Time to Face the Truth About World War II

"Last week's 70th anniversary of World War II has reopened old wounds and ignited an ugly battle of words between Russia and its neighbors, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states.
Poland and the Balts accuse Stalin's Soviet Union of having stabbed them in the back in 1939 by becoming a partner in aggression with National Socialist Germany.
Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCEPA) recently held the USSR and Germany `equally responsible for World War II.' After 70 years of disinformation, it's about time we face the facts.

"A flat-out lie," angrily retorted Russia's president, Dimitry Medvedev.

The Soviet Union lost some 25 million dead in World War II. Russians are quite right in believing that they, not the US and British Empire, defeated Hitler's Germany. Russians fought with incredible heroism, suffered unthinkably casualties and damage, and ground Nazi Germany into dust.

The Allies played an important but comparatively far less important role in Europe against an already defeated and exhausted Germany.

Underlining Moscow's worrying rehabilitation of Stalin's memory and the gradual erasure of his crimes, Medvedev claimed the Soviet dictator saved Europe from Hitler and rejected all attempts to equate him with Hitler.

But the facts tell us a different story. Stalin was an even worse mass murderer than Hitler by a factor of three or four. He alone ordered the deaths of 6-7 million Ukrainians in the mid-1930's. Stalin was also a much cleverer strategist, war leader and diplomat than Hitler, who stumbled into a war that Germany could not possibly win and for which it was woefully unprepared."

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Eric Margolis: Time to Face the Truth About World War II

 

If I get started down this road I'll never stop.....

So I'll keep it short....

Did Russia do well more than the bulk of the work to defeat nazi germany? With all my being I say yes...yes they truly did.

Was Stalin an insane, murderous, back stabbing, conquesting man? No questions asked yes...

This part of history is a very interesting segment. Stalin was a horrible person who was responsible for ruining the lives of so many people...his own and others. Yet on the other hand (and of course this was because the of the times, propaganda etc) but I truly believe that the Soviet people's fought so hard in part (a huge part) because they so strongly believed in Stalin and the communist ideals. It's scary to think that a large part of the soldiers and people's fight was in part to this man making him an almost necessary evil at the time.


Ilya

 

Ive seen many explanations as to why germany initiated ww2 " Germany stumbling into ww2" though, takes the proverbial...

 

I guess we should ignore the whole Lend-Lease Program, the Battle of Britain, the North Africa and Italy Campaign, the bombing of Germany's Industrial heart, opening a second front in France, etc...oh, how could I forget, the whole PTO as well!! Didn't you guys hear? Russia also single handedly defeated the Russians!

 

Both madmen had plans for expansion. The blood the USSR payed to win their part of the war does not alter the fact that USSR invaded Finland and the Baltic countries and part of Rumania.

If there was no Hitler I am sure that Stalin would have provoked a war in Europe on his own. But since Hitler was there a clash between the two nations was a certain thing.

The big question is what would have happened if there was no non agression pact. It is this pact that is tarnisihing the USSR policies regarding war guilt.

 

True jaeger. But at end of the day im still glad that we shared a common enemy.. Thats the duplicitous brit in me. Took us half a dozen years to defeat one menace and nearly 50 the other. There were not that many options. Nothing though expunges soviet crimes either even those we may have played a part in. Ww2 called for the defeat of nazism and nippon hegemony above all else. Strange bedfellows had to be made in its course. To the russian soldier though.. He was bound to wander what great coated germans were doing this far into russia..at moscow and stalingrad..and have no questions on who was right or wrong as we can today.

 

Flash! Both Hitler and Stalin were villains -but the working thesis is "my enemy"s enemy is my friend" -so Stalin -for the time -was our friend.

It is true that the Soviets had enormous losses in personnel -but they also had enormous support from the US and Britain in terms of materiel -and had the western allies not been pounding Germany from the west -things would have definitely gone differently in Russia.

Jock Williams Yogi 13