iconic poster image of the 1970 film Patton, starring George C. Scott as the titular US general
TOP 10 WW2 COMBATANT ART OF WAR RANKINGS
I’ve ranked my Top 10 Wars by art of war so now it’s time to rank the major combatants in WW2 by their art of war, drawing from my occasionally idiosyncratic application of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
Just a reminder – I ranked WW2, the top entry when ranking my Top 10 Wars in general, in tenth place for art of war, albeit in wild tier as something of a paradox.
Part of that paradox is that despite being one of most complete victories in military history (and anomalous as such in the modern history), winning the war took a lot of fighting – seemingly contrary to Sun Tzu’s maxim of winning without fighting.
That paradox is deepened in that the major combatants all demonstrated military proficiency at different points or in different ways – hence this ranking of WW2 combatants by art of war.
S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT SUN TZU TIER?)
(1) CHINA
On the one hand, it seems apt that China, the homeland of Sun Tzu, should rank in top spot for art of war in WW2, particularly given the irony that, despite its claim to The Art of War, China is one of the most defeated nations in modern history.
On the other hand – what the hell? China as exemplar of art of war? In WW2?!
China – the nation that spent the war wallowing in its persistent defeat by Japan and only avoiding complete defeat because it was simply too big and because Japan was defeated in the Pacific by the United States?
Yes, because there was more than one China in WW2. I’m not talking the primary combatant – Nationalist China, the Kuomintang China under Chiang Kai-shek that is and was usually recognized as the China of WW2.
Yes, that China spent the war being relentlessly pounded into defeat and through no real fault of its own other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time – next to Imperial Japan in the 1930s and 1940s.
No, I’m talking the other major China in WW2 – Communist China under Mao Zedong.
That China went from the verge of complete defeat by Nationalist China – a defeat from which the famed Long March was a desperate retreat – to being a viable contender and ultimately victor in the postwar resumption of the civil war between them.
And it did that by one of the best ways of winning without fighting – having others do the fighting for you, with both its enemies fighting each other and Imperial Japan effectively defeating Nationalist China for it.
Yes, that was more by stroke of good fortune than strategy, but they certainly exploited that good fortune to the fullest once it presented itself.
(2) USA
USA! USA! USA!
But seriously, you must have been expecting this.
The USA was the supreme victor of WW2, emerging as the greater of the two global superpowers after the war with the fewest casualties of any major combatant (at least relative to population, and depending on estimation or through civilian casualties, in absolute numbers).
And it did that through supreme art of war – indeed, WW2 was arguably peak American art of war.
Given that the American art of war in WW2 did involve actively fighting and strategy on its part while the Chinese Communist art of war was essentially fortuitous, I might have ranked the United States in the top spot. The only reason I didn’t was to finally give China some much needed Sun Tzu street cred otherwise missing in its military history – and that where the US ended the war as it started in a position of strength, the communist Chinese were able to reverse a position of weakness to one of strength.
The United States has proved itself in the art of war (at least until recently) by being Batman – fighting wars using money and allies. In the Second World War, the United States was the goddamn Batman of the world, winning through the sheer power of its money or economic production, not to mention its Soviet ally doing most of the actual fighting against Germany. Saving Private Ryan? More like Saving Private Ivan, amirite?
As Stalin is reputed to have said of the victory in the Second World War (and if he didn’t, he should have) – England provided the time, Russia provided the blood and America provided the money. That’s how you win without fighting.
Another classic way of winning without fighting is picking curb stomp battles. Such was the economic strength and resources of the United States in both world wars, that they were really a foregone conclusion after its entry, especially when you throw in the other allies. As the United States swamped Japan with its ships and planes in the Second World War, it did indeed have some actual curb stomp battles, such as the ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’ in June 1944, labelled by American naval aviators for the ease with which they shot down the remnants of Japanese carrier aviation (prompting Japan to resort to kamikaze attacks).
There was also American isolationism – the worst place to be in war is at the front line and the best place to be in war is sitting it out at the sidelines, ideally playing the balance of power and making money through financing or supplying your favored side and entering to tilt the balance of power in your direction (and you know, for your allies to pay you back).
