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[Urist is dead tome]

US help to Britain (and, to a lesser extent, Russia) was a pretty huge help to their war efforts even before the USA joined the war. They also did most of the work against Japan, as far as I recall.

I feel the need to clarify that I am not from the US, but a Finn.

If the USA wasn't attacked and Japan went north to Russia then Russia probably would have lost and we might not have won.

On a related note I would like to add the the Finns kicked ass in the war.

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

Just an article about one of my heroes.

Land war in Asia, and all that.

Don't remind me...

EDIT: And lets not forget that the man power problem got so bad we got to drafting midgets, to look around in airplane wings and whatnot.

Vector, on your earlier point: Hear hear!

[Vector]

Vector, on your earlier point: Hear hear!

Haha, well--it's kind of nice to be on the same side for once.  I thought you'd like that argument =)

[Mindmaker]

Eh, Russia was doing fine.
It just takes a while for the 'russian steamroller' to come into motion.
However I do agree, the US was needed as a counterweight. For example Austria, was inbetween those great forces.
Got split up between the USA, the UK and the Russians. From what I heard, everybody got along nicely.

Poland on the other hand, still hasn't fully recovered from the russian occupation.
It's even more distinctive for west and east germany.

So while the USA might not have won the war, they did a marvellous job on damage limitation and helped Europe to come on its feet again.

[Bauglir]

Spoiler: Random History Tangent (click to show/hide)

... Weren't the Allies basically down to England or something, and Russia was under siege and starving to death, feeding its soldiers sawdust, and Poland was pretty much wiped off the map again (but still resistant, as so many people seem to forget), France occupied under a puppet state, Spain fighting a fascist civil war, many of the Scandinavian nations "working" with Hitler because they didn't want to be invaded (for example, Finland was involved in the terrible siege of Leningrad), Japan hopping its way through China towards the other side of Russia, and so on?

I'm actually just replying to provide a few pedantic details. That I'm replying only to one paragraph hopefully indicates that I actually agree with the majority of your post, not that I think putting forth a few random corrections completely undermines your whole argument. Actually, the fact that, on the internet, the latter is the usual meaning is why I'm typing out this very disclaimer.

Anyway! A major thing is that Japan didn't seem to have much interest in invading the Soviet Union (and it wasn't until Stalin realized this that crucial troops were moved from the Eastern border to the front with Germany). Their whole alliance was kinda weird; as far as I can tell, the only major effect it ever had was getting Hitler to declare war on the US (something he wasn't actually obligated to do, IIRC, since Japan attacked first), which is probably for the best since even then there was a significant pro-Nazi segment of the population in the United States. That's the major reason for the conspiracy theories that FDR let Pearl Harbor happen so that he could get a war with Hitler (they're ludicrous because Hitler declaring war on the US was a batshit insane move, and it's unlikely that FDR could have gotten the political momentum to get the US to declare war).

Russia by this time had JUST begun to mount a counteroffensive, and was looking pretty fucked. The US didn't actually enter the Western Theater, though, until about the time Stalingrad was turning around in the Soviets' favor. Until this time, US involvement was almost entirely economic, and most of that seems to have gone to Britain. At least given my understanding, Hitler was never going to win in the USSR, whether the US helped or not; between his own inability to let his own generals make decisions on their own, Stalin's eventual decision to let his military run itself, and the gigantic natural resource imbalance, the major reason for the USSR's initial losses were because Stalin had just had all his best officers executed.

France had its own significant resistance (which, for a while at least, harbored a lot of the Polish codebreakers that were crucial to Britain's complete and utter dominance of the military intelligence part of the war), the Civil War in Spain was over but Franco wasn't optimistic about Hitler's chances and just kept non-committal throughout the whole thing.

All that said, the US' economic assistance was pretty much crucial throughout the whole thing, even before war was officially declared, and the US unquestionably contributed militarily once those operations actually got underway.

Also, I feel I have to point out, if only for clarity, that the use of "we" is misleading. It always just bugs me a little when people describe the actions of their own country that way, when there's no way the person speaking could actually have participated. I know you probably don't mean it this way, but it just always comes off as a weird sense of entitlement. It's just a quirk of the way nations have a tendency to be discussed (in English, at least, I don't know about other languages) that is mildly irritating, and I feel compelled to bring it up here.

