“The Proper Application of Overwhelming Force”
“超级力量的正确使用”
Nevertheless, Churchill’s basic assumption was correct. The conversion of the conflict from a European war to a truly global War may have complicated Britain’s own strategical juggling act—as many historians have pointed out, the loss of Singapore was the result of the British concentration of aircraft and trained divisions in the Mediterranean theater2—but it totally altered the overall balance of forces once the newer belligerents were properly mobilized. In the meantime, the German and Japanese war machines could still continue their conquests; yet the further they extended themselves the less capable they were of meeting the counteroffensives which the Allies were steadily preparing.
尽管如此，丘吉尔的这一重要推测却是正确的。这场冲突从一场欧洲战争变成一场名副其实的世界大战，这一情况使英国必须采取更为复杂的战略欺诈行动。许多历史学家指出，新加坡之所以沦陷，是因为英国把飞机和训练有素的陆军师集中到地中海战区去了。然而，新的交战国进行的适当动员，彻底改变了总体力量的对比。在一段时间内，虽然德国和日本的战争机器还可以继续征服新地区，但他们的手伸得越长，对付同盟国军队反攻的能力就越差，而盟军正在稳步地进行反攻准备。
The first of these came in the Pacific, where Nimitz’s carrier-based aircraft had already blunted the Japanese drive into the Coral Sea (May 1942) and toward Midway (June 1942) and showed how vital naval air power was in the vast expanses of that ocean. By the end of the year, Japanese troops had been pulled out of Guadalcanal and Australian-American forces were pushing forward in New Guinea. When the counteroffensive through the central Pacific began late in 1943, the two powerful American battle fleets covering the Gilberts invasion were themselves protected by four fast-carrier task forces (twelve carriers) with overwhelming control of the air. 3 An even greater imbalance of force had permitted the British Empire divisions to crash through the German positions at El Alamein in October 1942 and to drive Rommel’s units back toward Tunisia; when Montgomery ordered the attack, he had six times as many tanks as his opponent, three times as many troops, and almost complete command of the air. In the month following, Eisenhower’s Anglo-American army of 100,000 men landed in French North Africa to begin a “pincer movement” from the west against the German-Italian forces, which would culminate in the latter’s mass surrender in May 1943. 4 By that time, too, Doenitz had been compelled to withdraw his U-boat wolf packs from the North Atlantic, where they had suffered very heavy losses against Allied convoys now protected by very-long-range Liberators, escort carriers, and hunter-killer escort groups equipped with the latest radar and depth charges—and alerted by “Ultra” decrypts as to the U-boats’ movements. 5 If it was to take longer for the Allies to achieve “command of the air” over Europe to complement their command of the sea, the solution was being swiftly developed in the form of the long-range Mustang fighter, which first accompanied the USAAF’s bomber fleets in December 1943; within another few months, the Luftwaffe’s capacity to defend the airspace above the Third Reich’s soldiers, factories, and civilian population had been weakened beyond recovery. 6
这种反攻首先发生在太平洋。在那里，尼米兹的舰载航空飞机挫败了日军向珊瑚海（1942年5月）和中途岛（1942年6月）的进攻，并显示了在浩瀚无垠的太平洋作战，海军航空力量是何等重要。在1942年年底[1]，日军已经被逐出瓜达尔卡纳尔岛，美澳联军推进到新几内亚。1943年年底在中太平洋海域实施反攻时，两支掩护进攻吉尔伯特群岛的强大的美国作战舰队本身还有4支快速航母特混编队（12艘航母）掩护。这些航母使美军掌握了绝对制空权。在兵力对比上占更大优势的英军于1942年10月突破了德军在阿拉曼的防线，把隆美尔的部队赶回突尼斯。当蒙哥马利下达进攻命令时，他拥有6倍于敌的坦克，3倍于敌的部队，以及绝对制空权。在以后的几个月里，艾森豪威尔指挥的10万英美联军在法属北非登陆，从西面向德意联军发动“钳形攻势”，于1943年5月最终使大批敌军投降。这时，邓尼茨也不得不从北大西洋撤回他的潜艇部队。由于此时的盟国船队受到了B-24超远程轰炸机、护航航母，以及装有最新式雷达和深水炸弹的反潜护卫舰群的保护，并从破译出的“超级”密码电报中掌握了德军潜艇的活动规律，致使德军潜艇损失惨重。盟军取得制海权之后，要夺取欧洲上空的制空权则需要更长时间，但这一问题由于有了P-51远程战斗机而迅速得到解决。该机于1943年12月首次为美国空军的轰炸机群护航，没过几个月就把德国空军保护下的第三帝国士兵、工厂及居民的能力削弱到无法恢复的地步。
Even more ominous to the Wehrmacht high command was the changing balance of advantage along the eastern front. As early as August 1941, when many observers felt that Russia was in the process of being finished off as a Great Power, General Haider was gloomily confiding in the War Staff diary:
