The Second World War was worst than the first. It was six years. World War One was the War of trenches. World war Two was the War of bombs. Its devastation ate up ten years of world GDP. 60 million or so died. The atrocities in the Holocaust and in the fighting were beyond facing. The evil which emanated from Hitler and the Nazis made it into the narrative of good and evil of the modern era. The Nazis were evil and we were good, or at least the US and UK were good and the USSR was Communist. We won the War defending Democracy and Freedom and saved the World. The lesson is to always defend against the likes of Hitler so that the War does not happen again.

Except this version of history is not true. First the USSR mainly won the War. It lost 25 million in the fighting. The US and the UK lost half a million each. The USSR faced the lion’s share of the fighting and the battles of Leningrad and Stalingrad broke the Nazi regime. Second, before the War the Nazis had widespread support from other Fascist groups and sympathizers in Europe, the US and elsewhere. US loans funded the Nazi militarisation