Victory in Europe: One Year Later 

You know it's gonna be a good day when you wake up to seeing a new Rob lecture on RU-vid

The few years after the war are just as interesting as the war itself.

Dad said he now has a Man Crush on Dr. C!

Excellent!

As I become more aware of the Bengali famine caused by the British it is more difficult to draw a clear contrast with British and Japanese imperialism in Asia at that time. The British caused the deaths of millions of their subject population. Yes, the Japanese were more systematic in their approach but the lines begin to blur when we start learning what was happening in Asia around this time.

What is the real date of the Surender of Germany? General Doenitz signed the surrender somewhere in GermanyWas it in Lueneburg?.

I stumbled on this and it was excellent! ww2 history is still so applicable to today's world. I like what he said about the 'soft power' of the USA. The power of things like transparency or due process or how to behave as a world war winner opened up global markets and increased economic and military stability for the next 50+ years. The contrast of FDR's vs Truman's approach to Stalin poses a great hypothetical question of history. we went from charitable and permissive to hardline and threatening from the Yalta to Potsdam conference. What if we had set firm expectations with the aid we provided to Russia starting in 1941? could we have altered the fate of post-war Eastern Europe and reduced the escalation of the cold war? Could we have created a precedent and prevented the Korean and Vietnam wars? Stalin's media spin about the allies was that Russia was carrying all the load and until we opened a second front in France we were not doing anything. First, it was untrue: the bombing campaign (with the highest casualty rate of any branch of any allied armed force) was a 'front', Africa was a 'front', Italy was a 'front', and our pacific was with Japan which prevented a threat to the USSR was a 'front'. But more to the point, our aid from 1941-on in critical provisions and military equipment may have prevented a soviet defeat, and our ships and sailors were regularly attacked with the arctic convoys to Russia. My point is, We had a brief but powerful window of leverage with Stalin, why didn't we try to get commitments from him for our aid, a quid-pro-quo which could have prevented millions murdered and oppressed and a 50-year cold war? One of the biggest shifts from 1946-on was embedding anti-communism in not just our foreign policy, but the core of our culture. But I've listened to what FDR said, and he talked about American values of democracy and self-determination. He told the allies that these values were needed for a peaceful world, but he didn't put teeth into it. I think FDR was spot-on with message, but imho, he lost a one-time chance to pressure Stalin for post-war commitments. Post war, everything in the U.S. from public policy to popular culture became an ideological, anti-communism battle. I doubt the world was ever passionately ideological, and we lost our leverage by going off-message. Standing up for 'democracy' or 'self-determination' is simple, sincere and defensible. But being 'anti-communist' only made it easy for Stalin to spin everything as us being out to get him!

Soft Left. Interesting. Always suspected that. I will keep monitoring his talks to glean any other information central to political leanings. Rather disappointed I am.