"You forgot Poland"... for sixty years.

And yet to their everlasing credit, they forgive us.

Poland's contributions were not all that forgotten. I remember reading about this in The Ultra Secret thirty years ago.

Mike
I think there is a guy in Poland who has been sending a constant stream of press releases to all publications for over 60 years. As far as the US forgeting about it, they won't let us.

The Poles were the first to get to the top of Monte Cassino in Italy.

Mike Morley:

Right, any WWII buff knows they gave codebreaking information to the Brits -- at least that part of the story hasn't been hushed up. But, as this article demonstrates, we didn't volunteer praise.

Points taken.

There's a very good little museum commemorating the Polish contribution to WW2 aboard USS Little Rock (herself a museum) in Buffalo. I would recommend taking it in if you get up that way.

It is not unique to Poland that America tends to glory hog the credit in WWII. There's no conspiracy of silence.

Even the contributions of the British are limited to anything done prior to December 7, 1941. How many Americans credit or respect Montgomery? Americans seem to argue extensively over the comparative worth of Ike, Patton, or Bradley, but always put down Montogmery. His one mention in "Saving Private Ryan" was a derogatory "He's overrated." The movie Patton totally trashes Monty. Likewise if you ask a Brit, they'll sing Monty to high praises and list any number of defects of the American generals.

How often do you hear people mention the contribution of the Canadians? Probably zero. I guess they never stormed Juno Beach or raided Dieppe among many things. Likewise for the Australians. And any time the Russian contribution is mentioned, OJ leads the detractors.

Anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of WWII will quickly learn about the Polish contribution. ULTRA and Monte Cassion is just the tip. Then the Polish flyers come up. And the Polish airborne in Market Garden. Sosabowski even got played by Gene Hackman in the movie about it.

Growing up Polish-American, I knew about Polish aviators and the rest. Ultra was pretty well covered when the information became available.

There was a certain tendency on the part of Comsymps to deprecate Polish contributions. (He wrote, casting out the troll-bait and letting it twitch on the surface). That's in the past: we got them good in the end.

Monte Cassino was always one of the high points. Poles got there first, at the end of a tough battle. In fairness to the Germans, nobody actually "took" Cassino, the enemy having withdrawn after the Anzio breakout. Polish-American papers still run anniversary articles and even poems about the battle.

Fheh. Nonappreciation of the Poles goes as far back as the rescue of Vienna from the Muslims by the last-minute arrival of the Polish Cavalry.

"I helped save Western Civilization, and all I get is a pile of pollock jokes."

Chris:

It is a running joke in Britain that, watching American movies, you wouldn't know any other country was fighting the Germans.

They even made a film about the joke.

Though everywhere is guilty of similar historical 'interpretation' to some extent.

Really, I thought the joke was that Churchill mattered?

Why do you imply that Churchill did not matter?

Because he didn't. The Channel stopped Hitler.

Montgomery was overrated. How many days did it take him to reach Caen again? He did win the Second Battle of El Alamain but it was Claude Aukenleck (sic) who laid the groundwork.

The best Brit general of the war was Slim in Burma.

The channel may have stopped Hitler but it would not have stopped the appeasers (such as Lord Halifax, a certain dethroned king, the Clivendon set, and much of the British upper classes) from reaching an accomodation with the victorious Reich. This nearly happened as recently released memos from the British war cabinet showed that Halifax would have replaced Churchill as P.M. if the RAF had lost the Battle of Britain. Halifax's mandate would have been to seek peace with Hitler. Though a direct Sealion invasion of Britain was a logistical fantasy, Britain's strategic postion in the summer of 1940 was nearly hopeless. A rational man would have reached an accomodation with Hitler in order to preserve the empire.

Fortunately for European Jewry, Western civilization and Old World Christianity (which Hitler intended to destroy after he had secured a military victory and political dominance over continental Europe) - Churchill was not a rational man.

How did continuing the war after they'd defeated the Germans in the Battle of Britain help the British?

It didn't help the British, they ended up bancrupt and unable to keep their empire. Britain in effect sacrificed itself for the sake of Western civilization and Old World Christianity.

