No the Soviets didn’t Single Handedly Win the Second World War
A common myth spread by Russian Propagandists is the Minimizing of the US effort in the Second World War. This Piece will debunk the myth that the Soviet Union single handedly won the Second World War.
When the Germans launched the preemptive Operation Barbarossa in June,1941, the Wehrmacht overran the Red Army just as easily and just as thoroughly as they had routed the British and French. The numbers of Soviet prisoners taken and the sheer amount of war material destroyed or confiscated were staggering. It was only the onset of the Russian winter that stalled not reversed the rapid German advance into Russia.
If the German-Soviet War were a boxing match, Round 1 (1941) was clearly dominated by Germany. Round 2 (1942) could be considered a draw. It wasn’t until Round 3 (1943) that the Soviets could begin to claim that they had won a round (and even 1943 was a very close round). As for 1944 & 1945, those years clearly belonged to Stalin. But there are two little details that seems to have forgotten:
1: FDR’s massive, and I mean massive, infusion of Lend-Lease armaments and other essential supplies to the depleted Soviet war machine
2: The diversion of German troops to Africa, Italy, France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Greece and Yugoslavia all necessary to block the Anglo-American Alliance from advancing from fronts throughout Europe.
Just how massive was the free arsenal of state-of-the art goodies which the US Shipped to the USSR via never-ending Arctic convoys? Chew on these numbers Revisionists.
- Trucks: 427,284
- Tanks and Combat Vehicles: 13,303
- Aircraft: 11,000
- Bombers: 3,000
- Anti-Aircraft Cannons: 8,000
- Motorcycles: 35,170
- Ordnance Service Vehicles: 2,328
- Radar Systems: 400
- Petroleum Products (gasoline and oil): 2,670,371 tons
- Explosives: 300,000 tons
- Field Radios: 40,000
- Foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.): 4,478,116 tons
- Locomotives & Railway cars: 13,000.
- Tommy Guns (fully automatic machine guns): 135,000
- Metal Cutting Machine Tools: 400,000
An entire tire plant was actually lifted bodily from the Ford Company’s River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. There were also secondary Lend-Lease deliveries from the UK to the USSR, most of which were just re-transfers of US aid given to the UK. More essential goodies: aircraft engines, battleships, destroyers, submarines, mine sweepers, sonar sets, anti-submarine batteries, naval guns, rocket batteries, gear-cutting machines, drilling machines, cast-iron pipes, X-ray tubes, electric furnaces and even essential items such as socks, boots, razors, clothes.
The complete list of Lend-Lease aid, both for the Soviet military and the besieged home-front population, was published by Major George Racey Jordan in 1952. It is indeed a jaw-dropper (here). As conceded even by Russian military historians, the augmentation of Soviet fire-power due to Lend Lease was as much as 30%. That’s akin to a 150 pound street-fighter packing on 50 more pounds of muscle, American muscle! And it wasn’t only about numbers; the state-of-the-art quality of items such as radar systems, fighter aircraft and tommy-guns was beyond what the Soviets could produce at the time.
Was the Invasion of Normandy a “Minor Role” in the European War?
There is the claim the Invasion of Normandy only had “a few under-strength German units”? Over 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or went missing during the Battle of Normandy. The Allied casualties (killed or wounded) for D-Day alone (June 6, 1944) amounted to 10,000 killed or wounded a number that would have been many times higher were it not for the massive pre-invasion bombing of Normandy.For the entire Battle of Normandy: 83,000 killed or wounded from 21st Army Group (UK & Canada), 126,000 from the US ground forces. The losses of the German forces during the Battle of Normandy are estimated at 200,000 killed or wounded.
We’ll talk about that bit of bull-sugar regarding “a few” German units again, momentarily, but as for the fuel shortages that the Germans had to overcome, the supposed obvious insinuation that the eastern front was depriving the Germans of fuel in the west is only half-true. Since 1940, the British Royal Air Force had been attacking facilities supplying Germany with petroleum, oil, and lubrication products.
The Americans later joined the “Oil Campaign” by bombing the Ploesti Oil fields of Romania Germany’s main supplier. Refineries in Norway were also attacked. Though unable to cripple Germany’s supply to the extent they had hoped for, the damage was certainly enough to contribute to the shortage that Revisionists seems to think was all due to the Soviet campaign. They are wrong.
Were all available German Resources on the Eastern Front?
