Revisiting History: The Unlikely Campaign to Vilify Winston Churchill

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, placeholder said:

 "Anyone who looks at the Bengal famine will immediately realise that British actions contributed greatly to the final death toll, also Churchill's policy to store food under the Indian's noses but not to give them any, but instead to divert it for use by the British very obviously killed a large number of people."

So, according to you, not just Churchill but British actions.

 

Well, Churchill is British of course, but looking at it more carefully, the British administrators in India were trying desperately to alieviate the famine, it was Churchill who decided not to provide the food they repeatedly requested.

 

 

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, placeholder said:

Another point you failed to mention is that Lend-Lease aid came at a crucial juncture for the Soviets. It was during the period when they were moving their industrial capacity east. 

 

The did indeed move their industrial base eastwards. And still managed to produce 100,000 armoured vehicles during the war. An incredile feat.

[Nick Carter icp]

1 minute ago, Cameroni said:

 

Well, Churchill is British of course, but looking at it more carefully, the British administrators in India were trying desperately to alieviate the famine, it was Churchill who decided not to provide the food they repeatedly requested.

 

 

 

   Why didn't Churchill want to give them any food ?

[placeholder]

Just now, Cameroni said:

 

The did indeed move their industrial base eastwards. And still managed to produce 100,000 armoured vehicles during the war. An incredile feat.

Yes, it was an incredible feat. But if the US hadn't supplied the materiel while those factories were out of commission, there would have been a very different outcome.

[placeholder]

7 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

Very interesting character.

 

He is the elder son of Lisa McNear (née Lombardi; 1945–2011), an artist from San Francisco,[60] and Dick Carlson (1941–), a former "gonzo reporter"[58][61][62] who became the director of Voice of America, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles

 

Carlson's maternal great-great-great-grandfather was Henry Miller, the "Cattle King".[71] Carlson's maternal great-great-grandfather Cesar Lombardi immigrated to New York from Switzerland in 1860.[72][73] Carlson is also a distant relative of Massachusetts politicians Ebenezer R. Hoar and George M. Brooks.

 

In 1979, Carlson's father married Patricia Caroline Swanson, an heiress to Swanson Enterprises, daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson and niece of Senator J. William Fulbright.

 

Carlson was briefly enrolled at Collège du Léman, a boarding school in the canton of Geneva in French-speaking Switzerland, but said he was "kicked out"

 

Among liberals, Carlson's piece received praise, with Democratic consultant Bob Shrum calling it "vivid". 

 

 John F. Harris of Politico would later remark on how Carlson was "viewed ... as an important voice of the intelligentsia" during this period

 

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

Interesting or not, this is false:

"To be fair Tucker Carlson started out as a liberal and intellectual in the US."

[placeholder]

1 minute ago, placeholder said:

Interesting or not, this is false:

"To be fair Tucker Carlson started out as a liberal and intellectual in the US."

Clearly, Tucker Carlson has always been politically repugnant.

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, BangkokReady said:

As long as they come to the conclusion that all rulers of the past did really bad things, and not just single out White people, while pretending that non-White people never did anything wrong.

 

Don't worry, Ghandi will get his due in the next thread, that half naked Fakir...

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, placeholder said:

Really? If Churchll had agreed to a peace treaty or truce with  Hitler, most of the soldiers and materiel that was being held in reserve in the West and being consumed in the fighting in North Africa, could have gone to the Russian War effort. Without the British navy that was so effective in stifling supplies from  coming in to Germany, HItler would have been able to wage a much more effective war against the Russians

 

It would not have mattered. As I already wrote, Russia produced 100,000 armoured vehicles in WWII. They outnumbered Germany in planes and tanks to a ludicrous degree.

 

Nothing in this world could have helped Germany prevail over Russia in WWII. The war of the Wehrmacht was effective. However, when it came to sheer numbers in materiel the Russians just had a major edge. With or without Lend Lease btw.

[Cameroni]

53 minutes ago, Nick Carter icp said:

 

   Why didn't Churchill want to give them any food ?

 

He didn't like Indians very much. 

[Cameroni]

53 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Yes, it was an incredible feat. But if the US hadn't supplied the materiel while those factories were out of commission, there would have been a very different outcome.

 

Not really, the US Lend Lease did not supply all that was needed, they provided 7000 tanks. But the Russians built 100,000 armoured vehicles themselves.

