Putin on WWII

Putin on WWII. Just pointing out that the Russians did the heavy lifting in WWII. Apparently that fact does not sit well with some Amer-ikunz.
(He does not mention that Stalin was buddies with the Nazis until Hitler turned on him…)

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MOA:https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/06/putin-on-world-war-ii.html
…The President of Russia Vladimir Putin has taken the opportunity of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II to describe the build-up to the war, the diplomatic and military considerations Russia took into account during that time, and the results of the allies’ victory.

His essay was published in multiple languages on the Website of the Kremlin:

75th Anniversary of the Great Victory: Shared Responsibility to History and our Future.

The English version is also published in the National Interest magazine:

Vladimir Putin: The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II.

The part with the Russian view of the behavior of various nation in the late 1930s is most interesting. But this passage, related to the graphic above, is also very relevant:

“The Soviet Union and the Red Army, no matter what anyone is trying to prove today, made the main and crucial contribution to the defeat of Nazism.
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This is a report of February 1945 on reparation from Germany by the Allied Commission on Reparations headed by Ivan Maisky. The Commission’s task was to define a formula according to which defeated Germany would have to pay for the damages sustained by the victor powers. The Commission concluded that “the number of soldier-days spent by Germany on the Soviet front is at least 10 times higher than on all other allied fronts. The Soviet front also had to handle four-fifths of German tanks and about two-thirds of German aircraft.” On the whole, the USSR accounted for about 75 percent of all military efforts undertaken by the Anti-Hitler Coalition. During the war period, the Red Army “ground up” 626 divisions of the Axis states, of which 508 were German.

On April 28, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his address to the American nation: “These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies – troops, planes, tanks, and guns – than all the other United Nations put together.” Winston Churchill in his message to Joseph Stalin of September 27, 1944, wrote that “it is the Russian army that tore the guts out of the German military machine…”

Such an assessment has resonated throughout the world. Because these words are the great truth, which no one doubted then. Almost 27 million Soviet citizens lost their lives on the fronts, in German prisons, starved to death and were bombed, died in ghettos and furnaces of the Nazi death camps. The USSR lost one in seven of its citizens, the UK lost one in 127, and the USA lost one in 320.”
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As a German and former officer who has read quite a bit about the war I agree with the Russian view. It was the little acknowledged industrial power of the Soviet Union and the remarkable dedication of the Red Army soldiers that defeated the German Wehrmacht.

At the end of his essay Putin defends the veto power of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. In his view it has prevented another clash on a global scale from happening since World War II ended. Putin rejects attempts to abolish that system.

I have found no major flaw with the historic facts in the essay and recommend to read it in full.

Posted by b on June 20, 2020 at 17:07 UTC | Permalink
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CNN version:https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/18/europe/russia-putin-world-war-history-rewrite-intl/index.html
Putin rewrites World War II history — and does battle over historical memory
Analysis by Nathan Hodge, CNN