India was a champion of the Free World, we respect India's WW2 struggle in this house
India was a champion of the Free World, we respect India's WW2 struggle in this house
45 comments
-
-
US taking credit in WWII is only happening in US. In EU we consider USSR being the one that took the most hit and the one that eventually made a final push to win that war.
-
If you learn history by watching American movies then I can see people believing we won it.
But in school I was taught the old adage: American steel, British intelligence, and Russian blood won the war.
-
We do? Guess my history lessons didn't cover this. I thought we were all equal, apart from the US only joining during the last half
-
Where are you from in the EU? Cause that's not how it's taught at all, from my background. The USSR helped start the war and without the lend lease program, from the uk/us, would have probably been taken over by the nazis.
-
EU is not a monolith. It really depends on where you grew up. Here in the Netherlands we learn mostly about the Canadians, British and Polish forces and Americans troops. Since those were the units that liberated the country.
-
Similarly, I feel like Canada's contribution is overblown, but that's probably because I'm in Canada.
-
Your per capita contribution was enormous - just like it was in WWI.
And in my opinion, you guys were cheated out of the chance to make a truly epic and quintessentially Canadian contribution: the fleet of giant aircraft carriers made out of ice.
-
-
Some fun facts: during WWII, one of the biggest contributions the US made to the USSR war effort was food (as well as trucks to transport it). More specifically meat, since one of the side effects of Stalin's assault on the "kulaks" (or wealthy peasants) in the 1930s was the annihilation of something like 80-90% of the Soviet Union's livestock (the main effect, of course, was the annihilation of 5-7 million human beings). And even more specifically SPAM, which Russians often referred to as "second front" - a dig on the fact that they were getting canned meat instead of an invasion of Europe by the Western Allies.
-
-
"champion of the free world".
The "Free world" that literally colonized in India at that time...
-
I'm so out of the loop on history (ie, an american)
-
We all rebuild our understanding of the past piece by piece! You're in good company here! 🙏
-
I’m an American who moved to Germany and it’s rough. I was a curious kid and enjoyed every subject except for history in school, so I retained a base level of knowledge in most of those subjects. I did not in history, and my dumb ass realized a couple of years ago that I wasn’t confusing them, there was both a Thirty Years’ War , and a Hundred Years’ War.
Anyway, I’ve been slowly educating myself about at least German history, and it’s a lot easier to get into it as an adult.
-
Depending on you proficiency in German (and potentially to help improve it), I can recommend the podcast "Geschichten aus der Geschichte". It's two historians presenting interesting historical topics to each other, ranging from Arctic expeditions to Zanzibaran princesses. Other topics include the Saxophone, Axolotls, supposed werewolves and Polynesian wayfinders (really, there's no limit except it needs to be historical).
-
-
Lord Hardthrasher did an amazing series on WWII in Southeast Asia that showed the true grit of Indian troops
-
Can we get context for the "having all its wealth drained" bit?
-
Taxes in India were significantly increased by Britain during the war, almost tripling if memory serves. India was still quite impoverished at this time, so it's no exaggeration to say that this imposition represented a massive extraction of wealth from India.
-
Not to mention the Bengal famine of 1943, which is apparently due to Churchill diverting the food resources to the soldiers, starving the population: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
-
-
Short answer - British
Long answer - Colonisation by the British
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4
It's not too long (15 minutes), but it's a very good speech about the economic situation in India before and after British colonization.
-
as an Indian, I have heard people around me say, britishers looted all of our riches, the riches being gold from the western, central, southern kingdoms in both late 18th century and throughout 19th century; we had high taxes imposed and east india company had trade monopoly, then in 20th century the taxation was getting out of hand and a lot of indians were becoming slaves at indigo plantations, then slowly came the revolution and in mid 20th century wwII, some indians got control of our iron and coal mines, tata's and birla and I forgot, our mills and by now we had some educated-literate folks which led the revolution...
if you go on Instagram for a while and scroll, you'd eventually find some content with indians in the comment section blowing up about our past glory and ancient hinduism and what not. We lowkey still have tons of uneducated idiots
-
-
The Gurkhas didn't start getting veteran benefits until 2014.
-
Seams like someone should mentioned the British Empire. We'd been "volunteering" Indians for things all over the world for about two hundred years. After WWI, the Empire had never been so big, none had, but it was broke. WWII forced liquidation to pay the US for supplies. The US didn't join the actural war until after it was clear Germany wasn't going to win. That the summary of what I learnt.
-
pfft america didn't get all the credit for ww2. just the lion's share of the profits. and the smarties that survived.
-
45 comments
I feel the upper part of this meme is about ww2 in the western world (against the germans & their friends) and the bottom part is about the ww2 in the eastern world (against japan). Would argue India isn't actually alone underwater in this second part of the meme.
India sent hundreds-of-thousands of soldiers to the European and North African fronts, though.
Did India send soldiers, or did Britain send Indian
soldiersconscripts?