General Discussion

I know we have our own version of history in the US, but what happened in WW2 is extremely difficult to box into our cold war mentality. Certainly Stalin agitated things by keeping the territories, but the USSR had lost more than 20 MILLION people to the German war machine.

Not making excuses for the Russians (or the other many European peoples who also extracted revenge and atrocities against expat german civilians), but I think it is beyond imagining for most in this country to understand what it means for a foreign entity to extract the kind of toll that the german army did in Russia. I am not convinced, at that time in history, we would have necessarily acted that much differerent.

I am not saying it was right, but there was dangerous animosity toward German speaking people throughout that part of the world, including in the other allied countries. The primary problem was the anger of millions whose lives and countries were destroyed by the Reich, not Stalin, and not even the border designations. It was the aftermath of a brutal war.

I would, however argue, it's difficult to see how the allies could have done any different, especially given that they were all rebuilding their own countries and already had their resources tasked taking care of their own people?

Seems to me that it would be better to see the lesson of the brutality even in the aftermath of war. Maybe someday the world will learn that and it's citizenry will fight harder to make peace and human rights a higher priority.