https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/invention-won-world-war-ii-180972327/

Patented in 1944, the Higgins boat gave the Allies the advantage in amphibious assaults

The invention that won WW2 was the Russian Communist.

They forgot to mention that Higgins copied the front ramp from the Japanese landing barges of the 30's.

More details about the Higgins boat at the National WW2 Memorial website:
Bayou to Battlefield: Higgins Industries during World War II

They have a great exhibit on the Higgins boat at the museum. I was amazed at how flimsily it was built. Mostly just plywood on a steel frame. They sure made lots of them.

and in a hurry!

The best invention was the M1 Garand and the M1 carbine.

The biggest single success of WW2 was bringing every aspect of mass production to a fine edge as never seen before. The concept of the assembly line, even the moving assembly line to improve construction or production was thousands of years old, Not a Henry Ford invention like usually thought. But never before used in such wide aspects as during WW2.

Phil

John Browning's machine gun was no small assist.

Fat Man and Little Boy...

Enigma machine.

Also known as cannon fodder.

Hydroelectric dams in the northwest provided the huge amounts of electricity necessary to smelt the aluminum for aircraft fuselages.

I think the best firearm to come out of WW2 was the MG 42. I know, technically it's a machine gun, but it fires a rifle cartridge, so I'm going with it. I also think the STG 44 deserves some recognition, because it laid the path for the assault type of rifle to become so widespread.

T 34 tank

Dont forget the Amtrac and the VT fuse.

B17

This. Hasbeen

Determination was a major asset. Pissed off, brought us all together to a common goal.

It was a national effort. Many of those assembly line workers were women and after the war, they didn't quit. It changed the face of our workforce.

Toss up between spam and the A bomb😆

Grand Coulee dam is credited with being THE most critical component of the Manhatten Project as it supplied the massive amounts of electricity to power the Uranium separation process at Hanford Wa.

Don't forget J R Simplot and his dehydrated mashed potatoes. Produced in plants built specifically for the war effort.

The collective will of the American people won WW2, not any single device or idea.

Don't forget that $11B ($190B today) of lend-lease we gave Uncle Joe.

Deuce and a half, or 6x6 for the Jarheads, plus Liberty ships. Logistics, logistics, logistics...

The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were a pretty big help.

Liberty ships.

Logistics big time, and on the spot decision making at individual, squad, platoon, and company level to start with.
Low level and higher level leadership was not suppressed by 1 man at the top like Hitler after Stalingrad or Tojo in Japan.

some suggest hitler lost the war when he invited russian blood to be spilt.

One might make an argument for all the inventions noted above, plus radar. No single invention won the war, although they all contributed, and of course the atom bomb ended it.

Kudos, however, to those who mentioned the Greatest Generation as being THE key. And that includes all of that generation, most certainly those who served by producing the other inventions and those who fed all of the rest.

Honestly don't think any one invention won the war by itself although many of them influenced tactics and may have shortened the war. The combination of Russian manpower in the East armed with "good enough" weapons and American logistics on the Western front and in the Pacific made it unwinnable for Germany or Japan.

"I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so." -Khrushchev Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918-1945, Volume 1

Uranium separation was undertaken at Oak Ridge and the result was the uranium U-235 bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Uranium only contains .72% U-235.

Hanford produced a man made element, plutonium. The New Mexico desert bomb and the Nagasaki bombs were Plutonium weapons. Grand Coulee power was critical for supplying power to the Hanford operations.

Paul Harvey once said that Stalin spoke English quite well yet always used an interpreter. No one outside of his close associates knew he knew English. In meetings with Roosevelt and Churchill, he overheard talk that wasn't intended for him and he always had a little extra thinking time before his interpreter could translate.

It wasn't an invention but Hitler's divide and conquer policy cost them big. They needed to take other countries 1 at a time, not all at once.

I'm going to assume you mean the breaking of the Enigma codes. I don't think there was any one invention that won the war, but the work of English and American code breakers certainly had a major influence on the eventual result.

They knew so much about what was going on that they had to make great efforts to fabricate plausible reasons why they knew what they knew, so the enemy wouldn't figure out that the codes were broken and change the system. This would include having observation planes make a "fortunate" appearance where they already knew the enemy was going to be.

