Maybe the city should be named
Posted on 06/07/2014 8:04:39 PM PDT by princeofdarkness
It's no secret that Japan was, shall we say, 'economically disadvantaged' in her ability to wage war against the Allies. However, the sheer, stunning magnitude of this economic disparity has never ceased to amaze me. So, just go give you an idea of the magnitude of the mismatch here, I decided to compile a few statistics. Most of them are taken from Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" (which, among other things, contains an excellent analysis of the economic forces at work in World War II, and is an all-around great book) and John Ellis' "World War II: A Statistical Survey." In this comparison I will focus primarily on the two chief antagonists in the Pacific War: Japan and the United States. They say that economics is the 'Dismal Science'; you're about to see why....
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearhistory.com ...
and we even found it being used against us later.
For instance an American-built Soviet bomber was used against ships during the Inchon landing during the Korean War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#US_deliveries_to_the_USSR
“The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. Thereafter it saw the passage of 4,160,000 tons of goods, 27% of the total.”
4.1 million tons through that route was 27% of the total, so we sent something like 15 million tons of materiel through Lend-Lease to the Soviets?
Maybe the city should be named
No need to flame because you’re probably right.
American manufacturing was the Arsenal of Democracy. Chinese manufacturing won’t fill the same role.
America sent so much stuff to the allies that 2/3rds of the Red Army vehicles were US-made at the end of WW2.
We have had a demographic shift of seismic proportions since WWII. I’d say a large part of our population doesn’t share anything with WWII America.
bump
I saw a movie once, with that Japanese actor Mako. He was taken on a tour of Japan, long after the war, and he asked, "are you sure Japan lost the war?"
You’re thinking of Operation Barbarossa when the Hitler double crossed Stalin. But WWII began in 1939 when Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland.
Especially if you compare Hiroshima today with Detroit.
I think we also shipped them machine tools to crank out equipment that we had designed, so much of the Soviet made gear was ours to a degree.
Incidentally the Soviets had a superior tank in WWII because they used a suspension designed by an American engineer. That engineer tried to sell it to the American military but was turned down.
I did see exactly that. I do not recall if it was on FR, or maybe Drudge, but it showed pics of Hiroshima and Detroit, in 1945 and again in recent years. It does make one wonder, who REALLY won the war?
Maybe so, but who knows for sure? Yamamoto might have said that even before Pearl Harbor. I think he was pretty hesitant to do it.
Re: “They thought they could shock the US out of fighting”
There’s another dimension to that belief that is usually swept under the rug by historians.
Many people in Japan’s senior leadership felt that Roosevelt was a rich, spoiled, effeminate dandy.
They never believed that FDR would pursue the war all the way to the Home Islands, especially against fight-to-the-death, fanatical Japanese soldiers.
What if Josef Stalin had allowed the USA to occupy and fight from Russia's Far Eastern territories?
Instead of “island hopping” America could have focused all its Pacific energy on building and maintaining a 24/7/365 railroad link to the Bering Straight.
We could have massed an American Army opposite the Japanese forces in Manchuria.
We could have seized South Sakhalin Island as a launch point onto Hokkaido.
And we could have kept B-29’s in the air over Japan 24 hours a day with a fraction of the casualties we had by launching from distant Pacific islands.
We not only could win a world war, we could beat the whole world I do believe.
In US vs World, US closes down the oceans to commerce. The resultant economic disruption, particularly food, removes close to half the players in a few weeks to months.
Well, maybe that was “along with the Germans”, because under their treaty obligations Britain and France should have also declared on Russia, they having invaded the other half of Poland in 1939/40.
Surprising that one key factor has yet to be mentioned...our submarines and the adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare as US war policy.
There are many who believe that if one man deserves the credit for winning the war in the Pacific, it is Admiral Charlie Lockwood.
re: “They thought they could shock the US out of fighting at Pearl Harbor and they lost the gamble.” GeronL
Had the planned 3rd strike been delivered. It was cancelled by the overall commander. There would have been a good chance that the Americans would have negotiated an end. The third strike was to take out the fuel farm at Pearl.
Dan Kurt
bttt
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