First off, if there's anything I've learned to appreciate, it's a long, well thought-out, and knowledgeable reply. I'll do my best in this response.
1 - It was not only Yugoslavia, but Greece, too, after the Italians were given a reality check by the Greek Army. Churchill wanted to invade Greece to free them even before invading Italy - it was a matter of honor to him, for (according to him) England had promised to protect Greece and had failed to do so.
2 - Yes, America was sending Lend-Lease to Russia months before Pearl Harbor. Frankly, this falls right in line with Truman's quote: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.”
Germany was initially winning, so it goes right along with Truman's suggestion to help the Soviets.
3 - Yes, we pleaded with the Russians to open a second front in the east, just as Russia pleaded with us to invade France. Total war, like politics, makes for strange bedfellows, for Stalin despised and distrusted the West just as much as we did him.
4 - It is inarguable that one of the most difficult things to do in modern warfare is to invade a hostile and fortified coast, if for no other reason than the resulting logistics bottleneck that every beachhead becomes. Also, I strongly agree that air superiority alone is never enough. It is here that my argument admittedly is weakest, for as another respondent pointed out, the Nazis only had 20 divisions to respond to the Normandy invasion because the other 70 divisions of their Western Front were fighting in Italy and southern France. That being said, a beachhead in less-fortified western France (say, the province of Brittany) *may* have given us the opportunity to strengthen our foothold before the rest of the Wehrmacht was able to bring its strength to bear. But I could be wrong.
5 - You are quite right that most of the war was one of attrition, and that the Allies had by far the better access to strategic resources. I would say all three of the major allies had one other advantage that Germany and Japan never really came close to addressing: intelligence. Intel could be seen as the decisive element in the battles of Midway, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, the Battle of the Atlantic, and the Battle of Britain.
6 - I strongly agree with your last paragraph. Insistence on blind loyalty to demagogue and dogma never ends well. I hope I'm not offending you by noting that we've been watching that same dynamic in America for the past four years.
