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Why do people think that the US won WW2 in Europe?

40 points by georgecmu 5y ago

anticristi 5y ago
I got to learn "the other side" of the story, after meeting a few people from nations marketed as our "arch enemies". I became extremely disappointed that history is never a recollection of facts, rather a narrative to cater to national propaganda.
- vmception 5y ago
  Yeah I travel a lot, it is surprising how different the facts are. Its like Animal Farm but expanding the universe to a different farm. It can be subtle differences like "Serbia starting WW1" versus "Austria starting WW1" or it can be major consequential differences
- drewcoo 5y ago
  History, when I studied it in college, was a collection of opinions, claims of varying veracity, evidence of different strengths, lots of missing information, and attempts to find meaning in it all, usually from some current perspective. History professors these days are more often accused of postmodernism than narrative and more often of Marxism than national propaganda. Those electives in college are supposed to expose people to things like that. There is something very unlike that taught before college in the US that's more about memorizing than understanding. It's a similar situation to how the math that people have phobias about doesn't resemble undergrad math major math at all.
- twelve40 5y ago
  I agree, I really liked history and the humanities back in school but after traveling and living in different countries I found it extremely repulsive how the humanities are basically getting twisted to fit the local agenda everywhere. So I stuck with STEM and really happy I don't have to deal with this BS at least in my professional life.
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  It's super fun living in Sweden for some time, and then living in nearby Russia for some time. You get to hear exactly the same reports of military aggression, but the perpetrators are always the other side.
belltaco 5y ago
Would the USSR have won against Germany if the US was not involved? And what if the US joined the Axis powers in the war?
- tompazourek 5y ago
  Maybe also: Would the US have won against Germany if the USSR was not involved?
  - yostrovs 5y ago
    Please do recall that the USSR was effectively on the same side as Germany for the first two years of the war.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Not really. The USSR knew conflict with Germany was inevitable, Molotov-Ribbentrop was about delaying it as much as possible.
      - dimavs 5y ago
        Why delaying? USSR has the most powerful army in 1939. USSR could have occupied Ploesti oil fields in 1940 that would effectively stop the war. Creating a common border with your enemy is not a very effective way to "delay" from my point of view.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        This is really absurd. By 1939 the Red Army was massively lacking in tanks, artillery, air power, and logistics. They could not have sustained an expeditionary offensive against Germamy, even in Romania. And while Ploesti had significant oil production, by 1939 Germany had alternatives and a lower oil consumption, so this would not have stalled the offensive.
        5y ago
gsich 5y ago
To answer the question: it'a a retroactive downplay of the USSR after and during the cold war.
- itronitron 5y ago
  So, USSR took a break from killing it's own people to killing Germans instead?
  - flenserboy 5y ago
    Not really. They pretty much stayed on course with both programs throughout the war — and this was true for those in the military just as much as civilians. The policy of shooting anyone who hinted at retreat, combined with treating Soviet POWs as traitors (which encouraged soldiers to fight to the literal death), contributed to both tallies.
  - cyborgx7 5y ago
    its*
- fcantournet 5y ago
  You're getting downvoted by people who don't know shit / never set foot in a Western europe classroom. This is documented : the role of the USSR in WWII victory was erased from public school programs and constantly downplayed in media. There are numerous traces of the controversies that arose around this throughout the decades.
- prestigious 5y ago
  Well the even parts of Europe where USSR won those countries lost. Only Europe “won” by US/Britain can be considered free/independent. Those who were on the USSR side were hardly better off under USSR than Nazi Germany.
booleanbetrayal 5y ago
Because the US emerged with supreme reserve currency status, supported by its reconstruction approach? To the victor go the spoils.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Arguably, the USSR also got lots of the spoils and emerged a super power.
  - GenerocUsername 5y ago
    And 100 years from now, China will have won WW2 with their subtle but very important sideline involvments
    - booleanbetrayal 5y ago
      I think the clear distinction here, is that in absence of a reconstruction effort, you do not have stability, and war continues unabated. Maybe you call it something different or attribute it to different actors, but the true delineation of conflict is a tangible and lasting peace. I think that the US demonstrated its victory as it helped to coordinate and furnish that peace in a manner that supported its own interests at the time.
    - simonblack 5y ago
      Seeing that the Chinese War Against Japan lasted over eight years the Chinese very likely have a good claim to that title. (That's eight years at least. Some people count that war as between 1931 and 1945, so some 14 years.)
  - booleanbetrayal 5y ago
    Definitely, but they were geographically and philosophically isolated from several traditional European power centers, unlike their US capitalist counterparts. So if Europe is the theater and ultimately part of the prize, I think the US was able to flourish in influence from the start given its more advantageous positioning.
pmoriarty 5y ago
