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Has some good points and some lousy.

The old monster said that England provided the time, America provided the money, and Russia provided the blood.

Yup, he was good at catchy phrases. Nice one, I've never heard this one before.

Great Britain and the United States were democracies. Their soldiers were not brutalized peasants, or even an ‘‘army of mercenaries,’’ as A.E. Housman called the 1914 British regular army. As the British military historian Max Hastings puts it in his excellent recent book ‘‘Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-45’’ (Pan), they were citizens in uniform, and they could not be treated as German or Russian soldiers were.

Sad (for the Russians and Germans) but true.

the other hand, the Russians relaxed at the end of the war, with Stalin’s encouragement, by indulging in the greatest act of gang rape in history against millions of women in Hungary, Austria, and eastern Germany.

I wonder for how long I will have to hear this dirty fairytale.

For that fighting spirit of the Germans had another side to it. Hitler ruled by glamour and terror; his soldiers were driven by fear as well as zeal. In a war during which no British soldier, and only one GI, was shot for cowardice, at least 15,000 German servicemen were executed for dereliction of duty.

We now know that in the first winter of the war on the Eastern Front in 1941-42, more than 8,000 Russian soldiers died not in action but shot by their own army for cowardice or desertion. During the battle of Stalingrad alone, another 12,000 men of the Red Army were put to death pour encourager les autres. This was a regime fighting a desperate war that could nevertheless put to death well over a full infantry division of its own men. On the other hand, the Russians relaxed at the end of the war, with Stalin’s encouragement, by indulging in the greatest act of gang rape in history against millions of women in Hungary, Austria, and eastern Germany.

On one hand these numbers speak for themselves, on the other hand, given the conditions and the numbers involved on the Eastern Front, I'm a little bit surprised that the numbers aren't higher.

I know nothing factual about the rapes (or not) in Eastern Europe.

the other hand, the Russians relaxed at the end of the war, with Stalin’s encouragement, by indulging in the greatest act of gang rape in history against millions of women in Hungary, Austria, and eastern Germany.

I wonder for how long I will have to hear this dirty fairytale.

"The dirty fairytale," as you refer to it, is sort of standard fare in the documentaries currently being played on the History Channel and other cable stations here in the US.

Since you were born and partly raised in the old USSR and have a grandfather that fought the Germans from the steepes to Berlin, what is his/your version of the behavior of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe?

Since I'm a US Vietnam War veteran and didnot do any of the terrible things that US troops are generally slurred with in that war, I can understand there might be another, more realistic account of what happened. In saying this, I do not say that ALL US soldiers in Vietnam conducted themselves honorably because the evidence is there that some did commit crimes against Vietnamese civilans and against captured NVA and VC prisoners.

BTW, those who have really studied the history of WWII have absolutely no doubt about the tremendous contribution that Russia made in defeating Germany and also the tremendous cost in suffering the Russian people paid to secure that victory.

the Russians relaxed at the end of the war, with Stalin’s encouragement, by indulging in the greatest act of gang rape in history against millions of women in Hungary, Austria, and eastern Germany.
I wonder for how long I will have to hear this dirty fairytale.

This attempt at historical revisionism is as intellectually bankrupt, and as morally reprehensible, as Holocaust denial.

"I wonder for how long I will have to hear this dirty fairytale."

Just don't make the mistake I made, which was to say "Oh well - war is hell" in relation to this dirty fairytale. I got roasted in an earlier thread about Russian Gang Rapes for not feeling awful about the poor Nazi citizens. Apparently, the time frame for "NEVER FORGET" is only 60 years or so for a few posters here...

The front line Russian troops (the ones doing most of the fighting) did not behave like the "Raving Slavic hordes" that some historians portrayed them as. Yes, a lot of looting and rapes happened.

The second line troops from the Russian army, the ones who came into the occupied territories later, did rape and loot a lot more. Many of the stories of atrocities done by the Red army came from these troops.

I have family and friends that lived through WWII in Poland and what was then East Prussia. Listening to their stories, it is hard to see who they hated more.