The Germans sustained MASSIVE casualties on the various fronts in which they were compelled to engage the Americans. You see, there was this fellow named General George Patton you may have heard of him whose genius and aggressive tactics gave the German high command many nightmares.
Not only did the Germans have to contend with Patton, but America’s presence meant that Germany’s own greatest General, Erwin Rommel, and millions of his tenacious fighting forces were tied up in Africa and later Italy and France. Had it not been for Americas entry into the war, Britain would have been out of the picture as well. Rommel’s armies would thus have been fighting and tipping the balance against what would have been an under-supplied Red Army on the Eastern front.
Though not nearly as bloody and as large as the Eastern front, to suggest that the Western and Southern theatres were undefended American cake-walks displays an ignorance about the subject.
German Casualties sustained fighting US / UK:
North Africa / Italy: 50,000 Dead and 194,000 MIA or POW, 160,000 Wounded
France / Belgium: 107,000 Dead and 410,000 MIA or POW, 400,000 Wounded
Write off most of the MIA’s as dead, add in the numbers of German airmen and sailors killed by the US & UK Air Force and Navy plus those killed by US-trained and US-equipped guerrilla Partisans (the Resistance) and German casualties in the West approach numbers comparable to those killed in America’s Civil War.
Oh, and by the way need we remind of the utter devastation wreaked upon German industry and German civilians by the “Bomber Boys” of the US & UK Air Forces? Wave upon wave upon wave of Allied heavy bombers mercilessly banged Germany throughout 1943 and 1944. ‘Ya think’ all of that urban destruction, railroad-bombing, refinery bombing, factory bombing, deliberate dam-busting and straight-up primitive warfare might have hindered the German war effort, just a tad? Maybe?
In case you’re curious, what describes as “a small role” in undefended Western Europe cost the lives of 250,000 Americans and about an equal number of badly wounded. That equates to about Five Vietnam wars. For their part, the British also lost about 250,000 military personnel in the European theatre of World War II. That’s a total of about a half-million dead Allied fighting men and at least as many POW’s; not a bad take for “a few under-strength German units” which are said to be “without resources”.
What caused the Tide to be Turn in Europe?
The only reason “the tide had turned ”, can be attributed to FDR’s Lend-Lease lifeline to the Soviets, the dispersion of German forces required to defend multiple fronts, the vicious Partisan warfare being waged under the guidance of the OSS, and the merciless bombing of German cities.
Did Eisenhower Wait to Invade Normandy?
The delay had Nothing to do with Americas desire to spare American lives. The reason for delaying the invasion of Normandy until June 6, 1944, as well as for Ike’s subsequent fuel restrictions and halt orders which prevented Patton from taking Eastern Europe, was that per the Yalta Conference, the Western Allies had agreed upon giving Eastern Europe to the Soviets. Had Eisenhower invaded in 1943, it would have been politically impossible to gift Berlin and the east to the Soviets.
Eisenhower’s calculated “delay” was not for the purpose of minimizing US casualties by letting the Soviets do the heavy lifting. Not at all. It was Stalin, who wanted and who benefited from the cunning stalling tactics. Even so, the great Patton with his lightning advances was still on track to take Berlin; until Eisenhower cut off his fuel supply in 1944, and finally ordered Patton to halt at the Elbe River (near Berlin) in 1945. Have a look at line # 3 of the New York Times headline from ‘Roosevelt Is Dead’ issue of April 13, 1945, accompanied by an actual quote from General Patton.
Though it is unlikely that the US and UK could have won the war in Europe absent the diversion of 60–65% of Germany’s might in the east; the same holds true the other way. You see, without the massive Lend Lease Lifeline; without the bloody southern front (Africa, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece); without the bloody western front; (Normandy, Battle of the Bulge); without the OSS Partisans (in France, Holland, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia); without the US propping up of the UK; without the relentless US / UK bombings and fire-bombings of German cities, railways, factories, and oil refineries; and without the great Patton The Soviet Union would have been wiped out by the end of 1942, or 1943 at the latest.
Could the Soviet Union have won the war without the Western Front?
Certainly at key times western allied intervention did much to alleviate considerable pressure for the Russians on the eastern front. The American and British descent on North West Africa in November 1942 forced the Germans to not only deploy scare troops and tanks to Tunisia, but also to occupy Southern France, thus seriously spreading German forces even more thin just right before the Russians launched their powerful counter-attack at Stalingrad.
