> I am not sure how the US was complicit in this exactly.
We were allied with the Soviet Union and explicitly agreed to the program of forced relocations. I agree with you that the vast majority of the blame should be placed on the communists, but in my opinion the United States was still too naive and conciliatory towards Stalin during the war. If there was some way that the Nazis and communists could have both lost World War II without killing everyone else in Eastern Europe along the way, that would have been ideal. Unfortunately, that’s not how things work. I think the US ultimately took one of the better possible courses of action, but I still have my criticisms.
> You skipped the part where ethnic cleansing was also done to the Poles in Eastern Poland, and they were moved at gun-point to where I currently am writing from.. Lower Silesia. The understanding here was that the USSR moved Poland to the East, so that Russia moved further to the East.
Yes, thanks for bringing this up. Aside from the Kaliningrad Oblast, I think it was mostly Belarus and Ukraine that moved west, though the distinction between Russia and Ukraine is much more salient today than it was at the time.
Thanks for sharing your family history. I absolutely agree that the truth is extremely complicated and defies any simplistic and tendentious narrative that anyone tries to apply to it.
> I agree with you that the vast majority of the blame should be placed on the communists, but in my opinion the United States was still too naive and conciliatory towards Stalin during the war.
Historically, is seems as there is a normalcy bias[0] towards Moscow, whether it's the USA, UK, Germany, or France, trying to consider Russia as a "normal" European peer society. While Moscow keeps proving that they are not, and mostly that their leadership sees an advantage in being some sort of contrarian opposition to the ideals of Europe.
A while back in modern history, imperial Germany was also this type of problem. Is it too late to destroy and rebuild Russia, as Germany was rebuilt, now that nukes are involved?
How this divide is to be conquered all these decades later is still the challenge of our times. I almost give up. Our governments are clearly not up to the task, even today. My only hope at this point are very brave Russian artists like IC3PEAK.
We were allied with the Soviet Union and explicitly agreed to the program of forced relocations. I agree with you that the vast majority of the blame should be placed on the communists, but in my opinion the United States was still too naive and conciliatory towards Stalin during the war. If there was some way that the Nazis and communists could have both lost World War II without killing everyone else in Eastern Europe along the way, that would have been ideal. Unfortunately, that’s not how things work. I think the US ultimately took one of the better possible courses of action, but I still have my criticisms.
> You skipped the part where ethnic cleansing was also done to the Poles in Eastern Poland, and they were moved at gun-point to where I currently am writing from.. Lower Silesia. The understanding here was that the USSR moved Poland to the East, so that Russia moved further to the East.
Yes, thanks for bringing this up. Aside from the Kaliningrad Oblast, I think it was mostly Belarus and Ukraine that moved west, though the distinction between Russia and Ukraine is much more salient today than it was at the time.
Thanks for sharing your family history. I absolutely agree that the truth is extremely complicated and defies any simplistic and tendentious narrative that anyone tries to apply to it.