How inaccurate is this?
>>1322634
Pretty inaccurate.
In 1939, the American navy tonned equally with the RN and had, on average, more modern ships. With the naval treaties expiring, by the time it entered the war, it was well ahead of the RN in warships, and when the Essex class vessels came out, it wasn't even close. The claim that the RN was the best, or that the Americans couldn't defend their coastlines, is absurd.
Also, the Luftwaffe is pretty infamous, and the Americans did quite a bit to batter it down in the daylight raids from 42-44, while the Brits mostly bombed at night which had correspondingly fewer losses on either side of the air war.
Also, the Battle of the Atlantic was significantly impacted by American actions. Americans provided a lot of raw material and later Lend-Lease to the British. People talk about how much aid the Soviets got, but the Brits got almost 3 times as much as the USSR received. They also, even before officially entering the war, created an expanding security perimeter upon which they shot at German subs (although generally ineffectively)
The Middle East was not a big exporter of oil during the 40s. Rommel's orders were to hold Cyrenica to prevent an Italian collapse, deciding to conquer Egypt had nothing to do with seizing oil, and a lot to do with securing the med, as well as violating direct orders from his superiors in OKW. Rommel was actually a pretty shit general, at least at the job he was most famously assigned to.
He incredibly simplifies the North Afrtican campaign, but so do a lot of people. Oh, and at El Alamein, roughly 35% of Monty's tank force were American tanks, I'm not sure about planes, artillery, and other supplies.
Also, he totally ignores the American landings in Morocco (operation Torch) which is what forced Rommel to pull all the way back to Tunisia instead of making a shorter pullback into Libya and re-striking, the way he did after losing the battle in 1941, Crusader, that pic guy conveniently fails to mention.
1/2
>>1322701
Military deaths being about 80% on the Eastern Front is a bit old these days, although most modern estimates put it to 70%; that's somewhat deceptive though, because
A) Most of the Luftwaffe losses were on the western Front.
B) The Western Allies did a lot more bypassing than the Soviets did. Bordeaux, troops in southern France, the stuff sent to the Balkans and Greece to stop invasions that never came, the 13 division in Norway, etc; the Western Allies forced the deployment of millions of troops who never saw combat, which are effective losses as far as the war is concerned.
D-Day wasn't America's "first day at war", they had been in North Africa since 42, and Italy since 1943, and had far more of the reserve troops ready to flow out once the beaches were secured.
Oh, and guess whose planes did most of the interdictive bombing so that the beachheads couldn't be easily reinforced or counterattacked at.
He also amusingly completely fails to mention Dragoon, the operation launched a month later, which was about 80% American and the remainder Free French.
CBI was a pretty small theater. It wasn't any bigger than the Solomon islands campaign. And the British barely deployed at all against the IJN, and when they did, they got crushed.
If his point is that Britain was an equal contributor to the war effort as America, quite frankly, he's wrong.
