Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Lex Fridman"
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British guns were excellent.
In 1941 the British were concurrently fighting in all theatres of war, in all corners of the globe and against better prepared forces of greater numbers. Germany’s war was regional, extending from their borders - all logistics went directly over land back to Germany, apart from North Africa where the Italians provided the sea transport back to nearby Italy. Italy and Vichy France too. Japan’s war was confined to a radius around Japan. Taking on all these countries and securing wins for the free World was pure brilliance.
As well as achieving the first three victories against the ‘unstoppable’ German military war machine, Britain achieved that which no other nation in the world could even possibly dream of accomplishing in the early 1940s.
Britain fought a global war in the:
♦ Middle East;
♦ Far East;
♦ Indian subcontinent;
♦ Pacific;
♦ North Africa;
♦ West Africa;
♦ East Africa;
♦ North Atlantic;
♦ South Atlantic;
♦ North Sea;
♦ Barents Sea;
♦ Arctic Sea;
♦ Mediterranean;
♦ Adriatic;
♦ Mainland Western Europe;
♦ Eastern Europe;
♦ Scandinavia.
The British were the only military power in human history to fight in such globally spread theatres of conflict.
For the third year running, Britain was propping up an ally - France 1940, USSR 1941, then the USA in 1942. The incompetence of the US Navy to provide convoy protection on its east coast almost lost the allies the Battle of the Atlantic. Six hundred ships off the US eastern seaboard were lost in the first six months of 1942. Shipping losses climbed to a level that undermined British ability to supply themselves, keep the Soviets in the war, and keep reinforcements flowing to the Middle East and Asia. The British quickly deployed 60 escort vessels to cover the US coast.
In 1942 the USA was a liability. For most of 1942 the British Commonwealth held the line, kept back the combined efforts of Germany, Italy and Japan, with minimal input from the USA compared to her potential power, keeping the Atlantic and Indian oceans open with supplies flowing to the vital armies in the Middle East and Asia, and to the USSR. No other empire in the history of the world has been capable of such a sustained multi-continent and multi-ocean operation.
In 1942 the British Commonwealth was fighting a three continent, four ocean campaign, against three major powers and keeping the USSR supplied. The thousands of tanks and aircraft sent to the USSR would have saved Singapore.
The total British losses of territory and people in the early war were:
♦ One third of the territory the Soviets lost;
♦ Half of the people the Americans lost - mainly Philippines;
Yet those nations were fighting only on one front and only against one of the three powers.
The British Commonwealth had far more ground troops in action against the Japanese than the Americans. Also the British were maintaining sea control over the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. And then provided aircraft carriers and cruisers to help in the Pacific - while the USA concentrated mainly on just one of those theatres.
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Prof Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction.
Page 380
because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan [to attack France] was a one-shot affair. If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome.
Tooze, page 373:
In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms.
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You never listened. James gave the amount of planes the British built. Also the British had the most advanced planes. From the war came innumerable British inventions: the cavity magnetron, the computer, and the world’s most advanced jet engines, developing the A-bomb (MAUD Committee) as well as the Liberty ship (a British Sunderland yard design and initiative), to name but a few. Huge developments in engineering, with a staggering 132,500 aircraft and over a million military vehicles from Britain alone.
From the moment the first US soldier arrived in Britain until VE Day, the British provided the USA with 31% of all their supplies in the ETO - 70% in 1942. The British were producing so much they even provided arms to the USSR at the vital time. At the vital Battle of Moscow that stopped the Germans, 40% of all tanks were supplied by the British. The British supplied 5,000 tanks, 7,000 aircraft 5,000 trucks, 5,000 anti-tank guns to the USSR. The US delivered a lot more, but British deliveries were important in the vital early period 1941-mid 1942.
Britain in 1941 was producing more of most things than Germany or the US. In 1941 the British produced 20,000 aircraft more than the US, 19,000, approaching double Germany's 12,000 and would be producing more until 1944. Over the whole war, US 300,000+ planes, British 132,500, German 120,000. The US just kept stepping up as the years went putting to work its idle depression hit industry supplying its rapidly expanding forces, which in 1941 was only 80% active.
In 1941 the British produced 4,800 tanks v Germans 2,400, and 4,000 US. In 1942, 8,600 British tanks, 3,600 German, and 25,000 US. During the whole War Germany produced roughly 350,000 trucks to Britain's 460,000 and 815,000 Canadian.
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James explained very well why it failed.
Wages of Destruction, Prof Adam Tooze page 380.
In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster.
...If the Blitzkrieg's belt broke the whole movement stopped. The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success was French incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised production of 50,000 aircraft per year in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would in the RAF. Britain was producing more planes than Germany in 1941. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. That is US and UK production. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots of which looked like just UK pilots, they were coming Germany's way.
And the only way Britain and Germany could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon. The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these aircraft would be starting to come into service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
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The Germans never had the resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
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