• spencerwi@feddit.org
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    13 days ago

    I mean, the USA was pro-Nazi until Pearl Harbor, and even then it took a propaganda campaign by the government to convince the American public to oppose Hitler.

    Those Nazis were, by the way, inspired by the USA. Eugenics programs in North Carolina inspired later eugenics programs in Hitler’s Germany. Jim Crow was seen as a textbook example of how to use the legal system to enforce racial dominance, and was named pretty directly by Hitler as an inspiration.

    • hope@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Fun? fact, Hitler supposedly had a portrait of Henry Ford behind his desk!

    • D1re_W0lf@piefed.social
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      12 days ago

      Yeah. It’s amazing how much a few Hollywood movies can create such a big reality distortion field and make people believe that not only the United States was anti-Nazi (it wasn’t) but also that they where the ones winning the war (they weren’t).

    • Rooskie91@discuss.online
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      12 days ago

      Yeah, America was super into the Nazis before WWII. Many businesses leaders dealt directly with Hitler.

      It’s crazy how people have forgotten. The Hindenburg was even a Nazi air ship but that never gets mentioned along with that tragedy.

    • DillDough@lemmy.zip
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      12 days ago

      Even the US declaration of war against Japan specifically mentioned how we were only going after Japan as retaliation and that we wished to remain friendly with Germany.

  • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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    13 days ago

    The mainstream Western portrayal of the US as anti-Nazi or anti-fascist is one of the most successful propaganda campaigns in modern history, right up there with Napoleon being short. Like, what do y’all think America was doing before, during and after WWII?

    • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
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      12 days ago

      I mean if you don’t read about any Central or South American country, or the Middle East as a whole, or South Eastern Asia, or Native Americans, or Japanese People during WWII, or Black People, the US is actually pretty great!

  • MynameisAllen@lemmy.zip
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    13 days ago

    The Soviet Union did far more than the US to put down the Nazi movement and honestly I feel like even back then we weren’t super invested in getting rid of fascism

    • ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com
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      13 days ago

      The western powers were far more anti-communist than they were anti-fascist. Not everyone knows that they directly intervened in the Russian civil war years before the rise of Nazism to try and topple the new Bolshevik government.

      WW2 was just a temporary pause while both sides dealt with Germany.

      • trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works
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        11 days ago

        The Allies of WW2 were more a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of deal. That’s why the alliance started to fall apart the moment the common enemies were close to being defeated.

      • freagle@lemmy.ml
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        12 days ago

        It wasn’t even that. The US got involved when it was clear the Soviets were going to win. Yes yes Pearl Harbor triggered it, but it’s well documented that the Japanese attack was something that the US strategists and FDR himself discussed as something they needed to find a way to cause, and they did it by blockading Japanese oil imports and forcing them to act. The US was never an actual ally to the USSR, they just needed to keep up those appearances so they could invade Europe to stop the Soviets from liberating the entire continent.

      • freagle@lemmy.ml
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        12 days ago

        LOL, Hitler threatened the USSR in Mein Kampf. He was open about his intentions. The USSR knew they were the target at least 10 years before the war, and they spent years trying to get the European powers to support a resistance movement. But the USSR quickly learned that actually all of the European leaders were on the side of the Nazis and would be happy to see the USSR invaded, so the Soviets needed to find a way to resist them without losing, and that meant strategic retreat and losses until the enemy was overextended and at its most vulnerable. The fact that the Soviets won against the most powerful military in the world is a testament to the fact that their strategy worked.

      • plyth@feddit.org
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        12 days ago

        What should they have done and why wasn’t it enough what they suggested?

          • Tolc@lemmy.zip
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            12 days ago

            They didnt. They entered poland when polish govt has already fled and they did so to create buffer between nazi germany and soviet union.

            Poland had invaded soviet ally Czechoslovakia.

            • trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works
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              11 days ago

              They had planned this (in cooperation with Nazi Germany) quite some time before, and even put it in writing.

              The secret accords of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact haven’t been much of a secret for quite a long time, I wonder if you just missed that well known fact, or are omitting it on purpose.

              • Tolc@lemmy.zip
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                11 days ago

                No, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was not an ‘alliance’

                The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was an non-aggression agreement signed between the USSR & Germany in late August 1939. (Alot of countries signed various pacts with nazi germany beforehand).

                This agreement was a direct result of the failure to create ‘collective security’ in Europe The USSR had tried this and failed due to the irrational anti-communism of Poland & the unwillingness of the UK & France to make this a reality

                • trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works
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                  10 days ago

                  A non aggression pact with secret accords that divided up Eastern Europe into spheres of influence for land grabs, as you conveniently omit once more.

        • trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works
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          11 days ago

          Isn’t it quite obvious? Having a government that’s not as utterly abhorrent and disagreeable as that of Josef Stalin is quite possible, even if you are a one party dictatorship. Likewise not having imperialist ambitions is utterly possible.

          On top of that, especially since the Soviet Union anticipated that Nazi Germany would turn on them at some point, reacting to that becoming a fact more quickly and decisively could have helped. Stalin was so hell bent and stubborn about not provoking Hitler at any cost, that defensive action was practically forbidden even until for quite some time after the invasion had started. His purges of the military (partially instigated by Nazi German military intelligence to weaken the Soviet Union) didn’t help with defence either. But I guess that’s all symptoms of Stalinism. If you have a megalomaniac paranoid autocrat who has practically anyone who disagrees with him shot, you get that kind of a dysfunctional shitshow as a state.

          • plyth@feddit.org
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            10 days ago

            Likewise not having imperialist ambitions is utterly possible.

            USSR was about global socialism. How could they be non imperialistic? But then, is it imperialism to spread socialism?

            Stalin was so hell bent and stubborn about not provoking Hitler

            There were three spheres of power, two of which hoping the other two would fight each other. As Tolc mentioned, the USSR tried to create an alliance. After that failed which other options were left?

            • trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works
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              10 days ago

              socialism

              Under Stalin, yes, of course. That’s almost as unhinged as people claiming Hitler was socialist because he had “socialist” in his party’s name.

              which other options were left?

              Preparing to defend against Nazi Germany without the land grabs in Eastern Europe?

              • plyth@feddit.org
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                10 days ago

                socialism

                They didn’t amass riches for an elite and didn’t build their country on racial superiority. That’s closer than most to socialism.

                without the land grabs in Eastern Europe?

                The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I.

                The line became a major geopolitical factor during World War II, when the USSR invaded eastern Poland, resulting in the split of Poland’s territory between the USSR and Nazi Germany roughly along the Curzon Line in accordance with final rounds of secret negotiations surrounding the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curzon_Line

                Why is it a land grab if that was the start?

                Preparing to defend against Nazi Germany without the land grabs

                The “land grabs” happened after Germany started conquering. The preparations had to be made before.

                I am no expert at all so please correct me if I am wrong but I think that only the SU made suggestions for, as Tolc mentions, “collective security”. What else should they have done?

  • FatVegan@leminal.space
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    12 days ago

    They singlehandedly liberated germany and defeated the nazis. What kind of alternate history are you guys smoking over there?

    • Garbagio@lemmy.zip
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      12 days ago

      I mean I get the point, but the meme didn’t say anything about “singlehandedly”

      • DillDough@lemmy.zip
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        11 days ago

        I assure you every single person in the US who thinks anything remotely close to that picture actually believes the US single handedly saved the world from the Nazis.

    • nile_istic@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Oh you wouldn’t believe the propaganda bullshit we get taught in K-12 here. Pretty sure that’s why politicians (mostly republicans, but not invariably) vilify higher education and ensure it remains prohibitively expensive; wasn’t til college that I learned that a good portion of my history classes growing up had, at best, shown only the American (or, in the case of US history, the white male American) side of the story, and at worst, been almost entirely fucking fabricated. “No no no, the Civil War was about states’ rights, not slavery” lookin ass. Honestly “we saved the world from Nazis because we’re just such kewl dudes” isn’t even the biggest bridge they sold us.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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      12 days ago

      I think the point is that the americans view themselves like that, generally, and thus the change is startling

      the accuracy of the first statement is irrelevant, their belief in it is relevant

    • gandalf_der_12te
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      11 days ago

      i wonder whether there’s a causal connection

      like, for the original genocide when white europeans settled america i can see it, because they literally took the land away. but for mars? it’s not as if there’s any life on mars to begin with …

      anyways, i’m all for sending nazis to outer space; we don’t need them here.

      • 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it
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        11 days ago

        The thing is that you can still try living off the grid on Earth. That wouldn’t be possibile on Mars, thus linking productivity and the right to exist even worse than on Earth.

  • gandalf_der_12te
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    11 days ago

    You mean importing scientists and workforce into the US.

    See Wernher van Braun

  • Tolc@lemmy.zip
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    12 days ago

    “liberating germany from nazi”

    nope, soviet union did it

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    13 days ago

    America tagged along but the vast majority of the liberating was done by the soviets. We were pretty sympathetic to the Nazis for quite a while. The way you see America now is not an aberration, you are seeing what it has truly always been. It wore a variety of masks to hide its true nature, some of them were even convincing but they couldn’t change what America actually is.

  • Loco_Mex@sh.itjust.works
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    12 days ago

    And Germany went from committing genocide on Jewish people to defending Jewish people committing genocide, progress!