What were the basic reasons if any for the Axis powers losing to the Allied forces eventually in the 2nd World

Question

War ? Was it the lack of intelligence or power of Hitler's military forces or on the part of the Japanese, or any other reasons ?? I would appreciate ans from all people but esp. from people who are or have been in the military/defence forces.

Answer 1

Lack of material supplies and the fact that a society that uses slave labor or one that makes a god out of a slime-ball politician will never last very long unchanged.

Anybody contemplating citing the Roman Empire as an example of successful slave owners better read their history first.

Answer 2

You have to break the war up into two main theaters, the Eastern Front in Europe and the Pacific theater.

The story of the war is that the Red Army was able to fend off the 3rd Reich long enough to survive. Most of the fighting was in the East. The German forces that were driven from the beaches at Normandy and who later lost the Battle of the Bulge were a relatively small part of the German Forces.

Germany fell into the trap of fighting an opponent who had a huge supply of manpower, and fighting them at the end of a very long logistics chain, and in poor conditions (the Soviets were more adapted to surviving the Russian winters than the Germans). US aid to the Soviets through the Lend Lease program made up for the problems with the Soviet economy.

In the Pacific, Japan just picked a fight with a much, much bigger opponent. Japan was prepared for war, and the US wasn't. Once the US got it's act together, the outcome was just a matter of time. It's possible that Japanese homeland would have been successfully defended, but Japan would have still had to sue for peace as the loser. With the atomic bomb, nearly a million lives on both sides were likely saved, and Japan was forced to surrender what was clearly a lost effort.

Answer 3

In the end it was a war of attrition and the "sleeping Giant" awoke.

The USA during the first half of the 20th century had become the world's most prolific producer of all things. It's industrial output far outstripped the Axis powers combined.

Germany and Japan's only hope of winning was to keep the USA out of the war. Finish off Europe and the Pacific Rim without American intervention or inclusion. Once the bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor, the Axis powers lost. It was just a matter of time.

Germany had been fighting since 1939 and Japan on and off since the turn of the century. Both were fighting armies of limited modern military capabilities, the inclusion of the US military into the wars added men and materials that the Axis powers couldn't cope with.

Answer 4

One big reason is what is known in the military as logistics. The ability to amass bullets, beans, bullets and "bad guys" and transport them to contact with the enemy to eventually defeat him. There's a telling bit of dialogue in the American movie "The Battle of the Bulge" which illustrates this. A German Panzer commander shows a chocolate cake to a German General. He tells the General the cake was taken from a captured American Private and the return address on the package containing the cake was Boston Massachusetts. He also notes the cake is fresh and tells the General that any army which can ship birthday cakes by air across the Atlantic already has enough material in Europe to defeat the Germans.
It should be noted that all initial invasion and follow-on supplies and equipment in Operation Overlord which landed allied troops on the Normandy Peninsula were not completely delivered across the beaches and temporary piers until late August of 1944. The initial landing took place on June 6, 1944.

Answer 5

OIL.

That put the Germans in Africa, and both the Brits and the Russians attempting ot deny the Romanian oil fields to Germany.

Dilpomatic denial of oil from what later became Indonesia forced the Japanese into the 'take it' mode. So, Singapore and Hong Kong had to be neutralized on their right flank, and the American bases (Philippines, Guam, Wake) on their left flank, giving the Japanese transports a free ride to the south and the trip back. To ensure that the Americans dind' try to retake their forward bases, the U.S. Pacific Fleet had to be damaged or destroyed to the point where they wouldn't be effective for about five years.

Hence, Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese missed, on two points: One, they failed to get the aircraft carriers (just dumb luck, there.) Two, their estimates of the U.S. industrial capacity were wrong. The U.S. had it's fleet back to effectiveness in eighteen months,

Once both theaters started strangling the Axis for oil, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

wsulliva

Answer 6

The War in Europe and the War in the Pacific were in fact two very different wars for the Axis Powers; Japan was never capable of providing any sort of operational support to it's European partners while the United Nations worked fairly effectively, even transferring resources from one theater to another for an operation and back again.

In the Pacific, Japan hit its high water mark during the first six months of the war. From Midway on the U.S. Navy and its allies took the offensive away from the Japanese and pushed them back to the home islands. In Europe, Germany lost of the Sixth Army Group at Stalingrad ended whatever hope they had of defeating the Soviets. The U.S. landings in North Africa in November of 1942 caused the collapse of the much vaulted Afrika Korps and lead directly to pushing Italy out of the war by July of 1944.

Lincoln said "A house divided cannot stand..." The Axis Power were never united in concept or efforts, they were doomed from the very start and completely unaware of their shortcomings...

Answer 7

So many good reasons. My favorities:

Hitler's stupidity in attacking Russia. Doing it late in the year without winter uniforms available. And pissing off every ethnic group that welcomed your invasion. God how stupid.

The Polish capture of the enigma machine and the successful subsequent breakings of the Enigma codes by the English codebreakers.

Industrialization of the western powers. Germany was very late in going to a war economy. US produced mountains of war material. The Russians produced mountains of GOOD war material. The t34 tank was the best in the warThey were idiots for not giving us the plans. Our tanks were basically moving targets, but there were so many of the things they usually got the job done

Development of sonar, plane mounted radar and the convoy system. Once the German Uboats were broken, the logistical miracle could happen.

Not providing more support to Rommel. If he could have taken Egypt and the suez canal, British troops from India, Australia, and NZ would have been unavailable to the western theater of war.

Answer 8

No, Italy's resign made little distinction to Germany's defeat, as Russia by no potential engaged Italy. Italy become a small barrier combating the western allies pushing east into germany, yet because of the fact the conflict become in actuality gained on the western front, it mattered little if Italy surrendered or no longer. additionally, if Russia become with Germany, the axis extremely might've gained, particularly destroying the land tropps of the united kingdom and u . s . a ., and the luftwaffe might have sufficient time and aspects to recover from to mainland united kingdom and from there launch adult men on the u . s . a ., particularly crushing them, best to WW2 being gained via the axis.

Answer 9

Sheer numbers in production of weapons. European countries (and their factories) were bombed on a routine basis. A whole continent away, the US could churn out weapons from factories that never had a single bomb dropped on them.

Japan was also outproduced by the US, plus had another handicap. They imported nearly all of their oil and a war disrupted their oil supply. Ironically, Pearl Harbor was intended to prevent the US from entering the war and jeopardizing that same oil supply. A gamble gone bad if ever there was one.

Answer 10

Overwhelming amounts of men and materiel arrayed against them. They were overrun by hundreds of divisions of well-armed and well-trained troops. The whole thing was predicated, East and West, on the idea that great gains could be made, peace could be successfully sued for, and a happy ending would be had by the Axis powers. It was a fantasy wrapped in a pipe-dream.