So many brilliant intellectuals came from Central European nations of Hungary, Poland, and former Czechoslovakia.
From prominent Hollywood filmmakers like Milos Forman and Michael Curtiz to the brilliant linguist Leopold Weiner and his mathematician son Norbert Weiner and then to businessmen like George Soros, there was clearly a lot of brilliance concentrated among those nations.
And yet, Soviet expansion and communist satellite status destroyed the economic development of those nations and put its stock of human capital crushed under a central planning system. To an extent, the price of all those years under centrally planned economies is still being paid, and Hungary has not moved away from economic regulationism, as it still blocks foreign capital inflows.
I know “what if” questions aren’t the most intelligent to entertain, but seriously, what could have come of these nations if they had been under systems similar to free-er nations than them? Was it their culture and tradition that helped produce such people, or were those people exceptions to the rule? Were they otherwise potentially prosperous nations put down by crippling systems, or was it exactly some inherent flaw in the Central European nature that prevented communist rule from being usurped earlier than it should have?
Funny thing is Stalin did not initialy intend for these countries to become Communist, but was going to permit a multi-party system. However the West kept using the “bourgeois parties” as vehicles to try to usurp the Soviet dominance so he ordered one-party system be introduced in a defensive move to check the West. If in the aftermath of the WWII the Americans had not acted as aggressively perhaps the economic story of these countries could have been more like that of Finland.
Regardless, it is a fact that the anglo-american ‘liberal democracies’ were allies of the most brutal commie regime in history and handed half of europe to this ally.
I think the figure provided by David M. Glantz, which notoriously over-emphasizes the Soviet Union’s importance in the war, is that 70% of the Red Army’s logistics infrastructure (including trucks) was provided by the United States. Even he admits that without this infrastructure, it is unlikely that the Red Army would have been able to advance through Eastern Europe as quickly as it did (or, at all).
Financial and military sure do help,though. I’d recommend reading part 1 of How the Far East Was Lost by Dr. Anthony Kubek for a more detailed account of the financing of the Soviet Union.
That is nothing. This entire book is about Roosevelt’s contributions to the USSR. He drew a line across Europe and intentionally, witfully gave half to Stalin as a gift and concealed the entire plot. Edit: May as well add China to that.
Do not flatter yourself. The world does not revolve around you. Once the Germans had captured Eastern Europe and once the Germans had attacked the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe was always going to end in Soviet hands. There is nothing Roosevelt or any other Westerner could have done about it, short of either aiding the Germans or falling down on them in an attempt to liberate this part of the continent before the Soviets did.
It is absolutely laughable to say Glantz “notoriously over-emphasizes” the Soviet Union’s contribution to the war. That is something that is impossible to ever over-emphasize.
But of course, that does bring up the possible statist counter that Switzerland may be prosperous, but did not produce as many intellectuals as Austria-Hungary. Like Harry Lime in the Third Man said:
“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.”
You obviously have never read anything by Glantz. It’s not just about overall contributions to the war, you know. You also conviniently ignored what we really said.
LOL. On a similar note the place that “produced” the best writters was autocratic Russia and later on totalitarian Soviet Union. So maybe we need more GULAGs to get more Solzhenitsins.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Glantz says two in three trucks the Red Army used were Lend-Lease, he does no go into specifics of how much of logistics was provided by the West in percentages. He mentions that notably about 12,000 railway carriages were delivered and that without the trucks perhaps it would have taken the Red Army 12 or even 18 months longer to defeat the Germans. But nowhere does he doubt they would have been able to do it anyways. I have had it with the pop-history fetishation of the Lend-Lease, you know what was the Lend-Lease canned food called by the Red Army troops? “The Second Front”. It was not meant as a compliment.
The Second Front is the aid the Soviets really wanted, but they would have to wait until midd 1944 for any significant pressure to be taken of off them. Now those are the facts. The Western Allies seeing the USSR and Germany locked in a life and death struggle opted to save their own blood and not land until the German strenght had been sufficiently depleted. Had they landed earlier they might have met the Soviets on the Oder, or the Danube, or the Bug instead of on the Elbe. As it was they met them on the Elbe. There is no use in complaining now and blaming Roosevelt. Unless if your suggestion is a second front in 1943 or even earlier, as was what the Soviets themselves would have welcomed even in place of Lend-Lease. (Or a landing in 1944 but against a comparatively stronger Germany, less mauled by the Soviets deprived of the Lend-Lease.)
