A shocking statistic

Quotes:

Roosevelt was an early and firm believer in the "arsenal of democracy" concept-- the idea that the United States could most effectively contribute toward the maintenance of international order by expending technology but not manpower.  Long before Pearl Harbor, he had sought to enlist the productive energies of American industry in the anti-fascist cause:  the United States, he thought, should serve as a privileged sanctuary, taking advantage of its geographical isolation and invulnerable physical plant to produce the goods of war, while leaving others to furnish the troops to fight it.  Even after belligerency became unavoidable, Roosevelt and his chief military strategist, General George C. Marshall, retained elements of this approach, limiting the American army to 90 divisions instead of the 215 that had been thought necessary to defeat both Germany and Japan.  As Marshall admitted, though, this could not have been done without Soviet manpower.  The United States, in this sense, was as dependent on the Red Army as the Russians were on the American Lend-Lease--perhaps more so.

Pages 6-7


Gerhard Weinberg cites American casualties in World War II at 300,000, German casualties at over 4 million, and Soviet casualties at approximately 25 million.  More recent research places the Soviet figure at 27 million.


Page 8



Book: 

Strategies of Containment:  A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War

John Lewis Gaddis

Oxford University Press

Copyright 1982, 2005


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I might have sleepily read or heard a sentence or a paragraph or even an hour of discussion 30 years ago that mentioned how much of the burden of winning WW II was put on the Russian population.  I have no recollection of ever having known this, and certainly American propaganda about its role in that war has obliterated any common knowledge that there ever was of it among Americans.

There's no excuse for the Russian government's actions in Syria in this century, for its aggressive expansionism, for its dishonesty in publicizing false versions of events or for its manipulation of the United Nations and of negotiations in other venues.

There is also no excuse for American impatience, condescension or self-serving demands based on the premise that we are always saving the world.  Our first goal should be fairness.