How vital was U.S. involvement to the war effort? Could the Allies have won the war without it? And if not, why does American propaganda exaggerate our involvement?

by AutumnUnderFire

Disclaimer: I checked the FAQ, figuring this had likely been asked at some point. However, some links within the FAQ redirect me to a wall of code with the Reddit logo at the top. I am currently mobile and do not have access to a computer, so am unable to verify if this happens on PC as well. If this question has been asked already, feel free to link me to the appropriate answer.

Edit: I'm referring to WWII. I don't know why I forgot to put that in the title.

jschooltiger

Sorry you're having trouble with the FAQ on mobile. Reddit's "redesign" is screwing up a lot of things, not least of which is subreddit wikis. Thankfully the admins are working diligently to fix the problem doing useless shit like rolling out chat.

Anyhow ... this answer from u/Georgy_K_Zhukov goes into a lot of detail about industrial capacity and overall "warmaking potential" of not just the US, but of the other major powers involved in the war.

The notion that the US didn't contribute anything to WWII is classic second-opinion bias -- we get told that the USA is back to back World War champs, and then learn later that the US entered WWI very late and WWII only after France had been defeated and Hitler had invaded the USSR. We also then learn that the USSR suffered the most casualties in the war, and took back most of Europe and ended in Berlin, so "obviously" the Soviets bear most of the responsibility for the war effort.

The thing is, that POV ignores a few fairly critical things, not least:

  1. Lend-lease equipment sent to Europe accounted for a major portion of both British and to a larger extent Soviet supplies, and allowed for example the Soviets to shift production toward particular sectors while ignoring others. (Something like 409,000 American-built trucks and 47,000 jeeps were in service in the Red Army, meaning that was 450,000 less vehicles Soviet industry had to produce.)

  2. the entire Pacific theatre of action (while Australia and New Zealand provided basing and some naval and air help, and the British sent their largest overseas fleet there in 1944, it was a US affair).