[Cameroni]

Fun fact to end the weekend:

 

In 1911, Churchill banned interracial boxing matches so white fighters would not be seen losing to black ones.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/17/why-cant-britain-handle-the-truth-about-winston-churchill

[Patong2021]

On 9/12/2024 at 8:30 AM, Cameroni said:

 

It's funny that people would credit Churchill for saving the world from the Nazis, that honour should really go to the millions of Russians who left their blood on the battlefield against the Wehrmacht, unlike Churchill. In reality Churchill and the British played an exceedingly minor role in the actual defeat of the Wehrmacht.

 

It's easy to forgive Churchill's sins if they didn't affect you, but the people in India whose relatives he starved to death, the people in Iraq whose relatives he had killed, and the children, women and old people who were turned into living torches by his strategic bombing campaign might see it differently.

 

Russia was a strategic and voluntary ally of   Nazi Germany. It was Russia that enabled Hitler's expansionism and WWII. How quickly you forget that Russia  worked in unison with  Germany to attack and to  invade Poland. It was Russia with German assistance that expanded its expansionist movement towards the west.

 

Had Hitler not  turned on Russia, Stalin and his henchmen would have been happy to see  the Nazis march into London. Much is made of the  casualties sustained by Russia in WWII. The cruel reality is that much of it was self inflicted. Stalin did not care how many people died in his human waves of attacks. The Russians had a two tier system. Certain ethnic groups were sent to the front and were denied firearms. Two groups that have documented their treatment were Protestants (Baptists and Lutherans) and Jews.  Stalin and his enablers did not care if Russian women and children died, as they were deemed  expendable.  And therein lies a key difference with Churchill. He valued the life of his people. When his nation's cities were bombed the plight of the nation's children's was a priority.  Great Britain had a program to remove the vulnerable from harm's way, Russia did not.

[Cameroni]

9 minutes ago, Patong2021 said:

 

Russia was a strategic and voluntary ally of   Nazi Germany. It was Russia that enabled Hitler's expansionism and WWII. How quickly you forget that Russia  worked in unison with  Germany to attack and to  invade Poland. It was Russia with German assistance that expanded its expansionist movement towards the west.

 

Had Hitler not  turned on Russia, Stalin and his henchmen would have been happy to see  the Nazis march into London. Much is made of the  casualties sustained by Russia in WWII. The cruel reality is that much of it was self inflicted. Stalin did not care how many people died in his human waves of attacks. The Russians had a two tier system. Certain ethnic groups were sent to the front and were denied firearms. Two groups that have documented their treatment were Protestants (Baptists and Lutherans) and Jews.  Stalin and his enablers did not care if Russian women and children died, as they were deemed  expendable.  And therein lies a key difference with Churchill. He valued the life of his people. When his nation's cities were bombed the plight of the nation's children's was a priority.  Great Britain had a program to remove the vulnerable from harm's way, Russia did not.

Hitler did not want this. He had earnestly sought negotiations with Poland against their common enemy, Soviet Russia. However, Poland refused to return the territories she had stolen from Germany after 1918. So Poland paid the price.

 

I think it's a bit ludicrous to claim Churchill was a man of peace. By the beginning of WWI Churchill had fought in three wars. Kaiser Wilhelm of Oh-so-militaristic-Germany in none. Churchill, when given the choice to end the war in Europe refused, inflicting more suffering on his own people and especially the rest of Europe. He bombed women and children in Germany, knowing full well that Germany would retaliate in Britain in kind. Indeed had Churchill and his British colleagues not made the greatest geo-political blunder of the 20th century, the guarantee to Poland, none of it would have happened. 

 

You have to ask yourself, was it right and smart for 75 million people to die so that the majority German city of Danzig does not become German again?

Edited September 15 by Cameroni

[Nick Carter icp]

1 hour ago, Cameroni said:

 

He didn't like Indians very much. 

 

  Racism was quite rampant and acceptable back in those day , shouldn't judge historical figures by todays standards 

[Cameroni]

37 minutes ago, Nick Carter icp said:

 

  Racism was quite rampant and acceptable back in those day , shouldn't judge historical figures by todays standards 

 Actually, his contemporaries were quite surprised by the depth of his racism. 

 

Churchill's personal doctor, Lord Moran, commented at one point that, in regards to other races, "Winston thinks only of the colour of their skin."

