The successful campaign to convince people the USA and not the USSR beat Hitler (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The successful campaign to convince people the USA and not the USSR beat Hitler (2014)

vox.com

18 pointsmelenaboija24 comments

I feel like this article is dramatically underselling the Lend-Lease program.

But, more to the point, it never actually addresses why the French changed their minds!

I think many underestimate allies bombing campaign, which destroyed Germans industrial complex, oil industry and air forces (75% of aircraft were destroyed by allies, many on the airbases).

This is true, and not widely cited because the Allied bombing of civilian areas was horrific, dwarfing the suffering inflicted by the two atom bombs.

WWII was awful.

Yeah, this article's awful. I was expecting, you know, coverage of afore-written campaign. Instead it just notes that French attitudes changed, then attempts to refute that changed attitude. The "why", which the headline implies will be the focus, isn't just not the focus, but is absent.

I can only speculate that it's a combination of several factors: 1. older French people told stories of how Americans freed their cities in France (because US was on Germany's West front) 2. USSR had become a big bad evil with the Cold War 3. US and French movies mostly focus on the fights the US/France did.

> it never actually addresses why the French changed their minds!

I'll take a try as a French.

* Our exiled government was located in the UK, which as strong ties to the US

* France never saw any Russian troops, and a big event of the war was the Normandy landings

* We have the same societal model. Even though the state participation in the economy is one of the highest of the world (which would make us more communists that Russia or China), our system is deeply rooted in property and capitalism. We do have the "American Dream" of an individual making it to the top, rather than China's "Harmonious Society"[1] model. We love democracy.

* France is in NATO, and Russia was seen as menacing. When France decided to get the bomb, here is what De Gaulle had to say: "Within ten years, we shall have the means to kill 80 million Russians. I truly believe that one does not light-heartedly attack people who are able to kill 80 million Russians, even if one can kill 800 million French, that is if there were 800 million French"

* France is culturally closer to the US

* France does a lot more business with the US, benefited from the Marshall Plan.

* The Hollywood machine has won. Moving-making and distribution are expensive, and this might be a sector where the moats are deep and the winner takes all. With that the US army has an extensive movie sponsorship program, where they won't give money but they'll happily grant access to an aircraft carrier. Also, the Marshall plan mandated that at least 30% of movies projections had to come from the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_Society

As a French, I upvote :) Very good summary.

One thing though about the cultural closeness. It really depends on the generation.

For young people Russia is an unknown land they do not hear about (well, until the war). They are closer to the US culture, but not that specifically - I think it is difficult to speak of a culture in their c'est, it is very international and oriented to internet.

Older folks were actually quite close to Russian culture, at least the idealized one. Not that much to the US one.

It also dramatically underselling the North African campaign which tied Axis logistics and what little strategic lift capacity they had, at some point 80-90% of the long range aviation and most importantly fuel was dedicated to try and win Africa.

Both Germany and Italy have expended significant resources in Africa and lost a significant amount of personnel and more importantly materiel over the 3 years it lasted.

The article has a very misleading title. It doesn't discuss or provide evidence of any "campaign" to convince people.

That the US in any way won the war on either front is clearly propaganda. I think that implies "propaganda campaign."

In the US, we are taught in school and in all of our media that we were somehow the "tipping point." This is determined, in the European theater, by being involved peripherally and not participation in actually defeating the enemy (which had been relentlessly throwing itself against its eastern front) - we had to rush to try to meet the Soviets in Berlin despite much easier conditions. And in the Pacific theater, we Americans are taught that victory was determined by "awesome A-bombs" instead of what the actual timing shows to be - "oh, crap - Stalin," causing Japanese surrender to anyone but Stalin. The US POV is exported to everywhere else via Hollywood, thus global propaganda, a global "campaign."

That said, this is a puff piece in Vox. What do you expect?

>” "I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."

- Stalin

>” "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."”

- Kruschev

The Soviets made monumental sacrifices in the war and smashed millions of German troops.

But the idea is that they did the lion’s share of the war is just silly.

I don’t even know how’d you’d rank contributions. It was a group effort and without any of the major allied participants they would have faltered.

https://www.rferl.org/amp/did-us-lend-lease-aid-tip-the-bala...

I the think that the body count is an good way to compare the scale of sacrifice, something like 24m:0.4m or around 60 to 1.

Mother and father are equally necessary to the zygote, but the scale of the sacrifice is severely assymetrical for babies too.

You don't win wars by dying for your country.

You win them by making the other guy die for his.

(Patton, I believe)

What a bizarre article (probably needs (2014), by the way). It seems to go out of its way to minimize the contribution of the non-Soviet allies to the war.

This post, linked in the article, is I think a far more reasonable assessment of the Soviet sacrifices and overall contribution to Germany’s defeat:

https://orangeraisin.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/did-the-red-ar...

I happened to be in England during the 50th anniversary of VE day. (May 8, 1995)

The newsreader was talking about it and said something similar to:

"While today marks victory in Europe, it's important to remember that World War II was not yet over."

(pause)

"Our brave boys were still fighting in Burma..."

Nothing sinister, just the natural human tendency for everyone to think they are the star of the show.

Right, because the Soviets cracked Enigma... Oh right...

They both beat Hitler together. It's hard to give Russia credit after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. But they did sacrifice more men than anyone. This happened to a large extent because the Soviets got rid of most of the officers in the army. So they had too few people with actual experience and knowledge to lead campaigns.

The west talks about the west. Just like the east talks about the east. There's no campaign. Just like we don't talk much about the Japanese war atrocities against China and they don't know about the holocaust.

Wait, do you think the US cracked Enigma?

The UK did. The west. Not Russia.

There are reasonable arguments that Russia's or the USA's contribution was more pivotal. That people in the English-speaking world generally hand it to the USA is not the result of a dishonest campaign.

Given that the US' nuclear weapons could ultimately have taken out Hitler in short order - and possibly ended the war in Japan at the same time by way of demonstration - I'm not sure what the point is of quibbling about this. All the Allies made a contribution, certainly.

Not a word about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, of course. When two criminals fall out with each other after a joint robbery and murder, one ordinarily does not overly mourn the one whom the other shoots in a dispute over the spoils, nor do we call the one shot a hero for surviving the attack and turning on the shooter.

Hopefully, one of the good things that will come out of the Russia-Ukraine War is the eternal shattering of the "Ha ha smug Americans, everyone knows that it's the Soviets that beat the Nazis" notion that this article is based on. Setting aside the total complicity of the Soviets in helping the Germans to dismember Poland in 1939 and attack themselves in 1941, without massive American and British aid Moscow would have fallen in 1941 and the Soviets would have sued for peace in 1942.

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

David Glantz : Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 1941–1942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and ...

During the cold war, we (the US collectively) certainly didn't want to give the Russians credit for anything we didn't have to. But I still learned all about it in college in the early 90s at the latest. I don't think it's a great secret, their massive effort and sacrifice, and their role in the turning point for the Nazis.

"I said, 'You wouldn't have had much fun in Stalingrad, would you'?"

2014

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