Re: "...The soviet union suffered a lot in wwII, more than most people know..."
The fact of the matter, is that it was the Soviet defeat of the Wehrmact at the siege of Stalingrad, which turned the tide of the war and enabled Germany's defeat.
From that point on, the Reich was retreating from a huge push from the East, and an impending threat of amphibious Allied invasion of Europe's west coast.
Of course, I discuss only military tactics / blunders.
To discuss political ideology and morality involving the WWII combatants is entirely another matter; somewhat related but not the determinants by which one or the other side achieved victory.
Stalingrad was besieged by the Nazis until the inhabitants were forced to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. Had Hitler invaded the American West Coast in 2006, he is likely to not have encountered any resistance of substance. One has to give the Russians credit where credit is due; most probably hated Stalin but loved their homeland enough to fight and die for it.
Hitler and Goering publicly announced that Russia would fall to the Reich in only two weeks. Goering had, in advance, drawn up on paper detailed plans to literally starve to death the majority of the Russian population, use the rest as slaves, take hold of the fertile Ukraine "breadbasket",and repopulate Russia with German "Aryans".
In America, we are taught in school that America "won" WWII. This is true, but only half-true; if Stalingrad had fallen, all of Europe / Eurasia would have become an enlarged and more powerful Third Reich, and the outcome of the war might not have favored the U.S.A.
Regarding Japan, the socio-cultural establishment there did have a "code of honor" whereby authority was to be obeyed and honored, and individualism was scorned and punished. At that time, the Emperor was literally "The Sun God" incarnate on Earth, and to die for his honor was the greatest good of a Japanese soldier. They considered defeat (even in personal or business dealings) an unbearable humiliation, and it was normal for them to commit seppuku (ritual self-disembowelment) if disgraced.
In fairness, the U.S. government literally demonstrated the bomb before invited Japanese military/political officials, and delivered to them an ultimatum to either surrender or become victims of our bomb.
A final thought: Hitler's scientists were feverishly working on atomic weapons and very close to having them in operation. When the Allies defeated Germany, they observed for the first time how advanced the Germans were in military science...the world's first turbine jet fighter planes were sent up against our air force. Germany had built the world's first superhighways (from which we later adapted the idea), was fueling its Panzer divisions on synthetic fuel, and was already bombing England with its V2 & V1 missiles. So far advanced in space technology were Hitler's scientists, that the Luftwaffe already had been working on flying saucer weapons, and it was the Nazi scientists captured by both the U.S.A. & U.S.S.R. which gave birth to the modern space programs of today.
Thank God that it was we who first used nuclear weapons to win the war.
Topic: Winning World War II (Read 4042 times)