[Vector]

-enormous snip-

Huh, those were mostly details not covered in my history class or later study.  Thanks so much for the clarification!  I've heard quite a bit about the French resistance, but I thought that was more renowned than that of Poland and didn't think to mention it.  Shame on me.

As far as saying "we," I do so because I know that as an American I have a certain cultural image, fair or unfair, based on projections of the past actions of my ancestors and their fellow citizens.  So, I mean "we" in terms permuting that cultural image, which does pertain to "me" in a certain sense.  I do not mean "the US as a country," but "the US in terms of individual citizen action," and so because "we" implies a collective of citizens rather than the actions of the heads of state, the metonymy is a little bit better for my argument and appeal to personal ethos/pathos.  Helps to remind the person that I'm speaking to that I happen to be part of the pool of individuals they're talking about, without doing so explicitly.

However, I agree with you that the grammatical construction has unfortunate connotations in general usage.

[Bauglir]

-enormous snip-

Huh, those were mostly details not covered in my history class or later study.  Thanks so much for the clarification!  I've heard quite a bit about the French resistance, but I thought that was more renowned than that of Poland and didn't think to mention it.  Shame on me.

As far as saying "we," I do so because I know that as an American I have a certain cultural image, fair or unfair, based on projections of the past actions of my ancestors and their fellow citizens.  So, I mean "we" in terms permuting that cultural image, which does pertain to "me" in a certain sense.  I do not mean "the US as a country," but "the US in terms of individual citizen action," and so because "we" implies a collective of citizens rather than the actions of the heads of state, the metonymy is a little bit better for my argument and appeal to personal ethos/pathos.  Helps to remind the person that I'm speaking to that I happen to be part of the pool of individuals they're talking about, without doing so explicitly.

However, I agree with you that the grammatical construction has unfortunate connotations in general usage.

Cool, cool. I've focused on WW2 to the extent that I'm historically blind to a lot of other stuff, unfortunately. I need to work on that, and I'm sure I've misremembered one or two things (feel free to correct my corrections, readers). Still, I'm always glad to flaunt the knowledge I do have.[/ego] I should've realized you weren't omitting the French Resistance through lack of knowledge, though, given your interest in French culture and the like. Sense Motive fail on me, there. Oh well!

As for the grammatical thing I brought up on a tangent, yeah, I can agree with you there. That's pretty sound reasoning, and I'm always glad to hear a good explanation for something that's bugged me for a long time. Helps me wrap my head around why it's in use and what its value actually is, instead of just focusing on what I don't like about it.

I begin to feel as if I should contribute to the topic, but unfortunately I don't know enough to make an intelligent comment and I don't think any of my uninformed reactions are at all original.

[Urist is dead tome]

All this talk of Russia reminds me how important Stalin was to the allies. Despite his brutalities he had the right mind in making Russia so powerful so quickly.

[Sheb]

Well, he did a lot of stupid stuff as well, shooting his whole officer corp in '38 surely didn't help.

[Urist is dead tome]

Well, he did a lot of stupid stuff as well, shooting his whole officer corp in '38 surely didn't help.

And lets not forget that canal.... Or the famine.

[Vector]

And *cough* the engineless tanks being rolled off the production line 

[Urist is dead tome]

And the invasion of Finland.

[Sheb]

And the refusal to acknowledge the Germans were invading, with most of the Red Army being captures or killed.

P.S. What's the problem with the invasion of Finland, except that they failed at it?

[Urist is dead tome]

And the refusal to acknowledge the Germans were invading, with most of the Red Army being captures or killed.

P.S. What's the problem with the invasion of Finland, except that they failed at it?

It was a huge debacle that only brought back the war effort. They lost a lot of good men. Not to mention money, arms, tanks, and artillery.

[Digital Hellhound]

Actually, they got territory from the Winter War and a shitton of money (it was a shitton to Finland, at least...), more territory and a huge influence on finnish politics from the Continution War.

[Urist is dead tome]

Actually, they got territory from the Winter War and a shitton of money (it was a shitton to Finland, at least...), more territory and a huge influence on finnish politics from the Continution War.

Not money, mostly just finished goods, and not much territory.