Yeah that’s why I used the word “legacy”. He took part in the Yalta conference and along with Churchil they basically gave away Polish sovereignity to fucking Stalin. They also gave away Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Chechoslovakia, Romania and East Germany. He literally trusted one of the original invaders in 39’. He is the main reason the cold war even happened.
Oh. The Yalta Myth, I should’ve guessed. A contender for the founding enemy within type myth for the modern American far right.
What do you think they should have done instead? Immediately gone to war with the Soviets? Congrats! WW3 is much worse than the cold war.
The Soviets already held nearly the entirety of Poland by the time of the Yalta conference. The rest of the allies probably couldn’t have done anything to prevent that level of Soviet imperialism, even militarily. See: operation unthinkable, the korean war, the chinese civil war
Nah.
Lincoln
Honorable mentions:
FDR (that is, if you weren’t ethnically Japanese)
George Washington (that is, if you weren’t black, he’d been a great president)
Yea I feel like every “Great” leader has a dark shadow. There are no saints in leadership, especially not a leader of a large country.
Of the names you listed, only Washington was ever an ex-president. Lincoln and FDR died in office.
Ex-President
Dead is technically an ex-president. They are no longer a president. Former, now dead, president.
Washington was a pretty bad president if you were Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois).
FDR left a legacy of betraying allies in the post WW2 world. Fuck him.
FDR died before the end of WW2? How would any betrayal of the US allies post WW2 be on him?
Yeah that’s why I used the word “legacy”. He took part in the Yalta conference and along with Churchil they basically gave away Polish sovereignity to fucking Stalin. They also gave away Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Chechoslovakia, Romania and East Germany. He literally trusted one of the original invaders in 39’. He is the main reason the cold war even happened.
Oh. The Yalta Myth, I should’ve guessed. A contender for the founding enemy within type myth for the modern American far right.
What do you think they should have done instead? Immediately gone to war with the Soviets? Congrats! WW3 is much worse than the cold war.
The Soviets already held nearly the entirety of Poland by the time of the Yalta conference. The rest of the allies probably couldn’t have done anything to prevent that level of Soviet imperialism, even militarily. See: operation unthinkable, the korean war, the chinese civil war
A decent essay with citations, even if it is from a firmly neoconservative source. https://nationalinterest.org/article/the-yalta-myth-1052
An article from an american liberal source, responding to the same W. Bush Speech as the previous essay, and whose talking points you echo. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/05/what-really-happened-at-yalta.html
Finally, to round it out; a pair of articles by Alger Hiss, who attended the Yalta conference, and who was later investigated by McCarthy’s House Unamerican Activities Committee, specifically by then rising star Richard Nixon. One from the 50s: https://algerhiss.com/alger-hiss/in-his-own-words/yalta-modern-american-myth/ Another from the 80s: https://algerhiss.com/alger-hiss/in-his-own-words/two-yalta-myths/
What should he have done? Maybe not sell out their allies to an invader. Calling it “a myth” is such a fucking evil take it’s not even funny.
That’s not an answer. What should he have done? How do you prevent the cold war in February of 1945?