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Comment by 10000truths | Hacker News Reader

This is a naively exceptionalist view of America‘s role in the world.

> enabled secure trade between countries

Unless you’re Venezuela, Iran or (until recently) Cuba, or anyone that didn’t play ball with the US in the Cold War era and after. Then you get sanctioned to hell and your ships seized for daring to trade with anyone else.

> brought 75 years of peace to Europe

If you’re referring to WWII, the US had very little role in ending the war in Europe.

> allowed the rise of China

It is Chinese economic policy that allowed the rise of China. The US literally engaged in a trade war against China.

> brought billions out of poverty by removing many of the limitations of geography

Economic globalization was brought on by the development of nuclear weapons, not by the generosity of any individual country.

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> the US had very little role in ending the war in Europe

This is bonkers-tier delusional.

The Soviets would have won it eventually, but then the entirety of Europe would have been under the Iron Curtain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Significance_of_Len...

"Nikita Khrushchev, ... addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs:

I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war."

Just how much lend-lease contributed for the Sovjet war effort is still debated. I wouldn't go with memoirs, but numbers. And in 1941, the USSR received very little from the US. Later on, sure. Especially aviation fuel and trucks.

That's why I said, US money and gear, Soviet blood and British stubbornness.

Edit: My personal opinion is, that lend-lease ended the war early. Germany was outproduced by the British and the Soviets alone, they also had the raw material advantage. And the man power. It would have taken a lot longer, with a the dire consequences. In 1945/46 so, the Soviets would have taken Berlin, one way or the other, D-Day or not.

Don't forget that at least one of those first gen nukes was initially earmarked for Germany, before VE. Even if they decided not to use one in Europe, the demonstration in Japan would still be persuasive.

Anything that required a time frame of later than 1945 would've likely been too late to matter.

Yep. IMHO Germany lost WW1 when they failed to take Paris early on. And they lost WW2 when they were stopped before Moscow. Everything after that was just delaying the inevitable. And killing millions. Same for the Japanese, Yamamoto got his timeline quite right before Pearl Harbor.

I recommend reading "Wages of Destruction". Historiography doesn't rely on just one person making a claim. That's just one small quote. The German war plans indicated that they simply didn't have the ability to sufficiently supply forces as far east as Moscow for a prolonged period of time. That the Soviet army was not utterly destroyed by the time the Germans go close to Moscow effectively meant there was no chance for a German victory.

American food and trucks didn't arrive in vast numbers until well after the Moscow 1941 campaign. America helped end the war sooner than it would have ended had it just been the Germans vs. the Soviets but America was not the reason for victory in Europe.

>Historiography doesn't rely on just one person making a claim

if you follow the link then you can see additional assessments.

If you read "Wages of Destruction" you'll see a greater number of references. I don't dispute the fact that we did create and distribute a lot of supplies. I claim that those supplies didn't win the war but rather shortened it.

EDIT: I corrected a mistake on the number of references.

Yes, and look how well Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states did under the Soviets!

I don't think you're making the point you think you're making.

The war in Europe was won with Soviet blood. The failure of the Germans to take Moscow in 1941 effectively ended any chance of a German victory. While the U.S. made major financial and material contributions it's clear the Soviets were going to win the war before the Americans entered it.

Them:

> very little

You:

> major

But you're arguing... against them? Right?

I'm arguing against your assertion that the belief that America had little to do with the victory in Europe is bonkers level delusional. We did supply the Soviets with food and trucks but Soviet industrial output was greater than Germany's and when the Germans didn't take Moscow the chance of victory was zero. American aid didn't arrive to the Soviet Union soon enough to change anything. It just helped end the war sooner.

The Marshall plan however did have a huge effect on the post war development which was really successful

Which was only preferred over the Morgenthau plan because they needed Germany against the Soviet Union. So without an common enemy no union.

> If you’re referring to WWII, the US had very little role in ending the war in Europe.

While today we understate the role of the Soviet Union - who suffered the highest casualties by far - in winning WWII, Britain and the Soviet Union probably wouldn't have survived without American Lend-Lease aid. While the famous quote attributed to Stalin - "the British gave time, the Americans gave money, and the Russians gave blood" - may be apocryphal, Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs:

"I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

> If you’re referring to WWII, the US had very little role in ending the war in Europe.

Wow. Except, you know, for Normandy.

Which included British, Canadian and French forces. Still, US military contribution was bigger than in WW1. The main US contribution was industrial and financial, the blood in Europe was mostly from the USSR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the...

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