That reminds me of this video[1], where Americans are asked questions you'd think they'd easily be able to answer. Such as... Q: Who won the Vietnam war? A: We did. Wait, were we even in the Vietnam war? Q: How many sides does a triangle have? A: Damn. Four. A: There's no sides... One? Q: How many World Wars have there been? A: Three. Q: What are Hiroshima and Nagasaki known for? A: Judo-wrestling? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF9hhKWwZrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF9hhKWwZrs
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  well, this makes me think hmm, I know all the answers to those questions, but I've never been asked in one of those surveys of people walking on the street when living in the U.S - but if I had been.... would I have been put on this funny TV segment?
  - mcphage 5y ago
    > but if I had been.... would I have been put on this funny TV segment? Well, if you wanted to be—and plenty of people do—then there’s an easy way. All you have to do is give a really bad answer to an easy question.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      Yeah, I think that "what's the religion of Israel" - "Islamic" is indistinguishable from entry level trolling, and maybe given the short pause before saying it this guy was thinking "how do I get on the news but in a defensible way I can tell my friends yeah I was trolling bro" or maybe he's really stupid. But as a stupidity test there must be some false positives in there - so the rule is, in funny TV segments never ascribe to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by maliciousness. on edit: of course maliciousness used for wordplay purposes, but maybe should be replaced with mischievousness which nowadays is interpreted as meaning less than malicious.
- sebmellen 5y ago
  You can’t really trust these videos, because you could do this in any country. Interview 100 people and choose the dumbest 5 and selectively air those clips... It’s fun entertainment, but not much more.
erect_penis3 5y ago
That’s a really hard problem to solve.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aliensattack 5y ago
To me, the obvious answer is Hollywood, and the fact that the US (especially post Soviet collapse) has emerged as the obvious long-term benefactor.
joecool1029 5y ago
The opinion in France reversed after reconstruction. Immediately after V-E, there was a strong opinion that the Soviets did the most to win the war: https://www.france24.com/en/20190601-who-won-wwii-russias-role-gets-short-shrift-france https://www.france24.com/en/20190601-who-won-wwii-russias-ro...
- stock_toaster 5y ago
  What about lend-lease?
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Lend lease was a serious part of it but 10-15% of the USSR's output is no match for 90-85% of the Soviet output plus 20 million lives. The US still did however a lot to help.
    - vetinari 5y ago
      Materially significant portion of lend-lease also happened after Stalingrad. If US would not join USSR in the war effort, the Soviets would stop at the Atlantic shore, not in Berlin.
marcodiego 5y ago
In Brazil, a country heavily influenced by US culture, people will carefully explain you how the US won the Vietnam war.
- vmception 5y ago
  People in the US don't even say that..... thats the primary one considered a loss.
  - coliveira 5y ago
    In the US people don't discuss that. The idea is that if nobody remembers, they won't know that the war was lost.
    - vmception 5y ago
      My experience has been different. It was a wildly unpopular war with poor people being sent into a meat grinder. And its the one with the pervasive urban legend about returning soldiers being spat on. Vietnam is still a single-party state run by a self titled Communist Party that follows Marxist teachings while adopting the more modern state-capitalist approach. This is the opposite of American values and the exact outcome the Americans were there to prevent. Although the consequences have been largely muted. I also see memes about it almost every day. I saw a video on instagram about Muhammad Ali talking about the absurdity of people being sent into that war.
      - coliveira 5y ago
        You're right that people remember the opposition to the war. But that's exactly why they don't accept that the war is lost. In American's minds, the war was opposed, and they think that was the reason why it ended. When in fact it was just the opposite. Vietnam won that war of invasion fair and square, with the sacrifice of millions of Vietnamese for their country. Because of that, the American people was unwilling to send more of their children to be killed in Vietnam. The result of the protests is that the government created the illusion that they were retreating because people didn't want to continue the war, not because they lost.
bawolff 5y ago
Because they were on the winning side? War is a team sport.
- bdangubic 5y ago
  This is like saying Troy Daniels won NBA Championship last year. He was on Lakers roster and has the ring but you know… :)
  - foogazi 5y ago
    Did he made the winning shot in game 7? Specially in basketball, do you credit the first 10 baskets made or the three pointer at the buzzer?
hard_penis 5y ago
Life was hard in those days.
rkk3 5y ago
The Headline misses the second half of the question, "because the USSR killed 75% of German Soldiers in WW2". KIA/Casualties are just one metric. You would expect the long war of attrition and many Pyrrhic victories on the Eastern front to have a high cost of human life, that doesn't necessarily equate to strategic impact. The saying is... Churchill gave the time, Roosevelt gave the money and Stalin gave the Blood.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  War ended with 5 million pissed off Russian Potato farmers riding into Berlin on GM trucks. Soviet Casualties were probably 10% per month for 44 months. British and American/Common Wealth causalities were not much better but only over about 9 months. Getting shot sucks no matter what uniform you were wearing.
