Essay talk:How we won WW2

Critique?

You asked, so: Spellcheck. Don't bring up stuff that you don't know ("but beyond that, I can’t think of any other major players. "). Either know it or leave it out. Do you have references? Put them in. If not, get them.

You also need to think about structure. You're making an argument about how the Allies won the war (don't say "we," it sounds nationalist and jingoistic). That should be your first sentence: "The Allies won the Second World War because X." The rest of the essay should be spent proving that point. There are also quite a few problems with your facts, such as "The territories seized by the Nazi advance were hardly loyal to their goals, interfering with supplies." True; but this gets complicated when you think of, say, the fact that the Dutch raised an SS division that fought on the Eastern Front, or the way the Croatian Ustase embraced the Nazi plan. The question of collaboration v. resistance in France alone is really complicated and subtle--you can't reduce it to a few sentences.

And if I had to pick one reason (...and there isn't one reason) why the Allies won the war, it's because the leadership of the Soviet Union was willing and able to throw bodies at the Germans (23 million dead Soviets)for as long as it took to achieve their goals. The Brits and the US helped the USSR win the war in Europe. TheoryOfPractice 09:50, 17 February 2009 (EST)

Two questions, which will help my answer a little better; first, what type of class is this for, and second, what exactly are you arguing. As ToP mentioned above, you never really focus on why the US won the war; you gloss over it, but never get into the meat of it. The class is also important because of different writing styles. I'm assuming you are writing for a history class, but if so, you need to include references. Any kind of upper level class needs to include opposing viewpoints as well, and adress their objections. Z3ro^talk 10:41, 17 February 2009 (EST)

I'm no expert on the war at all, but I think if you consider why the Allies won, you should also consider why they were allies, how those alliances changed & what role they played in winning the war. E.g. the U.S. & British governement really distrusted Stalin (& vice versa) but they knew they had to work together to keep that war on two fronts going, which was pretty much the only way to defeat Germany. America's beef was with Japan, but the various alliances at work on both sides meant that, by entering war with Japan, the U.S. got involved in the war in Europe too. It's that complexity of alliances that made it a World War - basically a multitude of different wars around the world, which all affected & interacted with each other. Wèàšèìòìď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 11:13, 17 February 2009 (EST)

I have to admit that for me the essay lost all credibility at the point where the writer declared that Berlin fell in 1944! Mick McT (talk) 17:54, 10 February 2012 (UTC)