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Amused to Death posted:But Marshall aid was offered to eastern Europe, they rejected it because of Soviet pressure. I mean yeah it's possible without Truman the Soviets would've been more friendly and ready to accept the aid, but that's a big if. Soviet domination was going to happen to eastern Europe no matter who was president of the US in 1947, they had been wrecked by Germany twice in 25 years and never had a particularly great relationship with the west, they were creating that buffer of satellite states no matter what. It's unlikely Stalin would accept American aid regardless of who was president as it might have lessened the Soviet grip on eastern European nations. Just to but in on this a bit, the Soviets actually rejected Marshall aid because of the political strings attached to it. Basically it mandated a market economy. Molotov was apparently furious, having been really into the notion of getting a ton of aid for free. Eastern Europe was a smoking ruin after the second world war. Even Stalin was willing to accept help in the wake of that.
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Oct 29, 2013 15:44
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Patter Song posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_parliamentary_election,_1945 That is actually my point, in 1945 (when it was already Soviet domination btw), there were relatively free elections, it is only later that Soviet control was comfirmed. Also, you're wrong about 2 years later (1947), the Communist party only got 22% of the vote. Rakozi eventually dominated the cabinet and turned the country into a dictatorship, when they forced the social democrats to merge with them in 1948. Basically, there was a clear interlude after the war. quote:And the Czechoslovak elections. The communists only got 30% of the vote They were the biggest party, and in most parliamentary systems, it is usually assumed the absolute largest arty (with 93 out of 300 seats) would form the government. The Communists did form a coalition government but it fell apart in 1948 after the Communists pushed for full control. Poland never had a free election after the war, but ultimately Poland was the one country that Stalin was absolutely set on dominating. Bulgaria and Romania both had "popular front" elections (Bulgaria in 1945/46) and Romania in 1946 but they were still essentially multiparty until 1948/1949. The issue isn't necessarily that Stalin was a democrat, absolutely wasn't but he still showed flexibility outside of Poland. Ultimately, the Soviets were never going to let the pre-war government in Poland take hold because of the Polish-Soviet war and Polish claims on Western Ukraine not to mention Poland's key spot as a buffer. Basically, Stalin could have just set up communist governments from the get go, there was nothing stopping him inside those countries as they were all occupied by the Red Army, however he obviously stepped back in certain ways and allowed at least some of those countries to have democratic or at least semi-democratic rule. It needs to also be mentioned that Stalin actually refused to support the communist rebels in Greece. Stalin was a monster, but one that was willing to be diplomatic, especially after the war. Yeah the Marshall plan reforms had a much of strings attached, including allowing the US to access economic data directly. Yeah, American historians have painted it as purely altruistic but plenty of poo poo when on both sides during that period. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 15:57
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V. Illych L. posted:Just to but in on this a bit, the Soviets actually rejected Marshall aid because of the political strings attached to it. Basically it mandated a market economy. Molotov was apparently furious, having been really into the notion of getting a ton of aid for free. The Marshal Plan requiring it's recipients to have a market economy was the thing that really pissed off Stalin and Molotov. I can't find anything online right now, but what was "suppose" to happen based on agreements at Yalta and later on Potsdam is that in exchange for Russia only dominating Poland as a buffer between it and Germany while allowing free elections in the states it conquered from the Nazi's the US would flood all of Europe with money to rebuild itself including Russia, and England would get to keep at least some of it's empire holdings throughout the world. What actuality happened because Truman was convinced by the business and conservative wings of the democratic party that Stalin wanted to dominate the world with communism is that the US stopped sending Moscow money to rebuild and then the Marshal Plan included the provision about a market economy so that in order for Russia to get any of the money we owed them they would have to switch to it as well. Stalin and Molotov were rightly pissed, felt betrayed, and became paranoid that they would be invaded within a decade or two like last time which is why shortly after things like the Berlin blockade and eastern block forming happened.
