The 'Second D-Day' allied invasion of the south of France was proclaimed a success but [tr]

UK Daily Mail ^ | June 11, 2019 | James Gant

[NorthMountain]

Communism should have been destroyed just as Nazism was.

But the US and UK governments were riddled with communists as were the Big Media; FDR himself was quite the socialist. Communism was "good", National Socialism was "bad" (because it competed with Communism).

McCarthy was right.

[hanamizu]

The USSR was our ally in WWII—but not our friend. They did a large part of the fighting and dying. I don’t know if it is still true, but at least until relatively recently the custom of newlyweds in Russia was to stop off at the local WWII memorial after the wedding so the bride could place her flowers in remembrance.

I’m a Boomer, so I grew up with the memory of WWII fresh in every adult’s mind. It is now ancient history for today’s kids. But I think the memory of it will live on longer in Russia than here.

[Lurker]

“One could argue that without the material support of the United States Russia would have fallen.”

Kruschev credited Spam with keeping him alive until the end of the war. Not much Spam was made in the Soviet Union in the 1940s.

L

[AzSteven]

I don't think the Soviet Union would have fallen without Lend-Lease, but it would have been much much harder for the Soviets to retake lost Soviet territory, much less go into Poland and other Eastern European countries. The delays would have given Germany the time needed to put better equipment out in useful numbers on the Eastern Front.

I figure it would be a better than even chance the Soviets would have signed a peace treaty with Germany after slogging their way back tot he pre-war Soviet border, assuming their military didn't rise up and kill off their Communist masters before then.

[Reily]

I agree with the possible exception of FDR.

I don’t believe FDR had the intellectual sophistication to be a communist. I am not saying he was stupid. He was just no intellectual in spite of what the media tried to make of him. I wish I could remember who said this of him “ He (Roosevelt) hasn’t read a serious book in his entire life!”.

FDR was a political opportunist not an political ideologue.

[FreedomPoster]

Discounts the massive effort Germany had to put into air defenses due to the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command. Soviets would have had a much harder time of it if there were an extra 15,000 or so 88s defending against Soviet tanks.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Today’s WSJ carries a review of a new book on FDR.
I intend to buy it this week.

[dfwgator]

For all intents and purposes, the Soviet Union was a member of the Axis, until June 22, 1941.

[rbg81]

It’s amazing how intelligent you can be with the benefit of perfect hindsight, eh?

[Terry Mross]

Patton being told to shut up shows PC was already in play in 1945. Patton wanted to take on the Russians.

[DuncanWaring]

During the Battle of Kursk alone, the Soviets lost as many men as we lost in the entire war.

[Seruzawa]

Yawn. More armchair revisionism.

[thoughtomator]

I’m not discounting anything. I’m just trying to communicate scale and scope. If you think I’m discounting Western contributions, I would counter and say that you do not understand the full scope of the events on the Eastern front. It’s not that we did nothing; it’s that what the USSR did dwarfs all other contributions to the defeat of the Nazis, combined, by orders of magnitude.

[hanamizu]

For all intents and purposes, the Soviet Union was a member of the Axis, until June 22, 1941.

---

Of course it was. The Soviets actively helped the Germans evade Treaty of Versailles restrictions on their military. Hitler, because of his early military successes, really overestimated his military leadership abilities. He was stupid to attack the USSR and think he could do what Napoleon could not.

It is also interesting to note that Communist parties around the world, including in the US denounced the war, until June 22, 1941, when they promptly turned 180º and said the war had to be fought and won. (Shows where their real loyalties lay).

All that said, the USSR did the bulk of the killing and dying in WWII. This in no way lessens our role and sacrifice in the war.

[DesertRhino]

He was a nut out in left field in many ways. That was one of his moronic ideas, like reincarnation. Imagine telling the US soldiers that now they had to fight the Red Army, to protect Germany from their revenge.

That’s a very hard sell to guys who just reached the goal line after a brutal fight. The army was being careful in how it was handling sending them from Europe to fight Japs without provoking mutinies.

Patton was great at one thing. But thank god he was shut down on that.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Churchill was against Dragoon from the beginning - regarding it as a diversion from his remarkably successful (?) Italian campaign. There were no British troops involved and he was so certain it would fail that he came down to watch the landings personally from a vessel off shore.

Regarding Antwerp, if Montgomery had given it appropriate priority the Canadians would have cleared the Scheldt weeks earlier and with fewer casualties.

[dfwgator]

Stalin wanted a high death toll for the Soviet Union in order to claim moral superiority over the other Allies. The war would could have been won with a fraction of the casualties had the Russians had a more capable leader.

[Vaquero]

Blame FDR and Truman for giving the Russians carte blanche with Eastern Europe

[dfwgator]

We were diverting the Germans in North Africa before that.

[drpix]

"The USSR did almost all the heavy lifting in the European theater... the USSR is overwhelmingly responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany"

While the Russian soldiers did most of the dying and most of the killing of Germans that is not what won the war!

You not only ignore the fact that The US and UK were solely responsible for the expanding distruction of the Germany war industry and the scale and importance of US Lend Lease to the USSR's ability to wage any kind of war against Germany.

Here's what Joseph Stalin said:

"The United States is a country of machines. Without the use of these machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war."

That quote and the below figures can be found in "Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II" byAlbert L. Weeks.

Some of the figure on US Lend Lease to the USSR:

Vehicles (trucks, jeeps, etc.): 437,000 RR cars &
locomotives: 13,000
Tanks: 7,000
Aircraft: 15,000
Machine Tools: 306,000
Steel: 2,300,000 tons (from rolled aircraft steel to armor plate)
Petro Prods: 2,650,000 tons
AA Guns: 8,000
Guns: 132,000

In short, the USSR could not have supplied and transported its army without Lend-Lease. And they would have faced a German army infinitely better supplied than allied bombing rendered them.