Similarly, in WW2, Japan did quite well for itself, and if a handful of major battles had gone slightly differently, the outcome would have been very different.
You are wrong about this. Even if every single American ship magically got sunk at some point in 1941 or 1942, and if every single American soldier stationed outside of the U.S. mainland magically dropped dead at the same time, it would only have taken a few years longer for the U.S. to defeat Japan. Once the American war production was up and running, the U.S. could outproduce Japan by at least two orders of magnitude and soon overwhelm the Japanese navy and air force no matter what their initial advantage. Starting the war was a suicidal move for the Japanese leadership, and even the sane people among them knew it.
I think you’re also overestimating the chances Germans had, and underestimating how well Hitler did given the circumstances, though that’s more controversial. Also, Germany lost the technological race in pretty much all theaters of war where technology was decisive—submarine warfare, cryptography, radars and air defense, and nuclear weapons all come to mind. The only exceptions I can think of are jet aircraft and long-range missiles, but even in these areas, they produced mostly flashy toys rather than strategically relevant weapons.
Overall, I think it’s clear that the insanity of the regimes running Germany and Japan hampered their technological progress and also led to their suicidal aggressiveness. At the same time, the relative sanity of the regimes running the U.K. and the U.S. did result in significant economic and technological advantages, as well as somewhat saner strategy. Of course, that need not have been decisive—after all, the biggest winner of the war was Stalin, who was definitely closer to the defeated sides in all the relevant respects, if not altogether in the same league with them.
Ok. So all my World War 2 examples have now decisively been shown to be wrong. I don’t have any other modern examples to give that go in this direction. All other modern examples go pretty strongly in the other direction. I withdraw the claim wholesale and am updating to accept the claim for post-enlightenment human societies.
You are wrong about this. Even if every single American ship magically got sunk at some point in 1941 or 1942, and if every single American soldier stationed outside of the U.S. mainland magically dropped dead at the same time, it would only have taken a few years longer for the U.S. to defeat Japan. Once the American war production was up and running, the U.S. could outproduce Japan by at least two orders of magnitude and soon overwhelm the Japanese navy and air force no matter what their initial advantage. Starting the war was a suicidal move for the Japanese leadership, and even the sane people among them knew it.
I think you’re also overestimating the chances Germans had, and underestimating how well Hitler did given the circumstances, though that’s more controversial. Also, Germany lost the technological race in pretty much all theaters of war where technology was decisive—submarine warfare, cryptography, radars and air defense, and nuclear weapons all come to mind. The only exceptions I can think of are jet aircraft and long-range missiles, but even in these areas, they produced mostly flashy toys rather than strategically relevant weapons.
Overall, I think it’s clear that the insanity of the regimes running Germany and Japan hampered their technological progress and also led to their suicidal aggressiveness. At the same time, the relative sanity of the regimes running the U.K. and the U.S. did result in significant economic and technological advantages, as well as somewhat saner strategy. Of course, that need not have been decisive—after all, the biggest winner of the war was Stalin, who was definitely closer to the defeated sides in all the relevant respects, if not altogether in the same league with them.
Ok. So all my World War 2 examples have now decisively been shown to be wrong. I don’t have any other modern examples to give that go in this direction. All other modern examples go pretty strongly in the other direction. I withdraw the claim wholesale and am updating to accept the claim for post-enlightenment human societies.