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Dan Snow's History Hit
5 Reasons the Allies Won the War
00:45:15
What really tipped the scales in the Allies’ favour during World War II?
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Dan Snow
Hi, folks. Dan here.
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James Holland
I have some very, very exciting news for you.
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Dan Snow
To celebrate our 10th anniversary with you, we are doing a live show of.
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James Holland
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Dan Snow
So please join me on Friday 12th.
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James Holland
September in London town. By popular demand, I'll be retelling the story of the legend, Thomas Cochrane, the.
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Dan Snow
Goat greatest of all time, the man.
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James Holland
Who inspired the movie Master and commander, and the looking back over 10 years of making this podcast.
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Dan Snow
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James Holland
Veterans, Holocaust survivors, and some of the greatest historians in the world. It's a time for me to hang out with you guys and answer any burning questions you may have.
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Dan Snow
So don't miss it. It's going to be an epic party.
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James Holland
And there is no one I'd rather spend it with. All of you dedicated listeners, you can.
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Dan Snow
Get tickets at the link in the.
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James Holland
Show notes, but hurry because they are selling fast. See you there. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's history. Yet it is the greatest and most terrible destructive war in history. World War II, the Second World War. We've talked about it so often on this podcast. Many of us are so fascinated by its monstrous size, intensity, its scale, its repercussions, but also by the details, the experiences that men, women and children had in the front line or in factories or in crowded stations of the London Underground sheltering from the blitz. And yet, something we haven't really done on this podcast is to just step back and ask the biggest question of why did the Allies win? And the answer isn't straightforward. First of all, never forget that at the sharp end, victory had to be won. It had to be carved out, to be delivered by the young men who waded ashore under fire, who engaged Tiger tanks, who gripped the steering columns of aircraft holding straight and level through a blizzard of steel. It had to be won by the men and women on the home front who hacked at coal, who riveted ships hulls and crunched data. But victory also needed leadership. It needed resources and organization. It needed vision and strategy. The winners made better decisions. The Axis powers, they made shocking, crucial mistakes.
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Dan Snow
In this episode, I'm going to explore.
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James Holland
Five big reasons behind the Allied triumph. First, we're going to just look at the strategic overview, the direction. We're going to look at Hitler's mismanagement, essentially his obsession with control, paranoia, megalomania. He was a cancer that destroyed Germany from within. Second, you know me, I'm a Navy guy. We're going to look at command of the seas. We're going to look at the global picture, how dominating the world's oceans really allowed the Allies to access every corner of the world. They could move troops and supplies, they could gain information and resources. They could attack where and when they wanted. Third is the importance of collaboration. The shared strategic vision of the victorious coalition, the shared vision that kept Britain and its Commonwealth and empire, the United.
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Dan Snow
States, the Soviet Union and other allies.
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James Holland
Working alongside each other despite deep ideological differences. And that's in total contrast to the Axis, who were in this respect, a shambles. Fourth, let's talk about the overwhelming advantage in resources and production from American oil and steel and frankly, many other American resources, the giant output of the American economy at the time to the wheat of the Canadian planes, to the tanks pouring out of Soviet factories. And last but not least, we're going to talk about the Allied investment in technological innovation, from radar to code breaking to landing craft and the atomic bomb that really helped to tilt the war in their favor.
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Dan Snow
This is the story of how the.
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James Holland
Allies didn't just survive the greatest conflict in human history, they won it. And they won it hands down. Joining me, I'm thrilled to say I've got one of my oldest friends in this game. I've got James Holland, historian, best selling authority, broadcaster, YouTuber, Instagrammer, host of we have Ways podcast, legend in the field. He specializes in the history of the Second World War. He's always been such a good friend to me in the podcast. It's a great pleasure to have him back on again. Enjoy, folks.
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T minus 2 atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the King. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.
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Dan Snow
James Holland, Good to see you again, man.
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James Holland
Yeah, good to see you too, Dan. Always, always.
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Dan Snow
We know the Second World War was the biggest, most costly, destructive, dramatic war in history. We know all that. It defines everything that comes afterwards. It is a vast and fascinating event in the history of mankind.
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James Holland
But James Holland, was it close?
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Well, actually, I've got this theory that, that basically the Germans got to a situation probably by October, certainly November 1941, where they were very, very unlikely to win. By that point, I don't think the Japanese ever really had a chance. So, no, I don't think it was. But it's interesting, both regimes, both the Nazi regime and the Imperial Japanese, they're both just trying to achieve the impossible because the whole German way of war traditionally, you know, going back to Frederick the Elector, Frederick the Great. All the rest of it. And into the 19th century. The Pruss then German way of war is to win your wars as quickly as possible and you do it with overwhelming force. At the Schwerpunk, you know, the point of attack, you do the kettle schlack, the cauldron war, where you kind of attack in a pincer movement, you encircle your enemy, annihilate them and win and it's all over in three days, you know, a week for three months at the most, but all very quickly. The main reason for that is because in the German situation, Prussian situation, they like the heart of Europe and they don't have access to the world's oceans. And the world is becoming a smaller place with every advancing decade and century and you need resources and Germany doesn't have a lot of it. So what you have to do is you have to win very quickly before resources come into play. The moment the war extends into a long, protracted, drawn out enterprise, the German strict Russians are going to be on a back seat because they can't supply themselves, they don't have those resources. So you know, that's the whole point about conquering France very quickly and Scandinavia and the Low Countries early on in the war, because then you can take a whole lot of resources. And that's the whole point of going into the Soviet Union in 1941. So you can have that Lebensraum, you know. Another word for it is colonialism, where you can get all the resources you need from the Soviet Union. But the problem is getting that is really, really difficult because maintaining your effort, your war effort in the west is hard because you haven't subdued Britain by the end of 1940. Hovering in the wings is America with its huge modernity and industrial capacity and manpower. And of course the Soviet Union is absolutely vast. So there's all sorts of logistics coming to play. So it makes it very, very difficult. And the same sort of problems are really facing the Imperial Japanese as well. They don't have the resources. They don't have the resources they need. You know, everything they do has to be amphibious, which means you need huge amounts of shipping. And unless you win and strike a hammer blow, a really proper hammer blow, and Pearl harbor in December 1941 isn't that then you're going to be on the back foot and you're going to lose.