Likewise the allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 was extremely problematic for the Germans as they were attempting their last great offensive on the eastern front at Kursk to regain at least some initiative against the Russians. It was in fact the reason why Hitler halted the offensive, which marked the point in the war where the Russians seized and retained the initiative for the rest of the conflict. Hitler ordered significant formations from the eastern front to the Mediterranean, and while ultimately much of them were not sent, the Germans lost any chance, however small, of winning at Kursk, and thus it could be argued the Western Allies had a significant effect on the result of the battle.
Even the much criticized invasion of Italy had appreciable effects for the Russians. The Germans rightly feared the Italians were poised to switch sides to the allies and they deployed perhaps 20–25 divisions in Italy from mid-1943 to the end of the war. The invasion also forced the Germans to disarm countless Italian divisions which ultimately amounted to nearly 1 million soldiers in Italy, the Aegean, Greece and Yugoslavia. These soldiers had to be replaced, by German ones, and it is obvious that having to disarm and replace 1 million Axis soldiers, along with considerable amounts of tanks, planes, artillery and other equipment, could be nothing but beneficial to the Russians who fought the lion-share of the German army.
Finally, the ever increasing threat of a western allied invasion of Western Europe in 1944 forced the Germans to keep significant forces, perhaps 60 divisions and a disproportionate amount of armor, in the west. Hitler was so obsessed with defeating such an invasion that he drained reinforcements to the eastern front and the lack of such forces helped the Russians to inflict perhaps the biggest defeat the Germans suffered during the war in the summer of 1944. As Nigel Davies noted in a piece regarding misleading statistics for the war “in sheer combat power, the removal of ten percent of divisions (say 20 divisions) from the Eastern Front to face the Western Allies (happened 3 times — Tunisia/Mediterranean 1942, Sicily/Italy 1943, and France 1944) looks a lot more significant if it involves moving 50% of the available Panzers and 70 or 80% of the high quality, full strength, specially equipped, Paratroop or Mountain or Waffen SS divisions.”
Forgotten History, the Soviet and Nazi Alliance:
Perhaps we instead shouldn’t forget that the USSR gave the world Hitler by allying with the Nazis to carve up Europe. Stalin only fought back once Hitler had invaded the USSR. Stalin was so committed to his alliance with the Nazis that he refused to believe his own intelligence people when they told him that an attack had been planned.
The left-wing historical revisionism of WW2 is familiar. It lists how many Russians died in the war. It fails to address the fact that they died because
1. Their government allied with the Nazis
2. Their government was controlled by radical leftists who purged the military leadership preventing a viable response
3. Their government’s idea of ‘fighting’ was marching hundreds of thousands of men, some unarmed, directly at the enemy while Communist thugs carrying better weapons marched behind them and shot anyone who tried to flee.
Those thugs also had bad habits, such as carrying out massacres of their own soldiers for assorted political reasons. That and burying alive officers who didn’t perform up to the insane expectations of a war being run by a murderous moron in Moscow who, according to Khrushchev, planned out battles using a globe.
If the USSR had not tried to carve up Eastern Europe, if its brilliant leader hadn’t decided that any competent general threatened him, and if his idea of military strategy or building a highway didn’t involve senselessly killing huge numbers of people, those casualties would not have existed. These casualties don’t prove that the USSR was noble or self-sacrificing. No more than Pol Pot’s murders.
Of course the USSR had similar plans. Stalin planned to wipe out the Jews and other peoples and populations that interfered with his plans.
The USSR announced with its conquest of Poland that it had ceased to exist. Both sides, the USSR and Nazi Germany, were brutal genocidal states.
The Soviets and Germans had been in secret contact since the early 1920s, and Hitler’s rise to power was only a temporary interruption. The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 gave Hitler the green light to invade Poland and the Soviet attack on that country in 1939 broke Poland’s southeastern redoubt, shortening the war by weeks and saving the lives of many Nazi soldiers.Then, Stalin gave Germany a secure eastern border and provided the Nazi dictator with huge quantities of strategic raw materials, including food and badly needed oil.
Without Stalin’s help, the rapid Nazi conquest of Scandinavia and Western Europe would not have been possible. The terrible fate of these countries and of their Jewish communities under Nazi occupation must be laid, in part, at Stalin’s door. The Soviet navy even provided direct help to Nazi commerce raiders preying on British shipping during Britain’s darkest hours.All the while, Stalin was busy enjoying the territory he had gained by allying with Hitler, murdering hundreds of thousands of his new subjects and deporting millions more to the living hell of the gulags.
