Who won the war?

The US started supplying the Soviets in June 1941, 6 months before its entrance into the war. The t-34 Tank was based off of an originally US design from the early '30s. Without US trucks and locomotives, the Soviets would not have had the remotest chance of pursuing the Germans back out of Russia. 96% of all the locomotives in the USSR were supplied by the Americans. Furthermore, the fact that the USSR never repaid the majority of its lend-lease debts is still a sticking point in relations. A steady (and oftentimes foolishly used) manpower supply does not win a war in itself.

In the meeantime, you conveniently ignore that the US was also fighting in the Pacific Theater the entire time.

Germany won the war?? In your terms - suppose it did. Okay! Good for them! Every country wants to dominate politically and economically, it's natural.

But did they really have to have so many their own people as well as Slavic and Jewish people killed? Did they really have to bomb London to achieve that economical advantage? Did they really have to have cities of Japan bombed by Americans? So many good cities were bombed, so many pieces of arts were destroyed, so many good people around the world died.

Here in Russia it's almost impossible to find a family whose member wouldn't have taken part in that war. And too many of them died before their time.

If you really think what Germany gets from it may be called "a victory" then you must truly be a super positive thinker, and if Hitler was envisaging this "way to win" for his country then I'd say he was a really strange person.

And if that was a joke, sorry, I don't appreciate that kind of humor. Let's have some respect for those who died in that stupid war where everyone lost and where the proud name of "the winner" was given to the party that spent more human lives in this clusteryou-know-what.

lol well said

it all makes interesting reading tks to all who contributed,in australian history" we have always been led to believe that ww2 started 3rd sept. 1939 with only uk sa aus nz france then canada declaring war by the 5th or 6th,and it should be noted the ussr was hitlers ally in the invasion of poland. i must agree but, with whoever said about the destruction of priceless works of art and architecture is the true shame of ww2.the inhumanity of the human race seems to be an ongoing thing however .

Russia did the most to defeat Germany, and the US did the most to defeat Japan.

It is the case that the USSR won the war against Germany and could probably could have won the war without American aid. Keeping in mind that the war started in June 1941 in the East, lend lease did not start to arrive in any serious quantities until 1943. The PQ convoys of aid sent by the Allies north inside the Arctic Circle to Murmansk were plagued with serious difficulties, with some even being almost completely wiped out, forcing Western Allied planners to consider abandoning the route altogether.

Very few useful supplies got through to Russian forces this way. The vast majority of lend lease supplies made it to Russia through Persia, which was occupied jointly by British and Soviet troops in late 1941. HOwever significant supplies of lend lease material did not begin to arrive until 1943 with the Fourth Lend Lease Protocol.

Does that make a difference since the war was won in 1944/45 by Bagration and D-Day? Well yes it does since Afred Jodl, Hitler's main Heer advisor wrote in his diary that Hitler agreed that victory was no longer possible in the war and the best they could hope for was a negotiated settlement. This diary entry was made in August 1942, before even the Battle of Stalingrad began (August 28). This was due to the failure of Army Group A of Army Group South to seize the oil fields near Baku and the Caucasus. At this time it became apparent that General List's forces had become bogged down in mountain combat and that the Soviet Union would not collapse in 1942. With this failure the Germans were forced to completely retool their strategic doctrine since Germany was in no way equipped to fight a war of any such duration. Hitler knew that it was complete victory in Russia in 1942 or nothing. If anything, the war in the East was lost for Germany when the Soviet government did not collapse when German Forces were at the gates of Moscow in late 1941. Without victory in Russia there would be no victory. The British and Americans hardly even figured in this equation. In August 1942, when HItler made this judgement, where were the Wesstern Allies exercising any influence on the course of the war? A trickle of lend lease supplies to the Soviets, the war in Africa, which at this time occupied approximately 1% of total German manpower, the ineffectual daylight bombing raids on limited targets, and in the Atlantic where the allies were struggling to deal with the U-Boat threat.

As for most of the fighting for the rest of the war, almost all of it was done on the Eastern Front. Of German months deployed per division, throughout the war almost 90% of it was facing the Soviets. Even more was spent on recuperation from fighting the Soviets then battling the Allies in the last 12 months of the war in North-West Europe. Of German casualties, 85% were inflicted by Soviet soldiers. In the same month as D-Day, although one never hears about it in the West, Operation Bagration, the Russian offensive to push the Germans out of Belarus is often called "Hitler's Greatest Defeat" and it certainly was. The Germans lost 300,000 men and 47 generals in this steamroller offensive alone. In Normandy? The Germans lost 150,000 in two months of heavy fighting despite supreme Allied numerical and material superiority. If anything it is amazing that the Allies did not win the war by Christmas 1944. The Germans were even able to launch counteroffensives that met with some limited success and surprise despite being embattled on every front and suffering the under the most extreme difficulties. That the Allies did not drive straight across France into Germany and were not in Berlin by October 1944 is a sever indictment of the Allied leadership and soldiery who were outmatched on every level (except the logistical) by their Soviet and German counterparts.

The most titanic war in human history, that is, the war on the Eastern Front, decided the outcome of World War Two and the conclusion would have likely stayed the same (albeit with a redder map of Europe after the war) had the Allies not even fought any battles at all following the Fall of France.

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