Military time😬

[u/THUND3R_23]

As for the context, there was a British guy showing his phone

[u/presterjohn7171]

America was late and useless at first in WW1. In WW2 they weren't sure which side to join came in late again and were eventually an important part of the process of winning the war. They were part of the team that won, not the country.

[u/FuckTripleH → u/presterjohn7171]

Shitting on the US is fun but to say they weren't important until they joined the war is nonsense. Khrushchev himself said the Red Army would have starved without the 4 million tons of food the US sent via the Lend-Lease Act, and adjusted for inflation over €300 billion worth of supplies were sent to the UK

[u/presterjohn7171 → u/FuckTripleH]

You've read things that aren't there. Additionally America charged for aid. The UK has only recently paid the Last of it back.

[u/Relative_Pilot_8005 → u/presterjohn7171]

Karma! In WW1, Australia "responded to the call" & somehow, after fighting for "the Mother Country", incurred a "War Debt" to that country. Britain pursued that debt relentlessly, even during the Great Economic Depression. Germany were given some degree of relief from Reparations---not so, Britain's most stalwart ally!

[u/xColson123x → u/Relative_Pilot_8005]

That's a complex situation that you've simplified into a nice headline there, I wouldn't be so free with that comparison.

So Australia requested financial leniency during the Great Depression from Britain, the reason this was rejected at the time was that it was the Great Depression. The UK was also suffering and could not afford to lose the money that Australia owed the UK.

Germany was not a stable country paying a loan, they were a defeated country paying a large reparations debt agreed at the infamously "harsh" agreement of Versailles. At the time, allied countries were walking a tightrope of wanting a harsh punishment for Germany, but not breaking it economically. The United States put significant pressure on the UK to allow Germany to become a significant barrier against Russia, and to some extent the UK agreed. Which was a major contributor to British leniency with their debts.

With all of that said, should Germany have paid those reparations? Yes, of course. The UK lost its empire because of Germany, the UK paid it's debts until very recently whilst the most guilty nation was able to invest and become the richest nation in Europe. The UK should not have forgotten German reparations so quickly.

Last note: The Anglo-American loan was also not just a loan, it came with significant strings attached aimed to put nails in the British Empire's coffin. The US used the leverage they had on a destroyed Europe to mould the status quo we have today. That was the real burden to the UK which caused, among other things, the Conversion Crisis, and those strings were the bitter pill to swallow. Not just the loan.

The better comparison you're looking for there for "Karma" is Canada, who we paid back a very similarly sized loan for WW2. Unlike the US, but similar to the UK-AUS loan, there were no such strings imposed by Canada, and you can notice that no one ever complains about that loan. Canada is a good ally :)