 

among British politicians of the time, few of them had the stature of Churchill.^[62] The article was criticised by the Jewish Chronicle at the time, calling it "the most reckless and scandalous campaign in which even the most discredited politicians have ever engaged".^[63] The Chronicle said Churchill had adopted "the hoary tactics of hooligan anti-Semites" in his article. 

 

South African President Thabo Mbeki said Churchill's attitude toward black people was racist and patronising. That complaint was shared by critics such as Clive Ponting. Historian Roland Quinault states that, "Even some historians otherwise sympathetic to Churchill have concluded that he was blind to the problems of black people.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Winston_Churchill#:~:text=Churchill advocated against native self,races remains a real one".

 

I mean this was a man who sat down with the vice president of the United States and in all seriousness said "why should we Anglo-Saxons apologise for being superior?". 

 

Edited September 15 by Cameroni

[placeholder]

5 hours ago, Cameroni said:

Hitler did not want this. He had earnestly sought negotiations with Poland against their common enemy, Soviet Russia. However, Poland refused to return the territories she had stolen from Germany after 1918. So Poland paid the price.

 

I think it's a bit ludicrous to claim Churchill was a man of peace. By the beginning of WWI Churchill had fought in three wars. Kaiser Wilhelm of Oh-so-militaristic-Germany in none. Churchill, when given the choice to end the war in Europe refused, inflicting more suffering on his own people and especially the rest of Europe. He bombed women and children in Germany, knowing full well that Germany would retaliate in Britain in kind. Indeed had Churchill and his British colleagues not made the greatest geo-political blunder of the 20th century, the guarantee to Poland, none of it would have happened. 

 

You have to ask yourself, was it right and smart for 75 million people to die so that the majority German city of Danzig does not become German again?

Well, he graduated from Sandhurst, the military academy, did he not?

As for your comment about Kaiser Wilhelm not serving in the military.... He never served because he was effectively 4F. A mishap during his birth meant he had a withered arm.

As anyone who knows anything about the history of Germany preceding WW1, Wilhelm abandoned the measured and sensible policies of his parents and the brilliant Otto von Bismarck, who could see that Germany's rise to be the pre-eminent power in Europe would be unstoppable because of its economic success., Instead the Kaiser turned to jingoistic advisers. It seems clear in retrospect that Wilhelm wasn't mentally well.

[placeholder]

5 hours ago, Cameroni said:

 

Not really, the US Lend Lease did not supply all that was needed, they provided 7000 tanks. But the Russians built 100,000 armoured vehicles themselves.

"While executing its withdrawal, the USSR also displaced much of its industrial capacity safely east of the Urals. Having to rebuild itself in new locations, Soviet production numbers dropped appreciably during this period. Lend-Lease helped fill the gap between the time factories moved east and the production of new equipment once the industrial base was reestablished. Even if American equipment was only 4 percent of the Soviet industrial capacity, this stop-gap support came at a crucial time in the war. While the USSR did not receive significant support from Lend-Lease until 1943, shipments in 1942 were both welcomed and timely. In 1943, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin considered the American Lend-Lease aid already received to have been decisive."

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/lend-lease-eastern-front#:~:text=Lend-Lease helped fill the,crucial time in the war.

 

 

On the larger question of the importance of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union:

Nikita Khrushchev, having served as a military commissar and intermediary between Stalin and his generals during the war, 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. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.^[45]"

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease}

[BangkokReady]

7 hours ago, Cameroni said:

 

Don't worry, Ghandi will get his due in the next thread, that half naked Fakir...

 

It's funny you should say that. By some accounts he wasn't actually that nice a person.

[Cameroni]

2 hours ago, BangkokReady said:

 

It's funny you should say that. By some accounts he wasn't actually that nice a person.

 

I almost fell off my chair when I saw Ghandi's early writings. No wonder Africans don't like him.

 

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766083651/gandhi-is-deeply-revered-but-his-attitudes-on-race-and-sex-are-under-scrutiny

[Cameroni]

4 hours ago, placeholder said:

Well, he graduated from Sandhurst, the military academy, did he not?

As for your comment about Kaiser Wilhelm not serving in the military.... He never served because he was effectively 4F. A mishap during his birth meant he had a withered arm.

