North Africa and Italy get entirely no mention in typical teachings to little kids, from what I remember. It's just lots of carpet bombing and then D-Day, and then nuke Japan.
Re: USSR and lend-lease. I see this argued a lot. But from what I understand from the experts, Operations Uranus and Saturn (Battle of Stalingrad) were launched without any major LL aid from the Allies. The battle of Moscow was basically all USSR. The Soviet Union likely would've pushed the Germans out of their territory even with zero LL aid.
The Red Army got to Stalingrad with American trucks, food, and fuel. They basically got everywhere in the war thanks to General Motors. Stalingrad was largely aided by the proximity of the major north-south rail line along the Volga, but every offensive after that was due to our supply help. By the end of the war something like 60% of their vehicle fleet was American-made while they rebuilt their factories from scratch in the Urals. With Ukraine and western Russia occupied, there was a massive food shortage. The Red Army would have starved to death in late 1942 if not for our help. This requirement continued to the end of the war.
Now they probably could not have conquered Germany like they did with LL aid. Kursk was critical in that it basically destroyed all German offensive armor and put them on the defensive for the rest of the war. Kursk would've been different without LL and Allies cracking German codes. But even a different outcome wouldn't have allowed Germany to conquer the USSR.
Kursk was Germany's last ditch attempt at an offensive in the East. If Hitler had held onto those tanks in a defensive role he could have dragged out the war another 6 months, but the were always going to be retreating until the end.
Some other things re: WWII that kinda irk me:
-The Germans could've just won if they had done "X." No, the Germans were basically screwed.
-Japan could've won if they had done "X." Japan was even more screwed than Germany. It's a miracle they did as well as they did.
-The Germans were really good at fighting. Like, soldier for soldier, yeah, but their operational and strategic doctrines were shit.
2 out of 3. German operational doctrine was in a class by itself which is why it did so well against numerically superior opponents for as long as it did. Even in retreat they inflicted massive loses on the Soviets. Nearly every Soviet offensive was met with counterattacks on their flanks which incurred huge losses, but they had the manpower to keep pushing forward. The German military had no appreciation for logistics which is where they fell apart strategically. The German General Staff education system took the best and brightest of their officer corps and made them all fighters. The second-rate officers became logisticians so not only were the infantry officers ignorant of logistics, their logisticians weren't very good. This failing went all the way back to Von Schlieffen and the war plan that led to WWI. That campaign was never going to work because Von Schlieffen had no clue how his men and horses would eat, sleep, or communicate. Wash and repeat for WWII. Patton and Rommel both had to learn the hard way what it took to provide their tanks with fuel and felt outrunning their own supplies was somebody else's problem. Japan was in the same boat (pun intended). They were an island nation entirely dependent on imports with a pitifully small merchant marine fleet. Once they capture those island chains they couldn't support them. Our subs sank over half of their shipping fleet and entire island garrisons were isolated and bypassed. Yamamoto supposedly said something like "I can guarantee six months of victory, but if you don't get a negotiated peace after that I can't help you."
In the late 1970s and 1980s when the imprisoned WWII-era German Generals were paroled or their sentences ended we hired many of them as consultants to rewrite our doctrine which led to "Air-Land Battle." In a nutshell we planned a mobile rather than static defense of western Europe. It also led to an offensive maneuver doctrine when married with American logistics gave us the Desert Storm ground campaign.
-Germans could've won the Battle of the Atlantic. Nahhh. They were screwed there, too. We could build ships faster than they could sink them, except in a few months of the battle.
Very true. Germany lacked good radar, air-sea coordination, and an industrial capacity to build enough subs and aircraft. They wasted good steel and manpower building battleships which were promptly sunk. The British cracking all of their codes was also a decisive edge.
-The French and British never stood a chance against awesome German blitzkrieg. No, the French and British just really screwed the pooch and the Germans got a bit of luck.
They stood a chance, but French military and political doctrine seceded all initiative to Germany. They weren't going to make the first move for several more months until their entire army was mobilized (75% of their strength was part-time Reserves). Belgian neutrality slowed them down too because they couldn't occupy pre-planned defensive positions. When it came time for the showdown, the Germans proved to be much better at exercising local initiative and making decisions much faster than the French.
-Polish cavalry charged tanks. This did not happen.
Meh. Debatable. They threw horses at a mechanized army even if the attack started against dismounted infantry. It was the first large-scale cavalry charge in a century for good reason.