Well, both of these claims could be debated. Stalin decapitated the Red Amry in '38, setting himself up for Barbarossa. He executed Tukhachevskii, one of the authentic military geniuses of the last three centuries, and jailed the top commanders he didn't kill, putting incompetent Civil War relics in charge of the military. He failed to take advantage of the space offered by his vile Pact with Hitler, pushed forward the forward defenses to the "new" frontiers, ignored absolutely solid and unmistakeable intelligence (from Sorge and others) that gave him the time and date of the Nazi attack, and his generalship in the early stages of the war was disasterous, nearly fatal, until he got Zukhov and some other folks who knew what they were doing into the military leadership.
As for Roosevelt and Churchill not doing squat, that's rubbish. The Russins certainly didn't see it that way. Why do you think they called Molotov Mr Second Front? (It was the only English expression he knew.) Churchill held out during the Battle of Britain, which has nearly as much claim to having Saved The World as Stalingrad. The Battle for North Africa -- a Brit venture -- led to the defeat of Rommel and cut the Nazis off from Middle East Oil and Medeterranean shipping. the Battle of the Atalanic not only kept Britian afloat, but kept the sea lanes open for Lend-Lease to Russia. do you think that the Russians would have been able to defeat Hitler without American supplies and material? And Normandy was hardly an irrelevant nothing.
jks
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com