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Oct 29, 2013 16:36
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Anyway, back to American history. America's gun culture and NRA influence was on full display post-Sandy Hook, when a sufficiently large enough minority of voices raised such hell that even a token gun reform bill couldn't be brought up for a Senate vote. I believe guns are the last major cultural war battle from the 20th century being fought and with no real end in sight. Our history of gun control, however, is extraordinarily complex. Adam Winkler's Gunfight is must read material, but this article tells you what you need to know:The Founding Fathers posted:[W]e've also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution. Black Militants posted:OPPOSITION TO GUN CONTROL was what drove the black militants to visit the California capitol with loaded weapons in hand. The Black Panther Party had been formed six months earlier, in Oakland, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Like many young African Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were legal landmarks, but they had yet to deliver equal opportunity. In Newton and Seale’s view, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect and serve the public: the police. Ronald Reagan, Gun Confiscator posted:Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman from Alameda County, which includes Oakland, was determined to end the Panthers’ police patrols. To disarm the Panthers, he proposed a law that would prohibit the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. When Newton found out about this, he told Seale, “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to the Capitol.” Seale was incredulous. “The Capitol?” Newton explained: “Mulford’s there, and they’re trying to pass a law against our guns, and we’re going to the Capitol steps.” Newton’s plan was to take a select group of Panthers “loaded down to the gills,” to send a message to California lawmakers about the group’s opposition to any new gun control. Jim Crow posted:After losing the Civil War, Southern states quickly adopted the Black Codes, laws designed to reestablish white supremacy by dictating what the freedmen could and couldn’t do. One common provision barred blacks from possessing firearms. To enforce the gun ban, white men riding in posses began terrorizing black communities. In January 1866, Harper’s Weekly reported that in Mississippi, such groups had “seized every gun and pistol found in the hands of the (so called) freedmen” in parts of the state. The most infamous of these disarmament posses, of course, was the Ku Klux Klan. The NRA posted:TODAY, THE NRA is the unquestioned leader in the fight against gun control. Yet the organization didn’t always oppose gun regulation. Founded in 1871 by George Wingate and William Church—the latter a former reporter for a newspaper now known for hostility to gun rights, The New York Times—the group first set out to improve American soldiers’ marksmanship. Wingate and Church had fought for the North in the Civil War and been shocked by the poor shooting skills of city-bred Union soldiers. Who Killed the Kennedys? posted:In the 1960s, the NRA once again supported the push for new federal gun laws. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald, who had bought his gun through a mail-order ad in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine, Franklin Orth, then the NRA’s executive vice president, testified in favor of banning mail-order rifle sales. “We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.” Orth and the NRA didn’t favor stricter proposals, like national gun registration, but when the final version of the Gun Control Act was adopted in 1968, Orth stood behind the legislation. While certain features of the law, he said, “appear unduly restrictive and unjustified in their application to law-abiding citizens, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.” NRA's Radical Revolution posted:In 1976, Maxwell Rich, the executive vice president, announced that the NRA would sell its building in Washington, D.C., and relocate the headquarters to Colorado Springs, retreating from political lobbying and expanding its outdoor and environmental activities. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/
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Oct 29, 2013 16:45
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A Winner is Jew posted:The Marshal Plan requiring it's recipients to have a market economy was the thing that really pissed off Stalin and Molotov. Counterpoint: While that and other American conditions definitely did help things, Soviet leaders were deeply wary(albeit not outright rejecting) of the the plan right from its initial conception and it continuously grew over suspicions of ulterior American motivations for the aid. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/ACFB73.pdf (page 18 is where reactions to the plan begin) e: quote:Anyway, back to American history The cold war/Marshall plan isn't American history? 