对德军最高统帅部来说，东线优势的丧失更加使之担忧。早在1941年8月，许多观察家就认为，苏联作为一个大国将不复存在。但此时，哈尔德将军却忧心忡忡地在作战日记中写道：
We reckoned with about 200 enemy divisions. Now we have already counted 360 … not armed and equipped to our standards, and their tactical leadership is often poor. But … if we smash a dozen of them, the Russians simply put up another dozen Time … favors them, as they are near their own resources, while we are moving farther and farther away from ours. 7
我们曾估计敌人大约有200个师。现在已经查明仅有番号的就有360个师……它们的武器和装备不如我们，战术指挥也很差。但是……如果我们消灭十几个师，苏联人就会又投入十几个师……时间……对他们有利，他们靠近自己的资源，而我们却一步步远离自己的资源。
In this sort of mass, reckless, brutalized fighting, the casualty figures were making even First World War totals seem modest. In the first five months of campaigning, the Germans claimed to have killed, wounded, or captured well over 3 million Russians. 8 Yet at that particular moment, when Stalin and the Stavka were planning the first counteroffensive around Moscow, the Red Army still had 4. 2 million men in its field armies, and was numerically superior in tanks and aircraft. 9 To be sure, it could not match the professional expertise of the Germans either on land or in the air—even as late as 1944 the Russians were losing five or six men for every one German soldier10—and when the fearful winter of 1941–1942 passed, Hitler’s war machine could again commence its offensive, this time toward Stalingrad and then disaster. After Stalingrad, in the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht tried again, pulling together its armored forces to produce the fantastic total of seventeen panzer divisions for the encirclement of Kursk. Yet in what was to be by far the greatest tank battle of the Second World War, the Red Army countered with thirty-four armored divisions, some 4,000 vehicles to the German’s 2,700. While the numbers of Soviet tanks had been reduced by over one-half within a week, they had smashed the greater part of Hitler’s Panzerarmee in the process and were now ready for the unrelenting counteroffensive toward Berlin. At that point, news of the Allied landing in Italy provided Hitler with the excuse for withdrawing from what had been an unmitigated disaster, as well as confirming the extent to which the Reich’s enemies were closing the ring. 11
在这场大规模、疯狂、残酷的苏德战争中，伤亡数字之大使得第一次世界大战的伤亡总数都相形见绌。在战争的头5个月里，德国人宣称打死、打伤及俘获的苏军超过了300万人。然而，就在那时，斯大林和最高统帅部却计划在莫斯科附近实施首次反攻，苏联红军仍有420万作战部队，并在坦克和飞机的数量上胜敌一筹。当然不管是在地面还是空中战场，苏军都无法同训练有素的德军抗衡。甚至到1944年，苏军还要以牺牲5～6个人为代价消灭1个敌兵。因此，当1941～1942年可怕的冬季过去后，希特勒的战争机器仍能再次发动进攻，这次进攻的目标是斯大林格勒，但却遭到惨败。斯大林格勒战役之后，德军于1943年夏天重整旗鼓，集结了17个装甲师，用于包围库尔斯克。在第二次世界大战中，这次是规模最大的坦克大会战，苏联红军投入了34个装甲师，以4000辆坦克对付德军的2700辆坦克。虽然苏军的坦克在一周内损失过半，但他们也歼灭了希特勒装甲部队的大部，并开始准备向柏林方向实施坚定不移的大反攻。就在这时，盟军在意大利登陆的消息给了希特勒一个借口，以便使他的装甲部队从这场不折不扣的灾难中脱身，用于加强对正在被第三帝国的敌人收紧的包围圈的防守。
Was all this, then, merely the “proper application of overwhelming force”? Clearly, economic power was never the only influence upon military effectiveness, even in the mechanized, total war of 1939–1945; economics, to paraphrase Clausewitz, stood in about the same relationship to combat as the craft of the swordsmith to the art of fencing. And there were far too many examples of where the German and Japanese leadership made grievous political or strategical errors after 1941 which were to cost them dear. In the German case, this ranged from relatively small-scale decisions, like pouring reinforcements into North Africa in early 1943, just in time for them to be captured, to the appallingly stupid as well as criminal treatment of the Ukrainian and other non-Russian minorities in the USSR, who were happy to escape from the Stalinist embrace until checked by Nazi atrocities. It ran from the arrogance of assuming that the Enigma codes could never be broken to the ideological prejudice against employing German women in munitions factories, whereas all