• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The guys who stormed the beaches of Normandy were “antifa.”

    Many of them were quite literally Communists. The party membership was at its peak during the Great Depression, and American Communists were big advocates of US entrance into the war in the run up to Pearl Harbor. Lots of Americans saw the Western Front as an opportunity to aid their besieged allies in Soviet Russia.

    At the same time, you had pro-Nazi sympathizers who thought we should simply profit off the war by selling to both combatants, or even enter the war on the side of the Germans. The German-American Bund held rallies in New York and Chicago, hoping to win the public over to supporting Germany in its war against the eastern Communists.

    We had a very real and notable split in public opinion on the subject of which side of the war to support in the run up to the Japanese attack on Hawaii. And even after the war, many American conservative politicians remained sympathetic towards the defeated German government in a way they hadn’t been towards the Kaiser’s Reich of WW1, the Spanish during the Spanish-American War, or the American Natives.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The party membership was at its peak during the Great Depression, and American Communists were big advocates of US entrance into the war in the run up to Pearl Harbor.

      Fucking bizarre, considering that for the first two years of the war the US Communist Party followed the ‘party line’ and slobbed the knob of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

      We had a very real and notable split in public opinion on the subject of which side of the war to support in the run up to the Japanese attack on Hawaii.

      Like fuck we did. Jesus Christ. The only question of relevance was whether to join the war or not, not whose side to join it on. Do you enjoy spreading pro-fascist disinformation?