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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

This used to be a widespread perception in Western Europe, too, but changed during the cold war. When people in France were asked in May 1945 which country had contributed most to the defeat of the Germans, the answers were: 57% USSR, 20% USA, 12% UK. But asked again in 1994, the numbers had shifted to: 49% USA, 25% USSR, 16% UK.

According to: http://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sondage-...

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Propaganda is powerful... I suspect the USSR's contribution would be perceived as even less if those in the west were asked the same question today... Some recent commentators have even suggested it would have been better if the USSR fell to the Nazis...

This is weird, because it is mostly accepted in American History classes - at least from my school and a few other public school kids I asked when I saw this. Everyone I asked at LEAST thought the USSR contributed as much as the USA in terms of winning the war.

My experience has been the exact opposite. Americans by and large see themselves as the "saviors of Europe" when it comes to World War II. That's where a lot of the deeply rooted hostility towards Europe (especially France) comes from: they shouldn't be giving the USA shit about anything, they should be grateful we saved them from Hitler, etc. etc.

Serious question then: what would Europe look like today if the US had stayed home and not engaged at all in WW2 in Europe or the aftermath? How many more countries would have fallen to the USSR in Europe? Without US supplies, would the UK or the USSR have been able to keep fighting? Would WW2 have dragged out for years longer than it did? And so on.

The US spent a huge amount of money to stand off with the USSR in Europe after WW2 (which was in its self-interest). In fact it's still dealing with Russia in Europe to this day, trying to keep them from reclaiming more former Soviet territory, and carrying the majority of the burden in NATO.

Most Americans I talk to view their country's contribution in WW2 as the push that tipped the scales in the allies favor once and for all (rather than being the savior of Europe). Or allow me to paraphrase Churchill - he believed the war was won, when the US was convinced to fully join the war effort.

Further, what other countries in Europe are we going to claim had a large contribution to defeating Germany? The list is really, really, really short. The UK, Russia and the US carried the radical majority of the effort. It's that simple.

> In fact it's still dealing with Russia in Europe to this day, trying to keep them from reclaiming more former Soviet territory, and carrying the majority of the burden in NATO.

How many foreign military bases does Russia have in other countries ?

How many foreign military bases does USA have in other countries (NATO or not) ?

Who's the "territory reclaimer" now ?

Since WWII, how many square-kilometers of territory did the US seize from its neighbors, versus USSR (before it broke up) or Russia (after breakup) from its neighbors?

Even if you believe the leases on US bases are somehow secret hostile seizures from their host country (which is unlikely, except for in Cuba)... I'm pretty sure we're talking much less in terms of "taken" territory and people.

Had the US not entered the war, Britain would have eventually been lost, Hitler would have made peace with the Russians, and Japan and Germany would have had years of respite to work out how best to carve up the completely isolated US between them, most likely via friendly South American allies.

What purpose, realistically, would have been served by attempting to invade the continental U.S.? The fall of England would not have suddenly resulted in Nazi possession of Canada or Britain's Caribbean possessions. Trying to launch operations at the bitter end of a trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific sea-borne supply line would be fraught with risk.

In the Pacific, the U.S. never really faced the bulk of the Japanese Imperial Army, which was largely tied up in Manchuria, China, and south-east Asia. Pacification of China would have been a long, drawn-out affair under the best of circumstances (with regards to Japanese imperialism).

One of the more interesting what-ifs, I think, is what would have happened if the Japanese Army faction had won out over the Naval faction, and an attack was launched towards Siberia, rather than against Hawaii, the Philippines, and Indonesia in 1941. This would have conceivably tied up a significant portion of the experienced Soviet forces that were shifted from the Far East command (including a particular future field marshal) to help blunt the German invasion at the gates of Moscow.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Order_(Nazism)#Hitler.27...

Isn't "saviours of Europe" more than WWII though? It's also the aftermath involved in those words and how the Cold War panned out with a Western Europe under the influence of the USA and an Eastern Europe under the influence of the Soviet Union.

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