if the basic point being made here is that the soviets deserve the real credit for defeating the nazis, then that is very much correct. even with the importance of the lend-lease program acknowledged, the soviets remain the force that did the heavy lifting, with no help from the ukrainians or balts.

but, what an article like this is truly obscuring is the reality that the germans had already realized they'd lost, and had made a secret pact with the west to try to stop stalin before he got to madrid.

i remember the way they tried to teach this in the eighth grade as being this baffling, confusing thing that nobody understood. why didn't the germans fight back? why did they just let us walk in?

it's really the economic realities that clarify the incomprehensible, more than anything else; it was really american capital that stepped in, in it's refusal to lose germany to communism.

i cite world war two as almost the only war i've ever supported. the only threat the world has seen since that is comparable to nazism is fundamentalist islam, which is why i point to eradicating isis as being the only military operation that we can legitimately compare to eradicating the nazi state, even if there's a difference of scale.

but, we don't understand wwII very well at all.

justified or not, today's a special day. this was a war worth winning, and this is the day we celebrate it.

don't forget about it.

https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/comment-operation-bagration-was-the-real-d-day-1.1127733