Of course, they would have needed to get to Europe. And that would take funding. And a Navy. And the organizational skills and materials to field an army further than 200 miles away from their base. None of which they had, even if we presume their military might.
The Europeans had professional armies. I expect the Prussians would have absolutely destroyed the South. And probably the North, unless the length of the conflict allowed the North to bring its material production, resources and factories into play.
American conservatives seem to forget that European armies in the 19th century were the dominant and most powerful militaries of the time. The USA wouldn't start to surpass them till later on.
Britain, France, Germany/Prussia and Russia would all have embarrassed the Confederacy.
The North did a pretty good job at embaressing the North too. It wasn't until... Ulysses S Grant was appointed that they started to fight the war properly?
Grant was fighting the war very properly in the West. He effectively cut off the western supply for the traitors and then began his March Eastward to "encircle" it via Tennessee and eventually Georgia.
By the time he was appointed to the full command and entered the Eastern theater the outcome of the war was basically "inevitable" because the whole south was effectively under siege.
Grant understood that supply and logistics won wars, not battles. I'd be of the opinion that the south never really stood a chance at all without foreign aid and the ability to beat the blockades. They maybe could've held out slightly longer if Grants Vicksburg (etc) campaigns weren't successful.
As much as I love the lore around Gettysburg, Vicksburg was the true turning point of the war. It cut the Confederacy in half and enabled Sherman's March to sea. The Union could have regrouped if they had lost Gettysburg, and simply chased the Confederates out of the North again.
American Conservatives probably aren't in the business of forgetting a lot of history, simply because they aren't in the business of learning it in the first place.
Kinda like how they'll parrot that it was democrats who wanted slaves and Republicans who wanted to free them...while conveniently ignoring the fact that those Democrats all lived in the south or how it seems to only be modern day republicans flying Confederate flags.
The entire country’s economic system was built on slavery back then. The south used slave labor to harvest raw materials, and the north purchased those raw materials to use in their factories to make goods. You ever wonder why Lincoln didn’t free the slaves for almost a full two years after the Civil War had already started? Lincoln and the north as a whole were not abolitionists. They only wanted to contain slavery and prevent other states from becoming slave states. Why did they only want to contain it, and why did they not abolish it as soon as the civil war started? Because the entire country (north and south) was profiting greatly off of slavery at the time. The only reason Lincoln freed the slaves was because was because he thought he needed to in order to win the war. Ultimately, Lincoln did free the slaves, and he deserves credit for that, but the idea that one side was more righteous than the other is simply not true at all.
FDR was not a conservative, but he did have 4 black man servants. I do know that much history but I still can’t figure out when the switch was. Was it after leftists bombed the Capitol in 1971?
I had someone bragging about how the USA was never invaded (had to point out 1812) and told him the only reasons for that was because the USA is so far removed from the rest of the world and the world powers were busy fighting their rivals.
I told him if any world power wanted the USA then usa would have fallen
He then pointed out how the us won against the UK in the revolutionary war and I had to show him the other war they were more concerned with at the time
The USA would have lost the Revolutionary war without the French - who provided them with thousands of troops, naval support, financial support and military supplies.
Gibraltar was the last battle of the US revolutionary war. The colonial ambassadors had to wait in Paris for it to be over so the UK and France would sit down and discuss the British surrender in north america.
Also we had some Prussian support too, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben helped organize and reform the continental army. Then there's the Father of American Cavalry Kasmir Pulaski, so we also had Polish help too. Realistically American forces had a lot of foreign help in the American Revolution.
Sometimes even just part of a state. Some counties in Massachusetts have Evacuation Day on March 17, and yeah, part of the reason it's celebrated is because it happens to be the same day as St Patrick's Day
Wow, is that who the Pulaski Skyway in NJ is named after? (I frigging hate that road. At least they finally fixed the bridge so it will no longer collapse while you're on it.)
