I am not praising Zhukov himself. The way he spent men to win Stalingrad is another questionable aspect of the character.
We live with this slight propaganda that the USA was the responsible to liberate Europe, but in fact, USA showed up here at the end of the war when the Russians had already inflicted a major defeat on the German army, and it was the sacrifice of Russian men at Stalingrad (together with any material help the British could afford to spare to that front), that ultimately won the war for the Allies, not D-day.
Trying to reduce the war down to any one side is, IMHO, wrong and suspect.
Exactly. Just look at how many times Allied victory in WWII in Europe is reduced to D-Day. It's highly wrong and suspicious.
I don’t blame the western allies for the strategy but the soviets don’t get adequate credit for the privation they suffered.
According to whom?
We certainly learned the human burden the Soviets bore, including their less-than-Western regard for life, as a part of the war in my public school.
Perhaps if they hadn't raped, pillaged, and plundered their way through Europe they would've seen a bit more celebration from their erstwhile allies.
Makes you wonder why Americans did get that celebration then:
"In 1945, after the end of the war in Europe, Le Havre was filled with American servicemen awaiting return to the States. A Le Havre citizen wrote to the mayor that the people of Le Havre were "attacked, robbed, run over both on the street and in our houses" and "This is a regime of terror, imposed by bandits in uniform."[4] A coffeehouse owner from Le Havre testified "We expected friends who would not make us ashamed of our defeat. Instead, there came only incomprehension, arrogance, incredibly bad manners and the swagger of conquerors."[6] Such behavior also was common in Cherbourg. One resident stated that "With the Germans, the men had to camouflage themselves—but with the Americans, we had to hide the women."" [1]
I wonder if it had anything to do, with the much better implemented propaganda machine, USA had in Western Europe after WWII.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_liberation_of_...
Considering how the Nazis treated the Slavic peoples they conquered and that the Russians got to see all that on their tour of eastern Europe prior to arriving in Germany I think it's a miracle that the soviet army didn't get even.
Stalin and Zhukov both actively condoned the rape of women and the atrocities in East Prussia included the rape and crucifixion of women and elderly children and the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff which was equivalent to 5+ Titanics
It was a different order of magnitude of brutality on both sides
this old trope? the soviets were horrible monsters. they killed jews (many pogroms). during peacetime they killed at least as many people as the nazis did.
the great trick that the soviets managed is to make us belief they were on the right side of history, when in reality they were on the worst side, every single time.
one of the greatest mistakes of WW2 was the US support of the USSR. they should have left the two madmen to kill eachother. the world would have been a much better place. what did we get in return? USSR dominating half of Europe, murdering, scheming, destroying the social fabric of the continent for half a century.
All of that is orthogonal to the fact that over a third of the people who died in WW2 were Soviets, and many people do not realize it, which is the point the grandparent comment was making.