The US was playing the isolationist card until we got brought into the mess personally, but isn’t that usually how things are? Didn’t Canada go early on because they were part of the Empire still? The US was still needed even if it was late to the party, Churchill himself hinted in his Fight on the Beaches speech about “until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
Didn’t Canada go early on because they were part of the Empire still?
That was a true for the first world war but Canada entered the second world war as an independent nation.
And yeah, like the US helped a lot but that’s mostly because they walked in at the end with a fresh army after everyone else had years of fighting. It’s very American exceptionalist to narrow the “victors” of WW2 down to the UK, the USA and the Soviet Union.
The USA played an outsized role in propping the Soviets and British when they were getting curb stomped.
The Soviets played an outsized role fighting the Germans in the east and tying them up and grinding them down.
America played an outsized role in the war in the Pacific and helped the allies win the war in Europe. The pacific was our war, Europe was just a theater.
It’s hard to say the Soviets could have won if the USA hadn’t helped the allies open another front in Europe, but it’s also impossible to say they couldn’t have. Maybe in the absence of lend lease their territory would have been large enough to get themselves off the floor on their own. Who knows. It’s all hypothetical.
They all played their role. Nobody did any of it single handedly.
The USSR was the only country in 1936 to send weapons, planes and tanks to the Republicans in Spanish Civil War who were fighting against fascists supported by Nazi bombings.
The USSR was the only country who, as an alternative to the Munich Agreements, pushed hard to collectively invade the Nazis, which France and Poland refused.
The USSR pushed for the entire 30s for a mutual defense alliance with England, Poland and France against Nazism under the Maxim Litvinov doctrine, offering to send up to a million soldiers to France in exchange for a mutual defense pact, which got denied. Only in 1939 after a decade of exhausting every diplomatic alternative, did Maxim Litvinov get replaced by Molotov (from Molotov-Ribbentrop) to try and hold off the Nazis for as long as possible.
The USSR sent weapons to the Stalinist faction in the Spanish Republic, hoping after the war they would become a puppet state.
The efforts of the Anarchists during the war (establishing stateless, horizontal power structures) were undermining that effort, thus the Stalinists turned on them (and the anti-stalinist Marxist faction) mid-war, calling them ‘secret fascists’ helping the enemy, and proceeded to round them up for execution.
I hope I can make two suggestions about the moderation process.
If you ban a user for disinfo, it would be good if you could ban the specific comment so that the reason is visible in the mod log and the audience can learn what is wrong.
OP was banned as Tankie, almost permanently. You should add Tankie to the sidebar. Fascists and Tankies are totalitarian but not the same thing.
Red fash are fascists; both the points of Ur-Fascism and that of a palingenetic ultranationalist regime apply to red fash, but I’ll update the rules to make that more explicit.
The US was supplying the UK and France from the very start of the war, ending a near-decade long embargo on munitions export, and Lend-Lease began before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
You couldn’t have said it better. I am getting tired of memes of US being happy enough to profit from either side until they got dragged into WWII by Japan. Even though that is true (private companies with operations on both sides of the Atlantic are the ones who profited more), the US have helped China and the Allies more through lend lease and embargo as you mentioned. It is also important to remember that US ships and German u-boats were already skirmishing for well over a year before WWII, because US ships were supplying UK after France fell.
Under the Cash‑and‑Carry and Lend‑Lease programs, Britain, the Soviet Union, China and others paid for U.S. war material largely with gold.
Those inflows swelled U.S. Treasury gold holdings from about 30 million oz in 1939 to ≈574 million oz—over half of the world’s official gold stock—by 1945.
Contemporary accounts note that by the late‑1940s the United States controlled around 70 % of global gold reserves, a figure that stemmed from wartime payments.
During this time period the US saw a reduction in unemployment by 7% and wages rose 20 to 30% pulling millions of Americans out of poverty.
The GI bill, employment act and housing act were all introduced on the back of this accrued wealth.
Of greatest impact was that these gold reserves allowed the US to set its dollar as the global reserve currency via the Breton Woods system, which led to a persistent balance of payments surplus and cheap overseas borrowing.
In simpler terms, America could borrow at the lowest interest rates since it now had the highest credit rating in the world (turns out people trust you to pay back your loans when you have 70% of the worlds gold stockpiled).
So, while I hear where you’re coming from, I think it’s a stretch to think there weren’t politicians, industrialists and even ordinary citizens who saw that the war was rapidly improving their material circumstances (at least those that were not part of a targeted minority group). I’m sure there was fear the war would show up at their doorstep but it ultimately never did in the way Europe and other nations sustained profound infrastructure loss.
WW2 is what made the US the economic powerhouse it is today. I think that outcome alone would support that there were some, if not many, who didn’t mind seeing the war go on since it worked immensely to their financial benefit.
The US was supplying Allies and building a military industry well before Pearl Harbor. FDR was itching for a reason to join the Allies but popular sentiment was still very anti war.
I’m too inebriated to write an essay, but do yourself a favor and look up:
The US was happy enough with the Nazis until Japan forced them to take a side
And the USSR was very happy with the Nazis until Germany attacked them.
True, I just hate that the US acts as though they played the biggest part in the war when countries like Canada were there from the start
The US was playing the isolationist card until we got brought into the mess personally, but isn’t that usually how things are? Didn’t Canada go early on because they were part of the Empire still? The US was still needed even if it was late to the party, Churchill himself hinted in his Fight on the Beaches speech about “until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
That was a true for the first world war but Canada entered the second world war as an independent nation.
