Quote:
Originally Posted by tater
It's exactly what the brass thought—and how we prosecuted the war. It's not a surprise that the PTO played 2d fiddle to the ETO, it did because they were confident of winning the PTO. That made the first year even harder on the guys at the sharp end as they were forced to wage a shoestring war.
Note that the ship building program which pointed to our inevitable victory (even to the japs, who required the war be over before that point—it was supposed to be a short war with a negotiated peace before their 2 years of oil reserves ran out) would start having ships off the ways in 1943.
I'm not downgrading the PTO, it's my favorite theater, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
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Maybe that's indeed how they thought but you haven't proven it. Stark would have said that to Nomura even if he thought we'd loose if it came to war.
And beating the Nazis was the priority because they were seen as the more dangerous adversary of the two. That does not mean defeating either one was a given.