Often lost in the focus on Nazi anti-Semitism is the Nazi hatred of Christianity. The Communists weren't the only atheistic totalitarians of the past century. A.N. Wilson in "God's Funeral" comes very close to laying the horrors of the 20th century at the feet of the atheistic philosophers of the 19th century. He sites two main philosophical branches: the Carlyle/Nietzsche branch in which God is replaced with the hero or superman, and the Hegel/Marx branch in which heaven is replaced with a workers utopia. The first gave us the atrocities of the far right, the other the atrocities of the far left.

The Nazis, Hitler especially, despised Christianity as a belief fit only for weaklings, not for the coming Superman. With the possible exception of Himmler and his bizarre paganism, the Nazi ruling circle was composed of atheists. Though he called himself a Christian in Mein Kampf and in several speeches, it is well to remember that these were pronouncements for public consumption and were made by a consummate liar/politician. For his real views on the subject see his Table Talk, surreptitiously recorded by Martin Borman and never intended for the public. These statements represent his real views (more on this below).

Hitler had every intention of destroying the Christian faith and replacing it with Nazism when the time was ripe. His accommodations with the Roman Catholic Church and German Protestant churches were purely tactical. For a more in depth look at this issue see the OSS post war report on Nazism and the churches at www.lawandreligion.com run by Rutgers University. For a shorter version, see pages 477-478 of Weinberg's "A World at Arms" (IMHO the best single volume history of the war). Religious faith was the common enemy of atheistic regimes of both the far right and the far left.

An historical article from Christianity Today sums up the conclusions of the OSS report quite nicely:

Donovan's Nuremberg report undermines the assertion, made by Feldman and so many others, that because several key Nazis had ties (however tenuous) to a church, and because the Nazis advanced insidious policies, then those insidious policies must be inherently Christian. To what extent elements of popular Christian ideology fed Hitler's anti-Semitism is a separate and valid question, but the "if A then B" connection fails because insidious anti-Christian policies do not fit the syllogism above. A plan to eradicate Christianity can hardly be construed as Christian, and persons supporting such a plan can hardly be considered believers of any standing.

Perhaps we can now put that "Nazis were Christians" canard into the same waste heap as holocaust denial. Now, as for Hitler's Table Talk:

Outside of the officially atheist Soviet Union, what politician in the 1930s (or even today, at least here in America) would publicly (or even privately)admit to being an atheist? Hitler was a skilled politician and a consummate liar (the two often go together). Mein Kampf was for public consumption and expressed only those views most likely to get him elected. To really understand what such a man believes, it is necessary to view those words that were not intended for public consumption, as historian Hugh Trevor-Roper makes clear:

We must go direct to Hitler's personal utterances: not indeed to his letters and speeches-- these, though valuable, are too public, too formalised for such purposes-- but to his private conversations, his Table-Talk. Table-Talk, like notebooks, reveal the mind of a man far more completely, more intimately, than any formal utterance.

In Table Talk the following statements on Christianity by Hitler will be found:

The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism practises a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them.

Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.

Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can't, or can't yet, be explained-that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can't satisfy them with the Party's programme. Time will go by until the moment when science can answer all the questions.

Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that's why one day its structure will collapse. Science has already impregnated humanity. Consequently, the more Christianity clings to its dogmas, the quicker it will decline.

A movement like ours mustn't let itself be drawn into metaphysical digressions. It must stick to the spirit of exact science. It's not the Party's function to be a counterfeit for religion.

If in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does 10 in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself.

The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.

Pure Christianity-the Christianity of the catacombs-is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole- hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics.

I adopted a definite attitude on the 21st March '933 when I refused to take part in the religious services, organised at Potsdam by the two Churches, for the inauguration of the new Reichstag.

Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another hundred years, two hundred years perhaps. My regret will have been that I couldn't, like whoever the prophet was, behold the promised land from afar.

The fact that I remain silent in public over Church affairs is not in the least misunderstood by the sly foxes of the Catholic Church, and I am quite sure that a man like the Bishop von Galen knows full well that after the war I shall extract retribution to the last farthing. And, if he does not succeed in getting himself transferred in the meanwhile to the Collegium Germanium in Rome, he may rest assured that in the balancing of our accounts, no "T" will remain uncrossed, no "I" undotted!