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Dan Snow
Right, exactly. The decisive battle illusion, the dream that you can win it all with one great roll of the iron dice and defeat your enemy. Yes, James, having said all that, it is the most extraordinary and fascinating conflict in our history. And that's the reason you've devoted your life to studying and communicating about. And I agree with you. Let's go into some of the reasons we think the Allies won the war and we're going to. We've sort of identified five or six different fields and I'm going to get you just to break it all down for us. And the one that people will be sort of probably most familiar with, and it is one that's sort of popularly regarded as one of Germany's great weaknesses is Adolf Hitler himself. His interventions, his meddling, his incompetence, perhaps even his drug addled sort of madness really by the end. How important is Hitler to the Allied victory?
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James Holland
I think he is a key component to that. I mean, he's also one of the reasons why the war drags on for basically six years in Europe. Because his whole mindset, you have to get yourself inside. Well, you don't really want to get yourself inside his head, but you have to understand where he's coming from. So he's got a very sort of myopic worldview. His worldview is one that's of a continentalist. Of course, it's completely rooted in his extremely warped ideology. In his whole way of looking at the world is a kind of us and them either or black or white scenario. There's never any gray area of Hitler. There's always like either or. And when he's sort of pushing himself forward as the leader of the Nazis in the early 1920s, he's presenting it as it's us against them and them is, you know, the Bolshevik Jewish plot. I mean it's just absolute nonsense, but I mean that's what he believes. And so the ideology is at the root of it. But of course that ideology is a straitjacket as well because it means you can't do things in the way that you practically should do. I mean the amount of people that have said to me, you know, if only Hitler had just sort of brought all the Ukrainians into his side in 1941, you know, they won. It's like, yeah, but you're missing the point. I mean, it's an ideological war. I mean, that's just never going to happen because it's Hitler. And so again he presents this picture of it's either the Thousand Year Reich, this is what the Germans deserve, or if they're not man enough and there is no triumph of the will, then it will be Armageddon. And that's the choice and it's up to the German people to prove that we can be the masters of the world or we're going to fail. So it's either going to be Faznier Reich or it's going to be Armageddon again. It's this kind of either or black or white thing and that's dictating everything. But that's one of the reasons why the war lasts so long is because usually people give up in wars. You know, they surrender or sign an armistice because they're not going to win and they've run out of cash. Well, as I was saying right up front, that scenario is created effectively by November 1941 or certainly by December 1941. But he doesn't do that because he's Hitler. So on the one side he is a huge advantage to the Allies because he's such a military numbskull. But on the other hand it's him and his myopia and his worldview in this black and white kind of Armageddon or thousand year Reich that is ensuring that the war goes on again. But it is really interesting and his meddling gets worse and worse and worse. So first of all, let's go back to August 1939, the order for the invasion of Poland. Initially he gives his commanders, I think that was like three or four days originally. It's going to go in on something like the 28th of August, he tells them on the 23rd. So there's no time at all. Then there's a bit of a delay going on while there's sort of last minute diplomatic negotiations which he's very irritated about and just finds a huge pain in the ass. And then he finally goes for it. But you know, the army is simply not ready for it. And actually, although it's completely. They overwhelmed the polls, there's lots of things that go wrong and which point to the fact that Germany actually isn't ready for a global conflict at all. And where they've been very clever is this propaganda with all the kind of sort of automaton SS troops and military parades and all the rest of it, which were quite a new thing at the time in the 20th century and look really impressive and scared everyone. And you know, there's no question that all that film footage that Leni Riesenthal took and all the kind of news rules that Nazi did, that played into the paranoia of the West. Yet at the same time as the west is getting paranoid about it, they're also going, yeah, but you know, Nazi Germany doesn't have our industrial capacity, doesn't have our access to the world's oceans. If they attack us, we've just got to kind of hold fire, and then we can counterattack in our own pace and build up our own strength and overtake the Germans, blah, blah, blah. So there's this kind of sort of mixed feeling about how the war will play out. But apart from that mad decision to go into Poland, when he does go into Poland and putting all his commanders off their pace, he then insists on attacking the west as early as November 1939. And they're just not ready. They're absolutely ready. They've got shortages of ordnance, they've got shortages of all sorts of things. He does listen to his senior military leadership at this point and does accept it. So, you know, the Blitzkrieg in the west doesn't