<p>The war’s outcome (in Europe anyway) was set before America entered into it.</p>
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<p>I quite agree, but America contributed almost nothing to the war in North Africa, it was pretty much ALL Britain.</p>
<p>True of Montgomery coming toward Tunis from the east, but not of the forces coming toward Tunis from the west.</p>
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<p>In the sense that Germany was going to lose? Probably.</p>
<p>In the sense that the geostrategic situation post-war would have happened without American intervention? Not a chance.</p>
<p>Absent the direct American military intervention (and assuming continued “neutrality” included Lend-Lease support, food, supplies, etc. for the UK), it’s true that Germany would have been crushed by the Red Army eventually. But the British would have been wholly unable to organize and support a Western Front amphibious invasion of France on their own, and the likely result would have been a Soviet sweep all the way across Western Europe, creating a Warsaw Pact stretching from Vladivostok to Brest. The entire “Cold War” balance of power would be shifted.</p>
<p>One thing often forgotten about US’ lend-lease aid to the allies…especially the Soviets was that it wasn’t only in the form of provided food, equipment, vehicles, weapons, and munitions. It also came in introducing industrial production techniques in areas such as steel production. </p>
<p>This introduction of improved steel production techniques was one major factor in the eventual success of the T-34 and Soviet armor over the Nazi Panzers and its armed forces. Many Nazi Panzer commanders were shocked at finding many of their anti-tank weapons and lighter tanks…including their earlier Panzer tank guns were unable to easily knock out the T-34 and other newer Soviet Tanks using this improved steel armor plate. </p>
<p>It wasn’t just numbers…the quality of Soviet steel armor was actually better than what the Nazis had which enabled the Soviets to win their armored battles and eventually to contribute to the Allied victory in Europe. </p>
<p>The Soviet Air Force also loved the US made P-39 Airacobra fighters in both the ground attack and low-medium altitude fighter roles. </p>
<p>Surprising to the Americans considering they proved to be such a disappointment among US and RAF airmen during the early days of the war.</p>
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<p>Explain how the USSR “saved” the US from being invaded by Germany when the US could have very well defeated any German invasion even if the USSR and UK were both defeated by Germany.</p>
<p>Also, Poland being “saved” from Hitler by Stalin was not that much of an upgrade, especially since the two of them cooperated in partitioning Poland at the start of the European war. (After the war, the USSR kept what it took from Poland at the beginning of the war, “compensating” Poland by giving it parts of Germany.)</p>
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<p>Explain how the UK would have remained in the war without supplies from the US.</p>
<p>Explain how the USSR would have done in the war without supplies from the US, and with Germany less distracted by a weaker or neutralized UK.</p>
<p>UCB, weren’t the German lands given to Poland essentially border areas with a sizeable ethnic Polish population anyway? I believe that Gdansk, Poland was formerly Danzig, Germany.</p>
<p>Northwestern University professor Ipatieff discovered a “revolutionary oil-refining process which converted waste gases to high-octane aviation fuel. This fuel is credited with helping outmanned, outgunned British pilots hold off the superior German air power during the Battle of Britain in 1940.”</p>
<p>Re: #186</p>
<p>Here is a map of how Poland’s borders were redrawn after World War 2:
[File:Curzon</a> line en.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“File:Curzon line en.svg - Wikipedia”>File:Curzon line en.svg - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>The prewar ethnic distribution looked like this:
[File:Nationalities</a> in Second Polish Republic ca. 1931.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nationalities_in_Second_Polish_Republic_ca._1931.png]File:Nationalities”>File:Nationalities in Second Polish Republic ca. 1931.png - Wikipedia)</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nationalities_in_Second_Polish_Republic_ca._1931.png]File:Nationalities](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nationalities_in_Second_Polish_Republic_ca._1931.png%5DFile:Nationalities){kind=link}
<p>Gdańsk was Danzig, but it was a “Free City” between World War 1 and 2. Prior to World War 1, it, as well as western Poland<em>, were part of Germany (eastern and central Poland</em> were part of Russia).</p>
<p>*borders between World War 1 and 2</p>
<p>Additionally, we were taught that one of the rationales for re-designing the borders post-war Europe was to try to address strife concerning ethnic minorities. Obviously that didn’t work out very well in the Balkans. And the Soviets more or less tried to suffocate their minorities under the primacy of the dominant Soviet Russian culture.</p>
<p>UCB, I think it was all a sticky-wicket, given that Germany itself was not very old as a nation in 1945, and therefore its claim to certain territories might have been historically questionable. The Poles may have been able to claim that culturally, western Poland was never quite “German.”</p>
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<p>In eastern Europe, many of the borders remained the same. Those that changed were due to the USSR taking stuff like Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, part of Romania, part of Czechoslovakia, part of Germany, and part of Poland (giving Poland part of Germany as “compensation”). Ethnic minorities were forcibly expelled in many cases (e.g. Poles from areas taken by the USSR, Germans from areas given to Poland, Germans from the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia) to “solve” the problem of perceived-to-be-disloyal ethnic minorities.</p>
<p>The Balkan borders were restored to what they were between World War 1 and 2 (Yugoslavia was created after World War 1).</p>
<p>The biggest unsung contribution of the US via Lend-Lease was trucks. Plain, old trucks. We sent almost half a million cargo trucks to Russia, and those Studebakers formed the backbone of the Soviet transport fleet.</p>
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<p>Western Poland (1920-1939 borders) was historically ethnically Polish, despite being under German control for a century plus leading up to World War 1. If you look at a map of 1700s Poland before it was partitioned by Prussia (the largest predecessor state of Germany), Austria-Hungary, and Russia, you will note that its western border was rather similar to the border of the recreated Poland after World War 1, the latter of which was based on the ethnic distribution at the time. However, the areas west of that border were populated mainly by ethnic Germans.</p>
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I suggest you read the first and third sentences you wrote above, and think about whether this is really a position you want to take. Do you really want to take the position that 180,000 American dead is “minor” compared to anything? I’m afraid that you really aren’t impressing anybody with your arguments–I’m not sure if that’s what you’re trying to accomplish.</p>
<p>^More importantly, is lives lost necessarily a great measure of contribution? As General Patton said, “The objective of war is to make the other guy die for his country.”</p>
<p>My impression is that the Russians contributed greatly by sucking the Germans into a stalemate on the Eastern Front, weakening the German army and making it more prone to the decisive attacks by the American led allied forces on other fronts.
However, it’s an oversimplification to say the Russians contributed more because more died.</p>
<p>It is pointless and fruitless to argue about WWII or who 'won it"…the reality is no one entity “won it”, for a number of reasons. If the Russians weren’t fighting on the eastern front, the US would have taken several million casualties in fighting Germany, the Russians took on 100 divisions of Hitler’s best troups (and it is likely I wouldn’t be here, my dad was a vet of fighting in Europe in the 3rd army). The British for the first two years of WWII were pretty much all that was left fighting on the west, while after summer 1941 the Russians were fighting for their lives (and took as many as 20 million military casualties alone). </p>
<p>“Explain how the USSR “saved” the US from being invaded by Germany when the US could have very well defeated any German invasion even if the USSR and UK were both defeated by Germany.”</p>
<p>It is likely if europe fell that the US might well have had to pull out of Europe…We would have been in the position Germany was in in WWII, fighting a two front war, and in Europe Germany would have had troops from all the conquered countries at their disposal, not to mention the slave labor to build their munitions and such…I don’t think the US would have been able to fight in Europe had the rest fallen…</p>
<p>And if we retreated to the 'island" US, think about a couple of facts. Germany didn’t have a navy per se but they had submarines that could shut down shipping around the US. More importantly, the US retreating to “island” US would have allowed Germany time to develop the Atomic bomb and more importantly, long range jet powered bombers and intercontinental rockets that could carry the payload…Germany would have been able to pound the US and without bases in Europe the US would be fighting a long range war…and again, how many troops could the Germans muster from the Russians and the rest of Europe? And we would face the Japanese on the other side…think about that, and it could be a very different picture.</p>
<p>Getting back to the original topic, history is flavored by a lot of things, because History is not totally objective. Creative myth making makes people feel better, or as in the case of our British friends, make them feel better about justifying why the US colonists were ungrateful bunglers…and the like. My experience with US history is that it was a blur of dates and places, and a lot wasn’t discussed, what the realities were, I was lucky to have some teachers in high school who had their own viewpoints, but much of it has been made bland blah blah blah…the realithy is the OP is right about some other things, and misses the point on others:</p>
<p>-George Washington was a brilliant commander situationally. In the context of war as the British army could do it, no. As someone commanding a continental army of 15,000 at its best, that was ill fed, ill clothed, had high rates of desertion, he did a brilliant job. As others pointed out, he was brilliant that he realized the British war as a football game way of doing things was a disaster (after almost losing the whole thing on Long Island). He went against his own beliefs and fought a Fabian strategy of hit and run and prolonging the war (and with the help of the French, issuing a knockout blow, if the French Fleet didn’t show up, we wouldn’t have won at Yorktown)…he also did some brilliant moves using deception, not just Trenton, but at Princeton as well. More importantly, the troops and people did look up to him, that is no exaggeration, it is hard to fathom what people saw in Washington, if deserved or not. </p>
