Posted: Jun 01, 2016 9:48 am
don't get me started wrote:The narrative that the western allies were spineless and also calculating in their strategy is a well worn trope and was even voiced more or less overtly by Stalin during the war.
Of course the allies were not always without a stomach for armed intervention. But they surely lacked the guts when it mattered and of course, we are talking about a select set of politicians.
don't get me started wrote:I encountered it when I was visiting Volgograd (Former Stalingrad) and I fell into a conversation with a couple of Russian at the 'Mother Russia' monument. (It's pretty impressive). After discussing the horror of Stalingrad and the huge losses incurred by the Soviet Union, my interlocutor brought up the delay by the Western Allies in invading fortress Europe from the west. After all, he reasoned, the English channel is only 20 some miles wide....but the calculating and spineless allies decided to sit it out while the Nazis butchered heroic soviet citizens.
Stalin was full of praise for Operation Overlord after it took place. And he knew about Operation Sledgehammer.
don't get me started wrote:
Regarding the pre-war accommodations made by both the west and the Soviets, I remember Madelene Albright quoting her father, a Czechoslovak diplomat at the time. Regarding the disgraceful sell out at Munich he prayed that the British would 'have the strength to withstand the thrashing they so thoroughly deserved.'
And a disgraceful, spineless sell-out it was. And a thrashing they did receive along with a horrendous loss of their global power.