We celebrated D Day on June 6th, and rightly so. But June 22nd passes by every year without even a news story in the West. And we know why. Russia has been a piece of shit country since Stalin. Soviets killed millions; and even today with Putin’s BS invasion of Ukraine.
But seriously, Hitler and his evil regime were destroyed by the Russian people. And June 22nd is a day that should be acknowledged. Not for Stalin but for the Russian people who fought fascism. Both in the army and in the partisan battles.
25 million Russians were killed by the war. More Russians died in the siege of Leningrad than all the Allies put together in the whole war: 1.5 million.
Then we celebrate the landings at Normandy. But what won the war was the Soviet counter-attack on June 22nd 1944 called Operation Bagration. It killed more German soldiers and conquered more land than twenty D-Days.
I’m not a Soviet masturbator. They’re just as bad as the Nazis in most ways. But it just bothers me when the west fails to even acknowledge the eastern front, on which 80% of Nazis were defeated.
I voted C : Yes, I knew the statistics you quoted, but no, Russia didn't really win the war (to use your words).
Without the raw materials that the U. S. and the U. K. provided via the arctic campaign, Russia would not have won the war. No less than the egotistical Stalin himself admitted this.
It's not just about sheer manpower thrown into the effort, but the strategic big picture. Since the Soviet Union would *not* have prevailed without the efforts of the U. S. and commonwealth nations, and vice versa. The second and third fronts opened up in the Mediterranean and Europe were absolutely crucial for the Soviets to prevail. Why was Stalin constantly pleading for Churchill and Roosevelt to open them? Why did Stalin constantly appeal for more and more raw materials to arrive through Murmansk?
Again, Stalin himself credited the industry of the U. S. for winning the war.
Well, that is the way Russia tells it. They had no help. It was just them against the Nazis.
The End.
Even as they were actually allied with the Nazis before the war. And together they dissected Poland.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those two powers to partition Poland between them.
No. I didn’t know that. But it still seems to me that both fronts were equally important.
But don’t take my word for it. All I know is what I learned in history classes. If a military officer who’s been trained in tactics and stuff wanted to weigh in I’d definitely agree that they have much more knowledge in this area than I do.
80% of nazis were killed on the Eastern Front but what's the percentage of nazis that surrendered on the Western Front? The Wermarcht lost 5 million military personnel during WW2 vs the soviets 14 million , the Soviets captured 3 million POWs vs 6 million soviet prosoners on the Eastern Front, Britain and The US captured 8 million POWs. The US and UK effectively cut off Germany from maritime trade, flattened German cities, crippled German industry and logistics, stopped oil production, destroyed German Air power
As a person from Britain I can honestly say it was the US that won the war and the US that was the real victor in the end. Victory for Russia against Germany was simply not possible without the US or Britain for that matter.
@Lord_Saddler depends. Japan largely divided US resources. The US had the largest fleet in history assembled in the Pacific. The Marines didn't even serve in Europe and there were 600,000 of them in WW2. More US personel served in Asia than in Europe. The US Airforce was divided between bombing Europe, operating in the Mediterranean and operating in Asia there were no B29s over Germany. The US used to Soviet union to tie up the German military while the USAF &RAF crippled Herman industry, through lend lease the Russians were given the resources they needed to fight Nazi Germany and win. Nazi Germany was beat by logistics and production after all they were using horses the whole war.
Nazi Germany had just 10% of its military in the Western Front at the time of the D Day. Later on, 1 million Germans managed to hold back more than 5 million US soldiers, so how do you think things would be if there were 5 million Germans defending their Western flanks?
I'm not even talking about Great Britain, the Nazis could have destroyed the British army at Dunkirk if they had no mercy.
@Lord_Saddler your right the Germans made a massive strategic blunder at Dunkirk that cost them the war. You are only thinking in terms of troops and tanks but what beat the Germans in the east was they'd run out of ordnance and fuel and either be overwhelmed or forced to retreat which was largely due to the RAF& USAF strategic bombing campaign and Royal & US Navy's blockade of Germany. In France the US found itself overstretched due to commitments in thd pacfic, in China, the Atlantic, the strategic bombing campaign over Europe, Italy, Britain, Russia which created a logistics problem as everything had to come from a factory in the US all the way to France. The US military were largely saving themselves anyhow whereas Russia was wasting personel by throwing them into the meat grinder.