Germany’s foes willingly exploited that largely untapped labor pool. It was compounded by rivalries within the higher echelons of the army itself, which made it ineffective in resisting Hitler’s manic urge for overambitious offensives like Stalingrad and Kursk. Above all, there was what scholars refer to as the “polycratic chaos” of rivaling ministries and subempires (the army, the SS, the Gauleiter, the economics ministry), which prevented any coherent assessment and allocation of resources, let alone the hammering-out of what elsewhere would be termed a “grand strategy. ” This was not a serious way to run a war. 12
难道所有这一切仅仅是“正确地使用占压倒优势兵力”的结果吗？显而易见，经济力量从来不是影响军队战斗力的唯一因素，即使在1939～1945年完全机械化的战争中也是如此。经济力量与战争的关系，按照克劳塞维茨的说法，就像铸剑师的手艺与击剑技巧的关系一样。德国和日本领导人在1941年以后犯了许多严重的政治和战略错误，并为这些错误付出了高昂的代价。就德国来说，它既做过一些错误不大的决定，如1943年初把增援部队投入北非，结果都当了俘虏，也犯过一些蠢得惊人的错误，如对乌克兰人和其他非俄罗斯少数民族滥施暴力，他们原来很乐于摆脱斯大林的统治，但纳粹的残暴给了他们当头一棒。这些错误还包括坚信恩尼格玛密码绝不会被破译，以及不肯雇用德国妇女进军工厂干活这种思想偏见，而所有同德国作战的国家都乐于利用这一尚未利用的劳动大军。德军高层领导的明争暗斗，使得他们无法有效地抵制希特勒发动力不从心的攻势，如斯大林格勒和库尔斯克进攻战役。此外，学者们所说的相互倾轧的部门及小独立王国（陆军、党卫队、地方长官、经济部门）所造成的“大混乱”，也使德国无法统一估算资源需求和进行统一的资源分配，更不用说像其他国家一样制定出“大战略”了。这根本不是认真严肃的打仗。
While Japanese strategical mistakes were less egregious and counterproductive, they were nonetheless amazing. Because Japan was carrying out a “continental” strategy in which the army’s influence predominated, its operations in the Pacific and Southeast Asia had been implemented with a minimum of force—only eleven divisions, compared with the thirteen in Manchuria and the twenty-two in China. Yet even when the American counteroffensive in the central Pacific was under way, Japanese troop and aerial reinforcements to that region were far too tardy and far too small—especially as compared with the resources allocated for the massive China offensives of 1943–1944. Ironically, even when Nimitz’s forces were closing upon Japan in early 1945, and its cities were being pulverized from the air, there were still 1 million soldiers in China and another 780,000 or so in Manchuria—now incapable of being withdrawn because of the effectiveness of the American submarine campaign.
日本的战略错误虽然不是那么骇人听闻和后果严重，却也够引人注目了。因为日本奉行的是由陆军左右的“大陆战略”，它在太平洋和东南亚投入的作战部队很少，仅仅11个师。相比之下，它在中国东北则有13个师，在中国内地驻有22个师。即使美国在中太平洋开始反攻之后，日军向该地区增派去的部队和飞机也很晚才到达，且数量少得可怜。相比之下，日本1943～1944年在中国实施大规模进攻时却投入了大量资源。具有讽刺意味的是，1945年初，就在尼米兹挥师逼近日本，日本城市遭到美国飞机的狂轰滥炸时，仍有100万日军滞留在中国内地，还有约78万日军驻在中国东北。因美国潜艇的有效封锁，这些日军已无法撤退。
Yet the Imperial Japanese Navy, too, needs to take its share of the blame. The operational handling of key battles like Midway was riddled with errors, but even when the aircraft carrier was proving itself supreme in Pacific warfare, many Japanese admirals after Yamamoto’s death were wedded to the battleship and still looked for the chance to fight a second Tsushima—as the 1944 Leyte Gulf operation and, even more symbolically, the one-way suicide trip of the Yamato revealed. Japanese submarines, with their formidable torpedoes, were utterly misused as scouts for the battle fleet or in running supplies to beleaguered island garrisons, rather than being deployed against the enemy’s lines of communication. By contrast, the navy failed to protect its own merchant marine, and was quite backward in developing convoy systems, antisubmarine techniques, escort carriers, and hunterkiller groups, although Japan was even more dependent than Britain upon imported materials. 13 It was symptomatic of this battle-fleet obsession that while the navy was allocating resources to the construction of giant Yamato-class vessels, it built no destroyer escorts between 1941 and 1943—in contrast to the Americans’ 331 ships. 14 Japan also completely lost the battle of intelligence, codes, and decrypts. 15 All of this was about as helpful to the preservation of a Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere as German mistakes were to the maintenance of the Thousand- Year Reich.
