End of Empires: who and what was responsible? (post WW2)

[Dayuhan]

the legacy of FDR is more pernicious than any in that his actions led to eastern Europe being delivered to a 40 plus year period of servitude under the Soviet jackboot

What exactly did FDR do that "led to eastern Europe being delivered to a 40 plus year period of servitude under the Soviet jackboot"? Please don't refer to Yalta, because when that took place eastern Europe was already under the Soviet jackboot. I've no doubt that FDR hadf an excessively rosy view of Stalin and the Soviets, but whether a different view would have changed anything is very much open to question. Restricting lend-lease supplies during the war would have crippled the Soviet effort, but would have also made the Allied effort in Europe vastly more difficult; under the circumstances it's difficult to fault the decision to supply the Soviets. The US would not in any event have pushed forces farther into Europe than Germany, and once the Germans fell the Soviets would in all likelihood have pushed into eastern Europe anyway.

What exactly would you have wanted the US to do?

his strong anti-colonial position led to an all too rapid race for and granting of self-determination among colonies which devastated virtually all of Africa leaving a legacy of death, destruction and misery still evident today.

A truly remarakble and quite unsupportable position.

Yes, FDR was anti-colonial, a quite reasonable position. Yes, colonies fell after WW2. Can you cite any evidence to demonstrate that colonies fell because of FDR's anti-colonial position?

There's no way on earth that a colonial power that saw their colonies as a productive, profitable asset, desired to retain them, and had the capacity to retain them would suddenly leap up and decolonize because a dead American had expressed anti-colonial sentiments. None at all. The idea is too absurd to warrant consideration. The colonial powers divested because the colonies were no longer productive or profitable and they no longer had the capacity to retain them, not because of anything FDR said, thought, or did. He was a President, not God, he didn't the kind of influence that would compel powers to dispose of colonies long after his death.

Have you any evidence that establishes a causative link between FDRs opinions and subsequent colonial divestments?

Whether an extended colonial period would have made decolonization any easier or more orderly is another question. It's very much a debatable question, but since the colonial powers never had the capacity or (in many cases) the will to maintain the crumbling and anachronistic system, it's also an irrelevant question.

The historical record is clear that the actions of FDR thrump the likes of Mao, Stalin and Hitler in the shear scale and breadth of the death, destruction and misery his policies and actions caused peoples and countries across the world.

I understand that the historical record with regard to FDR is not palatable to most Americans and that subsequently it has been "glossed over" or misrepresented to avoid the the kind of national angst Germany has suffered since WW2 but is it not time for the nation to face up to the truth and relegate this destructively failed statesman to the scrapheap of history... after all he deserves no better.

Your interpretation of the historical record is clear. That's not exactly revealed truth, and given the pronounced absence of any supporting evidence it's not the most credible of positions either. The problem is less a lack of palatability than a lack of credibility.

If the US could go back and do thje cold war over again, knowing what we know now, There were numerous mistakes. One of them, IMO, was the failure to accept the momentum of history and take a more aggressively anti-colonial position. Too often we hitched our wagon to falling stars in the name of fighting communism; support for the French in Indochina is only the most egregious example. History doesn't afford the luxury of second chances, though, and the degree of blame that can be assigned to those who were neither omniscient nor clairvoyant is limited. Easy to look back and point out mistakes. Whether any of us could have done better in their shoes is doubtful.

I asked this before, and it wasn't answered:

Just for the sake of amusement, what do you think the leaders of post-WW2 America could or should have done, and how exactly would that have assured orderly decolonization?

Easy to criticize what was done; but what would you suggest as a practical alternative, even with the benefit of hindsight?