He dumped Henry Wallace from his vp slot…
I forget who it was, but a Texas politician - maybe a senator - wanted it put on his headstone that he prevented the renomination of Henry Wallace for VP in 1944.To me the tragic figure of the era was Herbert Hoover, who turned a Recession into the Depression with high tax rates. FDR loudly condemned Hoover, for the rest of FDR’s life - but the reason the Great Depression was “great” was just that FDR did exactly the same sort of foolish economic policies that Herbert Hoover did. Hoover was anti-communist, but his policies led directly to the FDR pro-Soviet administration.
It is not too much to say to claim that FDR was pro-Soviet; his first foreign policy inititative was to recognize the USSR, which America had never done. And FDR’s closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, was every bit the socialist that Wallace was. And FDR’s naval strategy in the Atlantic prior to US entry into WWII got really aggressive towards the U-boats precisely when Hitler invaded the USSR in late June of 1941.
The reality of WWII was that the Germans would not have been defeated - at least not until the A-bomb - if not for the opposition of the USSR, their ally before that invasion.
The Soviets and their admirers like to say just that, often to say they shed the blood we didn't have to.
True as far as it goes, but in quality and quantity of blood shed, two things should be kept in mind:
FIrst, the Soviet Union fought the war far differently than we would have. We in the USA would never have fought it as they did, because we view the value of life differently than they do, and would not have made our troops fight it at the points our own guns, as they did. Their sacrifice of so many men was often done brutally and callously.
Secondly, they were fighting for very existence of their own country. We never were, at any time, ever, even if at the time, it seemed that way to many. We did not have our necks and native soil on the chopping block as they did.
When I hear the Soviets and Russians making this point about how they made all the human sacrifice to winning the war, it reminds me somewhat of the person who murders his parents and then asks the judge for leniency because he is an orphan.