Was it acceptable to ally with Uncle Joe in WWII?

[History_Buff]

Hitler stupidly declared war?

source

Well, I wouldn't really know. This stuff is just too complicated for me.

There's certainly truth to that, and I think most people recognize that FDR was firmly in the Allied camp.

That said, that article is awful. There's a lot of stuff in there that seems very dubious, not to mention the rather obvious bias. You get the distinct impression the author did not care for FDR, and is attempting to villainize him far beyond anything he actually did.

 

[Kraznaya]

Much more than it was acceptable to ally with Hirohito.

 

[Borachio]

There's certainly truth to that, and I think most people recognize that FDR was firmly in the Allied camp.

That said, that article is awful. There's a lot of stuff in there that seems very dubious, not to mention the rather obvious bias. You get the distinct impression the author did not care for FDR, and is attempting to villainize him far beyond anything he actually did.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. You don't know what the article is, clearly. It's from a very long one that I linked to.

You have hit the nail very much on the head!

Click on the source link, and if you don't laugh, I shall be very surprised.

 

[warpus]

So you expected the exhausted western alies to declare war on the SU and start another war with 10s of millions of deaths?

Eh, no. You should read what I actually said.

I'm just pointing out what happened and the consequences. Actions have consequences

 

[Disgustipated]

We could have nuked Moscow. We had enough Uranium and Plutonium by September of 45 I think to drop another one.

Doubtful the world would have been with us on that one though.

 

[Quackers]

Eh, no. You should read what I actually said.

You said the eastern europeans felt betrayed for not gaining their freedom immediately and having to wait 50 years for it. You said they had a "justified betrayal" - i assume you mean they felt betrayed by the western allies; I suggest a possible solution to free the eastern europeans which would be favourable to your position. Seems reasonable to me.

Actions have consequences

Thanks for that world class insight

 

[Borachio]

And I doubt nuking Moscow would have done much to the Soviets but make them more waspy.

 

[Leoreth]

It was theoretically about Pearl Harbor, but beyond that, Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo had a vision to conquer the world. There was no length they wouldn't go to. That's when you can't just sit back and do nothing. When its a local dispute over whatever, keep out, but when a nation is trying to conquer the whole world, you have to stop them.

Stalin, for all the people he killed, wasn't trying to conquer the world at the time, and the Nazis were the immediate threat.

I would never have "Allied" with them, but I would have said "OK, we may not like you, but we've got to stop this Hitler guy." Which is basically what happened.

[...]

I support involvement in WWII both because Japan attacked us, and more directly, Germany wanted to conquer the entire world. Had they stopped when they had restored their own country after Europe kicked it to the can in WWI, I wouldn't have gotten involved, heck, I wouldn't have gotten involved in WWI to begin with.

But WWII was special because Hitler wanted to conquer the world, and there wasn't anything that would stop him except defeat. Had he taken England and Russia, he would have come after us next. And so we had to get involved before we lost any assistance we would have had.

No, just no. I know this narrative is popular especially in the US for some reason, but it has no basis in reality. It's the "comic book villain" narrative I've alluded to earlier. Apparently you think that these leaders or countries were simply crazy and wanted to conquer everything they could for no logical reason. I assume while laughing maniacally as they blow up the Statue of Liberty or something.

Japan clearly wanted to build a huge sphere of influence in East Asia and the Pacific.
Germany clearly wanted to build a huge sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe first, then later on the whole continent.
Italy clearly wanted to build a huge sphere of influence in the Mediterranean.

None of them had any interest in actually occupying American or even British soil (other than forcing a capitulation in case of the latter). If you really think American intervention into WW2 was motivated by preemptively protecting the American homeland than you're utterly mistaken. Of course neither of the goals of the Axis powers I've listed above were desireable for the US, but none of them in itself were a direct threat. So if you want to build some narrative around WW2 as a case of offensive self-defense, you could only do so in the long term (and since the actual WW2 diplomacy produced a rival superpower anyway it's questionable if there's any difference in the outcome, but that of course is speculative territory), otherwise it's very spurious. America got into the war to protect its interests, which of course is entirely valid in my opinion, but you can hardly call yourself an anti-interventionist when holding the same opinion.

