America Wins The War is a form of
Hollywood History in which a story implies or outright states that the United States single-handedly won
World War II. Sometimes, it's
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
Hollywood History at its worst.
When this trope shows up, the efforts and contributions of the other "Western" Allies are downplayed, and the Eastern Front (where Germans suffered
77% of their casualties) is considered a sideshow. Often it seems like the only other Allied nation that actually made any significant contribution in the war was the UK, which kept the hopeless fight alive until the USA joined in and saved the day.
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
The Great Escape and, perhaps most infamously, the film
U-571. It will occasionally even be said that WWII only began in December 1941, when the United States entered the war, although arguably in many cases it's poor phrasing or simply 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. American-made productions will focus solely on Omaha Beach, the most heavily fortified of American landing sites as well as defended by one of the best-trained German units on the beach—both facts which Allied intelligence failed to realize prior to the operation. The carnage that ensued is a favorite 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
Saving Private Ryan did it,
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.)
Cases of this trope are not limited to the European Theater, either, but they tend to be the more
Unfortunate Implications type. 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, as did the Soviet Union. Not to mention the
brutally violent struggle in China, probably the most ignored battlefront of the war, despite being the longest conflict (starting in 1931) and the one with the second largest amount of casualties in the war (given the difficulties of estimating these numbers, they might even surpass the European Eastern Front).
Keep in mind that despite having the name "
America Wins The War," this is
not a strictly American trope. The British commonly 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. That the U.S. was selling billions of dollars worth of weapons and supplies to the British and other nations in their fight against the Axis since the very month Germany invaded Poland (
two years before Pearl Harbor) is
never mentioned nor appreciated. The efforts of the Soviets are downplayed just as badly, too.
Even Russia does this; there, you'll find claims that WWII lasted from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945. This was actually just the duration of the war between the USSR and Germany, known as the "Great Patriotic War" in said country. The "Great Patriotic War" constituted only a part of WWII proper, though it was responsible for at least half the deaths in the war. Which isn't the surprising considering they actually
invaded Poland with the Germans and all
See also
America Saves The Day, of which this is a sub-trope, and
Hollywood History, of which
that is a sub-trope.
Examples
Comic Books
- Sgt Rock 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 DC Universe WWII "team" series, 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 Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. At least Fury's team actually had a (stereotypical) British soldier on it.
- Averted in Atomic Robo, 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).
Film
- U-571, which features the Americans capturing an Enigma machine. In real life,
all most of the captured machines were acquired by the British (a number of whom died in the process) and the original breaking of the code was done by the Polish. 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.
- What was particularly thickheaded on the part of the studio was that if they wanted to make a movie about the US Navy capturing a U-boat, they could just have used the story of Admiral Gallery's task force and the capture of the U-505
.
- Averted in Enemy at the Gates, an American film about a Soviet sniper in the battle of Stalingrad... in which Americans played no part. And by the way, while director/producer/writer Jean-Jacques Annaud is French, this still counts as an American movie.
- Churchill: The Hollywood Years lampoons this, it suggests that Winston Churchill was a tough as nails American G.I. (Christian Slater) 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.
- Saving Private Ryan was criticised 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, Band of Brothers, 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.
- 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.
- Also averted in Saints and Soldiers, when the Americans rescue a downed British recon pilot and attempt to return him to friendly lines.
- The 1945 Errol Flynn 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. Churchill himself was said to have been incensed by the film, and it was denounced in the Times. Warner Bros. withdrew the film from circulation in the UK, and it did not appear there until 1952.
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 Day Watch 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!"
Live Action TV
- Spoofed in a 2006 The Daily Show. Jon Stewart comments that the Iraq War has "gone on longer than WW 2"; Englishman John Oliver corrects him, that WW 2 was going on for 2 years longer than the US involvement. Stewart wasn't correct until May 2008.
- Explored in the episodes of Foyles War 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.
- In Star Trek Enterprise there is an alternate timeline where Lenin was assassinated so quite naturally Germany didn't bother with Russia and instead invaded the United States. It's like Hitler always had a grudge against the US, and Russia was just some sideline they didn't bother with.
- Justified in the Ken Burns documentary, The War, 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).
Video Games
- Averted in the Call of Duty 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 Medal Of Honor 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.
- Operation Darkness 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 (so far) in the 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 Super Soldier main character and his pals that achieve anything even resembling sucess.
- Averted and followed in Red Alert - the first one, that is. The USA is not part of the Allies when the game throws you into the war, Word Of God said they didn't directly join the war until the Soviets were already losing, and the US entry is not deemed important enough to actually be mentioned in-game, only more support from the international community in general. On the other hand, it seems the USA have been pulling a very extensive Lend-and-Lease campaign (most Allied equipment is US equipment), and the American 'professional volunteer' Tanya did save the day for the Allies a few times...
- Averted in Metal Gear Solid 3 with the Cobra Unit. The game tells you they all but won WWII by themselves. The unit consists of one American, two Russians, an old sniper guy, a Spider-Man wannabe, and a man covered in bees.
- Enemy Territory allows you to play as one of two sides: one is Nazi Germany, guess who the other is? Considering you know how the war turns out the implication is a given.
Western Animation
- In the Justice League 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, wouldn't a specific warning not to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 before neutralizing the Western enemies first have been a higher priority? Savage's time machine, it turns out, didn't have the range to go earlier than 1944.
- Spoofed in the Monkey Dust 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!" [1]
- 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 Saving Private Ryan lampooning various American military cliches.
- Parodied indirectly in The Simpsons; in an episode set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, Moe tells Lisa's British fiance that "We saved your ass in World War II." The fiance replies that Britain saved America's
ass arse in World War III, and Moe concedes the point.
- Featured in Chicken Run, when the RAF veteran rants about everything wrong with Americans, including the fact that they come in late to every war. Probably more of a case of Britain Wins The War.
- Freakazoid once got sucked through a time vortex and prevented the attack on Pearl Harbor, "preventing" World War II.
