Who do you think is victorious in WWII?

Question

By Thomas Keyes
June 28, 2005

After reading 8 books in English and Russian on the Second World War, including William L. Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, I have concluded that the role of the USSR was what decided the victory of the Allies over the Axis. It may be the case that even without the USSR, the Allies would have triumphed ultimately, but, of course, this is something that can never be tested.

The only problem is that if you ask the average American who won the war, he will probably say, “The US and its Allies did”, as if the great defender in the war had been the US. Even at useless-knowledge.com, a former contributor railed at someone from the Netherlands for not showing sufficient gratitude for American sacrifices in WWII on behalf of the Dutch, but I imagine that the same contributor (Hughes) would never berate Americans for not showing sufficient gratitude for the sacrifice made by millions upon millions of Russians and other Soviets. It may well be the case that those millions of dead were what kept Hitler too busy to win in the Western Europe and made the invasion of the US impossible for him. There’s no doubt that the US was the victor in the Pacific, however.

Even if someone should disagree that the Soviet effort was the keystone in the arch of triumph, from a strategic point of view, he certainly has no grounds to dispute the observation that the number of Soviet dead far exceeded that of any other nation.

According to Wikipedia, the total toll of war dead on both sides, Allied and Axis, including military and civilians, was 62,536,500. Of this number, 23,200,000 were Soviet citizens. This comes to 37% of the total. The Russian historian, Dmitri Volkogonov, in his 4-volume biography of Joseph Stalin, puts the figure even higher, with an estimate of 27,000,000, not counting the 8,000,000 or so who were shot or sent to their deaths in Arctic labor camps. The US suffered the loss of 418,500. So Soviet deaths outnumbered American deaths 55 to 1.

The object of the war, though, was to kill, not to die, and it may be that America’s contributions of weapons, planes, ships and tanks was a factor of paramount importance. I’m not trying to belittle America’s role.

In the same article, Wikipedia, lists the Holocaust dead as numbering 5,754,000. How many times in a week are we reminded to remember the Holocaust? And surely we should. Even if the figure was somewhat less, as some authorities maintain, the Holocaust was still an abhorrent deed. We should definitely commiserate with the victims.

But why are we never asked to remember the Russians who died for us? Of course, they weren’t thinking of us when they died. Nonetheless, it surely wouldn’t hurt to commemorate their sacrifice too. Then, of course, 10,000,000 Chinese died in the conflict too, but everyone knows that Chinese don’t matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_casualties_by_country

Illustrative of my experience with people was a conversation I had about three years ago with a Hispanic American of around 30. Actually we were arguing about religion, and he was an inerrantist, so I mentioned the WWII dead as evidence that the Beatitudes are bunk. Two minutes later, he said that I was the one who had mentioned the Jews. I hadn’t said a word about Jews. This is the way many Americans would summarize WWII: Hitler was killing Jews and therefore the US intervened and conquered Hitler, and that’s the whole story.

Answer 1

Your question is ridiculously long. You must really find other ways to occupy your time.

PS: Since I'm not speaking German, I assume that the Allied Powers won World War 2.

Answer 2

I read Shirers book as well along with a raft of books on the whole epic when I was younger.It was really a collaborative effort the likes of which the world has never seen.
No question that American industrial might really tipped the scales.Directly and thru lend lease before america entered the war.
With the atomic bomb America also had 'the last word' as it were leading to its superpower status today.So from that perspective.US won the most.If you can call that winning because what an onerous responsibility it is.
Often though I regard it not so much as who won the war, but who lost it.Hitlers decision time and time again to ignore the advice of his general staff is what really left the doors open for the allies to take advantage.
1) attacking Russia in the first place while the western front waas undecided and then treating it as a 6 week campaign instead of the debacle that it became
2) ignoring the strategic importance of MALTA from which the allies could harass and atack the Afrika Corps.Sinking german convoys etc
3) grossly undersupplying the Afrika CORPS.Rommel was SO CLOSE to Cairo but he literally ran out of fuel for his panzers.
Lots has been written about this so I will DESIST AT THIS POINT.
4)letting the AEF escape from Dunkirk
5)putting so much resources and effort into"the jewish problem"
History is written by the victors,so if the slant of victory points to a country or individual then they were probably insrtumental in winning

Answer 3

I wouldn't say Russia. Russia (USSR and Uncle Joe Stalin) was too busy trying to get into bed with Hitler to save their own *** to predict that Hitler would eventually turn on them. Don't get me wrong, ...the contribution of the Red Army was hugely significant, but I don't think any more so than that of the United States.

