World War II - Richard Sale

The War with Japan

    It should be remembered that while the popular view is that Japan‘s government prior to 1941 was a formidable totalitarian monolith, in fact, it was anything but. Japan’s civil government ended in 1931 and what remained was a clamorous, quarrelsome amalgamation of cliques and factions, the latter ridden with additional subgroups, the most radical of which was the Japanese Army. Supposedly abjectly subservient to the Emperor, in fact these groups disobeyed the Emperor when they didn’t ignore him.

     The different cliques were so bloodthirsty, indocile and unruly, that the result was basically government by assassination. Army groups who disliked policies murdered prime ministers as casually as tearing up a ticket, with no compunction at all. 

    It should also be remembered that the two most important strategic groups in Japan differed widely on what course of action Japan should take in the event of a World War. One group, “Strike North,” wanted to attack the Soviet Union in revenge for the 1939 clash along the Manchurian border in which Japanese casualties reached 50,000 (18,000 dead). The other group “Strike South” wanted to gain oil resources by attacking the Dutch East Indies.

     Had Japan attacked Russia in concert with Germany, today’s world would look a great deal different. In any case, the “Strike-South” group prevailed, thus freeing up incredible numbers of Soviet divisions that were switched west to confront Hitler. Those same divisions would come back to attack Tokyo in 1945 and hastened its defeat.

        In any case, Japan’s moves on Indochina and then the attack at Pearl Harbor meant that Toyko’s advances  threatened US policy, which was to deal with Hitler first, to aid Britain in the Battle of the North Atlantic (intelligent for a number of reasons B for one, British survival was crucial because it was an unsinkable base), and also because historically the U.S. had always been drawn into any war where fighting became severe in the North Atlantic. In 1940, Roosevelt wanted to be strictly on the defensive in the Pacific. As he said to Ickes, he didn’t have enough Navy to go around.

     Japan’s decision to attack us at Pearl Harbor was based on its realization that it lacked sufficient industrial resources for a long war. It was that simple and that desperate. 

 Administrative Reasons Why We Won 

    In our system, military, political, and civilian leaders play indispensable roles, and it should be noted that Stimson, Marshall, King, as well as Roosevelt proved absolutely essential.  But it is important to remember that Roosevelt picked no war (military) leader from the ranks of his political supporters.

 

Germany 

      One of the chief reasons for Germany’s defeat was its inability to manage its industrial economy effectively. Studying the Nazi economy with any care, leads one to see that all the arguments about the effectiveness of collectivism and the infallibility of centrally directed economics are like a bad gas in the wind. 

Military Notes. 

    Germany was also greatly hampered by the lack of motorized forces. Yes, the Panzer forces were quick, but they were small and self contained. The bulk of the German army, the grunts, used horses to move supplies and troops to the front and back.  That was disastrous. Combined with the inability of the Luftwaffe to supply German forces by air, these defects sealed the doom of the very finest German combat units on the ground in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, for example.

     According to US Army records, and scholors such as Hastings,Keegan, et al,  the German army was the finest in the world, in perhaps all of history. It was never defeated on its own terms. The genius of Marshall and others was to make it fight on our terms, not theirs and it lost.

     Another factor in the Nazi defeat would be the availability of oil. The US was then producing almost 75 percent of the world’s oil, a commodity absolutely indispensable to a mechanized, fast-moving war of ships, tanks and planes. 

Pacific Victory 

    The war in the Pacific was won because of superior resources, amounts of ships, planes, etc, but strategically, the US Navy was able to free itself of bases of supply, carrying its own mobile bases as part of US Task Forces, something which the Japanese never foresaw. Since Tokyo’s forces were spread thin among island chains, it could not see or fortify all possible points of attack.

    Just as the blockade of Germany was the chief agent acting to bring Germany to its knees in World War I, so it was the US submarine blockade of Japan that was the most potent weapon in its defeat, at least before the use of the atomic bomb (we sank 60 percent of ships bringing oil, rubber and the like.) What is shocking is to view how inconsistently, fitfully and erratically this strategic weapon was employed by our Navy leaders. (The greatest number of sub attacks on shipping didn’t occur until 1944.) 

