Ezequiel Adamovsky: After Goebbels proclaimed “total war” in 1943, more forces were added to the initial endowment. Vast portions of the Soviet Union were invaded and major cities –included Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and Stalingrad (now Volgograd)– were besieged. The Soviet Union resisted, fought back and eventually won the war, at a gigantic human and material cost. 34.5 million men and women were mobilized. The number of Soviet deaths in WWII has been much debated, but current academic consensus suggests that it was between 25 and 27 million (half of which were military deaths). By comparison, the US contribution to the defeat of Germany was small. Although Americans engaged in combats with the Germans in Africa and in the periphery of Europe before, the most relevant battles only came in the second phase of the Western front, after the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. In that famous episode, the combined Allied forces deployed 175,000 men, half of which were American. In the whole of World War II the American forces accumulated 407,316 servicemen dead, including those who died fighting in the Pacific War and with all non-German combatants (including civilian deaths, the total number would be around 420,000). Great Britain lost a similar number, while German wartime deaths are estimated in five to seven million. As British historian Roger Bartlett concluded, “with all credit to British and American achievements, it is clear that Nazism was defeated in the Soviet Union”. There is little chance that the 70th anniversary of the Nazi defeat will offer the opportunity for a non-ideological revisiting of the past. In recent commemorations in Europe, Russia has been deliberately excluded, like never before. More here.