Which harmed the Allied cause in WWII more and delayed final victory longer – USA to China, or UK to Italy?
USA spent enormous sums on “keeping China in the war” even though the Chinese were hardly fighting the Japanese at all. At great expense, America sent the Chinese large amounts of armaments, which fell into Communist hands in 1949.
Britain insisted on invading Italy in 1943 and committed the Allies to a long war of attrition.
Which was more harmful to the Allied cause? What can be said in the favour of either?
If the effort would have been better made elsewhere, where?
I would agree that neither were laudable decisions, so I’ll bite.
The Italian front helped the allied cause by forcing Germany to worry about the south. It also forced Italy out of the war and Mussolini out of power. But by itself, the Italian front was not a way to Berlin, the real European heart of Axis power. I’m not sure of casualty numbers, but if German deaths in Italy outnumbered American deaths, I’m sure it wasn’t by a large margin. The well-defended, mountainous terrain was virtually impassable.
Italy was not a great strategic move, but if you look at the experience that front gave our wet-behind-the-ears troops, and air force, it was somewhat valuable in the longer term.
By contrast, the moves in China never really paid off. The guns were used to drive the main American ally in China, Chiang Kaishek, out of power and to Taiwan(after the war). And the enormous expense mentioned included tons of fuel for our planes, not to mention the planes themselves, that could have been handy elsewhere in the Pacific.
There is the possibility that if America hadn’t helped China, Japan could have started a land war with Russia or elsewhere, maybe to get Iranian oil. But that would have been a huge longshot… even with China out of the picture, Japan was too heavily outnumbered to invade Asia’s interior.
And since the Pacific theater of WWII ended two or three years after VE day, it would follow that assistance to China, by delaying the progress of the Pacific war, delayed the final victory longer.
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