and after famines

it was about 30m soviets that died in the war, no?

mostly civilians.

so that's still 30m unaccounted for, but there were food shortages immediately after the war as well iirc

@mcstubbs I am unsure, WW2 info especially from the soviet union is hardly trustworthy at all, because the soviets were infamous for lying, and forging documents.

oh yeah.

the germans were too, which makes the eastern front a CLUSTERFUCK

If I remember correctly, the soviet union also claimed that there was zero starvation......in the 1930's.

yeah.

and this is coming from somebody who likes studying the eastern front a lot.

@mcstubbs Germans? Ehh, not really.

i know that a lot of SS units greatly exaggerated kill counts

@mcstubbs Like on the russian front?

and a lot of immediate postwar memoirs available in the us were written by german generals acquitted of warcrimes

yep.

@mcstubbs 20 mil was an official statistic formulated after the war, but a number of scholars have actually claimed that number isn't correct as it didn't accurately identify all those that actually died nor did it account for the missing POW's/MIA service members. Some say it may have been as many as 40 mil.

and the us bought into it because heck, we thought we were gonna be fightin' the commies next and we needed to know how they worked

yeah, i believe it. soviet documents are a clusterfuck

@mcstubbs Ehh, sounds more like banter and big talk, it is hard to say for certain, but it certainly dosen't match up with fucking removing people from history, forging historical documents, and outright lying.

@mcstubbs And, what do you mean about the german post war memoirs?

oh yeah, i just meant from a standpoint of analyzing casualty counts and the like

well, a lot of western understanding of the eastern front comes from these memoirs, which tend to paint wehrmacht actions in a very positive light compared to the soviets.

also

fun game

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration

check out the casualty counts in this article. none of the historians can agree.

this was one of the largest army operations in the whole war

and documents are *shit*

@mcstubbs The whermact really didn't have much belief backing their operations as opposed to the SS, they were more like the general military than anything, while the SS were the paramilitary wing of the nazi party, and also had an offensive wing which involved itself in every war nazi germany was in, the SS who weren't waffen on the offensive were guards.

yeah, the SS were definitely more politically driven than the wehrmacht heer

Some of the whermact actually attempted to have hitler assassinated several times, none succeeding.

So it makes sense why they would be acquited.

valkyrie being the most famous and close to success IIRC

there was some compliance in war crimes though

manstein, for example, was a pretty dedicated nazi

the army helped round up Jews for the concentration camps and the various decrees made by Hitler that 'allowed' the German military to 'legally' commit war crimes.

They sounded committed enough to natsoc ideology to me

most historians agree actually

@When Things Aren't Right Go Left I think the SS actually played the biggest role in that.

the wehrmacht were definitely compliant

But then again, most details around the holocaust are foggy, and conflicting.