MovieChat Forums > The World at War (1973) Discussion > Roosevelt Talked Democracy and Helped Di...

Roosevelt Talked Democracy and Helped Dictator Stalin

posted 10 years ago by bloody-3
7 replies | jump to latest

US president Franklin Roosevelt talked about world war 2 being a war for democracy at the same time he was helping the soviet communist dictator Josef Stalin. The USSR under Stalin had him as dictator, was a one party state with concentration camps, secret police and press censorship. Everything Roosevelt condemned in Hitler he supported in Stalin. He was as big a hypocrite as Churchill. The soviet leader killed millions of people before the war even started www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/4656-holodomor-the-secret-holocaust-in-ukraine and Roosevelt knew about this and yet still backed him. This support was not done as a wartime necessity. Roosevelt condemned Hitler for his invasion of Poland on September 1 1939 but remained silent when Stalin invaded Poland on September 17 1939 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland in keeping with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that divided that nation. Roosevelt covered up for Stalin when the discovery of the mass graves of Polish officers were discovered at Katyn in 1943 http://rt.com/news/katyn-massacre-documents-USA-816/ He was told by US intelligence it was committed by the soviets yet he still insisted on publicly blaming the Germans. He betrayed Poland completely at the Yalta conference in 1945 by signing all of that country over to Stalin.
Roosevelt falsely claimed the US was neutral while supplying one side (Britain and later the Soviet Union) with arms and ammunition. In October 1941 Roosevelt gave a speech in which he claimed that the Germans planned to invade and subjugate South America and claimed the existence of a secret map as proof. It was a brazen lie and the map was phoney - http://codoh.com/library/document/2119/ 6 months before Pearl Harbor Roosevlt had ordered the US navy to ram and depth charge German submarines. Hitler's declaration of war against the United States was merely a formality - http://codoh.com/library/document/2222/ Because of the provocations and warmongering of Roosevelt the US and Germany were already in a state of war. Roosevelt also falsely claimed neutrality in the Japan-China conflict while supplying China with arms and ammunition and military advisors. The "neutral" US under Roosevelt tried to cripple Japan with an embargo long before Pearl Harbor - www.cwporter.com/japanwas.htm
Roosevelt's Rotten Record - http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7486

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ib011f9545i 9 years ago

more far right revisionist website links.
I guess when nazis watch THE WORLD AT WAR they stop watching half way through when the axis start losing the war?

Of course Stalin's USSR was not a democracy but the western allies were right to join an alliance with it to defeat the country that was actually fighting them,nazi Germany.

[–] tplast 9 years ago

Correct.

Roosevelt did not involve America in WW2 to help/fight make the world safe for the spread of democracy (broad/popular participation in the political process i.e. voting). America was in WW2 to help make the world safe for the spread of Papa Joe Stalin's brand of Bolshevik communism.

And did it ever spread.

First to China and thence to N. Korea. From there it tried to take of S. Korea and came close to success, at least in the first several months of the Korean War. It also went from China to northern Vietnam whereupon it, eventually, spread to southern Vietnam, all of Cambodia & Laos. Next up on the list were Thailand/Philippines but N. Vietnam was not economically strong post 1975 to do so.

From the USSR it also spread to Cuba and on to cental America as well as parts of S. American where several forms of Marxism still survive to this day.

If a couple of million jews killed in WW2 is a holocaust then why is the 10M+ Eastern Orthodox Christians killed by Lenin/Stalin between 1919 - 1939 not a holocaust? jews were the ones being killed in the first one mentioned above and jews were doing the killing in the second one mentioned above. Plus jews have an inordinate influence on news media in the western world. Simple as that.

[–] chicago85 9 years ago

Britain had its back to the wall with Hitler trying to invade them and bombing their cities and using submarines sinking ships bringing in food. They had avoided treaties with Russia before the war. Russia had been desperate trying to find allies from France, Britain, anyone.

But all the European countries were hoping some other country would be Hitler's next target and figured Russia was next. After Britain was against the wall, Churchill said "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." That's when he made Russia an ally.

I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else

[–] dannieboy20906 8 years ago

You present a mishmash of "facts," some of which are unsupported by anything but your claim, and some of which are correct but you present them out of sequence.

I admit that I am happy to find virulent Stalin haters on boards like this. I don't think the USSR was ever an "ally." They ran a separate war for Stalin's own satisfaction. Many Americans, including President Roosevelt and President Truman much more openly and strongly later, were uncomfortable with being "allies" with the USSR.

