LogFAQs > #885057257

KJ StErOiDs posted...

We'd all be speaking German today.

Russian is the more likely hypothetical, though even that is unrealistic.

The US did not win the war on behalf of the Allies, much as American media likes to portray it that way. They were late joining into the War and the other Allies had already largely blunted the momentum of Germany's attacks on the Western and African fronts.

America's participation moved up the Allied victory by several years, but they were not the ones on whom victory hung; for that award, look further East. Hitler was doomed the instant he decided to double cross the Soviets. Once again, the media doesn't portray it this way (The Cold War kind of made acknowledging Russian efforts a bit gauche in the aftermath), but the Eastern campaign was by far the biggest and most important part of the war. It was larger than the Western, Pacific, and African campaigns COMBINED and the USSR was fighting it with virtually no support from the other major allied powers. And not only did the Soviets win this campaign, despite suffering more casualties than America had soldiers, they had enough left in the tank to take over a huge swathe of Eastern Europe and become a world superpower in the aftermath.

The 40s-era USSR was an incredible power, one that Hitler had no hope of matching. I dislike the idea of saying that *one* country made the difference between victory and defeat (it was called a "World War" for a reason, after all), but the USSR is the closest thing there is to fitting that definition.
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