History Main / AmericaWinsTheWar

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->''"We saved your ass in Vietnam!"''
-->-- '''[[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]]''' to some British citizens, [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS15E4TheReginaMonologues "The Regina Monologues"]]

America Wins The War is a form of HollywoodHistory in which a story implies or outright states that the United States single-handedly won UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.[[note]]To be fair, the USA 'did' provide the USSR with 9/10 of all lend-lease material sent, which in turn accounted for some 4-5% of the USSR's total wartime production. That percentage is a little deceptive, however, as that figure was more like 10-15% of the USSR's production during the first year (1941-2) of its involvement in the war (when Soviet industry was still relocating to the Urals). The lend-lease was also concentrated on several very specific items to free up Soviet industry to focus on other things; as much as 80% of the Red Army's trucks and a similar proportion of their radios and leather boots (as well as ''all'' the coffee, chocolate, tinned beef, and tobacco) came from overseas. All that said, there was a certain imbalance of 'blood' versus 'iron' spent to achieve victory, one very much in the USSR's 'favor' with 9-14 million Soviet military and 15-20 million Soviet civilian dead versus 2 million suffered by The Allies (minus India and China). This is where the saying 'The Allies bought victory with Soviet blood and paid in Spam' comes from. German dead and crippled stood at 5+ million, for comparison.[[/note]] Sometimes, it's [[UnfortunateImplications unintentional]]; the viewpoint or focus is simply too narrow for the audience to be reminded of the bigger picture. Other times, though, it's a blatant example of HollywoodHistory.

When this trope is in play, the efforts and contributions of the other "Western" Allies are downplayed, and the Eastern Front (where more than ''80%'' of the Wehrmacht was engaged at any one time after June 22 1941, and where the Germans lost ''2/3'' of their dead and captured[[note]]Though this is a little non-indicative, as German troops surrendered in droves to the Western Allies in the last couple of months of the war - Operational Group Steiner, for instance, infamously refused to attempt to break the siege of Berlin and instead tried to march west and reach Anglo-American lines so they could surrender to them.[[/note]]) is considered a ''sideshow'', if it's even mentioned at all. Often it seems like the only other Allied nation-state that actually did anything to fight Germany was the UK, which (after the Poles and [[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys French got their asses handed to them]]) kept the hopeless fight alive until the USA joined in and saved the day. This is likely a result of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar making American educators and filmmakers unwilling to glorify [[DirtyCommunists the Soviet Union]] or [[NoMoreEmperors China]] (especially [[RedChina Maoist]] [[DirtyCommunists China]]).

In particularly nasty cases, films based on actual WWII events will be warped to make the most prominent characters into US soldiers--see Steve [=McQueen=] in ''Film/TheGreatEscape'' and, perhaps most infamously, the film ''Film/{{U571}}''. It will occasionally even be said that WWII only began on December 7, 1941, when the United States entered the war, although that's usually poor phrasing or mixing up the dates, rather than a belief that the war did not begin until the US entry.

The D-Day landings are another good example. Many American-made productions will focus solely on Omaha Beach, the most heavily fortified of the four landing sites as well as the best-defended--both facts which Allied intelligence failed to realize prior to the operation. The carnage that ensued is a favourite among producers, since it emphasizes the sacrifice Americans made during the war--but doing so gives the impression that Omaha Beach was ''the'' decisive turning point that led to the Allied victory in Europe. The focus on Omaha Beach is also partially because ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'' did it, [[FollowTheLeader other games/movies/TV shows want to replicate its success]], and because it's more exciting to show a strongly opposed landing than an unopposed one -- not that the other landings were exactly unopposed (for instance, Canadian troops landing at Juno Beach on that day faced opposition almost as formidable, but punched through quickly and made better progress towards their objectives in spite of it[[note]]Due to better small-unit communication and leadership, something the military training of smaller nation-states tends to emphasize given their lesser material resources. Not to mention that the Canadians accepted "Hobart's Funnies" such as the amphibious tanks to give the landing troops armor support.[[/note]]), but still.

Cases of this trope are not limited to the European Theater. Most films featuring the Pacific theatre only focus on the naval and air battles fought by the U.S., appearing as though they were the sole force fighting in the Pacific. In reality, UK and Australian forces played significant roles against overwhelming forces in atrocious conditions, and many other nations contributed as well. Not to mention the [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar brutally violent war in China]], probably the most ignored battlefront of the war. This neglect is strange given that it was the longest conflict (starting in 1937) and believed to be the the second-bloodiest theatre of war in human history after the Eastern European Theatre.

Keep in mind that despite having the name "America Wins The War," this is '''not''' a strictly American trope. The British can and will exaggerate ''their'' role in the war as well, with an additional jab that the Americans were not only late to the party but also stole all the credit, and additionally only joined in when they knew who was going to win. Russia also gets this; there, you'll find claims that WWII lasted from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 -- when this was actually just the duration of the war between the USSR and Germany.[[note]]More specifically, in a classic Russian history course, it is mentioned that the war was fought elsewhere for quite some time, but only the Great Patriotic War is studied in detail - which still gives this impression.[[/note]] Which, ironically, sells the Soviet Union short, because their successful campaigns against Japan in 1939 and late 1945 aren't included in that time frame. Lately they've also picked up the [[MakeTheBearAngryAgain highly disturbing tendency]] to [[WrittenByTheWinners gloss over or outright deny some of the crimes that the Soviet Union committed]] during and shortly after the war. In short, many countries have tried to play up their part in the war at the expense of others and such examples are more than welcome.

Some see this general 'limited scope' thing as extending to the "official" date of the war's beginning, September 1st, 1939, the date of Germany's invasion of Poland. Most, however, accept that the moniker of 'World War' denotes merely the geography of a war (the British Empire alone spanned three continents at the time), rather than [[UnfortunateImplications implying the conflict wasn't 'serious' or something]] ([[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan the Japan of the time]], and many Japanese ultranationalists since, call it [[InsistentTerminology 'The China Incident']]). Though bloody and horrific in its own right[[note]]With war-dead to the tune of at least 10 and as many as 20 million (the Chinese Civil War that followed has to account for another 10 million or so, but Communist China, in [[ImplausibleDeniability classic form, likes to pretend that no one died in it]]), as well as an impressive gamut of war-crimes like mass-rape (e.g. Nanjing) and live-human-experimentation[[/note]], [[SecondSinoJapaneseWar the war]] that [[UsefulNotes/ChiangKaiShek Chiang Kai-Shek's]] [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors Guomindang]] waged against UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan wasn't part of the 'World War' until the Imperial Navy lashed out to take Malaya and the Philippines.

None of this is meant to diminish the contribution the United States, or any other single country, made to winning World War II, of course. The United States was very important, since not only was it the main presence on the Western and Pacific Fronts, but by virtue of heavy European investment over the last century or so they had developed the world's no.1 economy, accounting for perhaps a third of the entire world's GDP and maybe as much as 'half' of its industry (though not all of the latter was useful, of course). The United States also had more than twice the population of the Commonwealth, India aside. From the point of American entry, the Allies could have just broken even in the death count and material-destruction figures and still have won (Guomindang China aside, of course). Josef Stalin is on record acknowledging that without American loans and industry backing them up the Soviets would have had far more dead and crippled, and there would basically have been no chance of the Allies ''winning'' any part of Europe in the peace to follow (when the USSR won in 1946/7, or '48 at the latest). None of the anti-Axis powers won the war all by their lonesome; everyone had their part, and the USA's was certainly in the top three.

