You wrote:

I don't think the soviets could have defeated Hitler alone.

By the time the Americans landed in N. Africa (Operation Torch), The Germans were facing defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, which most knowledgable historians consider the turning point of WWII, but let's not forget the Brits, who stood alone against the Nazis from the fall of France until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Nevetheless, there is no question that the participation of American forces in the fight against the Nazis hastened the end of WWII.

However, analysis of the Wermacht's battles in WWII shows that 87% were fought against the Red Army on the Eastern Front. American Lend Lease played a significant role in supplying critical raw materials to the Soviets, but the Russians preferred to use their own weapons, and for good reason. Soviet armor and artillery in WWII were probably the best in the world, and by the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943, the Red Air Force was beginning to gain air superiority over the Luftwaffe.

The new generation of Nazi armor deployed at Kursk - the Panthers and Tigers were the qualitative equals of the Red Army's T-34/85s, KVs and Stalins, but the Soviet armor was available to the Red Army in far greater numbers than the Wermacht could muster. (See below)

One of the great stories of WWII is the translocation of Soviet heavy industry - lock, stock and barrel - from the vulnerable European part of Russia to the hinterland, where entire factories were re-assembled far beyond the reach of Nazi arms. In some cases, machine tools and other vital heavy industrial equipment were loaded onto rail cars while under fire from the invading Nazis, and transported to new industrial zones in the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East.

At Kharkov, which changed hands no less than three times during the course of the war, the T-34 factory was dismantled and evacuated when the city came under attack, and the remaining tanks were formed into a Brigade under Colonel Katukov. Manned by instructors and students from the factory school, the brigade played a critical role in stopping Guderian's panzers at Mtensk as they approached Moscow from the southwest in the late autumn of 1941. Guderian ruefully noted that this engagement demonstrated the T-34's vast superiority to his own tanks.

Even after the severe losses suffered in 1941 during the initial stages of Barbarossa, and despite the delays incurred during the translocation of factories to the new industrial zones, Soviet heavy industry outproduced its German counterpart by a wide margin during WWII.

For example, the Germans were able to produce, in total, about 6000 of the excellent Panther tank, production peaking at about 3800 in 1944. That same year, Soviet industry turned out 4100 of the older T-34/76, and an additional 10615 of the excellent T-34/85.

Not only did the Soviet Union have a far greater industrial capacity than Nazi Germany, but it had much greater pools of available manpower.

Early in the war, the Wermacht's organization and tactical prowess contributed to significant victories over the Soviets as the latter's disorganization, poor leadership, and highly vulnerable dispositions doomed the Red Army's frontier formations. As the Russians fell back before their capital however, capable leadership was emerging from the survivors of the ruined armies, Soviet heavy industry was being moved out of harm's way, and Kutukov's T-34s were revving up at Kharkov.

Having shelved pre-war development of the so-called Ural bomber, the Nazis had no way to disrupt Soviet industrial capacity, no way to match the available manpower pools of a country three times as populous, and no way to subdue the Soviet Union.

With or without the United States, the Soviet Union would have defeated Nazi Germany in WWII.

S