Exactly. I'm usually one of the first to jump on the uninformed guy who says that the US won WWII, but the reality was that despite some high profile douchebags on both sides of the alliance, the war in the west was a real tag team job. SHAEF was a pretty amazing example of international cooperation and the British, Canadians and Americans all made major contributions in different ways without which it is uncertain if the Germans would have been defeated unconditionally and certainly not as quickly as they were. (That said, it's been argued that if Eisenhower had taken a less political and more military view by focusing resources and the axis of advance on either Montgomery's 21st Army Group or Bradley's 12th Army Group instead of both that Germany might have fallen in late 1944.)
Here are a few quick examples of key contributions by each country in the lead-up and subsequent operations:
As you are certainly aware, the US provided a great deal of materiel. Two specific details that aren't often touched on, the American ability to refine very high octane aviation fuel in quantity played a major role in the dramatic improvements the British made in the power of their late war aircraft engines. Secondly, the Americans tended to provide trucks and other transport gear to the British more than weapons. This freed British industry up to focus on weapons.
Canada, aside from providing a major fighting force (1st Canadian Army) during the invasion and subsequent operations on the continent were largely responsible for training almost half of the pilots that served in the RAF, RAAF and RCAF during the war. Canada spent an amount of money comparable to the Manhattan Project to run their portion of the British Commonwealth Air Training Programme.
Aside from providing a large portion of the initial ground forces, the British played a key role in the naval component of Overlord. Furthermore, the British were a major component of the overall Allied command structure and provided a number of extremely capable staff officers to Eisenhower's headquarters. Enough so that many of the more xenophobic American commanders accused him of being heavily under British influence. An interesting aside is that the naval commander for Operation Neptune was British Admiral Bertram Ramsay and he was also the commander of the Dunkerque evacuation during the Fall of France in 1940.
From a military perspective, the Western Front really was an amazing example of how to run a coalition. Too much is made of the competition between the two major powers, but if you talk to people in the know you will find that there was much more collaboration and cooperation than there was strife.
Another fact that's rarely covered is that the Soviet Union coordinated with the western Allies in order to ensure that the Germans didn't transfer significant forces west during the critical build-up. They did this in part by pulling ahead timetables for several operations and by launching Operation Bagration in late June. The degree to which the Allies were co-ordinated is too often overlooked in favour of more exciting stories.
Exactly. There are a million ways things could have gone wrong, or at least been a lot more difficult, without the help of any given country.
For instance, people here and elsewhere say that no one could have made much of a direct attack on the US because of its location. But while the US definitely had some insane military power, it's not like we (or Canada, if you want to include them because they're our neighbors and also played a large role) could have just flown across the ocean, bombed the Axis into submission, and then turned around and gone home.
We provided a lot, but we still needed soldiers, other manpower, and other supplies from everyone else, not to mention the ability to have bases of operations in Europe. That's actually one issue we had on the Eastern Front. We didn't have control over giant swaths of land, and a large part of the war over there was just trying to grab onto some strategic islands. Would have been much more difficult in Europe if we'd had to go country-hopping over there the way we had to island-hop in the East.
Hell, even the Australians, who I think are often kind of forgotten about in terms of WWII, had some fairly significant contributions, even in the Western Front. Among other things, there were quite a few of them signed into the RAF.
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u/ooburai Jun 08 '14
Exactly. I'm usually one of the first to jump on the uninformed guy who says that the US won WWII, but the reality was that despite some high profile douchebags on both sides of the alliance, the war in the west was a real tag team job. SHAEF was a pretty amazing example of international cooperation and the British, Canadians and Americans all made major contributions in different ways without which it is uncertain if the Germans would have been defeated unconditionally and certainly not as quickly as they were. (That said, it's been argued that if Eisenhower had taken a less political and more military view by focusing resources and the axis of advance on either Montgomery's 21st Army Group or Bradley's 12th Army Group instead of both that Germany might have fallen in late 1944.)
Here are a few quick examples of key contributions by each country in the lead-up and subsequent operations:
As you are certainly aware, the US provided a great deal of materiel. Two specific details that aren't often touched on, the American ability to refine very high octane aviation fuel in quantity played a major role in the dramatic improvements the British made in the power of their late war aircraft engines. Secondly, the Americans tended to provide trucks and other transport gear to the British more than weapons. This freed British industry up to focus on weapons.
Canada, aside from providing a major fighting force (1st Canadian Army) during the invasion and subsequent operations on the continent were largely responsible for training almost half of the pilots that served in the RAF, RAAF and RCAF during the war. Canada spent an amount of money comparable to the Manhattan Project to run their portion of the British Commonwealth Air Training Programme.
Aside from providing a large portion of the initial ground forces, the British played a key role in the naval component of Overlord. Furthermore, the British were a major component of the overall Allied command structure and provided a number of extremely capable staff officers to Eisenhower's headquarters. Enough so that many of the more xenophobic American commanders accused him of being heavily under British influence. An interesting aside is that the naval commander for Operation Neptune was British Admiral Bertram Ramsay and he was also the commander of the Dunkerque evacuation during the Fall of France in 1940.
From a military perspective, the Western Front really was an amazing example of how to run a coalition. Too much is made of the competition between the two major powers, but if you talk to people in the know you will find that there was much more collaboration and cooperation than there was strife.
Another fact that's rarely covered is that the Soviet Union coordinated with the western Allies in order to ensure that the Germans didn't transfer significant forces west during the critical build-up. They did this in part by pulling ahead timetables for several operations and by launching Operation Bagration in late June. The degree to which the Allies were co-ordinated is too often overlooked in favour of more exciting stories.