Scipio you were forced to fight in WW2 by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour so please don't act like you came running to our aid. Churchill persuaded Roosevelt to help us deal with the Germans before you took revenge on Japan!
We were not forced the fight Germany because of Pearl Harbor. What could the Germans have done to he US? If the US chose to be like the French and British after the invasion of Poland and simply have a declared war with no fighting, what could Germany have done to us? Nothing.
In the meantime why did the Nazis decide to declare war on us? Because instead of being neutral were were shipping arms and resources to the Allies for free and even using many of our own ships to do it with the US Navy protecting them.
The US CHOSE to help defeat Germany, we didn't have to in order to protect ourselves it was done to protect our allies not the US from German attack.
Had Britain not stood alone in 1940 and won the Battle Of Britain (by not losing it) the story would have been very different. There is every possibility Hitler would not have attacked Russia but would have used Britain as a base to attack the USA. Long range bombers and ICBMs were being designed by the Nazis for that vary purpose.
LMAO, the UK would not have provided any significant jumping point to invade the US. Teh German Navy with its barges and so forth could not even invade the UK Operation Sealion was a joke which is why it was never launched. They could not even cross the channel with their barges let alone could they have been able to cross the Atlantic and invade the US. The long range bombers they desiged were suicide aircraft that could not have made it back fromt he US and they designed them because of the damage the US was doing. They had no plans at all in 1940 to try to prepare to attack the US.
Their aircraft had such limited range they would be lucky to have 15 minutes fighting time over the UK which is why they never even stood much of a chance of invading the UK or doing much harm besides pesky bombing. Their goal was to get the UK to simply stop fighting and withpout lend lease aid the UK would have had little choice but to do so. The UK was bankrupt and without American help could not afford to continue to fight Germany and would not have bene able to do squat to liberate European countries at best the UK could have managed to kick the Axis out of Africa but even that is questionable without American aid.
I don't believe the Nazis could ever have invaded the US across the Atlantic but equally without Britain still fighting the yanks could never have invaded Europe.
Indeed their Navy lacked any such ability, the US Carrier fleet and land based aircraft would have decimated any invasion force.
The US could indeed have invaded Europe successfully with out the UK however the US would have had no reason to do so. The US interest was in aiding the UK and Uk's allies. Without the UK as a jumping point the Naval forces devoted to the War in the pacific would have to have been devoted to the Atlantic. Do you know how many capital ships including large carriers we built? The aid that went to the UK would have gone to building a larger American force.
Using the Uk as a jumping point made things vastly easier and the UK forces meant we didn't have to devote as great a percentage of our 16 million man military to Europe but if necessary we could have and indeed could have instead marched through Italy much faster than we did if we devoted our full strength there instead of France. That would have been one option without using the UK as a jumping point.
The US prepared an invasion plan for Japan which wound up not being necessary. If we could invade Japan and supply such invasion forces which is considerably further than Europe we could indeed supplied suck forces in Europe as well.
The US produced 27 large carriers during WWII and that doesn't count some we scrapped because the war was over before we finished them.
We produceed over 100 escort carriers which could fit 30 aircraft as opposed to 90 on the larger carriers.
We produced 10 battleships and raised and repaired a couple sunk at Pearl.
We produced over 900 cruisers and destroyers. We produced 10,000 ships of other kinds including transports and tankers. This ignores what we had alreayd before the war which was the largest Naval fleet on the planet before the wartime production is added in.
We produced over 300,000 aircraft including a sizable number of long range bombers. The US Air Force at its peak fielded over 75,000 aircraft while the Navy fielded another 45,000 and the USMC over 3000. The RAF at peak strength fielded 9000 aircraft.
The US production would have been even greater if we didn't give away such enormous quantities of copper, aluminum, steel and other metals to the the Allies.
I can go on and on. The US fleet and USAAC dwarfed the UK forces by a wide margin and if the US had to it could have invaded and defeated the Nazis alone. it had the might but would not have the need since the US was fighting to protect its allies not because Germany could have done anything to the US.
