Like you my formal education about the Eastern Front was scanty, biased,and propagandistic. I made it a special study, therefore, when I moved to the left, and now know way too much about it, though I have not kept up with the scholarship in the last decade.
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On Dec 3, 2012, at 3:27 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Chuck Grimes
>
>
> In my remembered school histories the Russians and especially the
> Chinese are merely blank spots. There were a few mentions of southern
> China, Burma, and very distant US airfields. As for Russia I had no
> idea at all of the relative numbers. Stone uses the figure of 27
> million Russian dead. These are tremendous numbers I only came across
> sometime in 1990s.
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: I've been using the 27 million figure since this list started.
> The destruction of economic infrastructure was gargantuan. Few people
> take account of the fact the SU had to start almost from square one
> after The Great Patriotic War when they point to the fall of the SU in
> 1989. The industrial giant SU had to be built twice. It burned them
> out. It was not a failure of socialism qua socialism , but of
> socialism bludgeoned by capitalism.
>
> The Soviets inflicted 90% of the Nazis casualties. So, clearly it was
> the Red Army that defeated the Nazis. The Western front was tiny
> compared to the Eastern front.
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