日本帝国海军也有不可推卸的责任。在中途岛海战等重大战役中，日军的作战指挥错误百出。在航母已被证明在太平洋海战中极其重要之后，许多日本海军将领在山本五十六死后竟偏爱起战列舰来，仍想寻找机会打第二次对马海战。1944年莱特湾海战和更具象征性的大和号战列舰的自杀性出航，都暴露出这种弱点。日本潜艇配有威力强大的鱼雷，却被十分错误地用于为作战舰队担任警戒或向被围困的岛屿运送补给，而不是用于切断敌方的海上交通线。虽然日本比英国更加依赖原料进口，其海军却不去保护本国的商船队。在护航技术、反潜技术、护航航母和反潜舰群的发展方面也相当落后。在1941～1943年，由于过分迷恋战列舰，日本海军把资源用于建造“大和”级巨型战列舰，却没有建造一艘护航驱逐舰。在此期间，美国则建造了331艘。日本在情报搜集、密码技术及破译技术等方面也不如敌国。所有这一切对维持“大东亚共荣圈”所起的作用，就像德国人所犯的错误对维持“千年帝国”所起的作用一样。
There is, obviously, no known way of “factoring out” those errors (to use the economists’ inelegant term) and thus discovering how the Axis Powers might have fared had such follies been avoided. But unless the Allies for their part had committed equally serious strategical and political mistakes, it is difficult to see how their productive superiority would not have prevailed in the long term. Obviously, a successful German occupation of Moscow in December 1941 would have been damaging to Russia’s war effort (and to Stalin’s regime); but would the USSR’s population have surrendered then and there when its only fate would have been extermination—and when it still had large productive and military reserves thousands of miles to the east? Despite the economic losses dealt by Operation Barbarossa—coal production down by 57 percent, pig iron by 68 percent, and so on16—it is worth noting that Russia produced 4,000 more aircraft than Germany in 1941 and 10,000 more in 1942, and this was for one front, as opposed to Germany’s three. 17 Given its increasing superiority in men, tanks, artillery, and planes, by the second year of the conflict the Red Army could actually afford to sustain losses at a rate of five or six to one (albeit at an appalling cost to its own troops) and still push forward against the weakening Germans. By the beginning of 1945, on the Belorussian and Ukrainian fronts alone, “Soviet superiority was both absolute and awesome, fivefold in manpower, fivefold in armor, over sevenfold in artillery and seventeen times the German strength in the air. ”18
显而易见，人们还无法找出这些失误的原因，因此也就无法分析如轴心国不犯那些错误会产生什么结果。但是，除非同盟国也犯下同样严重的战略与政治错误，否则，从长远看它们靠生产能力上的优势就能取胜。毫无疑问，假如1941年12月德军成功地占领莫斯科，这对苏军的作战能力（和斯大林政权）肯定会造成严重损害。但是，当苏联人民得知他们唯一的前途是被处死时，在东方数千英里的地方仍有强大的生产与军事后备力量的情况下，他们还会投降吗？巴巴罗萨行动使苏联经济损失巨大（煤产量下降57%，生铁产量下降68%）。但是还应看到，苏联1941年生产的飞机比德国多4000架，1942年多1万架。并且苏联是在一条战线作战，而德国是三线作战。凭借兵力、坦克、火炮、飞机日益增大的数量优势，从战争的第二年起，苏联红军事实上就能承受5∶1～6∶1的损失（尽管己方部队伤亡很大），并击退兵力日衰的德军。到1945年初，仅在白俄罗斯和乌克兰战线，“苏军的力量就已占压倒优势，在兵力上5倍于敌，装甲车辆5倍于敌，火炮和飞机方面分别是7倍多和17倍”。
Since the Anglo-American forces in France a few months earlier were enjoying “an effective superiority of 20 to 1 in tanks and 25 to 1 in aircraft,”19 the amazing fact is that the Germans did so well for so long; even at the close of 1944, just as in September 1918, they were still occupying territories far larger than the Reich’s own boundaries at the onset of war. To this question military historians have offered a virtually unanimous response: that German operational doctrine, emphasizing flexibility and decentralized decision-making at the battlefield level, proved far superior to the cautious, set-piece tactics of the British, the bloody, full-frontal assaults of the Russians, and the enthusiastic but unprofessional forward rushes of the Americans; that German “combined-arms” experience was better than anybody else’s; and that the caliber and training of both the staff officers and the NCOs was extraordinarily high, even in the final year of the war.
