"Balance of Power nonsense"?
The soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, with it's huge army, that was only possible because of the manpower freed up by Lend Lease, led directly to the Cold War and generations of nuclear standoff.
If something had every gone wrong, it could have been the End of the World.
NOt to mention the Korean and Vietnamese Wars, and dozens of little proxy conflicts that destroyed whole nations.
Do you know what you're doing?
What you are doing, is simply blaming every mistake FDR ever made, and any unintended negative consequence that came out of a global conflict, squarely on FDR...just exactly like the GOP does today with Obama. And why not, the same GOP strategy organizations came up with all these revisions of history, dictate the campaigns against Democrats today. What you're saying is not being said by historians or journalists, it's being contrived by political consultants with communications degrees hire by the GOP.
Look at what you wrote again.
You blamed Vietnam on FDR.
Vietnam played out the way it did because of French reluctance to admit their colonial claims to the region were not viable post war. Then Eisenhower, and then Kennedy.
The Cold War grew out of the end of WWII.
Looking back I can see no evidence that FDR gave any thought to the post war balance of power.
Presidents are supposed to think ahead.
That's insane.
One word.............Yalta
The Avalon Project Yalta Crimea Conference
Yes. Insane.
"The establishment of order in Europe and the rebuilding of national economic life must be achieved by processes which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of nazism and fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice. This is a principle of the
Atlantic Charter - the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live - the restoration of sovereign rights and self-government to those peoples who have been forcibly deprived to them by the aggressor nations.
To foster the conditions in which the liberated people may exercise these rights, the three governments will jointly assist the people in any European liberated state or former Axis state in Europe where, in their judgment conditions require,
(a) to establish conditions of internal peace;
(b) to carry out emergency relief measures for the relief of distressed peoples;
(c) to form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of Governments responsive to the will of the people; and
(d) to facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections."
That was the extent of FDR's use of leverage.
He exacted from Stalin a promise to hold free elections in Eastern Europe...
How did that work out?
We sent fuel and trains, and food and trucks and opened a second front and refused to negotiate a surrender and Stalin made a promise that only a retard child would have believed.