Christianity is an invention of sick brains.

Anon:

Yes, so we destroyed it for him, by propping up the rotten regimes of Western Europe. Better to have let the isms grind themselves to pulp and force the West to start over.

Define "rotten regimes" in post-war Western Europe. Are democracies, republics and constitutional monarchies "rotten"?

Yes, the secular Socialist welfare states were and are rotten. We should have let them be swept away instead of salvaging them.

A Nazi victory in Europe is preferable to "secular socialist welfare states"? How so?

These "rotten regimes" were freely chosen by the peoples of Western Europe in democratic elections. Are you an opponent of democracy? Do you prefer Nazism to democracy? If not, what exactly is your preferred form of government?

The Nazis couldn't win--they'd have burned themselves out against the Soviets.

You have a habit of responding with non sequeturs, in effect surrendering the argument to me without the grace or manly werewithal to admit you were wrong. I repeatedly shoot down your facile and disengenous claims (Churchill didn't matter, continuing the war did not help Britain, we succeeded in propping up "rotten regimes" that achieved Hitler's aim of destroying christianity). And now yet another non sequetur in response to my point that these "rotten regimes" were freely elected democracies, the claim (impossible to prove or substantiate) that the Nazis would have burnt themselves out in a struggle with the Soviets.

Please provide evidence that this rather remarkable claim of yours is true.

But let us assume that you are correct. Perhaps, you'll excuse me if I care about all the millions of innocent people that would have been "burnt" and enslaved by both dictatorships during the course of this struggle. As a Christian, I can do no less. We are our brothers keeper. For someone who started this thread with a claim of admiration for the Polish people, you seem quite happy to let them be ground up between two giant totalitarian millstones.

If it is a noble thing to invade Iraq to bring it democracy, is it not just as noble (and on a much grander scale) to bring democaracy to at least half of Europe? Is it not also noble to wage a Cold War to eventually bring democracy to the other half of Europe?

However, assuming that P.M Halifax signs an armistice with Hitler, Germany no longer has to fear a second front. Nor is it distracted by military operations in North Africa and the Balkans. The full weight of the Wehrmacht can be thrown agains the USSR at an earlier date (depending on the timing of the spring thaw in 1941). The result is occupation of Moscow and the collapse of the Soviet Union by December 1941. No prolonged struggle - just another lightening victory for blitzkrieg followed by genocidal extermination of the Slavic peoples by engineered famines.

Since you dodged these questions in my previous post, let me reiterate them here:

How is a Nazi victory (or if you prefer and prolonged struggle between Nazis and Soviets) preferable to the secular democracies of Western Europe?

Are you an opponent of democracy?

Do you prefer Nazism to democracy?

If not, what exactly is your preferred form of government?

I'm an opponent of our preserving the form of government that Europeans chose.

Your claim that the Nazis and Soviets would have burnt themselves out begs the question:

Then what?

What arises from the ashes of a ruined continent and the chaos of two collapsed totalitarian regimes? And why would it (and the preceding struggle) be preferable to what actually happened?

It would indeed have been noble to go to war to free the continent from Socialism of every variety. Instead we got rid of Nazism but kept Communism, and extended it, and propped up the failed secular socialism of western Europe. That made the war a waste.

I'm an opponent of our preserving the form of government that Europeans chose.

But you approve of a Nazi dominated Europe?

Again, let me repeat the questions that you have dodged:

How is a Nazi victory (or if you prefer and prolonged struggle between Nazis and Soviets) preferable to the secular democracies of Western Europe?

Are you an opponent of democracy?

Do you prefer Nazism to democracy?

If not, what exactly is your preferred form of government?

So you don't believe in supporting democracy, except the theocratic, non-welfare state kind?

Then I'm afraid you don't believe in supporting American democracy.

Anon:

The Nazis could not have dominated Europe, nor could the Soviets, for any significant period of time.

Anon:

Anything would be preferable.

Define "significant period of time".

Anything would be preferable.

Why would the Nazis be preferable to secular democracies?

They weren't, what followed a prolonged struggle between Nazism and Communism that we stayed out of would have been.

First you say that the Nazis (and presumably the Soviets) would not have dominated Europe for a "significant period of time". Then you describe their hypothetical strugle as prolonged. You really should make up your mind.

