d-day, n.africa/italy, france, soviets
Answer on How did the allies plan to take back europe and win the war in the pacific?
The US plan against Japan initially included the assumption that the Japanese would move south and be met by the US Navy. That of course was altered by the spoiling attack on Pearl Harbor. But the basic strategy remained: to get close enough to the Japanese home islands for regular air attacks, and burn their cities to the ground. Compared to other industrialized countries, Japan's war industry was much more highly concentrated in major cities, and those cities had a lot of wood and paper construction, making them good targets for the little M-69 incendiary bomb.
The Soviet strategy was initially defense in depth followed by destruction of the Axis forces. Once they recovered from the initial assault, they began to use tactics very much like those of the Germans, with tough defensive strongpoints, counter-punches when the Germans attacked, and grand encircling movements when they could be carried out.
The Anglo-American strategy in Europe included strategic bombing by the air forces, but the ground strategy was less clear. The newly-constructed Pentagon argued from the beginning for a direct attack through France into the Ruhr, Germany's industrial heartland. Churchill won out with his arguments for the North African, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns. And he might have continued his peripheral assault, with invasions of Norway, Greece, and the Balkans had he not had the Americans at the point of a major rift, and Molotov constantly harping. (It was said that Molotov knew only four words of English: yes, no, and second front; and he used the first word sparingly.)
