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Main America Wins The War Discussion
I think the description should be rewritten, but I'm not exactly sure how to do it. It seems rather biased, focusing nearly entirely on how Americans think they won the war rather than the hubris of all nations involved, and seems to actually downplay how important American contributions were in an attempt to avert this trope. In addition to being the leaders and main presence in all theatres of war after their entrance (except the Eastern Front of course), and supplying huge amounts of materiel to their allies, Stalin himself said that the war would've been lost without American industrial capacity. Red Orchestra and Operation Darkness are also for some reason listed as aversions, even though they just swap out "America Wins The War" for "The Soviet Union Wins The War" and "Britain Wins The War" respectively.
Anyway, my point is that I think it should be rewritten so that it focuses on all nations rather than just the United States with a little note for every other country at the end.
Also, oddly enough, the first paragraph states "America Wins The War is a form of Hollywood History in which a story implies or outright states that the United States single-handedly won World War II", then proceeds to spend four paragraphs on American perceptions of the war and how wrong they are. But later in the article it states that this is not specifically an American trope, and then only spends three or so sentences on it. These seem to contradict each other and the laconic page.
Petition to include at least WWI? WWII's hardly the only place this has popped up, and in WWI it's close enough to be a near carbon copy of many of the disputes.
"Great Patriotic War" is no another name for the Second World War. Russians use this expression much like Americans speak about "War in the Pacific" (that was not separate war). Furthermore, USSR fought the Axis troops only during Great Patriotic War because between 23 August 1939 and 22 June 1941 USSR and Third Reich were _allies_.
There is some Truth in Television in this trope. While US troops didn't win the war, US machines did a large part. Following Wilson's idea during WWI that America should be the "arsenal of democracy", FDR adopted a policy that America would focus on industrial production in an attempt to spend metal and machines instead of men. Considering that a large part of Allied shipping came to be carried in American Liberty ships, which had an extremely fast average production time of 27 days (although they once built an entire ship from scratch in FOUR days just to show off). By 1944, the American war production machine was building planes faster than the Axis could shoot them down (Henry Ford was producing a B-24 from raw materials EVERY 63 MINUTES). The British in North Africa and elsewhere often used American-made tanks and trucks, and by the war's end, the average Soviet soldier was eating American spam brought to him in an American-made truck.
The above post has some truth; the Allies got a major boost in terms of industrial ability when the US entered the war. Even in 1938, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WORST PART OF THE DEPRESSION, America produced over 3 million cars (one of the best indicators of industrial ability at the time.) Germany only managed 330,000, 10% of American production, and the Japanese only produced 36,000, a little more than 1%. When the war started, America had a lot of fallow industrial equipment and a displaced workforce. When the war started, all that industrial capability was put to use in the war industry, in a nation that already was outproducing most everyone. By the end of the war, America was home to 50% OF THE WORLD'S TOTAL INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION. Declaring war on the United States was single biggest mistake of the Axis.
Point of all that is, while US troops didn't win the war alone, American industrial production played an extremely significant part in keeping alive the war-fighting capabilities and US troops DID play a major role in many of the major offensive actions against the Axis. It's easy to see how a sort of Adaptation Distillation leads to the trope that the Americans won the war alone.
All facts (or at least most of them; all on industrial capabilities) are from Patrick Kennedy's Freedom from Fear: The American People During Depression and War: 1929-1945.
I've heard of "Truth in Television" ... Is there "Truth in Tropes" too? Cause the USA did freaking win World War II! You Fail History Forever.
Nobody said the US did it alone. I've listened to alot of what was on the radio back then and that's not what they were saying. They talked about the other countries involved too. But it's pretty obvious that the United States entering the war was a major, major turning point without which it's probable that the baddies would have won.
And it could be quite intelligently argued that World War II didn't begin until the United States entered the war - the key word being "World." It could be argued that it's not really a "World War" until both sides of the Atlantic are involved. The conflict certainly didn't start with the US directly involved, but one could say that the World War did.
And the Brits who criticize the US for not getting off their lazy asses until 1942 have a right to complain.
There are good reasons to say that World War 2 began in 1939. Within two weeks of the beginning of the invasion of Poland, governments on five continents declared war on Germany (the UK, France, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Canada) and naval actions before the year went out also involved the waters off a sixth, South America.
The Sino-Japanese War on the other hand was a purely regional one that (apart from the war on the Soviet-Manchurian border from May to September 1939) only involved two nations until December 1941 (although more than two parties, as part of the time the Nationalist and Communist Chinese armies were also fighting each other). So you can plausibly argue that the conflict in Asia (and the Pacific) became "global" only after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Compare the situation with other major wars. The Seven Years War (1756-1763) has sometimes been described as a "first world war" because it was fought not only in Europe, but also in the Americas, India etc., but no one says it should be called the Nine Years War because the Anglo-French War in North America had already begun in 1754. Or look at the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) - the Spanish-Dutch part of that war had begun fifty years earlier, in 1568, but while both the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War were ended in the peace of Münster and Osnabrück, the Spanish-French war begun in 1635 as part of the Thirty Years War was only ended by the peace of the Pyrenees in 1659.