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Oct 29, 2013 17:04
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Helsing posted:There was no way Stalin was going to honour the Yalta agreement and allow "free and fair" elections to occur in Eastern Europe so some kind of escalating political tension was basically guaranteed when the war ended. Even if the suppression of dissent in Eastern Europe hadn't lead to greater tensions between the USSR and USA, I'm pretty sure that following Mao's victory in China people would have gotten upset. Its also completely impossible to imagine a plausible scenario for how Vietnam, Germany or Korea could have been reunified - as was the plan during World War II - without one side or the other feeling they'd been screwed. In regards to the partitioned countries, peaceful reunification became impossible the instant they were partitioned. The fact that they were even partitioned in the first place was a sign of the friction between the US and Soviets, and even without that influence from above, the rival governments each side installed weren't friendly enough to ever unify. I know almost nothing about the leadup to the Vietnam War, but once Kim Il-Sung and Syngman Rhee were installed, an eventual Korean War was essentially guaranteed to happen. Though, going along with the timeframe others have mentioned here, those two were only really unleashed in 1948. Prior to that, the two Koreas were under direct US and Soviet and could have been reunified just as easily as they'd been split. Maybe not to the satisfaction of everyone involved, but it's not like the Koreans were happy about being occupied and partitioned by imperialist powers in the first place.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:09
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Amused to Death posted:The cold war/Marshall plan isn't American history? Yeah thats a real good point, the Cold War is very much a part of American history even if it isn't domestic. I wonder it is almost unconscious at this point when we talk about "American history" we only start thinking about what happens domestically not the impact we have had on the world directly. (Although admittedly at a certain point it does become the history of the world 1945-2013.) As far as the Soviets being initially suspicious, I think it is fair considering that Soviet-American relations for a while were pretty frigid (despite obviously the US assistance during the war). If you start looking at things from their perspective, a country that helped invade them 20 years earlier is now going to offer economic aid in a peacetime situation where there was a obvious shifting of spheres of influence going on.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:11
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Amused to Death posted:Counterpoint: While that and other American conditions definitely did help things, Soviet leaders were deeply wary(albeit not outright rejecting) of the the plan right from its initial conception and it continuously grew over suspicions of ulterior American motivations for the aid. Main Paineframe posted:In regards to the partitioned countries, peaceful reunification became impossible the instant they were partitioned.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:26
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Amused to Death posted:Counterpoint: While that and other American conditions definitely did help things, Soviet leaders were deeply wary(albeit not outright rejecting) of the the plan right from its initial conception and it continuously grew over suspicions of ulterior American motivations for the aid. Yeah, the cold war and what caused it (Marshal Plan) covers like 20% of american history. It's kind of a big deal to study that poo poo. I'm not saying that there wasn't a huge amount of mutual miss-trust on both sides, it's just that the fragile relations that were there after the war between the three sides deteriorated really fast which kicked off the cold war starting in 47. Another thing I didn't touch on was while most of the blame for making Truman paranoid about communism came from the conservative and businesses wings of the democratic party, Churchill also manipulated Truman after Roosevelt died to a certain extent which just solidified his dislike of communism which was why in 46 you had Churchill and Truman traveling across the US giving anti-communism speeches, the most famous was the "Iron Curtain" speech in Missouri... a term that was used by Goebbels in 43 as a way to "otherize" Russia from the rest of the world.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:27
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So what has Puerto Rico's history been like since the US acquired it? I know that there's been supporters of statehood and Puerto Rican nationalists, and that a couple of Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate Truman, but I don't know much more than that. Also, why did so many Puerto Ricans emigrate to New York?
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Oct 29, 2013 17:33
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R. Mute posted:That's not really much of a counterpoint. The fact the Soviets were deeply suspicious of the Marshall plan and seemingly unlikely to accept it even before knowing the details isn't a good counterpoint? quote:I think there was probably a point where both the US and the USSR would've agreed to a Morgenthau-esque plan, maybe even without any partitions but with heavy demilitarisation and de-industrialisation. This is doubtful because this partition or not, this would just leave a failed German nation(s) already more broken than Germany already was. The feeling of gently caress Germany prevalent in the Morgenthau plan was great while the war was going on and right after it, but it's not so great 2-3 years later when the allies realize they have a massive humanitarian problem on their hands and ripping Germany of its industrial capacity isn't going to help mitigate this or the problems on the continent as a whole.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:54
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Emanuel Collective posted:
Wow. I admittedly don't know a lot about the history of the NRA, besides the fact that their general stand on guns/rifles/shooting weapons annoys me a great deal. How interesting that they have flipped stances multiple times. Thanks for the heads up and the article.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:59
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Of course the Soviets were suspicious of the Plan - anything else would have been stupid. What you've been saying is basically that Stalin would never have accepted the plan (citing his urge to dominate Eastern Europe as a cause), and everything indicates that he and the rest of the Party top brass had fairly specific reasons why they wouldn't take it. Your stated position is simply not plausible given the historical facts.
