Did Russia win WWII?

[Zakharra]

Books
I hope this books not by Norman Davis and others like him. Just go to any Russian forum and ask. Anyway you lose nothing.

Cleaning
The Soviet Union and the ethnic cleansing - is incompatible things. All Soviet ideology contrary to the division of people by race or ethnic. Social class cleaning - yes, this is possible.

Finland, Poland
Thinking, what Poland and Finland is an innocent victims - is a mistake. In the 1919-21 war, the Poles staged cleansing of the Jewish population (as bandits from central Russia, for justice), but and firsts and seconds was severely punished by Soviets. But don't forget, in Polish captivity more than 22,000 of Russian people was killed. People are not just the statistics numbers - in 1939 Poland was punished for that, in Moscow is not forgotten. By the way, after the occupation of Poland only elite was subject of repression - ordinary soldiers (sometimes even bypassing distribution centers) were just released home.
Finns attacked the border bases, burned to the hospitals with patients and doctors inside, shelled a village at the border.
Finally - not the fault of Russia that Poland and Finland are on our borders, and that the West was Hitler. We needed to protect the area. "The protection of national interests," as now talking. Modern Western policy much cynical.

Ukraine.
Please do not talk about Ukraine. I'm tired of this talk in Russia and on Russian, I do not want continue on English. Here are a few basic things:
1.Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians - are one people, one culture, divided only by administrative boundaries.
2.Ukraine within its present borders is political chimera like Yugoslavia.
3.In sum, I am almost a year (11 months, 1997-2002) lived in Evpatoria, without a word of Ukrainian. Many people don't know main Ukrainian dialect here, just Surzhyk maybe.
4.The occupation of Ukraine by the Soviet Union can be imagine only a madman, Ukraine as a state didn't exist in that time, Ukrainian language was not "standard" until 1920th.
5.Don't ask me any questions about the current situation - for understand something, what's going on now, you are need to be born and live here. All that MASS of information, what I know, even in Russian I can describe with great difficulty; and I speak English badly. Do you want to know more? - go to vk.com, Russian social network, get people from Kiev, Moscow, Lugansk, Donetsk, Evpatoria... I think many people willing to talk to you!

*snerks* Ha. Haha. Hahahahahaa.. You seriously believe that? If so, I pity you. The USSR was NOT a nice nation. It was brutal, cruel and killed millions of its own citizens (the Ukranian Famine is one example). It ruthlessly crushed -any- opposition with the blunt application of force and was blatantly expansionist, especially in the earlier decades.

Finland and Poland were attacked by the Soviets, with the intention of annexing their territories, and putting what wasn't conquered, under heavy Soviet pressure/influence. You might note that those nations have a bad history with Russia invading them over the centuries, and them fighting, or trying to fight them off.

Ukraine has been its own nation for about a century (if wikipedia is correct). It became a nation as we know it under the Soviets. It has been out from under the Soviet umbrella since 1990. A vote I remind you that had over 90% of the Ukrainian electorate supported the Act of Independence. Everyone, even Russia acknowledged that Ukraine was its own nation, so to say or imply it isn't a nation or doesn't deserve to be one is a fallacy on your end.

[Krulle]

Cleaning
The Soviet Union and the ethnic cleansing - is incompatible things. All Soviet ideology contrary to the division of people by race or ethnic. Social class cleaning - yes, this is possible.

Yet, the ideology and the actual politics diverged greatly... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian ... sification

Ukraine.
Please do not talk about Ukraine. I'm tired of this talk in Russia and on Russian, I do not want continue on English. Here are a few basic things:
1.Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians - are one people, one culture, divided only by administrative boundaries.

Yet the Ukranian language uses an alphabet that is different from the Cyrrilic scrpt....
And Russia considered it important enough to prohibit the use of Ukranian at schools from 1804-1917 (year of the revolution), in a try to suppress the Ukranian identity and language.

Lexically, the closest language to Ukrainian is Belarusian (84% of common vocabulary), followed by Polish (70%), Serbo-Croatian (68%), Slovak (66%) and Russian (62%).[8] The Ukrainian language retains a degree of mutual intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian.[9]

Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100. On the territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine emerged Ruthenian and in modern Russia medieval Russian. They became distinct since the 13th century, i.e. following the division of that land between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Poland and Hungary in the west and independent Novgorod and Pskov feudal republics plus numerous small duchies (which came to be vassals of the Tatars) in the east.

These are all indications that Ukranian is a language. Much more than English or Dutch is...
And there are cultural differences. Stalin destroyed the, as far as he could ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian ... sification ) by deporting the cultural elite, and sending many Russians as migrants into the industrializing regions of the Ukraine....

2.Ukraine within its present borders is political chimera like Yugoslavia.

And what about Russia itself?
That is a total chimera. If you want to deny Ukrania a right to exist because of this, then Russia needs to dissolve itself too.

3.In sum, I am almost a year (11 months, 1997-2002) lived in Evpatoria, without a word of Ukrainian. Many people don't know main Ukrainian dialect here, just Surzhyk maybe.

11months in 6 years? That are just longer holidays. Here you can live for years in one go without learning the local language (I have colleagues which live here since 15 years, and still can't talk or understand Dutch. Some of them are Germans, and Dutch / German is closer related than Ukrainian / Polish (which itself is closer than Ukrainian / Russian - see above).

And Ukraine is a multi-lingual nation, where due to history Russian is an important language even for non-Russian parts of the Ukraine.
Yevpatoria is in the Native-Russian part of the Crimea....

SpoilerShow

Linguistic map of Ukraine. The light Purple bars in each province indicate the percentage of Ukrainian speakers in 1989 and the dark purple bars indicate the percentage of Ukrainian users in 2001. The Blue Bars represent the percentage of Russian speakers by province for the same years.

