Coalitions, not Guns, won WWII

In the end, WWII was decided for the Allies only because the Axis coalition (cum gated community) proved to be much smaller than that of the Allies and very much less united.

In fact the Germans ended up in serious killing wars against almost all their former 'allies' - Italy, Russia, Finland, Hungary et al.

Not at all surprising really because all the various Axis ideologies were based as upon the 'genetics of exclusion'.

The Axis demonstrated that they meant what they said by their repeated and deliberate mass extinction of particular segments of the human species (Aktion T4,the Nanjing Massacre, Ethiopian Gassings, Hunger Plan East, Holocaust.)

Nationalist Axis ?

But thankfully for humanity as a whole, the Axis were nationalists, not racists.

So the Germans hated their fellow whites next door at least as much as they did distant black, brown and yellow 'races'.

The Japanese ditto, with regard to hating and fearing their nearest neighbours.

This alone made even a huge Axis coalition unlikely to be successful for long in its day to day co-ordination.

Big Tent Coalition won war - not Allied military skills

I believe - this blog is that belief made visible - that it is long pass due time to admit that the breadth of the Allied coalition, not the superior quality of its weapons and its fighting techniques, was what won the war in the end.

And that breadth was the result of the Allies' very different ideologies, based upon the genetics of inclusion, however fitfully that concept was applied in practise.

(Here Dr Henry Dawson's campaign for natural-penicillin-for-all did much to force the reluctant Allied High Command to make their actions match their high moral rhetoric.)

But thanks to their ideologies' genetics of inclusion, the Allies were able to meld the weak and powerless remote seeds and stems of the world into a sustainable coalition of Axis encirclement.

Brazil's real contribution to WWII

For example, it was really its natural resources and its crucial airbases in its north eastern corner nearest to Africa, rather than the Brazilian military forces in Italy, that provided the most towards the defeat of the Axis.

Over and over, it was the Allied network of military weak but resource and location strong remote chunks of the world that put the squeeze on the Axis in its attempts to form a larger more resources strong and geographically united bloc.

Let me be specific.

Island hopping - but in the North Atlantic not South Pacific 

Much of the Latin American elite was naturally pro Axis as they loved any successful ideology that blessed the idea of whites holding the whip hand over dark natives and the mixed races.

If Britain had fallen to Germany, encouraging Spain, Portugal, Turkey,Switzerland and Sweden to move to at least being neutral allies of Germany, a still re-arming America might not have strongly resisted a strong trade of Latin American natural resources - via the Azores etc - for machinery from an all Axis Europe.

At least not until - or if - Germany attacked Russia.

Because the small remnants of Britain's navy in industrially underdeveloped Canada, South Africa,India and Australia would not have enough clout to rule the High Seas around the world for long.

Not against a really big U-boat effort intent on sinking big British warships that they knew couldn't be replaced, given the low state of Canadian, Australian et al shipbuilding.

Shetlands more crucial than better known Orkneys ?

But Britain wasn't invaded and so suddenly some of its poorest and most remote portions quickly proved to be serious obstacles to expanded German coalition building.

Air and sea bases in the Scilly Isles, Northern Ireland, Dover Straits and the Shetlands seriously impeded Germany's access to the High Seas despite the open Atlantic available from Occupied France's Bay of Biscay.

That and the fact that sea coastlines of Sweden, Ireland,Turkey, Portugal and Spain (and their overseas colonies) remained more or less out of complete Axis control.

In particular, by controlling the remote Shetlands Islands, Britain in turn controlled a priceless sea and air route, guarded by the islands of the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland and Cape Breton that led right down to Halifax on mainland Nova Scotia, in turn attached to Canada and then through to America.

Alternative History of British - not Vichy - Empire going off side

Even in the depths of WWII, all of the remotest, smallest, least developed bits of British empire cum coalition remained loyal resource-giving unsinkable aircraft carriers  -- while the various parts of the equally vast Vichy Empire often did not.

We should never reject thinking about an alternate history of WWII, wherein there existed breakaway fascist parts of the British Empire provided bases against the remnants of the British war effort, while all of the vast overseas Vichy Empire are providing even more bases to sink British shipping.

The Allied coalition was very late in coming into being and really needed military victories, not purely 'moral' actions, to unite its moral coalition.

Communist nods to ethnic inclusion (except for 'the rich') won Stalingrad

Britain surviving the Blitz, Guadalcanal, above all Stalingrad were all essential in convincing the world's Neutral nations to move more onto the Allied side or even become Allies themselves.

Essential as well to convince most of the overseas colonies of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France to breakaway to support the Allied .

Above all to settle the civil wars raging all over Occupied Europe of whether or not to support the Axis or Allies.

WWII needn't have gone on for one year, let along six, if the Allies had put their moral money where their moral mouth was.

But the problem was that they talked the genetics of inclusion but in reality believed in and practised a milder version of the Axis genetics of exclusion....