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...The west chose to ignore decades of bolshevik mass murder of Christians,
ignore the mass murder and destruction of churches by Stalin, then allied with Stalin to destroy the enemy of the communists.
Kulaks were among the largest groups singled out for elimination, but their religion was not what marked them as enemies.
The program of the eradication of Christianity did not require the eradication of the mass of Christians believers.
No one has mentioned that at base Stalin was a raving paranoiac who only got got worse after the end of WW II until his death in 1953.
Even with shuttle bombing landing agreements he interned some Allied (mostly US) airmen and a few US aircraft were shot down by the Red Air Force when entering Soviet airspace on missions.
Because Patton and McArthur were right...we should have nuked them when we had the chance.
BTW..Most people forget that the USSR also attacked Poland to start WWII. The Soviets and Germany were neutral during the beginning of the war. Also, the war in the Pacific would probably have been over a lot sooner had the USSR and Japan not been neutral. If the soviets were truly an ally they would have declared war on Japan a lot sooner then the last 7 days of the war.
No one has mentioned that at base Stalin was a raving paranoiac who only got got worse after the end of WW II until his death in 1953.
Even with shuttle bombing landing agreements he interned some Allied (mostly US) airmen and a few US aircraft were shot down by the Red Air Force when entering Soviet airspace on missions.
If you think people are out to get you, you may be right. Being a member of Stalin's inner circle was often a step into oblivion if you got his attention and appeared to be a threat. You can now appreciate the skill of a Molotov, a Beria or a Krushchev or a leading military figure like Marshal Zhukov who worked with Stalin and survived.
The Soviets were not at war with Japan until August 1945 and were neutral.
When war between Germany and the USSR broke out in June 1941. Japan declined to attack the USSR so technically the USSR and Japan were at peace and the USSR could not allow a third party like the USA to launch military operations from its territory against Japan. That the Japanese would not attack the USSR eventhough they were part of the Tripartite Axis with Germany is surprising but understandable. Japan and the USSR had clashed in the late 1930s over Japanese encrocment on Mongolia a Soviet satellite state. The Red Army delievered a bloody blow to the Japanese Kwangtung Army in Manchuria so the Japanese had a warry respect for the Soviet Forces in Siberia and kept their distance. Why did the USSR attack Japan in August 1945? Stalin was keeping a promise made to FDR at Yalta and Harry Truman at Potsdam to initiate hostilities against Japan in order to increase the pressure on Japan to surrender to the Allies. Stalin had promised to start military operations against Japan after the war in Europe had come to an end.
Soviet Forces attacked Japan 3 months after hostilities ended in Europe. The one two blow of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US and the Soviet invasions into Manchuria and Korea compelled Japan to unconditionally surrender on August 15, 1945.
Because Patton and McArthur were right...we should have nuked them when we had the chance.
BTW..Most people forget that the USSR also attacked Poland to start WWII. The Soviets and Germany were neutral during the beginning of the war. Also, the war in the Pacific would probably have been over a lot sooner had the USSR and Japan not been neutral. If the soviets were truly an ally they would have declared war on Japan a lot sooner then the last 7 days of the war.
The Soviets knew how to play Real Politik as illustrated by the Molotov- von Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. The Soviets knew Hitler had designs on the Soviet Union and that war was inevitable. They also knew they were outclassed and unprepared to take on Nazi Germany in 1939. The Nazis on the otherhand did not want to take on all of the great powers of Europe at the same time. Germany had done that in 1914 and had eventually lost that war. Hence, you had the basis for an agreement. Stalin got the time he needed to prepare the Soviets for the war to come and the Germans got their piecemeal war first against small countries like Poland, then the Western Powers like Britain and France and then the main event the invasion of the USSR. To sweaten the deal the Soviets got to take back a lot of territory taken from the Russians at Versailles in 1919. The Polish territory occupied by the Red Army in 1939 and the occupation of the Baltic states was an example of this. The wisdom of this treaty is demonstrated by the events of 1941-2 the Germans did indeed attack the USSR and nearly struck a mortal blow but the Soviets absorbed the blow and then ate the Nazis alive.