start till the attack on Scandinavia in the beginning of April, on 9th April 1940, and then subsequently the big one, which is case yellow, which is the invasion of Low Countries in France on 10th May 1940. And thereafter he starts to meddle. But one of the reasons why the Germans have been so successful in Poland, in Scandinavia, in the Blitzkrieg in the west in May 1940, is because of the traditional Prussian way, which is to allow your commanders at the front quite a lot of scope. So this is okay, Cross the River Mers and get there in three days and across it in four. How you do it is up to you, because you're the commander on the ground and you're the best judge to kind of make those decisions. So Guderian, for example, who has got a core of the best trained, most mechanized panzer troops, and when I mean panzer troops, I mean all arms, motorized infantry, motorized artillery, anti aircraft artillery, anti tank artillery, and of course, tanks and reconnaissance stuff as well, the whole shooting match. He is given quite a lot of latitude, even from his immediate superior, who is General von Kleist. So von Kleist says, I want you to attack across the River Meuse here. And Guderian basically goes, no. And once it's successful, there's no recourse for Guderian at all. He then says, you know, I want you to wait for all the infantry to turn up. And Guderian goes across the Canal Dardenne, and again goes against what von Kleist has told him to, but again gets away with it because he's successful. Then there is a moment on the 24th of May where Hitler starts to intervene, and this is the notorious halt order, where there is nervousness higher up the chain of command from the old school Prussian military elites, that these panzer units are getting ahead of the infantry too far ahead, that they're overextending their lines. And so von Rundstedt, who is the army group commander at von Kleist's behest, who is the next stage down, halts the panzers. And when General Halder hears this, who is the chief of staff of the German army, because that's absolutely insane, and rescinds it and actually takes away this panzer group from the command of Army Group A and puts it into Army Group B be because he realizes that Holder realizes that this is golden opportunity to encircle all the Allied forces in the north of France, which includes, incidentally, the British Expeditionary Force, the bef, who are now falling back towards Dunkirk. And the following day, Hitler turns up and says, okay, so how are your panzers getting on? And von Rundstedt rather kind of sniffily says, well, I don't know, my Fuhrer, because the panzers have been taken out of my command. And Hitler at that point goes, what? You know, how dare these decisions be made without recourse to me. I'm turning them back over to you. And it's up to you when the halt order is lifted, and as a consequence of that, you know, they're out of action for three days. And that gives the British a time to kind of fall back to Dunkirk, get a perimeter, sort themselves out, and the absolute golden opportunity to encircle all of the BEF and indeed all of the northern French armies is missed. And as we know, 338,000 British and French troops are lifted from Dunkirk, and the BEF lives to fight another day, blah, blah, blah, and Britain's able to fight on throughout the summer of 1940, and then wins the Battle of Britain. And subsequently, that means that Hitler then thinks, oh, my God, I've run out of all my resources. I'm running out. I've still got Britain in the war, America's in the background. I need to go into the Soviet Union two years earlier than I was initially planning, with catastrophic results. So there you have it laid on a plate, this terrible, terrible decision by Hitler. And the only reason he makes that decision is because he feels slighted. He feels that his authority has been questioned by Holder making a decision which is a military decision rather than a political decision, behind his back, without consulting Hitler first. But, you know, Holder was unquestionably, absolutely right. So there you have it. And of course, what then happens is France does get beaten and completely defeated in six weeks. And it is a strategic earthquake in the nature of the war. And Hitler returns to Berlin at the beginning of July and does this sort of triumph, this sort of Caesarean triumph through Berlin with quarter of a million people lining the streets and swastikas everywhere and the sun shining. And you know, he just thinks he's the absolute daddy when it comes to military genius to be or to best Hannibal or Alexander the Great or something. And if so, he started to believe his own hype. And this is the problem with autocracies and autocrats is you're surrounded by yes men and sycophants. People tell you what you want to hear rather than the unpalatable truth. The meddling starts there and he decides.
- [16:31]
Dan Snow
He'S going to open a two front wall, he's gonna invade the Soviet Union. He makes that decision without putting in place the necessary plans to make that a kind of multi year campaign. He thinks, I know, we'll kick the door down, the whole rotten structure will come collapsing. He's moving units around the Soviet Union battlefield, isn't he? Constantly reversing directives, changing directions.
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James Holland
Yeah, yeah.
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Dan Snow
And then as you mentioned earlier, he also launches a campaign of genocide against the people of Ukraine and elsewhere to just stamp out any chance there might have been of people welcoming them as liberators.