Just removed the following:
'On the other hand, everyone seems to forget that World War II was the most "world" of the World Wars, what with the massive war in the Pacific and East Asia. That one America really did win mostly on its own: while the Chinese did most of the dying, the key front was the grinding war in the Pacific, which despite British, British Empire, and Dutch assistance was primarily a US-Japan affair.'
The person who wrote this not only was Completely Missing The Point and Did Not Do The Research, but the phrase 'Chinese did most of the dying' is just so wrong, so damned wrong, THAT I ACTUALLY LOST MY COOL. Yes, I actually shouted that inside my head. Sorry about being uncivil, but there's a limit to how much I can tolerate. And this isn't the first time this sort of thing appears here too...
Again, removed the following:
'Interestingly, the one front of the war—the Pacific—that usually gets overlooked by everybody's media in the West really was won mostly (mind you, mostly—the British and Dutch did a fair amount of fighting, and the theory only works if you regard the Sino-Japanese War as a separate front) by the United States. For the greatest naval war history has ever seen, the Pacific Theater World War II gets an incredibly small amount of attention in any media (except, of course, in Japan, which would rather forget the rather-less-honorable war on the Asian mainland...).'
It's better phrased, and avoids the 'jocalur' problem of before, but it's still wrong. The Pacific War receives a huge amount of attention in all kinds of media, precisely because of the fact that it was one of the theaters of war where the US was a major factor.
For example, take a look at this
compared to this, 73 films vs 21 films... and that's just movies. Watch some television or documentaries and pretty the same thing happens. And the focus tends to be on the US, not other countries too.
Let me give you one VERY glaring example of that may spark a mini flame war, but it's worth pointing out: the invasion of Manchuria by the Soviets. Arguably the most successful operation of the whole war, the Soviets captured an area the size of europe and a grand total of 640,276 prisoners during that small campaign, much, much more than any other country, utterly devastating the Japanese mainland army and effectively crushing any hope of Japan keeping China.
It's a debatable question of how much this factored into the surrender of the Japan, but <only> because of the issue of whether or not the Japanese government realized the full extent of the disaster that befell them; many argue that it was, together with atomic bombings, the main cause of the Japanese surrender and, at the very least, it's reasonable to put forth this theory.
And here's the kicker: how many movies have you ever seen of this invasion? How many times have you ever heard of the mainstream media ever mention this invasion? Any media? None whatsoever, right? And this is ignoring all other battles and fronts of the pacific war... and other countries involved and whatnot.
So the point I'm trying to make is very simple: the Pacific Ocean front was not won solely won by the US, it's debatable whether or not it was even won by mainly due to US efforts and, <most certainly>, it is not, by any reasonable measure, underrepresented: if anything, given the total amount of casualties involved, it is vastly overrepresented.
So please, karstovich, stop making these edits. They're just plain wrong.
compared to this, 73 films vs 21 films... and that's just movies. Watch some television or documentaries and pretty the same thing happens. And the focus tends to be on the US, not other countries too.
Let me give you one VERY glaring example of that may spark a mini flame war, but it's worth pointing out: the invasion of Manchuria by the Soviets. Arguably the most successful operation of the whole war, the Soviets captured an area the size of europe and a grand total of 640,276 prisoners during that small campaign, much, much more than any other country, utterly devastating the Japanese mainland army and effectively crushing any hope of Japan keeping China.
It's a debatable question of how much this factored into the surrender of the Japan, but <only> because of the issue of whether or not the Japanese government realized the full extent of the disaster that befell them; many argue that it was, together with atomic bombings, the main cause of the Japanese surrender and, at the very least, it's reasonable to put forth this theory.
And here's the kicker: how many movies have you ever seen of this invasion? How many times have you ever heard of the mainstream media ever mention this invasion? Any media? None whatsoever, right? And this is ignoring all other battles and fronts of the pacific war... and other countries involved and whatnot.
So the point I'm trying to make is very simple: the Pacific Ocean front was not won solely won by the US, it's debatable whether or not it was even won by mainly due to US efforts and, <most certainly>, it is not, by any reasonable measure, underrepresented: if anything, given the total amount of casualties involved, it is vastly overrepresented.
So please, karstovich, stop making these edits. They're just plain wrong.
In paragraph 6 of the article I do agree with most of it, but is it not a bit of a sweeping statement saying America's WW 2 aid is 'never' mentioned or appreciated? Both sets of my grandparents informed me that without that aid they (Britain) would have been up the creek. And its hard not to mention or forget anyway, as the british people have been paying the WW 2 aid debt back up until very recently. The acclaimed documentary series 'The World at War' pulls no punches in regards to showing the whole truth about all aspects of the War.