Why the Allies Won

by Richard Overy

Book Overview

Richard Overy's bold book begins by throwing out the stock answers to this great question: Germany doomed itself to defeat by fighting a two-front war; the Allies won by "sheer weight of material... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393039250
• ISBN13: 9780393039252
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Errors in WWII

In a nutshell, both sides made dumb mistakes. The Axis just made a few more than we did. Lives were lost on both sides to tactical and strategic errors.

Analytical history at its best

The book presents several principal themes among the reasons for the Allied victory. Germany was the Allies' main adversary and Russia, who started the war as a de facto German ally, was the primary force that defeated it. In the course of the war, the Soviet forces have destroyed over 600 German divisions. This unexpected result was brought about by the extraordinary transformation of Russia into a first-rate military state with passionate soldiers and talented military command. Its wartime economy was resurrected by an unprecedented effort of over 16 mln people who relocated whole industries beyond the Ural Mountains and beyond the reach of German forces. Russian military started the war by losing, by December 1941, almost the entire strength that they had in June. Yet, by the end of '42 the Red Army had twice as many tanks as Wehrmacht and by the autumn of '43 - more than three times as many. (For more details see the author's excellent "Russia's War"). While Russia defeated the German army and inflicted the most casualties on the German military force, the Western Allies, the US and Britain, defeated the Luftwaffe and won the war of the seas. In addition, the Western Allies' bombing campaign was instrumental in disrupting German military production and the transportation routes, denying Germany half of the weaponry in 1944. The Allied bombing campaign was made possible by the American phenomenal military production and the victory in the war of the seas, which cleared up the delivery channels. One of the sobering statements of the book is that the Allied victory in WWII was far from pre-ordained. In October of '41 Stalin was considering giving up, the US war machine was not geared up yet and the battle of the seas was still to be won. It appears that with no support, Britain would have found it extraordinarily difficult to stand up to Germany. In 1941, the Allied prospects looked grim, and at that point the most probable outcome looked like Germany dominated Europe and possibly Axis dominated world. This situation did not occur overnight and its roots go beyond appeasement, Chamberlain and Czechoslovakia. The policy of noninvolvement let Mussolini get away with occupying Abyssinia in 1935 and let Japan get away with occupying Manchuria in 1931. With horrors of World War I fresh in memory, and with the economic crisis of the early 30's in full swing, military build-up was not a popular concept. It took two dictatorships, German and Russian, to build the largest armies during that period. Still, before 1939 Hitler was fairly tentative. When he walked into Rhineland, the word was to withdraw at the slightest response from the French. The Axis powers got progressively emboldened by the years of unpunished aggression. Personal involvement of the leading statesmen is thrown in the balance as well. Churchill's and Roosevelt's - mostly positive. Churchill, on the day of the German's aggression against the USSR, broadcast his pledge of economic and

DOESN'T PUT ALL OF HIS EGGS IN ONE BASKET.....

This is a book that gives you "The Big Picture" concerning how the Allies won WWII, but manages not to neglect "The Little Picture" either- no mean feat for a book that is only 330 pages long. The author doesn't have any one grand theme. He methodically takes you through all of the areas that he thinks are important and zooms in on each of these areas- brilliantly analyzing each area and always backing his opinions up with some very telling statistics. Mr. Overy also makes it clear how it was not pre-ordained that the Allies would win. Certainly up until 1943 things could have gone the other way. As the Duke of Wellington said in another context, "It was a close run thing..."The areas that Mr. Overy concentrates on are: the naval war in the Pacific; the submarine war in the Atlantic; Stalingrad and Kursk; the bombing campaign; the invasion of France; mass production and technology; allies and leadership; etc. Within these large issues the author never forgets to include telling details. One example is when he discusses the Battle of Midway and explains how 10 bombs in the space of a few minutes made a huge difference. The reason? Japanese planes were caught "with their pants down." They had shot down so many of the lumbering American torpedo-bombers that they had to land on their supporting aircraft carriers to refuel. The carriers were left with no air cover and American dive bombers were able to swoop in with no oppostion. A few well-placed bombs ignited all of that fuel, which also blew up the bombs the carriers were carrying and in just a few minutes all the Japanese carriers were out of commission. Another example- in the submarine Battle of the Atlantic, what 2 things made a huge difference in turning the tide against the Germans? One was attaching an extra fuel tank to Allied bombers so they could extend their range into a "dead spot" in the ocean where previously the U-Boats had been safe from attack. The 2nd thing was the seemingly simple device of fitting a searchlight on Allied bombers so they could surprise U-Boats that surfaced at night to attack...Mr. Overy is especially enlightening on how the Allies managed to outproduce the Axis once Russia and the United States were attacked. The Germans had been preparing for war for years. Why did they lose their initial advantage? Mr. Overy's hypothesis is that one reason is that the German economy was "neither fish nor fowl." It wasn't centralized enough on one hand or sufficiently capitalistic on the other. It was an inefficient mish-mash that turned out a bewildering variety of weapons- too many types of tanks, too many kinds of planes, etc. There was not enough standardization to allow sufficient mass production and when things broke down there were insufficient spare parts to supply all the different "makes and models." In comparison, the Soviet economy was highly centralized. Despite being surprised by the German invasion in 1941 the Russians managed to dismantle their factories, reasse

History in real depth - extraordinary.

