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> as descendant of people who would not have been alive if not for the liberation of Western Europe and who was steeped in WWII lore this is not normal by any
by RobotToaster 1y ago
> as descendant of people who would not have been alive if not for the liberation of Western Europe and who was steeped in WWII lore this is not normal by any stretch of the imagination.
The liberation of Europe owes more to the Soviet Union than the USA, perhaps the current situation there foretells where we are heading with the USA?
- aredox 1y ago>The liberation of Europe owes more to the Soviet Union than the USA Oh yeah, just ask Poland about it! F*cking revisionist
- philwelch 1y agoThe Soviets never liberated anyone. Go ask the people of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968 how liberated they felt. Or you could ask all the people murdered by border guards at the Berlin Wall.
- TheAlchemist 1y agoYou are both kind of right. The Soviets helped in a major way to defeat the Germans - on par with the US. But it's also true that they did not liberate anyone in Europe, just replaced the German occupation.
- arethuza 1y agoIf you leave aside their ghastly leadership there is no doubt to me that the people of the Soviet Union paid the highest price in defeating the Nazis.
- tremon 1y agoI think the argument is that that cost has been repaid after the war by the people of occupied eastern Europe, that's why they don't "owe" Russia anything. In contrast, western Europe paid a much lower price for its liberation.
- TheAlchemist 1y agoYou would also need to leave aside the fact that they were as responsible as the Nazi in the beginning of the war. They invaded Poland in a coordinated attack with Germany.
- philwelch 1y agoThey paid the highest price precisely because their ghastly leadership was all too willing to sacrifice their lives for conquest.
- saubeidl 1y agoFactually not true. The Soviets liberated Austria.
- Jensson 1y agoAnd the Nazis did help liberate parts of Finland from Soviet, both are correct but doesn't really represent what these countries did very well.
- flohofwoe 1y agoAustria could have ended up divided by the Iron Curtain like East- and West-Germany, I wonder if you would view the Soviets the same way today if that had happened and your ancestors were on the wrong side of the wall.
- saubeidl 1y agoBut it didn't, that's the entire point of this counterexample.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> it didn't, that's the entire point of this counterexample This is sort of like arguing Belgian colonialism was fine because there was one village they forgot to enslave. Also, we were jointly occupied [1]. (Austrian-Indian American.) The reason we weren’t Polanded is the Allies, who controlled part of us at the end of the war, argued we were victims of Anschluss. If the Soviets controlled Austria, it wouldn’t have been spared. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Austria https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Austria
- saubeidl 1y agoThe statement above was the universal statement > The Soviets never liberated anyone A universal statement can be disproven by a single counterexample.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoThe Soviet "liberation" story you hear only from western Europeans who never had to live under the soviets so in their history books they're the good guys for defeating Germany.
- saubeidl 1y agoAs a Central European, the Soviets liberated my ancestors.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoDid they also live under Soviet rule after?
- saubeidl 1y agoThey did for a decade - after that they were given their freedom. Isn't that what liberation means?
- flohofwoe 1y agoEurope would owe much more to the Soviet Union if the countries that were liberated by the Red Army wouldn't have remained occupied by the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union made it very clear multiple times (1953 in East Germany, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in Czechoslovakia) that they are not going to leave without bloodshed.
- saubeidl 1y agoThey left Austria without bloodshed.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoThey're still running it today but remotely from Russia. Putin was attending politicians' wedding there who then took jobs for Russian companies [1] and meeting chancellors for skiing, plus laundering their money through private banks and real estate purchases. That's why they left, Austria agreed to became their trojan horse and lobbying arm in Europe, constantly torpedoing nuclear energy projects[2] and Schengen membership expansions. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56280898 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56280898 [2] https://www.euractiv.com/section/eet/news/austria-gears-up-to-fight-eu-green-nuclear-energy-plan/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/eet/news/austria-gears-up-t...
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> liberation of Europe owes more to the Soviet Union than the USA It really doesn’t. If America abandoned Britain the Nazis would have had a one-front war.
- Swenrekcah 1y agoTwo things need to be mentioned in this context. The Soviet Union got their equipment and supplies mostly for free from the US. All nations the Soviet Union “liberated” were not so sad when it finally fell and they were actually liberated.
- throw0101a 1y ago> The Soviet Union got their equipment and supplies mostly for free from the US. It is also estimated that 30-40%† of the tanks used in the Battle of Moscow were British (Matildas). The Soviets were especially dependent on US on (a) trucks, and (b) raw materials like aluminium. † Alexander Hill, “British “Lend-Lease” Tanks and the Battle for Moscow, November–December 1941″, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 19:2.