First Wave at Omaha Beach

theatlantic.com

12 points·DanielBMarkham··8 comments

"An account of the “epic human tragedy” that unfolded when Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy on D-Day"

Stopped reading there. Google: "By the end of the first day, none of the assault forces had secured their first-day objectives. Allied casualties on June 6 have been estimated at 10,000 killed, wounded, and missing in action: 6,603 Americans, 2,700 British, and 946 Canadians."

10k killed on your worst day? "an epic loss"?

The Soviet Union lost like 15k people. Per day. Over a week, a month, a year, in the end, over 5 years. It was a German-Russian war in Europe and the "Omaha Beach" looks more like a birthday party for children.

Tragedy is not a function of scale.

GP may have been doing some strange one-upsmanship, but Russia sure did have a worse time than the U.S. in WWII. I also think that extant Russian culture still suffers from PTSD over the trauma of the entire 20th century.

Suicide rates and alcoholism are high over there. If you act cheerful, many Russians think you must be stupid. Not a happy place to be.

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/13518049608430230

"the death of one is a tragedy. the death of a million is a statistic" Stalin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU

It's not a competition.

Soviet Union planned WWII with Nazis well ahead of it. They were well aware of Nazi beliefs and motives. Stalin killed most of SUs senior cadre for his own political reasons leaving SU almost defenseless.

Your statistic in no way diminishes the losses that each country suffered during the war.

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