Not to mention that this whole "Japan attacked us!" argument is almost equally annoying, because it often carries the implication of an America that just minded its own business when suddenly the Japanese attacked for no reason, when in fact the US opposed Japan in almost every way short of war, leaving no other possibility for Japan to attack when the circumstances were most favorable to them.

In short, don't try to rationalize your history by treating foreign leaders as cardboard cutouts, no matter how despicable they might have been objectively.

Proportionally? Pol Pot. For one.

The US was hardly allied with the Khmer Rouge though.

 

[Borachio]

The US was hardly allied with the Khmer Rouge though.

True. I was just considering the proportion of the Soviet population killed by Stalin. Not the fact of the alliance.

 

[Leoreth]

True. I was just considering the proportion of the Soviet population killed by Stalin. Not the fact of the alliance.

Oh, I thought you were still talking in context of who was the most questionable US ally.

 

[Grendeldef]

We could have nuked Moscow. We had enough Uranium and Plutonium by September of 45 I think to drop another one.

Doubtful the world would have been with us on that one though.

We would have, all 3.8 million of us, but sadly I doubt it would been enough to represent the majority of the world even with a healthy imagination or counting machines from Florida. Probably '85 would've been cool, too but '95 some might consider it slightly late and/or overkill.

G

 

[History_Buff]

I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. You don't know what the article is, clearly. It's from a very long one that I linked to.

You have hit the nail very much on the head!

Click on the source link, and if you don't laugh, I shall be very surprised.

Aha! I see what they did there. Carry on, carry on.

 

[Kraznaya]

The US was hardly allied with the Khmer Rouge though.

Yes it was.

 

[Cutlass]

It's not my fault Roosevelt was weak on communism. He was a communist himself imho. I hated his New Deal policies. He was a weak negotiator. But like Obama (who is also weak in dealing with the Russians), he's our commander in chief, and we have to follow him.

lol. FDR was a conservative.

 

[innonimatu]

You were orders of magnitude stronger and could have pushed for a "Finlandization" of most of Eastern Europe (Ukraine was a lost cause, naturally), which Stalin was more than ready to accept. In fact he fully expected that outcome (or something even more against his interests) and was taken aback by Roosevelt's inapt negotiation.

Roosevelt's plan was not Truman's plan (actually, did Truman even had a plan?). Roosevelt's plan featured the UN, not NATO. It featured China as a partner. And a weak (and "neutralized") Europe from which its colonial empires will had to be wrestled, not an Europe divided between two opposing fields.

 

[Ajidica]

lol. FDR was a conservative.

He was a conservative in that he opposed a leftist revolution, but he was not a conservative in how he approached economics. I might be off, but FDR's New Deal was the first time proto-Keynesian policies were put into place on a large scale.

 

[Disgustipated]

lol. FDR was a conservative.

and you expect me to believe that?

 

[Patroklos]

First, the number of deaths under Stalin were likely greatly exaggerated by at least an order of magnitude.

"order of magnitude" sounds impressive, but less so when it's obvious you have no idea what it means.

Second, the US continues to have allies which are quite probably far more morally despicable than the USSR ever was.

Name one.

The Soviet Union really won WWII. By comparison, the US and the UK were merely bystanders when it comes to the number of military deaths, much less civilians. Yes, we provided supplies which was likely critical. But it pales in comparison to the number of lives lost.

That has a lit to do with scale, but we were also just better at it than the Russuans, tank for tank man for man. No German division ever had the field day they routinely had whole Soviet armies (though small units than Western armies) with a Western equivalent formation.

And of course the European theatre is just half the story of WWII...

 

[Ajidica]

No German division ever had the field day they routinely had whole Soviet armies (though small units than Western armies) with a Western equivalent formation.

Does the Invasion of France escape you?

 

[Cutlass]

and you expect me to believe that?

Well, you may simply not know anything about FDR. Or socialism. In which case you might not believe it.

FDR, above and beyond all other things in his presidency, was about preserving the basic American status quo of the time. However he recognized that to do so required quite a lot of fiddling around the edges. But ultimately the preservation of the capitalist market economy and the American system of government was why he did what he did. That's a conservative motivation.