The Japanese had designs on the Soviet Far east and the Soviets knew this too. What a lot of Americans don't know is that the Japanese and the USSR fought a military clash in the late 1930s over Mongolia and the Korean border with the USSR. In todays terms this was a small war and the Japanese got the equivalent of a bloody nose. Afterwards the Japanese left the Soviets alone and turned their attentions to the South and into the Pacific. The Soviets didn't have to worry about a two front war with Germany and Japan. This proved very valuable to the Soviets in the winter of 1941-2 when the Russians moved their Siberian army under Marshal Zhukov to the gates of Moscow and broke the German advance into the USSR for the first time.
Because Patton and McArthur were right...we should have nuked them when we had the chance.
Bertrand Russell also thought so - he gave a speech in 1946 begging Truman to nuke Moscow before they could get nukes and stating that world peace was only possible with the obliteration of the USSR.
Quite a different position from that taken by Russell in the 1960s when he compared the US in Vietnam to Hitler's Germany and advocated war crimes trials for LBJ, Rusk, MacNamara, Westmoreland, and the entire US military general staff.
As for Patton: there was no political support in any Allied country for going to war against the USSR after WW2. Everyone wanted the boys to come home.
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BTW..Most people forget that the USSR also attacked Poland to start WWII. The Soviets and Germany were neutral during the beginning of the war. Also, the war in the Pacific would probably have been over a lot sooner had the USSR and Japan not been neutral. If the soviets were truly an ally they would have declared war on Japan a lot sooner then the last 7 days of the war.
The US didn't want the Soviets to declare war on Japan sooner, because that would have given them a claim to more Japanese territory and would have probably led to a split up of the home islands similar to that of Germany.
The Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev may have summed it up best when he said, "Russia cannot be understood by the mind alone...." After bearing much of the bleeding and horrors of WWII, Stalin and the ruling elite of Russia felt that they were entitled to massive reparations and political domination over eastern Europe. They wasted no time in consolidating their power and effectively putting a lock-down on communication with the west, as Churchill's famous "iron curtain" statement attested.
If the reports are true, Stalin, who early dismissed rumors of Hitler's intentions, suffered a major shock after the launch of Barbarossa and was immobilized for days. Throughout the war, Stalin brooded about the slowness of the western allies to launch a second front, thinking they intended to let the two adversaries wear each other down in the east. He was also very suspicious that Hitler might be successful in making a separate peace with the western allies. Too, President Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan did little to ease the tension between the east and west. To Stalin, who was already impressed with America's industrial capacity, it must have been a dramatic and perhaps intentional statement of America's power. Russia became an enigma and the Cold War was on.
Because Patton and McArthur were right...we should have nuked them when we had the chance.
BTW..Most people forget that the USSR also attacked Poland to start WWII. The Soviets and Germany were neutral during the beginning of the war. Also, the war in the Pacific would probably have been over a lot sooner had the USSR and Japan not been neutral. If the soviets were truly an ally they would have declared war on Japan a lot sooner then the last 7 days of the war.
You really think so?
Goodness, killing all those millions of people would have put the USA right up there with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. There would have been no moral difference between us at all. Maybe that doesn't bother some people. It would have bothered the hell out of me.
You know, I'm not kidding when I make this statement. I think in some ways the USA owes the USSR a huge debt of gratitude. If Stalin and his Red Army hadn't been there to kill all those Germans than just imagine how many more American soldiers might have been killed. As it was, the USA lost over 300,000 soldiers and sailors in WWII. Without the Soviet Union that death toll might have been 1,000,000 or more.
Stalin and the leadership in the Kremlin may have been mass murderers, but they played our game and played it the way we needed it done.
The Soviets could have struck sooner at Japan, but their invasion of Manchuria along with the dropping of the atomic bombs were both reasons cited by Emperor Hirohito in his radio address to the Japanese people announcing their surrender to the allies and acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. So belated though it was, the Russian invasion of Manchuria helped bring the Pacific War to an end.
Looking back on it, Cold War or not, I'm grateful we had the USSR as an ally during WWII.
Stalin and the leadership in the Kremlin may have been mass murderers,
but they played our game and played it the way we needed it done.
We played communist Russia's game by destroying their main enemy, Germany,
which allowed the communists to conquer and enslave half of Europe.
Please take a little time to watch this short YouTube video about
Stalin's destruction of the largest church in Russia, the Church of
Christ the Saviour in Moscow.
Stalin also wanted to destroy the most famous church in Russia,
Moscow's centuries old St Basil's. An architect threated to commit
suicide on the steps of the church if they tried to destroy it. Stalin
changed his mind and St Basil's was spared. For his efforts, the brave
architect was sent to prison.
~
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