Russia: West slighted Soviets in D-Day ceremonies

Well this is true.....

Europe's liberation and the D-Day commemorations themselves "would have been impossible if millions of our soldiers had not paid for this with their blood and their lives in battle against the best units of Hitler's Wehrmacht; if our army - in the words of Churchill - had not broken the back of Hitler's war machine."


And this is interesting.....

Many Britons grumble that their nation does not get its due - either from its ally, the United States, or from the French whom it helped to liberate.

 

True. The typical American citizen thinks the U.S. alone defeated Germany then there is the younger generation who many do not even know who we fought. My wife said this is what she was taught as were I in school. They never even mentioned the eastern front. My wife's friend is a school teacher and when I shared the facts with her it blew her mind and her son did not know who we even fought. Both his parents being teachers.

 

First..Russia should not be honored during a D-Day ceremony. They did not participate in D-Day, at all. Yes, Russia sacrificed and lost millions. They also "Purged" their own military by killing their Officer Corps, shot tens of thousands of their own soldiers for retreating, and murdered thousands of Polish Officials. Stalin was responsible for more Innocent murders than Hitler. So, I think the Russian officials should rethink their objections unless they want world to know what they "Really" did during the war.

Unlike the Western Allies, they were not fighting to free Europe and restore peace. They used the opportunity to expand westward and then occupied those countries for 50 years and Installed communist governments. Lets be honest. We swapped on Tyrannical madman in Hitler for another in Stalin.

Secondly....The fact that History classes hardly teach about WW2 is appalling. When I was kid, I was born in 1970. Every kid in the neighborhood knew about WW2. Playing army in the woods we always played as US against Japs or Nazi's. All I did as a kid was read about the war. I was just addicted and engrossed by it and the whole spectacle of the war.

Nowadays kids graduate High School and they cant tell you who the Axis nations were or the Allies. I saw a news report about the state of schools and education. For an example they asked a 24 year old COLLEGE GRADUATE.."Who attacked Pearl Harbor?" she said.."Russia". Its a shame that that generation will die off and the youth of today dont know about what they did.

 

Agreed, not only is the teaching of history at the high school level appalling recently the trend extends to the college level. Not just the students, the educators. When I returned to college to finish my B.A. studies (I was now in my forties), I was shocked to hear one young female instructor inform her students, with passion, how the US military/industrial complex "invented" Napalm for the express purpose of burning civilians out of their huts in Vietnam. Whereupon she flashed up that famous picture of the nude little Vietnamese girl running down the road with her flesh burned and her clothes burned off.

I couldn't stand it, since I was in the USN during the Vietnam period and had interrupted my college studies to enlist in 1968. I raised my hand and informed her that Napalm was invented in WW2, first used in France after D-Day, and to top it off that little girl was the victim of her own country's Air Force, not the USAF. It was their raid, not ours which produced that horrific photo for Life magazine.

I had to go and find independent documentation for her to believe me, I eventually convinced her of her mistake and did end up getting an "A" for that course BTW.

 

Well at least she was willing to admit she was wrong and you taught a teacher something. That can have a significant ripple effect.

 

That's not the point. At these ceremonies they mention the overall allied victory over the Axis. You have no choice but to mention Russia since they did the vast majority of the fighting. D-Day was really small potatoes when you compare it to the eastern front. Yes, Stalin was evil and did some very bad things even to his own people. That does not lesson the courage and the impact that the Soviet people had on this war. I agree about your remarks pertaining to the modern generation.

 

It is also important to note that the sacrifice of the Soviet (Russians now) were specifically mentioned by President Obama in his speech, if not by other nations:

This is the story of the Allied victory. It is the legend of units like Easy Company and the All-American 82nd. It is the tale of the British people, whose courage during the Blitz forced Hitler to call off the invasion of England; the Canadians, who came even though they were never attacked; the Russians, who sustained some of the war's heaviest casualties on the Eastern front; and all those French men and women who would rather have died resisting tyranny than lived within its grasp. (emphasis mine)

So the fighting on the eastern front was recognized in the same vein as all the other figthing forces who joined to defeat Hitlerism.

 

you get a salute for doing that, good job!

 

I agree and you get one for reminding me.