America’s Might 

   Another key US accomplishment was America’s ability to militarize its mass production economy, including using companies like the Ford Motor company which built tanks by prefabricated parts and which used subcontractors to mass produce heavy bombers in just the way he had done cars. This included Henry Kaiser’s genius in discovering a new way to make ships in prefabricated sections, abandoning the old method of building from the keep up. (Americans have a genius for this -- think of the balloon construction houses of the 1830s in Chicago. The British observed that the structures would have blown away except that every section was fastened with a screw so that any strain would go against the grain of the wood.) 

    That we were rich meant everything in World War II.

     The sheer wealth of the US economy was able to pour money like water from a sluice into Russia which kept its armies afloat. This meant that America had the  ability to motorize, not only its own army, but the army of Russia, which was bearing the main burden of the fighting and slaughter. The progress made by the Russians in warfare demands notice – (I am thinking especially of their brilliant defense in depth at Kursk) which forced the Germans to expend their best energy and equipment on attacks that left them vulnerable to counterattack. This was due to the stubborn genius of Zhukov, who made his views prevail over Stalin’s.

    The same thing happened in America  Roosevelt and the political leadership more and more took a back seat to Marshall and Stimson and the like. 

Technology

     Technological innovation provided other absolutely essential reasons for Allied victory. For example, it is astounding to consider that the US and Britain were losing the air war to the Germans until someone came up with the idea of using disposable fuel tanks on fighter escorts. This simple device enabled us to destroy the German Air Force and rendered both the bombing offensive victorious and secured the victory of the D-Day. Germany was doomed.

    (We also have to remember the horrendous mass casualties, economic and social damage we inflicted on Germany’s people by our bombing campaign.) 

Other Factors. 

    The winning of the Battle of the Atlantic was key,along with Hitler’s blunder in not being able to win the war in the Mediterranean.

     Another important point: the failure of the Germans to develop any strategic bombing capability proved catastrophic. Theirs was an air force designed primarily for ground support. The designer of German four-engine heavy bombers died in 1934. and no one took his place. There were no B-17s or B-24s or B- 29s in Germany.

    I noticed comments talking about the speed of war and Roosevelt’s “Germany first” strategy. It pays to go back to the writings of the great British geographer Mackinder, who believed that a country’s power flowed from its place on a map. (Think of Napoleon’s “A country’s geography is its fate.”)

    In the past some powers had exercised power out of all proportion to others because their sea power enabled them to ship forces – arms, men and wealth -- to crisis areas in the “world island” – Europe, Asia, Africa.  In the 20^th century, railroads, motor cars and aircraft had made sea power obsolete in terms of effective speed.  Thus a continental power could use such means to outflank a sea power. It was Alfred Wedemeyer, a graduate of the German Staff College, who convinced FDR and Marshall, that the way to counter Hitler was to create a vast American armored force.  It was this conviction that lay at the basis of Roosevelt’s “Germany First” war plan. 

    Please be patient with my mistakes.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

Great post! Kaiser ships were welded not riveted which also sped up the process!

Stimson and FDR brilliantly conducted military/civil relatiohships as did Marshall!

ULTRA also helped avoid the castarophe of German success in 1940-41!

Now will Wal-Mart be an adequate replacement for Detroit in warfighting?

[Fred]

Mr. Sale,

Excellent overview of the strategy. I am always puzzled that the IJN failed to use their submarine fleet in an anti-merchent ship role given the experiences of the Imperial German Navy in WWI.

[walrus]

Thank you for your summary Mr. Sale, and thank you in particular for mentioning the German Army's reliance on horse powered transport. I was aware of that, but I have not been able to find a reference to it. Perhaps an SST reader can point me to One or Two?

