re: Would the Allies have won WWII without America getting involved?

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Had Japan focused on the USSR instead of the US, I think the Axis may have pulled it off.

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How many Japanese do you think there were? They're great on the water/near the water - they would have gone, at most, 200 miles inside the USSR.

The Russians had nothing but time and bodies. Once Hitler got bogged down in Russia it was over. The scope of the problem was enormous for Germany - an analogue is the U.S. Civil War - the Confederates looked unstoppable for 2 years. The Germans looked unstoppable for 2 years. The Japanese looked unstoppable (once they engaged the U.S.) for about 6 months.

Why? They were on a war footing first, they were motivated, martial cultures completely ready to fight on day one. But, they took on their industrial and numerical superiors. Stalin, for all of his deserved reputation as a thug, was an extremely savvy and adroit strategic thinker. Once he made the decision to trade space for time, while he relocated his industrial capacity to the relative security of the Ural Mountains, he had made the strategic move that would win the war in the East. He only had to hold his major population centers and strategic road networks - he didn't have to defend every square inch of land - Russia had plenty of land. They pursued a scorched Earth program to lengthen the German supply lines.

By the time the tide had turned at Stalingrad, the Russians were cranking out about 1000 T-34s per month - the Germans had a fine tank, the Panther (Panzer Mk VI), but they could only make about 60 of those per month, and even fewer Tigers. 16 to 1.

And we haven't even gotten to the manpower advantage - over 3 to 1.