Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is:
“[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”
But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”:
“[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”
Statistically, it was the communists that saved Germany. Soviet and Chinese efforts in WW2 dwarfed any other contributions.
I would extend this to say the Soviets contributed monumentally, after Operation Barbarossa started, to the eventual downfall of National Socialism in Germany…but I hesitate to say they saved Germany…based on what East Germany looked like following the war. USSR’s behavior prior to Operation Barbarossa was pretty despicable and highly enabling of Germany’s regional proliferation. But, the western democracies should have been much more open to early communications and treaties/pacts with USSR, so to some extent Stalin was just adapting to the geopolitical reality of his position on the continent.
People are probably downvoting you because “lives lost” is not an effective metric for contribution in a war.
Also, let’s be clear, “the US lost only 100,000” is only true if you are just counting mainlanders. Estimates of deaths in the Philippines, who were American, top 1,000,000.
If you are going to incorporate all the SSRs in the USSR casualty counts, you should be incorporating the Dutch east indies for the Netherlands, India for the UK, French Indochina for France, etc.
I think thats probably not a good thing to do, cause if you are a citizen of a current/former colony, you probably dont feel like your colonial masters should get to “claim” your death. This also holds for all the non-russian SSRs and internal minority groups in Russia, though.
Plus, the numbers for the USSR are sadly inflated because Stalin didn’t care how many of the soldiers died. They were completely disposable and treated as such.
Also, their methodology was sloppy and completely relies on inaccurate military records. They counted POWd as KIA, even after they returned.
Of all the nazis that died in combat, something like 4/5 of them were at the hands of the Russians.
The russians accused the americans of slow walking their involvement to maximize the pain on them, and accusation that may not be entirely without merit.
But the Russians had more men under arms at one point than any country every, the largest standing army every, last I recall, and at one point were fighting on 17 different fronts although I don’t know when that was exactly.
I’m pretty sure “rest of the world” includes the communists…
Would you care to explain the class some of the things that caused Soviet casualties to be so high?
That is a wild take. Not saying you’re completely off target, but that framing is just wild.
In terms of overall effort, sacrifice, and suffering, they’re spot-on.
Although much of that monumental sacrifice is probably also due to the view of disposability, as well as poor coordination and support, USSR leadership had toward its troops. Plus Germany basically confiscated the fertile farming land upon which so many USSR citizens depended to avoid deadly famine.
Woe to the poor USSR soldier who became a POW under Germany. Their chance of survival in that state was very low, and their opportunity to be the subject of a cruel medical experiment was very high.