And yeah, like the US helped a lot but that’s mostly because they walked in at the end with a fresh army after everyone else had years of fighting. It’s very American exceptionalist to narrow the “victors” of WW2 down to the UK, the USA and the Soviet Union.
The USA played an outsized role in propping the Soviets and British when they were getting curb stomped.
The Soviets played an outsized role fighting the Germans in the east and tying them up and grinding them down.
America played an outsized role in the war in the Pacific and helped the allies win the war in Europe. The pacific was our war, Europe was just a theater.
It’s hard to say the Soviets could have won if the USA hadn’t helped the allies open another front in Europe, but it’s also impossible to say they couldn’t have. Maybe in the absence of lend lease their territory would have been large enough to get themselves off the floor on their own. Who knows. It’s all hypothetical.
They all played their role. Nobody did any of it single handedly.
The USSR was the only country in 1936 to send weapons, planes and tanks to the Republicans in Spanish Civil War who were fighting against fascists supported by Nazi bombings.
The USSR was the only country who, as an alternative to the Munich Agreements, pushed hard to collectively invade the Nazis, which France and Poland refused.
The USSR pushed for the entire 30s for a mutual defense alliance with England, Poland and France against Nazism under the Maxim Litvinov doctrine, offering to send up to a million soldiers to France in exchange for a mutual defense pact, which got denied. Only in 1939 after a decade of exhausting every diplomatic alternative, did Maxim Litvinov get replaced by Molotov (from Molotov-Ribbentrop) to try and hold off the Nazis for as long as possible.
The USSR sent weapons to the Stalinist faction in the Spanish Republic, hoping after the war they would become a puppet state.
The efforts of the Anarchists during the war (establishing stateless, horizontal power structures) were undermining that effort, thus the Stalinists turned on them (and the anti-stalinist Marxist faction) mid-war, calling them ‘secret fascists’ helping the enemy, and proceeded to round them up for execution.
@PugJesus@piefed.social
Is the ban necessary? Personally I enjoy the discussions that spring from radically different interpretations of history.
Subscribers of this sub should have or develop the knowledge to judge these comments accordingly.
Lies spread by repetition, not the strength of the point. “Radically different interpretations” are fine; disinfo and fascist apologia is not.
I hope I can make two suggestions about the moderation process.
If you ban a user for disinfo, it would be good if you could ban the specific comment so that the reason is visible in the mod log and the audience can learn what is wrong.
OP was banned as Tankie, almost permanently. You should add Tankie to the sidebar. Fascists and Tankies are totalitarian but not the same thing.
Preserving misinformation has no value.
Red fash are fascists; both the points of Ur-Fascism and that of a palingenetic ultranationalist regime apply to red fash, but I’ll update the rules to make that more explicit.
Thanks.
Should you ever write down your thoughts about the topic in a comment, please let me know if you remember.
lol, lmao even.
“Exhausting every diplomatic alternative” to carve Europe up in the way they wanted to
The US was supplying the UK and France from the very start of the war, ending a near-decade long embargo on munitions export, and Lend-Lease began before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
You couldn’t have said it better. I am getting tired of memes of US being happy enough to profit from either side until they got dragged into WWII by Japan. Even though that is true (private companies with operations on both sides of the Atlantic are the ones who profited more), the US have helped China and the Allies more through lend lease and embargo as you mentioned. It is also important to remember that US ships and German u-boats were already skirmishing for well over a year before WWII, because US ships were supplying UK after France fell.
Under the Cash‑and‑Carry and Lend‑Lease programs, Britain, the Soviet Union, China and others paid for U.S. war material largely with gold.
Those inflows swelled U.S. Treasury gold holdings from about 30 million oz in 1939 to ≈574 million oz—over half of the world’s official gold stock—by 1945.
Contemporary accounts note that by the late‑1940s the United States controlled around 70 % of global gold reserves, a figure that stemmed from wartime payments.
During this time period the US saw a reduction in unemployment by 7% and wages rose 20 to 30% pulling millions of Americans out of poverty.
The GI bill, employment act and housing act were all introduced on the back of this accrued wealth.
Of greatest impact was that these gold reserves allowed the US to set its dollar as the global reserve currency via the Breton Woods system, which led to a persistent balance of payments surplus and cheap overseas borrowing.
In simpler terms, America could borrow at the lowest interest rates since it now had the highest credit rating in the world (turns out people trust you to pay back your loans when you have 70% of the worlds gold stockpiled).
So, while I hear where you’re coming from, I think it’s a stretch to think there weren’t politicians, industrialists and even ordinary citizens who saw that the war was rapidly improving their material circumstances (at least those that were not part of a targeted minority group). I’m sure there was fear the war would show up at their doorstep but it ultimately never did in the way Europe and other nations sustained profound infrastructure loss.
WW2 is what made the US the economic powerhouse it is today. I think that outcome alone would support that there were some, if not many, who didn’t mind seeing the war go on since it worked immensely to their financial benefit.
Bullshit. Read a fucking book.
The US was supplying Allies and building a military industry well before Pearl Harbor. FDR was itching for a reason to join the Allies but popular sentiment was still very anti war.
I’m too inebriated to write an essay, but do yourself a favor and look up: