If the tide of D-day had turned on the Allies

If you look at it that way i really think it's strange that you don't mention that France and the UK declared War on Germany (not the other way around)! :roll:

 

No, all I have said is that the West (USA, UK) would have treated Eastern Europe better than the Soviets did.

To put it simply
Nazis: Very bad
Soviets: Very bad
Japan: Very bad
West: Good

 

Well, being the pessimist that I am, I'd put it this way...
Nazis: Very Very bad
Soviets: Very bad
Japan: Very Very bad
West: Bad

 

Well here it is, straight from my books:
Nazis: very very bad
Soviets: bad-mediocre
Japan: very very bad
West: good

 

Well-evaluated judgments all around. Good arguments, too! :lol:

Seriously, smeghead.

The Soviets were directly attacked by Nazi Germany, and so they defended themselves. At no point during the war did they explicitly and willingly help the Allies, in fact at several points they acted stubbornly against the common interest (for example by not opening their airfields to Allied bombers). They never invaded any country with the intention of liberating it from Nazi occupation; they only marched through the countries that lay between them and Berlin, turning them into Communist sattelite states after the war. In fact, they didn't lift a finger to help the West when it was being overrun by the Nazis for the simple reason that they had a non-agression pact with them!

More like, "Iraq would make better allies than Saudi Arabia". It would now, wouldn't it? You can't compare the contribution of the British in Iraq to that of the USSR in defeating the Nazis; the latter did not voluntarily come to the aid of the US, rather it was the other way around.

I already mentioned the fact that in the late 1930s the USSR was at war with pretty much every neighbouring country it had. I doubt it would have made a difference to Stalin if his neighbours had been Western contries, but in the event, they weren't. That's just a matter of geography.

Chronologically, it was actually the US doing a lot of work defeating the USSR's number one enemy. There was no chance at all that the Nazis could actually invade the United States, yet they sent four million men and a bunch of equipment right across the ocean to help crush the Nazis that were stuck in a life-or-death struggle with, you guessed it, the Soviets. Whom they had invaded. Meanwhile, even when the tide had turned decisively in favour of the Russians, they were not about to join the fight against Japan unless there was some definite profit (Manchuria) to be had; when they did so, the important work had long been done in the Pacific.

 

I never said the Soviets helped the allies out of the good will in their hearts (haha!)... They only helped them out because their immediate interests of not being annhilated were shared...
Does that make their contribution any less important?

Also, saying that the Soviets did nothing to help the west while they were being overrun is a tad unfair... How on earth would the Soviets help France and Britain in 1939? Geographically, and given the Soviet Navy it is impossible, you might as well criticize Britain for not coming to the aid of Abysinnia... You are also mistaken about the Japanese... The Soviets were fighting the Japs in Manchuria long before the US even joined the war...
Once again this was done out of the pure kindness and gentle consideration for the interests of the USA

 

Um, possibly by attacking Germany through the frontier they shared?

But here, as with the Germans, it was a case of the Japanese attacking the Soviets, who promptly threw them out. And after that, nothing at all. When the West appealed to the Russians to help in the Far East, there was no deal. Even when it was obvious that the German defeat was only a matter of time, the best Uncle Joe would give was '1 month after VE day' (not his exact words, I know ). The campaign that they launched was effectively a land grab, and eventually was the cause of the Korean War.

 

Yeah! which they did! that is, after they themselves were attacked... America did the same, they only attacked the Axis after they were attacked at pearl harbor...
The British however comitted a truly noble act of defence in their expeditionary force being sent to France in 1939

 

The important distinction here is this:

Before Germany declared war on America, America was actively sending aid & assistance to those fighting Germany, and was arguably starting to gear up to possibly enter the war anyway.

Before being invaded, the USSR actively aided the Germans, not only by joining the invasion of Poland but by sending train-loads of supplies right up to the start of Barbarossa.

Also, The USA was not directly threatened by Germany. To suggest that Germany could ever do anything beyond hassle the sea-going trade off the East Coast is ridiculous. Yet America agreed to concentrate on defeating Germany over and above Japan, who was an active threat, and who had already over-run several chunks of American territory.

Well, those Brits, they're just world-beaters... Not that I'm biased...

 

Not less important, but it shows their motive. It was not any better than the motive the Germans would have had to side with the Allies in a hypothetical conintuation war against the Soviets, which is what we are discussing now.

Then how on earth was the Soviet Union going to invade Western Europe like the Nazis did? This is what you bring up as a reason to say that the USSR wasn't as evil as Nazi Germany, yet you agree that it would have been geographically impossible for them to do...