一个令人吃惊的事实是，在法国的英美联军几个月前就占“很大优势（坦克为20∶1，飞机为25∶1）的情况下”，德军竟打了很多漂亮仗，并坚持了很长时间。甚至到1944年底（就像在1918年9月一样），德军仍然占领着比本国疆土在战争爆发时大得多的地区。对于这一问题，军事史学家的回答几乎如出一辙：德军的作战理论强调在战场上灵活机动和分散决策，这比英军谨小慎微、墨守成规的战术，苏军不计伤亡、全线出击的进攻，以及美军热情有余而谋略不足的推进，要高明得多；德军诸兵种协同作战的经验比任何敌手都丰富；德军参谋人员和军士的技能与训练素质非常高，即使到战争的最后一年也是如此。
Yet our contemporary admiration for the German operational performance, which seems to be rising book by book,20 ought not to obscure the obvious fact that Berlin, like Tokyo, had overstretched itself. In November 1943, General Jodl estimated that 3. 9 million Germans (together with a mere 283,000 Axis-allied troops) were trying to hold off 5. 5 million Russians on the eastern front. A further 177,000 German troops were in Finland, while Norway and Denmark were garrisoned by 486,000 men. There were 1,370,000 occupation troops in France and Belgium. “Another 612,000 men were tied down in the Balkans, and there were 412,000 men in Italy. … Hitler’s armies were scattered the length and breadth of Europe and were inferior in numbers and equipment on every front. ”21 The same could be said of the Japanese divisions, spread thinly across the Far East from Burma to the Aleutian Islands.
但是，对德军作战表现的赞扬（关于这种赞扬的书似乎比比皆是），不应掩盖这样一个明显的事实：柏林和东京一样，将自己的手伸得过长。1943年11月，约德尔将军估计，在东线有390万德军（和少得可怜的28.3万轴心国友军）在同550万苏军作战，另有17.7万德军驻在芬兰，48.6万驻在挪威和丹麦，在法国和比利时的占领军有137万。“还有61.2万被牵制在巴尔干，41.2万在意大利……希特勒的军队遍布整个欧洲，但每一条战线在人员和装备数量方面都处于劣势。”这些话也可用来描述日军，它稀疏地分布在从缅甸到阿留申群岛的广大远东地区。
Even in those campaigns which seemingly “changed the course of the war,” one wonders whether an Axis victory rather than an Allied one would not merely have postponed the eventual outcome. Had, say, Nimitz lost more than one carrier at Midway, they would have been replaced, in that same year, by three new fleet carriers, three light fleet carriers, and fifteen escort carriers; in 1943, by five fleet carriers, six light fleet carriers, and twenty-five escort carriers; and in 1944, by nine fleet carriers and thirty-five escort carriers. 22 Similarly, in the critical years of the Battle of the Atlantic, the Allies lost 8. 3 million tons of shipping overall in 1942 and 4 million tons in 1943, but those frightening totals were compensated for by Allied launchings of 7 million and 9 million tons of new merchant ships respectively. This was chiefly due to the fantastic explosion in American shipbuilding output, which by mid-1942 was already launching vessels faster than the U-boats could sink them —causing one notable authority to conclude, “In World War II, the German submarine campaign may have postponed, but did not affect the outcome. ”23 On land, also—and the Second World War in Europe was preeminently a gunner’s war and a tank crew’s war—Germany’s production of artillery pieces, self-propelled guns and tanks was considerably less than Russia’s, let alone the combined Allied totals (see Table 33).