On the other hand, but for American isolationism, the United States might well have preempted the war before it even began, arguably the model way of winning without fighting – or at least emboldened Britain and France to do so.
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(3) USSR
Wait, what?
Sure, the USSR won – and won big, the other of the two global superpowers after the war and occupying the other half of Europe to that by the United States.
But it also lost big – with the highest casualties of any combatant – and won hard as opposed to the nearly flawless victory of the United States, doing most of the fighting contrary to Sun Tzu’s maxim of winning without fighting.
As Stalin supposedly said, Russia provided the blood and America provided the money – and I know which I’d prefer to provide.
Still, the Allied victory in general and the Soviet victory in particular demonstrates the limitations of Sun Tzu’s pre-modern art of war, which did not anticipate modern firepower or industrial production – with WW historian H.P. Willmot observing for the latter that a modern industrial state can only be defeated by attrition. Not to mention the improvement of defensive firepower during the war – from about 1942-1943 – that goes to explain the endurance and strength of German resistance when the tide turned.
Despite Sun Tzu’s airy-fairy pseudo-pacifist poetry of winning without fighting, sometimes you can’t avoid fighting – and one of those times is when you’re on the other end of the largest invasion in history. That’s when you’d better know how to win with fighting or at least learn quickly.
It is easy to point out Soviet deficiencies in 1941 but seemingly less easy to give the Soviet Union credit for its resilience in avoiding collapse that evaded its predecessor and for that matter its own nascent state against the Germans in the First World War.
Similarly, it’s easy to attribute Soviet victory to brute force, but not so much the considerable skill with which that force was applied. The Soviets had originated the true ‘blitzkrieg’ – the concept of the ‘deep battle’ or ‘deep space battle’, a strategy aimed at destroying enemy command and control centers as well as lines of communication. They just lacked the means to employ this strategy fully until the fourth year of war, when it had sufficient elite or experienced armored and mechanized formations as well as the logistics and mobility to support them. And oh boy, it showed with the Soviet campaigns from Operation Bagration onwards, among the best of the war – or any war.
H.P. Willmott argues for the complete transposition of the German and Soviet armies in terms of military proficiency by 1945, when “the operational and technical quality of the Soviet army was at least the equal of the Wehrmacht at its peak” while “the German army of 1944-45, for all its reputation, had the characteristics so meticulously catalogued when displayed by the Soviet army in 1941”.
The biggest mistake by the Soviets in the art of war was their pact with Germany. By it the Soviets hoped but failed to achieve one of best ways of winning without fighting – having others do the fighting for you, in its adversarial version of having your enemies fight each other, in this case Germany and the western allies.
But wait a minute Stark After Dark, I hear you say – didn’t you place the Chinese communists in top spot for much the same strategy? The difference is that the Soviets failed where the Chinese communists succeeded.
You see, like most things, there’s a catch. The adversarial version of having your adversaries fight each other needs good judgment – in correctly judging that your adversaries will destroy each other, rather than one defeating the other and becoming stronger or more dangerous to you as a result.
In fairness, everyone else was as surprised as the Soviets by the collapse of France – but then, not everyone else was next in the firing line, let alone left alone on the European continent with the nation that hated them. And that brings us to the lapse of judgement that was very much on them – correctly judging your “adversaries” for how adversarial they actually are to you, where clearly Germany was far more adversarial to the Soviets than Britain and France.
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(4) BRITAIN
Yes, Britain won but they didn’t win as big as the US or USSR – and like the USSR, they also lost big, not in terms of casualties (which were less than their casualties in WW1) but in global hegemony, which they effectively ceded to the US, as well as the loss of their empire.
Although in fairness that’s probably not as much of a loss as it might seem, as their empire and global hegemony were waning, at least from WW1 but arguably from the late nineteenth century onwards, when their industrial economy that was the foundation for both was eclipsed first by the United States and then by Germany. In reality, the twentieth century was for Britain really just a matter of choice as to which rising power – the United States, Germany, and Russia or the Soviet Union – to align themselves with and their choice to align with the United States is hardly surprising.
