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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

> incredible power of democracies

I'd say free markets. The US was able to handily fight two wars (against Japan and Germany) as well as massively supplying Britain and the Soviet Union.

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What's the difference between France (lost quickly in WWII), Britain (barely evaded invasion), and the US (not invaded, economy grew during the war)? Is it democracy, free markets, or accessibility to German tanks and war planes that is the likely reason for the difference?

8 out of 10 Germans losses were inflicted by the Soviet Army; the USSR didn't rank high on democracy or market freedom but it had no choice but fight Germany, whereas the US could afford to choose the extent of engagement and let the USSR (and Britain) bleed while inflicting losses on Germany. This is not to say that the US policy wasn't sensible for the US, just that WWII is not a clear testament to the latent strengths of democracies and free markets at waging war.

And on the point of democracy specifically, in "The Gathering Storm," Churchill nearly pins the breakout of WWII on the inherent difficulty of conducting sensible foreign policy under democracy (both in the case of the badly designed peace treaties at the end of WWI, and in the case of subsequent appeasement of Nazi Germany.)

I wouldn't want to live where they don't have democracy or a reasonably free market, but neither is a reliable device to either prevent or win a world war.

> What's the difference between France (lost quickly in WWII), Britain (barely evaded invasion), and the US (not invaded, economy grew during the war)?

A lot of it is location, to be honest. Invading the U.S. was nowhere near as easy as invading France, Poland, etc. for Germany (or Japan, for that matter).

I think the closest we got to invasion during the war (outside Pearl Harbor) were some isolated submarines off the coast of Oregon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Fort_Stevens

Several Aleutian Islanda were taken over by the Japanese, as were Wake, Guam, and the Philippines.

France and Great Britain never really recovered from the losses incurred during WW1. Not just financially, but in losing a generation of men in their prime.

The USSR was largely dependent upon US support for food and industry.

> US (not invaded, economy grew during the war

GDP grew during the war due to federal debt. The standard of living markedly declined and didn't recover until much later.

...and simultaneously invent the atom bomb.

Japan and Germany fought WWII because they wanted to secure oil supplies. The USSR and USA defeated them because they had massive amounts of oil at their disposal. The USA was #1 producer at the time. Also, both the Germans and Japanese failed to secure oil supplies and refineries quickly enough and quickly ran out of liquid fuels. WWII can almost be boiled down to this factor alone. If Germany and Japan had secured supplies of liquid fuels they would not have been defeated. Democracy and capitalism has nothing to do with it.

Even in the early stages of the Pacific war, the Japanese soldier was very lightly equipped and the Japanese could not replace their losses, while the US produced a tsunami of equipment and supplies starting from near zero at the outset.

You'll see the impact of free markets even in the Civil War. The Southern slave economy could not produce what was needed - they couldn't even produce shoes for their soldiers. The free Northern economy buried them with well equipped well fed soldiers. (The North and South were both democracies. Slave/free economies made the difference.)

Both German and Russian war production increased throughout the war under command economies and massive bombing. They key factor was fuel.

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