Why allies won the war

British forces were close to defeat everywhere in The American economy was a peacetime economy, apparently unprepared for the colossal demands of total war.

The Soviet system was all but shattered in , two-thirds of its heavy industrial capacity captured and its vast air and tank armies destroyed. This was a war, Ribbentrop ruefully concluded, that 'Germany could have won'.

Soviet resistance was in some ways the most surprising outcome. The German attackers believed that Soviet Communism was a corrupt and primitive system that would collapse, in Goebbels' words 'like a pack of cards'. The evidence of how poorly the Red Army fought in confirmed these expectations. More than five million Soviet soldiers were captured or killed in six months; they fought with astonishing bravery, but at every level of combat were out-classed by troops that were better armed, better trained and better led.

This situation seemed beyond remedy. Yet within a year Soviet factories were out-producing their richly-endowed German counterparts - the Red Army had embarked on a thorough transformation of the technical and organisational base of Soviet forces, and a stiffening of morale, from Stalin downwards, produced the first serious reverse for the German armed forces when Operation Uranus in November led to the encirclement of Stalingrad and the loss of the German Sixth Army.

In the first place the Red Army learned a great deal from German practice and from their own mistakes. The air and tank armies were reorganised to mimic the German Panzer divisions and air fleets; communication and intelligence were vastly improved helped by a huge supply of American and British telephone equipment and cable ; training for officers and men was designed to encourage greater initiative; and the technology available was hastily modernised to match German.

Not until the later stages of the war did Stalin begin to reimpose control, when victory was at last in sight. Two other changes proved vital to allow the army to profit from the reform of operational practice. First, Soviet industry and workforce proved remarkable adaptable for a command economy long regarded as inherently inefficient and inflexible. The pre-war experience of economic planning and mobilisation helped the regime to run a war economy on an emergency basis, while the vast exodus of workers an estimated 16 million and factories more than 2, major plants from in front of the advancing Germans allowed the USSR to reconstruct its armaments economy in central and eastern Russia with great rapidity.

The second factor lay with politics. Until the summer of Stalin and the Party closely controlled the Red Army. Political commissars worked directly alongside senior officers and reported straight back to the Kremlin.

Stalin came to realise that political control was a dead hand on the army and cut it back sharply in the autumn of He created a deputy supreme commander under him, the talented Marshal Zhukov, and began to step back more from the day-to- day conduct of the war.

Given the freedom to work out their own salvation, the Soviet General Staff demonstrated that they could match the Germans on the battlefield. The Soviet Union did not turn the tide on the Eastern Front on its own. Though for decades Soviet historians played down the role of American and British Lend-Lease aid, its real significance has now been acknowledged. From a flow of food and raw materials and engineering equipment sustained the Soviet war effort.

There was enough food in the end to ensure a square meal for every Soviet soldier; most of the Soviet rail network was supplied with locomotives, wagons and rails made in the USA; one million miles of telephone wire, 14 million pairs of boots, , trucks, all helped to keep the Red Army fighting with growing efficiency.

Without Allied aid, Stalin later admitted, 'we would not have been able to cope'. The ability of the world's largest industrial economy to convert to the mass production of weapons and war equipment is usually taken for granted. Yet the transition from peace to war was so rapid and effective that the USA was able to make up for the lag in building up effectively trained armed forces by exerting a massive material superiority.

Take, for instance, the German-Soviet conflict. In late , the Germans had inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviets by linking firepower and mobility. They outmaneuvered Soviet defenders and imposed their tempo on the conflict. Yet with time, the Red Army learned to counter German tactics by skillfully using antitank guns to repulse German armor attacks and establishing defenses in depth to cope with any breakthroughs.

The Soviets also developed an effective offensive doctrine. After the Winter War with Finland in —40, the Soviets conducted a high-level analysis to honestly assess why their forces had at first been so ineffective against a small opponent. It led in May to Order No. The Soviets clearly demonstrated the fighting lessons they had learned from the Finnish conflict in their war with Germany, as in Operation Uranus—the encirclement of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in November This operation succeeded because the Soviets had re-established their munitions industry, especially tank production, and rapidly improved their tactical proficiency.