When it comes to the art of war in WW2, Britain resembles the US for winning without fighting, only just not as well from reason of being a similar but smaller military power closer to the firing line.
That is, Britain won by allies doing most of the fighting for it, as well through financial or imperial assets and intelligence.
Indeed, when the British did do their own fighting, they were consistently bad at it (until the end of 1942) – which arguably takes their art of war up a notch, to winning even when fighting badly.
WW2 historian Gerhard Weinberg observed that Britain’s consistently poor performance fighting the Germans and Japanese is an issue deserving more attention by historians. Even Churchill observed that the Battle of El Alamein was a turning point for Britain, in that before it they almost never had a victory and after it they almost never had a defeat.
That again just takes their art of war up a notch in my eyes, such that I’ve quipped that in both world wars, the British were lackluster soldiers but excellent diplomats and spies, running rings around their adversaries to win.
Also, fighting in the war may not have involved their traditional “splendid isolationism” but did involve a certain practical isolationism – that is, the practical effect that they sat out most of the fighting in Europe, albeit by fortunate circumstance of their island geography and necessity of being predominantly a naval power. In a sense they improved upon the trench warfare of the first WW1 by sitting behind the bigger trench of the English Channel and accordingly had fewer casualties. Hence their notorious caution and circumspection about opening the second front compared to the Americans.
On the other hand, their biggest mistake essentially involved trying to sit out any military action at all towards Germany prior to the war – appeasement in other words – by which they could readily have preempted the war before it began. Anzar Gat observes a common observation among historians – that the victors of WW1, Britain and France, are unparalleled in forfeiting their overwhelming military advantage that could readily have defeated their German opponent before it even began at effectively no cost to themselves.
That would have been the true art of winning without fighting – and Britain’s failure to do so had to cost it dearly from ranking any higher.
C-TIER (MID-TIER)
(5) CHINA
Yes, it’s the other China – the China that was the primary Chinese combatant in WW2, the China that was (and is) usually recognized as the China of WW2, Nationalist China or Kuomintang China governed by Chiang Kai-shek.
As I observed in my entry for communist China. Nationalist China spent the war being relentlessly pounded into defeat and through no real fault of its own other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time – next to Imperial Japan in the 1930s and 1940s.
I’m still ranking it higher than France.
In fairness, China didn’t do too badly, particularly given it was the weakest of the major combatants, lacking the industrial base of its antagonist Japan or anyone else really.
WW2 historian Gerhard Weinberg thought it a question for historians rivalling that of Britain’s persistent poor military performance as to how China was able to endure as it did.
At least part of it might be attributed to art of war. China was simply too big and populous to fall to Japan, so could resort to what was effectively a passive guerilla strategy, avoiding fighting Japan in open contest (or at all) as much as possible. The result was a stalemate for Japan, forcing Japan into conflict with more powerful nations for the resources to continue the war – nations that would win China’s war for it.
Also, I have to admit blowing up the Yellow River dykes to flood the Japanese out as pretty badass.
D-TIER (LOW TIER)
(6) FRANCE
That’s right, we’ve reached the lowest tier, the losing tier in other words, among the winning side – France.
Put simply, France lost in 1940 and only ranks on the winning side because that defeat was reversed by the victory of the other Allies, liberating it in the process. Sure, some expatriate or exiled French forces fought as part of the Allied forces, as did other defeated European nations. However, the question caustically posed by WW2 historian Gerhard Weinberg remains – why the Vichy French regime or colonial governments submitted so readily to the Germans or Japanese but resisted the Allies.
I suppose you could argue that having other nations liberate your nation and defeat your enemy for you is one way of winning without fighting, but that’s too dependent on their goodwill and strategic interests aligning with yours for it to count in my opinion.
Also, their defeat in 1940 was too big for that, in one blow wiping out French military reputation and substituting the trope of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. As military historian H.P. Willmott observed, it poses the questions of “why the German victory was so rapid and one-sided, or in its alternative form, why it was that the French army for three centuries the warrior host of Europe, and for the previous two decades the most prestigious army in the world, collapsed the way it did”.
