The Fallen of World War II

[xxMATTGxx]

Came across this video today:

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[James]

http://i.imgur.com/by2wVFa.png

This really did shock me.
Like, I knew the Soviet Union suffered huge losses, but I've never seen it in a graph like this before. That's just staggering.

[-:Undertaker:-]

The numbers the Soviets lost is well known to those who know World War II, indeed one of the tactics of the Soviet regime in the face of the onslaught by the Third Reich (Operation Barbarossa) was a tactic of no surrender in any circumstances, and so to prevent any troops turning back in the horrid conditions Stalin had other troops placed behind them with the orders shoot to kill if anyone dared attempt to give ground to the Germans. A brutal tactic, although it worked as even though the Reich forces came so close as to view the Kremlin, the all-or-nothing fighting of Soviet troops with Russian weather on their side halted the German invasion and eventually the tide turned.

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad is one of the main battles, although that said British imperial forces also had a similar horrid battle/siege back in World War I which I visited the battlefields with the school and it was literally Hell on Earth. It's the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme.

Brave men who died for King and country and went through what many of them knew what was a death sentence in the most appalling conditions, it makes you wonder whether today's "me me me and my precious feelings/y'uman rights innit" generation would rise to do the same.