danyet wrote:While it is true that Russia played a big part in the War and tied up valuable German resources. Russia was only fighting for HER OWN survival while Britain, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada began fighting to DEFEND OTHER countries against Hitler's Germany. These Allied countries sent there men to die for others, to die protecting Europe! Hitler had no plans to attack Britain until after the British led the revolt against him.
While we acknowlege the 20 million Russians killed in the war, we also keep in mind that Stalin would never have joined the fight to save Europe if Germany had not attacked Russia first!
it's hard and has no sense to imagine what could hapen if... i'm talking about enormous human deaths... the army fighting for soviet union independence was non-professional mostly... you are right, more than 20 million dead and over 5 million are not found yet... after 61 years grandchildren of those who brought freedom to them still don't know where their heroes are beried.
I'm not talking about stalin, there are statements in soviet union documents regarding to the first days of war telling us about devastating hitler's intention... but stalin payed no attention to it...
surely i don't lower the paricipation of allied forces in the ww2 but i emphasize that soviet union army started the campaign in 1939 in mongolia against japanese forces. and then in 1945 fighting in the europe territory on their way to berlin...
i just say that winning the war was not only a business of allied forces, it could happen only with combining forces of all the armies, because it was not easy to fight for germany in two opposite directions!