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James Holland
Exactly. It is absolutely nuts. So first of all, going into the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, they're not ready for this. They actually have fewer aircraft to support them than they did on the 10th of May 1940. So just a little over a year earlier, he also decides to go into Crete in May. So a month before Operation Barbarossa, which is the world's largest military operation, goes into Crete, loses half his transport fleet. You know, he actually lost something like 352 aircraft on 10 May 1940, which is the worst single day for the Luftwaffe in the entire war. You know, this is the start of the great victory blitz back in 1940. So it's a nonsensical decision. And yes, I'm sure it would have been jolly useful to have Crete, but not when you're just about to do Barbarossa and boy, you're going to need those transport planes which are now sitting in a crumpled heap on Crete or at the bottom of the Mediterranean. And the reason he goes into Soviet Union when he does in June 1941 is because he hasn't won the Battle of Britain. So he's now thinking, oh well, we don't Want a two front war. But I'm also, I'm running out of supplies. You know, I'm running out of things because basically the Germans have been like kids in a sweet shop. And all these new territories they've taken in Europe, you know, Scandinavia, France, Low Countries and all the rest of it. And Poland, the cupboards are bare. By the end of 1940 they've half inched it all and there's nothing left. So they're running out of everything. They're running out of oil, they're running out of this, they're running out of that. They haven't got enough resources to protract the war. So he's thinking, okay, well I've still got Britain there and I've got America hovering in the background. I need to do something quick. I need to get into Soviet Union much quicker than I thought I was going to do. Soviet Union weren't very impressive when they went into Poland at the end of 1939 and we defeated France, which is kind of one of the great nations in the world. How hard can it be, you know? Well, it's incredibly hard because the Soviet Union is absolutely vast. And actually it is Paulus, who later commanding 6th army at Stalingrad, who has to surrender 6th army at Stalingrad. He was on the staff of the Oberkommando de Wehrmacht, the Combined General Staff. And he is asked to kind of oversee the plans for Barbarossa and do sort of war game it in the first part of 1941. And he does so and comes back and he says it's not really possible. And they go, no, no, no, no, no, go away and have another go. Make it work. And he goes, all right. So he does. And he comes up with another plan which sort of does work, but it's bonkers. The whole thing is built on the flimsiest foundations. And the truth is it doesn't matter how successful they are in the first weeks of Barbarossa, they're not successful enough because they might have got to Smolensk by the 15th of July in little over three weeks. But thereafter they basically move only about 100 miles in the next three months. And that's not enough. And they're running out of steam. The trouble is, is the way the German army is fixed up particularly is it's all about the spearheads. And the spearheads are comparatively few in number. So I think it's something like 20 Panzer divisions are used out of 190 odd or whatever it is in Barbarossa. So it's a Comparatively small percentage, but they're doing kind of 80% of the hard toil and 80% of the fighting. And they are being attrited even when they're winning. So the 16th Panzer Division, for example, by the 16th of July, a day after the fall of, of the city of Smolensk, has 12 tanks left, you know, out of, you know, 180 that it should have had. So they're winning, they're capturing vast, you know, millions of Red army troops, but they're kind of winning themselves to death at the same time. And that's the problem. There's just overreach. It's what's called the culmination point, when you can no longer achieve what you want to do the way you want to do it, because your supply lines are too stretched and you don't have enough coming through. And they reached that probably in August.
- [20:25]
Dan Snow
So the Allies were lucky in that the opposing warlord, the supreme commander, was pretty hopeless, I mean, and got worse through the war. I mean, just to finish off this section, I mean, Hitler was a massive, massive drain on German resources, effectively.
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James Holland
Well, yeah, I mean, if you ever want to hear one really, really bad decision, it's Wachtam Rhein, you know, this is the Battle of the Bulge is absolutely bonkers, you know, and everyone always says that the Battle of the Bulge. This is his winter offensive, launched in the early hours of 16 December 1944, through the wooded, hilly, river strewn wintery Ardennes, with its narrow network of roads and tracks. Everyone says this is Hitler's last gamble. But by calling it a gamble, that's suggesting that it's actually got a sort of chance of success. It has zero chance of success. It is simply not going to achieve what it wants to achieve, which is to split the Allied armies in two and, and reach Antwerp. They simply don't have enough to be able to maintain a frost that deep, that big, that successful. It's insane.
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Dan Snow
And he sets fire to vital supplies of fuel, infantry, armour, the whole works. In doing so.
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James Holland
Yep, it's a total shower.
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Dan Snow
Hastens the end of the war. Just before we move on, he declares war on America, doesn't he? He made Roosevelt's life very simple. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. The Americans don't yet enter the war against Germany, they're in the war against Japan. And then Hitler declares war on them.
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James Holland
Yeah, pretty mad decision. I mean, again, this, it's really interesting because when Pearl harbor happens, Churchill goes, oh, thank good, that means we'll win the war after all. And when Hitler hears It he goes, oh, thank God. That means Hitler will win the war after all. Because in Hitler's view, what he's thinking is that the Americans will now turn all their effort to Japan and ignore Europe. And that's because his geopolitical understanding is extremely poor, to put it mildly. And I would say that one of the great advantages that the Western Allies have, particular is that they have two men as political leaders who have terrific geopolitical understanding in Churchill and Roosevelt, which is a huge advantage as opposed to a massive disadvantage from the access point of view.
- [22:23]
You're listening to Dan Snow's history. We're asking why the Allies won the war. It's important.
- [22:28]
Dan Snow
More coming up.
- [22:35]
James Holland
The McDonald's snack wrap is back.
- [22:37]
Dan Snow
You brought it back. Ranch snack wrap.
- [22:40]
James Holland
Spicy snack wrap.
- [22:42]
Dan Snow
You broke the Internet for a snack.
- [22:46]
James Holland
Snack Wrap is back.
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- [23:25]
Dan Snow
Okay, so James, that's dealt with Hitler. Hitler very poor. Supreme commander. Germany at massive disadvantage. One of the great reasons why Germany and its allies lost Second World War. You know me, James, I love talking about maritime history. Can we come to control of the seas, which I guess also we could probably just bundle up in the simple access to global markets and global resource and therefore the just enormous disadvantage that Germany and Italy, for example, in Europe faced. I mean, this is a mismatch for all the vaunted German industrial base. Germany is at an enormous disadvantage, particularly because its enemies control the seas.