The dirty propaganda you're spewing can't trump statistical evidence and historical knowledge, dear heart.
#1 It's widely known that the Soviet Union only started to regularly receive Lend-Lease by the end of 1943, after Germany had lost entire armies at the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, let alone their other losses in the USSR.
#2 The biggest beneficiary of the US Lend-Lease policy was Great Britain, which received thrice the amount of the goods that were sent to the USSR.
#3 Many of the weapons sent by the USA and the UK to the USSR were obsolete against the state-of-the-art German ones or faced logistics issues. Some couldn't be used in the Russian muddy or snowy terrain.
#4 All the weapons and goods received by the Soviet Union weren't even 10% of the Soviet production at that time. It was a bonus, not a game changer.
Now stop appropriating of other people's victories.
US Lend Lease to the Soviet Union Year Amount (tons) % 1941 360,778 2.1 1942 2,453,097 14 1943 4,794,545 27.4 1944 6,217,622 35.5 1945 3,673,819 21 Total 17,499,861 100
The United States provided the Soviet Union with more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 aircraft, 8,000 tractors and construction vehicles, and 13,000 battle tanks. The United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft. The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. British Lend lease to the USSR was 3,000+Hurricane aircraft, 4,000+ other aircraft, 27 naval vessels, 5,218 tanks (including 1,380 Valentines from Canada), 5,000+ anti-tank guns, 4,020 ambulances and trucks, 323 machinery trucks (mobile vehicle workshops equipped with generators and all the welding and power tools required to perform heavy servicing) 1,212 Universal Carriers and Loyd Carriers (with another 1,348 from Canada), 1,721 motorcycles £1.15bn ($1.55bn) worth of aircraft engines, 1,474 radar sets 4,338 radio sets, 600 naval radar and sonar sets, Hundreds of naval guns, 15 million pairs of boots British Lend-Lease tanks constituted 30 to 40 percent of heavy and medium tank strength before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941
@Lord_Saddler considering the US moved whole factories to the US and gave the modern factory equipment so they could increase production as well as the raw resources they needed, over 50% of their fuel for military equipment, trains, communication infrastructure. 33% of all red army vechiles. 1 in 3 bullets and shells were British Irish American. As for only 10%, what the Allies sent tipped the balance in the Soviets favour as well as tying 30% of the German military in the East North africa and Italy and crippling german war production, logistics and transport.
Gamously, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U. S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
The US won W2 Strategically. The Russians did the majority of the fighting against the Nazis but the amount of lend lease the US gave the Russians when they badly needed can not be overlooked, nor can the aid Britain gave Russia. Nor can the fact that the US kept Britain in the fight after the fall of France. At the end of the war the US emerged as the richest most powerful nation and had taken the territory and treasure of its rival the British empire as well as taken the French, Belgian japanese and Dutch empires and half of Europe. The Soviet union and Warsaw pact countries were basically leveled. The whole war the US had never deployed its full military or economic potential. No other country in history was ever able to project power like the US in WW2
You’re right basically. Not sure quite how Soviet vs US manufacturing equated. But we did send the Soviets lots of material when they were attacked. But they’re manufacturing was really extensive. Helps to have a slave populace.
But you’re right. The US was the only country that came out ahead after the war. Guess it depends on how you measure “winning”. Conquered land: Stalin. Enemy killed: Stalin. Power of their country: Stalin. But world power: US.
without Arctic convoys, without aid to Russia, without Italian invasion, without North Africa victory, without DDay, then Russia would have not been in a position to win.
There were a lot of German and Axis troops tied up of captured in other theatres.
Also without the American victories in the Pacific, the Japanese invasion of Russia was a very good possibility.
or the invasion of Japan in 1941 of Russia rather than Against the allies.
