[offa]

Am Russian, can confirm. I actually had an argument about that with a friend of mine a few days ago, in his eyes (and many other Russians both home and abroad) we are the ones who have saved the world while the Allies stood by and watched. The notion is deeply engrained in the Russian cultural memory now, and seeing how WW2 is still tremendously important to the majority of the population I do not see it changing any time soon.

[shuntress]

I do believe there is some truth to that. Its too complex to make a serious judgement that "The Russians could have won on their own". Though it does seem clear that making an enemy of Russia was a bigger mistake than making an enemy of the USA.

The losses sustained by Russia during that time are absolutely staggering and probably contribute to the "Are you guys even helping at all?" line of thought.

[Koshkin]

It is easy to come to blaming others for something that is, to a high degree, one's own fault. Much of the losses sustained by the Soviets during the war were due to the pitiless practice of a forced sacrificing of soldiers' lives in trying to achieve military objectives. All sides were doing that, but nothing can be compared to the scale on which it was practiced by the Soviet military command.

[wbl]

And the alternative would be to have the line break. The Germans were within miles of all of of Moscow, besieged Leningrad for months, and we all know about Stalingrad and the attempt to cross the Volga. Losing would have unthinkable consequences, and the casualties were also due to German executions of POWs.

[ptaipale]

It was not always just desperately holding the line. There was definitely an aspect of actually exterminating unwanted elements by sending them to missions that couldn't be accomplished or which could only be accomplished through overwhelming losses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtrafbat

[emp_zealoth]

Stalin also murdered a lot of competent officials/generals/officers (they were percieved a threat to his totalitarian power) so the military in big part was run by people who didn't know any better...doesn't excuse the massive losses ofc

[open_bear]

> "pitiless practice of a forced sacrificing of soldiers' lives"

Of course there were stupid commanders who wasted soldiers's lives, as there were very good commanders. You should look at the big picture:

1) Ratio of Wermacht - Red Army losses is somewhere around 1:1.3, only 30% more. 2) Germany had fully deployed and ready to attack army on the June, 22nd, while USSR was in the process of deployment: second and third line divisions were moving towards the border, stretched for 500-600 kilometers. 3) Wermacht was trained in doing blitzkriegs: Poland invasion, France invasion gave them a lot of experience, Red Army did not have a lot of experience in defending against such an attack (no one had). 4) Germany attacked without a warning, without a formal war declaration, and most of those 30% come from the first stage of the war. 5) Germany had its full industrial potential, together with Poland, Czechoslovakia and France working to provide tanks, guns, food and supplies, while USSR had 1/3 of its territory captured and 20+ million people under occupation for the first two years.

[neaden]

See you're falling into one of the traps here by phrasing it as Russia. The truth is the Soviet Union did a lot, but much of that was with disregard for the lives of it's population especially the non-Russian non-Georgian populations. While not trying to diminish the sacrifices Russians made in WW2 it is important not to let the modern day Russian government conflate the non-Russian Soviet Peoples with modern day Russia.

[tezza]

Whilst the Allies were very active participants, WW2 was in the end won by overwhelming Russian force.

The Allies like to fancy themselves as the saviors, but without Russia fighting back the war would have gone the other way.

[TheCoelacanth]

Remove any of the major participants from the winning side and the war likely would have gone the other way.

[noonespecial]

Its a kind of category error I see all the time:

Couldn't have done it without me != All because of me.

[gozur88]

I'm not convinced the Russians couldn't have done it on their own provided you don't take the conflict between the US and Japan out of the equation, i.e. that Japan didn't attack Vladivostok as Hitler was pushing them to do.

[TheCoelacanth]

First of all, Russia wouldn't have had a prayer without the non-Russian parts of the USSR.

The USSR could maybe have done it without help from ground combat troops from other countries. They definitely couldn't have done it without any help at all.

Without the UK's navy cutting off Axis shipping and without aerial warfare against the UK eating up a huge amount of resources, there would have been far more resources committed to the war against the USSR. Without lend-lease from the US, the USSR would have had extreme shortages of equipment.

[EliRivers]

How do they square this with the Soviet Union and their Nazi allies jointly invading Poland? Does that get glossed over? I recall that recently someone was in legal trouble in Russia for suggesting that the invasion of Poland was a joint effort between the Soviet Union and Germany.

[konart]

Usually people just don't think about this as they view Poland as almost "ours" territory. Same for baltics\ua etc.

Not to mention that usually this is viewed not as invasion, but a needed act to stop Nazis.

[Koshkin]

> stood by and watched

I don't know where you got that. You should read up on the history of the war and learn a bit about all the fierce fighting in Western Europe (including the time when the Soviets were being friends of Hitler's).

[berntb]

He didn't write that he believed that.

The ones that stood by and watched were us Swedes, btw. Sitting in the middle between Hitler and Stalin, you tried to do that... but it worked just for a few. (If Sweden should had joined the war, should they have fought with Norway/Denmark -- or with Finland?)

Also, being Swedish and re historical lies... A bit of a tangent: The Swedish schools didn't tell us anything about the Polish view on the "Polish deluge". And the English schools missed the part about the "harrying of the north". Is there any country in the history of civilization that acknowledged the dark parts of their history, except the Germans?

[Edit: But covering up aspects of embarrassing history is of course something different than hate mongering towards the own population over old history, to make the present government more popular. (But that is a Swede talking, we prefer that our neighboring countries don't read too much history. Not that we have anything like Holodomor to cover up. Trust us. :-) ) ]

[ptaipale]

As a Finn whose father was on the front I say, not much to be embarrassed beyond acting in national interest. Thank you for the 8500 men in 1939-1940, 33 of whom were killed, and for the Svenska Frivilligbataljonen later.

