Memorial Day

It being Memorial Day, I've decided to do a bit of writing about those people that we memorialize today, our fallen veterans. Actually, that's just a cover because I've been intending to write about my change of heart regarding World War Two for a while.

I used to believe that the decisive theater of World War Two was the Eastern Front, the epic clash between rival economic, political and military systems. I used to believe that it was the immense power of the Red Army, finally harnessed in Operation Bagration, that defeated Germany. But having thought about the matter, I no longer believe this to be the case.

It strikes me now that the absolutely decisive element in WWII was the industrial capacity of the United States. It is difficult to overestimate the way that US industrial and economic output powered Allied victory. It is difficult to think of one key resource that the United States did not supply - food, oil, tanks, ships, aircraft, bulldozers, radar, even trucks. Watch films of the Red Army in action in World War Two and try to count all the Studebaker US6 trucks you see. It literally can't be done.

So having defined US economic power as the decisive element, it follows that the only hope the Germans had of winning the war was to prevent US economic power from coming to bear. That is, to win the Battle of the Atlantic and prevent convoys from reaching England and the Soviet Union. The Germans could have won the Battle of the Atlantic and still lost the war - one need only think of the Enola Gay to be reminded of that - but if they did not win the Battle of the Atlantic, then they had no hope of winning the war. (And it then follows that it was the British who fought and won the key campaign of the war, since it was the British who shouldered the bulk of the struggle against German U-boats.)