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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

I recently listened to the Hardcore History about atomic weapons and I hadn't realized how right as WWII ended everyone was ready to wage nuclear war against Stalin immediately.

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Knowing that US was supplying USSR with weapons,airplanes, trucks and helping build entire factories right up until the end of the war and then wanted to nuke the same ally is really buffling. One one hand can be said, yes they wanted USSR to bleed fighting Germany (or do the harder fighting part) on the other hand it's just confusing and possibly different fractions within US government wanting different things.

It was purely a functional alliance - no more. I don't think anyone had any preconceived notions that it was anything other than a marriage of convenience.

Keep in mind that Stalin himself professed and acted on the belief that coexistence with capitalism was impossible and thought that conflict with the West was inevitable within 15 years of WWII. We're all lucky that he died before then and the cooler head of Khrushchev prevailed.

The weapon part of the US contribution is way overrated.

The Soviets produced 157k airplanes, the US only gave them 11k (7%).

US gave 7k tanks, Soviets produced 87,500 (8%).

The main contribution by the US was support vehicles like jeeps and trucks and fuel. Neither the aircraft or tanks were very notable beyond the very early years.

The Soviets largely did it on the own armour/aircraft wise. Which was why Hitler was so obsessed with invading in the first place. He knew unless they rushed to invade Russia could unleash it's massive capacity for production that'd they'd be impossible to invade on their own, or at a minimum be way harder to beat.

> The main contribution by the US was support vehicles like jeeps and trucks and fuel

Obviously, these are all absolutely critical. As is the aluminum, high-octane avgas, etc that the Soviets obtained via Lend-Lease

As the Ukraine-Russia war illustrates, supply chain (support vehicles) are critical.

you overlook that those weapons were supplied at critical times, when the Soviet war machine had not ramped up yet. entire offensives were led with nearly only lend-lease kit.

Also small compared to what the British got. But what matters more is how critical they were : the Nazis culminated in view of the Kremlin (also, notably, a couple of days before Pearl Harbor and the US officially joined the war).

There’s nothing baffling about it. An Enemy of my enemy is my ally. But when the business is done… keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

Both FDR and Churchill are on record as saying variants of "it is permissible to walk with the devil if it gets you to the other side of the bridge" about the alliance with Stalin.

This sort of ruthless pragmatism is sadly missing from today's politics. Recently people are more focused on imposing their will on the others instead of compromising, however unsavory the other side may be.

I find this statement one of the most astonishing things said on HN that I can remember.

The entire history of US foreign relations in South and Central America and the Middle East (at least!) is dominated with compromises similar to this.

It's difficult to know where to start a list!

I would be curious of the start of your list in the Americas, as I don't feel like making compromises with our adversaries is actually a common approach there.

I suspect that GP believes that US-supported strongmen and right wing dictators in Latin America were US adversaries, rather than useful, crafted actors for US interests in their countries, who were managed and supported until and unless they markedly diverged from US interests.

If you’re swimming in a sea of US-standard media and patriotic narratives, I suppose it’s easier to believe the former rather than the latter.

> I suspect that GP believes that US-supported strongmen and right wing dictators in Latin America were US adversaries, rather than useful, crafted actors for US interests in their countries, who were managed and supported until and unless they markedly diverged from US interests.

I'm not sure how you'd get that from my comment (I'm not from the US, so I think you are reading an awful lot into what I said there!).

Either way, both those narratives fit the realpolitik the OP seemed to be calling for.

Here's one: the US cooperating with Saudi-Arabia and other gulf states despite them being responsible for the largest terrorist attack(s) on US soil and funding terrorists, the big bad guy since 9/11, the reason why a generation of soldiers has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing nearly a million people.

Do you know where the Americas are?

Indeed the entire cold war (and I mean the previous one) was defined by this kind of questionable compromise. There was much talk of freedom and democracy while turning around to support brutal dictatorships, religious extremists and endless civil wars in order to defeat a supposedly more important enemy.

This is exactly why I'm so sceptical of the eagerness, even enthusiasm, of those who want to launch us straight into the next cold war, again to the mood music of ethical sounding objectives you cannot possibly oppose.

Please do start, meddling in those regions is well known to anybody interested in the topic (and currently helps greatly pro-putin crowds to rationalize and justify their views), but compromise ?

Perceived non-aligned folks were murdered if possible, often with CIA folks standing just behind the corner (Allende, Che etc.). You can't really say that putting into office fascist murderous dictator like Pinochet instead of Allende was a compromise in any way.

>The entire history of US foreign relations in South and Central America and the Middle East (at least!) is dominated with compromises similar to this.

If you meant the support and establishment of dictatorships and banana republics there, those aren't compromises in the sense of "working with the devil they hate", like they had to do in WWII with Stalin.

These are working joyly with "our kind of guys".

The main difference being that Stalin was an opponent and against the US interests, whereas those guys like Pinochet were always about the US interests, even groomed and build up especially to support them.

I agree, but I'm guessing parent might have been thinking of domestic politics, which has become more a lot more polarised and zero-sum.

Yup. I'm excited that my comment is someone's most astonishing on HN though. That's quite an accomplishment!

No need to limit it to the USA. The United States is not exceptional in this regard. Pragmatism has been a feature of the exercise of power for millennia.

Like when the US pretends like Saudi Arabia didn't sponsor terrorist attacks and so continue to sell them weapons and buy oil?

> Recently people are more focused on imposing their will on the others instead of compromising, however unsavory the other side may be.

How can you believe this when unsavoury compromise is the relationship of most of the world with the US?

Stalins tactics were outrageous and included having resisting regions and towns being "pacified" by german troops before the red army would take them. This is the guy who wanted to share Europe with his buddy Adolf.

Infamously Warsaw:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising

Not baffling if you know anything about the history of the US or the USSR.

"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible" - Harry Truman

Geopolitical realism has always involved turning on your allies as soon as they become the primary threat to your power; or even better to induce two rival competitors to fight each other[0]

See Mearsheimer and political realism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_and_bleed

"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances."

Western nations were also uncharacteristically tolerant of Hitler's militarization while he opposed the communists. Then they signed a non-aggression pact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

Only that right after WW2, nuking the Soviets wouldn't have helped. The Red Army had Berlin, had shorter, and well established, supply lines, and the numbers. Nuking Moscow had caused WW3 right after WW2 ended, the Soviets woupd have ended up controlling Germany, and propably other countries. Because a hand full of small nukes wouldn't have been that decisive.

The are reasons Operation Unthinkable wasn't launched. But one has to admit, the anti-communist propaganda that united people from Patton, McCarthy all the way to former Wehrmacht Generals, still has long lasting effects even today.

If History proved something is that Patton and McCarthy were right.

Come again? You mean the self-grandizing, almost sacked twice, never really promoted anti-semite Patton? And the lying about flight ime to get decorations, life desteoying, actually sacked and rediculed McCarthy?

But I'll bite, how exactly were those two individuals right about anything? Can ypu share some specific details?

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