Thread by @LaurentFranckx

(thread) At the occasion of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, we have “kindly” be reminded by the Russians that D-Day wasn't such a big deal, that the Germans were already virtually beaten by then, that all this was thanks to the Red Army, /

and that the Soviets has lost infinitely more people than the western Allies.
What to think of this?
Well, let's start with acknowledging some obvious historical truths. The Soviet Union indeed payed the highest human toll of all countries that participated in the war.

Probably around 25 million USSR citizens died in the war, give or take a few millions (it is not obvious to perform this type of accounting – how do you account for people who starved to death or died from deprivation?)

The Chinese may point out that their death toll depends on the starting date, and the Poles may argue that their per capita losses were much higher. But, let's not nitpick, right?

The sufferings of the people of the Soviet Union was indeed incomparably higher than that of the Western Allies, and came on top of the already incredible losses of the first World War, a vicious civil war and Stalin's purges in the 1930s.

It is also a indisputable historical fact that the vast majority of the German casualties occurred at the Eastern Front.
And, still, I find this story problematic, because of the implication that we should be more grateful, so to say, to the Red Army than to the Western Allies.

Let us first have a look at the issue of the (implied) moral high ground. In 1939, the French and the British declared war on Germany, even if there was no immediate military reason to do so (OK, it was after they had betrayed Czechoslovakia, but better later than never, right?).

What did the Soviet Union do? Well, euh, it signed a treaty with the Nazis. It is widely known that the Ribbentrop-Molotov treaty foresaw that the Nazis and the Soviets would split Poland between them.

Just as crucial, though, is that, thanks to this Treaty, Hitler knew that he wouldn't have to wage a war on two fronts in the immediate future. We can only speculate whether he would have risked a war with the Western Allies without the Treaty,

but the Treaty has certainly not discouraged him from doing so. Also, thanks to the Treaty, Germany was assured of a steady supply of natural resources that were crucial to its war effort, including oil

– this was so problematic for the Western Allies that, in the spring of 1940, they had seriously considered bombing the oil fields of Baku

But it was even worse than that. During the Phoney War, communist trade unions in France actively sabotaged the war effort and undermined the moral of the troops. Given the contributions of Stalin to the French defeat in 1940, it is a bit strange to ask for a “thank you” now.

In reality, USSR only fought against the Nazis when it was attacked itself (the same is true about the US). It is only Great Britain that kept on fighting against Germany, even when it had the easy way out of a compromise peace that would have left the Empire mostly intact

If there's any country to which the world must be grateful (well, at least in this matter), it is the United Kingdom.
Let us now consider the point that D-Day was not really a big deal.

As I have already argued in a previous thread, an amphibious assault in Northern Europe would have been suicidal without first winning the battle of the Atlantic and beating the Luftwaffe – two tasks to which the Soviet Union contributed relatively little.

It should also be kept in mind that this mastery of the sea also mattered for the Soviet Union which, during the war, was kept afloat thanks to massive material help from the Western Allies – help that had to be brought in from the sea

2,25 million tons of steel, 400 000 tonnes of copper, 250 000 tonnes of aluminum (worth two years of production in the Soviet Union), 20 000 planes, around 23 000 armored vehicles and hundreds of thousands of trucks.

Another “detail” that is overlooked in this story, is that Japan never declared war on the Soviet Union, while the Americans and the British fought a war on several fronts, and initially suffered massive and humiliating defeats against the Japanese.

It was also the Western Allies who knocked Italy out of the war – while the Italian Army has been a bit of the laughing stock of the Second World War (not entirely fairly), it had a rather impressive Navy that was a power to reckon with in the Mediterranean.

And, of course, it was not as if all German troops were concentrated on the Eastern front until D-Day: huge amounts of troops were immobilized in Norway, France, Italy and the Balkans, not knowing where the next amphibious move would come.

When the Allied bombing campaign against Germany intensified over 1943, ever increasing resources had also to be invested in air defense. It is really very, very debatable whether the Soviet Union could have held out if these troops had been available on the Eastern Front.

When the Allied bombing campaign against Germany intensified over 1943, ever increasing resources had also to be invested in air defense. It is really very, very debatable whether the Soviet Union could have held out if these troops had been available on the Eastern Front.

There's another question, though: why were human losses so high on the Eastern Front? That will be the subject of a separate thread.

(spoiler alert: the people in the Soviet Unions were the victims of the joint "efforts" of two totalitarian regimes, on the one hand, one that had a clear intent to commit genocide, on the other hand, one that had no regard for human suffering in the pursuit of ideological purity