Lastly, winning a war means nothing unless one also [[StrategyVersusTactics "wins the peace"]], as was the case [[NapoleonicWars in Vienna in 1815]] and infamously not [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI at Versailles in 1918]]. In the aftermath of World War II, the USA and Britain and the USSR all deserve recognition for demarking and respecting crystal-clear 'spheres of influence' that kept the peace despite the outbreak of the Yugoslavian, Greek, and [[NoMoreEmperors Chinese]] civil wars. When the CCP gained the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War, and the USA began to [[RedScare see the USSR as a threat]], the USA also began to funnel a great deal of money into reconstructing Western European economies[[note]]Britain got a lot less than France or Germany, as conservative American opinion was appalled that they had the temerity to elect a socialist government; Britain were still repaying US loans, written off for other countries, well into the 1980's.[[/note]] so that they [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar could sustain larger militaries and thus avoid the need for committing US troops to Western Europe in its defense]]. The membership of the USSR and USA in the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations also gave it a lot more clout than its predecessor the League of Nations.

On the flip side, this trope might be known as "Nazis Fight Alone." In media about the European Theater, only German soldiers will serve as the antagonists.[[labelnote:*]]And when non-German Axis forces ''are'' shown, [[SelectiveHistoricalArmoury it's likely they're still using German weapons anyway]].[[/labelnote]] A possible but still very rare exception would be North Africa, where the Italians made up a good portion of the troops fighting there. Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Finns, and the various foreign units of the SS are almost entirely absent, despite their sizable presence on the Eastern Front.

See also AmericaSavesTheDay, of which this is a sub-trope, and HollywoodHistory, of which ''that'' is a sub-trope.