4.The occupation of Ukraine by the Soviet Union can be imagine only a madman, Ukraine as a state didn't exist in that time, Ukrainian language was not "standard" until 1920th.

Historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus'. After the fall of the Kievan Rus' as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the language developed into a form called the Ruthenian language. The Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire, of which the biggest part of Ukraine (Central, Eastern and Southern) was a part at the time. It has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned,[...]]

And just because a "state didn't exist in that time", that does not mean the people have not been conquered and subjugated. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine ... domination)

And surely there are people willing to talk to me and explain the Russian view of the situation.
But they are as easily disprovable as your information given.

[Arioch]

This is an interesting visualization and breakdown of the civilian and military casualties during World War II, and in comparison with war fatalities before and since. This is about a year old, but I hadn't seen it before.

As you might expect, the coverage of the deaths on the Eastern Front is especially dramatic.



For a higher-resolution version, check out the vimeo version or the source website at fallen.io.

https://vimeo.com/128373915
http://fallen.io

[sunphoenix]

Thank you Arioch! That was VERY nice.. and informative!

[Beliskner]

Finland, Poland
Thinking, what Poland and Finland is an innocent victims - is a mistake. In the 1919-21 war, the Poles staged cleansing of the Jewish population (as bandits from central Russia, for justice), but and firsts and seconds was severely punished by Soviets. But don't forget, in Polish captivity more than 22,000 of Russian people was killed. People are not just the statistics numbers - in 1939 Poland was punished for that, in Moscow is not forgotten. By the way, after the occupation of Poland only elite was subject of repression - ordinary soldiers (sometimes even bypassing distribution centers) were just released home.
Finns attacked the border bases, burned to the hospitals with patients and doctors inside, shelled a village at the border.
Finally - not the fault of Russia that Poland and Finland are on our borders, and that the West was Hitler. We needed to protect the area. "The protection of national interests," as now talking. Modern Western policy much cynical.

Hmm commonly I'm staying out of politics and history but I feel I need to say something from Poland/Polish people side if you mind:

" in Polish captivity more than 22,000 of Russian people was killed" yes, historians estimate such numbers but COURSE of death is missing in your statement. Most of them died from pneumonia and tuberculosis which they carried and due to bad conditions in camps couldn't be cured. Why there were bad conditions in camps? This is shame but Poland was totally wrecked, devastated by Red army and WWI and there was no medicine/doctors around to cure such epidemic(don't force me to show Polish civilian loses in that time).

"Poland was punished for that, in Moscow is not forgotten." Punishing by dragging prisoners of war to forest and shooting them in the back of head? Yea good job. About invasion : first sinning no-aggression pact and then invade without official declaration of war. I guess Russian never change(see Ukraine, Georgia) also please go read what Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was about.

From my point of view, the biggest sinners of WWII are United kingdom, France ,first they convinced Poland to join Allies(feel free to read diplomatic correspondence between Churchill and Beck( Polish minister of foreign affairs) to make anti-german coalition, then they abandon Poland to Nazi and USSR. While historians say that combined forces of England and France could overwhelm western German flank. Ironically Hitler till late 1938 had great opinion about Poland and it's people, mostly due won war against Communists invasion(Polish-Soviet War 1920) and didn't consider a war with my people.

WWII brought much pain for every side, Poles, Russians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Germans, French, British, Latvians, Finns, Japanese, Americans let's honor everyone's fallen and remember it in case someone will want to start another global conflict...

[JQBogus]

In their defense, the UK and France did declare war on Germany over its invasion of Poland, as per their treaty obligations. The treaty was not a universal defense alliance, though. It specified a declaration of war on Germany in the event that Germany attacked Poland. There was no requirement to declare war on the USSR.

That they didn't have an effective plan, or possibly the ability, to render timely and effective assistance while Poland was being overrun is another matter.

[Krulle]

Well, seeing how fast the German panzerdivisions rolled over their Eastern Neighbour, any staging and shipping of English and French matériel would have only arrived in Poland once the Germans had full control over the harbours, so it would have had to be a very large operation...
For the French it would likely have been easier to send the material right through German than shipping it through the Øresund. And you can guess how friendly the French would have been received trying to do that past well-defended entrenchments.

And the political will to actively go into an open war with Germany was still not there. The politicians were afraid of the public opinion which still remembered the catastrophe of WW1...

[Suederwind]

If I remember correctly, the French and British garatueed, that they would launch an offensive against Germany within 14 days, in case they would attack Poland. Resulting in this: Saar Offensive

[fredgiblet]

The French and British did declare war on the Germans, as per their guarantee. The simple reality though is that neither of them was actually prepared for war. The British never kept a large standing army and the French were worn out still from WW1. Calling them sinners for failing to accomplish something they could not reasonably accomplish is a bit much IMO. The Germans didn't just fail to uphold treaties they flatly ignored them, that's far worse.

As far as Russia winning the war, no. It was a team effort. The Soviets did far more on the ground than the Western allies, however the Soviets had NO strategic combat ability. They mounted only a handful of strategic bombing raids, and their surface navy was a joke. The British blockaded Germany and the Brits and US performed strategic strikes. In addition the Brits (and later the US) opened up a second front in North Africa, followed by a third in Italy, followed by a fourth in France. None of those were as big as the Eastern Front, but all drained resources away. Lastly the Soviets received an enormous amount of aid in the East. They received thousands of armored vehicles, half a million trucks and millions of tons of supplies like gunpowder and food. The Soviet generals themselves stated that Lend-Lease was very important to their war effort.

Without the Soviets the western allies would never have been able to liberate France (Excepting, perhaps, nuking Germany into submission), but without the western allies the Soviets probably wouldn't have been able to push the Germans back, and if they did manage it they would have been utterly depleted by war's end.