Richard Overy is professor of modern history at King's College, London. He has appeared numerous times on British television as an expert in his field. No wonder 'Why the Allies Won' is such a masterpiece of analytical history, probably answering once and for all one of the great questions of the last century. With Germany and Japan (helped by Mussolini's Italy) rampaging through Europe and the Pacific, and poised to dominate most of the world, with USA standing indecisively on the sidelines, with Stalin believing in the validity of Hitler's peace treaty, with France beaten after just six weeks, and with only Britain fighting a rearguard action, how in heavens name did the situation get turned around?Overy obviously needs to point to certain pivotal battles/battlegrounds (Midway, Stalingrad, Kursk, the Atlantic, and Normandy) but he centers also on the other factors that changed history. The leadership, the morale of the troops on both sides, the determination of the British, the fighting spirit of the Russians. He points out the inefficiencies and bureaucracy of the German industrial machine, the incredible efficiency of American industry, which geared up so rapidly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He points out that, whilst the bombing of German cities has been questioned by other historians and is now commonly regarded as having served a questionable purpose and was of doubtful morality, that it was of critical strategic importance, having drawn off the Luftwaffe from the Eastern Front, where the European war was fundamentally decided.Overy's analysis of the battle for control of the Atlantic displays particular insight. Though many historians point to the Allies' radar and code-breaking abilities as being the key, Overy delves deeper and shows how basic good planning and good training was the essential added element that eventually beat the German U-boats.Despite what revisionist history tells us, there was never any certainty that the Allies would win the war. Quite the opposite. Even Churchill and Roosevelt had to come to terms with the fact that, at some point, they might have to make a conditional peace with Germany and Japan. Overy recounts how the Allies managed to regain superiority only after a series of extremely decisive military campaigns. He also points to the many other factors of the war that are too often left unsaid or not understood.For a REAL insight into five years that changed the world, you should not miss this extraordinary book.

Overy's Book Is a Breath of Fresh Air in Discussing WWII

Richard Overy's excellent book takes a careful and painstaking look at both how and why the Aliies won what he contends was a much more closely fought war than traditional treatments of the matter would have us believe. He cites several issues which were crucial; the war on the seas, primarily in the Atlantic, where the balance of terror for some time seemed to be tipping in favor of the Axis forces, the air bombing war over the skies of Europe, which holstered squadrons of Axis planes into a defense of the Fatherland, and removed them from conduct of a more vigorous air campaign against the Russians; the miscalculation concerning the ability of the Soviets to sustain their battle lines and to even accelerate the pace of the war on the Eastern front. In addition Overy cites the astonishing productive and manufacturing capability of the Americans, Canadians, British, and even the Soviets, who outworked and outproduced the Germans gun for gun, plane for plane, and tank for tank during the darkest and most difficult moments of the war; the constant and confusing interference with weapon selection and production by the upper reaches of the Nazi hierarchy. Finally, the philosophical sense shared by the Allies of fighting for the right, which Overy argues persuasively informed Allied forces with a sense of moral courage that seemed to imbue them with a fighting ferocity the Axis found difficult to rival. This is a great book by a very notable author, and one every respectable denizen of WWII history should have on his or her shelf.

The Definitive Answer to the Second World War

Historian Richard Overy sets out to answer what is one of the most important questions of the Twentieth Centuries, why the Allied Powers, and not the Axis, won the greatest conflict of all time. Overy emphasizes that the outcome was not a foregone conclusion, as Western Liberal societies have argued since 1945. Rather, the conflict was extremely close, and in the years from 1942-44, the war could have gone either way. Overy divides his analysis into two types of factors: the actual combat, including campaigns and tactics, and underlying factors, such as economics, resources, and leadership. Overy does more than simply rehash other historians' arguments while synthesizing them into one coherent work. For example, he maintains that the Eastern Front was the most important single front in determining the outcome of the war. At Stalingrad the Soviets won not only by sheer numbers, but by tactical superiority as well. But Stalingrad did not decide the outcome of the campaign. The German lines stabilized in 1943, and had Hitler not wasted all his heavy armor at Kursk, stalemate may have ensued. Overy also discussed the Anglo-American air war, which had little impact in 1942-43, but when the allied forces targeted the German industrial areas, they pulverized the German munitions manufacturing, so that in early 1945 Albert Speer conceded the war was over from his point of view. The sea war in the Atlantic is also examined. Germany's U-Boats nearly strangled England in the early stages, striking American and British ships at will. But American technology and ingenuity changed the tide, forcing the U-Boats to retreat after taking massive losses. All of these campaigns were close affairs, in which the allied forces made better choices than their Axis counterparts. The second main area of Overy's analysis are the underlying, macro-level factors. Overy discusses the internal problems in the Axis nations in terms of economics and resource mobilization. He argues that Germany in fact had logistical problems it did not solve, despite their reputation for engineering genuis. Furthermore, Hitler's "super weapons" like the V-1 and V-2, wasted valuable German resources which were better used on conventional arms. Japan was hobbled by the rift between the army and navy, which did not coordinate as well as they should have. Both Axis nations were also affected by easy victory in the early stages of the war, which prevented them from developing both new tactics and new weapons. Germanys' qualitative advantage in arms was reversed by 1944, when even Soviet weaponry was more advanced. Leadership mattered as well. Overy is not a great admirer of Winston Churchill, but views him as the right man in a time of war. Hitler on the other hand, embodied poor leadership and hurt the German war effort through his stubborness and inept decision-making. Finally, Overy makes the stunning assertion that morality is a major factor in determining the outcomes of war. While the Axis popu