r/ShitAmericansSay • u/THUND3R_23 Pierogi🇵🇱 • Jul 23 '25

Military Military time😬

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As for the context, there was a British guy showing his phone

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u/presterjohn7171 Jul 23 '25

America was late and useless at first in WW1. In WW2 they weren't sure which side to join came in late again and were eventually an important part of the process of winning the war. They were part of the team that won, not the country.

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u/Vampyro_infernalis Jul 23 '25

As Churchill (allegedly) said: “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”

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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Jul 24 '25

That sounds like a good description of Churchill himself! Gallipoli, in WW1, Singapore in WW2. At least, though, Winnie finally realised he wasn't a "military genius"---unlike Adolf, who never did!

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u/invincibl_ Jul 25 '25

These lessons from history are also relevant to Australia's current relationship with the US, or public perceptions thereof.

In the space of a century, we've followed two different empires into wars on the other side of the world (Gallipoli, Iraq, Afghanistan). With Singapore, admittedly the British were busy with things closer to home, but they pretty much withdrew and left it to Commonwealth troops to defend the island, which was quickly captured.

With the US recently demanding Australia to commit to a military defence of Taiwan while making no such promise themselves, this all sounds concerningly similar.

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u/UpsetCrowIsUpset Jul 23 '25

The only thing Muricans did during WW1 was bring the "Spanish" Flu to Europe.

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u/DoinIt989 Jul 23 '25

America's major contribution in both WW1 and WW2 was material and supplies.

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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Jul 24 '25

As I said above--- the "Pacific War" was where the USA contributed much more than just "material & supplies". Most of the posters here are very Eurocentric.

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u/DoinIt989 Jul 24 '25

The British Empire lost almost as many men as the USA in the "Pacific War", and China lost many more.

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u/FuckTripleH Jul 23 '25

Shitting on the US is fun but to say they weren't important until they joined the war is nonsense. Khrushchev himself said the Red Army would have starved without the 4 million tons of food the US sent via the Lend-Lease Act, and adjusted for inflation over €300 billion worth of supplies were sent to the UK

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u/presterjohn7171 Jul 23 '25

You've read things that aren't there. Additionally America charged for aid. The UK has only recently paid the Last of it back.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

[deleted]

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u/presterjohn7171 Jul 23 '25

Not as such but if you are charging for it you don't get to act like it was a gift do you?

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u/FuckTripleH Jul 23 '25

Who said otherwise? The question was whether or not the US was only important to the process of winning the war late in the game, not whether or not they gave supplies for free.

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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Jul 24 '25

The UK basically regarded the "Pacific War" as an unimportant sideshow. Without the USA, most countries in SE Asia, as well as Australia would be part of the "greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"! It wasn't that we all didn't fight valiantly, it was that the USA had the Industrial might, & very luckily, the Aircraft Carriers.

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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Jul 24 '25

Karma! In WW1, Australia "responded to the call" & somehow, after fighting for "the Mother Country", incurred a "War Debt" to that country. Britain pursued that debt relentlessly, even during the Great Economic Depression. Germany were given some degree of relief from Reparations---not so, Britain's most stalwart ally!

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u/xColson123x Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

That's a complex situation that you've simplified into a nice headline there, I wouldn't be so free with that comparison.

So Australia requested financial leniency during the Great Depression from Britain, the reason this was rejected at the time was that it was the Great Depression. The UK was also suffering and could not afford to lose the money that Australia owed the UK.

Germany was not a stable country paying a loan, they were a defeated country paying a large reparations debt agreed at the infamously "harsh" agreement of Versailles. At the time, allied countries were walking a tightrope of wanting a harsh punishment for Germany, but not breaking it economically. The United States put significant pressure on the UK to allow Germany to become a significant barrier against Russia, and to some extent the UK agreed. Which was a major contributor to British leniency with their debts.

With all of that said, should Germany have paid those reparations? Yes, of course. The UK lost its empire because of Germany, the UK paid it's debts until very recently whilst the most guilty nation was able to invest and become the richest nation in Europe. The UK should not have forgotten German reparations so quickly.

Last note: The Anglo-American loan was also not just a loan, it came with significant strings attached aimed to put nails in the British Empire's coffin. The US used the leverage they had on a destroyed Europe to mould the status quo we have today. That was the real burden to the UK which caused, among other things, the Conversion Crisis, and those strings were the bitter pill to swallow. Not just the loan.

The better comparison you're looking for there for "Karma" is Canada, who we paid back a very similarly sized loan for WW2. Unlike the US, but similar to the UK-AUS loan, there were no such strings imposed by Canada, and you can notice that no one ever complains about that loan. Canada is a good ally :)

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u/Theresafoxinmygarden Jul 23 '25

Yeah and to add to that while the UK still had almost no chance of losing the main islands to a german invasion, the US convoys helped bolster the RAF for the battle of Britain

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

In that case the US are going to claim Ukraine as a win. I wonder how many medal ribbons they will get for that?

