Did the Allies win WW2 mostly due to brute force?

Did the Allies win WW2 mostly due to brute force?

  • Yes

    Votes: 97 27.2%
  • No

    Votes: 99 27.8%
  • To a degree

    Votes: 160 44.9%

  • Total voters
    356
What's interesting to me about the Nazi lost causers is how fixated they are on changes like Yugoslavia, or taking Leningrad, or any number of minor strategic changes that they think would have won the war for the Nazis. You get a very positive reaction from those changes. But when it comes to something like Hannibal and Rome, you get a solid wall of talk about literally no victories Hannibal won could ever break Rome's morale, the Roman manpower pool was inexhaustible, a dozen Cannaes would not have been enough, etc. Feels like a double standard.
 

Ian_W

Banned
What's interesting to me about the Nazi lost causers is how fixated they are on changes like Yugoslavia, or taking Leningrad, or any number of minor strategic changes that they think would have won the war for the Nazis. You get a very positive reaction from those changes. But when it comes to something like Hannibal and Rome, you get a solid wall of talk about literally no victories Hannibal won could ever break Rome's morale, the Roman manpower pool was inexhaustible, a dozen Cannaes would not have been enough, etc. Feels like a double standard.

It's almost like Nazi sympathisers lie their tits off.
 
Reminds me of what Sartre said about arguing with anti-semites:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
 
Actually the U.S. would have done better if Congress had actually spent $12 on new equipment rather than doing the classic Congresscritter "wait, I need to get a useless bridge built in my district" shuffle.

At risk of digression the problem was not one of redirected spending, but of no spending. Despite the rantings of the fanatical faction of the anti Roosevelt crowd the new Dealers had a lot of trouble overcoming the fiscal conservative attitudes of the era. The number of 'useless bridges' built during the Depression were insignificant. Even the old Federal Highway project of the era was slowed for several years despite the practical nature of it. Ironically it was during the Republican dominated 1950s that the porkbarrels grew by many orders of magnitude.
 
We should be, The problem is that the reality always gets diluted by the myth. Rommel is a classic example.

Military genius.

Bollocks.

His great strategic plan was what they had been teaching at West Point since before the Civil War. It was a holding attack; one up, two around. When the U.S. military is disparaged as "hey, diddle diddle, right up the middle" is is only true when the enemy was actually wise enough to follow what they teach in chapter one of defensive strategy and have for a few thousand years. Anchor your defense on a piece of local geography, the rest of the time the U.S. basic attack theory was a holding attack (which has been renamed a couple dozen times, including the hilariously mis-titled Hail Mary" in the Gulf War).

If the German Army had been half as competent as some of the "well, they only lost because of numbers" folks claim they would have taken Leningrad, and Moscow, and Stalingrad. They would have held along the Rhine or the Dnieper or any of the other superb defensive positions that mark Western/Central Europe. They failed at all of them.
Probably at least partly our fault for letting the losers write the history of the war, I suppose. That combined maybe with a generation of History Channel-style "the enemy was an evil genius and their tanks were five times better than ours" suspense-building. And then the lack of interest in boring topics like logistics, which I guess are hard to make an attention-riveting documentary on.
 
If you voluntarily pick a fight with three guys, each of whom is individually bigger, stronger, richer and arguably smarter than you, and they proceed to beat the snot out of you and your two cousins, exactly who is the idiot in the scenario?

Depends. If you're Bruce Lee or have a background in some other Krav Maga-level martial art...
 

Ian_W

Banned
While we're here, Watch on the Rhine and the response to it are night and day.

One is a slow, badly coordinated mish mash of hope masquerading as a plan, and the Allied response is a rapid and effective example of operational art that quickly and effectively counters the enemy offensive.
 
While we're here, Watch on the Rhine and the response to it are night and day.

One is a slow, badly coordinated mish mash of hope masquerading as a plan, and the Allied response is a rapid and effective example of operational art that quickly and effectively counters the enemy offensive.

You have just described the German planning after Case Red.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Yes the allies won because of brute force (industrial production), but this more reflects the changes in the nature of warfare. For most of civilization, armies were small. Battles were generally brief, discrete events. Open flanks were everywhere. And we see plenty of battles where the guys outnumber 2-to-1 win. If we transition to a modern era (WW1), flanks are hard to find. Battles go on for months. Each side has ample reserves, so industrial production matter.

Or put another way, we moved from the era of maneuver and occasional long sieges to wars of attrition.
 

Deleted member 1487

If the German Army had been half as competent as some of the "well, they only lost because of numbers" folks claim they would have taken Leningrad, and Moscow, and Stalingrad. They would have held along the Rhine or the Dnieper or any of the other superb defensive positions that mark Western/Central Europe. They failed at all of them.
Though I'm sure there are some out there are say 'it was only numbers', it is a strawman, as the general argument is that there were a number of factors at play, including fighting on multiple fronts, distance, terrain, weather, their own mistakes, etc.

