Now this is a true piece of history. Pay close attention to which countries are represented.
Those who were represented were the country's directly involved with defending the Pacific and actively fought the Japanese. Nothing sinister with the representatives unless you count Russia who only declared war on Japan after the atomic bombs were dropped and only did so to get in on cutting up the pie. They did pay a heavy price in Europe which saved many Allied lives and helped defeat Germany much faster than it could have been done without them.
jud
Russia did have a role fighting Japan. They may not of had as big of a role as the US did, but they did have a role fighting Japan. For one, they fought Japan at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol.
Russia was part of the Allies somewhat. Things went sour with the US quickly after the war. The US actually supplied Russia with some tanks and other equipment and we even landed some of our bombers there after bombing raids. It was rare, but it did happened. My uncle was a B-17 ball turret gunner with the 8th Airforce, 388th Bomb Group, 562 Squadron and they landed in Russia a couple of times because they were low on fuel or the plane was crippled. He showed me a picture once of a B-17 that made a emergency landing in Russia. The propellers were bent from hitting the ground.
Russia lost over 23,000,000 people during WW2. The most of any nation-I think.
> Russia did have a role fighting Japan. They may not of had as big of a role as the US did, but they did have a role fighting Japan. For one, they fought Japan at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol.
>
> Russia was part of the Allies somewhat. Things went sour with the US quickly after the war. The US actually supplied Russia with some tanks and other equipment and we even landed some of our bombers there after bombing raids. It was rare, but it did happened. My uncle was a B-17 ball turret gunner with the 8th Airforce, 388th Bomb Group, 562 Squadron and they landed in Russia a couple of times because they were low on fuel or the plane was crippled. He showed me a picture once of a B-17 that made a emergency landing in Russia. The propellers were bent from hitting the ground.
>
> Russia lost over 23,000,000 people during WW2. The most of any nation-I think.
did your uncle tell you about all the planes, especially some b-29's, that they kept and would not return to US control or about the Air crews that they kept and would not return to US control. We were fighting the same enemy in Germany, but we were NOT allies.
> did your uncle tell you about all the planes, especially some b-29's, that they kept and would not return to US control or about the Air crews that they kept and would not return to US control. We were fighting the same enemy in Germany, but we were NOT allies.
No Stephen, he didn't tell me about that. And what I mean by being part of the Allies is that they certainly were part of the Allies of World War II. They definitely weren't part of the Axis.
The anti-German coalition at the start of the war (September 1, 1939) consisted of France, Poland and the United Kingdom.[2] After 1941, the leaders of the British Empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States of America, known as the "Big Three",[3] held leadership of the allied powers. France, before its defeat in 1940 and after Operation Overlord in 1944, as well as China[4][5][6] at that time, were also major Allies.[7] Other Allies included Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Greece, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Union of South Africa and Yugoslavia.[8]
"The Big Three": Josef Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meeting at the Tehran Conference in 1943.
Here's a picture of the remains of a Sherman tank that the US supplied to Russia during WW2. That same gal who took the picture also has a website where she rides her motorcycle to Chernobyl. Check it out when you have time. It's pretty interesting.
Here is one instance where American bombers landed in Russia to refuel. Quoted from the 388th Bomb Group website.
"On June 21, 1944 the 388th bombed the Ruhrland and then proceeded to Poltava, Russia and landed there. That evening they were refueled and rearmed ready for the next mission. However that night the Germans flew over and bombed the aircraft sitting on the ground. They made several passes over the field and were basically unchallenged as the destroyed the B-17s. The 388th lost 11 B-17s while their crews lay nearby in open slit trenches."
> Did your uncle tell you about all the planes, especially some b-29's, that they kept and would not return to US control or about the Air crews that they kept and would not return to US control.
The Soviets were probably still a little peeved about that whole "sending U.S. troops to Russia to fight on the losing side of the revolution" thing.
> And what I mean by being part of the Allies is that they certainly were part of the Allies of World War II. They definitely weren't part of the Axis.
>
Actually, they were on their way to becoming part of the Axis, and if Hitler had not double-crossed Stalin early in the war, they would have been as formidable member of the Axis as either the Germans or the Japanese if they had decided to fight against the allied powers.
