Normandy was June 1944. The US had nukes by August 1945. The Germans signed their surrender in May of 1945. The Germans were done. Period. The war in Europe was over one way or another and soon.
Within one year of the US invading at Normandy, all that Nazi territory in the prior map I posted was gone, whereas none of it had been reclaimed in the prior five years before the US invasion. It's not a coincidence. Churchill recognized that once the US joined on to invade Europe, the war was won.
There's a reasonable argument that the Soviets helped delay the possibility of the Nazis developing nuclear weapons. Historical evidence suggests the Nazis were nowhere close to developing a nuclear weapon though and they had largely abandoned the project in early 1942. Most likely, with or without the Soviet effort between January 1942 and May 1945, the US was going to bring Nazi Germany to capitulation with nuclear weapons.
There is a big difference in the stakes however: the US didn't need to win the war in Europe to survive. It could have stepped back, relatively safe with its nuclear position. And the Soviets would have treated Western Europe very differently without the US there to safeguard territorial lines from further Soviet expansion and influence west.
The premise floated is that the Soviets paid the most to guarantee victory in WWII, hence "won" the war. US entry in the war may have been a significant turning point, but the Soviet involvement dwarfs the US involvement.
>There's a reasonable argument that the Soviets helped delay the possibility of the Nazis developing nuclear weapons. Historical evidence suggests the Nazis were nowhere close to developing a nuclear weapon though and they had largely abandoned the project in early 1942.
Without the incredibly taxing years of war with the USSR, Germany would have had the resources to all sorts of other things. Not only could they have furthered their own advances, they would have been able to disrupt the UK's assistance and limit US access to necessary resources. You can't simply say the US would have still been able to win that race without the Soviets war.
Without the USSR involved in the war, US supplies would be unable to help stop the Germans and the German forces would not be spread thin enough for an invasion to be feasible. Both were necessary, but the Soviets gave up much more to secure the victory.