Soviet sacrifice

While lavish attention has quite rightly been focused on the D-Day landing sand the role played by the British, American, French and others in the liberation of Germanoccupied Europe, one should not forget the Soviet Union’ s crucial role in winning the war.

Starting in 1941 the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Nazi war machine and played perhaps the most important role in the Allies’ defeat of Hitler. By one calculation, for every single American soldier killed fighting the Germans, 80 Soviet soldiers died doing the same.

The Soviet Union paid the harsh est price: though the numbers are not exact, an estimated 26 million Soviet citizens died during the Second World War, including as many as 11 million soldiers. At the same time, the Germans suffered three-quarters of their wartime losses fighting the Red Army.

The Russians paid almost the entire ‘butcher’s bill’ for defeating Nazi Germany, accepting 95 per cent of the military casualties of the three major power soft he Grand Alliance.

The epic battles that eventually rolled back the Nazi advance – the brutal winter siege of Stalingrad, the clash of thousands of armoured vehicles at Kursk (the biggest tank battle in history) – had no parallel on the Western Front, where the Nazis committed fewer military assets. The savagery on display was also of a different degree than that experienced further west.

By some accounts 60 per cent of Soviet households lost a member of their immediate family and we shouldn’t forget their key role in winning the Second World War in Europe.

ALEX ORR Marchmont Terrace, Edinburgh