How much better off would the world have been, had we rid ourselves of all the great mass-murderers of the 20th Century in the same decade?

Maybe not better off at all, at least with respect to Eastern Europe and the USSR. The really horrific mass murders carried out by the Soviets such as the Holodomor and the Great Terror were already behind them, and as George Kennan correctly anticipated, over time the revolutionary fires of communism burned themselves out.

Moreover, the above assumes that the United States would have won its hypothetical crusade against totalitarianism, something that might not have been the case.

The biggest problem is that the US and UK were both thoroughly penetrated by the Soviets. FDR was virtually the catspaw of Stalin, so infatuated with him was he. The Eastern Europeans were doomed, no matter what, because of all the Soviet-sympathizers in the US government, and in the UK. Had the war continued into Eastern Europe, the amount of dissension and outright sabotage would have boggled the mind–Much like what happened in France in 1940.

The Soviets were past masters at this game, and would have taken full advantage of all the criminal subversives in the ranks of the West. Looking back, we can see the bare bones of how it would have gone–Had Churchill and FDR/Truman wanted to, they would have been undercut at every single turn by “allies” in their own governments. Not to mention that after five years of calling the Soviets such wonderful things in the propaganda, suddenly turning on a dime to declare war on them would have been nearly impossible to accomplish in public opinion.

The die was cast as far back as the moment when the US/UK determined to support the Soviets in 1941. Had they not chosen to call the Soviets heroes, and been more realistic in their portrayal of them in propaganda and public opinion, Eastern Europe might have been saved. As it was, it took five years and the advent of the betrayals of Korea before most in the West started seeing the Soviets and Stalin for what they were–Monsters.

Patton would have needed a totally different set of conditions, before his ideas (which I hate to say, were fairly prescient…) could have been implemented. How much better off would the world have been, had we rid ourselves of all the great mass-murderers of the 20th Century in the same decade? Absent the machinations of Stalin and the Soviet Empire, how much better off would we be, world-wide? Would the horrors of the last few decades of terrorism have even happened, absent the support of the KGB and GRU? How many lives across the world would have been saved, had we strangled all the totalitarians in their cradles? Certainly, North Korea wouldn’t have happened, locking the people of that nation into permanent servitude to a league of madmen supported and created by Stalin. That’s just one small corner of things, as well.

The whole horror show that was the late 20th Century could conceivably been much different, had the extent of Soviet perfidy been known early in the war, and had the Allies seen fit to set the table up for putting a stop to it.

The Soviets themselves should have put Stalin on trial for the massive amount of incompetence he demonstrated throughout the war, and its a wonder he was never assassinated by his own people for the stupidity of most of his decisions. But, then, that’s the Russian nature–Incompetent leadership is to be expected, and followed until the absolute last. It’s too bad that Stalin didn’t suffer the fate of Nicholas, because he sure as hell deserved to.

We might have promised the western Europeans freedom but that was all.

Most of the German effort in the later war was on the Eastern Front. That’s because that’s where all the pressure was.

The Germans thought they could beat the Russians in a matter of weeks, too.

He’s wrong to think of the countries the Red Army had gone through as having been stripped of forage; the Soviets traversed those regions rather quickly. They stole everything that wasn’t nailed down and did a fair bit of raping (according to many first-person accounts, including that of my maternal grandmother), but the productive capacity of the land was relatively unharmed.

Sadly, given the overall strategy that had been pursued since the start of the war, I don’t think it was possible for the western Allies to keep Eastern Europe from falling into Stalin’s hands. It would have been nice if FDR had even tried, though. Some people have suggested an Allied invasion of the Balkans instead of Overlord, in an attempt to beat the Soviets to the punch, but the logistics of that would be challenging almost to the point of impossibility.

I agree, World War 2 was lost from my perspective as well, mua and all Eastern Europe would have welcomed further liberation. Hell, I’d preferred if Adolf made our lands German again, as it was a thousand years before WW1, over the god damned red plague!

“I have never seen in any army at any time, including the German Imperial Army of 1912, as severe discipline as exists in the Russian army. The officers, with few exceptions, give the appearance of recently civilized Mongolian bandits.”

“In my opinion, the American Army as it now exists could beat the Russians with the greatest of ease, because, while the Russians have good infantry, they are lacking in artillery, air, tanks, and in the knowledge of the use of the combined arms, whereas we excel in all three of these. If it should be necessary to fight the Russians, the sooner we do it the better. If we have to fight them, now is the time. From now on we will get weaker and they stronger.” via

If Mr Sykes is correct, and I don’t at all rule out the possibility, alarming how little it would have taken to provoke a mutiny.