I personally am greatly concerned by both the "Great Man" school of military history that we have already discussed and the as yet undiscussed "linear Theory" school that victory in WWII was always pre ordained once America was involved because we are the best and brightest, most innovative, smartest, etc. etc., you know the drift and please understand that it is not intended as a slur.

The reason I am concerned is that I think beliefs such as those have the capacity to lead us into great error today by causing us to underestimate the difficulties and over estimate our abilities in waging war. Since WWII, events in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (including the USSR's experience) suggest that this may be the case in my opinion.

Personally, I think WWII was won by a combination of luck and economics. In 1938, Germany and Japan were running full fledged war economies and were at the height of their economic powers, or very close to it. The American, Russian, and British economies were in peace mode. Overall, and discounting specific items like German fighter aircraft production, our war materiel production could only go up, theirs could only go down. We overwhelmed them in this regard.

I also have problems with the innovation and learning argument. It is easy to innovate and learn when you have Thirty or Sixty aircraft factories at your disposal. When you have only Four, or Ten, your ability to produce multiple prototypes is exceedingly limited. For example, the reason the Spitfire was still in production at the end of the war was not that the British couldn't see the value of a bigger aircraft with a laminar flow wing (The Mustang), they lacked the capacity to produce them.

Then of course there is the "great man" argument - Churchill, Marshall, Patton, MacArthur, etc. One has to ask the question, what would have happened in Europe if instead of facing a suicidally stupid militarily idiotic supreme commander like Hitler, we instead faced the embodiment of Bismarck and Von Moltke The Elder rolled into one?

What would have happened if Hitler had not persecuted the Jews and invested more time and money in Otto Hahn's work? Would we have been awoken from our slumber some time in 1943 by a German nuclear weapon test?

What would have happened if Japan was content with British and Dutch conquests in South east Asia?

Personally, I believe we still owe a huge debt of gratitude to a few young Polish cryptanalysts and a homosexual English don for Ultra, because a re reading of the unexpurgated version of Alanbrooks diaries reveals how central it was to the planning and execution of the entire European strategy.

My view is that we were very lucky to come out of WWII in the shape we did. I don't believe our success was preordained in that conflict, nor do I believe it would be today if we tried to "take out" Iran or engage in similar lunacy.

[Brien J Miller]

As I taught in several Naval education and military history classes, one way to visualize the Great Pacific War is to think of it this way: The Japanese Army went to war against China while the Imperial Japanese Navy went to war against the United States. Sales points are good.

[zanzibar]

walrus

I don't believe there was anything preordained in our WWII victory. We had some advantages not the least being a large economy, immense financial strength as a creditor nation and the fact that the war was fought away from our shores that prevented our industrial base from being destroyed. Whatever the "linear theory" over time we would have won the game of attrition due to the sheer size and financial strength of our economy.

Today, a WWIII would be very different. With long range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons - everyone would get a black eye and I doubt there would be any victors. Just universal and indiscriminate destruction. What I fear most is the social and political dynamic when we are faced with the downside of a funding crisis on our current financial path.

[dilbert dogbert]

Read somewhere that the German economy was not effectively nationalized until 1944. They were still producing a lot consumer goods up till this point. I think the American economy was effectively nationalized between 42 and 43.
Pearl Harbor was a Hail Mary pass by the Japanese. Yamamoto said that he could run amuck for a year and then it was over.

[walrus]

While contributors to SST don't do it, there are at least Three generations that have grown up with a belief in American omnipotence who are untroubled by the possibility of war.

This has happened to societies before. The French after their victory against Austria in 1859 decided in 1870 to declare war on Prussia for reasons of prestige, and were somewhat surprised when the Prussians wiped the floor with them. The Prussians then suffered their own attack of the "victory disease" in 1914. I have to wonder if Japans experience in the Russo - Japanese and First World wars did not also give it a bout of "Victory disease".

We may not win the next one. I suspect that far too many people automatically assume that we will have continuous air superiority, naval superiority, and now space superiority. I hope our Generals don't fall for this.

[Eric Dönges]

walrus,

In 1938, Germany and Japan were running full fledged war economies and were at the height of their economic powers, or very close to it.

