re: Do Russian history students learn about WWII the other way around?

I assume that, similar to what we do, they see themselves as the winner and downplay the involvement and importance of the other major power in the world at the time.

The difference is that at the end of the cold war America had phenomenal technology and had advanced leaps and bounds above the rest of the world. Russia remained stagnant.

Now, America is fat and bloated and lazy and other countries are starting to pass us up.

Hitler beat himself by invading Russia

Russia doesn't stand a chance without US supplying them with vehicles and equipment. That combined with their complete disregard for human life is how they won the war. Their losses are staggering. Stalin would have thrown every man, woman, and child at the Germans to win.

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Posted by LSURussian online on 1/8/17 at 10:58 am to Tiger1242
Russian history books also teach that the U.S. "stole" Alaska from Russia by replacing the word "lease" with "sell" in the transfer treaty.

They claim Czar Alexander II thought he was signing a 99 year lease agreement with the U.S. for $7.2 million because that was the wording of his Russian translation version of the treaty. But the Americans substituted "sell" in the English version.

They use the date of Alaska's statehood admission as proof that the U.S. knew it was supposed to return Alaska to Russia in 1966, 99 years after the 1867 transaction, because congress admitted Alaska as a state in 1959 to make it impossible for the Russians to regain Alaska.

I had two different Russians in two different Russian cities explain that to me. It was all I could to avoid laughing as they told me.



Is it bad that I kind of want that to be true?

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Italy should be getting its arse kicked by Greece.

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and Ethiopia

Without US and British bombing there might not have been a stalemate in Russia and they might've been overrun. Also, they were only an ally because we had a common enemy, not a common goal, so it was imperative that we reach Berlin first. Without our boots on the ground in Europe in 1944 the chance of a truce between Russia and Germany could've been pretty high, and the results of the war would've been very different

You are on point. Remember when the German soldiers came back from WW1, they paraded through the victory arch and many saw them as winners of WW1, until the treaty of Versailles was finalized. A lot of people don't know that President Wilson pushed the League of Nations and a softer path to peace for Germany, but was rebuffed mainly by France, Italy and England, who wanted a harder truce. The English leadership and French leadership that pushed for harsher penalties on Germany, then sat on their hands as Germany rearmed. They could have swooped in in 1932 and stopped the Nazis from ever gaining a military, instrad they turned the other way.
If anything the leadership if France and England in the 1930's is just as complacent in the war as the Nazis themselves. They failed to keep up the treaty they pushed so hard for. The US on the other hand, never signed the treaty of Versailles, instead We signed our own treaty with Germany, and the US never joined the League of Nations even though the US president was the one who came up with the idea. A huge reason for that was Wilson was an ardent Democrat and he refused to work with Republicans, who were in charge of congress at the time. Another point was the US as a whole wanted to be left alone from European problems.

A story for another thread is that Ho Chi Minh came to the US in the 1920s and was looking to the US to help them gain freedom from France. As Wilson was anti-imperialist. Wilson was also a racist and rebuffed Minh and instead Minh got help from Russia, and this bit us in the arse forty years later.

Also Wilson gave German territory in China to Japan instead of to China, and this gave Japan strongholds in China. A lot of mistakes on his part.

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Not true. The communist and nationalist forces declared a ceasefire during the Japanese invasion and only resumed the conflict after WW2.

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Correct, in fact Chiang Hi Shek escaped what he thought was a death squad and hid out in a cave in basically is underwear in the cold, and when he was captured, his captors asked him to lead them. Very interesting stories. I have a bookcase and a half on ww2 books, my favorite subject. I just got all 39 Time Life WW2 books from 1984, so far it is the best most comprehensive series I have seen on the war. Each one about a small segment of the war or the lead up to it.

Studies have shown that the US and British bombing campaign against Germany, while vastly destructive of civil infrastructure, had relatively little impact on Germany's ability to make war.

There was zero chance of a truce between Germany and the USSR at that late stage of the war. The Germans themselves understood that, which was why they launched the Ardennes offensive in the vain hope of convincing the West to join sides with them against the communist horde.

The truth is, by the time 1944 rolled around, the Germans had the right of it: the Soviet Union was by far a bigger threat to worldwide peace and stability than a beaten Germany. The Nazis just didn't understand that the postwar world had no place for them in it.

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Napoleon

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I have a 14 part audio lecture by Margaret MacMillan titled Six Months That Changed the World, The Paris Peace Conference. I don't remember where the hell I got it but I downloaded it for free. If you are interested in the subject I highly recommend it. It discusses the subject of Ho Chi Minh and lots of other peoples under colonial rule and their emissaries to the peace conference lobbying for independence under Wilson's proclaimed principles of self determination. It was really good.