On May 23rd, Russia’s RT headlined “Soviet Union oddly missing from US-made coin ‘saluting’ WWII Allies” and displayed a private firm’s, the Bradford Exchange’s, “commemorative” “WWII 75th Anniversary 24K Gold-Plated gold-plated” coin, which is being marketed as an ‘investment’, and which on one of its sides shows US Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, and on the opposite side shows the flags of US, Britain, and France.
Russia had lost, to Germany’s Nazis, 13,950,000, or exactly 12.7% of its population. Another part of the Soviet Union, Belarus, lost 2.29 million, or exactly 25.3% of its population to Hitler. Another part of the USSR, Ukraine, lost 6.85 million, or 16.3%. The entire Soviet Union lost 26.6 million, exactly 13.7% of its population to Hitler. The US lost only 419,400, or 0.32% of its population. Furthermore, immediately after FDR died and Harry S. Truman became President, the US CIA (then as its predecessor organization the OSS) provided protection and employment in Germany for top members of Hitler’s equivalent to the CIA, the Gehlen Organization. (America’s CIA continues flagrantly to violate the law and hide from Congress and the American people crucial details of its relationship with the Gehlen Organization.) By contrast, the Soviet Union was unremitting in killing Nazis whom it captured.
Without the immense sacrifices by the USSR, Hitler would almost certainly have won WWII and Americans be living under Nazi rule, but the owner of that ‘investments’-firm airbrushes Russia totally out of the Allies’ victory.
The Bradford Exchange was founded by billionaire J. Roderick MacArthur, a rabid neoconservative liberal, whose fortune was left to heirs and to the liberal John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which sponsors its ‘genius’ awards; and also left to the Harper’s Magazine Foundation to buy that Magazine and place his son J.R. MacArthur in charge of it. They’re also major funders of NPR and PBS, America’s ‘public’ radio and TV.
As for US Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, they started the Cold War on 26 July 1945 at the Potsdam Conference between Truman, Churchill, and Stalin, each of which relied upon advisors. Eisenhower turned out to have been the key one for Truman.
Steve Neal’s 2002 Harry and Ike says (p. 40), “Truman was elated that Stalin was preparing to join the Allies in the war against Japan. [Stalin had made that intention clear to Truman on July 17th.] [But, on July 26th] Eisenhower advised [Truman against that, because, said Ike] ‘no power on earth could keep the Red Army out of that war unless victory came before they could get in.’” So, Truman rejected the overwhelming opposition he had received from the scientists, who favored doing only a public test-demonstration of the A-bomb for Japan’s leaders to view, and he simply nuked both Hiroshima and Nagasaki — in order to keep the Soviets out of Japan, not in order to win the war against Japan. (Then, of course, the very tactful Ike became Truman’s successor, and led, for what at the end of his Presidency he famously named the “military industrial complex,” which he warned against only after he had already served as the President and already given the generals whatever they had asked for.)
The Potsdam Conference ended on 2 August 1945, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred on 6 and 9 August — both within a week of that Conference.
So: those bomb-drops by Truman were part of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, spurred by Eisenhower’s advice, and not really part of the hot WWII to beat Japan, as the myth has it.
And, now, perhaps (according to the Bradford Exchange and other memorializers of a WWII victory that’s cleansed of the Russian ‘stain’ on it), is the time to airbrush Stalin out of the picture altogether, even though he was actually the key person in the defeat of the Nazis, and thus in all of the Allies’ — USSR, UK, and USA. — WWII victory.
Perhaps the reason why France (instead of USSR) was included on that coin, is that that country, which was defeated by the Nazis (instead of having contributed significantly to the Allies’ win), is viewed more sympathetically by propaganda-drenched Americans, than is the country which actually did more than any other — including than the United States itself — in order actually to defeat Hitler.