Furthermore, I am still waiting for you to define "significant period of time". While you're at it, perhaps you should also define what you mean by "prolonged struggle".

And how do you know exactly what would rise from the ashes and chaos of such a stgruggle? Please describe this preferred society of yours (assuming civilization even survives in Europe) and why you are sure it will arise in post-struggle Europe.

It's all the same point. Neither ism was capable of defeationg the other and then dominating the other and the rest of Europe. It doesn't matter what rises from the embers because what rose from what we did is a Europe so ugly it's killing itself off.

First question:

Was there any significant (political) difference between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia?

You've moved the goal posts and responded with yet another non sequetur. The issue was the duration of each regime. You were unable to answer this question when I cornered you with it. Besides, if neither can defeat the other, when will this prolonged strugle end? How many dead bodies would result from this struggle (especially the Poles caught between Russia and Germany, a people you claim to admire - a claim that rings rather hollow).

How many blasted cities reduced to rubble?

How long for any recovery in the absence of aid from an indifferent and isolationist America that has abandoned its Christian duty to care for others?

And why is all this better than the secular democracies that were created in post-war Europe?

What is so horrible about a secular democracy with socialistic features that was freely chosen by the people in free elections that you would prefer a Europe fought over by Nazis and Soviets?

(And this choice was not just made by Europe, this occured in America as well. Indeed, America's constitutional separation of church and state is far more secular than the state sponsored and subsidized religions of Europe.)

Why do you hate Europeans so that you would wish this fate on them? Aren't you a Christian?

Anon:

It's just one goalpost. Neither could defeat the other. Should one manage to outlast the other it couldn't control the other, nevermind the rst of Europe. It served everyone's best interest--except hitler and Stalin's--for them to fight to the finish. Anything that got in the way of that was strategically inept.

I am. Europe isn't.

Of course, wars are pretty easy to fight sixty years after they've finished, and in the comfort of your basement.

Even easier from island nations in the 40s. Neither Britain nor the US was at any risk.

"...you'll excuse me if I care about all the millions of innocent people..."

Anon, Just wondering? Do you also care about and feel responsible for the tens of millions of people slaughtered after we caved in to the demands of the anti-war protesters and pulled out of Vietnam leaving Southeast Asia in the hands of murderous communist regimes.

Posted by: erp at September 9, 2005 7:56 AM

Erp, both the left and the Right were wrong about Viet Nam.

The Left was wrong about who should win the war, as when it asserted that the VC were just benign revolutionaries and the North Vietnamese were liberators and there would be no bloodbath after a Communist victory. The boat people and the reeducation camps proved them wrong. So did the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. Subsequent claims by the Left that the American bombing campaign somehow "radicalized" the KR and was the "real cause" of the Killing Fields is akin to claiming that Alllied bombing of Germany radicalized the Nazis and was the real cause of the Holocaust. Then there was the invasion of Cambodia by Viet Nam, which put the Left in the embarrassing position of having supported just another imperialist aggressor. As corrupt and incompetent as the South Vietnamese regime was, it was infinitely preferrable to what followed the fall of Saigon.

Aside from Joan Baez, I don't recall any prominent person on the anti-war Left condemning post-war atrocities and invasions by the Communists. Perhaps by that time they were all too busy disco dancing to notice. I remember the 70s quite well. The only person of prominence on the anti-war Left that protested the Killing Fields was Joan Baez. She appealed to 350 activists for signatures to a very moderate appeal against the North Vietnamese oppression — she got 83. Less ethical liberals, like Robert Scheer and Jane Fonda, are still unrepentant and morally blind. What I don't recall is a single protest march by the Left against the Khmer Rouge. Not even an angry letter to the editor. What I distinctly remember was a massive silence from the Left back in the 70s when the Killing Fields became common knowledge. Apparently as far as they were concerned, atrocity was OK so long as it was done by left wing regimes.

