<<what is the real story?>>
The real story is that the US only had 295,000 of deaths in WWII, while the ex-Soviet Union had over 21 millions of their people dead in WWII, averaging one for every family of four. And that is also the reason why the ex-Soviet Union bankrupted their own country just to keep up with the US arm race.
Here is a link for the casulty of WWII for whoever interested:
geocities.com
As much as text books in the US, and in some Western European countries by certain degree, want to claim all the credit for the victory of the WWII because of the D-day, the truth is that the ex-Soviet Union deserves the most of the credit on the European battle field, and Hitler was fatally wounded ever since the Battle of Stalingrad, which also marked the strategic turning point of the WWII.
Some statistics for the Battle of Stalingrad: In a matter of two months, from late November of 1942 until the end of January of 1943, a quarter of a million German soldiers, a thousand German panzers, eighteen hundred pieces of artillery, an entire air force of transport planes, and untold quantities of military supplies were obliterated by the combined forces of the Soviet Army and the Russian winter. |