President Roosevelt strictly ordered American warships (principally destroyers escorting convoys across the Atlantic) to act only in self defense. You can certainly argue (I think it's the true case) That President Roosevelt should have expected shots to be exchanged sooner or later, and they were. He was playing a dangerous game in the North Atlantic. The presence of the destroyers with convoys some of whose ships were certainly loaded with war material seems like a violation of the neutrality act to me. In the end, he probably saved us at least a year of preparing for the war and that may have made the difference between us winning and losing. No matter who won between Adolf and Joe, the winner would come for us, eventually.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.

[–] bloody-3 8 years ago

dannieboy20906 - you wrote "Many Americans, including President Roosevelt and President Truman much more openly and strongly later, were uncomfortable with being "allies" with the USSR."
Can you provide any quotes where Roosevelt strongly condemns Stalin in the same terms he condemned Hitler ? I can't find any. I think you are wrong. Roosevelt supported Stalin till the day he died. In 1945 the last year of the war at the Yalta conference when it was clear the war was almost over FDR caved in to the soviet leader's demands regarding eastern Europe including handing Poland over to him. It was Roosevelt who came up with the absurd moniker "Uncle Joe" to describe the tyrant. Even after the Katyn massacre became known about his support for Stalin was unwavering even though he knew how murderous he was. It was FDR's insistence on unconditional surrender that allowed the soviets to advance so far and put them in a position to take over eastern Europe. Roosevelt never stopped supporting Stalin from the time of the holodomor - www.ucrdc.org/Film-Harvest_of_Despair.html- which he knew all about but couldn't care less to the time of his death.

[–] dannieboy20906 8 years ago

No, and I don't think that you will. We were allies with "Uncle Joe." I think FDR felt like Winston Churchill who said he would ally with the Devil if Hitler invaded Hell.

Here is the situation that existed as late as 1944:

We (the USA) were at war throughout the globe. Our conflict in Europe came about because Hitler declare war against us on December 11, 1941 with no provocation. They were the leading industrial power in Europe and the only one that leading scientists in the USA and UK believed capable of developing an A-Bomb. After all, it was Germans who had discovered the phenomenon of nuclear fission. The Soviets were on the offensive and winning. In Asia we had declared war against Japan following their unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor.

We could defeat either one of them, one-on-one, but it was going to be difficult to defeat both at the same time. It would also take more lives than Americans were prepared to sacrifice.

The Soviets lost millions of soldiers and civilians to the German attack. We don't know how many millions because of deliberate Soviet obfuscation in their census. That obfuscation was caused by Stalin to cover up the holodomor. They lost many of their soldiers due to poor strategy and extreme demands by "Uncle Joe." Nevertheless, Joe was willing to sacrifice millions to defeat Hitler.

Americans were nearly as impatient in the 1940's as they are today. They want instant fixes to complex problems, domestic as well as international. They want the fix to be cheap, fast, and good, while any contractor will tell you that you cannot have all three. Britain had "lost an entire generation," only one generation earlier. They had been worn out by the Great War, but Churchill and others would not let them role over like the French did. So FDR and Churchill both turned their heads to look the other way, bit their lips, and pretended that the Soviets, especially Stalin were a lot better human beings than they were. FDR was willing to give weapons and transportation to the Soviets and let them die killing Germans.

That isn't the way I would have played it. Had Truman been elected President in 1944 or 1940, I don't think it would have been the way he would have played it. However, there is no way that that could have happened. FDR was the hero of the country and he was willing to praise Joe in spite of all that he had done. It worked and it may have been the only way that it would work. I am happy that we lost only some 400 thousand KIA in the war, rather than millions.

We don't know what FDR would have done after the war. The allies were in ascendance in February of 1945, but the war was far from won. We were not yet into Germany and we had not yet invaded Iwo Jima. Neither had the Manhattan Project produced a weapon or set a date when they would have a weapon. FDR died in April in the closing weeks of the war with Germany, still long before the end of the war with Japan. Had an invasion of the Japanese home islands been necessary, the death toll among our soldiers and Japanese civilians would have been horrendous.

Be careful about applying our advantage of 20/20 hindsight. We know much now that the powers did not know even in early 1945. We needed and wanted all the friends we could get then, even if some of those friends were not really friendly and almost certain to be future enemies.

The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.