Dear CCI Friends,
First, I hope everyone had a HAPPY JULY 4th WEEKEND!!!
On to our agenda regarding WWII …
The Soviet nation lost approximately 26,000,000 people (military and civilian) in World War II, compared to the European nations and the United States, each of which had less than 500,000 fatalities. I was told in the mid-80s that for young Soviet men born in 1921, only 3% of them survived the war. In addition, the USSR’s primary territory, cities and industrial base were destroyed during the war.
Trying to understand the conflicting issues in the lead-up to WWII, I went to the Internet, not always the best source, but all that was immediately available to me. It appears that Germany was the country which the other nations most greatly feared. Different combinations of them tried without success to align with each other for their own country’s safety. Early on, Stalin tried to align with a number of these countries but was refused, likely because all were suspicious of communism, with good reason.