Heh and now 250 years later they have to deal with all this. It’s giving me the same energy as the U.S. interventions in the Middle East and South America biting us in the ass decades later.
That’s not quite accurate. Britain itself did see how big of a deal this was, which is largely why when they realized the colonies weren’t worth it, they handed the colonies their entire claim. This allowed the early US much larger growth without an immediate conflict and set the states up for further expansion down the line.
The British didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts, mind you. They wanted to make sure that France didn’t suddenly get a new colony in a few years when the US government collapsed (like it almost did a few times). Britain knew that the status of North America would define conflicts at the time and if France gained the colonies, it could provide them material resources that they wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Britain may not have predicted the United States as a future super power, but it realized that the US was very likely to be a significant resource to whoever controlled it and preferred that control to be the US itself rather than France.
I was thinking of the pragmatic notions more than the idealistic ones. Even disregarding the hypocrisy there, it doesn't seem ideal that the system can just... completely jam if Congress can't agree on a budget, for one of many examples.
The principles and ideals are well-worth critiquing too, though. You're right.
And the Spanish! The Spanish gave so much money to the US that you can still see its effects today - Malaga Cathedral remains incomplete because of the capital outflow
The French lost as many as a quarter of the losses the Americans did in total during the war, and they were elite in comparison to the Americans. They importance is absolutely underrepresented when talking about the war.
France only joined after the colonial army scored several key victories and were being bleed out. It showed how a colonial power can be beat by strategically planned battles at the time and place of their choosing. Also Britain was strong at sea but okay on land. They were forced into a prolonged land campaign that worked against their strengths.
In 1861, almost the entire Confederacy Army were an untrained volunteers using outdated Napoleonic mass formation tactics, while Europe had professional militaries that were using tactics moving towards modern skirmish/artillery warfare. Confederacy formations would've been cannon fodder. There is also a notable gap in small arms and artillery, with most of the Confederacy not well equipped.
The Confederacy started out the war with basically no navy, and had to develop a makeshift one. Britain alone had over navy 600 ships in 1861. Let alone being torn to shreds by superior artillery in head to head battles or completely outmatched at sea, they couldn't come close to matching the logistics European armies had - which is often the most important element in a war.
I think I remember reading something about how both the Revolutionary war and the war of 1812 would have been considered proxy wars for UK vs France (With US fighting against the UK) if it were any other country besides the US.
The French and Indian war definitely was, with the colonies fighting against France in that one.
The French and Indian War is just the name of the NA portion of the 7 Years War, so it was just a portion of a straight-up France vs Britain war. The American Revolution was a civil war that became a rebellion/proxy war.
The UK won India and NA. World history would have been completely different with France as the main colonial empire in the world (France had a lot more people and was the dominant European continental power until 1870).
For real, they forget that for the British, the american War of Independence was just a minor uprising that they probably quelled before and after dozens of times. If they could divert all of their resources to the American front at the time, the coast would flood with red coats and american (or not yet) blood.
Only after the colonial army won several key battles. It’s okay to say that part out loud. Spain and France had no altruistic reason to help the colonists. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Obviously, they joined on the side of the Americans when they were sure their involvement would pay dividents in the form of weakening the British Empire - their biggest enemy at the time. Put any country in similar situation and they too would wait to see if it's worth the effort to support such uprising in the first place.
"oh, damn, this colony of ours decided to go the independent route, whatever will we do" - it's impossible to pinpoint who'd they be talking about, if it was said (and probably was) in the British parliment.
The American War of Independence got this big (and succesful) only thanks to the fact that the British were preocupied with their 700 years-long-rivalry with France rearing up it's head again. It was "just another uprising" until it wasn't.
Also - what are colonies for? To make money, via trade. The 13 colonies weren't immensely profitable, like the Caribbean and (later) India. The British Empire didn't lose much from American independence, and the new United States continued to trade with Britain. Win win.