The Right was wrong about the need to fight the war in the first place. The falling dominos were confined to Southeast Asia (Vietnam's traditional sphere of influence). Ho's government was more like Tito's independent Communist regime in Yugoslavia than a cog in the vast Communist conspiracy to conquer the world. Viet Nam even fought a major border war with the PRC in the late 1970s. And a cold blooded analysis of South Viet Nam's geopolitical value would show it to be unimportant real estate, not worth the massive American military effort. It has no oil like the Persian Gulf, nor is its location of strategic importance like the Panama Canal, nor did it have significant industry valueable to our economy like Japan or NATO.

Anon:

The Right opposed the war in the first place, but once we were in it thought it important to win. At which point we should have gone on the offense instead of remaining defensive.

It's just one goalpost.

Actually you've moved the goalposts a half dozen times during the course of this conversation.

Now then, let's examine your latest round of opinions (they can hardly be called facts as they are not supported by historical evidence or common sense). I am happy to respond since I am always grateful for the opportunity to enlighten the historically ignorant (your ignorance of WWII history being made obvious with your initial claim that Churchill was not significant). Alas, for those who are willfuly ignorant or bigoted (which is pretty much the same thing), or just plain stupid, I can do nothing. I'm good, but I'm not a miracle worker.

Now listen to teacher......

Neither could defeat the other.

Quite the contrary, Hitler came within an ace of beating the Soviets in late 1941. Had the Wehrmach taken Moscow, the Soviet regime would have never survived the loss of prestige. Not to mention Moscow's importance as and industrial center and transportation hub. In the USSR all railroads quite literally led to Moscow. It's loss would have made strategic rail movement by what was left of the Red Army well nigh impossible. By the summer of 1942 German mopping up operations would have reached their Barbarossa stop line of the Volga river and either seized or cut off from what was left of Russia the all important Caucasus oil supplies. Assuming what was left of Russia wasn't ruled by a White Russian collaborationist government similar to Vichy, future Russian resistance would have been weak an ineffective with half their population under occupation, all of their POL supplies cut off, all their decent agricultural lands behind German lines, and most of their industry in a state of disorganization.

A second scenario for Russian defeat involves the near death of Stalin during the opening weeks of Barbarossa. Suppose Stalin does not pull out of his emotional nose dive after the early German kessel victories at Minsk. He was in a near catatonic, emotionally depressed condition for the first weeks or so of Barbarossa. In this scenario, Stalin eats a bullet in his dacha outside Moscow. The now leaderless Soviet state has to sort through a succession struggle while being gutted by Germany's panzers. Given the centralized nature of the Soviet state, it is quite possible that a leaderless USSR would perform much more poorly and perhaps even collapse during the crucial first three months of the invasion. A winter line of Leningrad-Gorki-Rostov becomes a real possibility with the confused Russian government unable to organize effective resistance let alone major counter-attacks. The Caucasus oil fields and the Volga river are within reach for the Germans in 1942. A (probably White) Russian government ruling in the Urals signs an armistice by the end of 1942.

As for Russia beating Germany, that actually happened now didn't it? Though Lend Lease was crucial to the mobility of the Red Army counter offensives (American trucks were the single most important item we sent the Soviets) a lackof lend lease would have resulted in the Soviets taking Berlin in 1946 instead of 1945. Once the Russians survived the initial German onslaught, their massive preponderance in men and metal ensured their eventual victory. By comparison with the Russian front, the Wehrmacht considered the Western front ot be a side show (the Italian front was a side show of a side show).

Should one manage to outlast the other it couldn't control the other, nevermind the rst of Europe.

Either could have easily ruled continental Europe indefinitely.

During the post-war years, the Soviets ruled half of Europe quite easily through local Communist party satrapies. Had the red Army reach the Rhine a completely communist Germany would have been no harder to establish than Eastern Germany was (easier in fact as there would be no need for a Wall). Communists would have come to power in France and Italy while the Reds would have won the Greek civil war. Though these regimes would have been as independent of Moscow as Tito's Yugoslavia, the fact remains that (aside from franco's Spain and the "Finlandized" Scandinavian countries) continental Europe would be Red and would remain so at least as long as the Warsaw pact actually lasted.

During the war Germany effectively and efficiently ruled western Europe through local collaborators. Vichy was responisble for the civil administration of even occupied France. The Germans utilized the existing Belgian government beauracracy and literally needed only a dozen staffers to administer occupied Belgium. Quizling ruled Norway for them and the Danish government continued as before, even holding free elections during German occupations.