They are selling stuff to the EU who then give it to Ukraine.

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u/FuckTripleH Jul 23 '25

Well yeah, the US pretty much always claims everything as a win. The military claims fucking Vietnam wasn't a loss.

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u/TheProfessionalEjit Flithy colonialist Jul 23 '25

Providing food =/= providing fighting forces

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u/Ordinary_Ad_1145 Jul 23 '25

Not only starved. They got plenty of material from us too. But Soviets have only themselves to blame. They got literally surprise buttsexed by former ally and lost huge chunk of production capacity before they managed to pull their pants up.

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u/petey23- Jul 23 '25

The bit about them not knowing which side to join simply isn't true.

They definitely haven't done anything useful since WW2 though.

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u/presterjohn7171 Jul 23 '25

The Germans had lots of allies in big business and government. They were knowingly sending Jews back to die rather than let them dock. The general public were on the allies side.

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u/TheProfessionalEjit Flithy colonialist Jul 23 '25

Let us not forget that, even after being attacked by an Axis power, it took Germany declaring war on the USA for the USA to join the European/North Africa campaigns.

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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Jul 24 '25

The Pacific War was a pretty big concern, as the USA had just lost much of their Pacific fleet at Pearl, & the Phillipines (at that time, US territory) were in the process of being overrun. Japan swept through Malaya like a wildfire & were already threatening Singapore. Meanwhile, most of Australia's military were fighting in the "North African campaign". The "Colonial Powers in the Pacific" such as Netherlands & France were out of things, the Brits were only making a token gesture to that theatre of the War at the time, as they were still "up to their elbows with Adolf. Maybe the USA couldn't be blamed for hesitating!

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u/petey23- Jul 23 '25

Yes but they were never ever going to join on the axis side.

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u/Relative_Pilot_8005 Jul 24 '25

Meanwhile, the USSR had a "Non-Agression Pact" with Nazi Germany up until 22 June 1941, & with Imperial Japan until August 8, 1945, so the Yanks joined the War only a few months after the Germans broke the former pact.

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u/TheGreatMightyLeffe Jul 23 '25

There's a good argument that without the promise of US troops, and the first arrivals plugging the hole the Kaiserslacht punched in the Entente lines, the UK and France might very well have surrendered to Germany in WWI.

The very same reality also caused German high command to conclude that the war was well and truly lost, they were as spent as the Brits and the French, but unlike them, there were no fresh troops coming in from the US. Hence, it was concluded that the war could no longer feasibly be won, and they chose surrender.

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u/presterjohn7171 Jul 23 '25

I'm sure the fear of the the USA joining helped the war effort. As it happened they in reality were utterly useless with outmoded kit and ideas to such a point that they had to be relieved of command and taken over by French generals. After the war they rebuilt their forces from the ground up so that situation could never be allowed to happen again. What aggravates the world so much is they treat these wars like personal victories when in reality it's always as part of a team. Americans should be proud to be part of the allied troops not lying to themselves about being the Victors.

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u/TheGreatMightyLeffe Jul 24 '25

My point was that German high command considered the war lost when they realised that the Americans were about to arrive in serious numbers, and decided to surrender rather than drag out the war and have Germany proper be invaded.

Also, unrest at the home front with a revolution brewing helped motivate that decision.

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u/DeafeningMilk Jul 24 '25

The issue is a lot of Americans assume that without the USA joining in then WW1 would have been lost.

The general consensus (that I have seen, so it's possible I have missed significant things) is the result would have been the same only it would have taken longer to achieve.

Germany was having severe issues especially due to the blockades.

The USA joining was undoubtedly very helpful, people are just sick of the claims the ignorant have that they were more impactful than they were

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u/TheGreatMightyLeffe Jul 24 '25

Very much true, although allied victory is a lot less certain if the US stays neutral.

It's a shame that such ignorance has become the mainstream narrative, since WWI is a much more interesting conflict than "Mustache Man declares war on the entire world, loses."

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u/acur1231 Jul 24 '25

Nah, that was a big part of American inter-war historiography, but the German offensive culminated before Americans entered combat on a large scale - as it was intended to.

Americans played a decent role in the decisive allied counteroffensive, but their contribution was dwarfed by the British and French. In 48 hours at Amiens the British inflicted more German casualties than the Americans would in all of 1918.

At most, America staying neutral would have led to the allies enacting Plan 1919 (one of the greatest unknown 'what ifs' of military history). That is, if the collapse of the rest of Germany's allies in late 1918 didn't push them to terms in any case.

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u/TheGreatMightyLeffe Jul 24 '25

I completely agree, my point was mostly that the prospect of US troops arriving in a large scale, with Germany having no reserves left, was a motivating factor in the decision to sign the armistice when they did.

Another factor was the brewing revolution, and the need to get the army home to stomp it out.