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Oct 29, 2013 17:59
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WJB was mentioned earlier. I thought it would be a good time to post the Philippic by HL Mencken of WJB during the Scopes trial. This part comes right after a pro-science witness testifies.quote:Bryan sat silent throughout the whole scene, his gaze fixed immovably on the witness. Now and then his face darkened and his eyes flashed, but he never uttered a sound. It was, to him, a string of blasphemies out of the devil's mass -- a dreadful series of assaults upon the only true religion. The old gladiator faced his real enemy at last. Here was a sworn agent and attorney of the science he hates and fears -- a well-fed, well-mannered spokesman of the knowledge he abominates. Somehow he reminded me pathetically of the old Holy Roller I heard last week -- the mountain pastor who damned education as a mocking and a corruption. Bryan, too, is afraid of it, for wherever it spreads his trade begins to fall off, and wherever it flourishes he is only a poor clown. All of Mencken's trial coverage is here. http://www.positiveatheism.org/tochmenk.htm What I think is neat is that Mencken accurately saw American fundamentalism. Though I suppose that the political power of fundamentalists is now dying out somewhat, it was a major force in American politics since at least the 1970s and its roots in earlier generations is not too much different than today. Though I guess they did not have prosperity gospel back then.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:00
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Amused to Death posted:The fact the Soviets were deeply suspicious of the Marshall plan and seemingly unlikely to accept it even before knowing the details isn't a good counterpoint? Why wouldn't they? Stalin had trusted Roosevelt to a great extend, a reason that the war-time alliance succeeded so well but obviously Truman didn't have the same relationship and obviously the right in the US had become much more vocal at the end of the war. In addition, like I said, there was already bad blood between the Soviets and the US that stretched back to the Civil War. quote:So what has Puerto Rico's history been like since the US acquired it? I know that there's been supporters of statehood and Puerto Rican nationalists, and that a couple of Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate Truman, but I don't know much more than that. Also, why did so many Puerto Ricans emigrate to New York? Well thats a pretty giant question, but the division in Puerto Rico has been that there generally has been a plurality (at least) for remaining a commonwealth that has been rivaled by statehood, and independence support has generally been the remainder in between the two. Basically, there is a never-ending deadlock on the issue so the status quo remains. Puerto Ricans are American citizens, and don't have any real restrictions on their movement, I think New York has so many because it is obviously such a dominant city as a whole on the east coast and has attached many other groups beyond Puerto Ricans. However, there are almost 900,000 Puerto Ricans in Florida, you just don't hear about them as much as the ones in NYC (probably because they are much more diffuse). Ardennes fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 18:03
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Ardennes posted:Why wouldn't they? Stalin had trusted Roosevelt to a great extend, a reason that the war-time alliance succeeded so well but obviously Truman didn't have the same relationship and obviously the right in the US had become much more vocal at the end of the war. In addition, like I said, there was already bad blood between the Soviets and the US that stretched back to the Civil War. I think if Eastern Europe was in a vacuum then you could argue that some political maneuvering could have prevented the Bloc from forming there. However, it's in the best interests of the USSR to spread communism (e.g., in China and Korea) and it's in the best interests for the US to stop communism, so it seems likely that the Cold War would have occurred anyway.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:07
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V. Illych L. posted:Of course the Soviets were suspicious of the Plan - anything else would have been stupid. What you've been saying is basically that Stalin would never have accepted the plan (citing his urge to dominate Eastern Europe as a cause), and everything indicates that he and the rest of the Party top brass had fairly specific reasons why they wouldn't take it. Yeah, specific reasons that were centered around suspicions that the plan was actually an attempt to build an American lead western European alliance and buy influence in eastern Europe(which both are true to an extent) even before they knew the details of the plan. The Soviets were never going to accept a plan with that reality, especially as long as Stalin wanted eastern Europe as a Soviet buffer, and that reality would always be the reality of a Marshall plan, ergo the Soviets were never going to accept the Marshall plan regardless of who is president. I mean for any chance of the Soviets accepting the Marshall Plan, you'd need FDR not dying(Wallace regardless of his positions wouldn't cut it as there was no already present relationship for Stalin to put a modicum of trust into), and Stalin suddenly having no interest in eastern Europe. Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 18:10
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computer parts posted:I think if Eastern Europe was in a vacuum then you could argue that some political maneuvering could have prevented the Bloc from forming there. However, it's in the best interests of the USSR to spread communism (e.g., in China and Korea) and it's in the best interests for the US to stop communism, so it seems likely that the Cold War would have occurred anyway. Yeah but that doesn't mean the containment theory was necessary, Communism could have been "limited" in probably a more diplomatic manner through detente. Really, the issue was Truman had such a hard line over the issue when probably a lot more careful discretion was needed.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:12
