Just as some Americans need occasionally to be reminded that the war did not start on 7 December 1941, some Russians apparently need to be reminded that it didn't start on 22 June, 1941, either. The brutal crushing of Poland was something that nobody should need to be reminded of, after all. Or its predation of Jews by both sides.
In fact, the Soviet Union was an ally of all of the major participants of that war at one point or another. I just alluded to the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact but let us not forget the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of April, 1941, an agreement that the Japanese honored even while its merchant marine was being slaughtered by the U.S. More than half the U.S. supplies to the Soviets came through Vladivostok unmolested, even on U.S.-flagged ships. No, none of that is forgotten.
The simple truth about WW2 is:
1) The Red Army killed about 3/4 of all German troops during the war, and the ratio for equipment loss is about the same. It is true that the West has, generally speaking (because there are exceptions) reduced the Soviet role in the war.
2) OTOH, the Soviets have made it seems as if they did everything, whereas the following factors definitely had a significant impact on the entire German war machine - including making things easier for the Soviets:
- Massive bombing of German factories, starting in 1942, and accelerating for the rest of the war.
- Forcing the Germans to defend their airspace. This involved massive aircraft and AA gun resources that couldn’t be utilized against the Soviets.
- The Battle of the Atlantic took away enormous naval resources from the Germans which couldn’t be used against the Soviets in the Baltic Sea and in the area around Murmansk.
- The invasions of North Africa and Sicily/Italy. These pulled significant German resources away from the Eastern Front.
- Even before the D-Day invasion, enormous German manpower, equipment and material resources were devoted to constructing and manning the Western Wall and developing mobile reserve forces.
- Significant equipment and fuel were sent by the US and (primarily) and the UK to the Soviets via Murmansk, the Middle East and Siberia. These resources arguably allowed the Soviets to have sufficient reserves to survive the German offensives of 1941 and 1942, and ultimately giving them must greater logistical resources for the Soviet offensives of 1943-1945.
The bottom line is that both the West and the Soviets contributed mightily to the effort to defeat Germany. By the nature of the war, the Soviets did more on the ground, whereas the Western powers did more in the air and on the seas. That is the objective reality, without giving any weight to who has more effective propaganda or who is more butthurt about what the other side says.
Or we could just talk about the mass genocide inflicted on Europe by the USSR before, during, and after second world war. We’re talk about how the Soviets signing The nonaggression pact to equally invade and occupy Poland as well as Lithuania Latvia Estonia and parts of Romania and Finland enable to conflict to happen in Europe in the first place.
That’s right, I was only eight years old on D day and about the
only thing I knew was that at times on the prairie where we lived
now and then we would see a plane pulling a Target and others following
it to Target peatice.
In the country There were several incidents of shells hitting people’s
roofs or even going through, I didn’t pay much attention as I was too
busy kicking horse turds.
Lavrov is auditioning for a job at CNN.
It worked, and "only" cost tens of millions of lives needlessly, all because Stalin was a psychotic tyrant. Good job. Be "proud" if you must. You were a part of the victory formula... but everyone else actually tried to value the lives of their soldiers, and didn't treat them like cannon fodder. The Soviet ideal of treating life as worthless is not something we want to celebrate anymore, though. FYI.
He’d have more of a leg to stand on, if once they “liberated” eastern europe, they didn’t spend the next 45 or so years oppressing it.
“portray it if not as the main culprit of the war, then at least as an aggressor, along with Nazi Germany”
They were an aggressor, and an ally (secretly) of Germany at the start of the war. It was no coincidence that Russia invaded Poland at exactly the same time as the Germans invaded Poland, and it was no coincidence that they split the country in two and never fired a shot at each other.
“equate Nazi occupation, which claimed tens of millions of lives, and the crimes committed by collaborationists with the Red Army’s liberating mission”
The Red Army liberated nothing. All the territory it occupied was installed with puppet governments and remained enslaved to the Soviets for the next thirty odd years. They also slaughtered plenty of civilians (and surrendered prisoners of war) in the course of their occupation.
The russians should celebrate the day they took Berlin while hundreds allied troops waited seats of the river for them to do so.
BFL
The US gave the USSR almost $10 billion USD in military equipment on lend-lease. Had it not been for the US, the Soviet soldiers would have walked to the battles ...barefooted ...fought the battles with sticks and rocks, then walked home ...barefooted ...presuming their feet hadn’t been shot off by the Nazis.
None of these politicians let an opportunity pass. They chime in wherever they can to promote their cause. Sometimes, it is so out of place/context that it's near comical, as this is.
Of course D-Day air brushes out Russia. It commemorates the landing of US/British/Polish/Canadian forces in France. If the Russians have a commemoration of the fall of Stalingrad, do they talk about the US invasion of Italy, or the battles in Africa?
He's a politician and sees a chance to “say something.” To bad it was stupid.