I don’t normally read or enjoy World War 2-analysis, but Your Book Review: How the War Was Won was an interesting read. The book in question challenges traditional narratives about what exactly allowed the Allies to win WW2, and offers its own less glamorous and heroic explanations that ring more realistic to me. For example:
Amateurs Discuss Destruction; Professionals Discuss Non-Operational Losses
O’Brien is at his absolute best describing the subtle factors that whittled away Axis combat power. Air and sea power created a situation where the Axis war machine simply could not function anywhere near as efficiently as it needed to.
For example, after the Allied air bombings started, Germany built vast underground aircraft factories to protect production. But that move carried a host of negative side effects. […]
These effects ultimately mean fewer airplanes produced as the war went on, and dramatic increases in non-operational losses. Citing the German field marshal in charge of aircraft production, O’Brien assessed that the Germans lost approximately half of their planned fighter production in this way. This comports with post-war American assessments, which assessed total German aircraft losses at the front as 15,327 in 1944, and non-operational losses at approximately 15,000. For comparison: total German aircraft losses at Kursk were approximately 159(!)
Logistics and production efficiency and capacity are not sexy, but they decide wars better than battles typically do. But traditional narratives focus on the latter, because it’s more glamorous, and allows the individual believe that their efforts mattered directly.