Oh, wow I had no idea that many died. That's horrible. Why the hell can't people stop killing each other? ::(

The Cyrillic displays fine in my browser, but the title bar says Den' Pobedy for some weird reason. Any ideas?

Dyen Pobedy is an English rendering of the Russian phrase for "Victory Day".

The problem, to me, with thinking that war is a terrible waste is that while it is indeed a terrible thing (and none but the sadistic and the utterly foolish actively wish for war), we'd be fools to the core if we thought there weren't some things worth fighting for, and yes, even killing and dying for. I make no exaggeration when I say that the Third Reich was perhaps the most evil regime ever produced in the history of mankind, only matched perhaps by the depravity of the Democratic Kampuchea in Cambodia. They wanted to not only conquer and subjugate the whole of Europe, but they wanted to destroy anyone and anything that did not match their warped and demented racial views. The Jews were merely one part of a much larger scheme to exterminate entire groups of people considered "undesirable" by Hitler and co: Slavs, Gypsies, communists, the mentally ill and physically disabled, etc. They planned to (and attempted to) destroy the entire cultural heritage of Europe. When Paris was on the verge of being captured by the Allies, Hitler ordered the city dynamited and razed to the ground. The only reason that order was not carried through is because the German commander in charge of Paris directly disobeyed Hitler's orders. This policy was eventually extended to all of the captured works of art and cultural artifacts in the possession of the Nazis when, realizing that they were not going to be able to keep their ill-gotten gains, Hitler ordered them destroyed instead. I think they put it best in The Monuments' Men.

These policies were implemented and continued up until the very moment of Germany's surrender, never once was the pace of the Holocaust slowed down as a result of the war, in fact, as the war came closer and closer to a close, some of the camps actually *increased* the rate of the extermination of their inmates (in the East, with the Red Army pressing further and further, they actually started to force-march the inmates of the concentration camps further westward into Germany, those who fell or could not keep up with the march were shot and thrown on the side of the road).

The tragedy and the depth of the loss faced by the peoples of the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe will probably never be fully understood, even by those who experienced it, but what matters to me is that so many gave up so much against overwhelming odds. We always hear of war as this brave and heroic thing, and while there are both brave and heroic people in war, war itself cannot be described by such words, War is simply Hell.

But the unimaginable loss of those who fought and pressed on even in spite of all of the pain they had suffered because they knew, in the end, that this was a battle for their survival, to me, that deserves to be remembered most about Victory Day.

I believe war is ONLY warranted if an atrocity against humanity is being or is about to be committed. This was one of those wars.

I wholeheartedly agree, and even during our lifetimes I think we have experienced such conflicts, as few and far-between as they are. Like with Libya and with Kosovo.

There is a concept known as the Right to Protect, and I support it completely.

And the Syrian one too, right?

Yes, I do for my part believe we should have intervened in Syria. It likely would have been a lot easier to do it in previous years before the FSA kind of fragmented as a political organization and before radical Islamist elements started to become a serious component of the opposition, but yes, in spite of their problems I do very much see the FSA as the representative of the people of Syria.

You are absolutely right; we should look back on our past. History as an old saying goes repeats itself if we allow it too.

Aye, I do not think history repeats itself (i.e. the same things happen over and over again, no two historical events are exactly the same), but I do think it likes to rhyme, and if we don't pay attention to it, it will go its own way, and we will all pay quite dearly for it.

I concur. History does not repeat itself as you said; I think that if such rhyming is left unchecked we will begin to hear the beat of those war drums play louder and louder till madness ensues. It does not just affect the current generation, but those who come after long after. Both World Wars are a perfect example of what the aftermath of madness taking root in the world. It is a poison to the well we all drink from. We must guard our past, and teach those who come after us. We must honor those who died as well as lived to tell their tales.

I agree, and we have already failed so many people on our promise of "Never Again". There have been some exceptions, the humanitarian interventions in Libya and the former Yugoslavia come to mind, but there have been just as many and probably more where we have decided that we are, in fact, not our brother's keeper and left people to certain death, as with the Rwandan Genocide when, in the words of a former UN peacekeeper Romeo Dallaire, the violence likely could have been curtailed by a force of no more than 1,500 men deployed effectively throughout one of the smallest countries in Africa.

And while soldiers were hugging, generals were already discussing the kind of plans that would have seen germans turned against russians once more, but this time armed with m1 garands...

We need to toss some shit back and forth, I'd claim to call myself knowledgeable from the german angle... you seem to know russian

Aye, but that was aptly named Operation Unthinkable for a reason by the powers-that-be in London and Whitehall, as far as I recall, the idea of war against the USSR in the direct aftermath of WWII was never seriously discussed in the Roosevelt government (quite the contrary, FDR from all we can gather of his personal views as well as his actions seemed to favor cooperation over confrontation with the USSR), the Churchill government did conceive of such a notion, though it likely would have resulted in an even earlier ousting of Churchill than historically.

Nobody, least of all the USSR, was in much shape for continued European war circa 1945.