即使在那些看上去“改变了战争进程”的战役中是轴心国而不是同盟国获胜，人们也很难看到这些胜利除了推迟大战最终结局的到来以外，还有什么别的作用。假如尼米兹在1942年中途岛海战中损失1艘以上的航空母舰，他在同一年即可得到3艘新型的大型航母、3艘轻型舰队航母和15艘护航航母；1943年可得到5艘大型航母、6艘轻型的大型航母、25艘护航航母；1944年还可得到9艘大型航母和35艘护航航母。同样，在几年紧张的大西洋之战中，同盟国在1942年和1943年分别损失了总计为830万吨和400万吨的船只，但这一巨大损失却分别得到了同盟国新下水的700万吨和900万吨新商船的补偿。这主要归功于以惊人的速度增长的美国造船能力。到1942年中期，美国新下水的船只吨位已经超过德军潜艇击沉的船只吨位。据此，一位著名权威人士的结论是：“在第二次世界大战中，德国的潜艇战只能推迟但不能改变战争的结局。”在地面作战中，情况也是如此。第二次世界大战在欧洲主要是敌对双方炮手与坦克乘员之间的战争，但德国的牵引火炮、自行火炮和坦克的产量大大少于苏联，更不用说与所有同盟国加在一起的数量相比了（见表33）。
Table 33. Tank Production in 194424
表33 1944年各大国坦克产量
But the most telling statistics of all relate to aircraft production (Table 34), for everyone could see that without command of the air it was impossible for armies and navies to operate effectively; with command of the air, one could not only achieve campaign victories, but also deal heavy blows at the foe’s wartime economy.
但是最能说明问题的数字是飞机产量（见表34）。这是因为人人皆知，没有制空权，陆、海军就无法有效地作战；有了制空权，不仅可以取得作战的胜利，还可给敌方的战时经济以严重破坏。
Table 34. Aircraft Production of the Powers, 1939-1945 25
表34 各大国飞机产量（1939～1945年）
Such figures, moreover, disguise the fact that the Anglo-American totals include a large number of heavy four-engined bombers, so that the Allied superiority is even more marked when the number of engines or the structure weight of the aircraft is compared with the Axis totals. 26 Here was the ultimate reason why, despite extraordinary efforts by the Germans to retain command of the air,27 their cities and factories and railway lines were increasingly devastated—as was, even more so, the almost totally unprotected Japanese homeland. Here, too, was the reason why Doenitz’s U-boats had to keep below the surface; why Slim’s Burma Army could reinforce Imphal; why American carriers could launch repeated attacks upon Japanese bases all over the western Pacific; and why Allied soldiers, whenever stopped by a stubborn German defense, could always call for aircraft to crush the enemy and get the offensive going again. On D-Day itself (June 6,1944), it may be worth noting, the Germans could muster 319 aircraft against the Allies 12,837 in the west. To turn Clausewitz’s phrase around, the art of fencing (like the art of war) indeed required skill and experience; but that would avail the fighter little if he ran out of stocks of swords. In the battle of the swordsmiths, the Allies were very clearly winning.
而且，这些统计数字无法说明这一事实，即英美飞机中有很大一部分是四引擎重型轰炸机。所以，就引擎量及飞机重量来看，同盟国比轴心国的优势更大。这就从根本上回答了，为什么尽管德军为保持制空权做出了极大的努力，他们的城市、工厂和铁路线还是受到了越来越多的狂轰滥炸。在日本情况更严重，整个日本本土几乎没有空中保护。另外，这也解释了为什么邓尼茨的潜艇不敢露出水面，为什么斯利姆将军在缅甸的部队得以增援英帕尔平原，为什么美军航母能在整个西太平洋对日军基地发起频繁攻击，以及为什么当盟军士兵遭到德军顽强抵抗时总能召来飞机消灭敌军，继续向前推进。同样值得一提的是，在D日（1944年6月6日），德军在西线只能纠集319架飞机，去对付盟军的12837架飞机。借用克劳塞维茨的话说，击剑（就像战争）固然需要技巧与经验，但如果一名剑手没剑了，那么技巧与经验将于事无补。在“铸剑”之战中，同盟国显然取得了胜利。
For the simple fact was that even after the expansion of the German and Japanese empires, the economic and productive forces ranged upon each side were much more disproportionate than in the First World War. According to the rough approximations which we have already seen,28 the Greater Germany of 1938 had a share of the world’s manufacturing output and a “relative war potential” which were both about equal to that of Britain and France combined. It was probably inferior to the total resources and war potential of the British and French empires combined; but those lands had not been mobilized to Germany’s degree when war broke out, and, as discussed previously, the Allies were less than competent in the vital matter of operational expertise. Germany’s acquisitions of territory in 1939 and (especially) in 1940 put it decisively ahead of the isolated and somewhat mauled Power which Churchill took control of. France’s collapse and Italy’s entry into the conflict therefore left the British Empire facing an agglomeration of military force which, in terms of war potential, was probably twice as strong; militarily, the Berlin-Rome Axis was unassailable on land, still inferior at sea, and about equal in the air—hence the British preference for fighting in North Africa rather than Europe. The German attack upon the USSR did not at first seem to change this balance, if only because of the disastrous casualties suffered by the Red Army, which were then compounded by the losses of Soviet territory and plant.