The only reason I don’t rank France lower is that it did, after all, end up on the winning side. That’s not as flippant as it sounds but reflects that their longer-term strategic instincts were essentially sound in that Germany would not win the prolonged conflict they anticipated. It’s just that they failed their immediate defense and hence to remain an active part of that prolonged conflict which was then won by others, France lacking the resources, space or time that the other major allied combatants had to recover from defeat.
Their biggest mistake was to forfeit their overwhelming military advantage they held over Germany as victor in the First World War by not pre-empting the war before it began. You know, in those two decades as the most prestigious army in the world – when they could have done it by show of force at no cost to themselves as late as the German reoccupation of the Rhineland.
(7) ITALY
And from the losing tier of the winning side, we go to the winning tier of the losing side – Italy, which managed to negotiate a conditional surrender and switch sides to the Allies (with far fewer casualties than Germany or Japan).
That is, apart from Finland, which also managed the impressive feat of extracting itself from the war while avoiding Soviet occupation.
Italy is notorious for its lack of military proficiency – a notoriety that is overstated as Italy was not so much universally bad as it was inconsistent in military performance, an inconsistency that is largely explicable from its underlying weaknesses before and during the war.
However, this is not ranking combatants by military proficiency but by art of war, particularly as it involves winning without fighting.
And for that Italy deserves credit for pulling off its massive bluff of being taken far more seriously as a great power despite its weakness. Italy’s biggest mistake was calling its own bluff by, you know, actually getting involved in the war, although even then it tried to win with as little fighting as possible while preserving its one real strength – its navy.
That goes all the way back to its anachronistic policy of trying to revive the Roman Empire, half a millennium too late after the world economy had moved on from the Mediterranean – which in practice involved attacking countries poorer than itself, Abyssinia and Albania, hence of little benefit to itself even when it won.
The war on Abyssinia was particularly ill-advised, doubling down on anachronism with a revival of the Scramble for Africa – alienating its former WW1 allies Britain and France, while leaving its forces exposed by their isolation if Britain did turn against them, as actually happened in WW2.
Italy’s contribution to the Spanish Civil War was a prewar drain on its military with little benefit to itself – while it did see victory for a fellow idealogue regime, that regime was unable and unwilling to reciprocate the favor to Italy or Germany in WW2.
Italy should have taken a leaf from Spain’s book, the latter proving far wiser in its cautious neutrality despite initial German victory. Italy should have stayed sitting it out at the sidelines rather than making the Mediterranean and ultimately itself a front line.
In other words, playing the balance of power and making money through trading with both sides, which probably would have seen it entering the war, if at all, on the winning Allied side later in the war and without turning itself into a battlefield except perhaps at the Alps.
Ironically, the British Cabinet also considered whether Britain’s situation would be better if Italy remained neutral or entered the war on Germany’s side. They concluded the former – narrowly – but they may have underestimated how much Italy would drag Germany down
I’d like to think that Italy was playing the long game against Germany, professing to support Germany’s war while secretly working against it by deliberate incompetence – much like Admiral Canaris and his Abwehr in Germany – but sadly I can’t quite pull off the mental gymnastics and it was just too self-destructive for Italy even if it was true.
F-TIER (FAIL TIER)
(8) JAPAN
This can’t be a surprise. If this was ranking combatants by fighting or military proficiency, Japan would rank higher. In terms of the art of war or waging war as opposed to fighting, Japan was hopelessly outclassed by the Allies – and indeed outranked by every major combatant except one.
Japan literally defined strategy only in the short term, with the concept of the decisive battle, particularly as held by its navy – that is, that war would be won by fighting and winning a single knockout below. First, Pearl Harbor, then Midway, and then, well, never as it forever receded back to the horizon and Japan ever more desperately sought to conserve their fleet – until it was a kamikaze last-ditch defense to somehow knock out the Americans in the invasion of Japan itself.
Japan’s long-term strategy was incoherent, to the extent that it had any at all beyond wishful thinking that the United States would simply give up or relied upon Japan’s allegedly superior martial qualities to overcome the overwhelming material superiority of the United States.
“There was no plan at all to invade America, knock her out of the war or destroy her capacity to wage it. In short, there was no strategic war-winning plan at all. Instead, there was an optimistic assumption that, at some stage, America (and Britain) would negotiate a compromise peace.”
