75th Anniversary of V-E Day

May 8 to Americans, May 9 to Russians. I don't have anything original to say about it, but I still wanted to mark the occasion. Here, for our tiny Russophone readership, is one of Bulat Okudzhava's most famous war songs, stirring and patriotic without being Communist or banal (at least to me).

Comments

[PeteRR]

Related. Polish folk song used by an online game for one of their WWII maps. I personally think it kicks butt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z9qp2v0200

[PeteRR]

Better version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylX7fcqEa8w

[AmosArch]

WWII European Theater TLDR: One (relatively) good guy helps a bad guy beat another bad guy.

[Sarcastr0]

Normalizing Hitler in order to hate on Stalin more efficiently. Also eliding every other Allied power.

This is not a great path to take steps down.

[Dr. Ed]

Stalin was a greater threat to America than Hitler ever dreamed of being. Stalin killed far more people than Hitler did, and while it only took four years to defeat Hitler, it took *fifty* to defeat Stalin, and some would argue that we haven't yet won.

Hitler honestly didn't think that the US would aid the USSR, and arguably we shouldn't have -- at least not as much as we did. It wasn't thinks like bombing Dresden as much as Stalin never released our POWs. The Americans held in German territory that the Soviets "liberated" were never released....

And then when he literally stole the B-29s, we ought to have considered that an outright act of war.

[Absaroka]

" The Americans held in German territory that the Soviets “liberated” were never released…."

Did you forget a "some of" there?

"Soviet authorities detained 119 American servicemen “with Russian, Ukrainian or Jewish names” from the more than 22,000 GIs they liberated from German POW camps at the end of World War II. Although most were later released after U.S. protests, 18 died in Soviet custody, while “some ended up staying in camps for a long time.”

Source

Don't get me wrong - holding any U.S. citizens is inexcusable. But if we're trying to weight the evil of Hitler vs. Stalin[1], if you are going to mention them then don't forget e.g. the Malmedy Massacre.

[1]which is a pretty pointless exercise ... like trying to decide which of two prolific serial killers was worse. The right lesson to take is 'psychopathic totalitarian rulers are really, really bad'.

[Dr. Ed]

I may have confused it with the 900+ whom we didn't get back from DPRK, but I remember it being something more than just these 119, and it may have been USAAF personnel who bailed out over Soviet-held territory.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/17/world/us-knew-in-1953-north-koreans-held-american-pow-s.html

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not talking about who was a greater threat, Ed. Neither was Amos.

[bernard11]

while it only took four years to defeat Hitler,

And here I thought it was six.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

My favorite song by Bulat Okudzhava: an ode to the "Arbat" which the street where he grew up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjMptBsrmW0

You flow like a river. Strange name!
And the asphalt is transparent, like water in a river.
Ah Arbat, my Arbat, you are my calling.
You are both my joy and my misfortune.

Your pedestrians are not great people
they knock with heels - they are in a hurry.
Ah Arbat, my Arbat, you are my religion
your pavements lie beneath me.

You won’t be cured of your love
forty thousand other pavement loving.
Ah Arbat, my Arbat, you are my fatherland
never completely pass you.

[Dr. Ed]

A different view -- personally, I think he is wrong -- Hitler wasn't planning to start a war before 1943-45 -- but it is an interesting point:
https://buchanan.org/blog/did-hitler-want-war-2068?doing_wp_cron=1589059888.4412550926208496093750

[bernard11]

Not interesting. Buchanan is a Nazi apologist, Holocaust denialist, and antisemite.