All the victorious powers of WWII oppressed large groups of people. The British had a vast overseas empire of subjugated nations, the French too. In case of the

All the victorious powers of WWII oppressed large groups of people. The British had a vast overseas empire of subjugated nations, the French too. In case of the Soviet Union, the empire was land-based and contiguous, but using even more brutal methods to keep undesirables in check, and the US was still a very explicitly racist place. The Nazis "just" topped all of these in sheer brutality (well, Stalin might have been their peer) and commitment not just to oppress, but exterminate. That said, without their empires providing resources, the Allies could have lost. Smaller countries were just overrun by the Nazis with rarely more than a month of fighting. It wasn't as easy to overrun the British Empire.