re: Biggest misconception of WW 2 was?

Not WWII related but I always liked this quote about Gen. MacArthur....

“I fired MacArthur because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the president. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was.”

- Harry Truman

I think one of the biggest misconceptions about WWII, at least among Americans, is a belief that the US did the bulk of the fighting in Europe and basically won the war on it's own with some help from our Allies. Uncle Joe's Red Army paid the price in blood in Europe. Without the Red Army pinning down a huge percentage of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, Overlord would have been way more risky and even if it had succeeded, the war would have taken much longer.

Well would they been able to put up a better fight and possibly been more equipped if he did not defy and sit on orders?

Depending on who you believe then that is how you answer that question.

When your own men call you out for desertion, that tells me who to side with.

Other reasons to dislike MacArthur as a leader after WW2.

Gave Ishii immunity but hanged Yamishita. Ishii was Japan's biological warfare guy and was using the agents. Yamashita was nowhere near Manila in the destruction and never gave the order, but he was executed.


All this said he was a great soldier but power corrupted him, after his stint as head of the US Military Academy he went sideways power hungry.

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Lot of people think Pearl Harbor was the trigger for us entering the war. In many ways, that is correct, but we had been moving military into position and building up the military for a few years in anticipation of entering the war. We even had some troops on

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We had been in a shooting war in the Atlantic months before Pearl Harbor. Hell. It was an American pilot flying an American plane that located the Bismarck.

That the source of the blitzcraig was great training, military discipline and equipment of the Germany military . It was actually crystal meth. That's why the attacks were 2-3 days. They didn't sleep eat etc as the soldiers were drugged up. That's also why they were so brutal

Sherman attacked an undefended land and burned it to the ground. Lemay attacked a still fighting and defended land. Sherman killed old men, boys, and women. Sherman was a war criminal, not some hero. His tactics in theory are correct, in his practice of them, not so much.

But who paid for the equipment/food/etc to get that Russia properly ready for war?

The Soviets would have been in trouble if the Germans would have stuck to the plan of going to the Caucuses and getting the oil. Hitler's pure hate of communism and the symbolic vision of destroying Stalingrad was just too much for him. Capturing the Kremlin would have accomplished nothing IMO. The oil was what they needed to focus on and goofed.

That being said, the Soviet regime would have bombed the oil fields and killed their own to make sure it never happened I bet. But if the English and Americans would have bombed it like planned, that changes everything and Russia may do what they did in WW1, just worry about themselves and then turn on the Allies.

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Biggest misconception of WW 2 was?

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That the USSR was completely dependent on lend-lease. The Reich stalled at Typhoon and then lost at Stalingrad without most of the lend-lease supplies coming in.

Germany would have still lost the war in the East and fighting in the West would've been at the same intensity. Lend-lease accelerated the advance West be the Soviets and helped end the war sooner.

Re the staged photo op of MacArthur's return, I've read in several different books that his staff's plans originally had him landing safely & dryly on a specially prepared dock. But the Navy operator of the landing craft, a lowly non com, disliked MacArthur so much he deliberately landed him short & off the mark. As the commander of any Naval vessel is the supreme commander of that vessel, MacArthur could not over rule him. It made for the famous photo op but MacArthur was reportedly furious at first. It was his plan to island hop instead of by passing the heavily fortified islands for mop up duty later, resulting in the heavy loss of life & wounded. He was far from well liked by the average soldier.