its pact with Germany which kept it out of the war for the first couple of years. This enabled Germany to run rampant in the west, south, north, and in the air and on the oceans further afield.
America’s biggest contribution to the possibility of an Axis win was keeping out of the war until it was forced in by Japan’s attack, which really dragged it into an entirely different war and which was the main focus of the American public, and some of the American military leadership such as Admiral King, if not Roosevelt and others who saw America‘s interests served best by victory in Europe in accordance with pre-war strategic evaluations. America, as usual arriving quite late in a world war which to that point had been fought largely by the British Empire, allowed Germany to run rampant etc etc
The British Empire never contributed to an Axis win, except for the pre-war appeasement represented by Chamberlain & Co. The Empire’s biggest contribution to an Allied win was fighting Germany, Italy, and the Vichy French alone for the first couple of years of the war. Nobody else did this. The Empire (primarily Britain with more or less proportionate help from the Canadian and Australian dominions but also great contributions from India and, especially for its size, Nepal and lesser contributions from places like South Africa) , for all its many faults, was the only Ally to be in action from the beginning to the end of the war. Unlike America, it could have avoided the war but went into it on a measure of principle (and the usual national self-interest) rather than being dragged into it by an attack as was America and many European nations.
I recognise that the titanic battles fought in the USSR after mid-1941 and the great contribution of America to the invasion of Europe through Italy and Normandy were greater than the British contribution in the later parts of the land war, but the USSR and America did nothing of any military significance (except in USSR’s case releasing German troops from the eastern front) while Britain fought on alone from 1939 to 1941.
Moreover, Britain alone was fighting Germany and Italy on the land, on the sea, and in the air. I do not ignore the wars in the Balkans etc, but they were not on the same scale nor over the same time. For example, while Greece put up a great fight against the Italians who, as usual, had to be rescued from their over-ambition and profound military incompetence by the Germans, Greece was not fighting a crucial naval war in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, and to a lesser extent in all other oceans as was Britain, nor engaged on land way beyond its borders as was Britain in Norht Africa. Or Greece.
I agree with Bravo 32 that this is a silly topic. It makes about as much sense as arguing which member of a sports team of 11 or 15 or 18 or whatever made the greatest contribution to the winning wicket or goal.
But if anyone wants to debate it, the debate has to be built on the foundations that the British Empire laid while fighting Germany on its own while the other major powers not already defeated by Germany, being the USA and USSR, did little or nothing to assist.
Sure, Lend-Lease was increasingly helpful to Britain as were the increasingly aggressive American Coast Guard / USN actions before America joined the war, but the simple fact is that the British Empire troops fighting the Germans in various raids on the European continent; in North Africa; and the Balkans were not significantly supplied by Lend-Lease nor assisted at all by American or USSR forces but fought with their own resources. If British Imperial forces hadn’t been doing that since 1939, while the rest of Europe caved in and the rest of the world sat on the sidelines, we probably would not have the luxury of being able to debate these issues freely nowadays as we do in this forum.
For those who proclaim the contribution of the USSR (after Stalin finally grasped that the nasty Nazis were actually breaching the non-aggression pact) was the major contribution to Allied victory in WWII, what would have happened if Britain had emulated the USSR’s position and made a non-aggression pact with Germany in late 1939 or early 1940 and released all German forces to attack the USSR? Where would Hitler have struck? Not London!
Personally, and from an Australian point of view where Churchill was quite happy to sacrifice Australia and its forces for Britain’s benefit (as would any national leader do for his own nation), I don’t much care for many aspects of Britain’s selfish and arrogant attitude to and use of Australian forces for its own benefit in WWII. I say this only to demonstrate that I’m not some Anglophile who thinks Britain and it Empire were the best. They wern’t, from my perspective. They were, from the perspective of Churchill and his coterie. But if Britain, with its imperial forces, hadn’t stood alone and staunch for the first couple of years of the war while most other nations crumbled or did deals with Hitler, no other nation would have been able to make a contribution which defeated Hitler.
Using a simple house-building analogy, Britain provided the foundation for the defeat of the Axis powers, regardless of the contribution of other tradesmen who arrived on the site later to complete the structure.
