this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
256 points (97.8% liked)
World News
32363 readers
271 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Lol no it wasn't clear. And you're forgetting about the entire Pacific.
Russians trying to rewrite history, forgetting who supplied half their army while also joining a war against their enemy on another front (at great cost to western lives), overall saving lives as the Germans had to divert resources and ending the war in Europe sooner.
Neither of you are wrong, but Americans should understand that the USSR suffered over twenty million deaths vs ~117,000 Americans on the Western Front. They had their own western cities & infrastructure invaded/destroyed. The undertaking & sacrifices are hard to compare.
Okay my bad: you actually are wrong.
It's been a very common thing recently with Russian to claim the West basically did nothing in WW2.
They are quite literally rewriting history in their classrooms.
Now I won't deny they took the brunt of the force and paid an absolutely huge price in lives.
But op is trying to use WW2 as a way to say the US is bad. That we did nothing and only joined when it was basically over. It's a super common Russian nationalist talking point right now.
Common perception in France right after WW2 was that the Soviets made the single largest contribution against the Germans out of any country. That perspective has been progressively rewritten.
And I'm not trying to argue that they didn't. I do believe Russia paid the biggest price and contributed the most. Especially in regard to the lives given to defeat the Axis. And I don't really want to down play that.
But op is using WW2 to attack the US which is dumb. They also paid a large price in the war on both fronts, contributed a ton to allies through lend lease / material goods and were on the correct side of history in this instance.
Not to mention post WW2 was the one time we got nation building done correctly.
Why did Roosevelt wait so long until launching a Western Front? By the time the US had troops in mainland Europe, the Soviets were tearing the Germans apart and outmaneuvering them on the battlefield.
The US' contributions to the Japanese war machine prior to Pearl Harbour are a big factor when evaluating American influence on WW2. American resources single-handedly sustained the Japanese invasion of China.
TIL... western historians deliberately glorifying the US and Britain's role in WW2 = "Russians trying to rewrite history."
That has nothing to do with the post I replied to and I even agree with western historians / hollywood greatly downplaying the eastern front.
Operation Barbarossa had stalled by the time the US entered the war. German logistics were overextended, they were out of oil, and they were against a larger, rapidly industrializing power defending their homeland.
By the time D-Day rolled around, Army Group North and Army Group South were taking loss after loss and the USSR had reclaimed a significant chunk of the land lost during Barbarossa. The Germans were in collapse. Roosevelt had promised a second front in 1942 but couldn't deliver until 1944 (when it was clear that the Soviets had a clear shot at Berlin and had the momentum to keep going).
The Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive put Army Group Center in an increasingly precarious position even as Russia continually gained ground in Byelorussia.
It’s been argued that Churchill & Roosevelt wanted Germany and the USSR to grind each other down, saving the them the trouble, because, being capitalists, they had no love for the Soviet State.
It's telling that the Allies only opened the Western Front after the Soviets had thoroughly defeated the Germans multiple times and were at a real risk of reaching Berlin and then sweeping past it.
And don't forget that during this time the ubermensch were also losing control over the Balkans...