  - rkk3 5y ago
    I'm not sure the point you are making. Casualties are a metric, but not the be all end of war. Indeed the USSR was victorious despite having more deaths then every other participant put together... Obviously there are other things that matter.
    - Gibbon1 5y ago
      Behind all the statistics is a horrific amount of personal misery.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  When you account for PoWs, the numbers are more equitable. Approximately 4 and 1 million German fatalities occurred on the eastern and western fronts respectively. The USSR took a further 3m PoWs, while the US, UK, and France captured 7.6m between them according to Overmans. Along similar lines, troop distributions again reinforce that both fronts were critically important to Germany. I'm sure many people will be happy to point out the issues with both of these metrics, but the different fronts were clearly very different places.
fcantournet 5y ago
Because it sort of did in that they provided support for UK and even the USSR that might have tipped the balance, not to mention operations in Africa. But really it's because there was a deliberate and concerted effort to erase the USSR's role in defeating the Nazis in western europe, after say 1960. Through public education, and general coverage in medias/fil/documentaries. The US cultural hegemony is real :) It started earlier, but at the time when the Communist Party was at 30% in a lot of countries and 90% of the workers where in unions the disinformation worked very poorly.
- schrijver 5y ago
  > The US cultural hegemony is real Looking back at my childhood growing up in a small NATO country (The Netherlands), it really strikes me. I found a box of my childhood drawings at my parents place. I’d drawn soldiers and fighter jets etcetera and they mostly had US flags. Some kind of militaristic nationalism is common in many places I guess but apparently I had grown up emotionally attached to the US military. > Through public education, and general coverage in medias/fil/documentaries. On children’s television, every year I’d see interviews with the American and Canadian soldiers that liberated the Netherlands. Which of course is important but… I watched an item on Auschwitz were they managed to talk about the history and liberation of the camp for twenty minutes without ever mentioning the country that the liberating soldiers came from.
  - Normille 5y ago
    > The US cultural hegemony is real... > I’d drawn soldiers and fighter jets etcetera and they mostly had US flags... I think this is the cleverest and most insidious thing the US has managed to do. For some reason, in spite of their appalling record: only nation to use atomic weapons on civilians, practiced apartheid for decades, has been continually at war with 'someeone' since the end of WWII, brutal prison system, death penalty, trigger happy police, etc. etc. so many people all over the world still see the USA as "cool". It's unfathomable to me. I've said many times that; in a lot of European and west-leaning countries, you could literally sell people dog-shit and they'd chomp it down with relish --as long as you called it "American Style" and put a stars & stripes on the packet.
hard_penis 5y ago
I also travel a lot. Especially hard lately.
daleharvey 5y ago
> Why do americans think that the US won WW2 in Europe? If you were British you would know the real truth from the 24/7 repeats of WW2 documentaries that Churchill won WW2
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  And if you were Russian you would know that it was the Soviets that defeated the Nazis and won the war. And if you were Polish you would know that the Soviets were bad for invading originally, and the English were also pretty bad through their initial inactivity. In fact if you look at the death toll by nation, one could argue that the UK barely went to war at all. The UK lost what, 400,000 people? Compared with Poland's 5,000,000? And of course a significant portion of the pilots in the Battle of Britain were Polish, and the Enigma machine was cracked by three Polish mathematicians eight years prior to Alan Turing pushing the work over the line (and subsequently taking all the credit for it, at least in the eyes of the British).
  - BuckRogers 5y ago
    And they'd all be wrong. The Allies won the war. None of them did it on their own. Nor could they had they tried. The UK was going to fall. The USSR was going to fall. It took all of us to destroy the Axis.
    - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
      My point is that every country teaches their own narrative to its youth, and of course it’s always only the parts of history that don’t make them look bad. English kids aren’t taught that the UK did nothing when Westerplatte was under siege. Swedish kids aren’t taught that Sweden profited and aided the Nazis by selling them natural resources. Australian kids aren’t taught much about WWII relative to Europeans as far as I can gather, as the curriculum centres around the ANZACs and Gallipoli. I think people having pride (or indeed shame) in their own nation — whichever nation that may be — for historic military engagements is misplaced, and is really an example of exceptionalism. It’s not a small thing either; I think this sentiment significantly aided Vote Leave’s Brexit campaign. As another commenter pointed out — British people know that we won “two world wars and one World Cup”.
guerrilla 5y ago
Isn't the simple answer just Cold War propaganda, especially within education systems in the west? There was a strong incentive to minimize the USSR's accomplishments and sacrifices in the west. Even if for some reason you think that the Soviets didn't have as much impact as people used to believe, it just means their propaganda was more effective earlier on. Either way, I think that's the easiest way to explain the change.
dguaraglia 5y ago
Because propaganda works and Hollywood has been America's biggest cultural export?
leroy_masochist 5y ago
