World War Two is probably one of the most propagandized & misunderstood wars in recent history. If you were to watch the average Hollywood movie you would come to the conclusion that the war was won single handily by Uncle Sam and his British sidekick. But it is too easy to simply blame Hollywood. I remember learning about WW2 in school & the focus was on the Nazi atrocities against Jews & the Pacific War. I cannot remember anything being taught about the war in Eastern Europe.
This is rather shocking when you realise that front line in the east was FOUR TIMES that in the west. That 8 out of 10 Germans were killed by the Soviets. That the USSR lost 27 million people.
Another thing which was not taught , which I think is detrimental to westerners understanding of the present situation in Ukraine is that the Nazis didn't just target Jews & Gypsies for annihilation but the Slavic people of Eastern Europe.
Hitler's plan for the USSR was to starve its population to death & steal its land. Poles & Russians & the Asians of the USSR were considered subhuman. This is why the German Army was given permission to commit atrocities in the east that did not happen in the West. 700 villages in present day Belarus were burnt to the ground with all their inhabitants by THE ARMY.
The western POWs had about a 5% chance of dying in captivity since in the west Germany abided by the Geneva conventions. In the east the death rate was at least 60% and in some cases 90%. Men were herded into barbed wire pens and left out in the open with no food and no water-though sometimes they would throw in a dead dog to watch the starving men fight over it. Jews & Muslims were shot on the spot. Later POWS and civilians were put into concentration camps. The first victims of the Nazis gas chambers were Polish & Russian POWS.
To the people of eastern Europe Hitler's Eugenics were directed at them. The second world war is seen as being against them. Nazis tried to wipe the Slavic peoples off the face of the earth.
In the Ukraine there were collaborators. Some western Ukrainians sided with the Nazis and assisted them in killing Jews & Russians & Poles. These groups continued to terrorise the populace long after the war ended. It took the Soviets about ten years to fully wipe them out.
Now think of what the EU & the USA have done in Ukraine. The united states spent 5 billion dollars trying to install their puppet government. To do so they sided with the Neo-Nazi fraction of Ukrainian politics. The sort of people that shout slogans like
"kill the Russians!" " Russians on knives!" and call for killing the Russian inhabitants of the east with nuclear weapons.
The USA not only violated what the Russians see as their sphere of influence - which is a dick move in itself. They did it by using the same people that tried to wipe out the Russian people. The same people that lead to the deaths of 27 million Soviets.
Dick move Uncle Sam. Dick Move.
