Who won WWII?

[Pannonian]

That is all I've been saying! Of course, I'm also saying that any understanding of the war is incomplete without acknowledging both. Not equally for equal reasons, but because the picture is utterly incomplete without both.

I find that the US part in the European theatre in WW2 is like that of the British in the Napoleonic wars. A glamorous intervention right at the end, but which is exaggerated way beyond its worth while the decisive effort was made elsewhere. Your and our contribution was vital mainly in providing money and resources for other players to grind down the enemy. Still key, but not in the way that our historians and storytellers like to tell it. Definitely enough to afford us a place at the bragging table though (Britain in WW2 just about scraped a place at the table, tolerated by the people who matter).

[Sarmatian]

I find that the US part in the European theatre in WW2 is like that of the British in the Napoleonic wars. A glamorous intervention right at the end, but which is exaggerated way beyond its worth while the decisive effort was made elsewhere.

That is a spot on comparison, I believe.

Even if the US stayed out of the war, the outcome would have been the same, but it would have been bloodier.

[Strike For The South]

Germany was liquidating gold reserves of captured terroritoy to keep themselves afloat, house of cards.

All WWII did was speed up the decline of Europe. Maybe gave Russia a bit more influence further into centeral Europe.

Germany lost before they rolled into poland

[Sasaki Kojiro]

There's not much point in talking just about how it happened. The "what-if" is much more relevant, for example, "What if Stalin had not purged the army, engaged in mass executions and genocide in eastern europe, and then signed the nazi soviet pact and twiddled his thumbs while the germans defeated their other enemies?". "What if the germans had worked at being perceived as liberators in eastern europe, and pursued a different strategy in general?"

It's ridiculous to say that CCCP did the "lion's share". They did the totalitarian dictator's share. Meanwhile the western allies did the naive and delusional moron's share.It seems like a bad joke to me to look back at world war two and try to hand out praise and credit, and especially to complain about stalin supposedly not getting enough credit. Which of the major countries can actually pat themselves on the back over their performance in the 1930s? They make the leaders from the world war one era look like geniuses.

[Papewaio]

Define won.

From a booty point of view the first order summary is who got a veto vote at the UN:
US
USSR
UK
China
France

These were all on the winning side from WWII. The last two definitely benefited from the manpower and logistical support from the three U's

From an effort point of view are we measuring manpower logistics?, manufacturing?, number of bodies fielded?, number of bodies buried? or technology?

Each of these rates the different powers differently. USSR had more manpower as infantry. USA had more manufacturing might due to a combination of manpower and technology.

If we are rating the war as a set of boxers where it is a fight of attrition then US is a standout winner. It's not tiring its getting fitter with each year.

Which year did US get involved in WWII? Do we measure from the declaration of war after Pearl Harbour? Or do we measure when logistical support was given and the convoys were protected across the North Atlantic?

Did the US know Pearl Harbour was about to happen? It is a bit suspicious that all the carriers just happened to be out ferrying aircraft to locations or receiving new ones. It might be that the codes had already been broken, it might just be a bit of serendipity.

As for the importance of reliable intel just read up about the five eyes alliance and how that formed.

tl;dr. The working class soviets provided the soldiers and their superiors and the western capitalists got the booty.

[Husar]

The USSR was also getting fitter with each year during the war.

As for praising Stalin, I don't think that is the point. He was the leader, but a lot of Russian men fought the war for him and put in as much effort as US soldiers and others did if not more. Why can those not be praised? Should they have switched sides to fight Stalin? Would that have helped anyone besides Hitler?

And I maintain that we won, we screwed out more than in WW1 but got out better I would say if you ignore all the dead people both wars produced. We're now a stable democracy where the (the vast majority of) constituents have finally understood how valuable peace and democracy are. We got built up by the US, were given a huge army again a few years after the war ended and finally got a reunification as well. We recovered so well that we are now seen as the mighty European oppressor of smaller nations again. We didn't achieve that in a glorious way and certainly profited from the circumstances but as I said earlier, we created these circumstances ourselves towards the end of the war when we decided to delay the soviets more than the US troops.

[Fragony]

Nazi's won. Russians and Allies won some battles but we got the international-soccialim and royal families back regardless. World War two isn't over everybody is still in place. Small trip to South-America, and back again. The EU is worse, just more subtle when it comes to ensuring royals and capital gets everything they don't really need. The EU is inherintaly deeply undemocratic and even deeply fascist, that's Europe's reality today. No democracy, ultra totalitarian.

Before you see I am full of it, ALL european royal families had ties with the nazi's.

And they are all still in place.

[Greyblades]

Before you see I am full of it, ALL european royal families had ties with the nazi's.

And they are all still in place.

You might have a point (here anyway, the rest of your post is conspiracy hick 101) if they kept those ties after the nazis showed how big bastards they really were, plus condemming an entire family for some of the actions of the individuals is kinda fascist in itself.

[Husar]

First off, I totally agree about your assessment of Germany. They've certainly made the best of the last 60 years, and that's a good thing.

However, Russia was not getting fitter with each year. To this day, the Russian population is still absorbing the aftershocks of ww2. The US could have sustained the war indefinitely, the USSR could not. This has nothing to do with economy and everything to do with people. Russian manpower was legendary, but not infinite.

I understood that in a purely military context and wanted to say that the Red Army was not getting really exhausted towards the end of the war. Instead it grew more and more overwhelming and became one of the largest and scariest armies in the world, even continuing this trend in the years following the war.

[Slyspy]

That's a good comparison, because you slighted the UK as well as the USA! The UK's victory in the napoleonic wars was engineered over a long period of time, was a masterpiece of planning and realpolitik, and led to the British basically ruling the world for 100 years afterward. If that doesn't merit a leading role in the discussion, I don't know what does. The same can be said for the USA in ww2.

The questions of "who won the war?" and "who won from the war?" are not the same of course. In general, though, the nation which does most to win the war is that which acts a paymaster to the rest.