So you know how everyone goes like, "Man, the thirties were the dishonest decade, la la la?"

The problem that France, England, and the USA had to deal with during the Second World War was that of their uneasy alliance with the Soviet Union.  Before the war, one rationale for the appeasement of Hitler's insatiable territorial appetite had been the creation of fascist buffer states in eastern Europe that could halt the expansion of Soviet Communism.  The war didn't change anything; before the war we allied with the fascists against the communists, during the war we allied with the communists against the fascists, and after the war we allied with the fascists against the communists.  (Not to keep harping on the same tune, but Tim Weiner in Legacy of Ashes mentions that most of the CIA agents that were recruited in eastern Europe were either ex-Nazis or otherwise undesirable.)  This is why the forties were totally the dishonest decade.