'''Note''': This trope specifically deals with UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It does not apply to any other war, particularly modern conflicts.
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!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* Webcomic/AxisPowersHetalia: Set in WWII. America's plan to defeat Germany? All the other Allies support him while he wins the war. "I'm the Hero!"
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comicbooks]]
* ''Comicbook/SgtRock'' and his 1960s spin-off series ''The Losers'' had one small team of US commandos pretty much holding up the Allied war effort.
** But generally averted in the other major DCUniverse WWII "team" series, ''Comicbook/{{Blackhawk}}'', about a multinational squadron of pilots where the leader is Polish (although sometimes he is a first-generation American of Polish descent). Even the American members of the team are generally immigrants or refugees from other countries.
* As did ''[[NickFury Sgt. Fury]] and his HowlingCommandos''. At least Fury's team actually had a (stereotypical) British soldier on it.
* Averted in ''ComicBook/AtomicRobo'', where of the five issues dealing with the titular robot's exploits against Nazi super-science, three of them has him teamed up with British agents (including one extremely {{Badass}} and nigh-unintelligible Scotsman).
* Given a head nod in ''ComicBook/ThePunisher: Comicbook/CivilWar'', when Frank is having a tense disagreement over tactics with ComicBook/CaptainAmerica.
-->'''Cap''': My ways stopped [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]], boy.\\
'''Frank''': [[WithDueRespect No sir]], the Russians stopped Hitler.
* British comics set in World War 2 tended to concentrate on the Desert War up until El Alamein, the last major battle won by the British and Empire forces without the involvement of American troops.
* ''ComicBook/TheBoys'':
** Invoked as part of Frenchie's back story. An American on holiday in France draws ire when he claims the US liberated France single-handedly, going so far as to call the French [[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys cowards]]. Frenchie is [[BerserkButton less than]] [[CurbStompBattle impressed]].
** Also averted when fighting Stormfront. Billy (English), Mother's Milk (American) and Frenchie ([[CaptainObvious ...French]]) are whaling on Stormfront (a Nazi super), but he's still standing. Then Billy, very much aware of the parallels of the current situation, asks Stormfront about the guys who reached Berlin first... [[MotherRussiaMakesYouStrong Hello, Vas.]]
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[[folder:Fan Fiction]]
* Subverted in ''FanFic/WorldwarWarOfEquals''. America's military is considered the biggest threat to Race domination of Earth and they provide assistance to Mexico, Iraq, and Australia. However, many operations in the American homeland succeed with the help of Canadian forces and they help fight The Race's advance in the north west United States.
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[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
* ''Film/{{U571}}'', which Americanized the story of the British capture of ''U-110'' and her all-important Enigma machine. In real life, most of the captured machines were acquired by the British and the original breaking of the code was done by the Polish (the first captured Enigma being literally found at the Warsaw Post Office in a parcel addressed to the German Embassy). ''U-571'' herself was never captured. When the film was released in the UK it had to have a disclaimer added at the start stating that it was in no way based on real events. Ironically, the filmmakers could have avoided all this by basing the movie on U.S. Navy's even more dramatic capture of ''U-505'', making this film a trifecta of America Wins The War, ArtisticLicenseHistory and ArtisticLicenseShips.
* Averted in ''Film/EnemyAtTheGates'', an American film about a Soviet sniper in the battle of Stalingrad... in which Americans played no part. Granted, director/producer/writer Jean-Jacques Annaud is French, but Mandalay Pictures produced the movie, and Paramount Pictures distributed it.
%% Whoever changed this to say it was a British and not American movie, look up the actual information on which companies were responsible for this movie, and please don't do that again.
* ''Film/ChurchillTheHollywoodYears'' parodies this. It suggests that Winston Churchill was a tough as nails American G.I. (Creator/ChristianSlater) who won WWII and romanced then-Princess Elizabeth. The Churchill history is familiar with? The film says he was in fact an actor called Roy Bubbles. The irony of this is compounded by the fact that Churchill's mother was American. Never mind that the RealLife Winston Churchill had a remarkable political and military career already long ''before'' WWII broke out. The Brits didn't pick just any nobody for Prime Minister in 1940.
* ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'' was criticized for this in the UK, since the sole reference in the movie to any non-American involvement in the battle was a brief exchange on how "overrated" General Montgomery was. Of course, like its successor, ''Series/BandOfBrothers'', the narrative maintains a narrow focus on a small unit who might not have encountered foreign Allied soldiers during their mission and might have actually espoused this opinion ([[UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery Field Marshal Montgomery]] being not-very-popular with a large segment of the American military).
* Pretty much averted in the film ''Film/TheGreatRaid'' about the Raid at Cabanatuan wherein the American Alamo Scouts with help from Filipino guerillas rescued a group of American [=POWs=] in the Philippines from a Japanese prison camp. The film showed just how critical the local forces were to the rescue by showing the guerillas holding back Japanese reinforcements at an important choke point and providing hundreds of carabao carts to quickly transport the weakened and diseased American [=POWs=].
* Absolutely averted in ''Film/TheLongestDay''. It includes practically ''everyone''. Also the Germans. Memorable for its portrayal of German officers:
-->'''Blumentritt:''' ''(as a sarcastic response to the message, that the Führer is asleep, and therefore unable to give permission to deploy vital Panzer reserves to Normandy)'' This is history. We are living an historical moment. We are going to lose the war because our glorious Führer has taken a sleeping pill and is not to be awakened. Sometimes I wonder which side God is on.
** The film does tend to focus on the American sectors, especially Omaha beach (with some justification, given the intensity of the fighting and the numbers of Americans vs. other Allies involved on June 6, 1944), and the Canadians are nowhere to be seen (although it is mentioned that they are making good progress in their section). Also, it is one of several major Hollywood movies focusing on the Western front very much to the exclusion of developments on the Eastern front, which presents an incomplete picture even for 1944, when the crushing Soviet summer offensive was coordinated with the Normandy landing.
* The 1945 Creator/ErrolFlynn film ''Objective, Burma!'' caused a minor uproar in the UK for supposedly suggesting that British involvement in the Burmese campaign was minimal, when, in fact, the British had been the primary combatants in the campaign. [[UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill Churchill]] himself was said to have been incensed by the film, and it was denounced in the ''Times''. WarnerBros. withdrew the film from circulation in the UK, and it did not appear there until 1952.
** Interestingly author/screenwriter Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser, who had been an infantryman in Burma during the war, said in his book ''Hollywood History'' that he rather liked ''Objective, Burma!' and that at least American troops had fought in that theater.
* In ''Film/ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'', Milton Berle's character invokes this while arguing with Terry-Thomas. It proves to be something of a BerserkButton for the latter.
-->"As far as I'm concerned, the whole British race is practically finished. If it hadn't been for Lend-Lease, if we hadn't kept your whole country afloat by giving you billions that you never even said 'Thank you' for, the whole phony outfit would've sunk under the Atlantic years ago...What are you stopping for?"
-->"GetOut of this machine."
** Well the Brits did say thank you for lend lease. A lot of British bases passed in American hands, the most prominent one later in the Cold War being Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean the only US base in the region which is actually a British Overseas Territory. Also US had first dibs on technological developments in the UK for 50 years after Lend Lease, that is how the Harrier became the AV-8 and why the first tank equipped with Chobham Armour (developed by the Brits) was the M1 Abrams (US).
* Averted in the 1961 adaptation of ''Film/TheGunsOfNavarone''. The team consisted of a American (Mallory), two Brits (Franklin and Miller), two Greeks (Stavros and Pappadimos) and one person of unknown nationality ("Butcher" Brown, played by Welshman Stanley Baker).
** Actually zig-zaged as in the book Mallory was from New Zealand ( and based on the real world Mallory that died in 1924 while trying to conquer the Everest) and Miller was the American. The Film kind of falls in this trope as it has the higher ranking character switched to American.
* The (Peoples' Republic of) Chinese equivalent appears in ''Film/IpMan'', which is set during the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar. The concluding captions mention China's defeat of Japan without mentioning [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo the Guomindang or the international Allied forces]] that had pushed UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan back and blockaded the Home Islands in preparation for an amphibious invasion. In reality, the Guomindang and their warlord allies acted as a huge punching bag, losing battle after battle until The United States, Britain, and later the Soviet Union entered the conflict. The importance of US Lend-lease - which was critical to propping the Guomindang with things like massive loans and anti-tank weaponry - also goes unmentioned, naturally.
* The 2011 ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'' movie, of all places, makes it a point of him having a MultinationalTeam backing him up, and that the program that helped give him his powers was a joint Anglo-American operation. However, you won't find any mention of the Soviet Union save amidst the sea of flags in the end credits.
* This trope is blatantly invoked in ''Film/IronSky'', when the President of the U.S. defends her nation's claim to the [[spoiler:Helium-3 deposits on the moon]] by saying that America won World War 2 and saved the world (albeit with tiny contributions here and there by her allies)... She even goes so far as to base this historic "fact" on Hollywood war movies which "never lie". PlayedForLaughs, of course.
