The Russians actually had territory they could afford to concede whilst rebuilding and re-equipping. The Germans never really had that
luxury.
No one can really afford to concede territory and the NATO cold war plans to stage a fighting withdrawal from West German borders were never
realistic given that the Germans were going to fight for every inch knowing that they would never have the ability to take it back. Given the massive
and overwhelming Russian superiority in Artillery and short range tactical nuclear weapons manning lines densely enough to prevent serious
penetration would have mostly resulted in the destruction of those formations. Basically the USSR did not retreat in 1941 because it wanted to trade
space for time but because their forward formations were simply crushed and annihilated. As most countries would they stood and they fought and it
simply didn't work; that they had enough space to regroup and occasional retreat back into was entirely incidental.
Britain was slow to mobilise the Empire at the start of WW2 but also had the resources available there to duke it out if need be.
It is not commonly known , even by those who read plenty of books, that Britain bankrupted itself in it's preparations for world war two and that
the money coffers would have been more than empty by late 1939 -1940 no matter what the Germans did...
People seem to forget that the RAF was sending out a thousand bombers regularly over targets, and that the Royal Navy was the largest, most
capable and most powerful navy on the planet at the time.
That is surely so British bombers were no match for German fighters and in daytime they were as good as annihilated over Germany hence the bombing in
the darkness that made such efforts almost entirely ineffective in terms of doing damage to German industry. The British navy was large but it had
much to protect and three enemy navies to contend with. The Italian navy lacked many things but to ensure that it did not get 'lucky' in the Med
against the vital convoy lines still cost the Royal navy dozens of capital and escort ships. The IJN were not treated with much respect but even then
they could not be ignored and many more capital ships had to guard the approaches to India and Australia to say nothing of the holdings they gained
from Holland and the other low countries...
The cost of guarding all that while guarding against the U-boat menace in the Atlantic and possible breakouts of German capital ships left Britain
so exposed that there was a few months were a German invasion were in my opinion not only possible but probably enough to result in a invasion of
Britain that they British simply lacked the means to reduce once established.
What America did was provide material and technical assistance that was out of the range of German attacks and as such could breach the gaps
in production and provide an established industrial base.
Without American assistance Britain would not in my opinion have been able to sustain the attrition for very long and would have been reduced to mere
survival while they kept open their lines of communication with India,Australia and Canada. Britain could probably in good time have raised armies
and industries in those countries but not in my opinion anything that could seriously threaten a victorious German reich stretching to the Urals and
slowly moving on Egypt. The American 'assistance' was thus not enough without the benefit of their manpower and physical industrial capacity...
After that the US assisted with bombing raids of its own and with the manpower to carry out the Normandy landings.
America's contribution to the fighting in Europe in WW2 should never be forgotten,
And i believe the contributions of many others are far worse understood or known than that of the US...
and the assistance provided in material resources and equipment certainly helped to shorten the war.
That is certainly so but Germany could best have been defeated if American corporations interest were not allowed to continue functioning in service
of the Nazi war machine. Given that REPARATIONS were paid to these corporations, by the US government for destruction of their properties in Germany,
after the second it's pretty clear that that the US government were not really all that interested in bringing to war to it's fastest possible
conclusion.
However, even without US intervention Hitler had been fought to a standstill at the channel, and the Russians had moved entire factories and
production lines out of the range of German bombers and had a massive strategic reserve of manpower to call on.
Hitler was no more fought to a standstill at Dunkirk than he was fought to standstill at the gates of Moscow and in both instances it was in my
opinion political considerations that allowed both Britain and the SU to recover in ways that would have otherwise been impossible to explain.
The British had an atomic weapons programme that was equal to that of the Nazi's, so its likely that the two powers may have developed nukes
at the same time.
The British program could not have been completed with US funds and possible not without US direct assistance. There is plenty of information that
indicates that the Nazi atomic weapons program were in fact quite advanced but since i do not have the time to defend that as the fact i believe it to
be i will claim it as my opinion only.
The British were also developing jet aircraft at a similar pace to the Germans.
Despite the war moving closer to home the Germans were faster and their operational result were 'better' by a significant margin...
Without US intervention its likely that the war would have gone on for four or five years more, but the outcome would have been the same for
Germany.
If there were no serious threat of invasion in Normandy ( which would not have happened for years without US manpower) or the direct aid to the SU
Germany would probably have been able to defend successive lines and possibly even fighting the SU to a virtual standstill in 1943 and 44. I am not
sure how long they could have kept that up but the SU would have been bled white if Germany did not have to defend Italy and Normandy with such large
formations of combat divisions. Germany could afford occupation divisions ( little or no fuel expenditure and older soldiers that were reinforced by
whatever formations were resting and retraining in the region after combat attrition) but not such a drain fighting on multiple fronts with tens of
millions of tons worth of explosives being consumed in defense against the day bombing air campaign that would not have been possible without the
USAF. This is not counting the tens of thousands of barrels consumed or the fact that the the resources taken up by the ten odd thousands flak guns
could not have been employed to massively improve the combat performance of German divisions against the Soviet tank armies.
Either way that what ifs and could-have-been's can keep any of us busy for a few years.
Europe would have been devastated and Germany and other Eastern European countries would have been annexed into the USSR, possibly with only
France and the Scandinavian Countries still existing as seperate entities.
Europe would have been occupied entirely and given the skilled citizens and vast industrial and resource base the US would have been hard pressed to
fund the type of cold war expenditures that could have protected them for as long as it in fact did...
Britain would have retained its empire, and the world map would look slightly different than it does today.
If the SU took Germany the ME would have been quick to follow and without that direct link India could no longer have kept Britain afloat thus
probably making the British isle's untenable. Given that i don't know how much of the world Stalin was really bent on taking i wont argue that that
was ever going to happen but if Stalin wanted to i doubt the US could have made Atomic weapons fast enough to stop him...
[edit] - I realise this was way off topic. Its just that there is a whole slew of ignorance about WW2, and maybe it deserves its own topic. I do
apologise.
I'll just say you started it as i am already in hot water for my alleged off topic remarks.
I hope my post is somehow 'useful' to you and that any apparent insult will be forgiven as unintended and largely due to high speed typing and no
proof reading...
Sorry..
Stellar
Well put. It appears that people are so set in their ways and are obviously not interested in the truth. How can anyone believe anything
the Bush admin says after all the blatant lies they have told? Now they are using the same propaganda tactics to drum up public support for an attack
on Iran. 