<p>-Arguing that the US had more rights then the British is a moot point and frankly irrelevant. The colonists had grown used to self rule, they were pretty much running their own show, and their ideas of what constituted rights had changed, as Franklin put it, the colonists were becoming their own people. And there was a big rubbing point Dionysius leaves out, the British class system was in full, grinding force, and colonists, specifically those who had made fortunes, found that the Brits with all their upper class snobbery, were treated as peasants, even though many of them were more well off then the nobility snubbing them. It is what convinced Franklin, who in one book was called the reluctant revolutionary, to go over to the side of independance. More importantly,. it was the successful well off colonists who were the biggest pushers for independence and I think this had a lot to do with it.</p>
<p>-The British had a point about defending the colonies, they had great expense defending it, especially the french and indian wars. The problem was they insisted on levying the taxes rather than asking for the help…I am not entirely certain that would work, one of the reasons troops in the continental army were so poorly provisioned is that the well off refused to pay for it for the most part, the congress had no power and the well off controlled the colonies’ legislators (read Nash’s “Unknown American Revolution” about the issue of taxes). The British claimed the right to do so unilaterally, although people like Burke and Pitt told the Crown and Parliament they were stupid for doing so, they saw what was going to happen (want to read a decent book about the blindess of the British government? Read “The March of Folly” by Barbara Tuchman, its section on the revolution). </p>
<p>-The OP is dead wrong about freedom of the press. It is true that us courts in the Zenger case found that libel only applied if the thing written was based in facts, but the British royal governors would have papers shut down, especially once protests started (and to this day UK law has no freedom of the press, and their libel laws are not only a joke, they have caused international incidents). The US had freedom of the press because the colonists themselves were in favor of it and because they were 5000 miles from Britain, wasn’t easy to enforce. </p>
<p>-A major issue for the revolution was the British refused to allow settling west of the Alleghenies, which for a growing set of colonies was a big issue (not to mention the money to be made from getting land and then selling it later). The colonists saw that as an infringement of their rights to obtain wealth and so forth. </p>
<p>-Coming back to a point I made, the British class system increasingly grated against the colonists, the people who came here achieved a lot, and they absolutely didn’t feel British when the dandies treated them like crap. I have heard Brits deride this point, but if you look at what happened post the revolution, the constitution and the framework of society got rid of that notion; one of the fundamental ideas of the new nation was that no matter where someone started out, they could rise based on their own efforts, that wasn’t true in Britain, wasn’t true really until after the second world war and the fall of Empire turned that on its head…</p>
<p>-There was also a bigger issue going on with the revolution, about why Britain dug in its heels and so forth…there was a war at home as well of a different sort. Trevalyn in his book on the American Revolution pointed out that George III was not a happy king, the other kings in Europe were absolute dictators, no pesky Magna Carta, no Parliament, and the revolutionary period in part was based in attempts by George to take more Power. Trevlayn (sorry for the spelling, not my strong point) said that had the colonists lost, it also would have probably meant the crown taking back more and more power, that the loss of the colonies de facto ended that power grab and led to the gradual loss of power by the crown and the power residing in parliament. </p>
<p>-About 1/3rd of the US colonists were in favor of independence, another 1/3rd were against it because though they would welcome it, didn’t believe the colonists had a chance, about a 1/3rd were loyalists. Over time those in the second third came around, by the wars end roughly 70% were independence supporters, the other 30% still saw themselves as British and many left or were forced to leave. Divisions happened in class lines, the well off planters down south were generally in favor, the ‘hill people’ often supported the british because of their hate of the planters (and it was pretty brutal down south, there were serious atrocities committed on both sides, but the wrath of the hill people on the planters was particularly brutal). </p>
<p>-Beards economic basis for the American Revolution has been pretty much discredited, if in large part because it was simple minded. While many of those who wrote the constitution and influenced the path of the country were well off and thus would have reason to want the kind of protections in there, many of those who fought over the constitution were not…to argue it was about maintaining wealth (which was in the mix, don’t get me wrong, as was fear of democracy and ‘majority rule’ aka mob rule), but it is simplistic. </p>
<p>I don’t know if I blame school history (though someone hit the nail on the head, Texas, because they buy books on a state level, has tremendous influence, and this is a state that wants to teach that the US always did the right thing, was a nation dedicated to being a Christian nation and so forth, slavery wasn’t so bad, etc) so the controversial stuff is left out of a lot of standard history books…but a lot of it quite frankly is our history is seen as something you sweat through in school…and what people end up remembering about history is the popular myths spawned in movies and so forth, the citizen soldier fighting for liberty (a picture with some grains of truth and a lot of myth), the die hard patriots fighting for liberty and democracy (not always), a constitution that was perfect and ‘blessed by God’ (which it most definitely is not, lot of it was left deliberately vague, leaving it to ‘posterity’ to figure out, so they could pass something), it is because people aren’t curious about it. It is sad, you don’t even have to read books, there are some really good tv series done on it that are incisive and do try to see the ‘truth’ of it…but people find American Idol and Jersey Shore more interesting, sadly (one of my favorites was the PBS liberty, neat program, and the music is fantastic)…</p>
