The Americans were some of the easiest troops for the Allies to get along with in WWII.
While not always perfect, the Americans joined the Allies late and showed up
with a swagger and an enthusiasm many troops needed to help boost morale.
American soldiers made fast friends with many of the other Allies,
but most notably with the Australians, Canadians, British, and even the Soviets.
Even if there were some bumps along the way and even if cultural differences led
to misunderstandings, the Americans were well-liked by their comrades.
In this video, we’re going to dive into the relationships American troops had with
their Allies and talk about the good, the bad, and the sometimes very ugly.
Inviting Americans down under wasn’t the first choice for many Australians, as they
had assumed the British would come to their aid while battling the Japanese in the Pacific.
For Australia, a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, it was a natural assumption,
but Churchill wouldn’t spare the men. He preferred to keep his troops closer to home
to protect the motherland. Left with no other choice, the Aussies turned to America for help.
The first Americans arrived in Australia in December 1941,
only a couple weeks after Pearl Harbor, and by 1943 that number had grown to more than 250,000,
with most of the Americans stationed around Brisbane.
There was a natural camaraderie between the Aussies and the Americans,
especially on the battlefield. With a common goal and language shared between the two,
they found it easy to find things they liked about each other.
In particular, the Americans admired the fighting spirit of the Aussies.
In August 1942, the two nations, along with other commonwealth allies, engaged in the Battle of
Guadalcanal against the Japanese in the Solomon Islands. The offensive’s goal was to keep the
Japanese from building an airfield on Guadalcanal which could cut off US sea lanes to Australia.
The offensive was a success and the Americans and Australians
found it easy to work together on the battlefield.
Back in Australia, things were a bit different. The perception of the American soldiers was fairly
positive at first. They had well-fitted uniforms that made them look stylish,
their manners were considered extremely polite by the Aussies as they addressed everyone as “sir”
or “ma’am,” and they made more money than the Aussies. Even the Americans in the lower ranks
earned more than the higher-ranking Australians. That, combined with the tipping culture they
brought with them from the States, gave the Americans a reputation for being big spenders.
The American presence had an effect on Australian culture.
Suddenly, hot dog stands started popping up, shops began selling American-style clothes,
and cafes started advertising hamburgers and Coca-Cola.
Some Aussies, women especially, began to talk like the Americans, picking up their slang.
The American GIs definitely enjoyed the company of the local women and vice versa. Some
12,000 Australian women ended up marrying American soldiers and returning with them
to the States at the end of the war. The American popularity with local women was
a source of tension for the Australian soldiers, along with the disparity of pay.
But what really got to the Aussies was how just how much
the Americans were encroaching on their territory.
To put it into perspective, at the time, Brisbane only had a population of around 330,000.
But at the peak of the American presence, there was an additional 80,000 people in and around the
city. They simply didn’t have the infrastructure to accommodate such a sudden population boom.
This sudden ingress of GIs led to such inconveniences as brownouts and school closures.
Furthermore, out of almost nowhere, Aussies couldn’t go to their favorite spots anymore.
Hotels and bars gave preferential treatment to the Americans because they had more money
to spend. At the time, establishments were only allowed to serve alcohol twice a day
for one hour at a time, which meant that the Aussies had to run around trying to
find space in any bar or hotel that could squeeze them in if they wanted a drink.
Meanwhile, the Americans comfortably took up space. Even though the Americans had
been told the Aussies enjoyed their drink in their military-issued guide to the country,
they were not informed of the dangers of getting in the way of an Aussie and his beer.
On top of that, the Americans had better rations and more access to products that were either
extremely limited or not available to their Australian counterparts. Things like chocolate,
cigarettes, ice cream, booze, and even nylon stockings were sold at American post exchanges,
where Australians were not even allowed to enter.
Tensions born out of resentment grew over time. According to local authorities,
there were as many as 20 brawls a night happening between Australian and American soldiers.
It all crescendoed on the night of November 26th, 1942,
when an American private named James R. Stein left a hotel bar stinking drunk after it closed.
He stopped to talk to three Aussie servicemembers when he was stopped
by an American MP who asked to see his leave pass. The MP got impatient with Stein when
it took him a few minutes to find it and he got impatient and arrested him.
The Aussies quickly came to Stein’s defense, both out of sympathy for the drunk kid and general
disdain for American MPs, whom Aussies disliked for their aggressive behavior.
Living up to the stereotype, the MP went after the three Aussies, raising his baton over his head.
