# Why is the eastern front of WW2 not covered more? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 26, 2018, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747 "2018-12-26T19:46:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kamaski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9d8465/32.png) [@Kamaski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamaski)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/21 "2018-12-26T21:29:50Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > 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. No the documentary is very good, I like it a lot, i want to watch the whole thing. Just the myth in general that the Soviet army didn’t have rifles/equipment is what I was referring to. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2018, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/22 "2018-12-26T21:34:19Z")
I remember plenty of references to it in an old WWII documentary series. General Burkhalter often discussed the desirability of Klink’s transfering to the Russian front. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/23 "2018-12-27T04:43:54Z")
Why is it surprising that people are more interested in something which affected them more personally? I wouldn’t accept an even-odds bet if the majority of Japanese were aware that WWII included areas outside of Asia and the Pacific. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/24 "2018-12-27T05:20:58Z")
Cracked did a great podcast on this very subject. TV tropes article “America won WW2” is excellent too (sorry no links; im using my phone and it’s PITA to do that. But I heartily recommend both.) It’s basically because noone wants to be seen to “big up” a communist regime, plus it’s a nicer story to american ears that the US did all the most important stuff. Similarly you don’t get much mention of how many people prominent americans sympathized with Nazi philosophy or opposed getting involved in Europe… It would cloud the story. To the OP though, note that the original Call of Duty included a very good Stalingrad stage. ---
**Author:** ![Kamaski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9d8465/32.png) [@Kamaski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamaski)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/25 "2018-12-27T05:30:44Z")
When Col. David Glantz gave a lecture at the US Army War College, this is how he addressed the topic. The US Army lost 5,000 men killed/wounded in the Iraq war since its start (at that time, maybe 2007) A single Soviet division entering Stalingrad in the latter half of 1942 could except to take that many casualties in dead alone in just a single week. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/26 "2018-12-27T06:18:09Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Cracked did a great podcast on this very subject. TV tropes article “America won WW2” is excellent too (sorry no links; im using my phone and it’s PITA to do that. But I heartily recommend both.) > > It’s basically because noone wants to be seen to “big up” a communist regime, plus it’s a nicer story to american ears that the US did all the most important stuff. > > Similarly you don’t get much mention of how many people prominent americans sympathized with Nazi philosophy or opposed getting involved in Europe… It would cloud the story. > > To the OP though, note that the original Call of Duty included a very good Stalingrad stage. Or no one in the west wants to admit that our Soviet allies were as bloodthirsty as the Nazis. That the war in the East didn’t really end until 1989 and the liberation of Eastern Europe. Or admit that the ethnic cleansing that took place in the East after the war cost hundreds of thousands of lives. There was little heroic in a USSR that enabled Hitler to rearm and went to war as his ally. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/27 "2018-12-27T07:14:09Z")
Those are reasons to _add more_ to the story, not omit details. The eastern front was the more important in the European conflict, and Soviet Russia was integral to crushing the Nazi war machine. These things are really beyond dispute. But I don’t think anyone is in danger of thinking that means Stalin was a swell guy. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/28 "2018-12-27T10:54:57Z")
and? No one talks about the Free French armies being mostly made of the Maghrebines and the West Africans - essentially mostly the muslims - the Free French get 100 percent whitened-europeanized in almost all the movies that touch on them, the French empire brownies disappear in the films… ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/29 "2018-12-27T12:20:54Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > 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. This is absurd. The reason people make movies centered on their own culture has everything to do with the market. Winning the Cold War has nothing to do with it. The Russians can - and do - make movies about their own history and nobody is stopping them. The “capitalist economic system” as a concept - and therefore Hollywood - was never in danger of collapse or conquest. ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/30 "2018-12-27T12:44:23Z")
> [@Kamaski](#): > > And the lies that the Russians ran into German machine gun positions unarmed still persist in the west. I’m getting a little fed up with Kamaski’s insistence on characterizing things as “lies,” as though there is a willful conspiracy to attack and demonize the Soviets. There’s a saying that goes: “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.” And the fact of the matter is that Americans are very, very stupid. The average American couldn’t find Normandy if you gave them a map of France. They barely know their own history, much less that of other countries. Unless someone actually takes the time to study history on their own, there is little reason to expect them to retain it. ---
**Author:** ![Kamaski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9d8465/32.png) [@Kamaski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamaski)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/31 "2018-12-27T13:01:40Z")
This also brings up an interesting question for me, when will we stop thinking of world war 1 and world war 2 as two seperate wars, but actually THE SAME WAR. Instead of being two different gigantic conflicts fought for different reasons, they were actuallyfought for the same reason (German aggression) Except in World war 2 the Germans came back in a much more sinister and evil way. The German Kaiser in 1914 was no nice guy, he was an autocrat, a dictator, a mean and a jealous individual with no problem using his military for aggressive war. Really he was not unlike the Middle East dictators if today. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/32 "2018-12-27T14:48:48Z")