At peak strength the UK 21st Army Group fielded 325,000 men (1st Canadian Army 175,000 men UK 2nd Army (including small foreign contingents) fielded 150,000. The UK forces shrunk because they had a hard time replacing losses and by the end of the war had well under 300,000 fielded. The US peak strenth was 2 million men in Europe.
I don't know what planet you are living on that you think Commonwealth forces did most of the fighting in Europe but you are well off the mark. Even if we attribute 400K to the Commonwealth counting all of Europe which it was never that high even counting forces in the rest of Europe it is still 16.6% compared to the US 83.4% of the manpower.
The US Army still had another 5.5 million soldiers based in the US, a sizable number in the Pacific and over 500,00 Marines that could have been deployed to replace the 400,000 froces from other countries fighting in Western/Southern Europe.
The US could indeed have defeated Germany without the commonwealth it simply would have bene more costly and there would have been no reason to do so if the UK were not fighting anymore and thus not being threated by Germany anymore.
Don't take too much credit for Lend-Lease will you ... it's not like you gave us all that material is it? It was very much in America's interest for the Nazis to be defeated and we had to pay you in money and overseas military bases! Lend Lease was as close to war-profiteering as it was to aid!
Actually you are dead wrong. How much did the UK receive from us? $30 billion. How much did the UK pay back? $650 million. That is a lost of over 29 billion if you know how to add. All told we lost $42 billion from lend lease. How is that war profiteering?
In the meantime the Nazis posed no threat to the US itself the threat was to outr allies. One has to seriously wonder where you learned about history.
The bases in the UK were to help liberate Europe which the UK desperately wanted to do for its own balance of power interests but could not do on its own.
Britain's true friends like Australia and New Zealand joined us with 10,000's of soldiers with equipment! They weren't forced to fight by Germany or Japan and they didn't ask for payment for doing so!
I love it "real friends". How much resources and weapons did they give you for free? Did they give you $29 billion like the US? You got over $30 billion and paid back only $650 million. The US also gave a postwar loan at a meager 2% interest rate that was payable in installments over the course of 60 years. The US provided 2 million of the 2.4 million soldiers the Western Allies fielded in Europe. You have no leg to stand on at all with any of your claims. But for the US the UK would have bene broke, had ot sue for peace and Western/Southern Europe would never have been liberated.
Finally you shouldn't dismiss the Russian losses so easily. It was not a matter of 'style' of fighting; the Eastern Front was 4 times the scale of the Western Front in both men and material and it was the Russian army and the Russian winter that broke the back of the Nazi war machine, not John Wayne! And the Russians didn't fight with Sherman tanks did they?
I am not sure how your argument works now! You admit that most of the major fighting didn't even involve the yanks but somehow you won the war by selling arms to others to do the fighting .... that is a bit of a stretch don't you think?
The major fighting in Western and Southern Europe was done by the US. You clearly have no clue what you are talking about in trying to pretend that the bulk of the Western allied force was made up of non-Americans. All I conceded is that on D-Day there were more non-Americans than Americans landed. I noted that AFTER D-day considerably more Americans were landed and well exceeded the non-American forces. The Western Allied forces in Europe peaked at 2.4 million of which 2 million were Americans.
In the meantime the Soviets failed to break the back of the Germany military. 3/4 of the lufwaffee was destroyed by the Western Allies which again was dominated by the US forces. The Kreigsmarine was destroyed by the West not the Soviets. The West also accounted for the majority of total irrevocable Heer/Waffen SS losses.
The Soviets paid us $722 million for over $10 billion worth of goods. Far from selling goods we gave most away like to the UK. In the meantime without these materials the Soviets could not have continued the war. If the US had not helped both the UK and USSR would have had to negoatie peaces or at best have a stalemate with no real fighting with hug swaths of Soviet land in German control.
The Soviet forces suffered enormous casualties because their style of fighting. They suffered 21-25 million military dead to incur irrevocable losses of under 4 million on the German forces. The ratio is because their manner of fighting ad Stlain not giving a crap about his people. indeed he killed millions of his own people before WWII.
