mrstickball said:
Marks said:
FattyDingDong said:
Marks said:
I didn't hear this from a Canadian history class my good sir, I took a trip to the Baltic States and Russia last summer and went to many museums and also visited the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk, Poland. The tour guide (and a short video we watched) talked about how when the Soviets "liberated" Stuffhof many of the people from the camp basically just became Soviet prisoners. They may not have been sent to death camps like with the Nazis but they certainly weren't sent back to their families or on vacation.
Also one of the museums I went to in Riga, Latvia was all about Latvia under Nazi as well as Communist control and in many respects like under the Nazis was better than life under the USSR. Not if you were Jewish of course, but for the common non-Jewish citizen it was.
I don't remember exact details, but I remember the big picture, and it was that the Soviets were horrible leaders and made life worse in almost every possible way for the countries they occupied.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your OP, the war more than likely would have been lost if Hitler hadn't attacked Russia. Russia was vital to the allies winning the war. And they definitely don't get the credit they deserve as far as their war effort is concerned.
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That may be true but not if you are a slavic person meaning if you are (Russian,Ukranian,Polish,Serbian,Slovakian,Czech). Because Hitler despised Slavic people, he ordered his army generals to treat them very harshly which is why most of the Slavs chose to fight against the Nazis and form Partisan groups.Hitler ordered that for every 1 dead german, 100 Slavic civilians would be shot. But if you were a Latvian,Estonian you would be treated fairly by the Germans. Communists treated every one the same. Nazism was only better than Communism if u were not from a "LOWER RACE" "Untermensch"
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Yeah that's true dude, the Nazis were terrible to Slavs. All I'm saying is that the Commies were bad too, they weren't hero liberators of the concentration camps like they'd love us to believe. They did save them from certain death but they treated them barely any better.
I love Russia so I was actually disappointed to find out what they did to the prisoners they liberated. I'm trying to find some sources to back up my statements but I guess not much is written about the subject. Everything just says the Soviets liberated the camps, doesn't talk about what happened to the prisoners after liberation.
But I'm certainly with you in terms of their war contribution. Wasn't a ridiculous number of German casualties caused by Soviets like 75% or higher? Its funny that the Germans were so scared of the Soviets that there were mass suicides in 1945 when they knew the Soviets were coming!
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They were scared because they knew what the results of capture would be. They would be thrown in prison for the rest of their lives, and likely tortured. The Soviets were absolutely brutal to their prisoners - much like the Germans. Most Germans tried their darndest to surrender to the western allies, as they knew they would get treated much better.
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True, the Soviets were horrible to German POW's and vice versa.
Germans killed 57% (3.3 million out of 5.7 million) of the Soviet POWs they captured, but only killed 3.6% of British/American POWs they captured.
I'm not sure the numbers for German POWs killed by Soviets.