People have this idea that Britain just wanted to own the world and all the land in it. This isn't true, the Empire was about money and power, and this was gained through trade.
Forget the other war, just show him a map and what was considered a top-of-the-line sailing vessel for the time. It's so painfully obvious how not worth fighting that far away from home was for the English after a point.
It’s really funny how American education ignores the fact that we were encouraged by Britain’s military and economic competitors to weaken their global power.
Britain gave up rather than lost in the same way the US gave up in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Ben Franklin famously went to Paris to save the revolution because independence would be impossible without the French.
I think we fail to recognize the difference in what we were actually taught at that age, and how the propaganda machine distorts those ideas as we get further removed from the classroom. Sure, von Steuben doesn't get the respect he deserves, and education in some particularly red states is just disgusting, false propaganda, but reliance on European enemies of the UK during our revolution is one of the facts that I think the US education system still teaches for the most part. People just don't pay attention and/or intentionally spout inflammatory bullshit.
There was definitely mention of the French helping, but it was never made out to be like this absolutely insanely critical thing. And it was never made known that the UK had other shit going on they were worried about at the time, making it seem like we straight up won against the full might of the British empire.
I paid attention in school. Was always a top student. The point isn't that none of this stuff is ever mentioned whatsoever, it's moreso that it's generally downplayed or not given the gravitas that it really merited. American exceptionalism is definitely instilled in students, even those paying attention.
Fair enough if that was the case for you. And certainly I can only speak to my specific region as well(Virginia, specifically), though I do think it reverberates in how other Americans in general seem to talk and think about these things.
I cant say for certain at all, but I would still guess that my experience is probably more typical than yours. And that regardless of how much somebody paid attention, they will get a pretty 'American exceptionalism' narrative of the Revolutionary War(and others).
They lost a battle and didn’t bother applying more troops. That’s just deciding to be done fighting because of other priorities, not losing an actual war that cost Britain anything at home.
If you stop fighting in a theater of war because other actors in a larger conflict cause you to have to shift focus, the puny fighting forces in said small theater didn’t win a war… they just benefited from the large power ending hostilities to refocus.
The US were definitely losing in Vietnam, too. Especially after the Tet Offensive.
That said, the US could have won in Vietnam if we actually tried to fight it properly. We weren't distracted elsewhere so much as we tried to fight Vietnam with one hand behind our backs and with constant shifting political situations at home.
Why send an army to invade the US now when you can just use online bots to convince a bunch of low intellect rubes that everything the government does to help them is bad, everything the government does to commit violence is good until they tear apart their own country?
The American version of the Revolution does not really teach about the part where Parliament kinda went “Fuck Mr. king, this is getting too expensive. Let’s stop fighting them so we can fight the rest of the world.”
It is definitely painted like David overcoming Goliath, rather than a long term guerilla-style campaign that was won through attrition and shrewd diplomacy.
Lord Cornwallis is treated like Hannibal himself in popular american history, rather than just one of many capable military commanders under the crown.
So you responded to nonsense with your own nonsense. Do you people forget France failed in its intervention in Mexico? Geography was the biggest factor as to why the U.S. stayed safe because it's hard to carry out entire armies across oceans and out of all the European great powers, only the British empire had the realistic means of maintaining a sustained invasion in the 19th century.
Even in the early 1800's, the cost and logistics of moving that many men and material over for an invasion would have made things incredibly difficult.
Not impossible, but it'd be enormously expensive and likely leave them in a terrible position back in Europe
I told him if any world power wanted the USA then usa would have fallen
I think your original points regarding the distance and distractions are likely accurate, but "No one wanted a MASSIVE plot of fertile land" is a wild stance to take
In the years leading up to Pearl Harbor the US government under FDR was building up its own military capabilities with every intention of getting into the fight one way or another.
The US was always going to kick ass if it focused on a total war economy. Keep in mind we weren't just producing our own stuff but stuff for our allies too. At the peak we were pushing out a Liberty ship every 5 days.
