I know this has been talked about many, but there simply aren’t enough movies/video games/books in the west which cover the enormous human scale of the Eastern Front of WW2.
A bout a year or two ago a video game came out called “Call of Duty:WW2”.
Instead of focusing on the titatanic battles of of the Eastern Front where 30 million lives were lost, the game focuses on the battles of Western Europe in 1944-1945 which pale in comparison.
Americas largest battle in WW2 was the battle of the bulge where 19,000 lives were lost. The ussrs biggest battle (Stalingrad) lost 800,000 lives lost. And many more wounded/maimed/impailed.
Why is this titanic conflict, the largest land conflict in all history, so underreported in the west.
All serious military historians, American, Russian, British agree that the Second World War was decided on the eastern front. It’s not even an argument. For example Col. David Glantz, who has written many excellent books in English about the eastern front with its titanic battles.
There is obviously still a large interest in WW2 in the west, as can be seen by the movies and video games being made about it.
I’m just saying that the subject matter on the eastern front is much more extensive, but doesn’t get covered nearly as much, so people have a warped view of WW2. Very Western-oriented.
When was the last time you heard a major news anchor on CNN talk about the battle of Stalingrad, Leningrad, Moscow, Kursk or the fall of Berlin? Or a million other large battles that happened on the east front?
It’s a case of winners writing the history. In this case the winners of the cold war. Basically the story told in mass media since WW2 has been an American one and the focused on the parts of the war the Americans were involved in.
For the same reason i suspect we will see far more representations of China in WW2 going forward (an aspect massively missing from popular accounts of WW2 in western media, far more so than the eastern front)
But your touchstones for what’s “covered” seems to be video games and Hollywood movies, with a dash of whatever the 24-hour cable news channels think while drive more viewership and more ad revenue, not history textbooks or documentaries.
Yes, many of our countrymen (I’m guessing you’re American here; if not, no offense intended) are incredibly ignorant of all sorts of aspects of history, not just WW2 (and Americans aren’t alone in that respect). But complaining that the Russian (or Chinese) roles in WW2 aren’t covered adequately in pop culture seems a tad silly. (Almost) Nobody wants to watch history lessons for entertainment or read encyclopedia articles for news. If the customers don’t want it, the companies that provide entertainment are either going to accommodate their customers or be replace by ones that do.
I doubt anyone would disagree with you. As others have pointed out, media aimed at American audiences will tend to focus on American characters and American battles.
This brings up another interesting question for me, how many veterans of WW2 are there in Russia/the former Soviet countries?
It has been reported that there are 500,000 American veterans of WW2 still alive and they are dying at the rate of 500 per day.
Some efforts are being made in the US to video tape their experiences before they all die, so that future generations will be able to know about WW2.
I wonder what he numbers are in Russia. I suspect a lot less because the quality of healthcare in Russia is bad, and people live shorter lives/die earlier.
To have fought in WW2 you must be at least 90.
I wonder if Russia is making efforts to record the history of WW2 from the veterans, anyone know?
Taking into account that there is a bias towards ignoring the worst of the mistakes and abuses of the Soviet army, one recommended documentary/reenactment series from Russia should be seen by people that know little about the eastern front: *Soviet Storm: World War II in the east *
Made for Russian television in 2011, and translated to English.
If the soviet union has won the cold war, and the American capitalist economic system collapsed, while the soviet communist one dominated the world unopposed starting in the 1990s, then you could be sure it would be the Eastern Front would be remembered in mass media.
Are you referring to the Russian Documentary just mentioned? Just to clarify, that documentary was made by Russian TV, so if the documentary mentioned that then one has to conclude that in the Russian media in the East that also persists. :dubious:
IIRC in one episode of that Russian documentary it was mentioned that Russian prisoners of the punishment battalions were forced into the front to do work or given guns for missions that amounted to suicide, but AFAIK no specific case in the documentary about Russians running into battle unarmed.
I’m from Poland originally but live in NYC (Polish people hate communism btw, and Russia in general).
A couple years ago there was actually a large number of Russian veterans of WW2 that came to NYC and marched in the Veterans Day parade with American veterans. The Russian veterans were in bad shape health wise, but happy just to be alive and with people who cared. (By the way, they were bringing school children out of school in NYC onto the street and letting them shake hands with the veterans).
I think the greatest misunderstanding of the Red Army is that they actually were well-equipped and in many cases had BETTER weapons than the Germans, even at the beginning of the war in 1941.
American army engineers thought the t-34 was a superb tank, probably the best in the world, when it was was demonstrated the them in 1942.