As anyone who knows anything about the history of Germany preceding WW1, Wilhelm abandoned the measured and sensible policies of his parents and the brilliant Otto von Bismarck, who could see that Germany's rise to be the pre-eminent power in Europe would be unstoppable because of its economic success., Instead the Kaiser turned to jingoistic advisers. It seems clear in retrospect that Wilhelm wasn't mentally well.

 

That's true, and I take your point about Wilhelm, well made.

 

Regardless of the Kaiser, there is a good argument to be made for Germany being the least militaristic of the major European powers. It seems clear that Germany's naval ambitions were at the very core of Churchill's antipathy towards Germany, as he understood early on this German path to economic pre-eminence and the dangers it would bring to British naval superiority.

 

I suppose that would be the main argument against a pace with Germany, had he accecpted peace, who's to say that Germany would not have started building a huge navy a la Britannia, thereby potentially endangering the economic exploitation of the colonies for the future?

 

A divided and defeated Germany was much more sensible from Britain's perspective in this regard, and Churchill of course supported the hateful and vengeful Henry Morgenthau Plan to dismember Germany. Though he then also supported German unifcation to end the cold war.

 

[Cameroni]

4 hours ago, placeholder said:

"While executing its withdrawal, the USSR also displaced much of its industrial capacity safely east of the Urals. Having to rebuild itself in new locations, Soviet production numbers dropped appreciably during this period. Lend-Lease helped fill the gap between the time factories moved east and the production of new equipment once the industrial base was reestablished. Even if American equipment was only 4 percent of the Soviet industrial capacity, this stop-gap support came at a crucial time in the war. While the USSR did not receive significant support from Lend-Lease until 1943, shipments in 1942 were both welcomed and timely. In 1943, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin considered the American Lend-Lease aid already received to have been decisive."

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/lend-lease-eastern-front#:~:text=Lend-Lease helped fill the,crucial time in the war.

 

 

On the larger question of the importance of Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union:

Nikita Khrushchev, having served as a military commissar and intermediary between Stalin and his generals during the war, 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. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.^[45]"

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease}

 

Thansk for these very interesting links.  So they supplied 4 percent of Russia's own industrial capacity which is in line with my view that it was not decisive.

 

Krushchev's undocumented recollection is interesting, however, a detailed look at what Lend Lease actually provided is more helpful, and since Lend Lease provided 7000 tanks but the Russian's built 100,000 armoured vehicles, it's very hard to conclude that Lend Lease was a decisive policy. Though I take the point clearly helpful when the factories were dismantled and moved eastwards, again an astonishing feat by the Russians.

[placeholder]

6 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

That's true, and I take your point about Wilhelm, well made.

 

Regardless of the Kaiser, there is a good argument to be made for Germany being the least militaristic of the major European powers. It seems clear that Germany's naval ambitions were at the very core of Churchill's antipathy towards Germany, as he understood early on this German path to economic pre-eminence and the dangers it would bring to British naval superiority.

 

I suppose that would be the main argument against a peace with Germany, had he accepted peace, who's to say that Germany would not have started building a huge navy a la Britannia, thereby potentially endangering the economic exploitation of the colonies for the future?

 

A divided and defeated Germany was much more sensible from Britain's perspective in this regard, and Churchill of course supported the hateful and vengeful Henry Morgenthau Plan to dismember Germany. Though he then also supported German unifcation to end the cold war.

 

The case against a peace with Germany was clear. Hitler only made that final offer because his plan to invade Britain had been dashed by the failure of the Luftwaffe and the British neutralizing of the German navy. As subsequent events showed, he had much to gain and nothing to lose by making the offer. As for a renewed German navy threatening the Empire, actually it would have posed a direct threat to the UK.

As for Hitler's support for the Morgenthau plan, at first he was strongly opposed. It was only after the US offered a sweetener in the form of substantial aid that he changed his mind. And as he later put it "At first I was violently opposed to the idea. But the President and Mr. Morgenthau from whom we had much to ask were so insistent that in the end we agreed to consider it".[30]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#:~:text=lost the war".-,British reaction,chained to a dead body".

And you apparently don't understand how horrified the West was by Hitler's systematic exterminations.

[placeholder]

12 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

Thansk for these very interesting links.  So they supplied 4 percent of Russia's own industrial capacity which is in line with my view that it was not decisive.

