Posted on 06/08/2019 7:35:58 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
YouGov asked citizens from four countries deeply involved in the European theater of WWII (the UK, France, Germany, and the US) who they thought was most responsible for defeating the Nazis – the Americans, the British, or the Russians. Those in the UK were the only country who choose the British; the other three were most likely to choose the Americans.
Intriguingly, historical data shows that at the close of the Second World War the French public believed that it was the Russians, not the Americans, who had done the most to defeat the Nazis. A survey conducted by IFOP in May 1945 showed that 57% of French people credited the-then USSR with having made the greatest contribution to Nazi defeat, compared to just 20% backing the USA and 12% the UK.
(Excerpt) Read more at today.yougov.com ...
What...you mean Poland didn't help Hitler carve up Czechoslovakia in 1938?
I'll have to reread Churchill's memoir...
Oh horse crap. Hitler didn’t give a crap what Poland did, he was going to get it all anyway.
Tired of that crap from anti-Polonists.
20% backing the USA
De Gaulle was a preening, arrogant, ungrateful bastard.
In Paris today there is a Train Station named “Stalingrad”.
History says Russia gutted the German military
You should read The Great Patriotic War as told by Russian historians. True winter was a factor in the defeat in front of Moscow but there were other factors as well. All in all Russia took the brunt of German fighting so that hardly anything was left for Germany to defend itself later after D-Day.
Yes, there other were factors. Not to mention Hitler’s decision to split his forces in half, one heading south, the other straight ahead.
Someone upthread mentioned horse drawn weaponry.
A captured German officer was allowed to watch supplies coming ashore on Omaha beach. He asked this captors where all the horses were. People don’t realize how primitive the Wermacht ground game was.
Poland was no innocent bystander to the events leading up to WW2.
While the Soviets were offering hundreds of planes to help the Czechs resist the Nazis in 1938, and France and England sat on their hands, Poland was busy carving off a slice of Czechoslovakia for themselves.
You should read The Great Patriotic War as told by Russian historians.
Since most everyone agrees on the facts of WWII, they couldn’t come out and lie about events. But the way they were spun, making the USSR the unheralded victor of the war in spite of the Allies, was impressive.
What I learned is that truth and facts are restless bed mates, dependent on the needs of the narrator.
And without America pouring arms and food into the Soviet Union, the Nazis would probably have overrun the Soviets in short order.
It’s neat to read the point of view from the other side. I also rad the German side of D-Day; it too was very enlightening.
It’s a good read and surprisingly not filled with propaganda.
Just to reiterate, the reason why the “Victory” legacy matters has to do with the war being fought on two fronts: military and moral. Let me ask you, would you rather live under the banner of the Sickle and Hammer, or under the American flag?
Militarily beating the Nazis (by sheer numbers, and time spent) does not mean the Soviet Union had the moral high ground over the Nazi-ism. And the battle over the narrative to this day has to do with this distinction. The moral component. It’s no wonder the seeds of the Cold War were already planted in the middle of World War II.
That’s what this is ultimately about.
That “slice” was stolen by the Czechs in 1920, while the Poles were busy saving Europe from Bolshevism.
. . . and you can throw in the fact that Hitler declared war on the US a few days after Pearl Harbor.America provided 450,000 trucks - which is THE thing that enabled the Red Army to supply its forces more than just very short distances from their supply bases. This was Germany’s single biggest weakness. They had to rely on horses which are slower, can’t carry as much and require far more manpower. The heavy American Studebaker trucks were what the Russians mounted their iconic Katyusha rockets on.
The list goes on and on. Everything you can imagine - especially industrial equipment. The Russians supplied the Manpower and paid a high price in blood - but there’s no way they survive without America’s vast supplies feeding and equipping them. — FLT-bird
The reality of the situation in December, 1941 is that it was exactly 1½ years after the Fall of France in June 1940.explains why that is significant. It is well known that the British did a major technology transfer to the US, but far less well known exactly when that happened. The Fall of France was a huge wake-up call for people who assumed until then that France, being a nation of similar size/population and similar technological/military base, would be able to fight Germany competently. France punched far below its weight class in 1940. The problem being that Colonel Charles de Gaulle was not commander in chief. He wrote presciently about the vulnerability of static defenses in the era of the tank and airplane - and the Germans proved him right. The French fought valiantly but, with the leadership they were saddled with, futilely. Lots of “dying for your country,” and not enough “making the other poor SOB die for his country.”
- Freedom's Forge:
- How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur HermanThe Roosevelt Administration was alarmed that Britain too might fall, and take the Royal Navy over to Hitler’s side in a Vichy-like deal. Here I have to give FDR his due - although he was the reason the US economy didn’t recover in the 1930s from the fiasco which was the Hoover Administration, FDR did throw his weight behind Britain when it was necessary, and unpopular, to do so. After Dunkirk Britain’s army was practically denuded of weaponry - to the extent that Americans were sending their old guns over to Britain for their Home Guard. And FDR sent over all the WWI surplus weaponry he could scrounge up.
But back to the “eighteen months after the Fall of France” time. FDR was the original “pen and phone” man. He was able, by hook and by crook, to mobilize the US economy for military production without much help from Congress. Having been in the Navy Department during WWI, FDR knew that US military production had not amounted to a hill of beans by the time the Armistice was signed. So he called on financier Bernard Baruch to ramrod the mobilization in advance of critical need. Baruch declined the job on account of his age, and recommended “three names: Bill Knudsen, Bill Knudsen, or Bill Knudsen.”
Knudsen had lost a power struggle to be Henry Ford’s right hand man, quit, and took a job with a small competitor called, “General Motors.” You get the idea. Knudsen was a production expert, and he had the respect of industrial America. He immediately undertook to line up the long poles in the tent: factory facilities and especially machine tools. Others, such as Henry Kaiser, went to work on shipbuilding facilities. So for a long time, the watchword was not production per se, but production of the means of production. Of course ramping up the ability to produce included actual production - but it was not retained in America but shipped off to Britain (or, after Hitler's June 22 1941 invasion of the USSR, Russia).
Hence the paradox - upon America’s (official, up-front) entry into WWII, the US had very sparse military inventories - but that changed seemingly overnight. Most all of the production of the means of production was accomplished, and from then on it was just a matter of priorities how much of what got produced.
Typical Old World myopia...ignore the Nazi threat and the best advice of both Churchill and DeGaulle to snatch back some lost Duchy from the Czechs.
So again, the battle for memory right now, is not about who can claim a larger role in the military effort against the Nazis -- but about who can claim credit for the MORAL victory that liberated the continent at large from the two equally awful menaces of Bolshevism and National Socialism.
People should read about what the Germans did in Russia.
Just watch "Come and See" (Idi i Smotri), if you have the stomach for it.
It was hard enough reading about what Germany did in Russia than having to see that; I’ve read about the heroics of Russian boys and girls fighting the Germans and it wasn’t pretty.
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