The Fallen of World War II

What people said

zug_zug · 2023-09 · Recommendation

There's something so emotional and compelling about the spectacle of shared tragedy (even smaller ones like oceangate). However there's always a reminder in the back of my mind that this sense of what makes our heart leap is very poorly correlated with what things ought to scare us. I don't know if it's possible to "Reprogram" one's heart to worry less about very high-visibility low risk things (like air travel, or terrorism in the US) and care more about statistically probable ones that SHOULD scare us (heart disease and such), but I wish it were. [VIDEO] does a great job of giving a sense of what the proportions are of relative tragedies in terms of loss of life.

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roveo · 2022-02 · Recommendation

Well, it's complicated. I think Putin's understanding of a "Nazi" is deeply connected to the Russian trauma of WWII that the West still doesn't get. Russians believe that due to the sheer number of lives lost, the USSR (and so Russia as its successor state) played _the_ central role in WWII. I encourage you to watch this video [VIDEO] (the relevant parts start at about 4:40 and 9:40) I personally think that it makes no sense to talk about "who made the victory" because it was an allied effort and none of the allies could have done it alone. But at the same time, I think that westerners just don't get how personal and traumatic this was for the people of Russia. So, Putin is very sensitive to any view on WWII that differs from his. Things like "this was just two dictators (Stalin and Hitler) fighting". Or the view of some Ukrainian nationalists that the communists and the nazis were just both occupants (same view exists in Poland), or even that the nazis were liberators from communism. There's history of collaborationism in the Ukraine, as is everywhere, but not everywhere the collaborationists are viewed by a lot of people as national heroes, not as traitors who joined the aggressor (the nazis). I personally understand why this view exists, but for Putin and most Russians it's just outrageous. So, for Putin a nazi is mostly someone who disagrees with the Russian view on the role of the USSR in WWII. That includes nationalists from countries that Putin views as satellites/buff

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chrisdhoover · 2021-12 · Recommendation

It is an odd claim, the largest. I just did a cursory search and found several notable atrocities with larger numbers. Most occurred from over several days to over several months. I guess an argument could be that specifies in a single day or in a single hour but that kind of specificity trivializes the scale of atrocities committed against Poles, Serbs, and Jews. Large scale massacres includes: Palmiry, Liepaja, Katyn, Bubanj, and Borki This video is widely viewed and worth the time [VIDEO]

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