The US didn't save France from Germany, they saved it from USSR

Submitted by Jacques Lema (Switzerland), Oct 3, 2005 at 06:25

The title says it all. It seems everytime some french starts bragging (which is often...) an american will come and tell him to shut up because "without the US they'll all be speaking german". Always the same exact sentence... do they teach it in school or something?

LOOK AT A MAP. From 1939 to 1945. What do you see at the end ? I see the russian army coming back from russia through poland and into germany and finally reaching Berlin. They defeated the nazis. They may have made less movies about it but they were the ones who actually won the war. The nasty communist did it. Get used to it. The vast majority of the nazi army died in Russia.

Just look at this map:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/ww2-loss.htm

Who destroyed the german troops? Hint: have a look on the right area of this map. What is the most important battle? By looking at this map I see the war was between nazis and commies and the other players like italy, france and the US were pretty secondary.

So: Yes, the US army (and Canadians and others) did liberate France. But they did it at the last moment. Because after that it would just be too late. The Soviets would have gone through France and probably gone on to spain and portugal.

As another poster said, the US helped a lot with loans. Militarily I am still convinced Europe could have done a lot without them. We'd just be communists. Not that I would have liked it. I am grateful to the US for saving US 70 years (probably more?) of hard-liner communist rule.

I insist again that I don't intend to deny the suffering of the soldiers who fought to win france. I just want to stress out the main politics behind it. It's about controlling Europe not freeing it.

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