Did America intervene in World War II

An American friend recently commented on US intervention in WWII. I don’t want in any way to be disrespectful to the memory of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who gave their lives in the cause of Freedom or to downplay the debt we all owe to them and to all those who fought. But I do want to make the point that it was not an “intervention”. Intervention, I would submit, is the voluntary involvement by one party in the affairs of a third party or parties. To that extent, Britain’s declaration of war on Germany was an intervention because it was not necessary and was brought about because we objected to the way Germany was treating Poland.
America did not intervene. It was attacked. At that point, America found itself in common cause with Great Britain and the two countries fought together as an alliance. I do feel that the extent of Britain’s role in the alliance is overlooked today by people on both sides of the Atlantic because they view history through the lens of today and, of course, today we are very much a junior partner. As I understand it, there were more British than American men and materiel in contact with all the enemies (Japan, Germany and Italy) until the middle of 1944, when the American war effort overtook ours. My source for this claim is Churchill’s seven volume account of the war. At the time of the D-Day landings, 60% of the forces involved were American but 40% were British or British Commonwealth. The Royal Navy began the assault on the Normandy Beaches (HMS Belfast beginning proceedings with a mighty broadside) and the American Navy followed in.

None of this, as I say, is to downplay the role of America. And without America, the war would have gone on for many years more and may well have resulted in a stalemate. We shall never know. On a personal note, I should say that after five years of fighting in Europe, my father, in 1945, was pumped full of tropical medicine shots and ordered to embark for Japan. Whilst carrying out this order, news reached him of the use of the Atom bomb and the subsequent surrender of Japan. As a result he was enabled to return to civilian life. Without that action by President Truman he might not have lived to see the Peace and I might not have been born. So I hope my pro-British sentiments won’t be mistaken for being anti-American.

Why we couldn't lose in 1940

I grew up with the myth of the Battle of Britain - how a handful of British heroes stood alone against the might of Nazi Germany and saved the world for Freedom. It is a lovely myth and one that stirs the soul of every British person who considers it. But it is not true. It suits us to think it is true because it paints us in such an heroic light but it is viewed through the lens of today and the world is very different today than it was in 1940.

I am reading James Holland's excellent history of the Battle of Britain and it is helping me to understand just how different that world was. And it is apparent that the Germans could not win in 1940 and that the RAF was simply the most visible part of our almost impregnable defences.

If you are going to invade an island, you need to be superior at sea, in the air and on land. The Germans simply did not have this superiority. Although it is hard for a modern Englishman to imagine, the Royal Navy in 1940 was the most powerful maritime force in the world. The only navy of comparable proportions was the American one but if you add in the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal New Zealand Navy and the Royal South African Navy, all of which were effectively part of the same fighting force in 1940, you have easily the most powerful navy on earth. On top of that, Britain in 1940 controlled the largest part of the world's Merchant shipping. Incredibly, we were able to deploy a thousand ships into the English Channel and North Sea during the Battle of Britain and no force on earth was going to get through that.

By comparison, the German Kriegsmarine was a minor irritant. The only weapon they had of any significance was the U-Boat but there were nowhere near enough of these to break British sea power.

In terms of air power, we had the world's first and only fully integrated, modern air defence system. There were two chains of radar defences - inner and outer - which covered the aerial approaches to Britain and fed their findings back to vast underground control rooms where the commanders could see large maps showing the progress of the battle in real time. The Germans had nothing comparable and, as one young Luftwaffe pilot wrote in his diary, "nothing we do seems to surprise the British. They are always expecting us and are always above us, ready to attack". On top of this technological edge, we had a superior industrial capacity. By the summer of 1940 we were producing twice as many aircraft as the Germans could manage and, more importantly, we were producing them faster than we were losing them, whereas the Germans were not keeping up with their losses. And this Allied advantage only got greater as the war progressed.

Hitler abandoned his attack in October 1940, realising that it was hopeless, and he turned his attention to Russia, thereby guaranteeing that he would lose the war. Unfortunately, it was to take another five years and countless human tragedies before that was to be.

Would we still have won if America had not come into the war a couple of years later? We simply can't know. A large part of our strength would have been diverted to the Far East and the Japanese onslaught and it would have been difficult to invade Europe in those circumstances. Certainly, it would have taken much longer. And probably we would have ended up with a Russian zone encompassing much of Western Europe. So it is just as well that we never had to find out!