Anyone who knows anything about WWII knows that Britain more than paid its dues. As for WWI, I'm not sure how much more British blood they could have spilled.

When the WTC was destroyed, the admirable example of the citizens of London coping and fighting back during the Blitz, where a hell of a lot more than two buildings were destroyed, came up more than once. 20,000 were killed, 3,000 in a single night.

The Soviets were indeed instrumental in defeating the Germans. However, the Soviets started out as German allies, signing a non-aggression pact in 1939, which seems to be largely forgotten in the leftist revisionism of history. Like all thugs, they eventually fell on each others throats not because they were actually political or philosophical opposites, but because they were two gangs fighting over the same turf. They were no more "opposites" than the Crips and the Bloods are. The idea that National Socialism and Marxism are somehow on opposite ends of some philosophical "scale" is a fantasy nurtured by leftists who want to back themselves as far away from the smoking ovens as they can.

Maybe the Soviets kept us from speaking German, but their eventual objective was to have us speaking Russian, which I don't think would have been a great improvement.

...A remarkable culture.... what might they have achieved if they had been allowed to develop freely?

Not sure what you mean by this. What would they have been like if the Soviet system had not been attacked and decimated by Germany? What would have happened if their expansionism had not been restrained by U.S. military power? What would have happened if the Czarist system had been replaced by a system dedicated to freedom, private property, and individual rights instead of Marxism?

All of the above are interesting questions. A free-market Russia, with the vast resources at its disposal, would have made a considerable positive impression on the world.