Read a lot of military history books when I was a child. Now I can google some things for a refresher - you can trust them or not, mostly wikipedia. There are

Read a lot of military history books when I was a child. Now I can google some things for a refresher - you can trust them or not, mostly wikipedia. There are many citations in the article about the US/UK strategy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_first The US oil embargo on the Japanese homeland had put them on their back foot before the war even started - and is often cited as a reason for the undelivered Japanese declaration of war prior to Pearl Harbor, and once we starting island hopping/pushing them off the Asian mainland they could only delay defeat and to make it as painful as possible for America to progress to discourage an invasion of Japan. Part of Germany's impetus for attacking on the Eastern front was the need for more fuel, the Allies had more in their homelands of the USA and the Soviet Union than was available to Germany. The somewhat disputed Yamamoto quote says it best(the movie version probably is what sticks in people's minds): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_attack_on_Pearl_Harbor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_attack_on_... The Soviets suffered more casualties than anybody to stop the Germans on the Eastern front and tying them up there helped reduce the German troops available for their Middle East push and beach/support defenses in France and Italy and the Soviets were able to build much of their own military hardware even after the German invasion but they still got our help, mainly for transport of material. We helped almost all the Allies, but most support went to the UK and Soviet Union. Kruschev quotes Stalin here: "He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease