RE: Dividends16 Sep 2023 14:21
5. The USSR was selfless in its sacrifice during the War. In reality, the USSR was self-serving. Stalin was keen to annex and occupy territories formerly belonging to the Russian Empire and beyond, both in 1939-40 and in 1945-46. How many? From north to south: Petsamo, the Karelian Isthmus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the north of East Prussia, eastern Poland, Transcarpathia, northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia.
6. The Soviets alone defeated Hitler. Even Stalin did not believe this lie, as he had to admit that without the tanks, planes, trucks, steam locomotives, gunpowder, explosives, steel, aluminum, fuel, clothes, shoes, stew and powdered eggs, received thanks to America’s Lend-Lease, any victory would have been out of the question – not to mention the key role of Allied military action in opening a new front in the West.
7. The Allies did not want a second front in France. To the contrary: Churchill and Roosevelt understood who Stalin was and what he might do in Europe, which he was conquering, so they tried to get to Berlin faster than the Russians.
8. The Soviet soldiers were unanimously heroic. In reality the Soviets had “penalty companies” meant to prevent soldiers from retreating. “Not a step back” was the order of the day, and if soldiers disobeyed, then the consequence would be summary execution. Then there were the Russians of General Andrey Vlasov’s army, which collaborated with the Germans. They would not have existed if everything were as rosy as the Russian myth claims.
9. The USSR strictly obeyed all treaties. The USSR flippantly did as it pleased. In 1944 it started a war with Bulgaria even though there was no conflict, just as in 1945 it violated its non-aggression treaty with Japan.
10. Europe was liberated by the Red Army. Eastern Europe was largely occupied and robbed, its peoples enslaved by Moscow for 45 years, often with methods as brutal as the Nazis’.
Without question, World War II was the bloodiest tragedy in human history and the people of the Soviet Union suffered greatly. However, it is travesty that the horrific slaughter, which Stalin had in many respects initiated, has over the years been whipped into a national religion.