Propaganda in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson and World War I the Germans tossing babies into bayonets and all that should be on the scrapheap of history but no Putin has to be the new Kaiser or worse in people’s minds.
By most accounts it was the British, not Wilson, who invented modern propaganda, aimed at the Germans. You know the famous quote about "lies big enough and repeated often enough", but do you know that Goebbels was accusing the British of it when he said it?
What's ironic today is that, while the WW1 Germans the British were slandering were pretty mild, the Red Army in WW2 actually DID that stuff as a matter of course, (along with the more virulent Nazis). This we know from many, many first-hand accounts. Read Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder if you have the stomach for it.
None of this would be news to the ancient Romans, Persians, and Arabs, Even early medieval European armies tended to be brutal. Massacres to extinction were more the rule than the exception, and everybody expected it.
WE thought that Modern Europeans had evolved above that, and they had by 1800, which is why the sins of the Wehrmacht were so shocking. Less surprising for the Red Army, since as I keep telling you their Mongol background has never completely faded away.
Needless to say, the Arabs in the middle east have never evolved, as recent events have shown us. Maybe it's the inbreeding.
Here endeth the lesson. Your reading assignment for Spring Break will indeed be Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder. I'm giving you a whole month and more because it's tough to take in large doses.