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> It's a complete American fantasy that our forces played a major role in the downfall of Germany, or that our blood sacrifice was particularly crucial to the o
by yamtaddle 4y ago
> It's a complete American fantasy that our forces played a major role in the downfall of Germany, or that our blood sacrifice was particularly crucial to the outcome of any aspect of the war as a whole. Certainly U.S. resources like oil and materiel were critical to Allied success, not to mention the atom bomb in the defeat of Japan, and the (severely delayed) opening of a western front in France 1944 helped contain Soviet victories (in other words, impacted the Cold War), but it is pretty insulting to the 20X more USSR trooops who died and the many many Chinese forces who perished to say that an account of the "Real War" could possibly exclude them like this.
Please indicate which part of the article is claiming this.
> I think it's near impossible to tell the story of "The Real X" -- that's a pretty sensational/trollish way to title something
I think most people find such a title for a piece like this is appropriate and communicates its meaning just fine, if they're not going out of their way to find "gotchas".
- eduction 4y agoMy point is pretty simple: It was not an American war, America was not a major party to the horrors of the war (except as a perpetrator of nuclear attacks on civilians), and an article purporting to describe the real visceral combat traumas of world war 2 would include descriptions from forces of countries that lost millions in the war. The piece only makes sense, and is only interesting, in the context of a fantasy world in which US forces played a much more decisive and heroic role than they did. It’s jingoism.