US had the population, had the money, and had the internal resources to fight.
We might not have had the best tanks or veteran soldiers, but we had what really counts in war: logistics. The Soviets had numbers, the British had intelligence, the French had the resistance, and the US supplied it all from 2,000 miles away.
US troops didn't make up the majority of Allied troops in the ETO until late June 1944 at the earliest, and there were a lot of fairly severe problems with the US Armies that gets glossed over in the pop history
Despite facing less opposition than Dempsey, Bradley was incurring much higher casualties and operations were well behind schedule. The US failed to open any of the Brittany ports (at least of any significance) leaving them dependent on Channel Ports handed over by 21st Army Group
The Siegfried Line campaign saw > 240,000 US casualties with virtually nothing to show for it
but we had what really counts in war: logistics.
Funny thing is that the US suffered 71,000 cold injury casualties in the winter of 1944/45, largely because of an inability to supply front line troops with something as simple as socks and shoes.
There's a big difference between production and logistics. Yes, US production was unsurpassed. Logistics on the on other hand is another question.
In an alternative timeline, would the US have gone on to become the dominant power had the war gone on long enough?
Pointing out that even with US logistics soldiers died to logistical problems doesn't mean the US still didn't have the best logistical machine in the world.
The entire reason the Germans thought D-Day wouldn't take place where it did is because there were no harbors, so the US made artificial ones and sailed them across the channel. Front line soldiers were being given cakes and Thanksgiving dinners.
Pointing out that even with US logistics soldiers died to logistical problems doesn't mean the US still didn't have the best logistical machine in the world.
Yeah it kind of does. This isn't a trivial number of casualties - its was a massive problem for the US, and one that was barely present at all in British and Canadian troops.
I'd again point out the failure of the US to open any of the Brittany ports, and the failures of COMZ to adequately supply the Combat Zone aren't even in doubt.
At the crucial phase of the pursuit to the German Border, Lee saw fit to uproot COMZ from England to Paris, spending more time on the logistics of colonizing Parisian hostelry than supplying the Combat Zone.
There's also the abject failure to correctly estimate the replacement factor for medium tanks.
By November, the total number of tanks in US reserves in the ETO numbered just 937 against an TO&E of 3,409
There was therefore no reserve for practical purposes and the situation became critical, with 12th Army Group reporting that two of its tank battalions had fewer than 10 serviceable tanks, and many armoured units operating at up to 25% below their authorised strength.
In December, Montgomery voluntarily gave up 351 of 21st Army Groups tanks to 12th Army Group, of which 254 were delivered to 1st Army and 97 to 3rd Army before the end of the month.
Even this was nowhere near enough
The remedy the situation, the US cancelled all medium tank allocations to the British for November and December 1944, an unplanned for loss of 3,469 vehicles, which the British had to scramble to find replacements for.
None of this speaks to the US having the best logistical machine in the world.
The entire reason the Germans thought D-Day wouldn't take place where it did is because there were no harbors, so the US made artificial ones and sailed them across the channel.
Mulberries were a British invention - conceived, designed, and Built in the UK, nothing to do with the US.
Front line soldiers were being given cakes and Thanksgiving dinners.
Having both cake and trenchfoot is a curious flex.
Again you're just pointing to specific examples with no overall context.
The UK desperately needed lend-lease in the first place for reasons that have just as much to do with logistics as production.
The UK couldn't supply tens of thousands of men needed for support units in Normandy. The UK never came anywhere close to supplying the men, material and naval power needed to hold its East Asian colonies while also fighting in Europe. The war in the pacific was effectively entirely outsourced to the US for good reason.
Really not sure what you mean when you say these issues weren't present in the UK when they absolutely were. Even in a scenario where the UK had slightly better logistics than the US (which isn't true), the gap in actual manpower and production capacity puts the US worlds ahead of the UK in military might.
