Recently, in reaction to the Trump administration’s issues with giving funding and aid to the Ukrainian war against Russian aggression, I’ve found myself in a discussion about the US’ geopolitical interests in Europe. I will eventually write a musing about more contemporary issues, but the discussion always devolves into a discussion about the US’ involvement in the land war in Europe during World War 2. This leads me to asking this question: What was the purpose of the US getting involved in the land war in Europe? What geopolitical interests or objectives were fulfilled with the involvement of the US? Why was it necessary that millions of Americans be mobilized into the military, and tens of thousands sent to die on European soil? What was gained by spending all of the blood and treasure fighting in Europe?
Broadly speaking, there’s 3 main argument as to why the US was involved in the land war. Broadly speaking, they all are meshed together into one main point (What affects the rest of the world affects the US), but generally there’s 3 distinct reasons:
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The US was allied with nations in Europe (The UK, France, or broadly other nations), and them going to war means the US has to go to war as well.
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The US had economic ties to Europe, and Germany being at war with those nations hurt the US.
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German unrestricted submarine warfare destroyed numerous shipping vessels during the war, and killed thousands of Americans.
I will discuss each of these as individual points below. However, as stated previously, they are all generally melded together as a single point: The US is affected by what happens outside of our borders, and as such, we are obligated or forced to act whenever something abroad, such as war, occurs. In general, I disagree with this assessment. There’s plenty that occurs overseas, outside of our borders, that can measurably affect the US, but we do little to nothing in action when those events occur. I could list out the innumerable conflicts, famines, or geopolitical issues that are occurring where American involvement is nonexistent. Just as a singular broad example, there are conflicts occurring in almost every African nation, and the US has very little involvement in any of them, yet arguably those conflicts affect stability in Europe, and the Middle East. The US does not always get involved in every issue that affects “Our allies”. This leads me to the first point: Nations do not always get involved in conflict just because their allies are attacked. This is surprising, because the majority of conflicts in the 20th century, from WW1, to the Balkans conflicts at the end of the century, all seemingly occurred because of alliances. WWW1 and 2 are cited classically as examples of run amok alliance systems that plunge the world into global conflict. However, this is certainly not true at all. Nations engage in conflict when it aligns with their interests to do so. The nations of the Entente or Central Powers did not start fighting because they held treaty agreements to do so, but rather they created treaty agreements with each other because it was in their geopolitical interests to support each other if conflict occurred, and as such they created treaties as an overt signal of geopolitical intent. Specifically with WW1, the two main alliances were created to protect national interests within Europe, in order to maintain a delicate peace that had existed since the end of the French Revolutionary era in the 1840’s. At the end of the war, when it was clear that the Central Powers were losing, many nations hopped on board the winning Entente side, just so they could secure war reparations and security/economic guarantees from the winners and losers of the war. Italy and Japan, for example, only became involved with the Great War when they knew who the winners were, and could calculate accurately what they could extract in concessions for being on the winning side.
The European war during WW2 was an even more bizarre case of alliances, as the post Great War Europe was largely split by Communist and Anti-Communist blocs, with Central Europe being the main front of the conflict. It was only when Germany regained enough industrial/economic power, that it could engage in its own geopolitical interests. Interestingly, the geopolitical interests of pre-WW1 Germany, and pre-WW2 Germany, were almost exactly the same, namely a unified German nation in central Europe that had strategic depth against invasions from France or Russia (Which ironically is also the geopolitical objectives of both France and Russia respective to Germany. It’s the reason why there’s war frequently occurs between France, Germany, and Russia). What makes the Axis alliance odd is that Germany and Japan could not support each other outside of some engineering/scientific cooperation because of the actual geographic locations of their nations (Germany and Japan being on opposite sides of the planet). Germany and Italy were seemingly closer allies on paper, as they bordered each other. However, whereas Germany was heavily industrialized, Italy was comparatively non-industrialized, and was comparatively less wealthy overall. During the course of the war, Italy relied on Germany for materials to fuel the Italian war machine. The Italian military was also not as well trained or equipped as the German Werhmacht, and Italy had to rely on German military support on campaign. Had the Germans not intervened during the Greek and North African campaigns, the Italian military likely would have been crushed early on in the war.
The war in Europe was mostly focused on the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This is not to say that the Western Front was an easy front. However, the actual strategic moves where the war was being won and lost was occurring on the Eastern Front, which was exclusively an overland campaign. The German Kriegsmarine was always smaller, and underequipped compared to the Royal Navy, and eventually the US Navy. The Bismarck, the pride of the German Navy, was knocked out on its first mission, and the surface fleet did not really conduct many strategic operations against the UK or the US. The U-Boat campaign is a different story, and up until 1943, it was a serious threat to the Royal Navy, and the US Navy. After 1943, the U-Boat threat was far less of a threat due to US convoys, and the development of anti-submarine aircraft and anti-submarine tactics. The US spent from 1943 to the end of the war, more or less unopposed crossing the Atlantic.
It’s here I always have to ask “What did the US gain by sending men and material to be expended in the European land war?” The Germans were unlikely to ever win the war, even if the US did not send troops to France/Belgium/The Netherlands. By the end of 1943, the Soviets had begun pushing the Germans westward, and retaking territory, thanks chiefly to our support through Lend-Lease. The Blitz against the UK also failed spectacularly because the US kept the UK supplied. Strategically, the Germans could do little more than maybe sink the occasional freighter with a U-Boat, which in turn was likely to be destroyed within a few weeks of its first deployment. Wundewaffe like the V1, V2, Amerika Bomber, and even the German atomic weapons program never had any possibility of developing into a weapon that could ever potentially harm the United States. Development of these weapons in fact took away brainpower, manpower, and resources from the German war machine, and made the situation on the Eastern Front easier for the Soviet Union to handle. With all this in mind, look at the situation purely contemporaneously, what was the purpose of sending young Americans, some barely 17 or 18 years old, to get killed in a war that was already on path to being won?
We arrive at the issue of hindsight, and the ghost of the Cold War, which is a different topic overall. We also arrive at an emotional, romantic view of World War 2, in which the motivation for war can be broken down into “Truth, Justice, and maintaining American Democracy”. This is a naive view of geopolitics. States do not engage in warfare for moral or ethical reasons, because war is wholly immoral and unethical, no matter how you split it. Even utilitarians struggle with justifying war, and come to a solemn conclusion that a justified war is such because it overall reduces harm, even though the war causes harm in of itself. Many will argue that the American involvement in World War 2 was justified because the Germans were committing the Holocaust. I would agree if that was one of the declared reasons for the war (it wasn’t).
The land war in Europe was a waste of American lives and resources. There was no way that the Germans were ever going to defeat the USSR, let alone the USSR and the UK. The variety of argued factors aren’t actual reasons States engage in war, and they’re romantic views of what warfare is. The reality is that war is a viscous clash of wills between two entities over interests.