Happy Victory Day

[_priapism]

75 years ago today, Hitler was vanquished and the German Instrument of Surrender was signed late in the evening on 8 May 1945.  Russia suffered casualties estimated to be as high as 26 million people, but no less than 16 million.  Over 15% of its population.  It is why the Russian People will not forget their Great Patriotic War.  Happy Victory Day.

[seveninchblues]

No doubt the war could not have been won without Russia.  Of course, Stalin was ready to align himself with Hitler and Hitler pulled one of the biggest double-crosses of all time, also making his biggest mistake.

Yes, to the Russian people, I say Happy Victory Day.

Stalin was an evil man.

[watcher1]

Not to take anything away from the Russian people who gave up their lives in defense of their country but it was the severe Russian winter's that began the downfall of any nation that tried to conquer Russia. The combination of the winter and the valiant defenders defeated all invading armies.

[_priapism]

Invasion of Russia can refer to:

•Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' (1223–1236), a series of invasions that resulted in the Rus states becoming vassals of the Golden Horde.
•Russo-Crimean Wars (1571), an Ottoman invasion that penetrated Russia and destroyed Moscow.
•Polish–Muscovite War (1605–1618), Poland gained Severia and Smolensk.
•Ingrian War (1610–1617), a Swedish invasion which captured Novgorod and Pskov.
•Swedish invasion of Russia (1707), an unsuccessful Swedish invasion.
•French invasion of Russia (1812), an unsuccessful invasion by Napoleon's French Empire and its allies.
•Invasion of Sakhalin (1905), an invasion and annexation by the Japanese.
•Eastern Front (World War I) (1914–1918), Russia ceded Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states to Germany as the Russian Empire collapsed.
•Japanese intervention in Siberia (1918-1922), an occupation of the Russian Far East by •Japanese soldiers during the Russian Civil War.
•Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and the contemporaneous Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921), the Polish occupation of Belarus and West Ukraine.
•Operation Barbarossa (1941), a German-led invasion that started the Eastern Front of World War II.
•Kantokuen, an aborted plan for a major Japanese invasion of the Russian Far East during World War II.
•War of Dagestan (1999), a repulsed Chechen invasion of Dagestan.

[Jed_]

Hopefully not too off topic or offensive, but this reminds me of an online argument I had with a Russian guy about Kosovo over 20 years ago.  He was pro-Serb and I held the anti-genocide view.  At one point we discussed the end of WWII, and I pointed out that the Americans actually paused their advance into Germany because the territory in the East was already ceded to the Russians by a Roosevelt Churchill Stalin agreement.  We didn’t want to pay in American lives for land the Russians would end up getting.  The Russian guy said that meant Americans were cowards.  I disagreed that we were cowards, but did agree the American Army should have kept going east back then and not stopped until they got to Alaska, and that the world would be a far better place if we had.  The Russian guy didn’t agree.

[_priapism]

Eisenhower decided to pause at the Elbe.  Roosevelt was already dead.  Churchill was furious, but Eisenhower did not want to risk an inadvertent engagement with the Soviets, and casualties to take Berlin were estimated to be as high as 100,000.

[Jed_]

Eisenhower decided to pause at the Elbe.  Roosevelt was already dead.  Churchill was furious, but Eisenhower did not want to risk an inadvertent engagement with the Soviets, and casualties to take Berlin were estimated to be as high as 100,000.

Didn’t really know who made the decision in the moment, just recall the allies had already divided up Germany into American, British, French and Soviet administrative districts.  And the U.S. did not want to die for territory they would then hand over to the Soviets.

The Polish were the 4th largest as far as number fighting for the allies, more than France.  They didn’t even get their own country back and were forbidden from marching in the victory parade that had soldiers from around 50 nationalities.

Interestingly, the Elbe was the geographic divider for the Slavic and Germanic tribes for many centuries.  So if you really went back in time and redrew the borders, Berlin would be in Poland.

Note added:  In my mention of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, I was thinking of Yalta and the post-war plan for the partitioning of Germany.