- [24:01]
James Holland
Yeah, absolutely. There are very, very few nations in the world that have all the resources you need to protract a long and arduous war. So how do you get it? Well, you have to go across sea to get it because the main means of transporting anything in bulk is by sea, just as it is to this day. And in 1939, Britain has the world's largest navy in the world's largest merchant fleet and has access to around 80% of the world's merchant shipping. It's a very interesting map of global shipping of 1937. And you can see the little ant lines all coming, coming in and out across the Atlantic and down to the South Atlantic. I mean, there's one very, very strong ant line going between Argentina And Britain, for example, Argentina is not part of the British Empire, but Britain has huge extra imperial assets there. It owns most of the railways, owns most of the ports, owns most of the farms there. So Britain's reach is absolutely huge. Second largest navy in the world is the United States. The largest oil producer in the world is the United States. The second largest oil producer in the world by some margin is Venezuela, Azerbaijan, you know, the Soviet Union, Baku and all the rest of it. The Caucasus, that's third, but by quite a long stretch down the Middle east is way, way, way, way down. So what that means is that Britain has access to the world's oceans at the start of the war, and increasingly with America's huge industrial might, so does America. And these are just enormous advantages. And if you look at the map of Europe and you look at Germany, Germany's got a little bit of the North Sea, but there's an economic blockade by the superior British navy at that time. And it's got the narrow sort of network of channels around the Baltic Sea and that's it. So it doesn't really have that many sources of real fuel, which then means you have to use, create synthetic fuel, which is incredibly expensive and uses coal, but you know, you also need coal for all sorts of other processes as well. So they're constantly getting themselves into a logistical and supply tangle. It's the whole reason for going into Barbarossa in the first place. So command of the seas is absolutely vital the moment the war goes on for more than a few months. And this is why saving the BEF in 1940 is so important and why winning the Battle of Britain is so important. Because what it means is suddenly Germany is committed to a long drawn out war. And in a long drawn out war, the nations with the greatest access to the world's oceans are almost certainly going to win. Because that's how you can access resources, the resources you need to protract this long drawn out war. And there's no question about it to my mind that the Battle of the Atlantic is the single most important theater of the entire Second World War. Because through the Atlantic flows everything out and in from Britain. You know, you can't do Normandy, you can't do D Day without the Atlantic. Britain can't survive in 1940 without the Atlantic. You can't reinforce Southeast Asia or the Middle east or North Africa without it. And one of the greatest mistakes the Germans make is by concentrating on recreating a surface fleet in the late 1930s rather than a huge U boat fleet. So amazing though it is, there are never more than 13 U boats operating in the Atlantic in 1940, and by January 1941, that figure is 6. The Atlantic is a big old place, and 6 U boats is not going to make a big difference. And the truth of the matter is, is that over 80% of all sailings across the Atlantic get there from A to B unscathed. In fact, actually, the number of sailings in The Atlantic is 1.4% which has sunk. And that sounds absolutely as though the U boats never got close. Of course they do. They sink about 25% of British merchant shipping during the war. But that's, of course, because each ship is doing more than one sailing. It's doing multiple sailings. But the fact of the matter is that there are never enough U boats to do critical amount of damage to Britain's supply lines. And I think you can say pretty safely by May 1941, with the sinking of the Bismarck, the sinking or capture or killing of three really, really experienced U boat commanders in Preen, Shepka and Kretschmer, and the capture of, of an Enigma machine with a code book, those three things which happened between March 1941 and May 1941, I think that really puts the battle of the Atlantic outcome beyond any doubt. The Wolfpacks are ultimately defeated by May 1943. So two years later. So it is a terrible, bitter, awful, brutal battle, but it is one where the Germans fail to understand its importance in the big scheme of things and don't do enough to make the Allies life difficult. It's difficult, but it's not as difficult as it could have been, and that's catastrophic. And in the meantime, the Allies, of course, are producing huge amounts of shipping, both of assault shipping, which are required when you're an island nation or you're a nation that's on the other side of an ocean, or when you're protracting a war in the Pacific, which is all about sort of capturing islands and battles and, and all the rest of it, you need lots of assault craft and you also need auxiliary vessels, you know, support vessels. And of course, you need warships and aircraft carriers. And all of that requires a huge amount of ship building. But it is amazing that at the start of the war there are no such thing as landing craft, you know, and it's not until 1941 that the landing ship is developed. It's not until May 1941, I think, that the Higgins boat is finally trialed. The Liberty ship is designed by Cyril Thompson, who's A shipbuilder in Sunderland then exported over to the United States. And a ship that was originally designed, the Liberty ship that was originally designed to be built in 225 days in November 1942, is built in 5 days, 15 hours and 26 minutes. I mean, it's just absolutely astonishing. That's a stunt. And they go back to a much more reasonable 25 to 30 days. But even so, that's just insanely fast. And by the summer of 1942, they're building way more merchant ships than they're losing. The number of warships is continuing to rise, both in Britain and in the United States and to a certain extent in Japan, but not at the rate of losses. And so the sliding scales are such that shipbuilding is increasing despite the losses for the Allies, but decreasing for the Axis forces in a very, very, very bad way. So shipping is absolutely vital to the whole thing.
- [29:57]
Dan Snow
And we should remind people that controlling the seas also allows you. You can move stuff around. So you can support the Soviets, for example, give them all the food and weapons and vehicles that they need to fight the Nazis. But you can also choose the timing and location of your. You land in northwest Africa, you land in northwest Europe, you can land in southern Italy, Sicily, Italy, the source of all your wonderful books, and southern France, and indeed in the Pacific. The Americans have all the mobility. The Japanese have no power to move anything around men or munitions. They're isolated on those islands because the Americans control the ocean. So you can actually choose where to go and how to get there.