人所共知的事实是，即使在德、日帝国扩张之后，交战双方的经济和生产能力的不平衡，也远甚于第一次世界大战时双方的力量对比。据我们所掌握的情况粗略估计，1938年“大德意志”在世界工业产量和“相对战争潜力”方面所占的比重，大致等于英法的总和。在资源总量和战争潜力方面，德国也许低于英法两个帝国的总和。但战争爆发时，英法两国的动员和战备水平不如德国。而且，如前所述，在关键性的作战专业技能方面，同盟国不如敌手。德国在1939年和（特别是）1940年征服的土地，使它在实力上大大超过了丘吉尔领导的被封锁且受到一定打击的英国。法国的垮台和意大利的参战，使大英帝国面前出现了一支强大的联合军事力量，它的战争潜力可能比英国大1倍。从军事上看，柏林—罗马轴心有所向披靡的地面部队，海上力量仍然不足，空中力量与英国大体持平。所以，英国选择在北非而不是欧洲作战。如果只看到红军遭受的严重伤亡，以及苏联的领土和工厂被占领、那么德国对苏联的进攻初期似乎并没有改变这种力量对比。
On the other hand, the decisive events of December 1941 entirely altered these balances: the Russian counterattack at Moscow showed that it would not fall to Blitzkrieg warfare; and the entry of Japan and the United States into what was now a global conflict brought together a “Grand Alliance” of enormous industrialproductive staying power. It could not immediately affect the course of the military campaigns, since Germany was still strong enough to renew its offensive in Russia during the summer of 1942, and Japan was enjoying its first six months of easy victories against the unprepared forces of the United States, the Dutch, and the British Empire. Yet all this could not obviate the fact that the Allies possessed twice the manufacturing strength (using the distorted 1938 figures, which downplay the U. S. ’ share), three times the “war potential,” and three times the national income of the Axis powers, even when the French shares are added to Germany’s total. 29 By 1942 and 1943, these figures of potential power were being exchanged into the hard currency of aircraft, guns, tanks, and ships; indeed, by 1943–1944 the United States alone was producing one ship a day and one aircraft every five minutes! What is more, the Allies were producing many newer types of weapons (Superfortresses, Mustangs, light fleet carriers), whereas the Axis powers could only produce advanced weapons (jet fighters, Type 23 U-boats) in relatively small quantities.
然而，1941年12月发生的重大事件却从根本上改变了这种力量对比——苏军在莫斯科的反攻说明它不会败在德军的闪电战下。日本和美国卷入这场战火已遍燃全球的战争，使一个具有巨大工业生产能力的“大同盟”得以形成。它还不足以立即影响战争的进程，因为这时德军仍然十分强大，能在1942年夏天对苏军发动新攻势；日本也正陶醉于战争头6个月对准备不足的美国、荷兰和大英帝国作战时轻而易举地取得的胜利中。但这一切并不能掩盖这一事实，即纵然把法国算在德国一边，同盟国也具有两倍于轴心国的生产能力（根据1938年不十分确切的数字，但这些数字肯定低估了美国的生产能力），3倍的“战争潜力”，3倍的国民收入。到1942年和1943年，同盟国的战争潜力就已转化为飞机、大炮、坦克和军舰等武器装备。事实上，到1943～1944年，仅美国一国就已能每天建好1艘军舰，每5分钟生产1架飞机！此外，同盟国还生产了许多新式武器（如B-29轰炸机、P-51式战斗机、轻型舰队航母等），而轴心国只能生产少量先进武器（如喷气式战斗机、德国U-23型潜艇）。
The best measure of this decisive shift in the balances comes from Wagenführ’s figures for the armaments-production totals of the major combatants (see Table 35).
瓦根菲尔统计的主要参战国军火产量数字，很好地说明了双方武器产量对比的巨大变化（见表35）。
Table 35. Armaments Production of the Powers, 1940–194330
表35 各大国军火生产1940～1943年
(billions of 1944 dollars)
［单位：10亿美元（1944年币值）］
Thus, in 1940 British armaments production was significantly behind Germany’s but still growing fast, so that it was slightly superior by the following year—the last year in which the German economy was being operated at relative leisure. The twin military shocks of Stalingrad and North Africa, and Speer’s assumption of the economics ministry, led to an enormous boost in German arms production by 1943;31 and Japan, too, more than doubled its output. Even so, the increases in combined British and Soviet production during those two years equaled the rise in Axis output (G. B. /USSR, $10 billion increase, 1941–1943; cf. Axis, $9. 8 billion increase), and kept them still superior in total armaments production. But the most staggering change came with the more than eightfold rise in American arms output between 1941 and 1943, which meant that by the latter year the Allied total was over three times that of its foes—thereby finally realizing that imbalance in “war potential” and national income which had existed embryonically at the very beginning. No matter how cleverly the Wehrmacht mounted its tactical counterattacks on both the western and eastern fronts until almost the last months of the war, it was to be ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Allied firepower. By 1945, the thousands of Anglo-American bombers pounding the Reich each day and the hundreds of Red Army divisions poised to blast through to Berlin and Vienna were all different manifestations of the same blunt fact. Once again, in a protracted and full-scale coalition war, the countries with the deepest purse had prevailed in the end.
