We weren’t very good about supporting Russia. We shipped as little as we could up to Murmansk.
In the twenties, when Germany was barred by treaty from re-arming, German arms makers and generals started arms factories in the USSR. Quid pro quo, cover, workers, material, in exchange for engineering know how and modern factories.
By the time WWII started, Germany had killed a few thousand handicapped people and many fewer political enemies.
The Soviet Union already had killed roughly seven million plus through food confiscation and famine, the gulag, execution and torture.
Would an anti-semitic fascist expansionist party have risen in Germany as a reaction to defeat in WWI alone, without the Soviet threat?
“We weren’t very good about supporting Russia. We shipped as little as we could up to Murmansk.”
We shouldn’t have helped at all. Russia went halfsies with Germany on the invasion of Poland and we should have let Germany and Russia maul each other when their partership ended.
We could have avoided the Cold War and likely not had Korea or Vietnam either.
I disagree strongly. We supported Russia too much and made their victory possible.
The U.S. never should have agreed to Russia, without Russia immediately declaring war on Japan. (And probably not at all, as MeganC said)
Remember, Japan did not surrender after nuclear bomb no. 1 or no. 2. They surrendered after Russia sliced through Manchuria. Russia was required, by their agreement with the U.K./U.S. to declare war 3 months after VE Day. For the mon ths prior they kept negotiatiating an alliance with Japan.
Japan was deadly afraid of Russia, especially from the 1939 Battle of Khalkin Gol.
Stalin himself admitted to Khrushchev, that the Soviet Union would have lost had it not been for US Lend-Lease.