"Han" wrote in message
...
harry wrote in news:e72c76bb-f41a-4533-bec6-
:
The Russians sacrificed more than anyone else in WW2.
Sometimes by their own ...
Wikipedia says the Russians executed an entire division's worth of soldiers
under their "If you retreat you will be shot by your own troops" doctrine.
There are a lot of sites devoted to the USSR - German conflicts populated by
(fewer and fewer) surviving members of the battles from both sides. The Sov
historians categorically deny that anything but sporadic "retreat killings"
occurred.
But I temper those comments with my ex-boss Colonel's belief that fragging
in the Vietnam more was a totally mythological concept and that US soldiers
didn't kill their officers. The loss of even a division to retreat killings
hardly makes a dent in the rest of the Soviet deaths. They lost what's
equivalent to the number of people living in all Australia with the
population of NYC thrown in on top of that.
They got creamed and that made them a very wary country after WWII,
determined to never suffer the same fate again. It was the motivation
behind the creation of the Iron Curtain to a large extent. They wanted a
buffer zone of countries between them and Europe to slow down any land-based
invasion.
--
Bobby G.