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By the end of 1942 Russia had received from the Allies 2,600 first-line planes, 3,200 tanks, 81,000 other vehicles; and during the winter she reconquered part of the lands she had lost the previous fall. But during those same months the Germans were still exploiting their advantage in weapons underseas. That winter U-boats sank abut 1,000,000 tons of Allied shipping a month—and with it many of the weapons which might have tipped the balance more rapidly.
Yet those months saw the balance tip.
Once started, the balance tipped more & more rapidly.
Before 1943 ended the Germans lost Sicily, southern Italy, the Donetz basin. With 1944 the Germans lost White Russia, the remainder of the Ukraine, half of Poland, most of the Balkans. Their aircraft plants and oil refineries were progressively reduced by the vast new weapon of the Allies: air power. Last week, captive Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt named Allied air superiority as the biggest single reason for Germany's final defeat.
By Dday, June 6, the Germans had no air defense in Normandy. Although they had now mustered 300 divisions, they could spare only 50, including six or seven Panzer divisions, for the defense of France; the rest were tied up elsewhere.
After the landing in Normandy, the pendulum swung more rapidly. In losing Africa, the Axis had lost a million men. In losing France they lost another million—beside their losses on the Russian front and in Italy.
From superiority in quantity and quality, Hitler grew progressively inferior in both. With V1, V-2 and jet-propelled planes he made a desperate effort to recover the advantage of weapons. But it was too late.
The Wehrmacht still showed skill. It held the Russians at the Vistula. It held the Allies' secondary attack in Italy. It launched a vigorous offensive in the Ardennes. But, once its two initial advantages in manpower and weapons had been definitely lost, it did not conduct a single successful campaign. Like the Allies in Stage I, the Germans in Stage III lost every major battle.
On Feb. 23, 1945, when Eisenhower began his big assault on Germany's western frontier, he had about 100 first-rank U.S., British, Canadian and French combat divisions, against some 55 understrength German divisions. In armor he had at least a 3-to-1 numerical superiority. In the air his superiority approached infinity. On the German frontier in February 1945, as in May 1940, one side completely outclassed the other. And the military results were inevitably just as conclusive.
The Big Mistake. In spite of their ultimate superiority in manpower and weapons, bad generalship on either the east front or the west front might have lost the war for the Allies at any time up to the final campaign.
Until history opens its book a little farther, the world will not know exactly what share of credit belongs to those Big Three—Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt—who very definitely commanded as well as took advice from their soldiers.
The credit for the successful field conduct of Russia's part in the war presumably rests chiefly on Voroshilov and Zhukov. In the west the credit belongs chiefly to the Combined Chiefs of Staff and to their field commanders Eisenhower, Montgomery, et al.