Posted on 05/05/2005 10:23:39 AM PDT by sergey1973
I was just wondering, because there were NKVD everywhere around, and I'm sure they didn't want Soviet soldiers to fraternize with GI's.
Nope--at a time picture was taken, it was perfect for propaganda. Cold War came a few months later.
They would have accepted German leadership in a free Russian state, but they would no more have accepted German rule then Poland would have even had the Germans treated Poles like people and not animals. But then again, the Germans then were the Nazis (well the leadership anyways) and as such they wouldn't have been themselves if they treated the untermensch north and east slavs like human beings.
Actually the Cold War started around 1948, more like a few years later.
3 million Soviet soldiers surrendered in the first 4 months of Barbarosa. They figured they were being liberated from Stalin. By the end of 1941, 2 million of them were shot, starved or worked to death.
The brits usually manage to leave the US out of WW2, also.
"Actually the Cold War started around 1948, more like a few years later."
Officially yes, but tensions were building up soon after American/British and Soviet Troops linked up in Germany.
"The brits usually manage to leave the US out of WW2, also."
You've got to be kidding ? Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Battle of Bulge, Guadalcanal, Italian Campaign, Pacific Battles against Japanese Navy, etc--how it could "usually leave the US out of WWII " ?
The Russians sometimes claim the Cold War started in 1918-19 when U.S. and British troops seized and occupied the Russian port city of Arkhangelsk.
Nope, not kidding. Check out most British books or shows on WW2. The only battle they remember was Dunkirk, and the brits claim they won that one.
"The Russians sometimes claim the Cold War started in 1918-19 when U.S. and British troops seized and occupied the Russian port city of Arkhangelsk."
This was during Russian Civil war of 1917-1922. British and American troops were assisting anti-Bolshevik Russian White Guard Army. They used Murmansk and Arkhangelsk to supply White Guard forces.
Unfortunately for Russia and for the rest of the World, Bolsheviks won.
"Nope, not kidding. Check out most British books or shows on WW2. The only battle they remember was Dunkirk, and the brits claim they won that one."
Ah--got it -:))) Well--historical mythology is a favorite International game. Nobody likes to talk and analyzie own failures and shortcomings--that's human nature after all
-:))))
I don't think you're right on this one.
We've got a lot of uranium in Utah and Colorado, and, as I recall, the production schedule on atomic bombs was roughly one every two months after the Trinity test bomb, Little Boy and Fat Man.
I can't find a definitive reference on that one; I'm writing from memory. However, I find it hard to believe that we could crank out three bombs by 1945 and then just shut down production for four years.
As for battlefield use, it would have been impossible to reach any major soviet city, considering that from the closest bases it would have been a flight of at least a thousand kilometers across enemy dominated air space into the mouth of one of the thickest air-defense nets in the world. As for battlefield use, the range on the atomics was so small (radius) that they would have made little impact on a front line compared to the cost of making the bomb.
It's just like Normandy. Normandy was not the turning point of the war not even nearly the main battle. 8 out of 10 Third Reich soldier KIAs (of all nationalities) died on the Eastern Front. By the time Normandy happened, the Soviets were sitting on and across the Vistul and the 6th Army was being exterminated for the second time, this time in Romania.
Which Russians? Considering that US forces arrived to assist White Russian elements on their southern drive. The drive was very effective, the combined force of Imperial Russian troops and US troops routed the Bolsheviks but then Wilson showed his leftest roots and forbid the US contingent to advance. Meanwhile the Whites were not strong enough to continue pushing the regrouping Bolshaviks and eventually both the Whites and the US troops were pushed back north.
I recall something James Michener wrote about the 20th Anniversary of D-Day. It seems the French had commissioned a "commemorative" stamp which depicted the heroic French Commandos coming ashore at Normandy with a large Frog flag. Somewhere in the distance you could make out British and American flags. I know that the Russians, that is the Russians + the other captive nations that made up the former USSR, made the greatest human sacrifice of any Allied nation in WWII, but it is also true that in large measure their sacrifice was due as much to the self-delusional paranoia of their ruthless Communist dictator, as it was to German action. Whether the Russians could have/would have stood alone against Nazi Germany, as Britain did, or whether the Russians could ever have achieved victory without the material support the US provided, is definitely an open question, at least.
Well--I would prefer not to speculate whether Russia/USSR would have achieved the victory over Nazi Germany on its own without Allied assistance. This is really anything but a wild guess of what ifs. What's really important is to recognize all contributions to the victory over Nazi Germany without overlooking darker aspects of Post WWII Soviet Control of E.Europe.
"6. after dropping the second bomb on Japan we didn't have another bomb for 4 years. US has very little Uranium."
You might ask God for a refresher course in the 'truth'...
Could you be more wrong? Let us count the ways... First as to your contention that after the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan that the US did not have another atomic bomb for four years. The TRUTH is that there was a third atomic bomb being readied for a combat drop. Didn't know that, did you?
The United States actually had three Atomic weapons ready for use near the end of WWII, two of which were dropped on Japan, the third was being readied for a mission by Col. Tibbets' unit, the 509th Composite Group when Japan surrendered. The USA had two "Fat Man" plutonium Atomic weapons in the inventory at the end of calendar year 1945.
In an August 2002 interview with Studs Terkel published in the British Guardian newspaper, Paul Tibbetts recalled something similar: "Unknown to anybody else--I knew it, but nobody else knew--there was a third one. See, the first bomb went off and they didn't hear anything out of the Japanese for two or three days. The second bomb was dropped and again they were silent for another couple of days. Then I got a phone call from General Curtis LeMay. He said, 'You got another one of those damn things?' I said, 'Yessir.' He said, 'Where is it?' I said, 'Over in Utah.' He said, 'Get it out here. You and your crew are going to fly it.' I said, 'Yessir.' I sent word back and the crew loaded it on an airplane and we headed back to bring it right on out to Trinian and when they got it to California debarkation point, the war was over."
Source: Warbird Forum: The third bomb
Now let's get to your laughable contention that the US did not have another bomb for another four years...
The reason that your assertion is so incorrect to be sophmorically stupid was that there WAS a production line set up to generate plutonium cores for the "Fat Man" model of the US nuclear stockpile! Did you think that the US had invested 2 billion (1943) dollars just to make five atomic bombs in 1945? The only reason that the US did not go into wartime production mode on the 'Fat Man' plutonium cores is that the war ENDED. The "Little Boy" uranium gun-type atomic weapon first dropped on Hiroshima was a one-off model, never produced again. All of the other US atomic weapons were of the plutonium-implosion "Fat Man" model. So the first bomb was tested in the US during July 1945. Two more atomic weapons were dropped on Japan in August 1945. One more atomic bomb was being readied for Tokyo for late August 1945; it was never delivered. At the end of calendar year 1945 the US had two "Fat Man" type nuclear weapons in its inventory out of the five produced in 1945, however if Japan had not surrendered the nuclear 'production line' that you insist did not exist was designed to produce 7 plutonium cored nuclear weapons per month. More than enough to take care of the Nazis and/or the Japs.
"A third bomb was being shipped from New Mexico, target Tokyo, when the war ended. Production was geared to seven per month with an expectation that 50 bombs would be required to assure that an invasion would not be required. Release of radiation from the untested Hiroshima bomb, designed as the original gun-type and made of uranium, was a surprise. The radiation range was expected to be within the blast radius, that is, a lethal dose of radiation would only kill those already dead from concussion. The Alamogordo bomb test and later production were of the more complicated plutonium, yet cleaner, implosion device."
Source: WW2 Pacific: Little Known Facts: Atomic Bomb -- Allies
The United States did feel the need to build more nuclear weapons in the immediate aftermath of WWII, since the demobilization of the 12.34 million Armed Forces of WWII had made the post-war US nuclear monopoly the first-line of defense for the United States and its interests. No "hindsight" was necessary, since the expense of the $2 Billion Manhattan Project was amortized over the following production of US nuclear weapons from 1945 onwards.
There was no need for the US to wait to build more atomic weapons until the USSR detonated their first atomic bomb in August of 1949, as by 1949 the United States had around 235 atomic weapons in its nuclear arsenal. Winston Churchill gave his famous "Iron Curtain" speach at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri on March 5, 1946 - the official 'start' of the Cold War, three years before the USSR tested its first atomic bomb. Note the ramp-up in production in 1946. Notice that by the four year time frame from the end of WWII in September 1945 to September 1949 the US had produced 235 atomic weapons. You stated that ZERO were produced in that same time frame.
Which statement is the TRUTH, yours or history's...
Source: Power Point Presentation USC Berkeley - History - 105, Dr. McCray "Early Nuclear Strategy" Slide #9.
Source: Complete List of All U.S. Nuclear Weapons The NuclearWeaponsArchive.org
Now as to your last contention about the US uranium reserves. The US has 3% of the world's know uranium reserves, Canada has 12% and Australia has 28% of the world's known economically recoverable uranium reserves. The US reserves alone would have been enough to re-create the US nuclear weapons inventory at the height of the cold war five times over. Access to the raw ore was never the problem, refining it was the reason for the massive expenditure of the Manhattan Project and follow-ons in the the 1950s and 1960s.
dvwjr
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