Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
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Atlas Institution
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« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2019, 07:14:24 PM » |
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Well for the first two years, they regarded them as a quasi German ally up until the lunch of Barbarossa. Russia invaded Poland from the East, exterminated the Polish officers, they helped a German ship navigate the Artic to destroy British shipping in the Pacific and they were at war with Finland who was regarded as an Ally of the UK. The UK and France even considered invading through Scandinavia, both to disrupt the Swedish Iron and also to help the Fins, but were weary of overt war with Russia. Of course Allied help was too little too late, and their remoteness meant that Finland had to seek terms, losing territory as a result. This led to them getting closer to Germany since the allies left them to whither on the vine.
Churchill was always the realist, and so while he knew the evils of Communism, he also understood that Stalin was the one killing Germans and losing millions of Russians to do it. There were plans in motion to bomb the Baku oil fields from bases in Iraq if it looked like the Russians might lose the caucuses.
FDR on the other hand refused to acknowledge for instance the reality that was the Katyn massacre and bought into the Soviet line that it was staged by the Germans. FDR tried to setup a meeting with Stalin, without Churchill present and then when Churchill found out about it, FDR lied to him and denied it. Stalin ended up canceling the meeting when he realized there would no be a second front in 1942.
Churchill then went behind FDR's back to create "spheres of influence" in Eastern Europe with Stalin and while this piece of paper meant little, it outraged the US who considered it colonialism at work.
The thing you realize is that Stalin held all of the cards and the happy relationship between FDR and Churchill that is presented is a myth or at the very least exaggerated. Churchill needed FDR because FDR wanted to get into the War.
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