It was a combined effort by all the Allied nations...no one country won the war against Hitler and his Nazi expansionist agenda. I’m not into speculating what would, or may have been, had either Russia or the USA not joined in the fight, because that was not the reality of what happened. I was an infant, a mere 7 week old baby on VE Day in May 1945, and am eternally grateful to the generation before mine who fought and won the freedom from fascism which my generation benefited from.

@Marionville I was being a bit facetious , but seriously people should be aware of the sacrifices made by many countries during the war'
At the height of the cold war were schoolkids taught about the war on the Eastern front and the horrers of war in a Russian winter ?. I certainly wasn't. The Soviet Union were the baddies and we should hate them.
I was not aware until recently that if it had not been for the equipment given to the red army by the USA and to a lesser extent by the UK the outcome would have been quite different.
I watched the film "Darkest Hour" on BBC last night. A great portrayal of Churchill by Gary Oldman

@Moravian Yes..a great film, had seen it in the cinema when it came out. I can’t remember much about what we were taught in school, but I have always been aware that the Russian war effort was significant and that like Napoleon 150 years earlier, taking on Russia during the harsh Russian winter was largely Hitler’s undoing. Fighting on more than one front is never a good idea from a strategic point of view, militarily speaking. As far as the USA and her involvement... I don’t believe they would have got involved at all despite Roosevelt doing his best to circumvent the Neutrality Acts, had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbour. That one act turned out to be the pivotal event of the war in my opinion.

My Dad was in the RAF and was invalided home in 1944...hence my arrival in March 1945, just 7 weeks before VE Day!