“More than 80% of all combat during the Second World War took place on the Eastern Front.”
For a fantastic look into the history of fascism and Communism as bitter enemies, Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti.
Yes, the United States and the other Western Powers played a role in WWII. The Eastern Front had 80% of the total combat in WWII contained within it, however. The absolute scale is massively different and the price paid was extremely unequal. This was by design, however. Harry Truman gave the game away:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
Essentially, the Western Powers hated both the Communists and the Nazis, and allied in a manner that involved the most bloodshed on the Eastern Front as possible. That being said, they didn’t ally with the Nazis as the Nazis wanted to colonize Western Europe and the rest of the world, the West did not want to be subject to the same force of extraction they used to plunder the Global South, like the UK with India.
The West also realized that the Soviets had no intention of invading Western Europe, and thus the Soviets became the one deemed better to ally with in the end.
They destroyed Nazis? Probably a bad thing since prageru loves Nazis.
Edit - was barely awake posting this.
It’s a reply picture to their question, the Red Army defeated the Nazis and took Berlin. PragerU didn’t post the picture, though they certainly would see the defeat of Nazism as a bad thing of course. Dennis Prager has spelled it out as such, claiming Nazis were better people than Palestinians.
The Red Army along with the Western Allies defeated the Nazis. It is true that the Red Army a magnitude more of losses and were responsible for 3/4 of Nazis killed in battle, so they objectively lost more of their own and took more Nazi lives. However, that is not the only factor that won the war. The Red Army received a considerable amount of military equipment from the West. Additionally, one can argue that the Red Army lost so many lives in part to their military strategy in which deserters and dissenters where killed. Shoot. Their leader was Stalin. Often times, Red Army soldiers would be ordered to rush a Nazi position knowing it would be certain death, but if they disobeyed, they would be killed by other Red Army soldiers. Plus, the Western allies, especially the UK, the USA, and Canada fought the Nazis on another front, forcing the Nazis to split their military units, equipment, and supplies. The Americans also were the main force fighting against the Japanese Empire, which reduced the strain on the Soviet Union allowing it to focus more on the Nazis eastern front, though technically, that has nothing to do with the war between the Nazis and the Red Army. And in the beginning, it was the UK that took the brunt of the Nazi war machine. Civilians in London were taking shelter in the subway during Nazi bombing missions. I would also like to give a shout out to the French resistance that terrorized Nazi occupation.
The Red Army definitely took the heaviest human toll against the Nazis. Estimates for Red Army losses vary immensely since they were so high and the war was so chaotic. Their losses were so much, that some of the ranges of casualty estimates I have seen on Wikipedia are as large as the rest of the lives lost by everyone else. According to a quick search on Perplexity, the Red Army loss ~8.7 million soldiers, while the rest of the allies lost ~1 million. So if there is an estimate that the Red Army suffered between 8.2 & 9.2 million, the range would be as wide as the losses of Allied military forces. Furthermore, many major battles were on Soviet ground, so they also suffered immense civilian casualties. Perplexity gives an estimate of 13.7 million Soviet civilian deaths. That’s over twice the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust which was a systematic genocide carried out to be as efficient as possible by a people known for efficiency.
Despite all of that, the Soviet Union did not defeat the Nazis on their own. They had considerable and decisive help from Western allies, both in battle and supplies. The Soviets took the brunt of the losses, and without WWII, the world would be an unrecognizable political landscape in which communism may have been more popular or prominent, whether you would prefer that or not. However, it is disingenuous to say the Red Army defeated the Nazis on their own.
Lend-lease was a factor in the Red Army’s success, arguably, but the far greater cost was to the Red Army and the Soviet Citizens who paid with their lives to defeat fascism. The Nazis engaged in a war of eradication, directly targeting Ukraine, the USSR’s breadbasket, to induce famine, and directly targeted housing and infrastructure in their initial onslaught to eradicate as many people as possible. Their goal, of course, was Settler-Colonialism.
This massive difference in cost of lives was deliberate, the bulk of the Allies hated the Communists, but feared the Nazis as Nazism had turned their colonialism with which the West pillaged the Global South towards themselves, as Nazi Germany sought to colonize Western Europe and the world. Harry Truman gave the game away:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
Essentially, they provided arms because they wanted the Soviets to pay with their lives and be as weakened as possible. The Soviets accepted the help they could get, but fought an existential war. This is also where the myth of “killing deserters” comes from, the “Blocking Units” would funnel soldiers back to their units. It was not the UK that took the brunt, but the most politicized brunt, as Stalingrad was the most drawn out and bloody battle of the entire war. The Soviet tactics weren’t poor either, the “human wave” myth is further propaganda used to erase the fact that the Nazis fought a war of extermination.
The Red Army did not defeat the Nazis alone, no. They were, however, forced by the Western Powers to pay the greatest price and take the most involved role, while the US and other Western Countries deliberately avoided bombing factories Nazis were taking shelter in if they were owned by US companies like Ford.
Either way, we should all be working towards Communism. Production for the purpose of use, and not profit, via collective ownership and intentional planning is the way forward. It is more efficient to produce cooperatively than it is to work against each other.
Lend Lease accounted for around of 4% of total war material expenditure by USSR. We can’t even assume that it was especially important because of being timely, since only around mid 1943 some LL deliveries, mainly trucks, achieved numbers enough to really allow USSR to shift their production in other directions.
Fair point, I hadn’t seen the numbers on Lend-Lease. I was aware that the vast bulk of millitary resources were Soviet produced, but not aware of just how vast, thank you.
What do you mean?
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New low acheived. Attributing the nazi’s scorched earth policy on the eastern front to Stalin.
- Lenin died in 1924, WWII started in 1939
Edit: original comment said Lenin, they edited it to Stalin.
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The Nazis invaded Ukraine, the USSR’s breadbasket, in order to induce famine. This is because the Nazis wanted to practice Settler-Colonialism and thus commit genocide against the Soviet people, which caused a massive number of civilian deaths.
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The Red Army regrouped after being surprise attacked, and proceded to do 80% of the fighting in WWII against the Nazis.
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Scorched Earth was applied in limited form by the Soviets, blaming a defensive strategy on the victims of Nazi onslaught is confused logic.
In short, it was the genocidal form of warfare against the Soviets that the Nazis perpetrated that killed the vast majority of those who died in the USSR during WWII.
lol
