My initial point is correct. Without the immense and undervalued British resources, American and allied soldiers would never have landed in Europe, from Sicily to Normandy.
79% of all ships on D-Day were British. Just 16% were US. 50% of all air cover on D-Day was British. And American units relied on RAF Typhoon air support all across NW Europe. American troops in Normandy and beyond also relied on specialised British armour on numerous occasions.
American units in 21st Army Group, notably the 82nd and 101st, and even some in the 9th Army, used the British Red Lion supply line. The Anglo-Canadian-Polish army used this supply line (the British also used many RAF petrol drops in 1944-45) NOT the famous Red Ball Express. British 21st also supplied US troops with the correct food in winter 44-45 when US rations were found to be grossly unsuited.
The same story is true of the allied wars in Italy and Sicily: it was the RN who landed most of the American and allied troops, and the RAF played a crucial role in air landing and air support. And it was the same Royal Navy who saved Clark’s bacon at Salerno.
If I can recommend a book to YOU, it would be the recent and superb ‘Britain’s War Production’ by historian David Edgerton, which utterly shatters many myths about British ‘weakness’ and British war productions.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R354FNQZ4MAG8X/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R354FNQZ4MAG8Xprovides a review of Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War - which seems to be the title under which your suggested reading is available here.
I will say that I’m surprised that Britain would have given Stalin a battleship. I had known, of course, that Churchill had proposed to send aid to the USSR, his own hostility to Communism notwithstanding. It was all to clear from my own reading that FDR had recognized the USSR as his first diplomatic act, and that his administration was riddled with commies. Including Alger Hiss. The attitude of American conservatives towards the war on Germany’s Eastern Front was, simply, that the pity was that they couldn’t both lose. But once we were fighting the Germans . . .But it turns out that helping Afghanistan fight the Soviets wasn’t all that much more of a bargain than helping the Soviets against the Germans ended up being.