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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (248256)	11/12/2007 2:18:24 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<How many more americans would have died than did> that is exactly why Truman dropped the A Bomb, twice...........

To: michael97123 who wrote (248256)	11/12/2007 4:52:49 PM
From: Noel de Leon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"...russians took as much as they could...." Michael you should study the Yalta agreement, The Soviets were given Eastern Europe since they occupied it, the US, Britain, and France got Western Europe. Nobody took anything from anyone in the sense that there was an agreement between the Allies on how to divide Europe. "Allegations about Yalta would play a significant role in United States politics during the Cold War. American conservatives alleged that decisions reached at Yalta were a betrayal of the Eastern European nations that resulted in their domination by the Soviet Union. During the McCarthy period, Yalta was a centerpiece of accusations that the Democrats were "soft on communism." The alternative opinion is that there was little Roosevelt or Churchill could have done to prevent Stalin from dominating the Eastern European nations short of war with the Soviet Union, since the Red Army already controlled those Eastern European territories. With the war in the Pacific theater continuing, and the atomic bomb still two months from completion, Roosevelt likely wanted to improve his negotiating position once the atomic bomb was introduced. Stalin had agreed at Yalta to the principle of a liberated Europe, which stated that liberated peoples would have the right to democratic self government. Stalin also agreed that Poland would hold democratic, free elections as soon as feasible. In the alternative opinion, the problem was not the Yalta Conference Agreement itself, but rather Stalin's violation of the Yalta Conference Agreement. [citation needed] The western countries violated Yalta when in 1946 they refused to provide reparations to the Soviet Union from their occupation zone of Germany. The currency reform and the unification of American, British, and French occupation zones violated Yalta. Yalta has often been assessed with hindsight. Historians have often commented that Stalin had shown himself to be immoral, as demonstrated in his purge of the Soviet army in the 1930s and, more recently, his reluctance to help the insurrection in 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and therefore could not have been trusted. However, in October 1944, Stalin and Churchill had agreed in the Percentages Agreement how to divide their respective spheres of influence. Stalin would keep to the majority of this agreement including, most profoundly, denying Soviet support for communist guerrillas in Greece, which Stalin had agreed was part of the British sphere of influence in that agreement. There was also the fact that, at the end of the day, Stalin could have chosen not to allow the Allies into Berlin. It was well within Soviet territory, and he could have said no if he wanted to. The argument that he did so because he wanted to avoid war is flawed, since there was a much greater chance of a war between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies over Poland. Therefore, at the time, there was nothing to suggest for certain that the situation would turn out the way it did." en.wikipedia.org See the section on "Major Points" in the source. Otherwise I agree with your analysis. But in August 1945 the US didn't have any nuclear weapons. So a stockpile would have had to be built up in order to attack the USSR. In fact the USSR didn't move on Western Europe. They returned the island of Bornholm voluntarily after occupying it. "A small German garrison on the island of Bornholm (Denmark) refused to surrender until after being bombed and invaded by the Russians. The island was returned to the Danish government four months later." en.wikipedia.org