It's funny, when I studied abroad in Russia people of all ages asked me this question incessantly and indignantly. It was almost like an article of faith for many people I met there that America has always denied the USSR's role in beating the Nazis. Never quite understood why so many Russians think this, but my guess is that it comes from watching state TV.
rsj_hn 5y ago
The issue is that Russia's liberation of Eastern Europe was incredibly traumatizing to the domestic populations. You had systematic mass rapes on a bewildering scale. As in, every single female from city X was raped. See this article: "They raped very german woman from age 8 to 80" (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/01/news.features11 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/01/news.features1...). And it was not just German women. Similar things happened in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania (http://www.globeatwar.com/article/red-armys-rape-europe http://www.globeatwar.com/article/red-armys-rape-europe) These reports would filter into diplomats in the West and they were so shocking no one believed it at first, and it was downplayed in the West but citizens from these countries remember. In addition to the scale ("almost no woman in Hungary was spared") is the blindness of the attacks. Everyone was a target. Especially shocking were the rapes of emaciated concentration camp survivors -- who had just been liberated by the Red Army! Often after the rape the women were shot and many committed suicides. Russian prisoners freed from German PoW camps were raped by Red Army units they encountered as they made their way back to Russia. There was also extensive looting -- organized, systematic looting of people's household treasures, watches, clothes, shoes, etc. Soldiers breaking into homes, raping the women, stealing any currency or valuables. Then moving onto the next home. Block by block, city by city, across all europe. The native population quickly learned it was not safe to leave your home wearing a watch. And of course that was followed by systematic political oppression, arrest of political enemies or those who were "tainted" by the West, including ordinary soldiers or aviators who committed the crime of flying with the RAF or with free French forces (https://www.wingsinexile.co.uk/clanky/return-communist-persecution-and-exile-28.html https://www.wingsinexile.co.uk/clanky/return-communist-perse...) -- these were all jailed, de-personed, and hounded by authorities for the rest of their lives as being politically tainted. Remember some of these were national heroes. And that was followed by a series of coups in which the communist parties assassinated their opponents and seized power. Bottom line, Eastern Europe has very mixed feelings about being "liberated" by the USSR, whereas Western Europe has much more positive memories of being liberated by the West, and so it's more a matter of one side celebrating while the other would prefer to not remember those events at all.
- Isinlor 5y ago
  This is exact story of my grandmother and her sister when Soviets were going trough my home city in northern Poland. They were not as afraid of Germans as they were of Soviets. Soviets were animals raping, stealing and beating everything they encountered.
hard_penis2 5y ago
That sounds really hard.
rektide 5y ago
The US was a smart, well organized, helpful 3rd party entering the war from another side of the map. I'm spitballing highly here, but it feels to me like it changed the conflict from a side vs side attrition to something more dynamic & much harder to fight. The size & scale of that change doesn't necessarily have to mean that the US did most of the fighting, did the most to "win" the war, but it's substantial presence was key to changing the nature of the conflict & bringing it to a close. Another key point to me about the US's importance in the war is something I've only heard in the last decade, from The Secret History of Silicon Valley[1][2][3]. The US's technological work in trying to learn & counter advanced German war machines seems like a crucial contribution to the war. Foiling Germany's impervious air defenses (& thwarting their bombing campaigns) is one example of the advanced signals & intelligence role that the US contributed to the war effort against the Nazis. As the linked Quora answer points out though, the US was also making colossal material contributions to the Soviet war effort, while also running their own invasion in parallel. While also working enormously hard to keep England fighting too. In the earlier days of the ar, denying German's free reign over the Atlantic required not nearly as many lives as a ground war (but still a horrific death toll), but gracious were a lot of ships ever lost trying to bring food & supplies under the Lend Lease program, & created the war-time industry needed to eventually enter the war in full. [1] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8980498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8980498 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23569184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23569184
poisonborz 5y ago
The US didn't win WW2. The Allied powers won WW2.
Yoofie 5y ago
Two good books to read on this topic are: - Stalingrad - Berlin: The Downfall 1945 Both by Antony Beevor. After reading these books, it really convinced me how much undue credit the US gets for "winning" WW2 (in Europe) when its pretty clear the Soviets did the large majority of actually doing the costly dirty work in Europe. People like to point out the obvious propaganda of other countries, but are fairly oblivious to the USA's own very strong propaganda and cultural influence.
Bancakes 5y ago
War is not just about deaths. If it were, then US won vietnam by virtue of kill-death-ratios.
sys_64738 5y ago
Depends on which nationality you are and whose history books you've read.
phenkdo 5y ago
"WW2 was won with British intelligence, American industry and Soviet blood" - unknown

