Our Worst Blunders in the War: Europe and the Russians
A Baltimorean who graduated from the United States Naval Academy and who subsequently saw service aboard our destroyers and battleships, HANSON W. BALDWIN has been the military editor of the New York Times since 1912, in which year his articles earned him the Pulitzer Prize. In the preparation of an extended history of the Second World War, he has added up the most costly mistakes which we made in the conflict. There are six of them; they all stem from our original misreading of the Russian mind. In prose which is absorbing if sometimes painful reading, they will be analyzed in this and the February issue.
Of course, Patton saw Stalin for what he was.
FDR ws too old to be at Yalta
I’m not so charitable to Roosevelt. I don’t think he just got “hoodwinked”. He was a radical progressive, basically a socialist himself, so he was sympathetic to the communists and probably wanted them to win, which is why he tried to hand them the world on a silver platter.
When I studied the Russian Revolution and the USSR in university, one of Kennan’s books (Russia and The West IIRC) was marked as an important reading item for the course.
Naivete. But FDR was in very poor health at Yalta and in no condition for serious negotiations. He would pass away just two months later.
Interesting history...Churchill-Roosevelt-Stalin. Thanks for posting.
Nothing much would have changed had FDR been sterner with Stalin at Yalta. What leverage did FDR have? The Red Army of 1945 was massive, experienced, and well-led. Trying to dislodge them from Eastern Europe would have been difficult, and very bloody.
I suppose the western Allies would have won eventually due to their air power advantage. But no way would the American people have stood for it. “Your son survived fighting Nazi Germany. Now we are going to throw him into a meat grinder against a country that was our ally just yesterday.”
Typical Democrat reasoning. APPEASE AND PLEASE.
It never ever works.
A despot will sense weakness and strike while he has the advantage........................
By that logic, we should have simply let Germany and Hitler bash each other's brains out, and stayed out of WWII
“I can’t believe Brezhnev lied to me!” Jimmy “the idiot” Carter.
L
FDR was far too leftist and had no great love of constitutionality but the man was at death’s door during the Malta meeting... I can cut him some slack on what happened there... the VP should have already taken over as president long before Yalta.
Honestly, as much as people talk about Yalta, there wasn’t much FDR and Churchill could have done. The Red Army was already in central Europe by that point. The real mistake was in giving the Soviets too much help earlier such that they could project power that far from their supply bases. Specifically, if the US and Canada had not supplied them with 2,000 locomotives, a bunch of rolling stock and half a million trucks, they could never have pushed that far Westward. They would have been relegated to using horses to supply their armies the further West they went. Everybody saw how well it went for the Germans when they tried to do that.
Putin can achieve almost everything he wants by renouncing Stalin’s annexation of Eastern Poland.
Misread hell, HIS WHOLE AMINISTRATIOM WAS CRAWLING WITH SOVIET SPIES. He was a Traitor.
FDR was a Socialist - heart and soul.
His only concern in life was being reelected every four years.
He was not naive, and he did not blunder away anything.
Everything that FDR did at Yalta was deliberate.
Everything Dementia Joe does is also deliberate.