The Soviet role in WWII isn’t given enough credit, but they did virtually nothing to fight Japan, and it also helped that so many Japanese troops were tied down in China. But let’s not forget that the Soviets only joined the war because Hitler was dumb enough to attack them. I’ll tell you who also doesn’t get enough credit- the Polish and Czech pilots fighting for the RAF in the Battle of Britain and the cryptographers, including the Polish ones, as well as the American women who built the weapons that buried the Axis powers.
Don't forget British women who produced weapons that buried the Axis powers. Also don't forget SOE & OSS agents as well as partisans in Europe who carried out sabotage behind enemy lines.
No the US did not defeat Japan alone. The Australians were there in New Guinea, the Chinese lost 30 million in China, the British empire forces along with the indians were there fighting in Burma. The Royal Navy was there eventually with its own carriers and did some good work before the war ended. The Russians took casualties against the Germans, when the US fought the Japanese they inflicted them. You don't win wars by how much casualties you take instead by how much you inflict.
Knew enough to know that the Russians fought a bitter war through their winter against an advancing German army and lost many millions of people. It is shocking and something that does seem to get forgotten in the UK (if not other parts of the world). Perhaps because we were distracted by large numbers of well equipped US soldiers that appeared on our doorsteps at the time. My view is the Americans brought fresh energy and resources to the allied campaigns. It would have been touch and go either way if they had not.
Man you hate America. “It bothers me how WW2 is taught in schools.” So the fuck what. Everything is dumbed down and over simplified in schools. That’s why Americans are so ignorant about history.
The Russians didn’t win World War 2 anymore than the Americans did. Would they even have gotten involved had Hitler not invaded Russia? Nope. They wouldn’t have given two shits about any of it. They didn’t help liberate France or Belgium. They weren’t at the Battle of the Bulge. The Americans did that. But let’s suck off the Russians because they happened to invade Berlin only AFTER Hitler attacked them? I think not.
And the way they threw their own troops into gulags after they returned from the Eastern Front? Truly evil. But yeah. Go Russia. Lol
The US declared war against Germany much later than the Nazis defeated Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium and France and did it not because they cared about those countries but because Germany was the Japan's biggest ally.
"And the way they threw their own troops into gulags after they returned from the Eastern Front?"
@Lord_Saddler the Nazis declared war on the US first after Pearl Harbour. There were issues within the US government about going to war with nazi Germany considering Japan attacked America not Germany, though the Roosevelt administration wanted to get involved in Europe and most of Congress wanted to defeat Japan first, after Hitler declared war the matter was settled and it was Europe first.
Not "Russians" per se but citizens of the USSR. 25 million Soviet citizens died and here's a rough breakdown:
14 million Russians 7 million Ukrainians 2.5 million Belorussians 1.5 million other.
Even organizations that the modern Kremlin regime has denounced as collaborators (like the OUN which which was by no means a commendable organization) fought against the Nazis after they denied them an independent Ukrainian State.
"In order to really assess the significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet victory, you only have to imagine how the Soviet Union would have had to fight if there had been no Lend-Lease aid," Sokolov wrote. "Without Lend-Lease, the Red Army would not have had about one-third of its ammunition, half of its aircraft, or half of its tanks. In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. The railroads would have periodically come to a halt. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. And they would have been perpetually hungry without American canned meat and fats."
I knew that because a) we learn about the whole of World War 2 in school and b) I am interested via the families‘ involvement (pressed into service). The losses on the Eastern front were staggering for both Axis and the Soviets. You can read many descriptions in published war diaries.
it took both, but you made a good point. withou the USA... have to wonder if russia could have held out... get germans past the winter and maybe moscow fall. Yes, we should acknowledge that more.
I was aware, some movies cover the subject for those that don't read.
