Nazaire was inconsequential. In any case I ask for a major land battle on the European continent. I will grant the the British navy occasionally showed up and did fight now and then. Their Air Force was good and performed well throughout the war. The British army, not so much. So what pivotal land battle in Europe did the Brits win? And not Brits under us command or mixed in with the Allies. Patton’s actions shortened the war. Where did the British engage and destroy the enemy such that it shortened the war in Europe? (Or any theater for that matter)
Oops my apologies it seems I repeat myself.
We are going to have to agree to disagree agree. I am way, way to tired to get into the weeds and breakdown every campaign. Big picture is the Brits needed the Yanks, where as the Yanks could have gone it alone.
I disagree heartily. The U.S. Armed forces may have been able in the very long run to prosecute the war, but did very badly need the British, and their very nicely situated Islands to ensure a Victory for the peoples, and Nations of the Planet. Each Allied Nation needed the other in order to have the manpower, and resources with which to finish the War successfully. Normally, I have no trouble agreeing with Texans, but in this case, No Sale.
From where and how would the US have launched its sole assault on Western Europe if Britain hadn’t fought alone for the first two years of the war and preserved Britain as the launching place for invading Western Europe, as well as preserving the Mediterranean for Allied use? The US would have been struggling to invade a German occupied and fortified Britain, never mind getting into Western Europe. As for the Mediterranean, the Italian and German naval forces there would have been undamaged. Mediterranean entry to and exit from the Suez Canal would have been controlled by the Italians and Germans. In the Atlantic the major German capital ships would have been out and fighting.
Plus the Soviets might have been defeated or more probably neutralised if Britain hadn’t diverted German land, sea and air forces to deal with Britain’s sole fight against Germany 1939-41 and especially from mid-1941and notably the Greek campaign delaying Barbarossa by about six weeks, which became critical as the Germans approached Moscow. Defeating or neutralising the Soviets would have released massive German forces and resources to fortify an occupied Britain and Western Europe against any US invasion launched from the US east coast.
Your belief that the US was and is all-powerful is exactly the same wrong and arrogant attitude that saw the US blunder into and lose or be fought or brought politically to a standstill in every one of its gravely ill-considered major engagements since WWII, starting with Korea and going on to Vietnam, Iraq both times, and Afghanistan.
There is also the fact that American land troops learnt a lot from Britain’s experience, as demonstrated by the American difficulties with green troops in Operation Torch and, for that matter, in New Guinea. The experienced Germans noted after D Day that American troops made a lot of basic mistakes, but they were quick learners and soon became competent troops. The fact remains that trying to invade a heavily fortified west coast of Britain with green troops was unlikely to succeed.
Meanwhile the useless British managed to defeat the communist insurgency in Malaya, all the lessons of which the US chose to ignore in its subsequent blundering big army approach to a guerrilla and at worst brigade size war in Vietnam, and to win in the Falklands.
Before you say that Malaya and the Falklands were small wars, yes, they were. But, unlike the Americans, since WWII and apart from the Suez fiasco the British have generally had the good sense not to initiate bigger and unnecessary wars they knew they couldn’t win.
If Britain had been defeated by Germany at any time before mid-1941, the British wouldn’t have been supporting the US and Dutch oil embargo on Japan. Japan would have taken Burma, Malaya, Singapore and perhaps even India in the same way it took French Indo-China in September 1940 as a consequence of the French surrender to Germany, giving Japan control of Burmese oil and Malayan tin and rubber, which would have relieved some of the pressures which impelled Japan to war as a result of the American, Dutch and British oil embargo. Whether there would have been a Dutch embargo is debatable as the Dutch embargo was possible only because the Dutch government in exile was in Britain from May 1940. If Britain was defeated by mid-1941 when the combined oil embargoes were imposed, and unless the Dutch government in exile was able to move elsewhere, there would not have been any Dutch support for the oil embargo. Nor would there have been any prospect of successful resistance by the Dutch in the oil rich Netherlands East Indies to any Japanese invasion, especially given that the Japanese managed in the real war to roll up the NEI very easily after conquering Malaya and the Philippines. Once Japan had the NEI, it had all the oil it needed, and indeed a good surplus to sell elsewhere.
In these circumstances Japan had no need to attack the Philippines or Hawaii, which makes it most unlikely that the staunchly isolationist America would have been sufficiently outraged to go to war with Japan.
It is much more probable that, without Britain holding out on its own for the first two years of the war, the only way that America as the sole remaining capitalist democracy would go it alone would be by reaching commercial trading agreements with Germany and Japan to America’s commercial advantage.
Any reasonably well-informed analysis demonstrates that America couldn’t, and wouldn’t, have been able to go it alone without Britain fighting alone for the first two years of the war.
Agreed RS*. The U.S. did not have the standing Forces, either in men, or Materiel at the outset of the War, Roosevelt knew it, as did most everyone else. The clever institution of Lend/Lease allowed the U.S. to become ready to arm itself which in the late 30’s it had no capability of doing at the levels of production such a War would require. Were it not for the European, Scandinavian, and Asian Nations bleeding themselves white, to give the U.S. time to wrap it’s head around going to War, the entire conflict would have played out very differently. The Allies would still have prevailed in the end, but it would have been a far costlier enterprise for the Free Nations. Roosevelt didn’t have an Amazon Prime membership so he could order up 5,000 Warships, 50,000 Tanks, and uncountable Warplanes to be delivered free of charge in 2 days. Just getting the first crate of G.I. Drawers to Theater would stagger the imagination.
Who checked 1917 movie?
Yes I did. Maybe because I didn’t see it in a theater I thought it a bit cartoonish and action-video-game-like which detracted away from any story…