Foreigners said that they think about the role of the USSR in World War II

4
More than 70 years ago, the Second World War ended, but in Russia the attitude towards it still remains. In our country it is called the Great Patriotic War, because it touched everyone without exception. In almost every family in those distant years, someone fought, someone died, so for our people it is too personal to forget.





In most countries, people regard the war as a distant historical event that has little concern for them personally. Every year on the eve of May 9, polls are held among residents of foreign countries, in which respondents are asked about the Second World War and the role of Russia in it.

What do Americans think?

The American Alan believes that the United States made the greatest contribution to the victory, as they dropped atomic bombs on Japan, which forced it to capitulate.

His compatriot Sophie Jen is 90 years old, so she remembers the war years. She believes that America saved the world from fascism, and the Soviet Union had nothing to do with it. A school graduate, Leo, said the Americans and the British won the war. When asked what the Soviet Union was doing at this time, he replied:

It seems that we helped them free themselves from the Nazis, but this is not accurate.


Alex in his youth participated in that war as part of the Red Army. Much later, fate abandoned him in the United States. He has no doubt that the main burden of World War II was borne by the peoples of the USSR. The question of the role of the United States in World War II surprised him:

Didn’t you study at school? Of course, thanks to them for the Second Front, they helped; but if earlier, it would be better.


What is the opinion of the Europeans?

In European countries, too, not everything is clear.

Stefan from Switzerland named the Soviet Union, the USA and France among the most significant participants in the defeat of fascist Germany, but it was difficult to answer which of them made a greater contribution.

Serb Darko believes that the Russian contribution to the victory was great, but not the main one. He could not answer which holiday in Russia was celebrated on May 9, but he remembered that Victory Day was a Russian military march.

The Italian Massimo named Russia, the United States and England among the winners. And on May 9 in Russia, "something like a party about freedom in the Second World War."

What are the answers of foreign respondents based on?

It is a mistake to think that the people who were interviewed are stupid or heartless. They were just taught that way. They draw information from school knowledge acquired in childhood, as well as from local media.

When a teacher at a US educational institution was asked why Americans were so poorly informed about the Great War, she said that "after the Second World War, the United States fought many wars, do you remember all of them?"

In Germany, they still feel guilty about Hitler and the slaughter unleashed by him, but in German school textbooks, speaking of the Second World War, they try to avoid evaluations and emotions, outlining only dry information. But Nazism is a very sore subject for the Germans. The propaganda of Nazi views is followed by very severe punishments.

After the collapse of the socialist system in Poland in the school curriculum, the historical material about the war almost did not change, except that the slogans about the "leading and directing role", etc. True, information about the execution of Polish officers in Katyn and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the division of Europe between Stalin and Hitler is becoming increasingly active, which does not contribute to the rapprochement of the Russian and Polish peoples.

The British knowledge is based on Churchill's book “World War II,” where Great Britain almost single-handedly saved the world from fascism, and the turning point of the war was the defeat by the British of Rommel’s corps in North Africa.

So the Great Victory Day is our holiday “with tears in our eyes”, the significance of which is difficult for foreigners to understand.
Our news channels

Subscribe and stay up to date with the latest news and the most important events of the day.

