We didn’t exactly “give” those places to the USSR.
The USSR did almost all the heavy lifting in the European theater. We get such crappy history education in this country that most people here don’t seem to understand that the USSR is overwhelmingly responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany. The scale of the war on the “eastern front” is unparalleled in history and is very unlikely to ever be repeated again.
The end of the Nazi regime was determined at Stalingrad and Leningrad (St. Petersburg), not on the beaches of France.
The Allies could never absorb the causalities the Germans inflicted upon the Soviets.
“The end of the Nazi regime was determined at Stalingrad and Leningrad (St. Petersburg), not on the beaches of France.”
Lots of people died on the eastern front. But Russia would not have won on its own, any more than we would have won alone.
Lend lease mechanized Soviet infantry. Without it they wouldn’t have been able to hold out and then effectively launch counter attacks in depth, let alone feed their armies
One could argue that without the material support of the United States Russia would have fallen.
The USSR was our ally in WWII—but not our friend. They did a large part of the fighting and dying. I don’t know if it is still true, but at least until relatively recently the custom of newlyweds in Russia was to stop off at the local WWII memorial after the wedding so the bride could place her flowers in remembrance.
I’m a Boomer, so I grew up with the memory of WWII fresh in every adult’s mind. It is now ancient history for today’s kids. But I think the memory of it will live on longer in Russia than here.
While the Russian soldiers did most of the dying and most of the killing of Germans that is not what won the war!
You not only ignore the fact that The US and UK were solely responsible for the expanding distruction of the Germany war industry and the scale and importance of US Lend Lease to the USSR's ability to wage any kind of war against Germany.
Here's what Joseph Stalin said:
"The United States is a country of machines. Without the use of these machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war."That quote and the below figures can be found in "Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II" byAlbert L. Weeks.
Some of the figure on US Lend Lease to the USSR:
Vehicles (trucks, jeeps, etc.): 437,000 RR cars &
locomotives: 13,000
Tanks: 7,000
Aircraft: 15,000
Machine Tools: 306,000
Steel: 2,300,000 tons (from rolled aircraft steel to armor plate)
Petro Prods: 2,650,000 tons
AA Guns: 8,000
Guns: 132,000
In short, the USSR could not have supplied and transported its army without Lend-Lease. And they would have faced a German army infinitely better supplied than allied bombing rendered them.
Vehicles (trucks, jeeps, etc.): 7,000
RR cars & locomotives: 13,000
Ike caught the brunt of this debacle but it was Roosevelt who insisted that Churchill wanted to prolong the war by liberating Italy and moving up Eastern Europe liberating everything from Germany and subsequently Russia. The influence of Communism in the US pushed Roosevelt to end America’s involvement to allow Stalin to hold Eastern Europe. Churchill was absolutely correct about this. It was antiwar sentiment in the US that allowed Russia to dominate Eastern Europe for the next 40 years and foment the cold war.
“We get such crappy history education in this country that most people here don’t seem to understand that the USSR is overwhelmingly responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany.”
Apparently that crappy education also fails to teach that the Soviets signed a Pact with Hitler to carve up Poland, thus emboldening Hitler to continue his Blitzkreig.
The Soviet Russians stand as guilty as the appeasers for the millions of deaths in Europe. There 20 Million killed was richly deserved.
+1
Of every 100 German soldiers killed in combat, the UK killed 2, the US killed 2, and the USSR killed 96.
“The USSR did almost all the heavy lifting in the European theater.”
While that is true the Soviets were the only ones NOT fighting on multiple fronts. The Brits, and later the U.S., were fighting against Germany in North Africa in 1941 and the Japanese in Asia after the Dec, 1941 Japanese invasion of British Hong Kong.
The USSR signed the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of 1941 prior to the start of Operation Barbarossa which allowed the USSR to move their troops from the Manchurian border to Eastern Europe in anticipation of the German offensive.
Stalin began promising a front against the Japanese as early as the Second Moscow Conference in August, 1941.
At the Tehran Conference in Nov/Dec, 1943 Stalin insisted that Germany be defeated before he would fight the Japanese.
After the German surrender Stalin drug his feet until August9, 1945. Ironically AFTER both atomic bombs had been dropped and the same day Hirohito convened the meeting that led to accepting the terms of surrender.
Soviet forces kept fighting the Japanese forces in Manchuria for three weeks. Two weeks after Japan had surrendered.
Screw the Russians.