An excellent novel about all this (and a lot else) is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

No contest ,Fat Man and Little Boy.You can put all the others mentioned here and they won't come close.How many months, even years were we fighting in the Pacific theater and the Japanese surrendered in days after us dropping these two.

uncle joe has been paraphrased as sayin' that the us supplied equipment & logistics, england supplied the planning, and russia supplied the blood to win ww2.

i guess at the 50,000 feet level, there's some truth in that statement.

+1

An argument can be made for the Norden bomb sight.

Our enemies used the “spray and pray” method from anything above a few thousand feet.

A device that allowed us to accurately drop bombs from 10 times that altitude, an altitude that defied accurate flack, and limited fighter attack to a few minutes.
It allowed us to decimate axis infrastructure, factories, fuel and ammo depots to devastating effect.

Yep, probably could never happen again, not with the current society we've "forged" on the anvil of entitlement from tissue paper, "wokeness" and hurt feelings...

The two Atomic Bombs?

the ones that Schtick got a couple of his nicknames from??

War creates many things from necessity to win ASAP.

The US industrial capacity by way of market capitalism was the invention that won WWII. It won WWI, too.

Somewhat off topic, but not much.

"Band of Brothers" shows Easy Company getting sent forward to confront the Germans when they made the attempt to break through during the Battle of the Bulge. Others were sent forward also. I think a lot of them were 101st and 82nd,...and many ended up dug in at Bastogne.

While the 101st and 82nd were going forward they met *many* American soldiers in retreat.

I've never understood that. It seems to me, "In for a penny, in for a pound".

How did it occur that one big piece of an Army was in retreat while another part of the Army is being moved forward for the same battle?

Mentioned lendllease early in the war on another forum today.
Of course my opinion on its importance for the Russians was "completely wrong".
Funny as fugg this post is presented.

He is right. +1

IMO, the Greatest Generation won WWII.
A lot of devices, many invented by the Greatest Generation, helped in the effort.
A device especially important on June 6, 1944 was the Higgins boat.

The history books detail America's involvement in Europe during WW2 as very "black and white", "good vs. bad".

But actually, America's alignment was very arbitrary. The entire war in Europe was chaotic, as evidenced by the fact that the allies bombed the hell out of France. (1570 towns killing 68,000+ civilians)

Vice President Harry Truman suggested that America take a "wait and see" approach to the squabble between Germany and Russia and go in on the side that looked likely to win. But FDR decided to back up Russia.

Not much of the alignment in Europe was black and white. A good deal of it was gray. In fact, very early in the conflict it seemed as if Russia and Germany were to be aligned.

My take away from the first half of the 20th century is,...during that period Caucasians spent a lot of time and energy killing each other off.

If anybody won, it was Mao.

^^^This^^^

Game over!!!

Here is a simple one that turned the Normandy invasion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhino_tank

It depends on a lot of factors but when testing the other forces there is usually a bit of partying going on and that leads to situations where minor deviations in course can put soldiers going in opposite directions. And with the Germans advancing in a blitzkrieg through the forest it was easy to get confused. IIRC the assumption was it would be unlikely the Germans would attack there so we had light coverage with new troops and beat-up troops.

I forget the name of the Airborne soldier dropped behind the lines just before D-day but on a little walk-about he walked into a German tent and killed two awesome German generals. That left them without the kind of leadership they needed. The soldier made it out alive but died in another battle much later.

Even with all the wonderful inventions, it still took blood and guts. Admittedly, Stalin was a factor in the European theater. However, Stalin never provided a second front against Japan until he was positive he could acquire major gains at little cost. The Pacific theater was pretty much the US. Never tell a Marine that Higgins boats won the war. The Marines had little use for Higgins boats after Tarawa.