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<p>The US was outbuilding everyone else combined in naval capability in World War 2. A hundred escort aircraft carriers and hundreds of destroyers on anti-submarine duty would have disposed of the U-boat threat. Dozens of fleet aircraft carriers (compared to two small ones and no naval aviation experience for Germany – and we know how well Japan fared) would have projected power over both oceans that Germany and Japan could not hope to match. Ten to sixteen new battleships, each individually more powerful than each of Germany’s two Bismarck-class battleships, and dozens of new cruisers (compared to Germany’s three) would make surface engagements a huge mismatch, if the airplanes from the aircraft carriers didn’t get the German ships (like they got Japan’s two Yamato-class battleships).</p>
<p>The US was also far more advanced in the development of nuclear weapons (thanks to some of the world’s top physicists who fled Europe due to Nazi persecution because they were Jewish) than Germany was, and was also more advanced in building intercontinental bombers to deliver the nuclear weapons. Germany was in the lead with ballistic missiles (V-2) and cruise missiles (V-1), but these did not have intercontinental range or the capability to carry a early nuclear weapons of the time. The V-1 was not that fast either, as RAF piston engine fighters were chasing them and shooting them down.</p>
<p>Nazi racial policies also meant that slave troops drafted from conquered populations would likely have been of poor quality and loyalty, and considerable numbers of German troops would have been necessary to keep the conquered populations from rebelling, rather than expressing gratitude for being liberated from Stalin.</p>
<p>This has to be the most preposterous post and ensuing thread I’ve ever read on CC.</p>
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<p>In the case of the Sudetenland Germans, it wasn’t a “perceived-to-be-disloyal” issue…but a real one backed up by actions. I recalled coming across a figure that a higher proportion of Sudetenland Germans were Nazi supporters…and more ardent ones than Germany. By the end of the war, the Czechoslovak people and government were in no mood to extend any consideration to those they regarded not only as traitors, but also collaborators in their brutal occupation. </p>
<p>The mood’s only somewhat worse than how Koreans and ethnic Han Chinese…including “Taiwanese” who served in the Imperial Japanese Army were perceived and treated after WWII by other Koreans/Han Chinese…especially those who fought the Japanese. </p>
<p>There’s an online BBC article about Taiwanese who served in the Imperial Japanese army and how they were socially ostracized as traitors and discriminated against for jobs/social services in the ROC(Taiwan) because no one in the government nor most Han Chinese wanted to associate/“help” those who were considered traitors for part of an aggressive brutal invasion/occupation force. </p>
<p>Moreover, having a Japanese collaborator in your family or social circles can still have a detrimental effect on one’s social, career, political, and financial aspirations even in the present. Just a few years ago, the South Korean government passed a law ordering the confiscation of all lands gained during the Japanese colonial occupation from descendents of high level collaborators who signed the Korean Empire over to Japanese occupation in 1910. This law also enables the government to redistribute those confiscated properties to South Korean descendents of those who actively participated in anti-Japanese resistance from 1910-1945.</p>
<p>Only exception to some extent is Taiwan as many pro-Taiwan independence politicians are pro-Japan…sometimes to the point of paying visits/defending Japanese polticians’ visits to the Yasukuni shrine* which not only commemorates Japan’s war dead, but also 14 convicted Class-A war criminals including Tojo and glorifies Imperial Japan’s colonialist/militarist legacy. </p>
<p>Heck, former President Lee Teng-Hui’s and his brother both served in the Imperial Japanese forces…he as a reserve army second lieutenant, the brother as a Petty Officer in the Navy on a ship which was sunk by the USN during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Moreover, unlike other colonial possessions…the Japanese draft in Japanese occupied Taiwan wasn’t implemented until around the last year of the war. Those who joined up beforehand like Lee and his brother were all volunteers drawn from a larger pool of those who wanted to join for various reasons.</p>
<p>It’s real interesting how Lee was able to join and rise up in the ruling KMT party from the late 40’s till he became president not only for his Japanese collaboration, but also for briefly joining the Chinese Communist party.</p>
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<li>If Germany made an equivalent to Yasukuni, it’d be as if they erected a memorial lionizing the top Nazi leadership, the SS/Wehrmacht, and the Nazi legacy…and top German politicians made annual pilgrimages to it.</li>
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<p>What do Egyptians teach in their schools about the Exodus? One day our slaves left?</p>