600,000 Soviet soldiers died liberating Poland.

[Swede]

Poland's president said this and thanked them during the Auschwitz liberation anniversary. What an incredible number.

[Aristus]

1. 600,000 soldiers. That's a lot of blood. And it "bought"

Poland for the next forty-five years.


I'm just saying...

[Downtown Hound]

2. That's more than all Americans that were killed in the entire war.

We Americans forget that we weren't the only ones fighting, and in fact had it pretty easy compared to other countries.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Thanks, I was about to say the same thing.

Also, 1/3 of all deaths in WW2 were Russian.

Think they had reason to be paranoid?

[atreides1]

3. Let's Not Forget the Rest of the Story

This was after the Soviet-German Non-Agression Pact, where the Russians and the Germans divided Poland, and before the Germans attacked Russia.

And let's not forget the Soviets killing the cadre and students of the Polish Military Academy, and then blaming it on the Germans, until WWII records kept by the KGB revealed the truth.

The Soviets got off cheap.

[Lexingtonian]

5. yeah, and more

Stalin had his armies deliberately halt their advances until the Germans had put down the city-wide Polish Resistance uprising and the adjoined, militarily much smaller, Jewish ghetto uprising in Warsaw.

As intended, the killing off and dispersion of the Polish Resistance leadership that resulted made it much easier for him to install the Polish Communists as his puppet government. That was also the political point of the Polish officer corps massacre in the Katyn forest- wiping out the men from esteemed and aristocratic families who otherwise were going to be the social and political elite of Poland for the next generation or two.

As for 600,000 Russians getting killed on Polish soil...for one thing, it would have been nice if Stalin hadn't kept that chunk of Polish soil he took in return. And given the superiority the Russians had in tanks and artillery, they probably lost most of the 600k in the useless and badly supported infantry waves they'd throw at German defenses. Speaking of defenses, the amount of fortifications Germans had within the boundaries of 1939 Poland were small, so chances are most of these Russians died on what was at that point German soil- Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia....

The Eastern Front war was horrible beyond objective description and senseless beyond belief.

[Swede]

6. 600,000 lives is not cheap.

No matter what the politics,these were living,loving human beings.

[KG]

7. neat-o spin!

guess he forgot about the part where the soviets attacked poland from the west while the nazis invaded from the east in 1939 and divided the spoils beteen them.

'liberating' poland was just incidental to defeating the hitlerites in the great patriotic war.

[robcon]

8. 'Liberating' is a strange word to use.

The Russians murdered thousands of Poles, including most of the Polish officer corps, and put the country under their iron fist for almost 50 years. If that's 'liberation' I'd sooner not be liberated.

[LSK]

9. thats what I was going to post

Stalin invaded shortly after Germany was well into Poland and they agreed to divide up Poland in 1939. They were allies at the time.

Also how many of those 600,000 died while fighting German invaders ON RUSSIAN SOIL.

How nice for Politicians that 99% of the people know little about history.

[BillZBubb]

10. That would be very impressive IF

If the intent of the Russians was to liberate Poland. In fact, the Russians died in Poland because it was on the road to Berlin. They had to defeat the German army there to move forward.

To the Russians, Poland didn't mean spit.

[Mountainman]

11. Then they occupied Poland for about 30 years.