Debunking the Crazy Myth that the Soviet Union Could Have Won World War II On Their Own

It was always a team effort

Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill at the Tehran Conference, 1943 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

We have all seen Vladimir Putin’s attempt to revise history in his “justification” for invading Ukraine, an attempt that has been challenged and debunked at every turn everywhere in the world…except inside Russia. The lies take hold there in large part because of government control of the media and brutal suppression of any sort of dissent, but this is not the first, or even the biggest, distortion of history that has been both taught and believed by the majority of the Russian populace. That dubious honor goes to the belief that the Soviet Union could have defeated the Nazis with no help at all from the United States, Great Britain, or any of the other Allies.

For more than 75 years now, the Russian people have been taught that World War II was essentially won by the Red Army alone, that the Allied armies played little role in the war (including the Normandy invasion in 1944 having no real impact on the ultimate outcome), and that it was made possible by the heroic efforts of the socialist workers who produced the tanks, planes, and munitions needed to defeat Hitler’s armies. As with all revisionist history, there is enough truth in some of these statements to make the lie believable.