“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
– Winston Churchill
Key Take Aways is arguably the most important section of 6thBombGroup.com. The U.S. was successfully attacked by a foreign country in 1941 through failure of military intelligence and an insufficient military deterrence to dissuade the attack. It prevailed where its enemies failed through industrial superiority, self-possession of the raw materials of war, including oil, and development of unmatched military superiority during the war. The U.S. military, its Allies and an entire generation of Americans on the home front united during WW2 to defeat two conquering armies posing existential threats to global democracies, including our own. We can never take our American-made freedoms for granted, should maintain lessoned rigor to protect them and appreciate the many who’ve sacrificed to preserve them
WW II Rationing poster
Lessons of War: The Home Front Was Critical To Winning WWII
In my view, the war was equally, if not more so won on the home front through the great transformation of America’s superior peacetime industrial engine to the war effort. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor awakened a “Sleeping Giant”. Over the next four years the U.S. far out-paced the collective Axis powers in the production of ships, aircraft, tanks, vehicles, guns, munitions and other vital weapons of war allowing the Allies to outlast a war of attrition with the initially far superior militaries of Germany and Japan. Instrumental also was the development of American game-change technologies, our fuel and natural resource independence and our unity to the war effort at home.
Lessons of War: Were Atomic Bombs Necessary To Win The War?
U.S. interrogation of Japanese government and military officials immediately following the end of the Pacific War confirmed that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and did not influence Japan’s decision to surrender. That decision had been made two months prior in June 1945 following seven months of massive, crippling conventional B-29 bombing of the Japanese homeland. Infighting on terms within Japan’s Supreme War Council stalled the surrender process while the nation’s public vow to “fight to the death” remained. Faced with launching a bloody, protracted amphibious land invasion of Japan, with an estimated loss of 1 million American lives, President Truman opted to use his new weapon to end the war quickly and save lives on both sides.
Atomic Bomb blast over Hiroshima August 6, 1945
Tokyo after firebombing
Lessons of War: What We Should Have Learned
Nations throughout history have built dominating militaries to impose their will on weaker nations to expand influence, territorial, offensive, defensive and economic advantage, impose government and religious systems, gain natural resources and other benefits. This was true of Germany and Japan in WWII, and true of Russia, China, Iran, Israel and other countries today. The lessons of the Pacific War are found in how and why we entered the war and how we won it.