The Aussies didn’t hesitate to attack him. Seeing trouble, more American MPs showed up,
and, seeing trouble, so did more Australian servicemen.
The MPs were outnumbered, and they backed off, but it was too late. The Battle of Brisbane had begun.
The Aussies went after the MPs and attacked the postal exchanges, two of the major sources of
their frustrations. Less than two hours after Stein left the hotel, more than 5,000 Aussie
servicemen joined in the riots. There were countless fights, projectiles were thrown into
postal exchanges, and one Australian soldier was accidentally killed in the middle of a scuffle.
The Battle of Brisbane lasted two nights before things calmed down and were quickly brushed off.
U.S. Army Sergeant Bill Bentson commented on that, saying It sort of settled down
and you go into a pub and an Aussie would come and up and slap me on the back. ‘Oh,
wasn't that a good ruckus we had the other night? And have a beer on me.’
From then on, the Aussies and Americans had no
more major incidents and got along fairly well for the rest of the war.
Sharing the world’s longest land border certainly had its advantages in World War II,
considering Americans and Canadians had almost no trouble getting along when fighting together.
Culturally very similar and sharing a language,
it was a breeze for both sides. They had a much deeper understanding of each
other than they had with the other Allies and this fostered a strong camaraderie.
The US and Canada fought together in Europe as well as the Pacific,
fighting many battles together. Most notably, they fought side-by-side on
the beaches of Normandy as well as at the Battle of the Scheldt.
For D-Day, Canada contributed 14,000 soldiers and 10,000 sailors, along with 110 warships and
15 fighter bomber squadrons. While the Americans landed on the code-named Utah and Omaha beaches,
Canada was assigned Juno Beach. Though they sustained heavy casualties,
the Canadians successfully took the beach from the hands of the Germans.
Both the Americans and the Canadians admired each other’s bravery from that day.
The Americans gladly served under Canadian command in several battles,
most notably at the Battle of the Scheldt in late 1944, during which Canadian and other Allied
troops successfully fought off the Germans and opened up a shipping route to Antwerp.
That shipping port was critical to the Allied success in the war as it allowed
2.5 million tons of supplies to arrive between November 1944 and April 1945.
But the North American neighbors didn’t just fight alongside one another. The men even sometimes
fought in each other’s militaries. In his book Military Relations Between the United States
and Canada: 1939-1945, Colonel Stanley W. Dziuban talks about how a number of Americans crossed the
border long before Pearl Harbor in order to join the Canadian Armed Forces. By 1941, there were
1,200 Americans in the Royal Canadian Airforce alone, making up 10% of its officer strength.
Around the time of Pearl Harbor, the number jumped to over 6,000 Americans in the RCAF and another
10,000 in the Canadian Army. And after Pearl Harbor, there was a bit of a reverse as the
US entered the war. Around 26,000 Canadians headed south and enlisted in the US military.
Both militaries operated very similarly, with only small differences in organization, tactics, and
equipment. These differences may have occasionally led to some disagreements or tensions, but overall
the Canadians and Americans were thick as thieves throughout the duration of the war.
The US and Britain have long been referred to as two countries separated by a common language.
But that didn’t stop British and American soldiers from becoming fast friends during the war.
Despite their cultural differences, both sides found friendship with the other to be easy.
The Americans had a great deal of respect for the British and all they had endured since they
entered the war in 1939, both at home and on the battlefields of Europe and North Africa.
Likewise, the British were grateful for the help the Americans were giving them.
The Guide for American Servicemen in Britain 1942 told Americans that
“[The British] are far more interested in getting together in solid friendship with us,
so that we can all start dishing it out to Hitler.” So any small cultural faux pas on
behalf of the Americans in Britain was quickly forgiven. Well, all except one.
The Americans brought more than just their swagger and fighting spirit to Great Britain.
They also brought their racism. That’s not to say racism didn’t already exist in British society,
it did and still does, but Americans brought over a much different flavor of racism.
The American Armed Forces were still segregated at the time of World War II,
and that segregation was brought with them everywhere they went.
Segregation between black and white people didn’t exist in Britain and it was something
the British didn’t understand. In fact, British servicemembers and civilians alike generally got
along well with around 150,000 African American soldiers that came over. While
there were some initial tensions as journalist Roi Ottley wrote in 1942: ‘When the manager of
a restaurant was questioned recently about refusing service to a Negro soldier, he had
a ready answer. “White Americans say they will not patronize my place if Negroes were served.”