- [30:35]
James Holland
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the main reasons why the war isn't over as quick as it is is because of a lack of shipping. Now, that may sound crazy, because I think the figure is something like 8713 assault craft are built in the United states alone between May 1942 and April 1943, which is a phenomenal number. But that increased number has also escalated the speed with which the Americans want to operate in the Pacific. And landing ships. These 120 meter long vessels, which only have a draft of 4 foot 8 inches, are the key vessel amongst all of them to enable you to do major operations, amphibious operations, whether you be landing on a beach in an atoll in the mid Pacific or whether you be crossing the Channel and going to Normandy. But one of the reasons why the Italian campaign takes so long, for example, is because there isn't enough assault shipping to be able to do an outflanking manoeuvre. There is not enough to be able to Do a simultaneous landing in Normandy and in the southern France at the same time. And that unquestionably lengthens the speed of the war. So for D day, there is 4,127 assault craft. And that sounds like an absolutely vast number. Of course it is, but it's never as much as Allied commanders would like, ideally. In other words, what I'm saying is there are the supplies and manpower to support more operations than there are the salt shipping to enable that.
- [31:59]
Dan Snow
Okay. So I think that's control the seas and shipping and resource. Moving resources around and men and material is so important.
- [32:06]
James Holland
Absolutely key to the whole thing. It is, I would say, almost the single most important factor of all.
- [32:12]
Dan Snow
Nice. Okay, well, let's come on to the third basket, which is, and you've touched on this a little bit, but the coalition strategy and coordination you mentioned, Roosevelt and Church in particular have a very good geopolitical understanding. Explain how that practically works and coordination. And then if you would, contrast it with the astonishing lack of coordination between these so called Axis powers where they're sort of finding out about each other's offensives pointing in entirely different directions, not in any way helping each other out whatsoever. I mean, I think people will be amazed to hear that.
- [32:41]
James Holland
Well, yes, and there's been this sort of part of the narrative of the Second World War has been journo historians writing about the Allies and rubbing their hands with glee as they find another diary entry with someone slagging off Monty or someone slagging off Patton or whoever it might be, and the Americans bitching about the Limeys and the British being supercilious about their transatlantic cousins and all this kind of stuff. The truth is the Western alliance is a marriage made in heaven. And it is absolutely remarkable. And I think the sort of apogee of coalition warfare is probably D Day, where the scales of coalition cooperation, coordination are just second to none. Because actually Britain and America are quite different. They're quite different in their approach. They're quite different culturally. They're quite different in how they're imagining the post war order is going to be, et cetera, et cetera. And yet for the duration of the war, they put that largely, not entirely, but largely to one side. And certainly when it comes to military matters, there are enough checks and balances and enough to of an understanding that we need to pull together on this, that the whole show works very, very successfully. So what you've got is you've got a united political front and united military front, D Day and achieving victory in Europe by May 1945 shows what can be done when people are pulling together for a common cause, and whether that be sharing supplies, sharing resources, similar strategic goals, ironing out differences. It's absolutely amazing. And really, it is incredible how well the commanders do get on with one another from different nationalities. And quite often when you look at this in a deep dive, you discover that actually the clashes are more of a personality rather than on national lines. So I think that has been completely overcooked, if I'm brutally honest. Whereas, as you point out, in contrast, I mean, the way Nazi Germany treated its allies was just appalling, just terrible, was unspeakably awful to the Italians, unspeakably awful to all their other Eastern European partners, paid lip service to the Japanese, little more. I mean, there's no sense of a sort of common goal, common purpose, just absolutely hopeless. So again, and that worked very much to the Allies advantage rather than against it. So I think there does need to be a kind of rethink on how we view all this.
- [35:05]
Dan Snow
People will always find it astonishing that Japan, which borders on the Soviet Union, along with its axis partner, Nazi Germany, they could have attacked when Operation Barbarossa happened. The Japanese could have invaded Siberia from their empire in northern China, and they absolutely declined to do so. That could have made an important contribution.
- [35:23]
James Holland
Yes. I mean, one of the reasons why Marshal Zhukov is able to successfully counterattack outside Moscow in December 1941 is because he's got two armies that have come from the sort of Manchurian front. And the reason is because he knows that Japan is about to launch an attack on America and is not interested.
- [35:44]
Dan Snow
This is Dan Snow's history. Don't go away.
- [35:47]
James Holland
More reasons for Allied victory coming up.
- [35:56]
Unknown
Say hello to Samantha.
- [35:57]
Hi there.
- [35:58]
Samantha built a SaaS platform that helps small businesses manage their workflow. But she needed a smarter way to reach decision makers.
- [36:05]
That's where ACAST came in. They helped me produce a professional audio ad which played to business owners and ops leads using their audience attributes targeting tools. Suddenly, my platform was showing up in the ears of the exact people I needed to reach.
- [36:17]
Now, that's streamlined marketing. Samantha, what's your tip for scaling smart?
- [36:21]
Solve a real problem and make sure the right people hear about it.
- [36:25]
Promote your business with podcast ads on Acast. Get started@go.acast.com advertise.
- [36:42]
Dan Snow
So, as well as being geopolitically savvy, Roosevelt and Churchill were pretty good at doing the bits that you said Hitler was so bad at. They were quite good at. Yes, they interfered. Yes, they Overreached. Yes, they got arguments, but there was a good political military understanding. They both worked out how to run modern total war, didn't they?
- [37:00]
James Holland
Yeah. And I think, by and large, they put the right people in the right positions. Both of them were very keen on using technocrats to help them. And I think they did that very successfully. And they did listen. You know, there were checks. You know, General Brooke, who is the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, in his diaries, is constantly sort of moaning about Winston and his million and one ideas and, you know, how impossible he is and all the rest of it. But Churchill does listen to him and also Brookie's able to influence Churchill. And there's also Hastings Ismay, who's his military advisor. And there's a whole host of people. I mean, it is a slightly sort of truncated version of democracy in Britain during the Second World War, as it is in the United States as well. But there are people there who can say, I think this is a really bad idea, prime minister, or Mr. President, and there are checks on that power, which I think are really important for making the right decisions.