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Korea is kind of a weird situation historically. I don't know if there was an expectaton of post-war reunification there like there was in Germany; I am simply ignorant on this matter. Mao, however, managed to establish a Communist rule in China without much help from the Soviets - certainly not much more than the KMT had received to fight off the Japanese. I mean, I get what you're saying - a revolutionary vanguard state that hates everything you stand for isn't going to be a good friend - but I don't think that the Cold War was inevitable, and it certainly could've been less lovely for everyone involved.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:13
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Propagation of the cold war helped too many entrenched interests to ever be avoided.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:17
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Ardennes posted:Yeah but that doesn't mean the containment theory was necessary, Communism could have been "limited" in probably a more diplomatic manner through detente. Really, the issue was Truman had such a hard line over the issue when probably a lot more careful discretion was needed. But again, even if overly blunt, the Truman doctrine didn't also arise from a vacuum, it came from Soviet actions in eastern Europe and other places(namely Stalin demanding partial control of the Turkish straits and their delayed withdraw from Iran). Both sides mutually stoked the suspicions of the other.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:18
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menino posted:So what changed about the major West Coast metros that made them go Democrat between 48 and 64? And why was Seattle and SF less Republican than Portland and LA back then? Those cities voted for the Democrat in 1964 because the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, was a historically awful candidate who lost to Lyndon Johnson in one of the most lopsided routs in American electoral history. That year is an outlier.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:27
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R. Mute posted:That's not really much of a counterpoint. It might've been possible, but the only real reason to partition the countries (especially the ones that had been occupied by the Japanese) was that the US and USSR both wanted the territory in their spheres of influence and couldn't agree on neutral solutions that left them in one piece. Of course, I'm massively simplifying and probably missing some Vietnam stuff in the process, but if the US and USSR had been able to agree on the status of a unified Germany and Korea, there wouldn't have been much need to divide them in the first place. I won't say it was impossible, but it would have required significant improvement in the US-Soviet relationship. V. Illych L. posted:Korea is kind of a weird situation historically. I don't know if there was an expectaton of post-war reunification there like there was in Germany; I am simply ignorant on this matter. Korea wasn't really instigated by the US and USSR. The problem was that both Koreas were led by extremely nationalistic military dictatorships who each personally wanted extremely badly to unify Korea by invading the other country, overthrowing the other government, and then imprisoning or executing every dissident they could catch. If the North hadn't invaded the South, the South would eventually have invaded the North. The only reason the North was the one to escalate was because the South was weaker at the time.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:34
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Amused to Death posted:But again, even if overly blunt, the Truman doctrine didn't also arise from a vacuum, it came from Soviet actions in eastern Europe and other places(namely Stalin demanding partial control of the Turkish straits and their delayed withdraw from Iran). Both sides mutually stoked the suspicions of the other. Yeah, but ultimately the US was still in the driver seat, the US was untouched by the war and even before it is was in all honest an economic superpower. In addition, the US controlled the world's oceans and had the entirety of the West backing them (not to mention the bomb). There was room to maneuver in that situation, obviously entrenched interests in the US pushed other wise but that not the situation itself decided how things would go. Stalin would have was willing to give up some things, obviously not Poland or a militarized Germany, but as far as the straits and Iran, they almost certainly could be negotiated down. Korea, was a separate manner and ultimately was its own wild card, and the North Korean communists had their own ideas how things would go. I don't think peaceful unification was really possible period.
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Oct 29, 2013 18:37
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Ardennes posted:You know that Communist parties did not take over in Eastern Europe immediately after the war, in fact the Soviets did allow elections to take place that elected non-communist parties. A lot of Soviet foreign policy of the period was strictly defensive, they were honestly fairly scared of the United States and the rest of the West even if they had more troops on their side of the line. Stalin has zero interest in allowing independent governments in Eastern Europe. Even if things had played out slightly differently in the late 1940s the first sign of real independence in the Eastern or Baltic states would have almost certainly lead to a crackdown. I'm not trying to put all the blame for the Cold War on Stalin because I think its inconceivable that US politicians weren't going to become vicious redbaiters for domestic reasons, and also because domestic interests in the US hated communism, and finally because US foreign policy was predicated on keeping markets open for the United States. Both the USA and USSR had fairly grand global ambitions after the war however. Perhaps the Cold War could have been delayed a few years, and perhaps it could have had a slightly more restrained tone (the apocalyptic musings about nuclear war were admittedly mostly an American thing) but the basic argument that I was responding to earlier - that a different president in 1945 might have resulted in the Cold War not occurring - is hard to swallow.
