Which harmed the Allied cause in WWII more and delayed final victory longer - USA to China, or UK to Italy?

Question

USA spent enormous sums on "keeping China in the war" even though the Chinese were hardly fighting the Japanese at all. At great expense, America sent the Chinese large amounts of armaments, which fell into Communist hands in 1949.
Britain insisted on invading Italy in 1943 and committed the Allies to a long war of attrition.
Which was more harmful to the Allied cause? What can be said in the favour of either?
If the effort would have been better made elsewhere, where?

Answer 1

I would agree that neither were laudable decisions, so I'll bite.
The Italian front helped the allied cause by forcing Germany to worry about the south. It also forced Italy out of the war and Mussolini out of power. But by itself, the Italian front was not a way to Berlin, the real European heart of Axis power. I'm not sure of casualty numbers, but if German deaths in Italy outnumbered American deaths, I'm sure it wasn't by a large margin. The well-defended, mountainous terrain was virtually impassable.
Italy was not a great strategic move, but if you look at the experience that front gave our wet-behind-the-ears troops, and air force, it was somewhat valuable in the longer term.
By contrast, the moves in China never really paid off. The guns were used to drive the main American ally in China, Chiang Kaishek, out of power and to Taiwan(after the war). And the enormous expense mentioned included tons of fuel for our planes, not to mention the planes themselves, that could have been handy elsewhere in the Pacific.
There is the possibility that if America hadn't helped China, Japan could have started a land war with Russia or elsewhere, maybe to get Iranian oil. But that would have been a huge longshot... even with China out of the picture, Japan was too heavily outnumbered to invade Asia's interior.
And since the Pacific theater of WWII ended two or three years after VE day, it would follow that assistance to China, by delaying the progress of the Pacific war, delayed the final victory longer.

Answer 2

I don't think that it would be accurate to say the Chinese hardly fought the Japanese, they had already been fighting the Japanese for a decade before the 'war' in the Pacific began, and had China been conquered the Japanese would have a great number of resources freed as well as greatly improved lines of communication. As to Italy it was effectively knocked out of the war by the invasion and it did help to divert German troops from the Eastern Front where the Soviets were getting tired of doing all the heavy fighting and were pressuring the Western Allies to invade the continent.

Answer 3

Have you read anything about the "Rape of Nanking"? If not, do so and then try a justify an argument that in hindsight the west ought not to have supplied military aid to the Kuomontang and indirectly the Maoists.

As to invading Italy. Well the idea of the Allies crossing the Alps to hit Germany was nuts, but the fact was no one was ready to invade France in 1943. The Canadians getting massacred at Dieppe proved that in spades. Invading Italy however was a relatively easy task for the Allies and one where they could start to mount a credible counter attack in Europe. At the very least they got onto the continent, engaged the wehrmacht, and began to drain military energy from the Nazis when the Soviets needed anything in that respect they could get. Of course it was costly, but then wasn't the whole damn mess? I don't think you could really argue your way into a better situation here either.

Answer 4

The invasion of Italy was mostly a diversion and in a smaller sense an experiment/practice in American arms, tactics, and soldiers. However, in my opinion the invasion was not a failure and was absolutely worth it, it provided the Allies with air bases for fighters and medium bombers to maintain control of the Mediterranean and to pummel targets such as the oil fields in southern Germany. Believe it or not, the Americans most important contribution to the European Theater of Operations was in strategic bombing and air superiority, the Soviets won the ground war.

As for supplying arms to China, I believe any little bit of resistance/fighting against the Japanese was positive to the war effort. And when one compares the acts of conquering Japanese soldiers, such as the Rape of Nanking, with those of the Maoist Communists, the Cultural Revolution, one can arguably say that the Communists' acts were/are the lesser of two evils. It can also be argued, and has been by many historians, that the US should have supported Mao's forces' resistance to the Japanese instead of Shek's, since the latter used a lot of the money/sold a lot of the arms in order to support his lavish lifestyle. It is believed that the support to Mao could have led to greater regional stability in the years following the war and would have allowed for diplomacy that could have prevented the atrocities of the Communist regime as well as factors of the Cold War. But that's playing the what if game. Oh, and the arms supplied to China were produced with much needed American labor which provided jobs to help kickstart the Depression Era American economy, half of the reason for Lend-Lease was for the positive economic impacts on America.

Answer 5

You have too many facts mixed up here. Churchill believed if the allies hit the soft underbelly of Europe they could split the forces and draw some off of the Channel. It worked. Mark Clark was driving to Germany from the south while Bradley was coming in from the West.
The Communist did not get very much in the way of arms. The U.S. did not exactly send the best we had. Keeping China in the war kept the Japs on two fronts also. It has been proven, all through history that a country cannot fight on two fronts, successfully.

Answer 6

I would say both made sense. Prior to the battle of the Coral Sea "keeping China in the war" made perfect sense as it could not be assumed that the US would have islands like Guam in order to bomb Japan from. So the Flying Tigers, etc. kept open the possibility of strategic bombing of Japan from China., not to mention facilitated the Doolittle raid. Aside from that, helping China was just plain the right thing to do and doing the right thing was how FDR sold the war to the American public.

The invasion of Italy gave the Allies the airbases they needed to bomb the German's oil fields in Albania etc. Without the destruction of Germany's oil supply, who knows how the war could have ended? Hindsight is easy, but most of the decisions (not all!) FDR and Churchill made during the war made perfect sense at the time.

Answer 7

the extensive function the U. S. performed in WWII under no circumstances diminishes the valiant efforts of the British and others previous to our get right of entry to. the only reason the U. S. ought to play a function became that the British hung on for for this reason long. yet without the U. S. Lend/hire software and the U. S. Forces the warfare could have been lost. that's to no longer say the U. S. gained the warfare.

Answer 8

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Answer 9

Agreed with above

Have you never played command and conquer?
Last thing you want is one massive force coming at you from one direction.

Create as many diversions as possible. They are not there to acheive anything other than splitting the main flow of attack and thereby weakening it.