VDH on Winning World War II
After suffering the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, and other defeats like it, how did the US and the Allies manage to win the Second World War? According to Victor Davis Hanson, victory required strategic brilliance and a lot of luck.
The horrific events of December 7, 1941, claimed the lives of over 2000 Americans. For the families and friends of these dead, whose slaughter is magnified by the fact that they were non-combatants at that time, the day was overwhelming.
In the context of the larger engagement, they were only a drop in the bucket of devastation, what Hanson calls a “vast canvas of death” that claimed the lives of over 65 million people. World War II is not merely a story of death, but one of vitality and leadership. As Hanson explains,
The Second World War was ultimately a story of people—how people died, and how people made decisions that determined which side won or lost.
According to Hanson, the Allies were lucky to have leaders in supreme command who helped win the war by embracing the power of their alliance when the odds looked bleak, and who sought victory through means that would cause the least possible injury to their own country’s populations. For the Americans, Hanson points to the indispensable Franklin Roosevelt, who went to great lengths to ensure a military build-up before the war:
And FDR, in sometimes cagey, Machiavellian fashion, was reassuring an isolationist nation in 1940 that it would not go to war, even though he was taking quite dramatic steps to prepare it to go to war and might even welcome it going to war.
Check out this clip from our free online course, “The Second World Wars,” in which Hanson explains how the leadership of Roosevelt, Churchill, and others led the Allies to victory:
