I was watching on the news this morning the various videos taken yesterday of the few Pearl Harbor survivors left that were well enough to attend the ceremony of the anniversary of the attack. And while it's well and good that this should be done, it's rather unsettling the amount of knowledge there is out there these days about WWII itself and the true amount of carnage that arose from it. Too many of our younger people seem to have really no idea.

I was speaking to a coworker yesterday who was taking obvious, and well deserved, pride in the American involvement in the war. He seemed to think the USA won WWII. In some ways, we did. Moreover, however, we survived WWII. I told him that on December 7, 1941 the war in Europe had already been going for 2 years, and the war in China for many more. And while he had heard of Pearl Harbor, Midway, D-Day, Iwo Jima and Hiroshima, he knew next to nothing about Barbarossa, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk, Bagration or Seelow Heights.

US casualties in the whole of WWII were something like 1,000,000, and of those a little over 400,000 dead, or .3% of our population at the time. An enormous sacrifice.

And while we celebrate Pearl Harbor on December 7 every year, we shouldn't forget our ally, the Soviet Union, had already endured the most murderous invasion in human history, and was starting to turn it back.

On December 7, 1941, the Germans were just starting to be pushed out of artillery range of Moscow. The Soviets had already lost millions. And before it was over in May 1945, the Soviets would lose 27,000,000 military and civilians, dead, not wounded, or about 14% of their population.

Soviets deaths from the start of Barbarossa to the end of the war in Europe averaged more that 17,000 per day, every day, for 4 years.

We'd do well to contemplate what our losses would have been if Hitler had only gone west. Or if we would have been able to dislodge him at all from western Europe if the whole of his armies had been there.

I'm not fan of Soviet communism. But thank God for the nameless Soviet soldiers that sacrificed so much.

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I'm not fan of Soviet communism. But thank God for the nameless Soviet soldiers that sacrificed so much.

The Soviet soldiers got their revenge on ordinary German citizens in a big way. The Soviet citizens suffered greatly under Stalin and his regime. Stalin was worse than Hitler in many respects.

The Soviet Union lost an incredible number but many were caused by their own strategy and willingness to throw bodies at the Germans.
Stalin continued to kill off his own people after the war too.
He should be known for being the mass murderer he was, in the top 2 all time, but most people think of Hitler (#3), who was the spark plug for the whole mess of WW2.
Communists, the guys that came to power as champions of the people, are the top two followed by the National Socialist, Hitler.
https://about-history.com/list...-killers-in-history/

The US is fortunate to have significant natural borders and protection (ie, the Atlantic & Pacific).

I love the before and after pics superimposed on each other. This one always gets to me.

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Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:

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I'm not fan of Soviet communism. But thank God for the nameless Soviet soldiers that sacrificed so much.

The Soviet soldiers got their revenge on ordinary German citizens in a big way. The Soviet citizens suffered greatly under Stalin and his regime. Stalin was worse than Hitler in many respects.

They did, and Stalin was. The magnitude of the hatred between the Soviets and Germans is what gets me.

I was watching a documentary on the German/Soviet war. I thought I had seen about all the videos of that war that are out there. I saw a new one I hadn't seen before. German troops using frozen Russian corpses to fill holes in roads so their tanks and trucks wouldn't' have to suffer the pot-holes in the wet, mushy, half-frozen Russian roads.

Other things I guess I knew that I never thought of: that the Germans went over 1,000 miles into the Soviet Union, and that the front was as wide as the United States - nearly 3,000 miles - all of it manned.

Crazy.

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They did, and Stalin was. The magnitude of the hatred between the Soviets and Germans is what gets me.

The Germans considered the Russians to be an inferior people, as well as the Slavs.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
The US is fortunate to have significant natural borders and protection (ie, the Atlantic & Pacific).

[FLASH_VIDEO]

“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”

"In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance."

Joseph Stalin

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Originally posted by Micropterus:
And while we celebrate Pearl Harbor on December 7 every year...

Not sure we celebrate Dec 7th, as much as memorialize or, hold remembrances.

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Or if we would have been able to dislodge him at all from western Europe if the whole of his armies had been there.

The common American citizen was more isolationist than most people realize during the early stages of WWII. While current events about the goings on in Europe and China kept people's attention, the Great Depression was still happening and most people were more concerned with getting a job and putting a meal on the table, rather than go fight. Perhaps some motivation would've kicked-in if the Nazi's had invaded and gotten a footing in the UK. The attack on Pearl Harbour changed all that, and the rest is history.

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I'm not fan of Soviet communism. But thank God for the nameless Soviet soldiers that sacrificed so much.

When looking at Communist states, we need to make sure the leaders are separated from the people. Guys like Stalin and later Mao really were criminals, their lieutenants were even worse as they implemented their reign of terror, silencing opposition and enforcing true genocide. The common citizens were kept ignorant, uneducated, spoon fed stories of romantic tales of heroic farmers/laborers fighting arm-in-arm with each other. Meanwhile, their leaders, lavishing themselves with the spoils of their ascendency, willfully threw their people into the teeth of the opposition without any care for tactics or, strategy. While many Russians today like to tout the number of casualties (horrific no doubt) as proof of their contribution, it was the US Lend-Lease program that allowed the Soviet Union to fight the invading Germans. The Soviet soldier sacrificed enormously, poor leadership and logistics got them killed.

Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU


Well worth the 20 min or so

If the Russians had lost the Nazis would have enslaved and exterminated them all. All. Mein Kampf is a joke of a book but was a deadly serious plan of extermination. I am respectful of the Russian efforts and sacrifices of the time.

An interesting piece of WWII history. My father was in the Greek Army from the mid-30s to late 40s. Look closely at the 2 white charts.

https://youtu.be/KcW1hNyK3bM

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Originally posted by corsair:
The Soviet soldier sacrificed enormously, poor leadership and logistics got them killed.

Without question, the purges of the 1930s contributed greatly to the nearly non-existent Soviet leadership at the start of Barbarossa. Nearly every Soviet officer from Major and above killed or imprisoned, ensured the Soviets had no leadership when the war broke out.

It astounds me every time I contemplate the casualties of Stalingrad - a battle which started with about a quarter million on each side, and ended with nearly 2 million casualties total.

2 million casualties in a battle for a city that even today has a population of only about one million.

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Originally posted by bobtheelf:
It astounds me every time I contemplate the casualties of Stalingrad - a battle which started with about a quarter million on each side, and ended with nearly 2 million casualties total.

2 million casualties in a battle for a city that even today has a population of only about one million.

A single battle where the Germans lost as many men as they did in the entirety of the western front.

Least we forget when Germany invaded Poland guess who got the other half of Poland the Russians. As for Stalin how many of is own people were killed by Stalin's regime the decades before WW2 and masked by putting into WW2 causality numbers.

What is even lesser known and discussed is the carnage of WWI. In some battles an Army lost in an HOUR the number of casualties we lost in the entire Vietnam war.

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Originally posted by lowflash:
Least we forget when Germany invaded Poland guess who got the other half of Poland the Russians. As for Stalin how many of is own people were killed by Stalin's regime the decades before WW2 and masked by putting into WW2 causality numbers.

Stalin's purges of the military were still going on when Barbarossa kicked-off. There were very few officers of any competence remaining. Yet, there was an endless supply of live-bodies to get thrown into the meat-grinder.

The scale of the German invasion was unbelievable, possibly the largest land invasion in history, 3million invaders. It was the end of WWI tactics and the beginning of WWII maneuver warfare; horse-drawn carriages were still widely utilized to go into battle, mechanized warfare was ascending and logistic trains were still being refined. If it wasn't for Hitler's meddling, it's very certain that Moscow, the Baltics and Ukraine would be speaking German.

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The scale of the German invasion was unbelievable, possibly the largest land invasion in history, 3 million invaders.

The US certainly made a major contribution in war production and military effort. We probably had fewer casualties because we used our soldiers smarter than some others but that is only part of the story.

One thing I rarely see mentioned is the good fortune we have being essentially an island, separated by thousands of miles on both sides from potential enemies. The English Channel bought England some time and relief from attack.

We suffered almost no civilian casualties at home and our industry was not under air or physical attack. Our only worry was sabotage, and that was minimal.

European and Asian countries have been subject to easy attack by land and their proximity has caused a lot of friction over the years, even during peacetime.

Substitute Russians for Canadians on our northern border and think how our history would have been different. We get upset with some unarmed and unorganized refugees sneaking in through our southern border. What if they had been armed, an organized military and hostile?

We are truly blessed to live where we do.