History /
Polish relation about Russians, Ukrainians? [281]
I disagree. Stalin was able to do just that for a very long time.
Stalin didn't control anyone other than the Russians, he died in 1948. What controlled Eastern Europe was the political philosophy of Communism which was not discredited as it is today. In was considered the wave of the future.
The Germans were brutal everywhere. In Vichy France for instance they dislocated 1.5 million Frenchmen to Germany to work as slaves in their manufacturing plants. For instance when about a dozen French labor leaders protested the workers treatment, they were filed out and shot. The German army confiscated all the food from the countryside, the French didn't have access to basic necessities. Everything in France was rationed.
Without sufficient supplies they would have been forced to give up or sign a truce sooner or later.
You don't know the English. London endured the 1940 blitz and afterwards the buzz bombs until 1945. If they were as you say, prone to surrender or signing a truce they could have or would have done that in 1940 right after Dunkirk. Besides Dunkirk and
the blitz they endured their shipping being sunk by German U-Boats. England and the English were literally starving. As for wave after wave of German troops. Uh, hello, there's a sea channel between France and England. They'd have to launch an amphibious assault. Not easy, it would have been a bloodbath. You're making the mistake of looking at the past through the prism of the present. The English in the 1940's were a formidable army.
Crying in Washington for a bail out out counts as proof for Churchill's quality of leadership? Granted: Britain was the only country in Europe standing up to Hitler (forget about France), but I don't believe for a second that their motive was noble. Fighting for democracy and the freedom of Poland? Yeah, right. Being afraid to lose their influence in Europe and abroad is more like it.
Bailout? You mean loan? Being a business owner myself, one needs operating capital (loan, bailout to you) in order to function. The problem with Europe is because of the previous bloodbath (aka WWI) no one was prepared for WWII. In other words the citizenry of England and France didn't want war. When Germany overran France the remaining French didn't have any weaponry to defend themselves. England organized the Resistance movements of Europe with supplies and training, that's what I meant by leadership. They were the only country in Europe to stand up to the Germans. England's leadership is sorely missed in today's European financial crisis. Germany's gone wild, once again.
The people in the 1940's knew that they were fighting for their very survival. It was the American working man, the American GI and political leadership from England that won the war.
