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Comment by othello | Hacker News Reader

In terms of loss of civilians and military personnel though, it does not compare: the Soviet Union accounted for more than 40% of all WW2 deaths (both civilian and military) worldwide - including deaths on the Pacific front.

The Soviet Union lost a total of 26.6 million people, or 13.8% of their 1939 population. Germany suffered tremendously as well of course, with 5.7 million dead, or 8.2% of their 1939 population [0].

This is obviously not a contest, and I'm sure we can all agree that the suffering was tremendous on all sides. However, when it comes to the perception of war in Russia, the fact that the brunt of the Allied war effort in terms of casualties was borne out by the Soviet Union during WW2 (a fact often little known or recognized in Western countries) is especially relevant.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

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That's true, I do not disput it.

My point was about the countries as a whole, including civilians and by including the displaced people. And I did include them because you pointed at the amputation of territories, which is something that happened nearly 70 years after the WWII, so I felt I could talk about what happened in the ten years after the WWII.

You know this point about displaced people strikes me because I am French:

I did work with (old) Germans and sometimes I felt some bitterness, including an occasion where one guy in an hotel told me of bombardments on Heidelberg (not a town that suffered heavily) and I was thinking that my father suffered also from bombardments (bombs exploded around him) as a 18 years old in France, so what was his point? Many years later I learned that the Allied discourse of "the good and the bad people" was an heavy (re) writing of history.

> Many years later I learned that the Allied discourse of "the good and the bad people" was an heavy (re) writing of history.

I agree that that was heavily the case on the Eastern front (with the Allies doing heavy cover-ups for USSR genocides so that they are not associated with a "bad guy"), but how did that happen on the Western front?

That is what I point out in my previous replies. You can look also at:

* US (Roosevelt) planned for nearly destruction of after war Germany, fortunately Hoover stopped that policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_plans_for_German_indust...

* Living with 1200 calories per day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_in_occupied_Germany

* Another strange behavior is that Allied forces imposed to De Gaulle to "whitewash" its troops before entering Paris. I suppose it was a only trick to make it impossible for French troops to enter in Paris without having to refuse bluntly, but that shows that the demand of "having only white soldiers" was considered to be perfectly normal and acceptable by UK and US forces.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7984436.stm

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