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Zbyszek,
Thanks for the account. My WWII timeline above is somewhat abbreviated and was not meant to "leave out" anyone. It is simply an accounting of the Military facts that I have uncovered to date. I also did not elaborate on the French underground activities in Paris, or the slaughters that took place in China by the Japanese before WWII "officially" started.
Since Americans have access to all writings about WWII that have been published, I'm not sure your statement about our histories being "filterd" is correct. It is fair to say that most Americans do not speak or read Russian, so our understanding of Russian accounts is not "filtered," we just don't happen to read the language. Can you recommend some Russian accounts of WWII that have been translated into English?
Anyway, my "brief" timeline would grow considerably if I included civilian activities, too. However, the brave people of Warsaw sould not be slighted in any way. So, I have amended my timeline to include the Warsaw uprising.
As a general statement, the USA suffered about 135,000 casulaties in WWII. The Soviet Union suffered 20 million or more casulaties. I have seen figures ranging from 18 million to 24 million. In any case, the Societ Union suffered more than 100 times the number of casulaties that we did.
I find that to be almost unbelievable and certainly unforgiveable in light of that fact that many of your soldiers were no doubt killed through sheer negligence by Stalin's refusal to prepare for war in the face of overwhelming evidence that it was about to happen. Cavalry had not place on a battlefield populated with tanks!
We will NOT forget the sacrifice by the Soviet peoples and decry your suffering. I think the aftermath of WWII, popularly called the "cold war," was due mainly to the fact that no one in the West knew what the Sovirt intentions were after WWII. You had weathered the war and built up a very good military, and we were completely unsure of what Stalin would DO with thath military when the war ended.
The fact that politicans, be they communist or capatalist, cannot seem to speak the truth or even say what they mean only added to the paranoia at the time.
I sometimes wonder that we survived the folly of the last half of the 20th century without blowing each other up. If we HAD done so, it would have been the damned politicians that did it, not the average Russian or the average American.
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