In one of my favorite anecdotes from popular historian Paul Johnson, “on 3 January 1942, H!tler admitted to the Japanese ambassador, General Hiroshi Oshima, that he did not yet know ‘how America could be defeated'” – “That made two of them: the Japanese did not know either.”
Worse, not only did Japan have no long-term strategy, but it also effectively had two bodies for planning any strategy, almost as much in competition with each other as with their external adversaries, in the worst high command arrangements of any combatant – its army and navy.
Even at the most basic tactical level, Japan “had almost completely neglected submarine warfare, both defensive and offensive” – which meant that it had no means for ensuring supplies for its forces scattered across the Pacific “or, conversely, of inhibiting the Allies from moving their own supplies”, such that “in the long run, Japan could not prevent America from developing a war-winning strategy.”
That was a fatal flaw for an island nation almost entirely reliant on maritime trade or supply lines, going to war in a naval contest that was essentially a competition of industrial production against an opponent of overwhelmingly superior economic and industrial capacity.
In what you may detect to be a running theme among the Axis, Japan’s biggest mistake was going to war at all when it should have done everything possible as an alternative to avoid it – “Japan’s decision to go to war made no sense. It was hara-kiri”.
And that went all the way back to every decision to go to war – or to ally itself with the Axis – after the First World War. The occupation of Manchuria in 1931 simply opened up the potential for wider war with the larger nations bordering it, China and the Soviet Union, as indeed occurred. The wider war with China exceeded Japan’s ability to defeat it or achieve anything other than a stalemate – and the need for resources, particularly oil, to continue waging that war forced Japan to the widest war of all in the Pacific against the United States, that was entirely beyond its means for anything but defeat.
(9) GERMANY
The lowest of low tier – no prizes for guessing Germany as the major combatant ranked lowest for the art of war in WW2.
Japan might otherwise have ranked lower as its strategy was more incoherent, but Germany loses out if only because they pulled this crap twice. As historian H.P. Willmott paraphrased Oscar Wilde, to lose one world war may be regarded as misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.
As for Japan, if this was ranking combatants by fighting or military proficiency, Germany would rank higher – some would argue highest. As Willmott opined, Germany’s military genius lay in fighting, not in war. When it came to understanding war and waging it, Germany was hopelessly outclassed by the Allies – a situation shared by Germany’s ally Japan. All Germany managed to achieve in two world wars was its encirclement and attrition by enemies with superior resources.
As H.P. Willmott opined on his “theme of Germany’s defeat as a result of her inability to understand war” – The failure to understand the limits, both of military force in the conduct of war and of German national power within the international community characterized Germany’s actions in two world wars, almost as if the very success of the one German leader who had understood both – Bismarck – blinded successive generations of Germans to these realities because they saw only his military victories”.
Their biggest mistake in the art of war? You guessed it – going to war in the first place, although as Willmott observed that went all the way back through successive German leaders screwing things up after Bismarck (which could be the subject of its own list).
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
(10) AUSTRALIA
I’m rounding out ten entries for my WW2 combatant art of war rankings with Australia in wild tier, because we all know if I was to rank it anywhere else, it would be in god tier top spot for both military proficiency and art of war.
For military proficiency, Australia was the first to defeat both Germany and Japan on land – with Australia’s Ninth Division stopping Rommel’s Afrika Korps at Tobruk in 1941 and Australian forces stopping the Japanese at Milne Bay in 1942 (as well as along the Kokoda Trail).
And art of war for a small nation (in population) like Australia is essentially a matter of allies – so swapping out Britain for the US as ally in the war against Japan, the only real threat of battle on or invasion of its own home territory that Australia faced in war, is prime art of war.
Rightly so too – Australia has never forgiven Churchill for screwing it over in both world wars, “starting with his habit of borrowing the country’s navy and army whenever world war broke out”. Gallipoli, anyone?
But at least Gallipoli didn’t risk the invasion of Australia itself, as opposed to WW2 where Churchill first sought to retain Australia’s troops in the Middle East, then to divert them to Burma when Australia recalled them to defend itself against Japan.
