Most wars lasting longer than six months or a year transition from a war of maneuver to a war of attrition, where victory depends on each side's will to fight and capacity to fight rather than rapid tactical success.

By 1943-1944, the US possessed phenomenal and increasing productive capacity for destructive equipment, which barely existed in 1939 and was not ready in 1941, demonstrating that the US mobilized industrial capacity over time rather than possessing it at war's outset.

The Japanese continued fighting in WWII despite being nearly defeated because their will to fight was very difficult to break; they only capitulated after the atomic bombs, demonstrating that some regimes can sustain fighting through overwhelming material defeat.

If the West does not destroy Russian production facilities and does not create political alternatives to Putin's regime, the West must break Russia's will to fight, which is the remaining lever; without ability destruction or alternative creation, forcing war termination requires breaking Russian political will.

The death toll of World War II was approximately 55 million, exponentially more than World War I, and a World War III with modern weaponry would represent another exponential increase in casualties.

Ukrainian military casualties are estimated at 120,000 to 150,000 killed and seriously wounded not returning to the battlefield, while Russian casualties are probably around 200,000, with a higher percentage of deaths relative to severely wounded on the Russian side.

A prevalent theory that emerged from German generals sponsored by the US military after WWII portrayed Hitler as a poor military commander who made mistakes, while Soviet victory is often incorrectly attributed to 'General Winter' (the Russian winter) rather than Soviet military achievement.

Approximately 80 percent of all German military casualties in WWII occurred on the Eastern Front fighting the Red Army, making Soviet sacrifice—approximately 27 million total deaths (7-11 million military, 18-20 million civilian)—the decisive factor in defeating Nazi Germany.

The US and European technology transfer to the Soviet Union in the 1930s—including tank prototypes, blueprints, and machinery for every major Soviet Five-Year Plan except synthetic rubber—enabled Stalin to build the military-industrial complex that produced Soviet weaponry decisive in defeating Nazi Germany during WWII.

The US has been strategically second-to-none on the battlefield in recent decades (Iraq, Afghanistan) but has systematically failed at consolidating military gains and winning the peace, which requires sustained political and economic commitment over generations.

Destroying the ability to fight (productive capacity: tank factories, airplane factories, ball bearing factories, aluminum factories) is distinct from and more decisive than destroying individual military assets on the battlefield; the US won WWII primarily by using air power to annihilate German and Japanese industrial capacity, not by killing soldiers.

The West has not destroyed Russian production facilities or the production facilities of Iran and North Korea (suppliers of munitions to Russia), and we are not bombing Russian productive capacity for artillery shells and drones, therefore we are not winning a war of attrition against Russia.

The US has sent 13 years worth of Javelin production to Ukraine and has not ramped up production facilities to replace these stocks; without increased production, Ukraine will eventually run out of munitions and lose the ability to continue fighting regardless of its will to fight.

Tanks on the battlefield have a shelf life of a few days before breaking down and require skilled workers in nearby workshops for repair; sending tanks without sending thousands of workers and workshops close to the battlefield makes tank supply ineffective because damaged tanks cannot be repaired and returned to the front.

Drones are essentially munitions, not fundamentally different items; they are high-tech on social media and the battlefield, but they function as consumable ordnance in the same way as artillery shells, and their depletion constrains fighting capacity just like ammunition depletion.

Richard Avery's recent book argues that Lend-Lease cooperation and resource sharing among the Allies was more decisive than destruction of enemy productive capacity in winning WWII; this argument is presented as an alternative to Phillips Payson O'Brien's production-destruction thesis.

Stalin was a very poor military commander with no understanding of tactics or combining tactical with strategic operations, continued to make mistakes throughout the war, but was extraordinarily skilled at organizing production on the home front and managing the Soviet command war economy with detailed knowledge of factories, directors, and production profiles.

Nazi atrocities consolidated Soviet patriotism, transforming it from a pre-existing sentiment into an unbreakable will to resist; the combination of Ukrainian valor and Russian atrocities is the driving force of the current war, demonstrating that atrocities can paradoxically strengthen enemy resolve.

Stalin could absorb vast casualties among enslaved collective farmers without concern for human cost because he ruled a totalitarian system with a young, large population compared to Germany, allowing him to use mass casualties as a substitute for sophisticated military strategy.

Democracies cannot fight like totalitarian systems because they care about every soldier and cannot throw soldiers into a meat grinder to compensate for lack of resources or military skill; this structural difference constrains how democracies can sustain wars of attrition.