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Igel

(35,309 posts)
10. You focus too much.
Sat May 9, 2020, 04:16 PM
May 2020

It wasn't lend-lease that was the primary complaint from the Soviet leadership, in propaganda during the war and especially after.

In fact, Russian war novels from during and just after the war had odd references to lend-lease materiel and food in them because the writers were at or near the front and tried to present things fairly accurately when they could. Enough fighters had been there that falseness not in the interests of appropriate nationalism would have been a big turn off.

But in re-editions a few years after the wars, the passages were tacitly rewritten to remove anything that could easily be labeled lend-lease.

By that time the standard trope was that the Allies sat out the war so the USSR would be beaten or rendered beatable, and the only reason that VE-Day happened when it was was that it was clear the USSR would push and take Berlin, and then continue to take the rest of Europe. And the Western capitalists wanted to preserve their territory. Lesser incarnations of this CT was that the Allies wanted the USSR to bear the brunt, and only step in once things got safe.

I've seen all kinds of nifty maps and such. One thing they don't ever mention is Africa, and there is no Pacific War until the USSR delivered the final thrust to Japan that triggered its surrender. Until Normandy, all the Allies did was sit and applaud as Mother Russia was pummeled by the Wehrmacht. All they see is their own pain. The Pacific War started for Russia in early-mid August, 1945. When it looked like Japan was going to fall and Russia wanted Japanese territory, having taken its time transshipping soldiers and materiel to the East. Pearl Harbor and Bataan no more mattered to Moscow than Leningrad did to Washington.

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