Myths of WWII

[Beirut]

This borders on dishonesty. I don't know what article you are talking about, but it's certainly not the article I linked to.

It just seems to me that the authour of the article is, albeit with subtlety, tearing away at the Allies for no apparent reason.

You know, I think here is what ticked you off -- the real reason why you try to find fault with the whole reasonable, well-balanced and well-informed article:

In all the western campaigns of the war against French, British, Americans, and troops of many other lands, some 200,000 German soldiers died. Four million Germans died on the Eastern Front.

The author says the Allies were militarily inferior to the Germans in most ways except in numbers and resources. That's a fact, borne out by many a study into the battles of WWII. The author also says that is no reason for shame, because democracies are defended by citizens in arms, not by blind robots of the kind that dictatorships produce.

The war between the Russians and the Germans was different in ways from the war between the Germans and the West. One German officer said that when fighting the British and Americans, things would calm down at night. People could almost take a breather. He said the Russians were different, "they were trying to kill us all the time!" There was a hatred between the Germans and Russians that was unparalleled elsewhere in Europe. That changed the scope of their battles.

And I'm well aware of the quality of the German troops. They were top notch. But so were we after a while.

Even then, others did the fighting. The best description of how Hitler was defeated was Stalin’s. The old monster said that England provided the time, America provided the money, and Russia provided the blood.

Maybe that hurts. The popping of myths always does.

No myth popping there. I knew all that. I just don't agree with how it is represented. You can make Mother Theresa look like a monster if you word it properly. And I admit to being reluctant to taking Stalin's viewpoint on too many issues. Besides, one of the reasons the Soviets paid such a high price in blood is because their tactics demanded it. If Stalin chose to march a thousand men across a minefield in order to clear it, I can't see that as any more heroic than the Brits or Americans losing a hundred men by fighting their way around it. Clausewitz said blood is the price of victory. He was wrong. You can't always equate casualties with heroism. Sometimes you can equate them with carelessness and stupidity.