[chilepepper]

the germans were always in a race against time vs. the soviets, and with the bad luck (unusually severe winters in the 1941-1943 for example) that struck them would have eventually lost even if we had never entered the war.

the real turning point was when the nazis failed to capture moscow - it was downhill from there. almost a YEAR before DDay, the soviet troops had rolled back almost all german advances in the east: in the balkans the red army had retaken bulgaria and romania (ploesti).

the illusion that the USSR would have lost without US help is just that: an illusion. US aid kept Russian *civilians* from STARVING, but it did not keep the USSR from producing huge quantities of T34 tanks from their factories in the Urals and Siberia, which like US factories, were never bombed.

[crowman]

You seem to casually discount the weapons advancement the Germans were making in aircraft and rockets, despite the Allied bombing, something the Russians were utterly incapable of doing themselves...and the Russians were only able to hold the Germans off. Without the Western front the Germans would have re-grouped and Russian would have lost.

[grey_whiskers]

Stalingrad and Prokhorovka (Kursk) broke the back of the German Army.