- [37:47]
Dan Snow
My fourth field that I want to talk about, I think we've already covered, but we'll just quickly recap it, which is just resource, which is it was horrifically unequal, Right, in terms of pre war production figures for steel and coal and oil and anything that you need to make war. It was always extraordinarily unlikely that a combination of motley crew of Germany, Japan and Italy were going to take on and defeat this vast international coalition.
- [38:11]
James Holland
Yeah, I think so. This is my whole point about the war being over. I mean, you could almost argue the war is going to be over by the time the Battle of Britain is over, but certainly by the end of 1941, because let me just give you a scenario. So middle of June 1941, before Operation Barbarossa, German invasion of Soviet Union, Germany's got one enemy, which is Great Britain, albeit Britain plus dominion and empire. Fast forward six months to the middle of December 1941. He's got three enemies. He's got Britain, dominion and empire, USSR and the USA. I mean, it's just. It's not going to win. It's not going to win. Against that combined populations, resources, access to the world's ocean shipping, all the rest of it. And, you know, it is just astonishing. In 1943, the United States produces 83,000 aircraft. You know, that is 1,000 more than the capacity of Twickenham Stadium. When you think of it in those terms, it is just off the scale mad. I mean, Britain alone builds 132,500 aircraft in the Second World War. That is really going some. It is just astonishing, the rate of supply, you know, and building Willow Run, an aircraft factory that is a mile and a half long. It's the single biggest room in the world. And there's this, you know, fantastic characters like Henry Kaiser, who's been building roads before the Second World War in America, and he's also constructed the Hoover Dam. And British Council say, you know, we need more shipping, you know, could you help us out? And he goes, well, I'll need to build two new shipyards. But, you know, how hard can it be? He builds two shipyards in three months. But it's absolutely incredible. And you know, how can Germany compete against that when they haven't got oil, they haven't got enough anything, and they've got ideology getting in the way and sycophants and the whole corrupt system of the Nazi state. I mean, it's all counterproductive to mass production.
- [39:51]
Dan Snow
Speaking of which, is there a fifth category which is related to that, which is the stories we tell ourselves about technological innovation? And obviously the Germans are innovating as well, but the Allies, from landing craft to the size of munitions, culminating in obviously the Manhattan Project and nuclear weapons.
- [40:08]
James Holland
Radar, the Cavity Magnetron.
- [40:10]
Dan Snow
The Cavity Magnetron. Is Britain, America in particular, more open to, more effective at pioneering new kinds of technologies that are helping to win the war?
- [40:18]
James Holland
Yeah, I think they're more effective. I think that's the key thing. Because obviously some of the creations that the Nazis do in the Second World War, particularly, you know, and you look at something like the battleship Yamato, I mean, it's an engineering masterpiece. But I think what you find is if you look at the war, by and large, the prioritization of resources is much more efficiently applied for the Western Allies than it is and indeed to the Soviet Union to a large extent than it is to the Axis forces. I'll give a couple of examples. So the type 21U boat, for example, is a work of absolute genius. And it is basically the model for post war submarines. It can actually operate faster under the water than it can above, which is something that most wartime submarines can't do. It's certainly not the classic U boat of the Battle of the Atlantic fame. It can operate underwater at kind of walking pace, but can do sort of 14, 15 knots on the surface. Well, that's not the case with the type 21. And yet the Germans don't Prioritize it. So it is only just coming into operation, operational use in April 1945, by which time of course it's all too late. And so that's just a really bad decision. And focusing on V2s, I mean it's first man made object to go into space. But if it's not actually achieving your war aims, why invest all that time and effort? I mean, that's the thing. So yes, I think that's a really.
- [41:30]
Dan Snow
Really good point on the Allied side. I mean, we've got the extraordinary scale and might of the nuclear program, but what else we got? Radar. What are some of the war winning technologies?
- [41:39]
James Holland
Radar is important. I think the reason why the cavity magnetron, which is so important and the Germans never know that we've got it or have developed it, they never develop themselves, is what the cavity magnetron means is instead of having huge great radar mass of sort of 360 foot high or 270 foot high like the one still at Dover, which is part of the old air defence system of Great Britain, you can actually reduce the size of radar, which means you can then put it on a destroyer vessel or you can put it on a very long range B24 Liberator, so you can use it for sort of anti shipping. And that was the whole reason it was prioritized. And so this is my point really, is that what Britain is doing in the early part of the war is focusing its research and development on winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Okay, what can we do to make our lives better? How can we detect U boats better? So improving the skill of high frequency direction fighting, you know, sort of. Huff Duff. Improving radar, improving anti shipping weaponry and so on. So it's about going, okay, what is our most important thing here and what do we need to kind of rectify as quickly as possible? And also I think the great thing that the Allies learn, which the Germans don't, is that bulk is king, mass matters. So it's great having the Tiger tank, you know, it's whatever it is, 56 tons. The problem is it's also incredibly complex. And the bigger it is, the more kit you need to then service it and maintain it in the field. All of which requires more oil, which is one thing you don't have. But the principle behind it is if you've got a kind of really super duper tank which has incredibly thick armor and a very powerful gun, then you don't need many of them. But the fact of the matter is, is there's 1347 Tigers built ever and 492 King Tigers, as they're called. But there are 49,000 Sherman tanks, which basically means that there is 36 Shermans for every single Tiger. And really what tank battles prove in the Second World War is that he who fires first generally comes out on top. So having a really, really massive high velocity gun and having thick armor is important, but it's not as important as great optics and being able to see and great manoeuvrability and also, frankly, reliability. And the number of Tiger tanks which are knocked out by a 75 millimeter medium gun on the Sherman is absolutely legendary. I mean, huge numbers. So that kind of rather proves the point. And numbers really matter, particularly in a long drawn out war. You know, this is something that our current leaders are starting to kind of twig and let's hope it's not too late. But I mean, you don't need the best of everything. You need the perfectly adequate and most of the ally kit is perfectly adequate and interchangeable with lots and lots of interchangeable parts, which means there's lots of them, which means a lot of your battlefield wrecks can be recovered and repaired and put back into action again, or they can be butchered to provide parts for other vehicles and things. So simplicity and mass are really important. That's one of the key things that emerges out of the Second World War. From the Allied perspective, I'd say, famously.