4 comments
Information
Dear reader, to leave comments on the publication, you must sign in.
  1. +2
    11 May 2018 12: 00
    The most territorially victors in the Second World War were the Poles, although, before the start of the German aggression against Poland, they were the most zealous allies of the Hitlerite Reich in the European redistribution (even the sympathetic British Prime Minister Churchill chided the RP with a “European hyena” for these "immoderate appetites") and dreamed , persistently suggested to the Fuehrer about a joint attack on the Soviet Union with Hitler's "common Europe" request .
    But the "possessed" occultist was very confused by the growing "appetites" and mega-mercantile "cunning" of the Polish "well-wishers" who, on occasion, were ready to profit at the expense of Germany (and he, the "seer", was right in this Yes ), so he decided to get rid of such unreliable accomplices ... all that was business: Gleiwitz and ... soon the fugitive Polish "government" in London is blowing bubbles ...
    For some reason, the Poles remember the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but do not remember the Anglo-French-German Munich Agreement of 1937, which actually initiated the WWII? They "forget" the Tishin region of Czechoslovakia, which was pricked in alliance with Hitler, and the Belarusian and Ukrainian territories "grabbed" from the disintegrating Russian Empire generally consider their Kresy Vshudniye ?!
    The Poles cry about the Anglo-Polish-Hitlerite (timed to coincide with the formation of the Polish army in the Soviet rear of General Anders, IMHO) provocation with the "Katyn execution", but, for some reason, not a word or a half-word, they do not stutter about the fate of almost one hundred thousand captured Red Army soldiers , interned White Guards and Russian civilians, brutally destroyed by the Polish military and died a painful death in Polish concentration camps?
    The partition of Poland by Hitler and Stalin is remembered, and a huge chunk of German territory annexed to Poland (as well as parts of Russian territory that had returned home under the "pact" before the war, after the war were again given to the "disadvantaged" Poles!) Precisely at the insistence of Joseph Stalin, with whom Roosevelt and Churchill had to agree, they don't remember at all ?! smile
    The Poles absolutely do not remember the genocide of the German population and the mass destruction of Jews during the war, and the heinous tricks of the Home Army subordinate to the London "fugitive government" to destroy the Ukrainian population (after all, the "Volyn massacre" was mutual and the Poles were not in it such "white and fluffy", which they "re-show" in their propaganda films - Bandera's and Akov's thugs were worth each other, and the civilian population suffered with might and main!), Akov's attacks and murders of Soviet soldiers-liberators, and the participation of thousands and thousands of Poles in Hitler's Drang nah Ost "... some strange" selective "they have a" memory ", I remember here, but I don’t remember ?! winked
    Some hysterical Russophobic functionaries of the Polish authorities, with "enthusiasm" worthy of better use, following in the wake of the anti-Russian policy of the Naglo-Saxons, are now digging and digging up the remains of their leaders who died in the Smolensk plane crash, the same Russophobes, trying in any way to somehow "substantiate" unfounded accusations in the address of Russia, meanly interfere, in a Russophobic manner, in the internal affairs of neighboring Ukraine, carry out similar "work" on the territory of Belarus ... - the Polish "European hyena", feeling like a kind of Tabaki under the Washington Sherkhan, seeks to advance its territorial and political claims in the post-Soviet space!
    Only the principled position of the Kremlin can be an obstacle to these Polish claims (as well as Washington's), therefore, all the malice of the malicious "partners" are directed at Russia, therefore, the pro-American Polish authorities themselves are not interested in "rapprochement of the Russian and Polish peoples" as we can see, they are doing everything (rewriting history and demolishing monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators and monuments of the Polish-Soviet military brotherhood - this is the smallest thing about "reprogramming and erasing memory" of what they do ...) so that such a rapprochement does not even thought ?!
    1. +1
      12 May 2018 17: 31
      If you take any two neighboring nations and pick up all the bad things that they did to each other, then the lists will be impressive, and almost all claims will be fair. Take, for example, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Turks and Kurds, Serbs and Croats. Deep excursions into history with an emphasis on negative moments in the end often lead to massacre.

      And the fact that the Poles are trying to destroy the monuments to Soviet soldiers does not honor them.
    2. +1
      16 August 2018 23: 15
      I think that history is developing in a spiral. And if there is such a period, then Poland will not be flavored. Or they will be erased or shackles for all for many years. These villains will be right.
  2. +1
    16 August 2018 23: 05
    And here is a present for all of you!
    Here they just talk about where there is so much gold in Germany (Hitler robbed all of Europe, and hid the gold in Switzerland, having previously melted brooches and chains). And where did Hugo Boss get all his wealth from? And how the fascists received from occupied France five thousand steam locomotives, at a time when the USSR bought only 900 steam locomotives from the United States under the lend-lease. And like the Americans, opponents in the war with the fascists, through "neutral" Spain, sold oil to Hitler. And suddenly France, which had been working for the Nazis throughout the war, was among the defeated countries.