People sometimes think that the colonists won the war by themselves, but they actually had help from lots of different people. One major help to the colonists was a man named General Von Steuben. He was born on September 17, 1730. Before the war, the colonists were very unprepared and would walk around in the middle of winter bare foot. They had shortages of everything that they needed food, gunpowder, weaponry, and clothing. General Von Steuben brought to the colonists many things, one of them, being a new tactic for war. They were much better than the tactics that they had already known of. He also brought a new training method, where he would train the colonists about firing and reloading weapons until it became like a second nature. Also, when he trained a handful of people, those people would train more people, then those people would train more people, etc. One last thing he brought was hygiene. He insisted that the colonists would get better bathed, and he also demanded that the kitchens and outhouses be put on opposite sides of the camp. He helped the Colonists a lot, and without him, we wouldnt have won the war.