Quote:
Originally Posted by DDLDSDB
The "westerrn leaders " were the one's in cahoots with Stalin. Hitler was the one who wasn't in their league.
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And that was a consequence, simply put, of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". War, like politics, makes for strange bedfellows. They were "in cahoots" because they had a common enemy, after Barbarossa for Britain and after December 11, 1941 for US. Fighting both Germany and USSR
at that moment in time would have been a silly move for either leader. Letting the Nazis and the Soviets fight it out and then going after the victor might have made more sense militarily, but the only way to have beaten Stalin would have been to really beat him
on Russian soil. Hitler (and Napoleon) proved that conquering Russia from the west isn't so easy to do. In fact, no one has ever succeeded in "conquering" Russia from the west (though the Russians did sue for peace in the first war because of internal turmoil, they were hardly "conquered").
It's easy to look through the "retrospectoscope"; much harder to look into the future with any accuracy.
And again, does anyone reading this really believe that US public opinion in 1941 or in 1945 would have allowed for further war in Europe to take back Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, etc? What could FDR really have done once Soviet troops were on the ground there, short of a war which was not an option for him? Stalin, on the other hand, was ready to fight for his "buffer". That much is well documented in Soviet archives.
People forget some important facts here. This was a war that Hitler and his people asked for, and started in fact when when Poland was invaded and France and Britain responded. The US was not directly involved in these events. The US became
directly involved in the European conflict only after Hitler declared war on December 11, 1941 (perhaps one of his biggest mistakes). The US had
never guaranteed Polish borders or sovereignty. So what was her responsibility?
For those angry at FDR (and by the way, I agree that he made his share of mistakes, but to call his actions a "betrayal" of anything is overstating his obligations), let us remember the following numbers:
- USA: Total KIA, all theatres, about 400,000. Civilian deaths, about 11,000. Total of 3.2/1000 population.
- USSR: Total KIA, about 10,000,000. Civilian deaths (including Holocaust victims), over 15,000,000. This is well in excess of 100/1000 population.
Once again, I am not taking a political stand here. I'm just trying to look at the
facts.
WorldWarII-MilitaryDeaths-Allies-Piechart.png
There is no "just" war and there is no "moral" war. The US was in the war in Europe to win for the US. That is the sad truth, but it is the reality of war. As someone said elsewhere in this forum, sometimes we need to look at who is the "biggest devil", not who was "more moral". Hitler's plan was to eventually annex all of Poland and kill or expel 80-85% of its citizenry over 25-30 years (see
Hitler's Plans for Eastern Europe). Ukraine and Belarus would likely have suffered similar fates as the idea of
Lebensraum involved creating colonies for Germany similar to those of Britain. Hitler, in
Mein Kampf likened what would happen to that of India, where the (Aryan) colonists would live like kings and the locals would be kept primitive and extremely poor. I never lived under either system, but I am quite sure that the populations of those regions grew under Stalinism (eg Poland, 1939 population ~35 million, 1946 population after war, border changes, and forced expulsions of ethnic Germans, ~24 million, 1970's population, ~35 million, current population ~38 million). Despite the repressive nature of the regime, Polish post-war population
grew by 50%!!. That would clearly
not have been the case under the Nazis. I'm not convinced that there ever really was a third option, given the situation on the ground in 1945 and US public opinion.