Don't forget lend lease. The US created a whole new modern communication system for the Red Army, built infrastructure from Yemen all the way to Russia to provide war materials, a pair of boots for every Russian soldier, food for every Russian soldier for a year, 400,000 jeeps, 400,000 trucks, 4000 Sherman tanks, 1000 Lee tanks, 11,000 aircraft, 35,000 motorcycles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the high-octane aviation fuel,1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. 53% of ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives used by the Red Army. The US took whole factories and moved them from the US to Russia. We British provided 3,000+ Hurricane aircraft 4,000+ other aircraft, 27 naval vessels, 5,218 tanks (including 1,380 Valentines from Canada), 5,000+ anti-tank guns, 4,020 ambulances and trucks, 323 machinery trucks (mobile vehicle workshops equipped with generators and all the welding and power tools required to perform heavy servicing) 1,212 Universal Carriers and Loyd Carriers (with another 1,348 from Canada), 1,721 motorcycles, £1.15bn ($1.55bn) worth of aircraft engines, 1,474 radar sets, 4,338 radio sets 600 naval radar and sonar sets, Hundreds of naval guns, 15 million pairs of boots
That's not even counting the resources needed to ship that to Russia, the escort ships, sailors involved, loses to U-boats that had to be replaced. I dont think the nazis were able to get there hands on much uranium, they'd have to maybe conquer certain parts of Russia for that.
yep, a lot of propaganda has been created that changed peoples perception in how important the US was in stopping Nazi Germany. In reality the USSR is mainly responsible for the military defeat of the Nazis.
In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
@Redhead999 I will repeat, the propaganda you're spewing can't trump statistical evidence and historical knowledge, dear heart.
#1 It's widely known that the Soviet Union only started to regularly receive Lend-Lease by the end of 1943, after Germany had lost entire armies at the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, let alone their other losses in the USSR.
#2 The biggest beneficiary of the US Lend-Lease policy was Great Britain, which received thrice the amount of the goods that were sent to the USSR.
#3 Many of the weapons sent by the USA and the UK to the USSR were obsolete against the state-of-the-art German ones or faced logistics issues. Some couldn't be used in the Russian muddy or snowy terrain.
#4 All the weapons and goods received by the Soviet Union weren't even 10% of the Soviet production at that time. It was a bonus, not a game changer.
Now stop appropriating of other people's victories.
@Lord_Saddler Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me." Nikita Khrushchev Leader of the Soviet Union & Red Army General during WW2, participated at the Battle of Stalingrad.
Are you dumb? What does the first W in WWII stand for? World! How can one country win a World War against a single other country? Especially when Neither one of them were Colonial empires. The USSR participated on a single front of a Global conflict. They did their part well, but hardly won the entire war. Euro centric history is a pet peeve of mine, not to mention damaging to society.
What do you mean by that that the Russians invaded Berlin and ultimately finish the war in Europe yet remember the Americans were still fighting the Japanese in the Pacific after the Russians took over Berlin
Oh a you can’t thank the left leaning Nazis for that. (Remember the national socialist Germans workers party are the Nazis) the actual communist in their losing The election in 1933 I believe their opponents were the actual communist so technically socialist are right of communist but both sides are on the left
Of course they would say that. The Polish people who had contact with the Germans probably ended up dead since the Nazis killed almost 6 million of them. Dead men tell no tales.
They were alive to complain about the Soviets, the Poles who were under Nazi control weren't that lucky because the Germans killed huge numbers of them.
Well, every country has propaganda-ish textbooks. But yes school children should be taught the complexities of WW2. How it was a fight between two pretty evil countries and we picked the less evil.
@OddBeMe That depends on whether you consider lying evil. According to the USA and their media, in WWII, the USA had God on their side. Therefore, they never committed any atrocities because regardless of how evil, they were justified and, better yet, never published.
In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
@Redhead999 I am pretty sure that is, also, not an obscure fact that the USSR was part of an alliance during the war. What is surprising about any of this?
@Redhead999 Reading histories of the Great War, one would readily reach the conclusion that it was not “won” by anyone. However, the Alliance which dictated the terms at Paris in 1919 included the United States. Are you suggesting that the US entered the war on the other side?
Anyway, I’m glad that you are learning history and enjoying the process of discovery. I did not mean to imply otherwise. These may be long settled and uncontested facts of history—but it is still a moment of discovery when YOU encounter them for the first time. That is the joy of learning.
@Redhead999 it is sad that both Germany and Japan's leadership were to stubborn to have surrendered. the peoples in both countries would have been better off.
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