* Thoroughly averted in ''Film/{{Patton}}'', despite what some would have you believe. Yes, the film focuses on the deeds of George S. Patton throughout World War II, but Patton does not single-handedly curb stomp the Nazis. His rivalry with British general UsefulNotes/BernardLawMontgomery features prominently, and he expresses frustration when resources are diverted to important British operations rather than his own. He is just as much upset by the Soviets conquering Berlin and being the ones to force Nazi Germany to surrender.
** Early in the film, Patton boasts that America had never experienced defeat while addressing his troops. Historian Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' ''The Civil War'' series pointed out the irony of this, given that Patton's grandfather had been a Confederate officer and certainly lost a war of his own.
* On the whole averted in German movies about the war, a lot of which focus on the Eastern Front. Here the battles of Stalingrad and Berlin are particular favourites, maybe in part because with their intense house-to-house fighting they are easier to recreate than e. g. the battle of Kursk, the greatest tank battle in history.
* Subverted in ''Film/InglouriousBasterds'': the trailers suggested that the movie would be about a bunch of US special forces guys killing Germans in occupied Europe, but the main plot of the film is about the cat-and-mouse game between a vengeful Jewish French woman and a MagnificentBastard Austrian SS man (mostly in subtitled French and German) and the US special forces guys are the comic relief B-plot.
* "We cannot win it (the war) without the Americans!" Says Churchill in ''Film/IntoTheStorm2009'' (the Churchill biopic). . Despite this, the movie actually subverts this: The Americans are shown as worthy allies, but the British (and to a lesser extent the Russians) are shown as just as responsible, if not more so, for the ultimate victory.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* This trope is pretty much the entire justification for Tom Brokaw to write ''The Greatest Generation'', a book about the brilliance of Americans born in the 1920s and 1930s.
* Sergei Lukyanenko mocks this attitude in the book ''Literature/DayWatch'' where an American soldier (a Light Other) in Prague talks about how they liberated the place from the Germans. Earlier in the same book, Las is described as wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a Red Army-man bayoneting a Wehrmacht soldier and the text "Remember who really won the War!"
** Las was in "Twilight (Dusk) Watch", and [[{{Bowdlerization}} (in the original Russian version, at least)]] he wears t-shirt with a picture of Russian paratrooper knifing "negro in American uniform". And the text was something like "We can ''help to recall'' who won the Second World War".
* Averted in ''Literature/TheGunsOfNavarone''. It was about an Allied commando team, consisting of a New Zealander, an American, a Greek, a Scot, and another Brit. They were sent on their mission by the British army, to destroy enemy guns threatening British ships, that were on their way to rescue British soldiers. The blurb on the movie tie-in edition said something along the lines of "They had to succeed where the entire ''U.S. Navy'' had failed!" This story is based on the SAS attack lead by Paddy Mayne against the guns at Sicily prior to Allied invasion of the Island.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* Spoofed in a 2006 ''Series/TheDailyShow''. Jon Stewart comments that the Iraq War has "gone on longer than UsefulNotes/{{WW2}}"; Englishman John Oliver corrects him that [=WW2=] was going on for 2 years longer than the US involvement. Though Stewart wasn't correct until 2009, John Oliver wasn't historically correct ''either'' if the Sino-Japanese angle, considered a separate war in European countries, is factored in (which would place the start at July 1937).
* Explored in the episodes of ''Series/FoylesWar'' which focus on the American entry into the war; whilst the American soldiers who appear are treated largely sympathetically, there's a certain amount of realistic tension between them and the British characters, many of whom take the attitude that they took their time to get involved and now seem to be taking over everything since they got here - and the American 'we're here to save the day' attitude doesn't entirely help matters or endear them.
* ''Series/{{Friends}}'': Invoked in the fourth series finale when Ross and Emily's parents are arguing over paying the costs of the wedding.
--> '''Mr. Geller:''' "All right! Fine, but I just want to say, I'm not paying for your wine cellar, you thieving, would-be-speaking-German-if-it-weren't-for-us, cheap little man!"
* In ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' there is an alternate timeline where Lenin was assassinated, so quite naturally Germany didn't much bother with Russia and instead invaded the United States.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''. "The City On The Edge Of Forever". Due to pacifist movement USA did not enter WW II, and Hitler won precisely because of it, causing humanity to be enslaved and never reaching the stars.
* [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in the Creator/KenBurns documentary, ''TheWar'', as its format was specifically created to show, compare, and contrast WWII's impacts on 4 American towns and people from them. Since obviously few if any people from those towns would have been with the British, Russian or any other military, by default it focuses on the American parts of the war (although the British and Russians do get the occasional narrator-said nod).
* In the ''Series/DadsArmy'' episode "My British Buddy", the Walmington Home Guard are infuriated by the arrival of American troops whose attitude is that they're going to succeed where the British have failed. Matters aren't helped by the fact that the first thing the American soldiers do when they get there is try and steal the British soldiers' girlfriends, and then act very entitled and hard-done-by when they find they can't get a good drink. It all ends in a fistfight.
** [[JerkAss Warden Hodges']] comments didn't help the situation any either - mockingly saying that the US had joined the war quickly this time, "Two and a half years instead of [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne three]]!"
* For a long, long, time, the definitive TV-documentary history of UsefulNotes/WW2 was the British-made ''The World At War'', which condensed [=WW2=] into twenty-six hours of TV narrative. Scrupulous care was taken to make this as objective as possible, to allow the American and Russian involvements to be related accurately and in context. The last thing the makers wanted was half a year of British triumphalism. American TV has since commissioned its own version of TWAW. And whaddya know, the British and Russian aspects have been pared back to invisibility, as second-rate allies of a triumphant world-leading USA...
* Whenever the French were mentioned in front of [[EverybodyLovesRaymond Raymond's dad]], his automatic response was "Pulled their ass out of two world wars!"
** Which was deeply ironic, coming from a [[NationalStereotypes Italian-American]]....
* A ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' sketch featured an uptight and AmbiguouslyGay British host getting into a snit with Mickey Rooney, played by DanaCarvey. As they traded barbs, Mickey sneered at the host: "All I know is we hauled your butt out of two world wars!"
* ''Series/BandOfBrothers'' is a bit of an interesting example, as it focuses on American soldiers in the war, but most of the main cast are played by British actors. Foreign allies do show up in the series, though not necessarily in a positive light. In Market Garden, the British armor support is shown to be [[TanksForNothing completely ineffective]], forcing Easy Company to retreat (In the book, Ambrose not-so-subtly implies that Operation Market Garden, which was led by Montgomery, was doomed to fail and that Patton's plan for crossing the Rhine would have been far more effective - a longtime debate in military history circles). Later on, Easy is tasked with rescuing a number of British soldiers trapped behind enemy lines, though both sides do get along very well after the success of the mission. When Easy Company is advancing on Eagle's Nest, they are specifically ordered to get there before the French do.
** Generally, ''BandOfBrothers'' averts this trope. For instance, the epilogue to the Operation Market Garden episode points out that the British suffered far worse casualties at Arnhem than the [=101st=]. Similarly, the British tank support ''does'' cover Easy's retreat in that episode, and the only reason the British tanks do badly is because their orders force them to "avoid unnecessary destruction of property" which would have allowed them to ambush the German tanks, rather than be ambushed.
* ''Series/ThePacific'' earned some minor controversy in Australia after the tv station that aired the show advertised it as the 'fight for Australia', despite Australia doing well enough on its own against the Japanese Army.
** In the show itself J P Morgan causes a fight with some Australia troops by disrespecting the Australians and claiming that the USA was saving them from having 'chopsticks up their ass'.
* ''Series/TheRatPatrol'' was licensed in the UK but taken off air due to the volume of complaints received about its exaggeration of the American involvement in what had been primarily a UK and Commonwealth theatre.
* The British attitude towards this trope is mocked in ''Series/DoctorWho'', "The Day of The Doctor" - the justification UNIT gives for keeping Jack's time machine locked away from the Americans is, "Americans with the ability to change history? You've seen their movies."
* ''Series/HorribleHistories'', being a British {{Edutainment}} series, reminds us constantly that the "Britain wins the war" variant (often taught to British children) is just as untrue as the American version. For instance, the RAF Pilots introduce us to their Eastern European members and go out of their way to mention that "some of our bravest men were Polish and Czech", and a sketch taking place in a trench in World War I features a British soldier trying to find the British unit he's assigned to, but instead meeting French-Canadian, Australian, and South African soldiers (with extremely silly accents) fighting as part of the British Army.
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[[folder:Videogames]]
* Averted in the ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' series, in which you change your player character every once in a while so that you can see the war from several Allied perspectives; one mission concerns an American paratrooper, then you're a British commando in a few other missions, then a Russian grunt, etc. Of course, you rarely hear of what else is going on as you are fighting.
** ''Big Red One'' plays it straight, putting you in the boots of an American soldier for almost the entire game.
* ''VideoGame/CompanyOfHeroes'' plays it straight in the first game. The main campaign for the game follows the US Army from D-Day onwards.