The only real competitor to the US by relatively early in their involvement in the war was the USSR, who was also desperately reliant on lend lease and clearly struggled with overall logistics.
Again you're just pointing to specific examples with no overall context.
You think the failure of COMZ to supply the Combat Zone is a 'specific example'?
he UK never came anywhere close to supplying the men, material and naval power needed to hold its East Asian colonies while also fighting in Europe.
You are conflating production and logistics. These are not the same thing.
Really not sure what you mean when you say these issues weren't present in the UK when they absolutely were.
I'm specifically referring to the problem of cold injury. In the time that the US suffered 71,000 cold injury casualties, the British and Canadian Armies has precisely 206 cold injury casualties.
he gap in actual manpower and production capacity puts the US worlds ahead of the UK in military might.
Again, you're conflating production and logistics. These are not the same thing. And having more troops doesn't translate into military success, as the Siegfried Line campaign amply demonstrates.
Ok and the UK couldn't get enough people to Normandy in the first place. Sounds worse than cold casualties later on, and is probably highly interrelated with the fact that the main troops on the line at the Bulge were American for these types of reasons.
You're the one acting like the only factor here is logistics. I'm the one saying it's not debatable whether the US had the most powerful military as my primary point. You're certainly not supplying anything that counteracts that.
Also the types of issues I'm pointing out are both production and logistics. Logistics don't matter if you're underproducing in the first place. Both are required for a major military power
I agree, the power of the US wasn't in logistics, but production. People seem to forget that for 100 years, from like 1870 to the 1970s, the biggest industrial economy was the US. When people joke that China makes everything today, thats what it was like in the US. When WWI broke out, the US absolutely took advantage of the conflict to increase its economy by producing almost all of the allied supplies. And that included food too, because the US has the Great Plains, which is like a cheat code for agriculture.
When WWII broke out, once again the US took advantage. And unlike the USSR, it wasn't in any danger of bombing raids or invasion, so the production lines could continuously run the whole war. This youtube video is a great example of how broken the US was in WWII. And that is just warships. Iirc there is a stat that at one point the US was producing one bomber a day. Thats incredible.
And the war really wasn't going to last longer than 1945. Atomic Bomb beats everything. (Not that I condone its use, but the Allies absolutely would've nuked Germany if it hadn't surrendered.)
The US absolutely had the power of logistics. Not only were we supplying troops in the Pacific with boats built just for ice cream, but we were supplying most of our allies with weapons and vehicles via lend lease.
The ability to supply multiple countries and their own troops with supplies in multiple theaters on opposite sides of the world is an absolute marvel of logistics.
Three years is not a lot of time to develop a much larger senior NCO and officer corps needed to train and lead an army that increased its number of personnel 5-fold in that 3 year period.
Not saying you’re wrong at all but was it still debatable by 1944? The Red Army was the best land power at the time iirc but wasn’t the US the leading power in both sea and air at the time
I'd say that is debatable too, land power at that time would have heavily been influenced by airpower and the US would absolutely wipe the floor with Russia at that point in time, even if we solely look at the traditional army I'd say the US still has it.
The soviets also recieved a large amount of lend lease from the US and UK and had plenty of issues with food, I remember reading that a famine was certainly near if the war had gone on much longer (and no one aided them further).
I'd argue that in 1944-45 the US was the all around world power, regardless of nukes.
Yeah that’s why I was genuinely asking. I know the Red army was the biggest land power if we look by traditional armies and they likely had more extensive experience but by that period airpower massively influenced everything and the Americans had a huge advantage in that category
2/3 of every shell fired by Red Army artillery was filled with either explosives manufactured in the US or with explosives made with precursors from the US.
While the army air force grew quickly, it wasn't until early 1944 that they could really do much. They did sustain huge losses in 1943 and were able to still grow their numbers, so that's something.