Wrong. The German economy (I don't know about Japan) was not put on a full war footing until 1944, when it was much too late. And the byzantine nature of the Nazi state with its jealous infighting for resources and Hitler's attention made sure that the resources available where not put to optimal use. At the start of WWII, the German army was less motorized than either the British or Russian armies. The French had more and better tanks (well, at least better armed and armored) in 1940, and the British alone would produce more armored vehicles in WWII than Germany ever did. The list goes on and on. The only area where Germany was initially superior was in the air, as the Luftwaffe was the best equipped of its time - but that advantage was quickly lost, as new developments like radar where largely ignored, as Hitler believed in a swift German victory.

What did win Germany early battles was better trained troops and officers using combined arms tactics more effectively.

zanzibar,

I don't believe there was anything preordained in our WWII victory.

Once WWII turned into a war of attrition (i.e. the German failure to quickly knock out the Soviets with Barbarossa, and the Japanese failure to intimidate the Americans with Pearl Harbor), it was clear even to military planers of the time without the benefit of hindsight that Allied victory was only a matter of time. There was no way for the Axis powers to overcome the enormous Allied advantage in manpower and industrial capability (of which a great part, namely that of the U.S., was completely out of reach of Axis attack).

Frankly, I would like to know how the myth of the all-powerful German war machine outlived the Nazi propaganda from which it originated - perhaps embarrassment that it took six years to defeat it ?

[Medicine Man]

A rather interesting article by Andrew Bacevich: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-tyranny-of-defense-inc/8342/1/

A tad off-topic but still interesting nonetheless.

[walrus]

Eric Donge:

"Wrong. The German economy (I don't know about Japan) was not put on a full war footing until 1944, when it was much too late. And the byzantine nature of the Nazi state with its jealous infighting for resources and Hitler's attention made sure that the resources available where not put to optimal use. At the start of WWII, the German army was less motorized than either the British or Russian armies. The French had more and better tanks (well, at least better armed and armored) in 1940, and the British alone would produce more armored vehicles in WWII than Germany ever did. The list goes on and on. "

Thank you for correcting me. My point is still that Germany and Japan had no way to go but down in terms of military materiel production while the Allies production could only go up.

We are in agreement about Germany's stupid misallocation of resources, caused I think I understand, by the competitiveness between Hitlers underlings as a result of his "divide and rule" management style, as well as his own meddling and prejudices.

[Neil Richardson]

Eric:

"The German economy (I don't know about Japan) was not put on a full war footing until 1944, when it was much too late. And the byzantine nature of the Nazi state with its jealous infighting for resources and Hitler's attention made sure that the resources available where not put to optimal use. "

I agree. The Hitler state was anything but a model of efficiency.

"At the start of WWII, the German army was less motorized than either the British or Russian armies. "

This is a bit misleading because it looks at rate of motorization. In terms of absolute combat power, they were sufficiently motorized, i.e. the tip of the spear. This is all one needs to break up the enemy's cohesion and paralyze decisionmaking which is the core tenet of "blitzkrieg."

"The French had more and better tanks (well, at least better armed and armored) in 1940"

I agree but as any tanker would note, without radio communication a "superior" tank such as a Somua or even a KV-1 was just a roving target. The French and Soviet tank commanders had to resort to signal flags which wasn't the safest command activity in combat. In addition their turrets didn't accommodate three men. This meant that their target acquisition and fire rate was significantly slower than German, British and American crews. In fact until late 1943 a typical tank crew in the Red Army had spent *3 hours* in a tank before being assigned to a line unit. To any competent adversary that's just lining up as ducks in a row. The Germans tried the same tactics they'd used in Russia only to find out that they didn't work at all in France (e.g., Arracourt, the Bulge).

"and the British alone would produce more armored vehicles in WWII than Germany ever did. "

That's one of the complaints I had heard from many of the veterans of the Panzerwaffe (and these guys had fought in Tigers as well as Mk III and IV). They believed a focus on PzKpfw Mk.IV and V rather than Tiger and King Tiger would've been better as nearly a third to sometimes half of their tracks were down due to mechanical problems.