I ignored, before being provoked, much of what was said earlier because it is completely irrelevant. The argument that Roosevelt was somehow proactively the factor that shifted the balance and that without him taking action Eastern Europe might have been liberated, but without being sucked into the Soviet sphere is absurd no matter how you construct it. The only way he could have prevented that outcome was with more state action, by expending more American lives in an invasion against a stronger Germany, but never with less state action. No matter what you think of the American power it is not that great to negate geographical facts. To make Eastern Europe not lie between Germany and Russia.
There is an explicit difference between able to defeat the Germans and invading and occupying the majority of Eastern Europe within the timespace that the Soviet Union did so. There is no doubt that what allowed the Red Army to sustain their massive front-wide offensives between August 1943 and May 1945 was the massive logistics system that had been constructed out of lend-lease material. There is also little doubt that what decisively aided the Soviets in launching their winter 1941-42 and winter 1942-43 counterstrokes was the lend-lease which allowed them to support these millions of troops. I never alluded to the general quality of the aid. Western Allied equipment which was meant for frontline use was notoriously poor. But, equipment which was oriented towards logistics was obviously superior to whatever the Soviets could produce in sufficient enough quantities (otherwise, they wouldn’t have used Western equipment).
Your last paragraph is enough evidence to show that you are not seriously considering my position, or even seriously understand it. I never spoke of any “American power”. I never negated that the Soviets were the primary reason why the Germans lost the war. It is my opinion that the Germans lost the war the day they invaded the Soviet Union, with or without Western aid (the fact is that by the time the Germans reached Moscow in late 1941, their spearhead divisions were already so depleted that the occupation of Moscow was unrealistic and even had they done so it was not likely that they would have held it for long). But, the question is not whether the Soviets would have won the war. It is whether they would have been able to push the Germans back to Berlin as quickly as they did.
Roosevelt and Western Allied military leaders, without question, were banking on the Soviet Union’s capability of soaking up most of Germany’s manpower. This was one of the major reasons why lend-lease came through to Russia in such a high volume. You basically agree with this fact. I should also mention that I never said that Eastern Europe would have been “liberated” by the Western Allies. The question is whether or not the Soviets would have been able to push the Germans into Central Europe fast enough without Western Allied military aid, or whether they would have agreed to some sort of peace had the war not turned into a “world war” (even if the peace would have either meant pre-war borders or somewhat extended Soviet borders).
I would prefer that you do not misconstrue my arguments when you reply to them.
You can only blame yourself. I do not read minds. I can only reply to what you write. You posted backing up Caley without explaining that your own position actually differs from his. It was perfectly natural of me to assume you were therefore of a mind.
Roosevelt`s aid, political and material (of which I am perfectly aware of and do not require a lesson in, I was being snarky, a post as ridicilous as I was replying to deserves no better), to the Soviet Union was in fact not a decisive factor in preventing the region from developing in post war years as fast as it should have. The Poles and the Czechs would not have exactly flourished had the Soviets concluded status quo ante bellum with the Nazis. Therefore whether the USSR would have been able to eject Germany from the region without the Lend-Lease is a totally moot point.
“I think the figure provided by David M. Glantz, which notoriously over-emphasizes the Soviet Union’s importance in the war, is that 70% of the Red Army’s logistics infrastructure (including trucks) was provided by the United States. Even he admits that without this infrastructure, it is unlikely that the Red Army would have been able to advance through Eastern Europe as quickly as it did (or, at all).”
My position is quite clear.
I’m not exactly sure how that is relevant, at all, to what you were quoting to. How the region developed in the post-war was not brought up in the comment you replied to.
You are both wrong. Roosevelt never had any intention of playing USSR and Germany against each other. He was on Stalin’s side from day one. Just start reading that book “Roosevelt’s Road to Russia” and watch your jaw drop. The administration was so full of communist agents that Stalin may as well have been President.