John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Russian TV Blasts Trump for Not Mentioning That Russia Won WW2, Not last-minute D-Day Landings”
I recall once, many years ago, seeing a large article in an American urban newspaper about D Day and ensuing events. It, quite seriously, referred to the Battle of the Bulge as the greatest battle ever fought.
I immediately wrote a letter to the editor correcting the error and explaining that Stalingrad was an immensely greater battle and was indeed the greatest battle in human history.
Stalingrad was also far more consequential, marking as it did, the genuine turning point of the war. It came more than a year before D Day, and after the victory, a lot of people, including Germans, understood that it was just a matter of time.
The anecdote is a good measure of fairly widespread American ignorance about history. Endless propaganda about the "indispensable nation" and its unparalleled achievements in every field of human endeavor always stands ready to fill any gaps left by ignored or forgotten facts.
And Americans, many of them, are only too happy to lap up such stuff, reinforcing their own prejudices.
There apparently was a film a few years back which had Americans making the Enigma German Code machine discovery instead of the British. The same kind of fat-headed nonsense gets repeated countless times in speeches and films and popular articles.
So, keep in mind, it is not easy for anyone outside America to cut through the layers of insulating nonsense in order to communicate sensibly.
It is a serious problem for genuine communication and understanding, much akin to someone trying to tell an ultra-Orthodox person from Israel that you don't believe God ever had a chosen people, whatever some of those old papyruses written in caves by eccentrics and lunatics thousands of years ago might say.
D Day, despite its importance, including symbolic importance, quite simply was, I'm sorry to say, a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the Eastern Front.
I believe nothing is more important for history and the later decisions based upon it than perspective, accurate perspective.
23 American divisions, 14 British, 3 Canadian, 1 French and 1 Polish.
Apart from what greeted the Americans on the beaches of Normandy, the Germans had 228 divisions fighting desperately on the Eastern Front, battle-hardened and originally equipped as the finest army ever fielded.
Had even a fraction of those German divisions been freed-up to turn towards Normandy, D Day either would not have taken place or been a tragic fiasco, a larger-scale version of Churchill’s terrible failure at Gallipoli in WWI.
About three-quarters of all German soldiers killed in the war were killed by Soviet armies.
The Soviets themselves lost 27 million people, somewhat less than half of them soldiers, the most terrible toll in all of recorded human history, both military and civilian.
For comparison, America's entire losses in the war, including the Pacific, were about 300 thousand. By comparison to Russia and Europe, America lost virtually no property or industry. No wonder it emerged afterward as a strong imperialist power, ready to take over almost everywhere.
