As kowen said, most people in Britain do acknowledge that Russia played a vital part in WWII.

I've never heard anyone with at least a basic knowledge of the war to give the reasons you say people in the west do, but to be honest you give the west far little credit, to say what happened on d-day was a piece of cake compared to stalingrad and other battles is quite frankly insulting.

And you're not exactly creating a healthy debate by calling people with opposing views as ignorant or idiotic.

@ fatty:

What about the people in the Ukrain? Ever heard of Holodomor?

And this happend between 1932 -1933. Crazy, but this people where happy when they saw the german soldiers.

Sorry, but you don't want to argue, but to proselytize.

But they were dirty commies!

I don't know if you read the thread or not,  I was talking about how russian people sacrafised so much to defend their homelands, they didnt fight for communism they fought to stay alive, Nazis invaded their lands to enslave them.  Most of the Russians who fought the Nazis did not support Communism.

Sorry for calling you ignorant i had no right. So i take that back.  But you have to realize that those Russians who fought the German occupiers were not Communists. Most of them were ordinary russian civilians who wanted to defend their lands against the Fascists who saw them as an inferior  race.  In fact in the begining of Operation Barbarossa when Nazis first entered russia, many russians welcomed them as liberators! but boy they were wrong.. Hitler had no intention to free the russians from Stalin. I hope you understand waht im trying to say. Communism was just as bad as Nazism but at least Communism did not wanna annihialite or enslave Slavic people.

Please don't insult the people responding to your thread even if you don't agree with what they post. I realize that this is a heated topic of discussion but I just want everyone to watch what they say.

I'd say its generally the fact that Americans don't have access to the kind of information about the war in the East as they do any other theater, maybe sans the Indochina and Chinese front. I mean, I can mention the Soviet's Manchuko campaign to my dad who loves WW2 stuff, and he had no idea.

I'd blame the education system that is generally America-centric (in the US at least), and the general stupidity of kids being taught history. We mostly only learn about our sacrifice, much as probably the Soviets only learned about WWII through the lens of the Great Patriotic war.

How many Russian-made movies and documentaries are available on WW2? I try to find as many as I can, and the sad thing is that the Germans made more about the war (being essentuially banned from doing such for decades), than the Russians did. They only made Come and See and Brest Fortress vs. literally hundreds of WW2 movies made from the American and British side. So again, most only have had the chance to learn of the Western campaigns in Africa, D-Day and so on, and the Pacific War. Its not fair, FWIW, because the Soviets did do a lot to secure an allied victory. I try to study as much as I can from the Soviet side, because its very intriguing.

I do think the whole Cold War aspect does play in - after the war, I am sure few people wanted to portray the Soviets as a wonderful savior during the war, when we hadn't yet had detente.

Thanks my friend, you and i have the same views i wish all people knew as much you do. and did you see my comment above where i mentioned that 1/3  of Belarussia's population was gone due to the Nazis? i was refering to "Come and See" which is historicly accurate movie. I wish everyone sees that great movie. 

You are 110% correct, I shouldn't be calling people ignorant. But i can't help it when they ignore all the dead russian people who were murdered by the Nazis, like it didn't even matter that they died. They only like to point fingers at the Soviets. Yes the Soviets comitted atrocies crimes in Berlin, i'm not denying that. But you can't ignore all the crimes the Germans comitted against Russian people. That's the whole point of the thread.

Right. Everyone on that front was severely effected by the war. I believe something like 80% of all military-aged men in the Soviet Union were involved in the war. Crazy stuff. I've been trying to get a good copy of Come and See, but I have yet to find one. My brother and I are huge fans of foreign-made war movies like Brest Fortress (fantastic!), Downfall, 71 Into the Fire and so on. Great stuff out there, but hard to find, from at least my experience.

And a lot of that, again, has to do with film industries worldwide. As they get larger around the world, I imagine more will be made to educate people on the sacrifices of non-Western parties in the war.