Strong defensive positions mattered less than ever in WW2 as the Maginot Line demonstrated early on. WW2 was a nuanced situation that people have a tendency to generalize about, but numbers were a serious factor, especially when one side has at least 500% more manpower and 2/3rds of the world's industry under their command. Before you bring up the strategic stupidity of declaring war on all those powers at the same time, you would be right and no one accuses the Axis powers of having competent strategic leadership.

What's interesting to me about the Nazi lost causers is how fixated they are on changes like Yugoslavia, or taking Leningrad, or any number of minor strategic changes that they think would have won the war for the Nazis. You get a very positive reaction from those changes. But when it comes to something like Hannibal and Rome, you get a solid wall of talk about literally no victories Hannibal won could ever break Rome's morale, the Roman manpower pool was inexhaustible, a dozen Cannaes would not have been enough, etc. Feels like a double standard.
Are you seriously comparing a 20th century conflict to ancient Rome's wars? Of course there is a different standard, things were vastly different in the 1940s compared to the era where the steel sword was the highest weapons technology.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Though I'm sure there are some out there are say 'it was only numbers', it is a strawman, as the general argument is that there were a number of factors at play, including fighting on multiple fronts, distance, terrain, weather, their own mistakes, etc.

Strong defensive positions mattered less than ever in WW2 as the Maginot Line demonstrated early on. WW2 was a nuanced situation that people have a tendency to generalize about, but numbers were a serious factor, especially when one side has at least 500% more manpower and 2/3rds of the world's industry under their command. Before you bring up the strategic stupidity of declaring war on all those powers at the same time, you would be right and no one accuses the Axis powers of having competent strategic leadership.


,,.

Actually the Maginot Line is a textbook failure to follow a basic principal that goes back so far that it ca=n be seen as instinctive. The French utterly failed to secure their northern flank on a solide defensive position, largely, but not exclusively, to avoid insulting the Belgians. The Line should have ended at the sea, either including Belgium behind it or along the French-Belgian border leaving Belgium to its fate. Instead the French did neither. By doing so they left their Northern flank hanging entirely in the air and provides a 200 mile wide entry for the Heer to exploit. There were political reasons for the decision, but from a military perspective the decision was far beyond idiotic, Of course the politicians were making the decisions based purely on political considerations.
 

Deleted member 1487

Actually the Maginot Line is a textbook failure to follow a basic principal that goes back so far that it ca=n be seen as instinctive. The French utterly failed to secure their northern flank on a solide defensive position, largely, but not exclusively, to avoid insulting the Belgians. The Line should have ended at the sea, either including Belgium behind it or along the French-Belgian border leaving Belgium to its fate. Instead the French did neither. By doing so they left their Northern flank hanging entirely in the air and provides a 200 mile wide entry for the Heer to exploit. There were political reasons for the decision, but from a military perspective the decision was far beyond idiotic, Of course the politicians were making the decisions based purely on political considerations.
The French also had budget concerns, as the Maginot Line ate up a huge part of their defense money and arguably was part of the reason the French army-air force was so unprepared for WW2. The French did bet on the Belgian forts to anchor their position when they moved in their army to the Dyle, but the Germans managed to take their centerpiece position, Eben Emael, with a quickly and shockingly successful commando operation at very low cost. So beyond their military mistakes the French (and Belgians) suffered pretty badly from having invested so much in a fortification line that left too little for the military to keep up with their opponents.
 
Strong defensive positions mattered less than ever in WW2 as the Maginot Line demonstrated early on. WW2 was a nuanced situation that people have a tendency to generalize about, but numbers were a serious factor, especially when one side has at least 500% more manpower and 2/3rds of the world's industry under their command. Before you bring up the strategic stupidity of declaring war on all those powers at the same time, you would be right and no one accuses the Axis powers of having competent strategic leadership.

However the defensive positions at Leningrad, Stalingrad, Moscow, Kursk, Alamein, Kasserine, Normandy ( allied side) Guadalcanal, Imphal all held.

Underlying issue is without a flank to exploit German forces in particular have little offensive capacity. Everyone else seems to have the ability to break through, and exploit.
 
The Western Allies always leaned towards economic warfare, while the Axis always hoped for whirlwind tactical feats to win. The Western Front ended up being fought on a broad front partly to sooth the egos of Bradley and Montgomery (and the US and UK by extension), but also because the Western Allies could afford to. Why bother with risky maneuvers and potentially high casualties when you can use your immense firepower and aerial superiority to grind the enemy into dust?

As for the Soviets, I'd argue that they won with brute force but that was not the intention. The objective of the 1941/1942 winter counteroffensive was to destroy Army Group Center. Also, it was hoped that Operation Uranus would be a prelude to a larger campaign to cut off the Germans in the Caucasus. The Soviets desperately wanted to end the war as quickly as possible (with very good reason), but many of their major operations did not go the way they had hoped.
 