40 points by georgecmu 5y ago

I got to learn "the other side" of the story, after meeting a few people from nations marketed as our "arch enemies". I became extremely disappointed that history is never a recollection of facts, rather a narrative to cater to national propaganda.

vmception 5y ago
Yeah I travel a lot, it is surprising how different the facts are. Its like Animal Farm but expanding the universe to a different farm. It can be subtle differences like "Serbia starting WW1" versus "Austria starting WW1" or it can be major consequential differences
drewcoo 5y ago
History, when I studied it in college, was a collection of opinions, claims of varying veracity, evidence of different strengths, lots of missing information, and attempts to find meaning in it all, usually from some current perspective. History professors these days are more often accused of postmodernism than narrative and more often of Marxism than national propaganda. Those electives in college are supposed to expose people to things like that. There is something very unlike that taught before college in the US that's more about memorizing than understanding. It's a similar situation to how the math that people have phobias about doesn't resemble undergrad math major math at all.
twelve40 5y ago
I agree, I really liked history and the humanities back in school but after traveling and living in different countries I found it extremely repulsive how the humanities are basically getting twisted to fit the local agenda everywhere. So I stuck with STEM and really happy I don't have to deal with this BS at least in my professional life.
yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
It's super fun living in Sweden for some time, and then living in nearby Russia for some time. You get to hear exactly the same reports of military aggression, but the perpetrators are always the other side.

belltaco 5y ago

Would the USSR have won against Germany if the US was not involved? And what if the US joined the Axis powers in the war?

tompazourek 5y ago
Maybe also: Would the US have won against Germany if the USSR was not involved?
- yostrovs 5y ago
  Please do recall that the USSR was effectively on the same side as Germany for the first two years of the war.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Not really. The USSR knew conflict with Germany was inevitable, Molotov-Ribbentrop was about delaying it as much as possible.
    - dimavs 5y ago
      Why delaying? USSR has the most powerful army in 1939. USSR could have occupied Ploesti oil fields in 1940 that would effectively stop the war. Creating a common border with your enemy is not a very effective way to "delay" from my point of view.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        This is really absurd. By 1939 the Red Army was massively lacking in tanks, artillery, air power, and logistics. They could not have sustained an expeditionary offensive against Germamy, even in Romania. And while Ploesti had significant oil production, by 1939 Germany had alternatives and a lower oil consumption, so this would not have stalled the offensive.
        5y ago

gsich 5y ago

To answer the question: it'a a retroactive downplay of the USSR after and during the cold war.

itronitron 5y ago
So, USSR took a break from killing it's own people to killing Germans instead?
- flenserboy 5y ago
  Not really. They pretty much stayed on course with both programs throughout the war — and this was true for those in the military just as much as civilians. The policy of shooting anyone who hinted at retreat, combined with treating Soviet POWs as traitors (which encouraged soldiers to fight to the literal death), contributed to both tallies.
- cyborgx7 5y ago
  its*
fcantournet 5y ago
You're getting downvoted by people who don't know shit / never set foot in a Western europe classroom. This is documented : the role of the USSR in WWII victory was erased from public school programs and constantly downplayed in media. There are numerous traces of the controversies that arose around this throughout the decades.
prestigious 5y ago
Well the even parts of Europe where USSR won those countries lost. Only Europe “won” by US/Britain can be considered free/independent. Those who were on the USSR side were hardly better off under USSR than Nazi Germany.

booleanbetrayal 5y ago

Because the US emerged with supreme reserve currency status, supported by its reconstruction approach? To the victor go the spoils.

bawolff 5y ago
Arguably, the USSR also got lots of the spoils and emerged a super power.
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  And 100 years from now, China will have won WW2 with their subtle but very important sideline involvments
  - booleanbetrayal 5y ago
    I think the clear distinction here, is that in absence of a reconstruction effort, you do not have stability, and war continues unabated. Maybe you call it something different or attribute it to different actors, but the true delineation of conflict is a tangible and lasting peace. I think that the US demonstrated its victory as it helped to coordinate and furnish that peace in a manner that supported its own interests at the time.
  - simonblack 5y ago
    Seeing that the Chinese War Against Japan lasted over eight years the Chinese very likely have a good claim to that title. (That's eight years at least. Some people count that war as between 1931 and 1945, so some 14 years.)
- booleanbetrayal 5y ago
  Definitely, but they were geographically and philosophically isolated from several traditional European power centers, unlike their US capitalist counterparts. So if Europe is the theater and ultimately part of the prize, I think the US was able to flourish in influence from the start given its more advantageous positioning.

