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(angie999 @ Dec 10 2005, 11:53 AM) [post=42958]Can I remind everyone that this is a non-political forum and we need to be careful not to let our understanding of politics in history spill over into whether or not the west should have turned on its ally, the Soviet Union, in 1945, particularly in alliance with its enemy, Germany.
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Angie, in regards to Russia, you really need to qualify what you mean by “ally”. Personally I think that term was not only used too loosely but also more of a technicality. Is a nation that continues to "scumbag" (verb) its "allies" throughout a war campaign causing many of their "ally’s" deaths, really considered an ally or just a nation with a common enemy?
That's not a diatribe against Russia, but I just think that Russia "used" the allies to spread communism by leveraging them to survive certain annihilation. Yes, Hitler was a class “A” creep, but that didn’t mean he was wrong about Russia being a plague to mankind or Stalin being an even bigger creep. If Russia could have conquered all of Europe including the Isles, they certainly would have. That’s history not politics, part and parcel of WWII, especially when you can cite many incidents where they performed many “non-ally” acts against their “allies”. Russia never pretended to be a liberator but was not ashamed to be seen as a ruthless conqueror enslaving the nations of east Europe. From their post war attempt to starve the Berliners to death as well as the provocative confrontations of war to building the wall that created a veritable hell for so many, their history speaks volumes. As a nation they have never earned honor as there are no examples of their nobility on a national level. Everything that appeared to be even remotely reasonable dealing with said “allies” we know retrospectively was nothing more than a con and a “means to an end”.
Other than that they were a pretty good ally.