No.
The two decisive allied victories were Operation Bagration, that was force+skill and Operation Pointblank, that was force+technical/training superiority. Neither was a case of brute force prevailing alone.
 
I think the problem is that after December 1941 the strategic situation is so lopsided against Germany that you can read into it just about whatever you want as the "key" to victory.

It is worth pointing out that more or less from the beginning the Germans suffered from a number of things that clearly aren't related to brute force. These include catastrophically poor intelligence and counterintelligence, a cavalier disregard for logistics, and bad engineering and design decisions on "advanced" weapons systems.

So I think the compromise view is that the Allies not only had more resources to play with, but they also used those resources much more efficiently, on the whole.
 

Deleted member 1487

However the defensive positions at Leningrad, Stalingrad, Moscow, Kursk, Alamein, Kasserine, Normandy ( allied side) Guadalcanal, Imphal all held.

Underlying issue is without a flank to exploit German forces in particular have little offensive capacity. Everyone else seems to have the ability to break through, and exploit.
Except for Normandy all the examples were of the defenders outnumbering the attackers and the attackers having worse supply, with the exception of Moscow in October, but the weather was a serious factor there. Normandy was also proof of the Allies being able to overpower fix positions by masses of greater firepower and manpower. Anyway there were any number of factors in each of those situations beyond defensive terrain lines that determined the outcome.

No.
The two decisive allied victories were Operation Bagration, that was force+skill and Operation Pointblank, that was force+technical/training superiority. Neither was a case of brute force prevailing alone.
I'd really double check on the Bagration offensive. The Soviet plan was sound as was their deception, but their success and in fact even their successful deception efforts were a function of their grossly larger numbers and the Allied offensive in Normandy drawing off the German strategic reserve. Operation Point Blank was mostly a function of the greater reserves of the Allied air forces grinding the Luftwaffe down to dust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointblank_directive
In practice the USAAF bombers made large scale daylight attacks on factories involved in the production of fighter aircraft. The Luftwaffe was forced into defending against these raids, and its fighters were drawn into battle with the bombers and their escorts. It was these battles of attrition that reduced the Luftwaffe strength despite increases in German aircraft production.[5]

It is worth pointing out that more or less from the beginning the Germans suffered from a number of things that clearly aren't related to brute force. These include catastrophically poor intelligence and counterintelligence, a cavalier disregard for logistics, and bad engineering and design decisions on "advanced" weapons systems.
Except this isn't true. The Axis had tremendous counter intel and regular intel successes in 1938-42 against the Allies and it is when that advantage broke down and the Allies scored their successes that the Axis really fell apart. Logistics largely worked just fine for the European Axis until they miscalculated Barbarossa pretty badly; the book "Blitzkrieg Legend" gets into the logistic planning for the 1940 offensive and it was actually pretty darn well planned. The issues cropped up after when the Germans got victory disease and though radical maneuver would solve all issues, which history proved it did not. Of course the Allies had their own problems of logistics planning in western Europe in 1944, which was partially dealt with through expensive masses of material thrown at the problem in quantities that the Soviets could have only dreamed of.

That said, yes the designs for their 'mid war' new weapons generally were seriously flawed and cost them badly when it mattered.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Except this isn't true. The Axis had tremendous counter intel and regular intel successes in 1938-42 against the Allies and it is when that advantage broke down and the Allies scored their successes that the Axis really fell apart.

The British penetrated Enigma and ran the entire German agent "network" in Britain out of MI5. This isn't a brute force-related problem and it is a combined intelligence failure of unprecedented gargantuan proportions. "Tremendous" Axis intelligence failed to gauge the strength of the British air force. In contrast, the Dowding system dramatically improved British ability to concentrate forces in the air.

German intelligence did manage some early success against British convoy traffic although I suppose this should probably be more than offset done by the damage to German shipping and naval forces by the Allies.

Logistics largely worked just fine for the European Axis until they miscalculated Barbarossa pretty badly; the book "Blitzkrieg Legend" gets into the logistic planning for the 1940 offensive and it was actually pretty darn well planned.

So in other words, the Nazis didn't encounter logistics problems as long as they stayed within a day's drive of their borders. Whoop-de-doo.

Wouldn't want to wear out the horses, I suppose.

Of course the Allies had their own problems of logistics planning in western Europe in 1944, which was partially dealt with through expensive masses of material thrown at the problem in quantities that the Soviets could have only dreamed of.

The Allies are sending equipment thousands of miles from the factory across the ocean to England across the ocean to France through occupied territory to the advancing front lines. The Germans couldn't manage to send both clothing and bullets to the Moscow front simultaneously.
 
Top