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Originally Posted by Doctor Mick
The Western Allies won their side of WWII with Winston Churchill and with the vast resources of men and machines mainly provided by the USA. It also helped that Hitler was a nutter and made some serious mistakes, not least of which was trying to invade the Soviet Union.
But I don't see the Japanese in the above equation. Or the Italians. Or the many other fronts of the War.
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the Italians were total crap as soldiers, the only thing they were ever good at was mass surrender. Initially the north african and Mideterreanian campaigns was an Italian affair, but the Italians FUBARed it so fast and at a such a grand scale that Hitler had to commit troops ASAP to at least slow down the inevitable and buy himself some time, thus the African corps and all that followed. By 1942 neither side took the Italians seriously.
The pacific theater was a 90% American affair, the Brits mostly played a fringe role in Bruma, helping the jungle to bog the Japanese down. The only more or less major role played by the Brits in the Pacific was that of martyr POW's after the 35 thousand strong Singapore garrison surrender to circa 15 000 japanese with little to no resistance. Obviously they were too shocked by the spectacular sinking of task force Z or whatever designation the Repulse and Duke of Wales had.
The Soviet Army carried out a swift 10 day campaign against the 1.1 million strong japanese Kwantung army in northern china in agust 1945. The operation was code named August Storm and while it was an exemplary combined arms op it had probably even less real significance than the D-day landing.