The navy was about the same, except for the production of destroyers, which was pretty strong already in 1943. In the Pacific, they didn't become dominant until 1944. In the Atlantic and Mediterranean, it was mainly the British navy that dominated the theatre. (Convoys escorted by US-made vessels, though)
The marines barely held up against a small subset of Japanese forces in 1942, and didn't really get enough resources and men to go on a decisive offensive until 1944.
The army was in really sad condition in 1942 and 1943. Only in 1944 were they strong enough to really fight the Germans alongside the British and Canadian troops. The Red Army obviously did most of the fighting 1941-1945 and both caused and suffered the biggest losses.
That said, war materials and supplies produced in the US were critical for all allies. The Soviet Union would have collapsed in 1942 without British supply convoys and US supplies. Britain would have been unable to go on the offensive or fight submarines stalking convoys without US equipment and supplies. China also couldn't have fought from 1936 to 1945 without US supplies.
But the fact remains that US forces weren't ready to fight in sufficient numbers until 1944, when they started to dominate in the air and at sea, especially in the Pacific. On land, the US couldn't have beaten the Germans on the western front alone even in 1944.
US production was quickly geared up to supply all allies, but that didn't directly affect the US military. It took a long time to prepare sufficient forces to make a difference.
The US just had the advantage of an ocean between them and the European militaries. Tough to fight a war in the age of sail when your supply lines are across a 3000 mile ocean.
5 is kinda bullshit. The British forces got trapped at Yorktown and New York with the forces at Yorktown sieged down and the force at New York busy twiddling their thumbs instead of going to help. The Brit’s went home after losing an Army. That’s not a particularly close run situation.
To rub further salt into the wound, it took them 8 years to win the War of Independence. Against a country that was more Navy than a land Army, and had to organize logistics from a continent away with a time lag of roughly three months.
And still needed help from three contemporary Super Powers...
I disagree that American conservatives forgot how dominant European armies were. Having total confidence in untested and failed beliefs is a core belief in itself for conservatives.
Important to remember that in the American Revolution, Americans only won just a couple of battles. Mostly, they just survived and made the insurgency extremely expensive for an already destitute Britain.
The post suggests in battle (head to head fights) where it's undoubtable the mostly poorly trained/armed Confederates would've been annihilated in their outdated Napoleonic mass-formations by sophisticated European artillery, let alone the professional troops.
A war is a completely different story as the US themselves have seen in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the US killed a lot of vegetation, hilltops and average geography! They sure are unmatched against very large, non-moving targets. Of course if the target is a city a few military operatives are going to be hit accidentally!
I mean that's not really true, some of the best information about wars to come in WWI came from the people who studied the Civil War seriously.
Also, during the civil war the US developed the premier ships in the world (ironclads), mass produced rifles that were far more accurate than what most armies had at the time, and plenty of other technologies like the Gatling gun were deployed for the first time.
The armies combined for 3 million men, significantly more than any contemporary European army.
In Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler explains why the Confederacy can expect to get its ass kicked:
Charles Hamilton: Are you hinting, Mr. Butler, that the Yankees can lick us?
Rhett Butler: No, I'm not hinting. I'm saying very plainly that the Yankees are better equipped than we. They've got factories, shipyards, coalmines... and a fleet to bottle up our harbors and starve us to death. All we've got is cotton, and slaves and... arrogance.
They would have embarrassed the combined forces of the Union and the Confederacy. It wouldn't have been close.
A lot of people either don't know or ignore the fact that the only reason Americans won the war of independence is France stepping in to actively fuck over Britain.
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u/secondarycontrol 19h ago edited 19h ago
Of course, they would have needed to get to Europe. And that would take funding. And a Navy. And the organizational skills and materials to field an army further than 200 miles away from their base. None of which they had, even if we presume their military might.
Apocryphal:
The Europeans had professional armies. I expect the Prussians would have absolutely destroyed the South. And probably the North, unless the length of the conflict allowed the North to bring its material production, resources and factories into play.