They were generally welcomed in pubs just the same as their white counterparts, and British
women were drawn to their manners, a fact that greatly bothered many white American servicemen.
Racial tensions between the Americans spilled over on the night of June 24th, 1943,
in the village of Bamber Bridge in Lancashire. The violence started at Ye Olde Hob Inn, a local pub
that made a point to serve both black and white Americans. Two white American MPs tried to arrest
a black soldier for being out of uniform. There was a confrontation in the street outside the pub
during which a black soldier, Private William Crossland, was shot and killed by a white MP.
That prompted more white MPs to show up armed to the teeth, which then, in turn,
forced the black soldiers to arm themselves in defense. The two sides shot at each other through
the night and into the following morning. By the end of it, a further four people had been shot,
three black and one white, and two other white MPs had been beaten.
In the aftermath, 32 black soldiers were convicted of mutiny, while no white MPs faced any charges.
However, the blame for the incident was put on the MPs
for their poor leadership and use of racial slurs.
The story of the Battle of Bamber Bridge was buried pretty quickly as the Americans didn’t
want the news of their in-fighting to get out to the other branches or even the other Allies.
Thankfully, the incident didn’t hinder the British and American camaraderie on the battlefield,
and the two sides fought well together in countless operations. Most notable were
their joint efforts in the Battle of the Atlantic, where the Americans helped the British destroy the
German U-boat blockade; Operation Overlord, where the two countries stormed the beaches in Normandy;
and Operation Market Garden, where British and American airborne forces
combined and liberated the German-held cities of Eindhoven and Nijmegien in the Netherlands.
The incredible teamwork exhibited by the soldiers from the United Kingdom and the
United States bonded the two countries in a way that has yet to be broken.
It helped to create the famous special relationship that exists to this day.
The relationship between US and Soviet troops during World War II was, to put it mildly,
complicated. Though they were allies, for the most part, the two nations’ soldiers didn’t really have
much interaction with one another. Their opinions came from propaganda and secondhand sources.
On the one hand, the Americans admired the Soviets for the fight they’d put up
against the Germans despite terrible odds and even more horrific losses.
On the other hand, having never fought together on a major battlefield, their understanding of one
another was extremely limited. They didn’t share a language or a political ideology,
and that made it difficult for them to form a comprehensive opinion of each other.
If anything, the overall opinion Americans had of the Soviet soldiers
skewed negatively, in large part due to anti-communist attitudes in the West.
Made even worse by rumors of war crimes committed by the Soviets towards the end of the war.
Whether true or not, it made the Americans weary of their allies.
However, despite this, in the rare instances
Americans and Soviets did meet, their interactions were positive.
One such example is their meeting at the Elbe River in Germany in April 1945.
American forces pushing east met up with the Soviet forces pushing west
and it marked an important part of the end of the war as the two fronts
finally converged and two of the major Allies linked for the first time in enemy territory.
An even better example of Americans and Soviets getting along came in the form of one man:
Joseph Beyrle. Beyrle was a paratrooper in the US Army before getting captured by the
Germans on D-Day. After several months spent as a prisoner of war with a number of failed
escape attempts under his belt, he finally had a successful escape in January 1945.
After he freed himself from the clutches of the Germans, he went east with the hope
of joining the Red Army so he could continue his fight against the Nazis.
He eventually found a Soviet tank brigade and approached them,
arms raised with a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes in his hand. He shouted,
“American comrade!” in his very limited Russian in the hopes they wouldn’t shoot him on sight.
Thankfully, it worked, and the brigade’s commander, a woman by the name of Aleksandra
Samusenko, allowed him to join as they headed for Berlin. Beyrle was considered useful by
his new battalion due to his expertise in demolitions, and it was his new band of
brothers and sisters that liberated the very POW camp he had been imprisoned in.
However, a month or so later, he was injured in battle and was taken to a Soviet hospital. There,
he met Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who, after learning Beyrle’s story via an interpreter,
was amazed by his bravery. He wanted to ensure that Beyrle got back to his
countrymen and drew up the papers for him to rejoin the American Army himself.
We wish there were more examples of Americans and Soviets fighting together, but their interactions
were too limited. What do you think? Do you think America and the Soviet Union could have forged a
special relationship like the one with Britain if they had the opportunity to fight alongside
one another? How has the international opinion of Americans changed since the Second World War?
Tell us your opinions in the comments below.