Re: Levente Szileszky Re: If you build a better mousetrap...................
"....alone you weren't even able to land in Europe...." Actually, the British and Commonwealth forces were the senior partners for the invasions of Sicily and Italy, both parts of Europe. Maybe you should read more history? The Yanks were not politically committed to either, preferring the idea of the "short drive" across France to Berlin.
".....the German military machine was far superior to almost anyone...." Yet the British kicked the Germans (and Italians) out of Africa, defeating your supposedly "superior" German forces with minimal assistance - some would say more interference (unintentional from Yanks like Colonel Bonner Fellers, intentional from anglophobes like Admiral King) from the Yanks. Ever heard of a place called El Alamein?
The German loss in North Africa was symptomatic of another German failing - poor choice of friends. The Italians soon swapped sides in 1943. And that was after Hitler's decided to start the inevitable fight with another of his on-off buddies, Stalin. And after his other buddy, Tojo, had given the Yanks the excuse FDR needed to join the War.
Germany went to war without a plan, as evident by the fact Hitler and his cronies had no capability to cross the Channel and defeat Britain in 1940, having never planned beyond the idea of invading France and the Low Countries. And Hitler did so without having built the industrial base required to fight a long war, not even one capable of meeting his mythical idea of then defeating the Soviets in six months.
And what finished Germany was the fact their so-called "efficiency" was a myth, as shown by their chaotic attempts to match even British war production, let alone that of the rest of the Allies. Britain and the Commonwealth would have defeated the Germans in the long run without the help of the US (or even the Soviets) simply due to the fact that Britain and the Empire could out-produce Germany in every field of agriculture and industry and had security of their sources of production. Germany couldn't even effectively bomb half of British factories with their limited force of twin-engined, tactical bombers, let alone those in Canada or Australia, whereas every German factory was within range of the RAF's four-engined bombers.
Germany was also largely dependent on iron ore and oil from abroad, and even when in control of foreign sources for both it still failed to meet the requirements of fighting the British alone. And even when in control of all of Continental Europe the Germans were simply unable to efficiently produce enough food. The only thing that stood between Nazi Germany in WW2 and the starvation that forced Imperial Germany to an armistace in 1918 was the U-boats, and once the Royal Navy got the convoy system working (along with an Anglo-Canadian invention called ASDIC), the Germans had zero chance of winning the War even if they had never invaded Russia. Indeed, Hitler's best hope of avoiding that fate would have been to stay best buddies with Stalin and try to get supplies and food from the Soviets, but he blew that in 1941 (probably about only a few months before the Soviets would have invaded anyway).
So, your so-called "superior" German forces had bad planning, bad organisation, bad alliances, and got their asses handed to them on a plate by the British Empire. The Germans also suffered from two other big failings - over-confidence and political-induced shortsightedness, not too different from their current fascination with the whole "one Europe at any cost" idea.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