 

Krushchev's undocumented recollection is interesting, however, a detailed look at what Lend Lease actually provided is more helpful, and since Lend Lease provided 7000 tanks but the Russian's built 100,000 armoured vehicles, it's very hard to conclude that Lend Lease was a decisive policy. Though I take the point clearly helpful when the factories were dismantled and moved eastwards, again an astonishing feat by the Russians.

Why the fixation on tanks? What good are tanks artillery if they lack explosives for their munitions?   Maybe the plan would be to replace the gun with a battering ram?

And of course you ignore the huge amount of food that the US shipped to the Soviets because the war had destroyed so much of its agricultural capacity. And Lend Lease also provided so much of other  materiel necessary to fight such a war.

[placeholder]

17 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

Thansk for these very interesting links.  So they supplied 4 percent of Russia's own industrial capacity which is in line with my view that it was not decisive.

 

Krushchev's undocumented recollection is interesting, however, a detailed look at what Lend Lease actually provided is more helpful, and since Lend Lease provided 7000 tanks but the Russian's built 100,000 armoured vehicles, it's very hard to conclude that Lend Lease was a decisive policy. Though I take the point clearly helpful when the factories were dismantled and moved eastwards, again an astonishing feat by the Russians.

Nonsense. You deliberately ignored the fact that there a short gap in time when it was supplied. The gap being when Russia wasn't producing what it needed to fight the war. You think the Germans were going to give the Soviets a time out while they regrouped?

[placeholder]

20 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

 

Thansk for these very interesting links.  So they supplied 4 percent of Russia's own industrial capacity which is in line with my view that it was not decisive.

 

Krushchev's undocumented recollection is interesting, however, a detailed look at what Lend Lease actually provided is more helpful, and since Lend Lease provided 7000 tanks but the Russian's built 100,000 armoured vehicles, it's very hard to conclude that Lend Lease was a decisive policy. Though I take the point clearly helpful when the factories were dismantled and moved eastwards, again an astonishing feat by the Russians.

Additionally, over the course of the war, the Americans delivered over 400,000 trucks and other vehicles to the USSR. During the same period, Soviet factories produced less than 200,000. Given the size and scope of the challenges in the vast Russian steppe, trucks were key in moving various classes of supply and labor over hundreds of miles. After the war, even Premier Nikita Khrushchev reported that the USSR was dependent on Western vehicles for its tactical advances in Stalingrad and Berlin.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/lend-lease-eastern-front#:~:text=Addressing this need%2C Americans provided,from factories to the front.&text=Additionally%2C over the course of,other vehicles to the USSR.

[spidermike007]

Cooper is not a historian, he's an absolute goon who is simply a supporter of revisionist history.

 

Hitler was good, Churchill was bad, democracy is bad, fascism is great. What can one say about idiots like this? The reality is that these days there's just so much nonsense online that we have to just establish very good filters, and use them on a daily basis. 

 

Cooper’s revisionism represents a Right-wing equivalent of the 1619 Project: a radical re-narrativisation, with a similarly tendentious relation to factual accuracy, of a politically load-bearing set of historical narratives. It’s also premised on broadly the same set of insights about the relation between historical narratives, ideology, and power as Left-wing “woke” revisionism, and particularly the crucial “woke” insight concerning the operation of power through language, narrative, and ideology.

 

If the sacred dogma of WWII is subject to critical re-reading today from the woke Right, as that of the American founding is from the woke Left, this should be understood as a response to larger ongoing shifts in the political order. The gap between Taylor’s assessment of the Second World War and the contemporary, dominant American one attests that such shifts and re-narrativisations have happened before.

 

https://unherd.com/newsroom/darryl-coopers-woke-right-view-of-world-war-ii/

 

 

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, placeholder said:

The case against a peace with Germany was clear. Hitler only made that final offer because his plan to invade Britain had been dashed by the failure of the Luftwaffe and the British neutralizing of the German navy. As subsequent events showed, he had much to gain and nothing to lose by making the offer. As for a renewed German navy threatening the Empire, actually it would have posed a direct threat to the UK.

As for Hitler's support for the Morgenthau plan, at first he was strongly opposed. It was only after the US offered a sweetener in the form of substantial aid that he changed his mind. And as he later put it "At first I was violently opposed to the idea. But the President and Mr. Morgenthau from whom we had much to ask were so insistent that in the end we agreed to consider it".[30]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#:~:text=lost the war".-,British reaction,chained to a dead body".

And you apparently don't understand how horrified the West was by Hitler's systematic exterminations.