Debunking the Soviet vs American Casualties Argument
Because more Soviet soldiers died (around 8 million) than American soldiers (around 400,000) in the war, according to Revisionists, the Soviets have a stronger moral claim to victory. They ignore the fact that many Red Army soldiers perished helping to extricate the USSR from Stalin’s cynical, short-lived nonaggression pact with Hitler.
Revisionists also appears to discount the American contribution to the liberation of Western Europe before, during, and after the D-Day invasion of 1944. Using their own bizarre calculus, they give the “win” to the USSR simply because more of its often ill-equipped soldiers died.
Russian casualties were so high because the Soviet Union invited Nazi Germany into its backyard, purged its own generals and then threw horrifying numbers of unprepared and, sometimes, unarmed soldiers into combat in massive killing fields that slowed down the German advance with miles of corpses.
It’s true that the Soviet Union sacrificed more to defeat Hitler than any other country. But much of that sacrifice was wasted. Millions of Soviets died through the incompetence and brutality of their own political masters. It was Stalin’s blindness to Hitler’s pre-invasion manoeuvres that allowed the Germans to occupy Russia’s industrial heartland at a stroke. Only then, with reluctance, did Stalin shift his attention from killing his own citizens to killing Germans. His tactics, if they can be dignified with that name, involved throwing masses of underequipped men virtually under the treads of invading panzers. To retreat was a crime against the motherland: in 1941 and ’42, according to the historian Dmitri Volkogonov, 157,593 men were executed for “cowardice”.
Perhaps a better way to compare the effectiveness of the western and eastern armies is not to compare Allied deaths but to compare German deaths. Estimates vary widely, but since I’m looking for a ratio rather than a total, one source will do as well as another. For military deaths only:
Killed by Soviet Union:
2,742,909
Killed by Allies:
534,683
This limited comparison (which excludes casualties among Italian and other Axis forces, as well as Germans killed in the Balkans, Scandinavia, and Germany itself ) suggests that the Red Army was roughly 5.5 times as lethal as the other Allied forces combined. This is a somewhat more convincing argument for the claim that “the Third Reich was defeated by the Red Army and not by the Western democracies”.
However. At the end of the war, the Allied democracies held over twice as many German prisoners of war as the Soviets — 7.7 millions versus 3.1 million, according to this chart. This makes sense, because the war in the east was far more brutal. Soviet soldiers were likelier to execute prisoners, and German soldiers were likelier to fight to the bitter end, knowing their chance of surviving Soviet captivity was slim. At the close of the war, as defeat became inevitable, German strategy was based partly on the recognition that their countrymen would be better off surrendering to the Americans or Brits.
Still, conceding that a POW has been removed from combat just as effectively as a KIA, let’s reevaluate those figures:
Killed or captured by Soviet Union:
5,870,289
Killed or Captured by Western Allies:
8,201,683
So while the Soviets may have killed more Nazis, Americans and Western Forces certainly captured far more.
It is not Americans fault that they did not die in equal numbers. You don’t win wars by dying. Sure, you need to be ready to sacrifice in order to win but a lot of people who’ve fought Soviets have lost a lot of people during and after the war and what good did it do them? Nothing. They were still oppressed by Soviet Union and faced genocide in their hands.
Wars are won by building more and better machines of war. Wars are won with industry and by having the guts to see it through. Soviet people sure had the guts but they didn’t have the materials to win the war. They had to be helped with massive direct material aid that rivals the amount of materials USA spent on it’s own war effort but also by having USA divert enemy forces away from Soviet Union.
American Forces may have had a small part in World War 2….If we completely ignore the Pacific Front
And of course, all the proponents of the “USSR did almost everything in WW2” school of thought leave out Japan, which they have to, since the US, four years while the USSR jumped in literally on the day the second atomic bomb was dropped. For people who live in countries that were occupied by Japan, it is quite bizarre and borderline insulting that the “USSR did everything” crowd act like the other half of WW2 didn’t exist.
It’s even more insulting and downright laughable when some of these people, not satisfied with claiming that the Soviets did everything in Europe, even go as far as to take the primary credit for defeating Japan as well. That practically crosses the line into comedy.
There’s no question Japan was closer to domination of Asia than Germany was to control of Europe. If the US hadn’t stopped that, the Japanese may well have created a legitimate two front war for the Soviets and paved the way for a second German invasion of the USSR.
If, however, the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor, it is very likely that the Japanese could not have been defeated by their opponents:
- The USSR would not have entered the war against Japan. Defeating Germany without US logistic support would have required all its efforts.