由此可见，1940年英国的军火生产虽然大大落后于德国，但增长速度很快，到下一年——德国经济自由发展的最后一年——竟已略占优势。斯大林格勒保卫战和北非战役中两次失利的震撼，以及施佩尔执掌经济部，使1943年的德国军火生产急剧增长；日本的军火生产也翻了一番多。尽管如此，英苏在这两年中增加的武器生产费用仍与轴心国基本相等（1941～1943财政年度英苏增长100亿美元，轴心国增长98亿美元），并在军火总产量方面遥遥领先。但是，美国的变化最惊人。1941～1943年，美国的军火产量增长了8倍以上。这就是说，1943年同盟国的军火总产量已是敌方的3倍。于是，人们终于认识到，从战争一开始，双方的“战争潜力”和国民收入就很不平衡。不管德军在东线和西线的反攻中运用了多么巧妙的战术，一直坚持到战争的最后几个月，最终都将被占绝对优势的盟军的火力所压倒。到1945年，数千架英美轰炸机每天都去轰炸德国，苏联红军的几百个师已做好进攻柏林和维也纳的准备。这一切从不同角度说明了这样一个不容置疑的事实：在一场旷日持久的大规模联盟战争中，财力最雄厚的国家将获得最后胜利。
This was also true of Japan’s own collapse in the Pacific war. It is now clear that the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945 marked a watershed in the military history of the world, and one which throws into doubt the viability of mankind should a Great Power war with atomic weaponry ever be fought. Yet in the context of the 1945 campaigning, it was but one of a series of military tools which the United States then could employ to compel Japan to surrender. The successful American submarine campaign was threatening to starve Japan; the swarms of B-29 bombers were pounding its towns and cities to ashes (the Tokyo “fire raid” of March 9, 1945, caused approximately 185,000 casualties and destroyed 267,000 buildings); and the American planners and their allies were preparing for a massive invasion of the home islands. The mix of motives which, despite certain reservations, pushed toward the decision to drop the bomb—the wish to save Allied casualties, the desire to send a warning to Stalin, the need to justify the vast expenses of the atomic project—are still debated today;32 but the point being made here is that it was the United States alone which at this time had the productive and technological resources not only to wage two large-scale conventional wars but also to invest the scientists, raw materials, and money (about $2 billion) in the development of a new weapon which might or might not work. The devastation inflicted upon Hiroshima, together with Berlin’s fall into the hands of the Red Army, not only symbolized the end of another war, it also marked the beginning of a new order in world affairs.
日本在太平洋战争中失败的原因也是如此。现在人们都很清楚，1945年原子弹的使用标志着世界军事史上一个新阶段的开始，意味着大国间使用原子武器的战争一旦爆发，人类能否继续生存下去将成为问题。但在1945年的作战中，这只是美国用于迫使日本投降的一系列军事手段之一。美国成功的潜艇战使日本受到了饥饿的威胁，蜂拥而至的B-29轰炸机将无数日本城镇夷为平地（1945年3月9日对东京的“火攻”大约造成了18.5万人的伤亡，摧毁了26.7万座建筑物），美国及其盟国还计划大规模入侵日本本土。尽管有某些不同意见，美国政府最终还是做出了投放原子弹的决定。其动机是多种多样的，其中包括希望减少盟军士兵的伤亡，向斯大林发出警告，以及证明实施耗资巨大的原子弹工程是正确的。这些理由是否成立，直到今天仍有争议。不过，这里要说明的问题是，当时只有美国拥有如此强大的生产能力和技术手段，能在打两场大规模常规战争的同时，还投入大量科学家、原料和资金（约20亿美元），去发展一种效能未卜的新武器。广岛遭受劫难与柏林落于苏联红军之手，不仅象征着又一场战争的结束，而且还标志着世界事务中一种新秩序的开始。