> [@Kamaski](#): > > 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. > > Why not portray the conflict accurately?? A couple of things here. First off, there have been video games set on the eastern front in the past. The fact that Call of Duty which is a 1st/3rd person shooter from what I understand (I don’t play it) probably has several factors which the game designers used to determine where the setting would be. The first is that almost certainly the main market for the game will be in western countries, not Russia. IOW, the game designers (or more liked the corporate suits who green lighted the development) felt that the majority of those who would buy the game would be in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe (maybe Japan and South Korea as well). Perhaps they already have the uniforms modeled for allied soldiers and their weapons though that was probably a minor matter compared to the first. Perhaps they felt the game play on the western front would be more interesting that the brutal slog match on the eastern front. But in the end it’s who would be playing to game and what they would want to play that factored in the most. You can’t look at a year of gaming and then make broad statements about what was or wasn’t covered in general. Not sure what your point about the Soviets taking more casualties in one day or one battle verse what the US took is supposed to demonstrate wrt what you are asking. In Russia, especially in the Soviet era the focus of their history was, unsurprisingly, completely on their own part. In the UK, again unsurprisingly, their main focus (though not all) was on their part. And in the US, our focus was on our part. Other countries focused on other aspects too. That said, I didn’t go to a particularly good school, and we spent a large part of our time when we were studying WWII on the eastern front. Certainly in college that was the focus. It was covered quite a lot. Again, because it wasn’t in some game doesn’t equate to, well, anything really, except the corporate suit types thinking they had a crystal ball on what would sell wrt their game. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/33 "2018-12-27T15:01:56Z")
Relax, [Al Stewart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_to_Moscow)’s [got this](https://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/story-of-stalins-war-al-stewarts-roads-to-moscow/). ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/34 "2018-12-27T15:47:05Z")
> [@JB99](#): > > This is absurd. The reason people make movies centered on their own culture has everything to do with the market. Winning the Cold War has nothing to do with it. Of course, America makes films about Americans and Russia make films about Russians but the reason most people have heard of Saving Private (inside and outside the US) but hardly anyone outside the former Soviet has heard of Come and See, is America won the cold war. American mass media is the default mass media. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/35 "2018-12-27T15:57:48Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Of course, America makes films about Americans and Russia make films about Russians but the reason most people have heard of Saving Private (inside and outside the US) but hardly anyone outside the former Soviet has heard of Come and See, is America won the cold war. American mass media is the default mass media. I sort of agree with this. Basically, America is the sole world hyper-power and our culture and films dominate on the world stage. Hollywood, until fairly recently, was almost entirely driven by what the American movie going public would want to go see (or, wrt the OP, what the American gaming community wanted to play), so our films reflected that (just as other countries home grown film industries reflect what they think their movie going public wants to see). However, since the US has such a huge global impact that means that a Hollywood film is going to reach a much wider audience than most if not all other countries home grown films. Notice that recently this has been changing, though. Which is why I only sort of agree with you. Recently, the Hollywood film industry has been trying to court China (which didn’t win the cold war…though they didn’t lose either I suppose). A lot of recent Hollywood films have either re-written their scripts or put in parts to make them appeal to the China market as well (and, of course, get through the CCPs very restrictive foreign film rules that only allow a handful of official films a year…the rest basically being pirated, which means no profits for Hollywood). So, the reality is that if Russia was perceived as a similarly large market you WOULD see more movies (and more games no doubt) based on the eastern front of WWII, as well as more movies focused on the Russian market. But they aren’t…they are just a very niche market for US companies. It’s not because of the cold war, per se, it’s because there isn’t any money in it. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/36 "2018-12-27T16:05:41Z")
in combination with his other thread in this forum, a reflection on the engagement can be made. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/37 "2018-12-27T16:18:37Z")
> [@XT](#): > > . > > Notice that recently this has been changing, though. Which is why I only sort of agree with you. Recently, the Hollywood film industry has been trying to court China (which didn’t win the cold war…though they didn’t lose either I suppose). A lot of recent Hollywood films have either re-written their scripts or put in parts to make them appeal to the China market as well (and, of course, get through the CCPs very restrictive foreign film rules that only allow a handful of official films a year…the rest basically being pirated, which means no profits for Hollywood). > . As I said in my original post I think the Chinese point of view in WW2 will become much more common in mass media outside China. For all the same reasons. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/38 "2018-12-27T16:20:45Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Because the media your are exposed to is trying to sell to Americans, not Russians. That’s why we had Americans running around the North African desert in _The Rat Patrol_ and went through the tunnels of _The Great Escape._\* You can bet there were plenty of stories about the [Great Patriotic War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Patriotic_War_(term)) in the Soviet Union. \*Americans were in the camp and participated in the digging, but were transferred out of the camp two months before the attempt was made. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/39 "2018-12-27T16:27:55Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > As I said in my original post I think the Chinese point of view in WW2 will become much more common in mass media outside China. For all the same reasons. I seriously doubt it, but we shall see. Certainly movies that conform to what the CCP wants or a Chinese audience wants to see will become more common…it’s already happening. I don’t have a major issue with movies that appeal to the Chinese movie going audience, but I think it’s a serious mistake to conform to CCP censorship or demands. ---
**Author:** ![Kamaski](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9d8465/32.png) [@Kamaski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamaski)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2018, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747/40 "2018-12-27T16:46:00Z")
I don’t think anyone in the former Soviet Union/Russia thinks that the sacrifice of nearly half a million lives defeating Nazi germany should not be celebrated in that war. The Americans were extremely heroic. But I think the scale of the fighting in the east needs to be remembered more, there is so much subject matter there, enough to fill several encyclopedias. Russian generals loved to drive in American Willys jeeps, they thought they wer great vehicles. Russia is still digging up the remains of soldiers in Stalingrad, I don’t know how many have been identified or properly buried, but the number who couldn’t be identified/buried properly is much larger. Nearly a million soviet soldiers died there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-eastern-front-of-ww2-not-covered-more/826747.md?page=3)