Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program was a major factor in Russia’s salvation. The list of goods that Roosevelt committed to send to the Soviet Union was astounding. It included shipments every month of 400 planes, 500 tanks, 5,000 cars, 10,000 trucks and huge quantities of anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft guns, diesel generators, field telephones, radios, motorcycles, wheat, flour, sugar, 200,000 pairs of boots, 500,000 pairs of surgical gloves and 15,000 amputation saws. By the end of October 1941, ships were carrying 100 bombers, 100 fighter planes, 166 tanks all with spare parts and ammunition, plus 5,500 trucks. (5)
The siege of Moscow lasted from Oct 1941 to Jan 1942, it would claim 926,000 Soviet lives before it ended.
The Soviet Union was receiving supplies from the U.S., but it was taking the full brunt of the Wehrmacht army on their own.
According to WWII historian and authority on Nazi Germany Gerhard Weinberg, the German military’s own figures show that ten thousand Russian prisoners of war were shot or killed by hunger and disease EVERY SINGLE DAY for the first seven months of the war.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/09/18/on-roosevelt-and-stalin-what-revisionist-historians-want-us-to-forget/
Cynthia Chung
“Madman, thou errest. I say, there is no darkness but ignorance”
– William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
There is a very real attempt to rewrite history as we speak. A history that is at the root of what organises our world today, for it is understood that who controls the past, will have control over our present and our future.
This attempt to rewrite history is of the most paramount significance because it is what is used today to shape who we regard as a “friend” and who we regard as a “foe.” Thus who controls the “narrative” of history, will also control who we see ourselves “aligned” with.
There is a consequence to this which can only lead to further disunity, to further conflict, to further war. It can only be remedied when the past is finally acknowledged.
There is still time to change this dreadful course.
A Meeting of Minds
The Tehran conference (Nov 28 – Dec 1, 1943) was the first time that Roosevelt and Stalin met in person. It was a historic meeting of the two most important leaders of the Allies that would shape the outcome of WWII.
Roosevelt had been trying to set up a meeting for more than a year, the meeting was of utmost importance because it would allow the two leaders to begin a basis for a solid “trust” to be formed, essential to not only winning the war but for maintaining a stable peace afterwards.
Over four years into WII had passed, and the level of distrust, fear and hatred for the Soviets was still prevalent in the political and military circles within the United States.
This was especially the case within the State Department career officers who were against FDR’s recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933, and thus antagonism to him and his policies were pervasive (1). When Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest advisor on foreign policy during WWII, was sent to Europe to check in on the foreign service, he had found many U.S. embassies and legations still displaying the portrait of Herbert Hoover on their walls instead of FDR.
George Keenan, best known as the author of the Cold War strategy of “containment,” was among many of similar fibre, who opposed FDR’s recognition of the Soviet Union, stating: “We should have no relationship at all with them…Never- neither then nor at any later date- did I consider the Soviet Union a fit ally or associate, actual or potential, for this country.”
The Foreign Services’ anti-Soviet attitude ran so deep that most were against aid to Russia even after Hitler had invaded, despite the Soviets losing more lives against the Nazis in the first few months than all of Europe combined.
Churchill himself made it no secret that he wanted to make sure Germany would emerge from the war strong enough to counterbalance Russia in Europe (strong… but as he sought to soothingly explain not dangerous).
However, Roosevelt would be the first to recognize that the ever growing barbarism of Hitler was much more dangerous than these foreign intelligence circles were estimating, and that Russia was an imperative ally, in fact the only ally, that could ensure its defeat.
The Tehran conference was a great success in collaborative strategy to win the war, but more importantly, it was a great diplomatic success that would begin one of the most important alliances to have ever occurred in modern history.
The Truth Behind the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
In 1936, Stalin had predicted how German aggression would break out upon the world:
“History shows that when any state intends to make war against another state…it begins to seek frontiers across which it can reach the frontiers of the state it wants to attack…I do not know precisely what frontiers Germany may adapt to her aims, but I think she will find people willing to ‘lend’ her a frontier.”
These statements were made before the Munich Agreement which was just that, a “lending of a frontier.”
On March 18th 1939 at Stalin’s direction Litvinov, Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, proposed that France, Britain, Poland, Russia, Romania and Turkey join together at a conference to draw up a treaty to stop Hitler. Chamberlain was strongly against the idea, writing to a friend: “I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia. I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive, even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives.” (2)
On April 14th 1939, Lord Halifax, British Foreign Minister said that Britain would not extend an alliance to Russia in case Germany were to attack. Russia was clearly being told to go at it alone.
On April 16th 1939, Stalin had Litvinov propose to Sir William Seeds the British ambassador, that Russia, France and Britain make a pact that would bind their three countries to declare war on Germany if they or any nation between the Baltic and the Mediterranean were attacked.
Great Britain and France refused.
The Munich Betrayal had already been signed Sept 30th 1938, where Britain had “allowed” Hitler’s annexation of the German speaking territory of Czechoslovakia, as if it were a British colony that it could do with as it wished.
In addition, the Bank of England and the Bank of International Settlements, through BoE Governor Montague Norman, allowed for the direct transfer of 5.6 million pounds worth of gold to Hitler that was owned by the Bank of Czechoslovakia.
And lastly, that Prescott Bush on behalf of Union Banking was caught funding Hitler before and during WWII and on Oct 20th, 1942 had its bank assets seized under the “U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act.”
Despite all of this, it is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that has been selected by “historians” to go down in history as a deep stain on the moral character and true “face” of the Soviet Union. Confirmation that the Russians should never be trusted, for they would side with whoever wielded the greatest power, no matter the ideologies held.
This could not be further from the truth, and is in fact a gross disregard of the responsibility that Great Britain and France held in creating such a desperate situation for the Soviet Union. They had left her destitute because they wanted to see her destroyed.
Stalin was under no illusion. He knew that it was an impossibility for the USSR to coexist with a Nazi Germany, specifically because the existence of the Slavic people was considered unacceptable to the latter. Hitler, who described this belief in detail in his Mein Kampf, made no secret that he thought the Slavic people an inferior race and that after his conquest he planned to turn Russia and Poland into slave nations. Hitler would boast “The conflict [in the east] will be different from the conflict in the west.” The people of the west were to be subdued, the people of the east were to be annihilated.
Poland’s foreign minister Josef Beck who controlled foreign policy was strongly pro-German, and was adamant that Germany would never invade Poland. Some say Beck was a Nazi agent. It is curious that his son Anthony would in fact find after his father’s death, among his possessions an entire album filled with photos of Beck posing with Nazi generals and various officials of the Nazi government elite. (3)
Poland’s refusal to strategise a defense put the Soviet Union in an understandably difficult situation, since Poland shared a border with them. If Poland were to be invaded it would be used as a launching pad to attack the USSR, which had happened numerous times in the recent past, including during WWI.
Despite the fact that Poland would have absolutely no ability to defend itself in the case of a German invasion, Lord Halifax used as his excuse for putting off serious negotiations with the USSR that it was due to Josef Beck’s refusal to allow Russian soldiers to enter Poland, even if it were to drive back a Nazi army…who wanted to exterminate the Polish race as Hitler explicitly stated repeatedly. Read the rest of this entry »
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