** The expansion campaign ''Opposing Fronts'' has one campaign as the German Army as they steamroll the British airborne during Operation Market Garden.
** The sequel is on the Eastern Front for the first time, following the Russians during the Stalingrad campaign.
* The ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'' series, however, tend to play this pretty straight, in which you're an American soldier who seems to single-handedly ensure victory in every major Allied campaign and save the day. In later expansion packs, this even included battles in which ''America played no part whatsoever''. That said, the second game of the series focused on a French woman, Manon Batiste, fighting the Germans as a Maquis and an OSS operative.
** ''[=MoH=]: Airborne'', where each mission ends with a debriefing voice-over from the commanding officer. After a relatively minor skirmish in Italy in early 1943, he proclaims "The war has begun", and after a very over-the-top raid on a flak tower in early 1945 he says that the war is over and effectively gives the Airborne itself full credit in his speech. The British are mentioned in passing in one mission, Operation Market Garden - fascinatingly, in contrast to the earlier ''[=MoH=]: Frontline'', it is presented as a great victory in spite of the fact it's actually the Allies' most notorious bungle. It's also an example of the reverse angle (as in the Axis consisting entirely of Germans), as despite half the game taking place in Italy you only fight Italian blackshirts in the first half of the first level - where they are [[ArtificialStupidity much dumber than the German soldiers]] and [[ImproperlyPlacedFirearms only use German weapons]].
* ''VideoGame/OperationDarkness'' mixes this trope up a bit, by instead using Britain Wins The War. Both the plot of the game and its brief historical asides emphasize the British contribution to the war effort in the same way this trope does for the US. The funny thing? It's a Japanese game.
* Averted - ''probably'' - in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert''. As per HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct, this version of WWII is quite different, with a Soviet invasion of Europe being countered by Allies led by a German supreme commander and aided by technology developed by AlbertEinstein, while WordOfGod is that America didn't directly join the war until the Soviets were already losing. That said, the Allied armory includes what look like Abrams tanks and M16 rifles ([[AnachronismStew in the 1950's]]), but it's unclear whether this is due to an extensive lend-lease campaign by the United States and the result of {{alternate history}} shenanigans, or simply because the game reuses a lot of assets from the original ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianDawn Command & Conquer]]''.
** Outright inverted in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'', as the United States grudgingly have to ask for help to the European Allies. The French President is [[FrenchJerk stereotypically uppity]]. In the intro cutscene of ''Yuri's Revenge'', though, the desperate U.S. President Dugan acknowledges Yuri that it in fact [[BlatantLies was the United States who won the war]]. The backstory makes it a bit of a mess, however, in that the whole reason the game is ''Film/{{Red Dawn|1984}}'' the RTS is because Premier Romanov blames ''America'' for his country's loss of the Great World War II - rather than, you know, Germany or Greece, for doing the actual ass-kicking, he blames the guys who gave them a couple tanks to do the ass-kicking with (or possibly he blames the USA because, only joining the last war towards the end and therefore not having their manpower exhausted by slogging through much of Europe, they ended up handling a lot of the occupation duties).
** And averted again in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3''. The viewpoint for the Allied Campaign is mostly from the British, and while the USA do contribute heavily to the Allied army, the paranoid U.S. President Ackerman isn't willing to cooperate with the Soviets, whether or not they're fighting the Rising Sun together. [[spoiler:In the Imperial Campaign it turns out the President is an android spy]].
* Averted in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' with the Cobra Unit, which while led by an American (and apparently a hugely patriotic one) contains at least two Russians and three people of unknown origin (all that's said is that they're from the Allied Nations). The game tells you rather erroneously that they all but won WWII as if all the other millions of Allied soldiers were just twiddling their thumbs at the Axis Powers.
* Averted in the ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}}'' series. The Chimera have pretty much steamrolled over all of Europe and Asia. In the sequel, they begin their invasion of the United States...and steamroll over ''them'' too. It's only the SuperSoldier main character and his pals that achieve anything even resembling success.
* The ''VideoGame/{{Wolfenstein}}'' series is about American soldier B.J. Blazkowicz taking on the Nazis [[OneManArmy all by himself]].
** ''[[VideoGame/ReturnToCastleWolfenstein Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory]]'' allows you to play as one of two sides: one is UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, guess who the other is? Considering you know how the war turns out the implication is a given. In this specific case, however, it's probably less an intentional use of this trope, and more paralleling the singleplayer games.
** ''VideoGame/{{Wolfenstein|2009}}'' (2009) can be said to subvert this. While you are still American OneManArmy B.J. Blazkowicz, the assistance of the German resistance is necessary and invaluable to your success, which also nicely averts the common AllGermansAreNazis trope that appears so often in Nazi-based [=FPSs=].
* Averted in the ''VideoGame/IL2Sturmovik'' series of WWII combat flight sims. The US is an important aerial power there, but the focus is more on their struggles in the Pacific theatre instead of the Western European front. They're certainly not winning single-handedly all the time, either. The British, Australian, Soviet and Dutch air forces play an equal role in the Pacific (British pilots attacking Okinawa from Royal Navy aircraft carriers, Soviets fighting in Manchuria and the Dutch defending their colonial turf in Indonesia) and often join US forces on various missions. In a humorous inversion, the Brits are sometimes even ''in command'' of certain US Army/Navy Air Corps squadrons.
** And this is a notable example because it is played straight in many, many combat flight simulators, where the focus is overwhelmingly on the European Western front and/or the battles between Japan and the US.
*** To be fair to the Western Allies, the Germans did commit most of their air strength against the British and Americans and suffered their heaviest air losses against them. The air battles of Western Europe and the Pacific dwarfed those of the Eastern front.
** Considering that the Il-2 series were developed in Russia, the series' even-handed coverage (including its ready acknowledgment of the importance of British- and American-built Lend-Lease aircraft that were used alongside Soviet types in the Soviet Air Force) also counts as an aversion of The Soviet Union Wins the War.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/RedOrchestra'' and its sequel: they focus entirely on the conflict between Germany and Russia. To an extent this is also averted in the mods that add other Allied factions; for example, the only D-Day battle present in ''Darkest Hour'' is the Canadian's Juno Beach.
* Averted in the original ''Day of Defeat'' by Creator/ValveSoftware, which featured both American and British armies fighting against Nazi Germany, albeit with a much more limited weapon selection for the British. Played straight in the sequel, which features only the United States versus Nazi Germany.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/HarkAVagrant'' mentions this trend in war movies [[http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=292 here]].
* Parodied in ''Webcomic/ScandinaviaandtheWorld'', where [[http://satwcomic.com/better-late-than-never America believes that he single-handedly saved all of the other countries]] during World War II, despite the fact that [[http://satwcomic.com/america-has-spoken he didn't even know what was going on.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' episode, "The Savage Time," the immortal supervillain, Vandal Savage, manages to send a laptop full of technical information for superweapons to himself during World War II. There was also a video recording message telling himself what to do with the info, such as usurp Hitler and a specific warning to ready the Third Reich for a massive US/UK/Canada seaborne invasion of Normandy on June 6th, 1944. While the success of Operation Overlord in 1944 was definitely very bad news for Germany, why no mention of the Soviet Union's offensive at the same time in the East?
** The laptop he sent back in time could have arrived ''years'' before 1945 (the Martian says it). Savage had enough time to set himself up as a revolutionary scientist, prove his new weapons, and then remove Hitler. Since there's no mention made of the Soviets, one could assume he never invaded the USSR or instead had already destroyed them, and was instead focusing on the center of Allied supply lines, the US.
** Also, Savage shut the laptop off while the message was in mid-sentence, implying that there may have been more to it.
* Spoofed in the ''MonkeyDust'' sketch ''Hollywood Pictures Presents: The Diary of Anne Frank'', along with a slew of other Hollywood clichés. The sketch ends with Anne Frank's all-American boyfriend Johnny killing a room full of Nazis with an American flag, then sucker-punching Hitler with a cry of "This one's for President Churchill!" [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xJq1f_8bw4]]
** Several other spoofs appear also, one set in the 'Camelot' era where everyone has American accents, and then 'They all come home' which is a parody of ''Film/BlackHawkDown'' lampooning various American military cliches.
* Parodied indirectly in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''; in an episode set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, Moe tells Lisa's British fiance that "We saved your ass in World War II." The fiance replies "Well, we saved your [America's] ''arse'' in [[WorldWarThree World War ''III'']]", and Moe concedes the point.
** ''Bart-Mangled Banner'', which is mainly a TakeThat episode aimed at misguided patriotism, plays with it. The Simpsons are rescued from the sea by a boat captained by a xenophobic Frenchman, who acknowledges his unjustified hatred of the Americans by admitting they were the (not a, the) country [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo which saved France from the Germans]] - [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne twice]].
** In ''[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS15E4TheReginaMonologues The Regina Monologues]]'' Homer, as usual, handles this in his usual way when visiting London: ''"We're big shot tourists from everyone's favorite country, the USA. We saved your ass in Vietnam and shared our prostitutes with Creator/HughGrant"''.
[[/folder]]