"The list goes on and on. The only area where Germany was initially superior was in the air, as the Luftwaffe was the best equipped of its time - but that advantage was quickly lost, as new developments like radar where largely ignored, as Hitler believed in a swift German victory."

Actually the Luftwaffe was more advanced in radar technology (e.g. Freya) which was the reason why they quickly adopted the Kammhuber line. The key turning point was in the misallocation of fighter pilots training resources in 1941 and 1942 as Williamson Murray noted. In contrast the United States bet heavily early on. There were two different visions of time frame for the successful prosecution of war. Hitler expected a series of short wars while the United States expected the war to continue well into the late 1940s (e.g., Army Specialized Training Program). Greater emphasis on the total number of combat aviators meant that the overall quality of personnel was much higher as the USAAF could afford to rotate veterans to disseminate critical lessons learned to trainees. What killed the Luftwaffe was a series of bomber offensives in early 1944 when the fighter force had to come up to fight (e.g., the Big Week). After a handful of top aces, most were just target drones for USAAF and RAF fighter pilots.

"What did win Germany early battles was better trained troops and officers using combined arms tactics more effectively."

I agree completely. I would also add that after May 1940 the German army didn't really fight anyone possessing tactical competence until 1944.

"Frankly, I would like to know how the myth of the all-powerful German war machine outlived the Nazi propaganda from which it originated - perhaps embarrassment that it took six years to defeat it ?"

Self-serving German generals (e.g., Manstein) and some Western historians wrote the first works that started the myth. It's very very hard to kill a myth. It didn't take that long to knock out the Germans once the Allies were able to get ashore and establish a beachhead (that's probably half the fight anyway given inherent challenges in forced entry amphibious operations) despite some miserable performances at the operational level (tactically they were fine). Ike (Sadly he just wasn't very good), Bradley (His finest moment was the planning of Cobra. It all went downhill after that), and Montgomery (The less said the better, but the failure to clear the Scheldt estuary was just inexcusable not to mention the escape of the German 15th Army) were simply not that good at that level. Plenty of German generals and Soviet generals were better in terms of operational art. The only Allied generals who possessed keen grasp were too low to matter (e.g., Patton, Collins). The war would've been over in October 1944 had the Allies finished off the Westheer at Falaise or even along the Seine. One has to remember that this took place at the same time period as Bagration. Without the cadre that escaped the Falaise pocket, Hitler wouldn't have been able to reconstitute the mobile reserves in the fall.

[YT]

The followin' is from a military novel (can't remember the title unfortunately) I read a couple of years ago. If I ain't mistaken, it was written by a U.S. Army Maj.

It's a transcript, a Japanese officer (IK) bein' interrogated by his American counterpart (LP) who was investigatin' war crimes --

IK: No. I read Western languages. Why do Westerners not trouble with Eastern languages?

LP: Many do. I only have French and German myself.

IK: I think Westerners do not believe Eastern languages important. Westerners believe the world will eventually belong to them. You Americans believe the world should belong to you.

LP: Americans have no imperial ambitions, not like...

IK: Come now. You have your empire, and it is growing, flourishing, I might say. You deny to others the right to do what you have done.

LP: We did not start this war. Japan did.

IK: You did start it. You started it well before 1941. You started it with your diplomacy, with your immigration laws, with your embargoes, with your League of Nations. You and the Russians.

LP: The Russians? You mean the Communists?

IK: Yes, the Russians, the Communists now, who are only Russians dressed up with Marxist ideas. They are still dreaming of their empire, and now they want a world empire. They may well get it; if you are not careful. And in the contest between your empire and theirs, you will find you need Japan on your side.

LP: Under the circumstances, I fail to see how Japan could be of help to anyone.

IK: All this will pass. History will go on, according to its own pace and purpose.

LP: Karl Marx would probably agree with you...

Revisionism?

[kuj]

very intersting !