How America Fractured in 1968(nytimes.com)

  In 1945, most French people thought that the Soviet Union 
  deserved the most credit for Nazi Germany's defeat in World 
  War II — even though the Soviets didn't play much of a role 
  in France's liberation, relative to the US and Britain. By 
  1995 and 2004, however, the French had changed their minds, 
  and were crediting the US as the biggest contributor to 
  victory in Europe (...)

  Scholar addresses question, ‘Who won World War II in 
  Europe?’

  There’s no easy answer, said Norman Davies, an Oxford-
  educated British historian and Poland specialist who has 
  written widely on the 1939-1945 conflict.

  (...)

  Among the Davies so-called myths:

  That D-Day was big and decisive. (About 80 percent of 
  German forces were lost on the Eastern Front, he said, 
  where the biggest battles raged.)

  That the West triumphed over the Third Reich. (Germany was 
  all but defeated by the Soviets well before the Allies 
  landed troops on the continent, he contended.)

  In fact, asserted Davies, it was the Red Army that played 
  the decisive role in defeating Germany, “and they were in 
  the service of an evil tyranny.”

  Sheer numbers alone help dispel myths about the war, he 
  said. In 1939, the United States had half as many trained 
  soldiers as Poland — and it took until 1944 to muster 100 
  American divisions. The Germans fielded 230 divisions, and 
  the Soviets as many as 400.