- [44:20]
Dan Snow
The Germans chased out all the Jewish nuclear physicists, or chased out, slash, imprisoned and killed them. Is there a sense in which there's something about those Western democracies, they're more tolerant of creative thinkers. People like Alan Turing, who was gay, worked at Bletchley park, helped to crack the Enigma code. Is there a little bit more, more space for some of the eccentrics and some of the slightly more off the wall people you need if you're going to be innovative?
- [44:43]
James Holland
Yeah, definitely. I mean, otherwise, how do you get the Mulberry Harbour? The Mulberry Harbour, there's two of them which are both larger than the Port of Dover and which are built, then sunk off the Isle of Wight, then resurfaced and floated across the Channel, put in place and creating two huge harbours. I mean, you don't get that without tolerating eccentrics and some pretty creative thinking. There was a moment, sort of halfway through, where they're sort of struggling with logistics of building this unspeakably enormous engineering project. And Churchill famously says, don't argue the matter, the problems will argue for themselves. But the point Is there is that? Yes. The Allied war effort is full of mavericks and people who prepare to think outside the box and think creatively. But importantly, there is a filter for this, which means that there's not too much time wasted on projects which are never going to come into being. So the grand idea to create an aircraft carrier out of ice and wood chip that is kicked into the long grass, very sensibly so. But the bouncing bomb is allowed to happen, the Mulberry harbours are allowed to happen, the Grand Slam earthquake bomb is allowed to happen, etc. And of course, ultimately, the atomic bomb is allowed to happen.
- [45:53]
Dan Snow
I've got a great fondness for the iceberg aircraft carrier. I'm lucky enough to go and see all the plans in the National Archives. They're great fun. Before we get off this topic, you just quickly tell me about. I don't understand it. In the past, you always talk about high octane aviation fuel and that's another innovation, isn't it?
- [46:08]
James Holland
Oh, well, it's just much more efficient. That's the key thing. So it's about how you process it. And obviously, if it's coming from America, you can process it very, very effectively because they've got all the kit to do it. And it just means you've got fuel which is kinder to the engine and is more fuel efficient, so you get more miles out of it. So it's just better every which way you look at it, it's just better fuel. That's the key thing about high octane. Whereas, you know, the fuel that the Joes have, they don't have the time and the money and space to properly process the oil that they do have. And most of the fuel they're using is synthetic and it's just not very good.
- [46:37]
Dan Snow
Thank you so much. You're an absolute pro. I always wanted to get you on the show. Thanks for coming on. Tell everyone what your YouTube channel is.
- [46:44]
James Holland
WW2 headquarters, worldwide headquarters.
- [46:47]
Dan Snow
Go over and check it out. All sorts of exciting things happening over there. James, good to see you, buddy. See you again soon.
- [46:52]
James Holland
Great to see you too, Dan. Thank you.
- [46:55]
Dan Snow
Thanks very much for listening, everyone. Before you go, I have to tell you that ever at the cutting edge.
- [46:59]
James Holland
The bleeding edge of what's new and.
- [47:01]
Dan Snow
Exciting, after 10 years of the podcast, you can finally watch it on YouTube.
- [47:06]
James Holland
We are moving fast and breaking things here, folks.
- [47:08]
Dan Snow
Our Friday episodes each week will be available to watch on YouTube and you can see me, you can see what we're talking about.
- [47:15]
James Holland
I'd love it if you could subscribe.
- [47:17]
Dan Snow
To that channel over there. Just click the link in the show notes below and and you can watch it on your phone, your tablet, or even a tv. Or even a giant cinema movie screen.
- [47:27]
James Holland
If you have one in your underground lair.
- [47:30]
Dan Snow
See you next time, folks.
- [47:41]
Unknown
Say hello to Samantha.
- [47:42]
Hi there.
- [47:43]
Samantha built a SaaS platform that helps small businesses manage their workflow, but she needed a smarter way to reach decision makers.
- [47:50]
That's where Acast came in. They helped me produce a professional audio ad which played to business owners and ops leads using their audience attributes targeting tools. Suddenly my platform was showing up in the ears of the exact people I needed to reach.
- [48:02]
Now that's streamline marketing. Samantha, what's your tip for scaling smart?
- [48:06]
Solve a real problem and make sure the right people hear about it.
- [48:10]
Promote your business with podcast ads on Acast. Get started at go.acast.com advertise.