Russia Remembers, The United States Forgets

Today, May 9, marks the 79th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany aka Victory in Europe day and the Russian people held massive marches and commemorations — not just in Russia — but in countries around the world where Russian expats live. But in the United States, where the mythology persists that the United States defeated the Nazis, there were crickets. Nothing. Why the difference?

It is a simple matter of numbers.

The Soviet Union is estimated to have suffered the highest number of WWII casualties. As many as 27 million Soviets lost their lives, with as many as 11.4 million military deaths joined by up to 10 million civilian deaths due to military activity and an additional 8 million to 9 million deaths due to famine and disease. Those totals do not include the more than 14 million Soviet soldiers who were wounded during the war. Among the Soviet Union’s 15 republics, Russia withstood the highest number of casualties, with 6,750,000 military deaths and 7,200,000 civilian deaths. Ukraine tallied the second-highest casualties, with 1,650,000 military deaths and 5,200,000 civilian deaths.

The estimated population of the Soviet Union in 1940 was 170 million. In other words, 16% of Soviet citizens (which included Russia and Ukraine) died as a consequence of the Great Patriotic War. That does not begin to take into account the number of wounded, which probably represented an additional 20 million people.

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h/t Matt Bracken