So many innovative advances in weaponry and technology occurred during WW2, it's damn near impossible to say "this is the thing that won the war".
VT fuses, the Norden bombsight, the Higgins Boat, the M-1 rifle, Atom Bomb...., the list is endless. Don't forget the Liberty Ships and destroyers built and launched in 30'days.
American technology and the American Spirit won the war.
I think Christopher Titus said it best.
"America! We build Monster Trucks for fun! Piss us off, and see what we build!"
7mm

Alot of the earlier formed divisions were trained well and had experience from north Africa , sicily and italy.
Alot of the later divisions were "trained to time" and not to standard
( anyone that has been in military knows what I am saying) for the huge build up in England for the European campaign after the u boat threat got taken care of and troops could be brought across the alantic in huge numbers. Money ,resources, and timing had a lot to do with divisions being stood up in the states for deployment overseas.
Some of those hastily trained division in the ETO needed massive artillery and air support to be effective.
The more experienced divisions didnt need alot of it to initiate operations at times
Historians have said 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 infantryman would fire their wpns when needed.
That is a telling number.


Some of those divisions over run by the germans were new to the ETO and moved forward into a supposedly quiet sector to train and get gradual battle rhythm from patrolling and platoon and company level operations against the germans.

Eisenhower was also at the bottom of his manpower reserves at times in late 1944.
The replacement system was also ad hocing rear area job types and newly arrived soldiers into infantryman also.
Lots of air defense artillery units were scrapped and sent into the infantry and tanker replacement system.

Grant did similar things during the civil war when manpower issues came up.
Heavy artillery units ( heavies)
Alot of rear area units gaurding Washington
Were disbanded and made infantry units
They didnt perform well as a whole either.



S.L.A. Marshall wrote a pretty in depth book about the war in europe
And he explained alot of issues on why some divisions did well and others not so well.

The Germans and the Russians were aligned by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, signed in August 1939 and Poland and the Baltics were divided up by the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. The pact was broken when Germany invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa in June 1941.

IMO, if there was one thing that assured Allied victory it was Hitler's decision to get involved in a two front war.

I remember a story about a soldier who was armed with a 1903 Springfield. His job was to fire tracers at enemy concentrations to direct fire on them. First time he did it he got so much return fire he left the '03 propped against a tree and got himself an M-1.

And most of this stuff had a lot of parts made on W&S turret lathes.

Wonderful stuff doesn’t help if you can’t make it.

[u][/u]

I’ve read that the Germans during WWII were generally not so enamored of our “soldering” or our tactics, but that we could continually resupply, even bringing our soldiers their mail, when their men, on their own continent couldn’t get even the basics at times.

It was the century of blood, resulting in more war-dead and victims of genocide than all other centuries combined. It was proof-positive that while man can exponentially improve technologically, he is constrained by his nature from any utopian dreams. The 20th century was big blow to intellectually honest secularists and their dreams of perfect societies.

Apparently, intellectually honesty is rare among the Left today with their dreams of peaceful globalism. Or, as CS Lewis has claimed, they are guilty of “chronological arrogance,” the belief of each latest generation that, after all, they are the smartest of all their predecessors and can “do it” better..

Without the Russians and the Eastern Front combined with Hitler’s deluded, mistaken tactics there, it’s arguable that we would have lost.

Oak ridge national labs?! My paternal grandfathers oldest brother was nuclear physicist who assisted in drafting the plans for the atomic bomb at oak ridge national lab in some fashion( I was a kid when he told me the story). Said they had people going 24/7 and were told it meant winning or losing the war. He said he went to the White House twice to discuss plans with a group of engineers, and the president was in those meetings.

My grandfather has always said my great uncle may have never served actively in the war despite being active duty Air Force, but played a pivotal role in winning. He was such a wonderful person too. He passed away about 7 years ago.

Maternal grandfather had two older brothers who served and where both wounded in WW2. Jimmy was shot while trying to drag his younger brother Adrian back to safety after being wounded. France I believe it was. With only 13 months between them jimmy and Adrian were as close as twins. Jimmy once said taking a bullet for his brother was the easiest thing he ever did. Said didn’t even occur to him he could die, only that his brother needed him and he was going to get him no matter what. I always admired them. Humble hard working men

Jimmy taught me to fly fish as a child, Adrian taught me to squirrel hunt. Miss them both. They both met my first son before they died. My sons middle name is Hutson, which was jimmys middle name also. My next son, if I have one will be named Adrian

I feel American grit and determination won the war, but I’m no war historian. Too bad those days are gone. Too many puzzies.

Fat man

Asians spent a lot of effort killing each other too.