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Oct 29, 2013 19:11
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Main Paineframe posted:It might've been possible, but the only real reason to partition the countries (especially the ones that had been occupied by the Japanese) was that the US and USSR both wanted the territory in their spheres of influence and couldn't agree on neutral solutions that left them in one piece. Of course, I'm massively simplifying and probably missing some Vietnam stuff in the process, but if the US and USSR had been able to agree on the status of a unified Germany and Korea, there wouldn't have been much need to divide them in the first place. I won't say it was impossible, but it would have required significant improvement in the US-Soviet relationship. Vietnam was partitioned in the mid-1950s shortly after the battle of Dien Bien Phu, basically splitting the country between the northern Vietminh strongholds and the southern areas where the colonial regime held more control. Of course, by that time matters had shifted significantly in political terms, and in any case the USA refused to sign the agreement in the end.
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Oct 29, 2013 19:14
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Effectronica posted:Vietnam was partitioned in the mid-1950s shortly after the battle of Dien Bien Phu, basically splitting the country between the northern Vietminh strongholds and the southern areas where the colonial regime held more control. Of course, by that time matters had shifted significantly in political terms, and in any case the USA refused to sign the agreement in the end. More importantly after DBP, the partition was meant to be temporary, with the North being an independent state and the South was to have a referendum to decide if they wanted to from a government with the north or not. But the French basically just jerked them along, and finally the North got fed up and decided to liberate the South. In fact the North/South distinction wasn't particularly strong amongst the populace, largely because the independence movement of the Viet Minh and later the VC was mor nationalistic than communist.
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Oct 29, 2013 19:20
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Gygaxian posted:So what has Puerto Rico's history been like since the US acquired it? I know that there's been supporters of statehood and Puerto Rican nationalists, and that a couple of Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate Truman, but I don't know much more than that. Also, why did so many Puerto Ricans emigrate to New York? I can't offer anything besides anecdotes (I'm sadly lacking in Puerto Rican history) but I can tell you that the only time I saw my Titi angry was her talking about how indpendence would ruin the island. Make of that what you will.
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Oct 29, 2013 19:23
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Helsing posted:Stalin has zero interest in allowing independent governments in Eastern Europe. Even if things had played out slightly differently in the late 1940s the first sign of real independence in the Eastern or Baltic states would have almost certainly lead to a crackdown. The cases of Austria and Finland show a different example, Stalin and later Soviet leaders were willing to accept neutral capitalist countries as long as they were relatively neutered military and weren't especially hostile to the Soviets. The Baltic states were a done deal though, and the Soviets saw them as completely integral. Poland wasn't integral to the union itself, but the Soviets had very much an axe to grind but the other states were probably negotiable to some degree. Germany almost certainly was. There would have been a Cold War, if not under the Democrats, it would happen under a Republican one but there was the possibility of diffusing at least one of the major flashpoints, Germany and keep Europe mostly frigid. China was going to fall to Mao either way and the Korean war would have still happened, and Vietnam would mostly play out how it did. All 3 of those conflicts weren't reliant on the Soviets though, and were really their own individual conflicts (sorry domino theory).
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Oct 29, 2013 19:33
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Ardennes posted:Why wouldn't they? Stalin had trusted Roosevelt to a great extend, a reason that the war-time alliance succeeded so well but obviously Truman didn't have the same relationship and obviously the right in the US had become much more vocal at the end of the war. In addition, like I said, there was already bad blood between the Soviets and the US that stretched back to the Civil War.
