I read Richard Overy’s Why the Allies Won with little expectation of learning much that was new. Even the most casual student of WWII, of which I count myself, knows the conventional explanation about why the Allies won. The Allies’ industrial economies, the United States’ in particular, simply out-produced and overwhelmed the Axis. Once the Allies’ war economies hit their stride, victory was all but guaranteed -- end of story. Overy argues this oft-repeated narrative is illusory and suggests a high degree of historical determinism. To even ask the question of why the Allies won, the author submits, is to propose that other outcomes, short of absolute victory, were possible. This is precisely Overy’s argument: other outcomes were entirely possible. In fact, Overy contends the outcome in the middle years of the war was anything but certain as the “conflict was poised on a knife’s edge.” The author builds his case with familiar primary and secondary WWII sources. The strength of Why the Allies Won and the power of its argument, however, is Overy’s critical analysis and thoughtful interpretation of his sources.
The essence of Overy’s case is that the Allies’ ability to consistently improve the qualitative performance of their forces, technology, and logistics coupled with their ever-increasing quantitative supremacy in numbers were the keys to victory. In other words, the Allied economies made victory possible, but by no means automatic. The Axis, on the other hand, did little to modernize and improve the effectiveness of their forces and support arms after their stunning successes against France and Great Britain in 1940 and the Soviet Union in 1941. Similarly, when they had the upper-hand from an economic perspective – which they had from 1939 to 1942 – the Germans failed to fully utilize their industrial power and vast resources.
Overy makes his case for the Allies warfighting ascendency and ultimate victory using two historical approaches. The first is a review of four decisive “zones of conflict” between 1942 and 1945 where the Allies applied maximum efforts and prevailed: the war at sea (Coral Sea and the Battles of Midway and the Atlantic), the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk on the Eastern front, the tactical and strategic air war against Germany, and the invasion and reconquest of Western Europe. In each of these zones, Overy illustrates how the Allies’ strategic and operational decision cycles were faster and their tactical performance more effective than the Axis. Similarly, the Allies consistently outpaced the Axis in translating emerging battlefield requirements and lessons learned into the mass production of technology that improved warfighting.
The Eastern front is an example of Overy’s ability to apply critical thinking and get beyond the numbers. At Kursk, the conventional wisdom held that the Soviets did not win; the Germans lost due to overwhelming Soviet numbers and Hitler’s meddling. Overy blows-up the overwhelming numbers argument by illustrating that the 1941 Soviet Army vastly outnumbered the Germans in machine and men, but still suffered catastrophic defeats. Similarly, it was the German General Staff, not Hitler, that planned and executed Operation Citadel. Finally, the Soviet’s modest advantage in numbers at Kursk cannot explain the enormity of the German loss. Instead, Overy argues effectively that, by 1943, the Soviets had bested the Germans in every warfighting discipline that made the difference at Kursk: doctrine, leadership, combined arms operations, communications, intelligence, and logistics. Pound for pound, the Soviets were simply better than the Germans. In each of these zones of conflict, Overy demonstrates that, without the means to employ it effectively at the operational level, quantitative superiority was no guarantor of victory.
Overy’s second approach deals with factors that enabled the operational success in the zones of conflict – production, technology, leadership and moral rectitude. Here the book shines as Overy shifts the analysis and interpretation into high gear. The author is especially effective at contrasting what the Allies did right and what the Axis did wrong. On the economic front, the Soviets relied on clear lines of authority and central planning to restore their wrecked 1941 economy and get it running in high gear by late 1942. The United States empowered the nation’s captains of industry to mass produce everything from B-17 bombers to Sherman tanks. By 1944, Soviet and United States workers were twice as productive their counterparts in Germany and four times better than the Japanese. Overy also successfully argues that, until early 1943 when the Soviets were making the most of their “attenuated resources”, the “new German Empire failed to make the most of its economic advantages” (182). Had the Germans chosen to do otherwise, and they could have, the course of the war might have been much different.
In the area of technology, Overy argues that standardization, limited types of major combat equipment such as tanks, trucks and airplanes, and production simplicity carried the day for the Allies. So, while the Soviets and United States were producing simple T-34 and Sherman tanks by the tens of thousands, the Germans were producing expensive, over-engineered, albeit effective, Tiger tanks. By 1944, Soviet tank production in one month exceeded an entire year of German output. The key, Overy contends, is that the Germans could have taken a different course of action to even the odds, but chose not to do so.
The decisive factor, Overy contends, for Allied success on the economic and technology front was decidedly effective strategic leadership. Unity of command and unity of effort characterized the Allies efforts across the board. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, each with their own particular leadership style, communicated their strategic intent to clear-thinking senior military officers and civilians who in-turn delegated tasks to a focused and responsive bureaucracy that made things happen. Hitler’s regime on the other hand was handicapped by his own well-documented meddling and inability to think strategically. Hitler’s General Staff was similarly ineffective and focused almost exclusively on combat operations at the expense of logistics, and there was little unity of effort among the German and Japanese military services. Instead, competition, back-biting, and inter-service rivalry characterized the Axis armies, navies and air forces. Finally, the German economy was plagued by a lethargic bureaucracy, a lack of coordination, and a dearth central planning.
Overy’s final point is that Allied morale and fighting spirit was higher because they were “fighting the good fight” against monstrous totalitarian regimes. This argument is somewhat thin given that Axis soldiers fought just as hard as the Allies without holding the moral high ground. For whatever reason – ideology, fear of the enemy, fear of the regime, unit cohesion, et al – Axis soldiers battled ferociously until the bitter end. The American in me wants to take Overy’s side in this argument; however, it just does not wash given the reality of what made the WWII soldier fight.
In the end, however, this is a small blemish on an otherwise powerfully written and highly readable work. Overy makes his argument – that the Allied victory was not predetermined by economic primacy – with rock solid analysis and clear-thinking interpretation. Why the Allies Won is a worthwhile read for the academic and WWII buff. It also offers a valuable lesson in applying a healthy dose of scholarly skepticism when a historical event is presented as a fait accompli.
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Top reviews from other countries
observer100
Food for thought. Thoroughly recommended.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2023
Bruce Dallas
Something for WWII afficionados
Reviewed in Australia on July 23, 2020