Michael Gerson in his column “Stalin has no place at D-Day memorial” states “For a period during World War II, ‘Uncle Joe’ was an ally. Roosevelt sent about $11 billion worth of war material to Stalin under Lend-Lease.”
WATCHDOG: Lest there be implicit ‘American Particularism’ , we point out that 8,806,453 Soviet Union soldiers died or were missing versus 416,800 American soldiers. The Soviets also suffered 13,684,692 civilian deaths, while the USA had very few.
Stalin accused Roosevelt of a policy of “fighting to the last Russian.” American concessions made at the Malta conference were to obtain Stalin’s agreement to launch a military invasion of Japanese territory.
Stalin was a bad guy. But, during the Second World War, he was our bad guy. The Brits and American soldiers bravely helped and our supply line across the North Atlantic was essential, but Stalin and Russian soldiers were key to beating the Germans.
So perhaps they should honor the Soviet soldiers rather than the murderous Stalin who also was Hitler’s Bad Guy before he was ‘our bad guy”?