this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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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.