Better planning and preparations magnified their resource advantages. Poor German command decisions that included allocating what became key flank positions to weak Romanian forces and a feeble German response to the Soviet breakthrough were also crucial. Earlier, the large-scale Soviet counteroffensive in the winter of —42 had eventually run out of steam.

Thereafter, however, the Germans proved far less successful in stemming Soviet advances. The major Soviet constraints in and were logistical.

They could not resupply advance units, especially with fuel. In , the Red Army proved adept at coordinating armor, artillery, and infantry, and in successfully executing encirclements. Soviet assets outnumbered German, particularly in artillery and aircraft.

The Soviets used their reserves well to maintain the pace of their advances and to thwart German initiatives. Still, the Red Army could only achieve so much before exhaustion, losses, and supply difficulties stopped its offensives.

In Manchuria in , the Japanese were outnumbered, particularly in artillery, armor, and aircraft, but they were also decisively outfought. Soviet troops were better trained, and many brought combat experience from the German front.

Using skillful deception, they immediately seized the initiative and advanced rapidly to envelop their opponents. Although the Japanese fought tenaciously, employing suicide tactics that included carrying explosives up to tanks and detonating them, the speed of the Soviet advance dismayed them. In particular, the Japanese underestimated Soviet mobility and inaccurately assumed the Soviets would need to stop for resupply after about miles, giving the defenders an opportunity to counterattack.

When the fighting proved that assumption wrong, they were unprepared to deal with the consequences. The fighting abilities of the Western Allies also improved. In initial clashes, they had been found wanting: the British conspicuously so in Norway in , and the Americans at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa in February With time, however, better Allied training and experience both paid dividends, especially at the command level.

The Allies also became far more skilled at integrating their forces. Fighting a two-front war strained the United States. The relatively small size of the American army, and the lack of reserve divisions, forced individual units to endure combat without a break in —45, creating serious difficulties for the troops involved.

Allied fighting quality also improved during the war with Japan. The Japanese clearly outfought the British in Malaya and Singapore in the winter of —42, and easily handled American forces in the Philippines. With training and experience, the Australians in New Guinea and the British in Burma became superior fighters, while the Americans improved with each engagement as they island-hopped across the Pacific. British training came to emphasize patrolling the jungle aggressively and, if flanked or surrounded, avoiding a disorderly retreat as had happened in Malaya in —42 and Burma in Instead, they stood firm in defensive boxes with all-around fields of fire.

By contrast, the Japanese never changed their tactics. Obviously, resources played a big part in each victory. Recovering Burma depended on the Allied ability to airdrop supplies along the India-Burma border in , yet the campaign was won by the troops on the ground who fought successfully using those supplies. The Americans displayed similar improvement in their two Philippines campaigns. Thomas Blamey, commander in chief of the Australian army, took personal command of Allied operations in New Guinea in September A subsequent report by Major General Stanley Savige on the operations of his 3rd Australian Division in the Salamaua area in emphasized the value of air support but also underscored the need for ground troops to be physically fit and led by experienced junior officers and noncommissioned officers.

He maintained that the Australians fought more effectively because of their training and determination. Eisenhower in Reims, France, and forced the Germans to sign another one the following day in Soviet-occupied Berlin. A man wheels his bicycle thorough Hiroshima, days after the city was leveled by an atomic bomb blast, Japan. The view here is looking west-northwest, about feet from where the bomb landed, known as X, on August 6, American forces had made a slow, but steady push toward Japan after turning the course of the war with victory at the June Battle of the Midway.

The Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the winter and spring of were among the bloodiest of the war, and the American military projected that as many as 1 million casualties would accompany any invasion of the Japanese mainland.

Weeks after the first successful test of the atomic bomb occurred in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, , President Harry Truman , who had ascended to the presidency less than four months earlier after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt , authorized its use against Japan in the hopes of bringing a swift end to the war. On August 6, , the American B bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the manufacturing city of Hiroshima, immediately killing an estimated 80, people.

Tens of thousands later died of radiation exposure. When Japan failed to immediately surrender after the bombing of Hiroshima , the United States detonated an even more powerful atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days later that killed 35, instantly and another 50, in its aftermath. In addition to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan came under increasing pressure when the Soviet Union formally declared war on August 8 and invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria in northeastern China.

A great tragedy has ended.