pmoriarty 5y ago

That reminds me of this video[1], where Americans are asked questions you'd think they'd easily be able to answer. Such as... Q: Who won the Vietnam war? A: We did. Wait, were we even in the Vietnam war? Q: How many sides does a triangle have? A: Damn. Four. A: There's no sides... One? Q: How many World Wars have there been? A: Three. Q: What are Hiroshima and Nagasaki known for? A: Judo-wrestling? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF9hhKWwZrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF9hhKWwZrs

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
well, this makes me think hmm, I know all the answers to those questions, but I've never been asked in one of those surveys of people walking on the street when living in the U.S - but if I had been.... would I have been put on this funny TV segment?
- mcphage 5y ago
  > but if I had been.... would I have been put on this funny TV segment? Well, if you wanted to be—and plenty of people do—then there’s an easy way. All you have to do is give a really bad answer to an easy question.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    Yeah, I think that "what's the religion of Israel" - "Islamic" is indistinguishable from entry level trolling, and maybe given the short pause before saying it this guy was thinking "how do I get on the news but in a defensible way I can tell my friends yeah I was trolling bro" or maybe he's really stupid. But as a stupidity test there must be some false positives in there - so the rule is, in funny TV segments never ascribe to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by maliciousness. on edit: of course maliciousness used for wordplay purposes, but maybe should be replaced with mischievousness which nowadays is interpreted as meaning less than malicious.
sebmellen 5y ago
You can’t really trust these videos, because you could do this in any country. Interview 100 people and choose the dumbest 5 and selectively air those clips... It’s fun entertainment, but not much more.

erect_penis3 5y ago

That’s a really hard problem to solve.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aliensattack 5y ago

To me, the obvious answer is Hollywood, and the fact that the US (especially post Soviet collapse) has emerged as the obvious long-term benefactor.

joecool1029 5y ago

The opinion in France reversed after reconstruction. Immediately after V-E, there was a strong opinion that the Soviets did the most to win the war: https://www.france24.com/en/20190601-who-won-wwii-russias-role-gets-short-shrift-france https://www.france24.com/en/20190601-who-won-wwii-russias-ro...

stock_toaster 5y ago
What about lend-lease?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Lend lease was a serious part of it but 10-15% of the USSR's output is no match for 90-85% of the Soviet output plus 20 million lives. The US still did however a lot to help.
  - vetinari 5y ago
    Materially significant portion of lend-lease also happened after Stalingrad. If US would not join USSR in the war effort, the Soviets would stop at the Atlantic shore, not in Berlin.

marcodiego 5y ago

In Brazil, a country heavily influenced by US culture, people will carefully explain you how the US won the Vietnam war.

vmception 5y ago
People in the US don't even say that..... thats the primary one considered a loss.
- coliveira 5y ago
  In the US people don't discuss that. The idea is that if nobody remembers, they won't know that the war was lost.
  - vmception 5y ago
    My experience has been different. It was a wildly unpopular war with poor people being sent into a meat grinder. And its the one with the pervasive urban legend about returning soldiers being spat on. Vietnam is still a single-party state run by a self titled Communist Party that follows Marxist teachings while adopting the more modern state-capitalist approach. This is the opposite of American values and the exact outcome the Americans were there to prevent. Although the consequences have been largely muted. I also see memes about it almost every day. I saw a video on instagram about Muhammad Ali talking about the absurdity of people being sent into that war.
    - coliveira 5y ago
      You're right that people remember the opposition to the war. But that's exactly why they don't accept that the war is lost. In American's minds, the war was opposed, and they think that was the reason why it ended. When in fact it was just the opposite. Vietnam won that war of invasion fair and square, with the sacrifice of millions of Vietnamese for their country. Because of that, the American people was unwilling to send more of their children to be killed in Vietnam. The result of the protests is that the government created the illusion that they were retreating because people didn't want to continue the war, not because they lost.

bawolff 5y ago

Because they were on the winning side? War is a team sport.

bdangubic 5y ago
This is like saying Troy Daniels won NBA Championship last year. He was on Lakers roster and has the ring but you know… :)
- foogazi 5y ago
  Did he made the winning shot in game 7? Specially in basketball, do you credit the first 10 baskets made or the three pointer at the buzzer?

hard_penis 5y ago

Life was hard in those days.

rkk3 5y ago

The Headline misses the second half of the question, "because the USSR killed 75% of German Soldiers in WW2". KIA/Casualties are just one metric. You would expect the long war of attrition and many Pyrrhic victories on the Eastern front to have a high cost of human life, that doesn't necessarily equate to strategic impact. The saying is... Churchill gave the time, Roosevelt gave the money and Stalin gave the Blood.

