"dgk" wrote in message ...

The Nazis were pretty much defeated by the Russians. It cost them
20,000,000 young men (which they never recovered from) but that was
what really beat them. There just wasn't too much left to throw at the
west after that. It was brutal of course, mostly because Stalin killed
all their qualified Generals, but even so, that is a lot of men to
lose.

It is certainly true that the Soviets did far more bleeding than Britain and
America, but that doesn't equate to them winning the war on their own, they
couldn't have. Russia received massive support from the U.S., e.g. they
built their own tanks, but without trucks to haul fuel and ammo those tanks
would have been useless and almost half their wheeled vehicles came from the
west. The west sent Russia thousands of vehicles and aircraft and large
quantities of food, fuel and specialized equipment like radios, railway
hardware and so on. Since sources of information opened up after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, historians have confirmed that lend-lease
support was vital to the Soviets. And that's aside from large portions of
the German military effort being devoted to fighting in North Africa, Italy
and N.W. Europe.

It's quite possible that Britain and America could not have defeated Germany
without the Soviets, but it's equally likely that without Britain and
America the Soviet Union would not have survived.