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%% No Real Life, please.[[admin]]
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* Averted in ''AtomicRobo'', where of the five issues dealing with the titular robot's exploits against Nazi super-science, three of them has him teamed up with British agents (including one extremely {{Badass}} and nigh-unintelligible Scotsman).

* Invoked as part of Frenchie's back story in ''ComicBook/TheBoys''. An American on holiday in France draws ire when he claims the US liberated France single-handedly, going so far as to call the French [[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys cowards]]. Frenchie is [[BerserkButton less than]] [[CurbStompBattle impressed]].

* Subverted in ''Film/InglouriousBasterds'': the trailers suggested that the movie would be about a bunch of US special forces guys killing Germans in occupied Europe, but the main plot of the film is about the cat-and-mouse game between a vengeful French Jewess and a MagnificentBastard Austrian SS man (mostly in subtitled French and German) and the US special forces guys are the comic relief B-plot.

Keep in mind that despite having the name "America Wins The War," this is '''not''' a strictly American trope. The British can and will exaggerate ''their'' role in the war as well, with an additional jab that the Americans were not only late to the party but also stole all the credit, and additionally only joined in when they knew who was going to win. Russia also gets this; there, you'll find claims that WWII lasted from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 -- when this was actually just the duration of the war between the USSR and Germany. Which, ironically, sells the Soviet Union short, because their successful campaigns against Japan in 1939 and late 1945 aren't included in that time frame. Lately they've also picked up the [[MakeTheBearAngryAgain highly disturbing tendency]] to [[WrittenByTheWinners gloss over or outright deny some of the crimes that the Soviet Union committed]] during and shortly after the war. In short, many countries have tried to play up their part in the war at the expense of others and such examples are more than welcome.

* Sergei Lukyanenko mocks this attitude in the book ''DayWatch'' where an American soldier (a Light Other) in Prague talks about how they liberated the place from the Germans. Earlier in the same book, Las is described as wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a Red Army-man bayoneting a Wehrmacht soldier and the text "Remember who really won the War!"

** The film does tend to focus on the American sectors, especially Omaha beach (with some justification, given the intensity of the fighting and the numbers of Americans vs. other Allies involved on June 6, 1944), and the Canadians are nowhere to be seen. Also, it is one of several major Hollywood movies focusing on the Western front very much to the exclusion of developments on the Eastern front, which presents an incomplete picture even for 1944, when the crushing Soviet summer offensive was coordinated with the Normandy landing.

* In the ''JusticeLeague'' episode, "The Savage Time," the immortal supervillain, Vandal Savage, manages to send a laptop full of technical information for superweapons to himself during World War II. There was also a video recording message telling himself what to do with the info, such as usurp Hitler and a specific warning to ready the Third Reich for a massive US/UK/Canada seaborne invasion of Normandy on June 6th, 1944. While the success of Operation Overlord in 1944 was definitely very bad news for Germany, why no mention of the Soviet Union's offensive at the same time in the East?

* ''Churchill: The Hollywood Years'' parodies this. It suggests that Winston Churchill was a tough as nails American G.I. (Creator/ChristianSlater) who won WWII and romanced then-Princess Elizabeth. The Churchill history is familiar with? The film says he was in fact an actor called Roy Bubbles.
** The irony of this is compounded by the fact that Churchill's mother was American.
** Never mind that the RealLife Winston Churchill had a remarkable political and military career already long ''before'' WWII broke out. The Brits didn't pick just any nobody for Prime Minister in 1940.

* Pretty much averted in the film ''The Great Raid'' about the Raid at Cabanatuan wherein the American Alamo Scouts with help from Filipino guerillas rescued a group of American [=POWs=] in the Philippines from a Japanese prison camp. The film showed just how critical the local forces were to the rescue by showing the guerillas holding back Japanese reinforcements at an important choke point and providing hundreds of carabao carts to quickly transport the weakened and diseased American [=POWs=].

* "We cannot win it (the war) without the Americans!" Says Churchill in ''Film/IntoTheStorm'' (the Churchill biopic). . Despite this, the movie actually subverts this: The Americans are shown as worthy allies, but the British (and to a lesser extent the Russians) are shown as just as responsible, if not more so, for the ultimate victory.

-->-- '''[[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]]''' to some British citizens, "The Regina Monologues"

* Parodied indirectly in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''; in an episode set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, Moe tells Lisa's British fiance that "We saved your ass in World War II." The fiance replies "Well, we saved [America's] ''arse'' in World War ''III''", and Moe concedes the point.

** In ''The Regina Monologues'' Homer, as usual, handles this in his usual way when visiting London: ''"We're big shot tourists from everyone's favorite country, the USA. We saved your ass in Vietnam and shared our prostitutes with Hugh Grant"''.

Lastly, winning a war means nothing unless one also [[StrategyVersusTactics "wins the peace"]], as was the case [[NapoleonicWars in Vienna in 1815]] and infamously not [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI at Versailles in 1918]]. In the aftermath of World War II, the USA and Britain and the USSR all deserve recognition for demarking and respecting crystal-clear 'spheres of influence' that kept the peace despite the outbreak of the Yugoslavian, Greek, and [[NoMoreEmperors Chinese]] civil wars. When the CCP gained the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War, and the USA began to [[RedScare see the USSR as a threat]], the USA also began to funnel a great deal of money into reconstructing Western European economies[[note]]Britain got a lot less than France or Germany, as conservative American opinion was appalled that they had the temerity to elect a socialist government; Britainwere still repaying US loans, written off for other countries, well into the 1980's.[[/note]] so that they [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar could sustain larger militaries and thus avoid the need for committing US troops to Western Europe in its defense]]. The membership of the USSR and USA in the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations also gave it a lot more clout than its predecessor the League of Nations.

America Wins The War is a form of HollywoodHistory in which a story implies or outright states that the United States single-handedly won UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.[[note]]To be fair, the USA 'did' provide the USSR with 9/10 of all lend-lease material send to the USSR, which in turn accounted for some 4-5% of the USSR's total wartime production. That percentage is a little deceptive, however, as that figure was more like 10-15% of the USSR's production during the first year (1941-2) of her involvement in the war (when Soviet industry was still relocating to the Urals). The lend-lease was also concentrated on several very specific items to free up Soviet industry to focus on other things; as much as 80% of the Red Army's trucks and a similar proportion of their radios and leather boots (as well as ''all'' the coffee, chocolate, tinned beef, and tobacco) came from overseas. All that said, there was a certain imbalance of 'blood' versus 'iron' spent to achieve victory, one very much in the USSR's 'favour' with 9-14 million Soviet Military and 15-20 million Soviet Civilian dead versus 2 million suffered by The Allies (minus India and China). This is where the saying 'The Allies bought victory with Soviet blood and paid in Spam' comes from. German dead and crippled stood at 5+ million, for comparison.[[/note]] Sometimes, it's [[UnfortunateImplications unintentional]]; the viewpoint or focus is simply too narrow for the audience to be reminded of the bigger picture. Other times, though, it's a blatant example of HollywoodHistory.

* Also averted in ''Saints and Soldiers,'' when the Americans rescue a downed British recon pilot and attempt to return him to friendly lines.

When this trope is in play, the efforts and contributions of the other "Western" Allies are downplayed, and the Eastern Front (where more than ''80%'' of the Wehrmacht was engaged at any one time after June 22 1941, and where the Germans lost ''2/3'' of their dead and captured[[note]]Though this is a little non-indicative, as German troops surrendered in droves to the Western Allies in the last couple of months of the war - Operational Group Steiner, for instance, infamously refused to attempt to break the siege of Berlin and instead tried to march west and reach Anglo-American lines so they could surrender to them.[[/note]]) is considered a ''sideshow'', if it's even mentioned at all. Often it seems like the only other Allied nation-state that actually did anything to fight Germany was the UK, which ([[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys after the Poles and French got their asses handed to them]]) kept the hopeless fight alive until the USA joined in and saved the day. This is likely a result of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar making American educators and filmmakers unwilling to glorify [[DirtyCommunists the Soviet Union]] or [[NoMoreEmperors China]] (especially [[RedChina Maoist]] [[DirtyCommunists China]]).

