This does not surprise me at all. In the US we learn the fantasy story of how we saved Europe twice in the 20th century. In both wars we came in very late and helped, but we were not the deciding force.

Here in Vienna, Austria, there is a single large memorial to the liberation of Vienna from the Nazis. It is to the Red Army.

I am not whitewashing the Soviet occupation afterwards. The workers districts of Vienna and the quarter of the country occupied by the Soviets for the 10 years after the war fared far worse than those occupied by the French, English and Americans. That does not change the fact that it was the Red Army alone that retook the city, just as in Berlin.

It is a similar story all across Eastern Europe. The Soviets, at huge cost, drove the Nazis back from the Eastern Front. Again I’m not whitewashing the Soviet occupation of the “Eastern Bloc” after the war. That does not change the fact that Red Army alone defeated the Nazis in the East.