That meme is funny but wrong. It is not "how people" it is "how Americans" think WW2 was. When I moved to Europe I learned the real history, but it is well known here. Particularly in central and eastern Europe the people know who defeated the Nazis, and it wasn't the US.

Russia has never invaded Western Europe. Western Europe (and the US) has invaded Russia 3 times. That is why the USSR wanted those buffer states around Russia - to keep Russia safe from Western invasion.

If Putin was bent on recreating the USSR, he' have been going about things differently since taking power over 20 years ago. For example: You don't spend billions on gas pipelines to and lucrative join ventures with a country you plan on destroying. You destroy the country, put in a puppet government and THEN build the pipeline.

Germany would like the whole war thing to go away, and get back to that lucrative gas business they had with Russia for the last decades. Scholz has made that VERY clear. Sending German tanks to attack Russia will make it REALLY hard (if not impossible) to reestablish a business relationship after the war. Merkel's statements about Minsk II didn't help either.

Not just BTW. Can you imagine five years ago that in 2023 the US would be demanding that Germany attack Russia in Ukraine? The irony is unbelievable.