The Unimaginable Achievement of D-Day

America Fought and Won a World War on 4 Fronts

Yesterday I posted a couple of notes about D-Day. Of course, because today is the 80th anniversary of the Great Crusade, the greatest seaborne invasion in all of history. The men who fought there are nearly all gone now. The youngest of them are almost 100 years old. We must not forget what they accomplished on The Longest Day.

D-Day was an achievement not equalled in all of human military history. And when we include the reality that America was fighting on 3 fronts (Western Europe, South Pacific/China, and SouthWest Pacific) and supplying a 4th front (Soviet Union in Eastern Europe), what the US accomplished is truly stunning. America was the mightiest industrial and military power the world had ever seen, without question.

Interestingly, one of the responses to those notes was a somewhat standard response whenever we talk about the achievements of the western Allies during World War 2.

Not to diminish any of this, but let us not forget that the Russians had been wearing down and beating back Germany for almost 3 years by this point.

We couldn’t have pulled this off if Hitler had never turned east. They would have driven us back into the sea.

World War 2 Without An Eastern Front?

The truth is somewhat the opposite of this. But let’s tackle the what if idea of Hitler never turning East. Interesting idea, but no serious WW2 historian believes that war between Hitler and Stalin wasn’t going to happen, sooner or later. The real question was how and when. Let’s set that idea aside and leave it to the Alternate History folks like Professor Harry Turtledove (I happen to love his books, by the way. Great stories).

Moving on to the idea that without the Russians wearing down and beating back Germany from June, 1941 to June, 1944 the invasion of Normandy wouldn’t have been possible and the Germans would have driven the Allies into the sea. In that situation, the War would have been entirely different and the strategies used by Germany and the Allies would have been entirely different. meaning, there’s not much point in speculating about an invasion of Normandy in 1944 in that alternate history because it wouldn’t have happened.

How Did the Soviet Union Beat Germany?

My commenter is absolutely correct that without the Eastern Front of World War 2, the US and Britain would not have been able to follow the strategy that they did. But, in June, 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, no one really thought that the Soviets were going to win by themselves. Things were so bad for the Soviets that more than half their food production and over 1/3 of military industry was overrun or destroyed by the Germans by November, 1941. The German Army had encircled Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and were within a few miles of Moscow in December, 1941. As one indicator of how dire things were, Soviet aircraft production had plummeted from well over 1500 planes per month to just 600 in December, 1941.

To make a long story short, the Soviets did fight back and ultimately win on the Eastern Front. And they did so with enormous sacrifice. Yes, millions of Soviet citizens died to defeat the Nazis and we must never forget their sacrifice. However, without America’s industrial might supplying them, that sacrifice would have been in vain and the outcome for the USSR would have been somewhere between complete defeat and a negotiated surrender. This outcome the Western Allies could not afford if they wanted to defeat Hitler and liberate Europe.

So, Lend-Lease came to be. America, Canada, and Britain sent immense amounts of war materials to the Soviet Union and China to keep them in the war. In fact, the USA sent nearly as much war materials to Russia as they sent to Europe for their own Army. 17.5 million tons of equipment, supplies, vehicles, and food went to Russia between October, 1941 and May, 1945. From December, 1941 to May, 1945 the US sent 22.5 million tons of equipment, supplies, vehicles, and food to Western Europe for its own military.

One incredible item that’s not really brought out well when we look at the numbers is that the United States dismantled an entire Ford truck factory, put it on ships, sent it to the Soviet Union, and re-assembled it there. Yes, we shipped a truck factory halfway around the world.

Here’s the numbers

Lend-Lease from the US to the USSR from October, 1941 to May, 1945

• Armored vehicles: 12,000, including 7,000 tanks

• Motorcycles: 35,170

• Trucks: 427,284

• Aircraft: 11,400

• Locomotives: 1977

• Train cars: 11,075

• Ordnance: Ammunition, artillery shells, mines, explosives amounted to 54% of total consumption

• Food: 4,478,116 million tons

• Petroleum products: 2,670,371 tons, including 57.8% of all Soviet aviation fuel and 90% of high octane fuel

• Total tonnage: 17.5 millions of equipment, supplies, vehicles, and food

Some of these numbers tell the story. Without petroleum products the USSR would have been unable to continue to fight a mechanized war against Germany. No aircraft flying and no tanks moving. No locomotives to bring tanks from the factories east of the Ural Mountains to the actual fighting 2000 miles away in Russia and Ukraine.

And yet, this was just a percentage of what America produced. According to the Wikipedia article on Military Production in World War 2

• Tanks & Self-propelled guns: 108,410

• Other vehicles (trucks, jeeps, etc): 2,382,311

• Artillery: 257,390

• Mortars: 105,055

• Machine guns: 2,679,840

• Total Aircraft: 295,959

• Munitions: $106.3 billion

When you add up all Allied (USA, UK, France, USSR, and minor nations) war production during the war years, it turns out that the USA accounts for about 45% of it. Without the USA, the USSR, UK, and France would only have just equaled Germany, Italy, and Japan and the war would have been very different.

As yet one more interesting example of how stunning all of this is, it has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line. By comparison, by April, 1945 the United States only had 68 divisions in North Africa, Italy, France, Germany, and Central Europe. And the Persian Corridor only represents about half of all Lend-Lease supplies to Russia.

Conclusion

It doesn’t diminish anything to say that without the USSR still in the fight, the Allies could not have successfully invaded at Normandy. Rather, it enhances it when we pause and remember that America equipped an Army capable of invading Normandy, a Navy capable of defeating the German submarine forces AND bringing 3 million soldiers to Europe, an Army capable of defeating Hitler on the Eastern Front, and Navies and Armies capable of fight throughout the entire Pacific and Far East and defeating Imperial Japan.

The United States was the powerhouse of Democracy and Liberty that enabled the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan.