Living in an area historically settled by many Poles and Lithuanians (but few Russians), I guess I’m just more sympathetic to them. I see little praiseworthy about an American fighting for Stalin; our support of his regime was a low point in our history (on the international scene). To this day the people of Eastern Europe don’t understand how we could sell them out to Soviet enslavement for half a century; he butchered far more people than Hitler.
“I see little praiseworthy about an American fighting for Stalin; our support of his regime was a low point in our history (on the international scene). To this day the people of Eastern Europe don’t understand how we could sell them out to Soviet enslavement for half a century”
That’s weird. I had a conversation on this very subject earlier today on another forum. I’m copying here what I wrote:
1) You know, the peoples of Eastern Europe waited for the Allies armies to come liberate them at the end of WWII, but Roosevelt and Churchill sold them to Stalin at Yalta. So don’t tell me about the US “moral duty”. They didn’t give a flying f@@k about Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yougoslavia ... They condemned these countries to suffer 55 years of communism.
I think that the US despised true democracy as much as Stalin’s Soviet Union.
When Budapest revolted in 1956, what did the US do? When Prague revolted in 1968, what did the US do?
Nothing, zilch, nada.
2) Roosevelt and Churchill sold them to Stalin at Yalta.
“Roosevelt was oblivious to Stalin’s objectives because of Stalin’s excellent ‘poker face,’ and he readily met Stalin’s price, leaving the Yalta Conference exuberant because Stalin had agreed to enter the Pacific war against Japan. Moreover, the Soviets had agreed to join the United Nations given the secret understanding of a voting formula with a veto power for permanent members in the Security Council, there by providing the Soviets with more control in world affairs and greatly weakening the United Nations. Overall, Roosevelt felt confident that Yalta had been successful. The Big Three had ratified previous agreements about the postwar division of Germany: there were to be four zones of occupation, one zone for each of the three dominant nations plus one zone for France.
In the postwar setting, Russia would gain the southern half of the Sakhalin Islands and Kuriles, half of East Prussia, Konigsberg, Germany, and control of Finland. In addition, Roosevelt let it slip that the United States would not protest if the Soviet Union attempted to annex the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) or establish puppet governments, therefore leaving Stalin as pleased with the overall results as Roosevelt, and more rightly so. The Yalta Conference is often regarded by numerous Central European nations as the “Western betrayal.” This belief, held by countries such as Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and the Czech Republic, is rooted in the belief that the Allied powers, despite venerating democratic policies and signing numerous pacts and military agreements, allowed smaller countries to be controlled by and/or made Communist states of the Soviet Union. At the Yalta conference, the Big Three “attempted to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability,”
www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/yalta.html
3) Q: And what should have the U.S. done? Go to nuclear war with the Soviets?
My answer: Then why doesn’t Obama shut up about Ukraine now? He won’t start a nuclear war with Russia. All those US saber rattling in Poland and Romania are simply grotesque.
That’s why I don’t believe a word when the US (a.k.a. NATO) rides its “high-ground principle” horse.