Gibbon1 5y ago
War ended with 5 million pissed off Russian Potato farmers riding into Berlin on GM trucks. Soviet Casualties were probably 10% per month for 44 months. British and American/Common Wealth causalities were not much better but only over about 9 months. Getting shot sucks no matter what uniform you were wearing.
- rkk3 5y ago
  I'm not sure the point you are making. Casualties are a metric, but not the be all end of war. Indeed the USSR was victorious despite having more deaths then every other participant put together... Obviously there are other things that matter.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    Behind all the statistics is a horrific amount of personal misery.
AlotOfReading 5y ago
When you account for PoWs, the numbers are more equitable. Approximately 4 and 1 million German fatalities occurred on the eastern and western fronts respectively. The USSR took a further 3m PoWs, while the US, UK, and France captured 7.6m between them according to Overmans. Along similar lines, troop distributions again reinforce that both fronts were critically important to Germany. I'm sure many people will be happy to point out the issues with both of these metrics, but the different fronts were clearly very different places.

fcantournet 5y ago

Because it sort of did in that they provided support for UK and even the USSR that might have tipped the balance, not to mention operations in Africa. But really it's because there was a deliberate and concerted effort to erase the USSR's role in defeating the Nazis in western europe, after say 1960. Through public education, and general coverage in medias/fil/documentaries. The US cultural hegemony is real :) It started earlier, but at the time when the Communist Party was at 30% in a lot of countries and 90% of the workers where in unions the disinformation worked very poorly.

schrijver 5y ago
> The US cultural hegemony is real Looking back at my childhood growing up in a small NATO country (The Netherlands), it really strikes me. I found a box of my childhood drawings at my parents place. I’d drawn soldiers and fighter jets etcetera and they mostly had US flags. Some kind of militaristic nationalism is common in many places I guess but apparently I had grown up emotionally attached to the US military. > Through public education, and general coverage in medias/fil/documentaries. On children’s television, every year I’d see interviews with the American and Canadian soldiers that liberated the Netherlands. Which of course is important but… I watched an item on Auschwitz were they managed to talk about the history and liberation of the camp for twenty minutes without ever mentioning the country that the liberating soldiers came from.
- Normille 5y ago
  > The US cultural hegemony is real... > I’d drawn soldiers and fighter jets etcetera and they mostly had US flags... I think this is the cleverest and most insidious thing the US has managed to do. For some reason, in spite of their appalling record: only nation to use atomic weapons on civilians, practiced apartheid for decades, has been continually at war with 'someeone' since the end of WWII, brutal prison system, death penalty, trigger happy police, etc. etc. so many people all over the world still see the USA as "cool". It's unfathomable to me. I've said many times that; in a lot of European and west-leaning countries, you could literally sell people dog-shit and they'd chomp it down with relish --as long as you called it "American Style" and put a stars & stripes on the packet.

hard_penis 5y ago

I also travel a lot. Especially hard lately.

daleharvey 5y ago

> Why do americans think that the US won WW2 in Europe? If you were British you would know the real truth from the 24/7 repeats of WW2 documentaries that Churchill won WW2

yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
And if you were Russian you would know that it was the Soviets that defeated the Nazis and won the war. And if you were Polish you would know that the Soviets were bad for invading originally, and the English were also pretty bad through their initial inactivity. In fact if you look at the death toll by nation, one could argue that the UK barely went to war at all. The UK lost what, 400,000 people? Compared with Poland's 5,000,000? And of course a significant portion of the pilots in the Battle of Britain were Polish, and the Enigma machine was cracked by three Polish mathematicians eight years prior to Alan Turing pushing the work over the line (and subsequently taking all the credit for it, at least in the eyes of the British).
- BuckRogers 5y ago
  And they'd all be wrong. The Allies won the war. None of them did it on their own. Nor could they had they tried. The UK was going to fall. The USSR was going to fall. It took all of us to destroy the Axis.
  - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
    My point is that every country teaches their own narrative to its youth, and of course it’s always only the parts of history that don’t make them look bad. English kids aren’t taught that the UK did nothing when Westerplatte was under siege. Swedish kids aren’t taught that Sweden profited and aided the Nazis by selling them natural resources. Australian kids aren’t taught much about WWII relative to Europeans as far as I can gather, as the curriculum centres around the ANZACs and Gallipoli. I think people having pride (or indeed shame) in their own nation — whichever nation that may be — for historic military engagements is misplaced, and is really an example of exceptionalism. It’s not a small thing either; I think this sentiment significantly aided Vote Leave’s Brexit campaign. As another commenter pointed out — British people know that we won “two world wars and one World Cup”.

guerrilla 5y ago

Isn't the simple answer just Cold War propaganda, especially within education systems in the west? There was a strong incentive to minimize the USSR's accomplishments and sacrifices in the west. Even if for some reason you think that the Soviets didn't have as much impact as people used to believe, it just means their propaganda was more effective earlier on. Either way, I think that's the easiest way to explain the change.