No, ...I would have to award the top honors to Great Britain. Let's face it, ...Britain and France were the first ones to engage Germany after Hitler rolled across Poland on September 1, 1939. The French had the undue misfortune of not having the English Channel to buffer them from Hitler's attack and eventually even Paris fell to the German horde. So, for a long period of time (nearly 2 years from June of 1940 to December of 1941) Great Britain stood by herself in Hitler's path and did so heroically. The RAF stood their ground and repelled a massive attack from the German Luftwaffe and the British people endured savage bombing during the Battle of Britain. The USSR, USA and all the allies did their individual parts to defeat the Germans and the Japanese, ...but the Brits were the only ones to stand their ground from start to finish.

Answer 4

US intervention definotyl helped win the war. but had they NOT intervened i'd say the allies would hav still won, eventually but the war would hav dragged out alot longer.

Britain had defeated germany's invasion plans, and it was prven germany couldn't invade her. Given time to re-group and the fact britian now had the best airforce in the war she would have been able to strike back at the axis.

Britian also had a far better navy than germany, that also would have helped.

Don't forget the british commonwlth nations and french or belgian colonies that helped, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and India.

In the pacific the japanese advance was already being held up n New Guniea, before the US intervention i by aus, NZ and indian troops. Japan never could hav completely conquered australia, it's just not possible coz we r such a big country and we beat them in new guniea.

Do u think japan or germany could hav invaded india anyway? noone in history has ever invaded india. They had such a large population, rememebr in the 1940s india included both the land and po;uatipons of india and pakistan.

Likewise the resistance movements in europe would hav picked up over time. The allies did defeat rommel in africa without US help.

It was not possible for the axis to conquer the world anyway and given time the allies would have re-grouped and been able to defeat the axis with or without US. Finland for example helkd off both the german and russian armies.

BTW Greece is actually the reason that war war was won. The italians tried to invade greece but were actually turned back and the greeks actually took land from the italians. The italians had to ask from help from germany in 1942, when germany was preparing to invade USSR, they met with fierce resistance in greece and it took the axis 2 months to pacify greece, when it only took them 3 weeks to pacify poland!

Greece also had one of the strongest and most active resistance movements which force the axis powers to leave extra troops to occupy greece.

Those two vital months delayed opersation Barabarossa and allowed winter to come and thus indirectly turned the tide of the war.

Answer 5

The Jews were never an issue during WW2. In fact, many allied countries were just as racist towards Jews as the Germans.

From an independent point of view, I can say this- we should surely mourn the Russians who died during ww2, for they were not given a choice. It is not that they chose to oppose Germany (in fact, in the Ribbentrop pact the USSR was willing to split Europe in half with Nazi-Germany), but that they were herded like cattle by gunpoint to charge at the opposition.

Alas, I was not in the winning side of WW2, being a Finn. We did manage to kill enough of the Russians to ultimately broker a peace deal- though even though we killed 10 russians for every one Finn that died, it is estimated that more died from starvation and cold. Or killed by their own people in the case of officers (who obviously had food and warm clothing).

This is a war that the USSR started, and then in the peace deal forced us to pay reparations for.

I disagree that the Soviet effort "was the keystone of the arch of triumph", becuase, obviously in my case they were the aggressors who attacked with an expansionist agenda. And killed 2.8 percent of our population.

It's debatable whether a Nazi-Germany occupied Europe would've lasted as long as an USSR occupied Europe before breaking. After all, the germans did treat the people in their occupied countries better than the Russians, with the unfortunate exception of the jews. This is why the bubbling resistances to the rule were stronger than under sovjet occupation (less risk involved).

Answer 6

won't be able to help yet nominate the main ordinary classical products - Ode to exhilaration of Symphony no.9 via Beethoven and of direction 1842 overture via Tchaikovsky. Will make your blood boil! in any different case, think of via John Lennon.

Answer 7

The Russians didn't cross an ocean to get to her enemies, nor did Russia have the means to sustain war by herself with the Germans for long- the motherland simply put, would have gotten pounded to a pulp if not for a U.S. intervention.
The U.S. could have done what Russia did better, but the U.S. fought another enemy on another front.
Which Russia couldn't do during the 80's(a big slap in the face is what Russia got for the attempt), against Afghanistan. The U.S. did essentially the same thing- but it took only 2 weeks.
I dunno...your long and boring point cannot hold water in the real world and its history.

Answer 8

I say the USA.

The Allies were being destroyed until the US joined. It would have been Germany, but Htiler made a fatal, stupid mistake in the end.


It isn't Russia, because the only reason they won was because Hitler made a fatal, stupid mistake. If that hadn't happened, Russia would have been destroyed.

Answer 9

Yup!

Answer 10

if you aleady know, why bother asking the question?