To the credit of the Russian people, at least 25 million died to stop Nazism. So many, and in so many different places – Kiev, Leningrad, Kharkov, Stalingrad – the real number will never be known.
Part of the reason so many died, especially initially, was Stalin’s continued delusion that Hitler would never betray him as three and a half million Germans prepared to invade in 1941. The day of the invasion, he collapsed in nervous exhaustion at his dacha.
By the time his murderous henchman calmed Stalin nerves enough to govern two crucial weeks had passed. Half a million Russian soldiers lay dead. Another million were prisoners, and Hitler’s panzers were halfway to Moscow.
The crimes of Stalin are too numerous to list here, but progressives of the day blindly supported him, including Franklin Roosevelt’s Vice President from 1940-1944, Henry Wallace.
Were it not for Hitler’s hubris and betrayal of Stalin; there’s no telling what kind of world we would be living in today.