dguaraglia 5y ago

Because propaganda works and Hollywood has been America's biggest cultural export?

leroy_masochist 5y ago

It's funny, when I studied abroad in Russia people of all ages asked me this question incessantly and indignantly. It was almost like an article of faith for many people I met there that America has always denied the USSR's role in beating the Nazis. Never quite understood why so many Russians think this, but my guess is that it comes from watching state TV.

rsj_hn 5y ago

The issue is that Russia's liberation of Eastern Europe was incredibly traumatizing to the domestic populations. You had systematic mass rapes on a bewildering scale. As in, every single female from city X was raped. See this article: "They raped very german woman from age 8 to 80" (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/01/news.features11 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/01/news.features1...). And it was not just German women. Similar things happened in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania (http://www.globeatwar.com/article/red-armys-rape-europe http://www.globeatwar.com/article/red-armys-rape-europe) These reports would filter into diplomats in the West and they were so shocking no one believed it at first, and it was downplayed in the West but citizens from these countries remember. In addition to the scale ("almost no woman in Hungary was spared") is the blindness of the attacks. Everyone was a target. Especially shocking were the rapes of emaciated concentration camp survivors -- who had just been liberated by the Red Army! Often after the rape the women were shot and many committed suicides. Russian prisoners freed from German PoW camps were raped by Red Army units they encountered as they made their way back to Russia. There was also extensive looting -- organized, systematic looting of people's household treasures, watches, clothes, shoes, etc. Soldiers breaking into homes, raping the women, stealing any currency or valuables. Then moving onto the next home. Block by block, city by city, across all europe. The native population quickly learned it was not safe to leave your home wearing a watch. And of course that was followed by systematic political oppression, arrest of political enemies or those who were "tainted" by the West, including ordinary soldiers or aviators who committed the crime of flying with the RAF or with free French forces (https://www.wingsinexile.co.uk/clanky/return-communist-persecution-and-exile-28.html https://www.wingsinexile.co.uk/clanky/return-communist-perse...) -- these were all jailed, de-personed, and hounded by authorities for the rest of their lives as being politically tainted. Remember some of these were national heroes. And that was followed by a series of coups in which the communist parties assassinated their opponents and seized power. Bottom line, Eastern Europe has very mixed feelings about being "liberated" by the USSR, whereas Western Europe has much more positive memories of being liberated by the West, and so it's more a matter of one side celebrating while the other would prefer to not remember those events at all.

Isinlor 5y ago
This is exact story of my grandmother and her sister when Soviets were going trough my home city in northern Poland. They were not as afraid of Germans as they were of Soviets. Soviets were animals raping, stealing and beating everything they encountered.

hard_penis2 5y ago

That sounds really hard.

rektide 5y ago

The US was a smart, well organized, helpful 3rd party entering the war from another side of the map. I'm spitballing highly here, but it feels to me like it changed the conflict from a side vs side attrition to something more dynamic & much harder to fight. The size & scale of that change doesn't necessarily have to mean that the US did most of the fighting, did the most to "win" the war, but it's substantial presence was key to changing the nature of the conflict & bringing it to a close. Another key point to me about the US's importance in the war is something I've only heard in the last decade, from The Secret History of Silicon Valley[1][2][3]. The US's technological work in trying to learn & counter advanced German war machines seems like a crucial contribution to the war. Foiling Germany's impervious air defenses (& thwarting their bombing campaigns) is one example of the advanced signals & intelligence role that the US contributed to the war effort against the Nazis. As the linked Quora answer points out though, the US was also making colossal material contributions to the Soviet war effort, while also running their own invasion in parallel. While also working enormously hard to keep England fighting too. In the earlier days of the ar, denying German's free reign over the Atlantic required not nearly as many lives as a ground war (but still a horrific death toll), but gracious were a lot of ships ever lost trying to bring food & supplies under the Lend Lease program, & created the war-time industry needed to eventually enter the war in full. [1] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8980498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8980498 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23569184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23569184

poisonborz 5y ago

The US didn't win WW2. The Allied powers won WW2.

Yoofie 5y ago

Two good books to read on this topic are: - Stalingrad - Berlin: The Downfall 1945 Both by Antony Beevor. After reading these books, it really convinced me how much undue credit the US gets for "winning" WW2 (in Europe) when its pretty clear the Soviets did the large majority of actually doing the costly dirty work in Europe. People like to point out the obvious propaganda of other countries, but are fairly oblivious to the USA's own very strong propaganda and cultural influence.

Bancakes 5y ago

War is not just about deaths. If it were, then US won vietnam by virtue of kill-death-ratios.

sys_64738 5y ago

Depends on which nationality you are and whose history books you've read.

phenkdo 5y ago

"WW2 was won with British intelligence, American industry and Soviet blood" - unknown