I agree completely with your post.
One of the most powerful and influential books I ever read was “The Gulag Archipelago” that described the brutality of the government in great depth, and you definitely understand the power of the police state and the power it holds over individual citizens with no rights.
The part I can’t get my mind around, is knowing how many Red Army soldiers had relatives murdered by Stalin, and then had to fight Germans who were just as murderous.
It reminds me of a domestic argument between a married couple, and a stranger steps in. Both of them turn on the interloper even though they were at each other’s throats a moment before.
I’ve also read a lot of stories, that one the Germans first poured in, many people in places like Ukraine thought the Germans were civilized people, and thought salvation was finally in hand from Stalin. They were shocked to find the Germans were just as bad. Kind of like a rape victim seeing a cop walk up and knock the hell out of the rapist, only to unbuckle his pants. The German bestiality on the Eastern Front is probably one of the great betrayals in history.
Ironically, for Germans to behave as liberators was probably the only chance they ever had to win on the Eastern Front. It just wasn’t in that Teutonic DNA