I teach history in an American high school. I make it a point to explain that the U.S.A. did not win WWII on its own, not by a long shot. I show my students how many enemy combatant casualties each of the major allies caused. The Russians destroyed more German divisions and killed/captured more German soldiers than the rest of the Allies combined. I show them how the U.S. could not have participated in the liberation of western Europe without a secure base on Europe's doorstep (i.e. Great Britain). I need to make more of a point of stressing Australia's similar importance in the PTO.
That said, my students also learn that the other Allies could not have won the war without direct U.S. involvement. I show the students production figures from all of the main combatants. I don't need to say much- the numbers tell most of the story. The U.S. out-produced most other combatants combined in ship tonnage (warships and merchant shipping), aircraft, and ammunition. Much of that production went to Great Britain and the U.S.S.R., helping to keep them afloat in their darkest hours. The U.S.A. narrowly beat the Soviets in tank production. The Soviets contributed more manpower than any of the other Allies and they also took far more casualties.
Without USN assistance, the Royal Navy wouldn't have been able to win the Battle of the Atlantic. Cut off from its global empire by German U-Boats, Great Britain would have been in much worse shape, economically, than it was during the Napoleonic Wars. It's unlikely that they could have carried on the war on their own. The German threat to Egypt wasn't truly eliminated until the U.S. contributed to Allied operations in North Africa. Although it's not impossible, it's highly unlikely that an economically isolated Great Britain could have developed and delivered its own atomic weapons before being forced to sue for peace with the Axis.
Guys, the numbers really don't lie. It was a team effort. As I said before, without any one of the Big Three, and arguably China, the Allies could not have won WWII.
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