As for Eastern Europe, the Germans intended what is today called "ethnic cleansing" on a continental scale. Using the techniques pioneered by the Communists in their man-made Ukrainian famine, the Nazis intened to exterminated the Slavs from Poland to the Urals. If the death rate from the Ukrainian famine is a reliable indicator, the Nazis would have succeeded in less than a decade.

It served everyone's best interest--except hitler and Stalin's--for them to fight to the finish. Anything that got in the way of that was strategically inept.

What is strategically inept and historicaly ignorant is the contradictory assumption that neither could defeat the other yet neither would last very long either. Worse still, is the moral bancruptcy of your position. Let us take one example, the Poles that you profess to admire. Why are you willing to leave them crushed between two totalitarian, anti-Christian monsters? I'd be interesting to hear from any Pole or someone of Polish descent who would like to comment on the fate of their people under OJ's plan.

Even easier from island nations in the 40s. Neither Britain nor the US was at any risk.

The British were in grave danger from being strangled by German U-boats (the only thing Churchill said that he feared during the war). A direct invasion of Britain would not be necesssary to bring them to their knees. Had Doenitz posses a few dozen more u-boats at the start of the war, or if the British had failed to break the Ultra Code (or conversely, if the Germans wised up tot he fact that the code was broken and changed their u-boat signal codes), the Germans would have won the Battle of the Atlantic. Britain would have been starved into submission.

As for America, it would have been in danger by the early 1950s. Plans for a V-3 ICBM were on the drawing boards at Peenemunde when Berlin fell. Without those same German rocket scientists there would have been no American rocket or space program. With the resources of all of continental Europe (an the colonial empires of their puppet regimes in Africa, the Middle East and Asia), the developemnt of a German atomic bomb was an eventuality. A rain of atomic warheads delivered on every major American city by the mid 1950s is a near certainty.

.... Well then, I hope I was able to enlighten you and remove the heavy burden of historical ignorance. But like I said, I'm not a miracle worker.

Anon:

Yes, that's a fine recital of the received wisdom, written by tiumphalist New Deal historians and Brits, but it's terrible nonsense. There weren't enough Germans to occupy Russia even if they could have ever defeated an insurgency. Demographics is destiny.

I am. Europe isn't.

What kind of Christian are you that you would be indifferent to the European heart of Christianity being trampled under two atheistic regimes bent on destroying Christianity? It's not any kind of Christian I've ever heard of.

As for the Europeans, their secular and socialistic governments were freely chosen by free people in free elections. Why do you hate freedom? Do you prefer theocracy to democracy?

BTW, I'm still waiting for your definition of "significant period of time".

Yes, that's a fine recital of the received wisdom, written by tiumphalist New Deal historians and Brits, but it's terrible nonsense.

Translation: "I can't counter these arguments either logically or factually so I will rely on ad hominems." Kindly make the effort to marshall your own facts and evidence to refute my arguments.

Put up or shut up.

There weren't enough Germans to occupy Russia even if they could have ever defeated an insurgency. Demographics is destiny.

Your reading comprehension is as poor as your logic. There would be no Russians left to oppose the Germans once they were exterminated by man-made famines. As for demographics, if you weren't ignorant of WWII history you would know about the Nazis pro-natalist policies that were designed to ensure enough Germans would be available to colonize their newly conquered Lebensraum.

Less than the seventy years we kept them in power.

Yes, I prefer our American theocracy to European secular socialism. We put the former at risk by the disfiguring of our society that saving the latter required.

Anon:

Rather few people are capable of critical thinking, and for you a mere intake of conventional wisdom is probably best, but let's try this one step at a time:

How many Germans were there?

How many Germans were there?

Following the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the Sudetenland (part of Czechoslovakia) in 1939, German territory and population encompassed 586,126 square kilometers and 79.7 million people, according to the 1939 census.

80 million Germans in round numbers.

How many Russians were there?

How many Russians were there?

Population of the USSR on 22 June 1941 = 196.7 million

And how many Europeans in the rest of occuppied Europe?

Be careful - someone here is going to start sounding like John McCain or Chuck Hagel.