I have been a student of WWII for most of my 62-years,and I agree with Herbert Hoover!We needed to help the Brits,but we should have let the Nazis and The Soviets destroy each other!!
I might agree, but without the benefit of hindsight, it was easy to see how Stalin might have come to some sort of peace with Hitler and transfer a load of assets back west to take on Britain again, or take the Caucasian oilfields and be in a better position to fight the Western allies.
Both the Nazis and Soviets were driving for total victory.
The UK could not have remained independent - either the Soviets would have defeated the Nazis and conquered Britain, or the Nazis would have defeated the Soviets and conquered Britain.
Whoever won would then have moved to consolidate the British Empire and have seized Canada, India and Africa and entered into an alliance with China.
The US would have wound up completely isolated, with no export markets and with its northern border a staging ground for invasion.
Hoover was a completely useless sack of dung for many reasons, but this kind of analysis underlines it.
So, instead of letting the Nazis and Soviets do 100% of the dying, we let them do 99% of it instead.
Dunno. It might have been a practical decision as opposed to a moral one.
If we didn’t aid Russia, the Germans MIGHT have been able to take Russia. If the Germans took Russia, they might have been able to finish off the rest of Europe.
More likely, though, Germany and her allies (why do people forget that Germany had allies?) would have been so busy digesting the USSR, that war would have been put on hold for 10-20 years.
IIRC, the American left was against US intervention in the war until Hitler attacked the Soviets.
Mark