- China was already staggering. If the Japanese had bypassed the Philippines and taken Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, Japan would have secured the oil and other resources they needed to keep their military machine running.
- If they had avoided attacking British possessions when they avoided attacking Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, the Japanese would have found that their only major enemy was China, which was in the throes of civil war. The Chinese Communists under Mao would have gotten far less support from the USSR. It is likely that all or most of China would have fallen under Japanese suzerainty.
Without the U.S. taking on the most technologically advanced Navy and 3rd largest Army in the world, the Japanese would have been able to destroy or steal global resources and attack both Britain and the USSR on different fronts thus unbalancing the advantage the Allies had over the Axis powers.
The United States fought and defeated Japan almost single-handedly with small contributions from Australia and the British Empire. 3,621,383 of Troops in the Pacific were American, while the 2nd highest was only Australia at 600,000. 426,000 Americans were injured and 161,000 died liberating the Pacific while Australia comes in second at 46,000 and 17,000 dead.
Was it True America Liberated Europe from the Nazis? Or did the Soviet Union?
A Nazi-dominated Europe would still have been Europe, “purely and simply” in the geographical sense. The same with a Soviet Occupied Europe.
However Europe suffers, with respect to its American cousin, from the debtor’s complex. It is clearly understood, at least in Western Europe, that without American help in 1917, and especially in 1944, it would have been purely and simply wiped off the map or permanently colonized by Soviet troops.
When the phrase is said that the United States Liberated Europe we are referring to both how the United States saved Western Europe from the Nazis, but also from the Reds. A western Europe left to shift for itself in the 1940s would have been screwed either way if not screwed by Hitler, then screwed by Stalin, like Poland and Czechoslovakia and all the other countries “liberated” by the Red Army. The presence of three and a half million American servicemen and women (and billions of dollars of aid) helped assure the survival of European freedom, in its Western Half at least.
The Soviets on the other hand didn’t “Liberate” anyone. . They proceeded to pillaging, raping and burning Europe, as far as they could. They rounded up people who opposed communism and executed them or sent them to concentration camps to die.
The Soviet Union from 1922–1991 killed 58,627,000 people.As for the so called countries it “Liberated” in Yugoslavia 1,072,000 were killed. In Romania 435,000. In Bulgaria 222,000. In Albania 100,000. In East Germany 70,000. In Czechoslovakia 65,000.In Hungary 27,000. In Poland 22,000. What a “Liberation”
They even built a huge wall to stop Europeans from fleeing from their tyranny and barbarism where people kept being taken away from their homes decades after the war was over because they didn’t support communism. That was no rescue. It was more or less the exact same what Nazis had to offer, decades of tyranny, oppression, murder.
Their main argument is that the USSR paid by far the highest cost in human life traditionally estimated at some 20 million during the war. However, it is far from clear why Stalin’s criminal incompetence and total contempt for human life, which unnecessarily magnified the Russian cost in casualties, should now become a justification for rewriting the history of the war.
The Russians argue that by contributing to the defeat of Nazism, Moscow brought “liberation” to Eastern and Central Europe. But the facts are quite different. Poland, whose partitioning in 1939 by Hitler and Stalin marked the beginning of the war, lost the eastern half of her territory and became a Soviet subject; similarly, Romania, at the end of the war an ally of Moscow, lost a fourth of her land as well as her independence.
But the worst was the fate of the Baltic states. For the second time in four years, they lost everything: their statehood; some 20% of their people (sent to Siberia); and in the cases of Latvia and Estonia, the near loss of their very ethnic existence through forced Russification.
The Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe in the wake of the “Great Patriotic War” also brought about one of the largest campaigns of ethnic cleansing ever: the deportation of some 3 million Germans in then Czechoslovakia and Poland, most of whom had lived there for the better part of a millennium, to what became the Soviet-controlled part of the truncated Germany. The Red Army’s soldiers self-proclaimed liberators unleashed a wave of raping, stealing, and brutality on the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe. Even Allied soldiers, like those of Romania, were randomly captured and sent to the Gulag.
Russia has consistently refused to repudiate the 1939 non-aggression pact with Germany, wherein the two partitioned Eastern Europe. Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russia’s representative in talks with the EU, is a prime example of Russia’s continued denial of the realities of 1945, as his comments about the Baltic States made on May 5 demonstrate: “One cannot use the term ‘occupation’ to describe these historical events.