(Plus thank you for the kind act of accepting thousands of small children as refugees, even if in the end it turned out to be not such a good idea to split families; the lesson is that don't do that as a temporary relief; if you must give children away, let them be adopted.)

[berntb]

Thousands? Around 70,000 children?

The Swedish organized force (not individual volunteers) for the Winter War was trained, organized and at the front just as the peace started, so they missed most of the blood letting.

We talk about sending a 1/3 of the Swedish military equipment, including of the air force. (Sadly not enough, the politicians had been doing downsizing defense -- just as they have now, when Putin is starting to act like Hitler in the 1930s.)

Wikipedia claimed this aid was the politicians' way of silencing a popular opinion that Sweden should do more. I don't really know. I do know that Swedes in general have no clue about the subject, after the education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_support_of_Finland_in_...

Also, a disclaimer -- I am half Swedish and half Danish, with half the Swedish relatives from the Finn forests of Värmland. So I really don't have a horse in this race. (When Finns have problems with Swedes, I tell them about my relative in Norway 300 years ago, which became a general major by killing lots of "you damned Swedes and Finns". :-) )

[ptaipale]

Yes, it was a really significant thing, tightroping between how much Sweden can support Finland without becoming an outright adversary of USSR and its allies (first Nazi Germany, then Britain and USA).

[berntb]

Frankly, as a Swede that have a bit of insight into Finland -- I am still ashamed.

Sure, a third of the total military equipment must be something of a world record. But still.

[watt]

This [lie] is what was taught in Soviet schools. That's where he (and all other Russians) got that.

[quirkafleeg]

> This [lie] is what was taught in Soviet schools. That's where he (and all other Russians) got that.

Do you have a source for that claim, because I find it unlikely that Soviet schools taught that their wartime allies just "stood back and watched" during WWII.

I find it more likely that the Soviets simply focused on their own experience of WWII, exactly as every other country involved does.

For example, I seriously doubt much time, if any, was given in Cold War American schools to the effort and sacrifice of the Soviet Union in defeating Hitler.

Indeed, given the way Americans (and American movies) love to portray the USA as saving everyone's ass in WWII, it wouldn't surprise me if every country other than the USA is largely ignored in American teaching on WWII.

[ptaipale]

Yes, "lie" is a strong word here, and Soviets focused on their own experience, but still the teaching of that focus was somewhat selective.

Naturally Soviet schools did put a lot weight on the sacrifices of Soviet soldiers to battle Germany. That is reasonable. But they stayed very quiet about other aspects of the suffering of Soviets and others. I mean things like:

- the happy co-operation of Nazis and Soviets prior to the war (e.g. providing training grounds for Panzers, teaching Nazis how to run an extermination camp)

- the secret protocol of Molotov-Ribbentrob pact (spheres of influence dividing Poland, Baltic countries and Finland)

- the invasions to Poland, Baltics and Finland (common parade in Brest-Litovsk, staged shelling at Mainila to start Winter War)

- the massacre of Polish officers and intelligentsia (Katyn Forest and Vasili Blokhin's work)

- overall, the magnitude of the Great Purges and the GULAG

It's not strictly speaking a lie that teaching was silent about these. But selecting what facts you talk about and what you don't talk about effectively denies truth. Particularly when there is little freedom of press and other ways to complement the knowledge after what was taught at school.

Yes, of course other nations have similar blind spots; those of the Soviet system just were rather large spots, comparatively.

[quirkafleeg]

> the happy co-operation of Nazis and Soviets prior to the war (e.g. providing training grounds for Panzers, teaching Nazis how to run an extermination camp)

Can you provide a source and/or further explanation for these two claims?

[ptaipale]

Sorry, "Nazis" should be replaced by "Germans" here, as the German re-armament started already before Nazis were actually in power -- the Soviet-German military co-operation started after the Rapallo treaty of 1922 and waned after 1932, to be reconciled at the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

However, it is quite well documented that the German re-armament, forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles, was largely made possible by this co-operation with USSR. It provided grounds for training armored forces in Soviet Union, allowed building and testing chemical weapons in Soviet test sites under German leadership, and had German aircraft tested in the USSR. The sources I read before this were not in English but after a quick Google one could start with e.g. http://www.feldgrau.com/ger-sov.html

It looks like "The Roots for Blitzkrieg" is an English presentation that I should read myself (thanks to prompting the search). https://www.amazon.com/Roots-Blitzkrieg-Seeckt-German-Milita...

The Germans visiting Soviet extermination camps is documented at least in "Kremlin kellot" ("The bells of the Kremlin") by Arvo Poika Tuominen (a Finnish Communist who worked for Komintern in 1933-1939 and spent quite some time observing the camps at the Baltic-White Sea Canal works and Solovki prison.) It's a pretty chilling read; the canal works were where the basic research for extermination via forced labour was done.

Solzhenitsyn then later provided a more well-known description of the GULAG.

[Koshkin]

A book by Antony Bevoor seems to be a pretty balanced account of most of the more or less important events - balanced, as evidenced from the outrage by many reviewers, both American and Russian. Highly recommended as a well-written introductory text on the history of the war.

[watt]

My grandmother was a middle-school history teacher, so I had access to history books they used in schools (in Latvia). I was a kid during 1980s.

What I am talking about is the sort of history that was taught in schools (at school level!) during 1960s-70s-80s in Soviet Union. Very simple stuff.