But he fought against the Russians. His past is here irrelevant.
North American democracies have never had issues with Nazis, as long as they can help them beat the Russia. They even got the highest possible positions, like for example, the chief of NASA that landed on the moon before the Soviets.
There was a very easy way to help Nazis beat Russia in WWII, and uh, we did the opposite thing.
You mean like being neutral and refusing to open a second front for years, while Russians were fighting against Nazis.
> and uh, we did the opposite thing.
What, landed in Normandy in 1944 when the war was already decided because you were afraid of Soviets reaching Paris before you?
If you're going to be one of those tiresome "Russia would have won WWII alone!" nationalists then this conversation isn't worth having, but I'm happy to show evidence you're wrong, if you aren't.
Despite the way popular history paints these things, the game that folks in the allied command played was not some grandiose good vs evil fight with two clear sides. It was complicated and dirty and awful things were done by everyone including the Americans.
And those "huge" quantities were just a small drop in the sea of the total effort. Their significance was more for propaganda purposes than actual military impact.
> And invaded Italy and North Africa years before, if you had any knowledge of history.
If you had any knowledge of history, you may be aware of the fact that the total German Afrika Korps consisted of merely 35,500 soldiers [1], while there were millions fighting on the Eastern Front. And you managed to drag those Africa operations for years.
And Italy was selected as a target for the invasion exactly because it was strategically relevant. It was again defended by a minor German force for more than a year. It wasn't even a distraction for the Nazis.
But I understand the USA didn't want to actually engage fighting Germany and end the war. It was in their interest to let them slaughter each other, regardless how many civilians get killed.
> If you're going to be one of those tiresome "Russia would have won WWII alone!" nationalists then this conversation isn't worth having, but I'm happy to show evidence you're wrong, if you aren't.
I never claimed Russia would have won WW2 alone. What I said is that the Soviets (not only Russia) did win against the Germany alone. The influence of other "allies" war minor.
The USA had its role fighting against the Japan, but that was a completely separate fight. And even there, the Soviets helped the USA, by binding significant Japanese forces on their borders, that would otherwise be used against the USA, and maybe change the flow of war. They even did a similar move like the USA in Normandy, by defeating the Japanese expeditionary army in China. The only difference, they left China afterward, while the USA army stayed in Europe as an occupying force, and is there up until now.
for example:
> Lend-Lease trucks were particularly important to the Red Army, which was notoriously deficient in such equipment. By the end of the war, two out of every three Red Army trucks were foreign-built, including 409,000 cargo trucks and 47,000 Willys Jeeps. [Note, Glantz's 2/3 stat is a higher ratio than Ellis indicates, but Ellis still points to 2:1 import/production, and regardless there may be other caveats in play]
The shipment of finished trucks, planes and tanks was very important in the early years of the war, and forced a stalemate in early battles (we both know, that Moscow was about a hair from being captured). Yes, the material aid became relatively less significant as Soviet production ramped up, but that wouldn't have happened if the USSR had collapsed in 1942 or 1943.
Oh lol I almost missed this gem.
> The only difference, they left China afterward, while the USA army stayed in Europe as an occupying force
Absolutely incredible to describe the US forces in Europe as "occupying" and not mention what the Soviets did.
Yeah I think we're done here.
How do you call a foreign force in a foreign country that came with the force, and refuses to leave, although there is no reason to stay there? If you think they are "partners" to Europeans, ask yourself why are there no "partner" European forces on the US soil.
> Yeah I think we're done here.
Great. Then tell your army to pack their stuff and GTFO from Europe. We don't need you here.
(hint: you can't)
> ask yourself why are there no "partner" European forces on the US soil
In case you are arguing in good faith... Canada isn't going to invade.
Opinions differ:
> "I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
> Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.
> "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."
[…]
> Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper.
[…]
> The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks.
* https://www.rferl.org/a/did-us-lend-lease-aid-tip-the-balanc...
During the Battle of Moscow, apparently British tanks may have made 40% of the armour:
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1351804060069781...
And then there's another can of worms of how Poland acted to it's neighbours in 1920.