Lack of CALORIES & CITIZENS, not lack of CHROMIUM & COAL stymied combatant nations during WWII ....

Its usually said that a lack of strategic natural resources - ferroalloys, petroleum, even coal was the downfall of Japan and Germany.

Don't buy it.

They began to run short of these materials in 1945, months away from losing a six year long war of attrition.

Running short of these materials moments before their defeat was more of a sign rather than a cause of their collapse.

The empire held and controlled by Germany between 1940 and 1944 was more or less the area held by today's EU --- just as the empire that Japan held in those years was the same as what we call the South East Asia Economic Tigers.

These two areas then and now, along with America and the former USSR, were the powerhouses of the globe - in terms of people, industry,science.

Yet these two empires failed to either adequately feed their subjects or turn them into willing citizens, prepared to work hard and die hard for those empires.

Lack of food and lack of civic support worked together in an entangled way --- if the subject people had felt warmly towards Japanese and Germans ,they would have produced the food to fill their bellies and quiet their dislike.

Lack of Calories is just another way to say lack of Citizenship and vice versa.

The modernist rulers of these empires failed to treat Nature (or people they considered lessors/close to Nature) with the respect they deserved and then paid the price when their potential strong empires collapsed from within --from lack of supporters.

The Soviets also failed to feed their people and while they inspired the naive, the rest they had to drive into battle with guns at their heads.

Things weren't so dramatic in the American and British empires but even there relatively few people were willing to volunteering for  infantry, eager to drive the Japanese and Nazis from their conquests.

People did not flock to the colors in a sort of moral crusade.

Instead, they saw its as a grimly necessary 'job' and plodded into battle led by generals equally cautious and uninspiring.

True, food was more or less adequate in these empires.

But the ruling people (and the subject peoples) of  empires based on a mild form of racism were hardly going to go all out to defeat other empires that were also based on racism, now were they ?

In the end, it took six long , costly, years for a half dozen world-sized empires to defeat two relatively small empires --- hardly an inspiring record...