Posted on 09/29/2014 2:49:58 AM PDT by wetphoenix
Leroy Williamson, 93, has seen relations between the United States and Russia during good times and bad, and has some advice for the countries: "We have to get along," he told ABC News. "We don't need a patriotic war or a World War III."
The Texan was in Russia this week to share his appreciation for the Soviet soldiers who liberated his Nazi prisoner-of-war camp on May 1, 1945. He met with a Russian general for lunch, visited with veterans, and placed a wreath at Moscow's memorial to the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known in the country. He had planned on meeting with a surviving member of the infantry division that liberated his camp, but the man fell ill; instead, Williamson presented a Purple Heart to a soldier who fought alongside U.S. troops during the war. "It's been wonderful,” Williamson said. "I am so pleased with the attitude of the people here."
Only recently has Williamson started talking about his experience in the POW camp. He was shot down in April 1944 during a bombing mission over Germany, and after being interrogated was sent to a camp on the Baltic Sea. When the Russian soldiers arrived, they brought meat — Williamson's first taste in more than a year — and donuts. "They not only liberated us from prison camp, they did so many other good things for us," he said.
Once the Cold War started, Williamson had to fly supply runs during the Berlin Airlift. Soviet jets would scramble and "stay with us a few minutes," but Williamson remained cordial despite the tension. "I'd give a salute back and that was it," he said. Listen to Williamson describe his trip in the video below. --Catherine Garcia
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
I predict Russia will once again be our ally in a war against the vultures of Islam, who predictably, sided with the nazi socialists.
So few remain alive, and many of them are frail.
We struggle with an enemy far more dangerous than the German’s or even the Japanese, and without the National will for survival that those including my Father had during WWII.
Putin is a very strong supporter of the Orthodox Church - he’s from St Petersburg...he wants Russia to return to a great empire and leave socialism behind them - as well as Stalin...which is why in the Olympics that part of Russian history was a blacked out...If Islam is to be stopped - it will have to be a concentrated effort...
As a side issue, my father in law was a B17 pilot and crash landed behind the Russian lines. I have to tell you, He and his crew were held in captivity for several months and interrogated about the construction of their aircraft. Don was captain of the ship at 22 years in 1945. God rest his soul.
Just watched a recent movie - Stalingrad - that is just a puff piece to re-invent the evil that was the Soviet Union. They were no allies to us - maintaining peace with Japan until the last months of the war - and they shouldn’t be depicted as such. The number of their own people that supported Hitler was evidence that Stalin was the devil himself; there are no references to their invasions of the Baltic states or Finland...
Back during the war itself they were showing films like this to Americans to convince them the Soviets were like Americans with a different language - just silly.
In fact “maintaining peace with Japan” was a part of the deal, reached at Tehran and Yalta, between Stalin, FDR and Churchill.
Stalin demanded allies to invade France since 1941 and FDR demanded Stalin to attack Japan since 1943.
The deal was after all that US and Britain hits Normandy and in a 3 months following the German defeat Soviets would move sufficient forces to the Far East to toss the Japanese from China and assist US in invasion of Japan.
It was exactly what happened with the exception of the invasion of Japan, because there was A-bombing and the Japanese folded without a massive conventional operation.
This little piece of pro-Russian feel good propaganda for the Russians does nothing whatsoever to makeup for the Russian seizure of tens of thousands of British Commonwealth and American POWs in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War only to be murdered or sent to their deaths in the Soviet Gulag/s of Russia. It would be unfortunate for Russia if any of the remains of these missing British and American POWs were ever to be publicly discovered in the mines of Donetsk where many of them were used as slave laborers for Russia.
I agree, this garbage is offensive.
Any evidence?
The Russian government has been sending clear signals in recent years that Stalin's achievements must be revered — despite the "mistakes," as officials often put it, that were made during his time in power. During Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's annual call-in TV show earlier this month, which included several staged questions aimed at sending the public a message, Putin warned Russians against making any "overall judgment" against Stalin. To prove his point, he cited the forced collectivization of agriculture, a process that historians say caused millions of deaths from starvation in the 1920s and '30s, when Stalin was general secretary of the Communist party. "It's true, there was no peasantry left after that," Putin said. "Everything that happened in this sphere did not have any positive effect on the villages. But after all we did get industrialization."
More here.
“It was exactly what happened with the exception of the invasion of Japan, because there was A-bombing and the Japanese folded without a massive conventional operation.”
No, that is not what happened, exactly or not. The Soviets (Russia) planned a regimental task force invasion of Hokkaido to be followed by Soviet occupation of Hokkaido after the Japanese surrender of 15 August 1945. Truman and MacArthur firmly warned the Soviets not to attempt such a plan. To reinforce the message, the American B-29 bombers conducted another major raid into the northern reaches of Hokkaido the night before Emperor Hirohito’s surrender broadcast. The Soviet forces were still having difficulties with logistical support for their ongoing offensive operations, so they did not challenge the American refusal to permit a Russian invasion and/or occupation of Hokkaido.
Long after the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945, Soviet forces continued their combat operations against the Japanese defending the Kurile Islands and Sakhalin Island, because the Soviets did not want their occupation to be halted where the battle lines existed on the 15 August surrender day.
The Soviets were terrified of the Japanese after the Russo-Japan War. They didn't even want to believe the Germans were invading since part of the fallout from preemptively attacking could have bee a declaration of war by Japan.
Being a U.S. ally was pretty far down the priority list, but at least they tied up the bulk of the Wehrmacht while we stormed Europe.
There has been decades of evidence going all the way back to the Allied intervention at Archangelsk in 1918. Most of this evidence has been suppressed by the Soviet-Russian and the Western governments to avoid the provocation to war such revelations would cause in the West. Nonetheless, some fragments of the evidence has leaked and become a matter of public record and thereby refuted at least the previous attempts to deny there was ever any evidence at all; e.g. U.S./Russian Joint Commission on POW/MIAs.
Similarly in WWI there were deals made by the West with islamic devotees of Satan in efforts to defeat Germany.
What goes around comes around.
Not with Vlad Putin at the helm.He'd have no trouble killing tens of thousands of moslems if it suited his purposes.As long as Vlad,or anyone like him,is running the USSR 2.0 they will be the mortal enemy of civilized man.
OTOH, the Japanese & Russians fought a border war in Manchuria in 1938-39, and the Russians spanked the Japanese pretty thoroughly, so the Japanese were plenty scared of the Russians.
You must have Netflix as well to have watched Stalingrad. It was quite ‘clean’ of how it portrayed the leadership of the soviets. The best example of a Hollywood portrayal of the attitudes of the soviets is the opening battle scene in “Enemy at the Gate.”
I’m over here in Poland for the next few months. Poland has been pretty good at tearing out the old Soviet memorials. But you still see them all over the place. The soviets loved to leave their little piles of crap all over the place. And of course all the memorials are about how wonderful the soviets treated the locals and saved the city, nation, village from the evils of capitalism and naziism. And of course the old murals of following the glorious revolution to a workers paradise.
Talk to the locals and they hear the same speeches from Obama they heard from the puppet leaders Moscow installed here.
In response to the battle against Islam Russia and China won’t tolerate the nonsense. They are not bound by the bonds of political correctness.
Did you know that the Russians actually recovered and rebuilt a few bellied in B-17s and flew them up through the late 40s.Your FIL plane may have been one of them.
More than a few WSOs from the Vietnam airwar were captured and turned over to the Russians never to be heard from again.
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