On the flip side, this trope might be known as "Nazis Fight Alone." In media about the European Theater, only German soldiers will serve as the antagonists.[[labelnote:*]]And when non-German Axis forces ''are'' shown, [[ImproperlyPlacedFirearms it's likely they're still using German weapons anyway]].[[/labelnote]] A possible but still very rare exception would be North Africa, where the Italians made up a good portion of the troops fighting there. Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Finns, and the various foreign units of the SS are almost entirely absent, despite their sizable presence on the Eastern Front.

* Given a head nod in ''ThePunisher: Comicbook/CivilWar'', when Frank is having a tense disagreement over tactics with ComicBook/CaptainAmerica.
-->'''Cap''': My ways stopped [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]], boy.
-->'''Frank''': [[WithDueRespect No sir]], the Russians stopped Hitler.

** Never mind that the RealLife Winston Churchill had a remarkable political and military career already long ''before'' UsefulNotes/WW2 broke out. The Brits didn't pick just any nobody for Prime Minister in 1940.

-->'''Blumentritt:''' (''as a sarcastic response to the message, that the Führer is asleep, and therefore unable to give permission to deploy vital Panzer reserves to Normandy'') This is history. We are living an historical moment. We are going to lose the war because our glorious Führer has taken a sleeping pill and is not to be awakened. Sometimes I wonder which side God is on."
** The film does tend to focus on the American sectors, especially Omaha beach (with some justification, given the intensity of the fighting and the numbers of Americans vs. other Allies involved on June 6, 1944), and the Canadians are nowhere to be seen. Also, it is one of several major Hollywood movies focusing on the Western front very much to the exclusion of developments on the Eastern front, which prevents an incomplete picture even for 1944, when the crushing Soviet summer offensive was coordinated with the Normandy landing.

* Averted in the ''CallOfDuty'' series, in which you change your player character every once in a while so that you can see the war from several Allied perspectives; one mission concerns an American paratrooper, then you're a British commando in a few other missions, then a Russian grunt, etc. Of course, you rarely hear of what else is going on as you are fighting.

* The ''MedalOfHonor'' series, however, tend to play this pretty straight, in which you're an American soldier who seems to single-handedly ensure victory in every major Allied campaign and save the day. In later expansion packs, this even included battles in which ''America played no part whatsoever''. The second game of the series focused on a French woman, Manon Batiste, fighting the Germans as a Maquis and an OSS operative.
** ''[=MoH=]: Airborne'', where each mission ends with a debriefing voice-over from the commanding officer. After a relatively minor skirmish in Italy, 1943 he proclaims "The war has begun" and after a very over-the-top raid on a flak tower in early 1945 he says that the war is over and effectively gives the Airborne itself full credit in his speech. The British are mentioned in passing in one mission, Operation Market Garden - fascinatingly, in contrast to the earlier ''[=MoH=]: Frontline'', it is presented as a great victory in spite of the fact it's actually the Allies' most notorious bungle.
* ''OperationDarkness'' mixes this trope up a bit, by instead using Britain Wins The War. Both the plot of the game and its brief historical asides emphasize the British contribution to the war effort in the same way this trope does for the US. The funny thing? It's a Japanese game.
* Averted - ''probably'' - in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert''. As per HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct, this version of WWII is quite different, with a Soviet invasion of Europe being countered by Allies led by a German supreme commander and aided by technology developed by AlbertEinstein, while WordOfGod is that America didn't directly join the war until the Soviets were already losing. That said, the Allied armory includes what look like Abrams tanks and M16 rifles ([[AnachronismStew in the 1950's]]), but it's unclear whether this is due to an extensive lend-lease campaign by the United States, the result of {{alternate history}} shenanigans, or simply because the game reuses a lot of assets from the original ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianDawn Command & Conquer]]''.

When this trope is in play, the efforts and contributions of the other "Western" Allies are downplayed, and the Eastern Front (where more than ''80%'' of the Wehrmacht was engaged at any one time after June 22 1941, and where the Germans lost ''2/3'' of their dead and captured[[note]] Though this is a little non-indicative, as German troops surrendered in droves to the Western Allies in the last couple of months of the war - Operational Group Steiner, for instance, infamously refused to attempt to break the siege of Berlin and instead tried to march west and reach Anglo-American lines so they could surrender to them. [[/note]]) is considered a ''sideshow'', if it's even mentioned at all. Often it seems like the only other Allied nation-state that actually did anything to fight Germany was the UK, which ([[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys after the Poles and French got their asses handed to them]]) kept the hopeless fight alive until the USA joined in and saved the day. This is likely a result of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar making American educators and filmmakers unwilling to glorify [[DirtyCommunists the Soviet Union]] or [[NoMoreEmperors China]]/[[RedChina Maoist]] [[DirtyCommunists China]].

The D-Day landings are another good example. Many American-made productions will focus solely on Omaha Beach, the most heavily fortified of the four landing sites as well as the best-defended--both facts which Allied intelligence failed to realize prior to the operation. The carnage that ensued is a favourite among producers, since it emphasizes the sacrifice Americans made during the war--but doing so gives the impression that Omaha Beach was ''the'' decisive turning point that led to the Allied victory in Europe. (The focus on Omaha Beach is also partially because ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'' did it, [[FollowTheLeader other games/movies/TV shows want to replicate its success]], and because it's more exciting to show a strongly opposed landing than an unopposed one -- not that the other landings were exactly 'unopposed' (For instance, Canadian troops landing at Juno Beach on that day faced opposition almost as formidable, but punched through quickly and made better progress towards their objectives in spite of it[[note]]Due to better small-unit communication and leadership, something the military training of smaller nation-states tends to emphasize given their lesser material resources. Not to mention that the Canadians accepted the Hobart Funnies such as the amphibious tanks to give the landing troops armor support.[[/note]]), but still.

Cases of this trope are not limited to the European Theater. Most films featuring the Pacific theatre only focus on the naval and air battles fought by the U.S., appearing as though they were the sole force fighting in the Pacific. In reality, UK and Australian forces played significant roles against overwhelming forces in atrocious conditions, and many other nations contributed as well. Not to mention the [[UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar ''brutally'' violent war in China]], probably the most ignored battlefront of the war. This neglect is strange given that it was the longest conflict (starting in 1937) and believed to be the the second-bloodiest theatre of war in human history after the Eastern European Theatre.

Keep in mind that despite having the name "America Wins The War," this is '''not''' a strictly American trope. The British can and will exaggerate ''their'' role in the war as well, with an additional jab that the Americans were not only late to the party but also stole all the credit, and additionally only joined in when they knew who was going to win. Russia also this; there, you'll find claims that WWII lasted from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945--when this was actually just the duration of the war between the USSR and Germany, (which ironically sells the Soviet Union short because their successful campaigns against Japan in 1939 and late 1945 aren't included in that time frame). Lately they've also picked up the [[Main/MakeTheBearAngryAgain highly disturbing tendency]] to [[WrittenByTheWinners gloss over or outright deny some of the crimes that the Soviet Union committed]] in its conduct during and shortly after the war. In short, many countries have tried to play up their part in the war at the expense of others and such examples are more than welcome.