 

The motive is meaningless without an accompanying act
I am saying that the Soviets were less evil than the Nazi's, and I am saying that they were better "allies"

My core reasoning is this
By criminal standards the Soviets comitted nothing wrong against the western world. and the Nazi's did

Many people seem to think of the moral motives behind the Soviet's acts, that it was all about domination. This is true. I accept the assertion that nothing the Soviets did may have been in good faith. However the result of their actions was no physical harm done against the Western Allies, in fact alot of pressure was taken off the allies, so it was beneficial. Thus despite immoral reasoning and general evilness, the Soviets by standards of international law, did not really do anything wrong to France/America/UK, they helped them... You can't have a crime without a guilty act

I guess i'm just law-minded :smok:

 

Do you count Poland, Lituania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland as part of the western world?

 

Well, in 1939, the soviets:

- gave the germans a naval base in Murmansk where they could repair and refuel their ships in order to fight Britain and France

-Stalin called on french comminists to weaken the defence of France by any means(desertion, sabotage....).Again the goal was to help Germany win.

-The soviets supplied Germany with all raw materials they needed, thus making the allied blocade inefficient.

-They attacked Poland, a country that was figthing Germany alongside Britain and France.

I think all this could well be described as doing something wrong to the West.
Wars have been declared for much less than that....

 

Why was the West bad? They laid the groundworks for democracy, human rights, etc.

 

The West was bad because they alone negligently created the conditions which allowed World War Two to commence... In 1918 Germany was forced to accept full responsibility for the First World War and to pay massive, unrealistic and unnessecary reparations to the UK, USA, and most of all France... German industry was left almost entirely under French control, leading to inflation, and poverty and starvation on a massive scale... Coupled with the Influenza epidemic, and Germany's inability to afford proper medical treatment for this; millions upon millions of Germans died in atrocious conditions during the 1920's.
It was only a matter of time before they took matters of revenge into their own hands... Whether it was Hitler who lead them, or someone else

I could also go on about the British/US.French comittal of 20,000 troops (and alot of supplies) to aid the White forces in fighting the Soviets in 1919... That sounds like a very good reason why Soviet/Western Relations never got off to a good start... Or the American governments installing of fascist governments in South American countries such as Chile whose death squads killed tens of thousands of citizens... or the millions left dead in Vietnam, Algeria and Korea... But regardless; despite all this, the West remains by far the best of a bad lot
but we aren't angels :lol:

 

Smeg:
USA bad?
I'm honestly surprised at your reasoning and conclusions. The Marshall Plan was instrumental in the rebuilding of post-war Europe. The USA forgave billions in war debt from cash-starved countries attempting to rebuild after all those years of war... and in many cases, total devastation.
Do you think for ONE-MINUTE that Mother Russia would have undertaken such an effort? I can remember no such commitment of generosity and good-will in history.
In the Pacific, MacArthur was revered by the public in post-war Japan, and our efforts in rebuilding and supporting their recovery, prepared Japan to be a formidable economic force in the region and the world in later years.
I'm not saying our country is perfect. There are times when we do the right-things for the wrong reasons, but in the instance of the Second World War...
We fought two mighty foes on opposite sides of the world simultaneously, while supporting our forces and those of our allies--Russia included--with unimaginable amounts of war-materiale, and basic goods required to fight & feed armies and civilians alike. THEN, after the total defeat of two of the most despicable regimes in contemporary history, and as a result of the unparalled cooperation between a host of allies, we forgave their debt, and spent billions to help rebuild both the cities and economies of our friends--and ENEMIES--alike.
Seems pretty-clear who the "good-guys" are to me.

Tim

 

I agree with everything you say, Tim...
Forgive me if my previous post sounds too pessimistic... I just have trouble discerning who are the "good guys"... I mean, on what basis does one select which nation he will fight for in a war? It would be nice to think political beliefs or ideals, but in reality, the "good guys" are just the people in the country you were born in.

So if you're American the American's are the good guys

If you're Russian the Russians are the good guys

And if you're East German the Russians are the good guys because you'll get shot if you say otherwise

 

Actually, the Soviets only fought the Japanese for a short time in 1939, where they beat the japanese so thouroughly that the Japanese were very careful not to do anything to upset the Soviets, like intercept lend-lease convoys coming from US ports (using Soviet flagged ships).
Japan decided it would be better to go after the soft west. An interesting point is that in August 1945 the Japanese were trying to use the Soviets as go betweens to see if they negociate a peace with the west.

 

Morality and foreign politics are biting eachother. There is no morality in foreign politics, only interests, despite ideology.