this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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I'd recommend that you read a more insightful commentary on Red Army practices during WW2 rather than following Nazi propaganda from that period. David Glantz' work is particularly insightful.
Either way, those are 19 million civilians. That isn't military dead, that's civilians.
One thing they always forget to mention is the USSR was allied to Nazi Germany in order to partition Poland.
No doubt the Soviets suffered greatly in WW2, and contributed greatly to the allied victory. On the other hand they did not do it alone, and they certainly did not expect to have to fight the Germans at all, at least not at that point.
So? The Great Powers had decided on a policy of appeasement against Nazi Germany. What exactly would you have proposed the USSR do? They signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact prior to the war for a reason.
Without the Eastern Front, Europe was lost. Hitler only launched Operation Barbarossa because he thought the Western Front was all but won. Continental Europe was under German control and the UBoats were locking down most of the Atlantic, meanwhile imports of Russian materials was sustaining the German war economy (similarly, imports of American materials was sustaining Japan's war in China and the Pacific)... Of course, it turns out that dividing your forces and taking on Russia in the winter aren't the best ideas, but at the time Germany wanted energy independence and the Caucasus was seen as an easier target than the Middle East (which at the time out produced Romania but wasn't yet the oil superpower it is today).
That's all well and good, but that's never taught at all to Russians and ignored by tankies.
And if you actually read your dumb narrative, your first paragraph is contradicted by your second. You really need to work on your story.
Here's the truth: the USSR, like Nazi Germany, was an authoritarian expansionist nightmare that was happy to get Poland for free. They only fight the Nazis because they had to. And Stalin was a shit strategist.