Sheldrake wrote: ↑03 Aug 2020, 23:53
There was the small matter of the Russo German pact in which Hitler and Stalin agreed to ignore their ideological differences to invade Poland and gobble up the Baltic states. The British and French contemplated acting against the Soviet Union in Winter 1939-40.
All of this was tossed aside once Germany invaded the USSR, as the Allies seemingly dropped it with Stalin thereafter.
Sheldrake wrote: ↑03 Aug 2020, 23:53
Churchill hated Bolshevism, as did his Cabinet colleagues. The British left had seen what Stalinism brought to the Spanish Civil War. However much the British public might have admired the fighting spirit of the Red Army, anyone with contact with the USSR recognised that it was an evil regime and we were only on the same side because the villains had fallen out. Churchill's verdict was that if Hitler invaded hell he would find a good word to say about the devil. Frankly, Stalin's Russia was pretty close to hell on earth.
This is pretty much as close to the actual reason as to why the UK and US were not in the USSR; it was not an issue of logistics, it was exclusively political. However, the US did not have an ideological problem fighting alongside Communists, they even sent a military delegation to China in order to:
evaluate the Communist potential for military collaboration against the Japanese. This meant American aid and an American relationship,
which was exactly what Chiang Kaishek feared and the reason he had done his best to obstruct the mission.
viewtopic.php?f=113&p=2283697#p2283697
Sounds eerily similar to the UK opposition towards potential French and American combat support in the USSR. We already know that enormous amounts of American aid made it to the USSR, but an American relationship was not encouraged by the UK version of Chiang Kaishek, PM Winston Churchill.
It is well known that he did not like the Communists, there is nothing wrong with that. The Allies do not have to like each other, they only need to treat each other as military professionals, although Churchill did get along well enough around the dinner table with Stalin after a few drinks. The Normandie-Niemen pilots did not convert into Bolsheviks simply because they fought beside them; this is a nonsensical fear and fantasy.
Why would Stalin's miserable society matter to the Allies in determining the location in which they need to fight their common enemy?
They would not care at all, they would fight and win wherever they were sent, so the only conclusion as to why the US and UK were not present on the Eastern Front is
because they intentionally chose not to. This is the point that I made in a previous post, Stalin interpreted that the US and UK were content to let the Soviets do the heavy lifting on the ground, even if it meant the mutual destruction of both the Nazi and Communist governments. Large Allied forces were not necessary, but even a symbolic force could have gone a long way towards a change in the Soviet attitude post-war.
FYI - When the US and USSR ground forces finally did meet in 1945 there were a few instances in which US soldiers were decorated for their joint actions, and they were treated exceptionally well. Here is a photo and the newspaper article detailing one of those soldiers, Master Sergeant Leo Pedroza from the US 84th Infantry Division receiving the Order of the Red Star from a Soviet General (he was a Staff Sergeant at the time of the award).
- Awarding of Red Star.jpg (77.34 KiB) Viewed 1273 times