While times seem bad, and they are worse than they used to be, especially with the election of Donald Trump, imagine what it was like during WW2. Nazi Germany invaded France, Czechoslovakia, and half of Poland (with the Soviet Union the other half); Britain stood alone. Spain was under fascist dictatorship. Now Russia barely controls 1/5 of Ukraine, and has suffered many thousands of losses in tanks and armoured vehicles. Modern Russia is now weaker than the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany was (for their time period).
I do wish people would stop with the “Britian stood alone.” stuff. Even before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, there were Allies fighting all over the world, resistance movements in every single continental European country, famously France, but also the Nederlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The entire British Empire was at war, either based in Britain, as saboteurs on the continent, on fronts from east Asia to the Sahara – Canada, Newfoundland, Nepal, Australia, New Zealand – India alone lost 2 million fighters (look it up!), Burma, Malta, South Africa, Egypt, and southern Rhodesia. China did not just surrender blindly: before 1941, both Mao and Sun Yat-sen had armies fighting the Japanese which kept them from attacking the Soviet Union after Hitler turned. Mongolia and Korea never stopped fighting, either. Britain endured the Blitz, it is true, and Churchill certainly made some great speeches about ‘standing alone’ while he was sacrificing literally millions of ‘colonials’ to preserve his European troops. But it was, and is, propaganda.
While times seem bad, and they are worse than they used to be, especially with the election of Donald Trump, imagine what it was like during WW2. Nazi Germany invaded France, Czechoslovakia, and half of Poland (with the Soviet Union the other half); Britain stood alone. Spain was under fascist dictatorship. Now Russia barely controls 1/5 of Ukraine, and has suffered many thousands of losses in tanks and armoured vehicles. Modern Russia is now weaker than the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany was (for their time period).
I do wish people would stop with the “Britian stood alone.” stuff. Even before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, there were Allies fighting all over the world, resistance movements in every single continental European country, famously France, but also the Nederlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The entire British Empire was at war, either based in Britain, as saboteurs on the continent, on fronts from east Asia to the Sahara – Canada, Newfoundland, Nepal, Australia, New Zealand – India alone lost 2 million fighters (look it up!), Burma, Malta, South Africa, Egypt, and southern Rhodesia. China did not just surrender blindly: before 1941, both Mao and Sun Yat-sen had armies fighting the Japanese which kept them from attacking the Soviet Union after Hitler turned. Mongolia and Korea never stopped fighting, either. Britain endured the Blitz, it is true, and Churchill certainly made some great speeches about ‘standing alone’ while he was sacrificing literally millions of ‘colonials’ to preserve his European troops. But it was, and is, propaganda.