[colorado tanker]

IMHO, our not so secret weapon in Europe was Hitler. He kept interfering in military decisions and he had a knack for getting them wrong. I saw a post a while back that one of the considerations discussed when the Brits were thinking about an assassination attempt was that Hilter was shortening the war for us.

[SunkenCiv]

I wholeheartedly agree. He didn’t grasp (or at best, at times, had a very poor grasp of) either tactics or strategy.

OTOH, the British (including the USSR, through its traitor spies in British intelligence) had the Ultra secret, the ability to decrypt German military communication within a short time after it was sent (and the decrypts were shared with the US).

During the north African campaign, Rommel’s exact strength and capability was known, and (still) Monty set the date for Alamein II to coincide with the US landing well to the west — Rommel knew immediately he had to get out, and did just that. It made Montgomery look like a huge hero, even though British tank forces were actually mauled by a greatly numerically inferior German (and Italian, but c’mon) force which had tremendous problems with fuel and spare parts.