Overy why the allies won pdf

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Great book, Why The Allies Won pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone. Add a review Your Rating: Your Comment:. They had to seize as many trucks as they could from the occupied countries, and it just didn't do. All Nazi policy was based on the Blitzkrieg, and when they got stuck with a long, protracted war in Russia, they weren't prepared for it.

Same with Japan. They were essentially a WWI military, and did fine against the Chinese or the colonial constabulary forces of , but when they fought our modernized forces, they had problems. I also liked how Overbury described the genuine hatred of Roosevelt and Eisenhower for Germany, which poisoned any chances of a compromise peace, and I wish Overbury could have written more on the morale in the Axis countries.

He implied they really, in the long run, had nothing to fight for and were not enthusiastic. There is a valid case that WWII was a series of localized wars that grew into the major struggle it did, and Hitler, hoping for quick, easy victory in the east, doomed himself.

Declaring war on America was also causing his defeat, although we were in effect in a state of war with Germany, and he seemed to hope that in the six months after Pearl Harbor, the U-boats could cause enough damage, overestimating their ability As for Japan, the leadership really had no idea what to do after Pearl Harbor.

As for allied unity, it was shaky but was maintained. The Axis nations never united command and were chaotic at best. Mussolini dragged Hitler into war in the Balkans and Africa. There never was a Nazi or Fascist International; Europe could have been won over, but this kind of unified, long-reaching policy was never considered, and by , when Allied power was beginning to turn the tide, no one saw any reason to keep supporting Germany.

The allies offered a communal world everyone could participate in, and they showed they had the means to militarily bring it on. A good book to show how modern war is waged and won, and the wise use of abilities. Jun 14, Mary Catelli rated it really liked it Shelves: history-far-east , history-modern.

A look at World War II, taking in a few of the most crucial battles in about half the book, to take in a slew of other issues in the other half. Interesting stuff. Lots of interesting details.

The Battle of the Atlantic was seriously helped at one point by the Leigh Light, which had been developed contrary to orders A look at World War II, taking in a few of the most crucial battles in about half the book, to take in a slew of other issues in the other half. The Battle of the Atlantic was seriously helped at one point by the Leigh Light, which had been developed contrary to orders -- an enormous spotlight, which would allow an airplane that was losing track of a sub because it was too close for the radar, to turn to the naked eye to spot it, even at night.

It was briefly very useful, until it inspired the Germans to develop a technique to detect the radar and so render it useful. So then it was a question of developing new, centrimetric radar that they couldn't detect, deploying more Leigh lights, getting more airplanes and deploying escort carriers. Steadily mounting losses hid that the techniques were a success in one sense: the Germans were inflicting higher losses by having more subs, each of which was sinking fewer and fewer ships, and having a more and more restricted area of operations.

But one month, everything hit critical mass. It went from their worst losses, to the Allies sinking more submarines than they got merchant ships in two months.

The Germans pulled back the subs. After a bit, with two months with no losses, it dawned on the Allies that they had won. A while later, the Germans tried again -- the Allies sunk three times as many subs as they sank ships. Stalingrad -- one reason they won was that Stalin finally managed to listen to his generals, who laid out a plan to cut off the supply lines and explained that they had to cut it far off to ensure that the Panzer division could not turn its tanks back on the force.

And it took a long time to assemble the appropriate task force. Once they had managed to cut Stalingrad off, the battle there went on and on and on -- partly because the Soviets had grossly underestimated how many Germans were in the city.

When the commander finally surrendered, Hitler put all the blame on him personally, betraying all the courage of German soldiers with one cowardly soul. But then the Soviet were pursuing the Germans so hard that they lost their own supply chain, the Germans managed to actually rebound, and then the Battle of Kursk tried to seize the German initiative again. It was ugly. About as ugly as the strategic bombing campaign, which started by smashing Hamburg to smithereens, with flames that could be seen for miles, a million people homeless, and 40, dead.

The notion of throwing aluminum through air to foil the enemy radar took some argument before implementation, for fear of giving Germany the idea to use it, but they finally went with it. Though the bombing campaigns were enormously dangerous until finally the Allies sent escort fighters. That took adding new fuel containers, so they could fly the distance -- a bright idea that they had had earlier rejected because of the added weight.

He discusses the impact of bombing and points out that it definitely had an impact. One that can be quantified, because large chunks of industrial production was turned from generating other war material to producing stuff that fought off bombing. Also, it appeased Stalin, who really, really, really wanted a Second Front.

He wanted it so much that the Americans finally resorted to dragging him into the British-American discussions. It didn't keep the Germans from finding about the intended Normandy invasion, which was just as well -- the Germans assumed that they intended as a diversion, or part of a pincer attack, which helped them not commit enough forces to fight off D-Day.

The Mulberries, which were basically artificial ports to take supplies. The Rhinoceros, where a Sherman tank was given means to tear through hedgerows while Germans were confined to roads. And how they had a terrible storm the next open period, if Eisenhower had decided to push D-Day off.

Then the book gets into the industrial side of things, which is fascinating. The Soviet Union packed up factories and sent them off to Siberia. Many workers were getting factories going again on packed, frozen earth. And production plummeted. But within a year, they had rebounded, producing more than Germany did, and improving still more the year after that. They managed to improve production processes while they were going, and the destruction of the equipment was beneficial in that it allowed them to rebuild from the ground up, with better stuff.

