America Wins the War: Difference between revisions

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When this trope is in play, the efforts and contributions of the other "Western" Allies are downplayed, and the Eastern Front (where a full ''80%'' of the Wehrmacht was engaged at any one time, and the Germans suffered approximately ''77%'' of their casualties) is considered a ''sideshow'', if it's even mentioned at all. 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. This is likely a result of the [[Cold War]] making American educators and filmmakers unwilling to glorify [[Dirty Communists|the Soviet Union]].

 

 

The D-Day landings are another good example. Many 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, [[Follow the Leader|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), 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. Even the Mexicans, with their small 5-man Squad 201, helped in the war (and that's just the pilots, take in mind there's also engineers and medics and many more). Not to mention the [[Second Sino-Japanese War|brutally violent struggle in China]], probably the most ignored battlefront of the war, despite being the longest conflict (starting in 1937) and next to the Russian front the second-bloodiest theatre of war in human history (we ''think'' - reliable figures just don't exist for the number of Chinese civilian deaths, so it's only a best-guess that the better-documented Russian front was bloodier).

 

 

This general limited scope viewpoint extends to the "official" date of the war's beginning, September 1st, 1939, which was the date of Germany's invasion of Poland. However, the oft-forgotten Japanese-Chinese portion of WWII had been going since 1937 (or, arguably, from 1932!), and may have been the bloodiest of all the conflicts in the war; not to mention a vital (some say ''the'' critical) battlefield of the Pacific front.

== Films -- Live-Action ==

* ''U-571'', which Americanized the story of the British capture of ''U-110'' and her all-important Enigma machine. In real life, <s> all</s> 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, [[Did Not Do the Research]] and [[Artistic License Ships]].

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* ''Churchill: The Hollywood Years'' parodies 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.

** The irony of this is compounded by the fact that Churchill's mother was American.

** Never mind that the [[Real Life]] Winston Churchill had a remarkable political and military career already long ''before'' [[WW 2]] 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.

* 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. [[Winston Churchill|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.

** Interestingly author/screenwriter [[George Macdonald Fraser]], 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.

{{quote| "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?"<br />

"[[Get Out!]] of this machine." }}

* Averted in the 1961 adaptation of ''[[The Guns of Navarone]]''. 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).

* The Chinese equivalent appears in ''[[Ip Man]]''. The concluding captions mention China's defeat of Japan without mentioning the international Allied forces that had pushed Japan back across Asia and the Pacific, or the atom bombs. In reality, China acted as a huge punching bag, losing battle after battle until The United States, Britain, and later the Soviet Union entered the conflict. Also, no mention is made to the fact that a lot of China's anti tank weaponry (which was key in the few victories it did win) came from The United States.

* This trope is blatantly invoked in [[Iron Sky]], 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". [[Played for Laughs]], of course.

 

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* [[Justified Trope|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).

* For a long, long, time, the definitive TV-documentary history of [[WW 2]] was the British-made ''The World At War'', which condensed [[WW 2]] into twenty-six hours of TV narrative. Scrupulous care was taken to make this as objective as possible, to allow the American and Russsian 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 [[Everybody Loves Raymond|Raymond's dad]], his automatic response was "Pulled their ass out of two world wars!"

* ''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 - ''probably'' - in ''[[Command and Conquer Red Alert]]''. As per [[Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act]], this version of WW II 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 [[Albert Einstein]], while [[Word of God]] 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 M-16s ([[Anachronism Stew|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 ''[[Command and Conquer]]''.

* Averted 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 success.

* ''[[Return to Castle Wolfenstein|Wolfenstein: 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.

*** 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.

 

 

== Webcomics ==

 

 

** ''Bart-Mangled Banner'', which is mainly a [[Take That]] 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 [[World War Two|which saved France from the Germans]] - [[World War One|twice]].

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

* ''[[Freakazoid]]'' once got sucked through a time vortex and prevented the attack on Pearl Harbor, [[You Fail History Forever|"preventing" World War II]].

** Of course, he prevents the attack by setting up a customs checkpoint in the path of the Japanese fighters, and they turn back because one of their pilots brought grapes. So let's not take this example ''too'' seriously.