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Oct 29, 2013 19:50
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Ofaloaf posted:I know that there was at least some Soviet espionage within the US and UK during WWII, what with Manhattan Project leaks and so forth-- what wartime American and British spies were there in the USSR during the same period? I assume there's some, because if it was just the USSR spying on the western Allies without any reciprocation that wouldn't lend much to the idea of Stalin being a trusting sort of fellow during WWII.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:04
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Nessus posted:Well, there's trust and then there's trust. I don't think the idea that Stalin was spying on all the bourgeois states and the idea that Stalin had a positive regard for Roosevelt compared to (say) Churchill, Truman etc. are mutually incompatible. Ofaloaf fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 20:10
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Well there was Lee Harvey Oswald for one.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:11
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Ofaloaf posted:I know that there was at least some Soviet espionage within the US and UK during WWII, what with Manhattan Project leaks and so forth-- what wartime American and British spies were there in the USSR during the same period? I assume there's some, because if it was just the USSR spying on the western Allies without any reciprocation that wouldn't lend much to the idea of Stalin being a trusting sort of fellow during WWII. More or less, there is a "reasonable" amount of trust among allies, consider Nato and the fact that even if out potential real adversaries NSA was spying on multiple foreign governments and leaders. There was plenty of spying going on, on the other hand, Stalin and Roosevelt worked together well at the same time especially as Nessus said, versus Churchill and Truman.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:11
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Everything that I've seen seems to indicate that the vast majority of allied intelligence operations were focused on Germany and Japan rather than the Soviet Union.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:11
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Fojar38 posted:Everything that I've seen seems to indicate that the vast majority of allied intelligence operations were focused on Germany and Japan rather than the Soviet Union. Wait allied intelligence operations?
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Oct 29, 2013 20:16
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Ardennes posted:The cases of Austria and Finland show a different example, Stalin and later Soviet leaders were willing to accept neutral capitalist countries as long as they were relatively neutered military and weren't especially hostile to the Soviets. The Baltic states were a done deal though, and the Soviets saw them as completely integral. Poland wasn't integral to the union itself, but the Soviets had very much an axe to grind but the other states were probably negotiable to some degree. Germany almost certainly was. Finland isn't a representative example though. It seems to me that it is closer to Yugoslavia than it is to the other countries we are discussing here, because the Finnish army played a large role in expelling German soldiers from Finnish territory during the Lapland War. Austria isn't a great example either since the Soviet grip wasn't tightened there until after Stalin's death. While Finland was defeated by the Soviet Union but it wasn't quite conquered the way that Poland was.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:26
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Ofaloaf posted:Aside from the "did Stalin actually trust Roosevelt" thing, I am legit interested in American & British espionage inside the USSR. There's stuff out there about Communist agents working in federal agencies in the 1940s and '50s and a bit about Soviet defectors, but surely there must've been active American agents inside the Soviet Union at some point, right? There was almost literally no US or British espionage inside the USSR through the war, and very very highly asymmetrical espionage afterwards in favor of the Soviets. Soviet spies were all over the US and USSR, but the only spies that ever worked for the Americans or British were a handful of Soviet defectors. There were CIA attaches in the US embassy, of course, but they weren't very effective and the Soviets knew who they were. The Soviets were basically a closed society with a massive internal police force and built-in paranoia against outsiders, compared to an open US society where you could buy the New York Times and have excellent coverage of most things an intelligence agency might want to know. Meanwhile, they had spies throughout the American and British spy agencies, including the head of the British counterespionage unit, and those spies gave the Soviets enough information that in many cases, parachute-dropped spies found Soviet forces waiting for them at their landing zones. See: Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only Klehr et al, Spies: The KGB in America berzerker fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Oct 29, 2013 |
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Oct 29, 2013 20:29
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Ardennes posted:Wait allied intelligence operations? Sorry, should've said western allies.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:30
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Ofaloaf posted:I know that there was at least some Soviet espionage within the US and UK during WWII, what with Manhattan Project leaks and so forth-- what wartime American and British spies were there in the USSR during the same period? I assume there's some, because if it was just the USSR spying on the western Allies without any reciprocation that wouldn't lend much to the idea of Stalin being a trusting sort of fellow during WWII. Every country is spying on every other country they're capable of spying on, whether they're ally or enemy. It is absolutely 100% certain that the US and UK were trying to spy on the USSR long before the end of WWII. We (the public) don't necessarily know how successful those efforts were, but there is no way at all the West wasn't at least attempting it. However, with an active war going on, I'm sure we focused on today's enemy before tomorrow's enemy, and I can't imagine any halfassed spying attempts got much traction in the Stalinist USSR where secret police were basically everywhere and people were getting sent to prison camps over the slightest irregularity or accusation.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:31
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