And they sent repair crews into battle with the tanks. The factors that allowed this -- he has some fun disentangling such effects as the personality cult, the resurgent patriotism, and the command economy. The United States did even better. But what happened was that the guy in charge of the Office of Production Management called together a bunch of businessmen, listed what was needed, and asked for volunteers.

Which meant they unleashed the mind behind mass production. They invented a new way to build ships, so that instead of building it from the hull up, you welded together pre-fabricated sections, and that meant that while they chopped the man-hours needed to a third of the old, they chopped down the actual number of days to one-nineth of before. Retooling was daunting -- weapons needed a lot more precision than cars -- but once they got rolling they started to over-produce their orders.

Plus, of course, the Great Depression meant that the United States did not have that much trouble attracting a work-force, at least compared to Germany and Japan, and even the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, in Germany, they tried to mobilize the country, and while the Soviet Union was cut off from assets, they captured assets. They produced nothing like it.

Then, they had a tradition of contempt for American mass production and favored craftsmanship. They did produce a lot better weapons, the Allies stole the notions to use in the following decades, but they didn't produce the quantity. They didn't even produce standardization. And spare parts. All of which meant the Allied forces, increasingly mechanized, blasted through the Axis ones. And in other things -- in the Pacific War, there were four tons of supplies for every American soldiers, and two pounds for every Japanese one.

Japan had compensated for inferior weapons by intensive training of its armed forces, but as the war chewed up the trained men, they were a lot harder to replace than equipment. And Germany would never have put men, such as Marshall, who had no combat experience, in high command.

But Marshall treated supplying the army as important as fighting it. American forces had 18 personnel behind every combat soldier.

Denying the Axis oil helped still further. Japan had captured its oil, but never got the conveying under protection going sufficiently to get it back. And both Italy and Germany didn't capture oil fields, and were methodically denied it.

The personalities of the leaders were also important. All the Allied leaders -- even Stalin -- had good managers under them that they let manage, and they had their personality flaws that interfered with the war, but the system managed to cope with them.

Not so Hitler. And the populations of the Allied nations were more behind their leaders. The Axis powers roused some enthusiasm with victories but lost it with defeats. Like I said -- lots of interesting details. Aug 09, Arun Khanna rated it really liked it. Richard Overy somewhat persuasively shows using a number of case studies from the U-boat campaign to the Wehrmacht defeats at Stalingrad and Kurst that this was indeed the case. Essentially, Overy's case boils down to effective use of resources, greater morale, better intelligence, significantly stronger economic mobilization which translates into better ships, airplanes and Why did the Allies win World War II?

Essentially, Overy's case boils down to effective use of resources, greater morale, better intelligence, significantly stronger economic mobilization which translates into better ships, airplanes and tanks and better doctrine.

The only case study I found somewhat unconvincing was his discussion of the battle of Midway where he argues that the Japanese had a significant superiority over the United States going into the battle. I also think he overstates the general case for the Axis powers to win, the economic superiority of the Allies once the United States joined did make the chances of victory almost inevitable. Overall, I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone with only a rudimentary understanding of WWII and is looking to understand the war from an overall strategic level rather than the lens of individual battles.

I definitely want more history books in this vein, where battles and individual commanders matter, but an emphasis is placed on the true winners of war such as factors like logistics and economic mobilization.

Aug 10, Brian Campbell rated it really liked it. Dense reading. First half of book covered primarily military topics. The U. The Battle of the Atlantic between German U-boats and Allied shipping was described as continued progress in Allied tactics, technology and convoy escort Dense reading. The Battle of the Atlantic between German U-boats and Allied shipping was described as continued progress in Allied tactics, technology and convoy escort capacity to the point that the German threat to Allied shipping was eliminated.

I knew before reading this title that the war in Russia turned during and that Germany lost , soldiers in Stalingrad.

This title added a good description of the Battle of Kursk which practically eliminated German mechanized fighting capability. A year later in Normandy, US tanks and air forces did the same for the German mechanized fighting force in Normandy.

Overly is very insightful in his description of how German bureaucracy stifled its military production and how short production runs of customized weapons made maintenance difficult.

Similar treatment of the technological advances in weapons. Military and civilian leadership of the Allies and of the Axis countries was described in detail. This book does not cover any of the battles of WWII in detail, but tells the story behind those battles. The book mainly covers the Allied struggle against Germany, but does mention the war against Japan too, be it in a more general way. One would say that with the Soviet Union and the United States' combined forces, Germany had no chance to win the war at all.

But is this really the case? Early in the war, after Germany had conquered several countries and their industries, its production potenti This book does not cover any of the battles of WWII in detail, but tells the story behind those battles. Early in the war, after Germany had conquered several countries and their industries, its production potential was enormous.

As we know, the United States were not in the war yet except for the Lend-Lease effort before December 7th, Thus, he lavishes praise on U. Though the evidence is partially persuasive, the point is picayune. But these flaws are in the end of small moment. Statesmen looking to the past for easy maxims will not find them in this book. Login Access your Commentary account.

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