C-Mag wrote: ↑Thu Dec 20, 2018 1:52 am
Truth be told, the Soviets were probably more brutal an inhuman than the Nazi's. Our popular history doesn't remember it that way. The Danes going neutral in WWII was probably the best decision by the government for it's citizens.
No. Just no.
Our popular history actually makes the Germans seem pretty nice, all things considered. Keep in mind, we keep thinking of "nazi war crimes", not "German war crimes". This was an effort by the western allies and western Germany to distance Germany from their responsibility with nazism. Because the Soviet Union was our new enemy, and Western Germany our new friends. And the propaganda took hold, and now many people honestly believe Germany was the lesser of two evils. They were one of two evils, that is true, but they were so far from the lesser evil as you could get. This "the germans weren't that bad"-propaganda effort was done by the Soviets too, because they too had Eastern Germany as their new ally. As a consequence, these propaganda efforts have given the general public a pretty limited understanding of the true nature of Germany during the war. Holocaust is hammered into us so much we think this was pretty much the only bad thing Germany did.
Read up on the hunger plan. It makes the Holodomor look like a misdemeanor in comparison. If Germany had succeeded in Barborossa, they would've starved 20-30 million civilians. In comparison, the Soviet Union won, and occupied the German territories, and about a million german died, both from western allied mismanagement, and to a larger extent combination of famine and mismanagement from the Soviet Union.
You had a better chance to survive the war as a German soldier captured in the battle of Stalingrad, than as a Soviet soldier captured during the first year of the war. (And those were the germans that had the worst odds). The only reason they kept Soviet soldiers alive after the first year, was because they needed their manpower in the war industry.
I see this trend of "oh the Soviet Union were the real bad guys". And it's all based on some pop history fandom of Soviet atrocities, without going into the same depth of the German atrocities. Yes, the Soviets were bad, horrible, and should never happen again, and they did awful things. And yes, we don't learn enough about it in school. But damn if the same is true for the common knowledge about German atrocities during the war too. People have a limited knowledge of the Holocaust, and call it quits there. But there's more, there's way more. Hunger plan, aktion t4, and many, many more.
Soviet won, and there's still a Germany, and there's still German people around. But there wouldn't be a living slav west of the Urals ten years later if Germany won, and there would be no Russia.
The Germans did more damage in two years, than the Soviet Union did in ten. And yes, the Soviet Union lasted far longer, and caused more deaths due to its longevity. But you better believe Germany would've caused FAR more deaths if it actually managed to succeed. They would've used their victory to ramp up the killing, not slow it down.