[PEN-L:369] Re: R-Saving Private Ryan

[valis <valis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Frank Durgin wrote in part:
> ...... This veteran of many bombing missions over France and Germany
> finds it incredible that those who told of their fathers' experiences
> displayed no awareness of the fact that if it had not been for the Soviets
> (Russians we called them in those days) their fathers might well have never
> come back.
>     	 In all parts of the FSU, the remains of war dead are still being
> uncovered . Izvestiya of June 12, 1998 had a front page article updating
> the Soviet WW II losses emblazoned with one-inch headlines, "In the Years
> of the War our Army Lost 11,244,100 People". The article also reported that
> by the latest count, 17,400,000 civilians died.  ......................

In the years preceding June 22, 1941 the Soviet armed forces were wracked
by massive purges that ran the gamut from generals to privates, and their
effectiveness was hampered thereafter by the fear and paranoia these
actions engendered.  As many battle and civilian deaths may be attributable
to Stalin's inexplicable measures as to Axis prowess, for all we know.

The nature of the once-removed reminiscences offered by the posters were
not meant to address the war's strategic Big Picture, but otherwise Frank
is certainly correct in his comment.  By the time the Cold War was several
years old the heroic and decisive Soviet role in WWII had been quite
successfully removed from general American consciousness, and members of
the left born post-Korean War are as likely as others to manifest the
effects of this official fact-surgery.
                                                                   valis