 

There is an element of truth in that, had Germany won the battle of Britain there may well have been a swfit invasion to take out the UK government, Hitler showed in Greece and Yugoslavia that he was not averse to that. However, this was of course after Britain had declared war on Germany and she was confronted with this fait accompli and how to deal with it. Hitler himself was an Anglophile and an admirer of the Empire who clearly never wanted a war with Britain. His offer was informed by this sentiment and the desire to avoid a two front war.'

 

The Morgenthau plan of course would have  lead to the starvation of 40% of Germany's population, as Hull noted to Truman. So Churchill agreed to the Morgenthau Plan knowing that 32 milllion Germans would die, in exchange for a fistful of dollars from the Americans. Yup, a real moral guy who knew right from wrong, lol.

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, placeholder said:

Why the fixation on tanks? What good are tanks artillery if they lack explosives for their munitions?   Maybe the plan would be to replace the gun with a battering ram?

And of course you ignore the huge amount of food that the US shipped to the Soviets because the war had destroyed so much of its agricultural capacity. And Lend Lease also provided so much of other  materiel necessary to fight such a war.

 

It's not just tanks, with planes too the contribution of lend lease was not decisive, when put next to Russian production figures.

 

Railway supplies, trucks, yes food, this was all helpful. But it did not decide the battles with the Wehrmacht.

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, spidermike007 said:

Cooper is not a historian, he's an absolute goon who is simply a supporter of revisionist history.

 

Hitler was good, Churchill was bad, democracy is bad, fascism is great. What can one say about idiots like this? The reality is that these days there's just so much nonsense online that we have to just establish very good filters, and use them on a daily basis. 

 

Cooper’s revisionism represents a Right-wing equivalent of the 1619 Project: a radical re-narrativisation, with a similarly tendentious relation to factual accuracy, of a politically load-bearing set of historical narratives. It’s also premised on broadly the same set of insights about the relation between historical narratives, ideology, and power as Left-wing “woke” revisionism, and particularly the crucial “woke” insight concerning the operation of power through language, narrative, and ideology.

 

If the sacred dogma of WWII is subject to critical re-reading today from the woke Right, as that of the American founding is from the woke Left, this should be understood as a response to larger ongoing shifts in the political order. The gap between Taylor’s assessment of the Second World War and the contemporary, dominant American one attests that such shifts and re-narrativisations have happened before.

 

https://unherd.com/newsroom/darryl-coopers-woke-right-view-of-world-war-ii/

 

 

It's hard to fault Cooper's popular history, as he is so well read and meticulous. His argument about Churchill was made decades ago already by several people.

 

There was good and also bad in Churchill. It would be naive and childish to see him only as "good".

 

Your article mentions A.J.P. Taylor who wrote Origins of the Second World War.

 

In the book Taylor argued against the widespread belief that the outbreak of the Second World War (specifically between Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and France, September 1939) was the result of an intentional plan on the part of Adolf Hitler.

 

...he argued that Hitler was not just a mainstream German leader but also a mainstream Western leader. As a normal Western leader, Hitler was no better or worse than Gustav Stresemann, Neville Chamberlain or Édouard Daladier. His argument was that Hitler wished to make Germany the strongest power in Europe but he did not want or plan war. The outbreak of war in 1939 was an unfortunate accident caused by mistakes on everyone's part and was not a part of Hitler's plan.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._P._Taylor

 

So a lack of plan...hmmm, sounds familiar...didn't I hear that in the Darryl Cooper interview...?

 

Edited September 16 by Cameroni

[Bkk Brian]

5 hours ago, Cameroni said:

 

Thansk for these very interesting links.  So they supplied 4 percent of Russia's own industrial capacity which is in line with my view that it was not decisive.

 

Krushchev's undocumented recollection is interesting, however, a detailed look at what Lend Lease actually provided is more helpful, and since Lend Lease provided 7000 tanks but the Russian's built 100,000 armoured vehicles, it's very hard to conclude that Lend Lease was a decisive policy. Though I take the point clearly helpful when the factories were dismantled and moved eastwards, again an astonishing feat by the Russians.

But your just an anonymous internet poster, I go for opinions from those in the know a little more.

 

Nikita Khrushchev

"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"

https://www.rferl.org/a/did-us-lend-lease-aid-tip-the-balance-in-soviet-fight-against-nazi-germany/30599486.html