Quote Originally Posted by VictorCharlie View Post
Well I don't think there is much argument regarding the Pacific theater but the European is tougher. If you believe that Russia could have withstood the Wermacht invasion and regrouped to counter attack w/o allied support and the eventual second front then the answer is hands down Russia. Even if you don't believe that was possible the USSR sacrificed and accomplished a tremendous more than the allied front. If Hitler never invades Russia the world becomes a very different place.
Russia and the US are the biggest winner; Russia suffered a staggering beatdown but Yalta an Pozdam reunions granted them wayyy more territories than when the war began, the US for all the contracts to rebuild everything that allowed them to kick up their economy to an uncanny level. As for invasion, if Germany would have been more successful on the russian front, There would have been no Hiroshima and no NAgasaki, probably a Berlin and a Frankfurt or something like that, winner would be on the same side, irradiated ruins would have been located otherwise.