Germany and the USSR entered into the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-agression Pact in August of 1939. The USSR supposed that Hitler shared their aim of reconquering and dividing Eastern Europe between the two powers, but Hitler intended the whole time to turn against the USSR. Had he stuck with his original plan of first defeating the western powers, it is very likely that Russia would have cooperated with Germany in the conquest of Eastern Europe and then maintained a quiet front, preventing the allies from attacking Germany from the East. Or possibly would have taken advantage of the fact that Germany and Japan otherwise had the West tied up and pushed their conquest in other directions throughout Asia and the Middle East.
The Russians were never fully a part of the Allies. They only shared a common enemy and as a result, enjoyed some support in maintaining their efforts against Germany and returned some little support in return.
I can agree with that. As I said earlier Russia was part of the Allies somewhat. Russia looked the other way when Hitler attacked Poland. And I have no doubts about what Stephen was saying about the B-29's.
> > Did your uncle tell you about all the planes, especially some b-29's, that they kept and would not return to US control or about the Air crews that they kept and would not return to US control.
>
> The Soviets were probably still a little peeved about that whole "sending U.S. troops to Russia to fight on the losing side of the revolution" thing.
>
> Polar Bear Expedition
You are probably correct on that James. The US sent a small expeditionary force to Siberia in 1918, IMSMC.
Thanks for posting about that Russian chick and her bike. That was fascinating.
Stephen
My dad had a role in the atomic bomb project during and after WWII. He wouldn't speak much of it. But one thing he said many times was "If the third bomb hadn't gone off, we would all be speaking Russian today!" The "third bomb" is one that most people don't even know about. The Russians didn't believe that we had the resources to make more than the two we dropped on Japan and they we ready to claim all of Europe and Asia by force. Who knows where they would have been stopped? We set off one more on a small island out in the ocean to prove to them that we had as many as we needed if they weren't ready to end the war on our terms. My dad always believed that it was the last one we had at the time and if it had malfunctioned and not gone off, Russia would have turned on the Allied Forces and we were too weak to defeat them.
The thing a lot of people don't know is that we hadn't reached our peak at the end of WW2. We were getting close, but the truth is, we were just hitting our stride when the war ended. Patton wanted to push on further into Eastern Germany and not let the Russians take much of it, but Ike stopped him. Ike thought we had lost enough men and would let Russia take Berlin. Goggle the numbers of dead in the battle of Berlin. The numbers are staggering, about 230,000 total killed for both sides. We lost a little over 400,000 killed the entire war. The Russians lost over 23 million killed for the entire war.
Russian didn't want a war with us anymore than we wanted a war with them, but at the time, I think we could have put the hurt to them. Stalin also deserves a lot of credit for killing huge numbers of his own people. Hitler was no worse of a person than Stalin, Stalin was just on the winning side. At the time, we were prepared to invade Japan and take as many loses as needed to assure their unconditional surrender.
>Stalin also deserves a lot of credit for killing huge numbers of his own people. Hitler was no worse of a person than Stalin, Stalin was just on the winning side.
Exactly. Russia/Stalin was busy engaging in the same type of oppression and abuse of locals and unapproved minorities in Eastern Europe that the rest of the West was condemning Germany/Hitler for in that period. The West just decided to look the other way where the USSR was concerned because we did not want to turn Russia against us in what was often already a very desperate situation.
Russia took advantage of using the war against the Axis as cover for their own brutal conquests. Given a few more years to build and modernize its military, had Germany and Japan not precipitated WWII with their own aims of World domination, Russia would have.
I believe that you are also correct that the US could have been successful in forcing Russia back to or close to its sovereign borders had we followed Patton's advice. I disagree that it would have been as easy as you characterize. Even though we were hitting our stride as you put it, and the USSR was significantly weakened, the resources of each side were stretched, the people of the US were becoming war weary, and the Russians had demonstrated great resolve and willingness to sacrifice for victory, and had done so with a military infrastructure very poorly equipped as compared to the Germans.
Whether the people of the US would have rebelled against immediately engaging in a new war of indefinite duration and effort, or resolved themselves further in seeing the threat the USSR posed to a free world, and whether the Russians would have continued with their same level of resolve or if they had reached their breaking point is an unmeasurable factor left for historians to argue.