The troop deployment took place on an agreed basis and with the clearly expressed agreement of the existing authorities in the Baltic republics. There was no occupation of foreign territory seized by military means.” The Balts would be surprised indeed to find that “their” nonexistent authorities in 1945 “agreed” to Soviet annexation. Yastrzhembsky added that he would advise those seeking constructive relations with Russia not to project “phobias and historical prejudices” onto those relations. Orwell would feel vindicated.
Many Russians have never fully understood how their role in 1945 was seen quite differently in Eastern Europe than at home, and that for many East Europeans, the Soviet “liberation” achieved through the wave of Soviet rapes, lootings and deportations, and subsequent domination were by no means welcome, to say the least. Russians are often still shocked at the “ingratitude” of their present western neighbors. In that sense, if few others, Putin is indeed representative of his people’s sentiments. Even today Moscow tries hard to bully its neighbors into accepting its version of World War II history. Combine that with his recent claim that the end of the USSR was a “geopolitical catastrophe” and all of the above become much easier to explain.
Conclusion :
Without their massive material aid first to Britain which played a big part in helping them stop Germany from launching an invasion left a thorn in Germany’s side.
Then when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa USA rushed in to deliver thousands of trucks, gunpowder, all sorts of supplies soviets needed to mobilize their reserves and move their troops. Because USA shipped in enormous amounts of steel and other resources that helped soviets ramp up their tank production helping them start building of their T-34’s and KV’s among other things.
Because USA conducted series of invasions against Germany’s all over the place tying up German troops from East Front.
Because impending USA’s invasion through Britain tied up enormous amounts of Germany’s forces they needed in the East Front. Because USA bombed the crap out of Germany’s industry from their bases in Britain.
Because USA was taking up full attention of Japan while also fighting against Germany, Japan could not threaten Soviet Union’s Far East with their millions of troops which allowed Soviet Union to move their Far East guards to face Germany as Japan was rendered incapable of assisting Germany.
Because USA produced enormous quantities of military equipment, just because Americans didn’t send 10 million troops on wooden rafts to Normandy without rifles it doesn’t mean that USA’s enormous contributions were not just that enormous contributions.
Soviet Union was fighting a war on a single front, while assisted by USA which fought a war on two fronts and did a good job of relieving pressure against Soviet Union and kicking fascist butt on both of their own fronts.
Besides producing massive amounts of military hardware to European Theater, USA also had to produce massive amounts of military hardware to Pacific Front and also have a massive navy on both fronts.
Now, imagine if USA allowed Britain to fall? What if they didn’t keep Japan occupied? What if they didn’t send a single truck, a single ton of steel, a single ton of gunpowder or other resources to Soviet Union? Imagine Soviet Union being forced to keep most of their Far East troops in place just to check Japan’s opportunism. Soviet Union themselves dropped the non-aggression treaty on the first sign of an opening to seize Japanese territory, does anyone really think Japan was not going to grab several Soviet cities in the Far East if they thought they could get away with it?
Above all, Allied Victory in WW2 was a team effort. Everyone counted, even the goalie did his job. Even the water boy was doing his part. But that said, USA scored all the goals. Soviet Union and Britain got a lot of points for serving USA some sweet spots to score goals and especially Russians like to reversibly pretend that they won WW2 single-handedly. They refused Marshall Aid after WW2 and during Cold War they pretended that they never received any help.
The USA put out an enormous effort for winning the war, it couldn’t have been won without USA.Even without Soviet Union USA would have won the war. Their industrial production alone was unrivaled in the world, they were able to grind down Germany and Japan simultaneously while also carrying the hulks of Soviet Union and United Kingdom on their backs.
Without the need to support Soviet Union they would have had that much more powerful forces of their own. The Germans were already unable to stop USA from grinding their industry to dust, if USA had even more bombers, tanks, artillery and troops to their disposal it would have been even easier for USA to dominate them.
The sacrifices Soviet Union did resulted in less Americans dying while facing Germany and also the war ended faster thanks to Soviets being able to inflict heavy casualties to Germany. Americans are most likely grateful for that but don’t expect Europeans or Americans to feel very sympathetic to a murderous regime.
While the Soviets may have “Liberated” Eastern Europe. The United States and Western Allies Liberated Western Europe, The Mediterranean, the Middle East, Eastern and Northern Africa, Southern Europe as well as the Pacific (Which the United States did pretty much single handedly.) The Problem is many have forgot the “World” part about World War 2 and simply conclude it to be occurring in Europe. While in fact World War 2 was a truly global war.