Some see this general 'limited scope' thing as extending to the "official" date of the war's beginning, September 1st, 1939, the date of Germany's invasion of Poland. Most, however, accept that the moniker of 'World War' denotes merely the geography of a war (the British Empire alone spanned three continents at the time), rather than [[UnfortunateImplications implying the conflict wasn't 'serious' or something]] ([[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan the Japan of the time]], and many Japanese ultranationalists since, call it [[InsistentTerminology 'The China Incident']]). Though bloody and horrific in its own right[[note]]With war-dead to the tune of at least 10 and as many as 20 million (the Chinese Civil War that followed has to account for another 10 million or so, but Communist China likes to pretend that no-one died in it), as well as an impressive gamut of war-crimes like mass-rape (e.g. Nanjing) and live-human-experimentation[[/note]], [[SecondSinoJapaneseWar the war]] that [[UsefulNotes/ChiangKaiShek Chiang Kai-Shek's]] [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors Guomindang]] waged against UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan wasn't part of the 'World War' [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo until The Imperial Navy lashed out to take Malaya and the Philippines]].

None of this is meant to diminish the contribution the United States, or any other single country, made to winning World War II, of course. The United States was very important, since not only was it the main presence on the Western and Pacific Fronts, but by virtue of heavy European investment over the last century or so they had developed the world's no.1 economy, accounting for perhaps a third of the entire world's GDP and maybe as much as 'half' of its industry (though not all of the latter was useful, of course). The United States also had more than twice the population of the Commonwealth, India aside. From the point of American entry, the Allies could have just broken even in the death count and material-destruction figures and still have won (Guomindang China aside, of course). Josef Stalin is on record acknowledging that without American loans and industry backing them up the Soviets would lost 'far' more dead and crippled, and there would basically have been no chance of the Allies 'winning' any part of Europe in the peace to follow (when the USSR won in 1946/7, or '48 at the latest). None of the anti-Axis powers won the war all by their lonesome; everyone had their part, and the USA's was certainly in the top three.

Lastly, winning a war means nothing unless one also [[StrategyVersusTactics "wins the peace"]], as was the case [[NapoleonicWars in Vienna in 1815]] and infamously not [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne at Versailles in 1918]]. In the aftermath of World War II, the USA and Britain and the USSR all deserve recognition for demarking and respecting crystal-clear 'spheres of influence' that kept the peace despite the outbreak of the Yugoslavian, Greek, and [[NoMoreEmperors Chinese]] civil wars. When the CCP gained the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War, and the USA began to [[RedScare see the USSR as a threat]], the USA also began to funnel a great deal of money into reconstructing Western European economies[[note]]Britain got a lot less than France or Germany, as conservative American opinion was appalled we had the temerity to elect a socialist government; we were still repaying US loans, written off for other countries, well into the 1980's.[[/note]] so that they [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar could sustain larger militaries and thus avoid the need for committing US troops to Western Europe in its defense]]. The membership of the USSR and USA in the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations also gave it a lot more clout than its predecessor the League of Nations.

On the flip side, this trope might be known as "Nazis Fight Alone." In media about the European Theater, only German soldiers will serve as the antagonists. A possible exception would be North Africa, where the Italians made up a good portion of the troops fighting there, but not always. Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Finns, and the various foreign units of the SS are almost entirely absent, despite their sizable presence on the Eastern Front.

The D-Day landings are another good example. Many American-made productions will focus solely on Omaha Beach, the most heavily fortified of the four landing sites as well as the best-defended--both facts which Allied intelligence failed to realize prior to the operation. The carnage that ensued is a favourite among producers, since it emphasizes the sacrifice Americans made during the war--but doing so gives the impression that Omaha Beach was ''the'' decisive turning point that led to the Allied victory in Europe. (The focus on Omaha Beach is also partially because ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'' did it, [[FollowTheLeader other games/movies/TV shows want to replicate its success]], and because it's more exciting to show a strongly opposed landing than an unopposed one -- not that the other landings were exactly 'unopposed' (For instance, Canadian troops landing at Juno Beach on that day faced opposition almost as formidable and made better progress towards their objectives in spite of it[[note]]Due to better small-unit communication and leadership, something the military training of smaller nation-states tends to emphasize given their lesser material resources. Not to mention that the Canadians accepted the Hobart Funnies such as the amphibious tanks to give the landing troops armor support.[[/note]]), but still.

Lastly, winning a war means nothing unless one also [[StrategyVersusTactics "wins the peace"]], as was the case [[NapoleonicWars in Vienna in 1815]] and infamously not [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne at Versailles in 1918]]. In the aftermath of World War II, the USA and Britain and the USSR all deserve recognition for demarking and respecting crystal-clear 'spheres of influence' that kept the peace despite the outbreak of the Yugoslavian, Greek, and [[NoMoreEmperors Chinese]] civil wars. When the CCP gained the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War, and the USA began to [[RedScare see the USSR as a threat]], the USA also began to funnel a great deal of money into reconstructing the British and other Western European economies so that they [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar could sustain larger militaries and thus avoid the need for committing US troops to Western Europe in its defense]]. The membership of the USSR and USA in the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations also gave it a lot more clout than its predecessor the League of Nations.

* AxisPowersHetalia: Set in in WWII. America's plan to defeat Germany? All the other Allies support him while he wins the war. "I'm the Hero!"

** Of course, this intersects with HateDumb in a very odd way, because the movie never even *pretends* it is accurate and even goes on the record after the ending to credit the actual capturers of U-Boats. Most of which were naturally captured by [[AmericansHateTingle the British, making the accusations of it being a slur against the Royal navy even more ironic.]]

** Outright inverted in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'', as the United States grudgingly have to ask for help to the European Allies. The French President is [[FrenchJerk stereotypically uppity]]. In the intro cutscene of ''Yuri's Revenge'', though, the desperate U.S. President Dugan acknowledges Yuri that it in fact [[BlatantLies was the United States who won the war]]. The backstory makes it a bit of a mess, however, in that the whole reason the game is ''Film/{{Red Dawn|1984}}'' the RTS is because Premier Romanov blames ''America'' for his country's loss of the Great World War II - rather than, you know, Germany or Greece, for doing the actual ass-kicking, he blames the guys who gave them a couple tanks to do the ass-kicking with.

* ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'' was criticized for this in the UK, since the sole reference in the movie to any non-American involvement in the battle was a brief exchange on how "overrated" General Montgomery was. Of course, like its successor, ''Series/BandOfBrothers'', the narrative maintains a narrow focus on a small unit who might not have encountered foreign Allied soldiers during their mission and might have actually espoused this opinion ([[BernardLawMontgomery Field Marshal Montgomery]] being not-very-popular with a large segment of the American military).

* Thoroughly averted in ''Film/{{Patton}}'', despite what some would have you believe. Yes, the film focuses on the deeds of George S. Patton throughout World War II, but Patton does not single-handedly curb stomp the Nazis. His rivalry with British general Bernard Law Montgomery features prominently, and he expresses frustration when resources are diverted to important British operations rather than his own. He is just as much upset by the Soviets conquering Berlin and being the ones to force Nazi Germany to surrender.