Nah, the Russians clearly take the cake, which is why I went off on the OP.
Let's look at the Russians' "glorious" record, shall we:
1. Refusing, over and over again, to stand with Great Britain and France during the Abyssinian Crisis, Austria, Czechoslovakia and the Ruhr, even though if they'd at any time stated their firm intention to form a tripartite Alliance against the Fascists, it would have almost certainly avoided the war.
2. Invasion of Finland, a neutral country, after making a deal with Hitler.
3. Invasion of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, all neutrals, after making a deal with Hitler.
4. Participating in the partitioning of Poland, with connivance with Bulgaria and Hitler.
5. Did nothing to secure the neutrality or even an alliance of convenience with the Bulgarians and Hungarians.
6. Hitler invades; Russia is horribly ill-prepared and has ignored all of the clear signals given to it by Great Britain, the United States and others that their respective intelligence services have detected Hitler's massive build-up of forces positioned in a way that suggests invasion is imminent.
7. Russia loses significant amounts of its territory and a large proportion of its military forces, and is largely saved by the Russian winter.
8. Spends next two years complaining bitterly that the Allies whose values it had recently betrayed aren't helping it enough, while begging for the Second Front that would have been possible if it had stood up to Hitler at the same time Great Britain and France had, instead of carving up Eastern Europe.
9. Ends the war with the most colossal betrayal of an Ally in all recorded history, by using every possible excuse to invade and control all of Europe up to the borders of West Germany, then sits on that territory for more than 60 years, using military force and every possible harsh measure to ensure that they could keep their totalitarian dictatorship intact and keep their economy up by enslaving millions and shipping their products to Russia.
And that's not the complete list.
We're not even talking about the mass-shootings in Polish territory, the story behind the liberation of Warsaw, the horrific things the Russian army did to prisoners or the way they shot their own people who'd been captured because their Commissars thought they might be "infected" with alien ideas, etc., etc., etc.
There is plenty to be proud of, in the Russian people's determination to defeat the Germans and the sacrifices they made. There is almost nothing to be proud of, however, in how the Russians fought the war or what their leaders ordered their people to do, or the Russian people's unwillingness to demand that their leaders actually adhere to the things they agreed to, not once but over and over again, with the democracies they fought beside.
So, eh... those Italians... yeah. I'll take weak and inept ally over the Russian record any day of the week.
Let's look at the Russians' "glorious" record, shall we:
1. Refusing, over and over again, to stand with Great Britain and France during the Abyssinian Crisis, Austria, Czechoslovakia and the Ruhr, even though if they'd at any time stated their firm intention to form a tripartite Alliance against the Fascists, it would have almost certainly avoided the war.
2. Invasion of Finland, a neutral country, after making a deal with Hitler.
3. Invasion of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, all neutrals, after making a deal with Hitler.
4. Participating in the partitioning of Poland, with connivance with Bulgaria and Hitler.
5. Did nothing to secure the neutrality or even an alliance of convenience with the Bulgarians and Hungarians.
6. Hitler invades; Russia is horribly ill-prepared and has ignored all of the clear signals given to it by Great Britain, the United States and others that their respective intelligence services have detected Hitler's massive build-up of forces positioned in a way that suggests invasion is imminent.
7. Russia loses significant amounts of its territory and a large proportion of its military forces, and is largely saved by the Russian winter.
8. Spends next two years complaining bitterly that the Allies whose values it had recently betrayed aren't helping it enough, while begging for the Second Front that would have been possible if it had stood up to Hitler at the same time Great Britain and France had, instead of carving up Eastern Europe.
9. Ends the war with the most colossal betrayal of an Ally in all recorded history, by using every possible excuse to invade and control all of Europe up to the borders of West Germany, then sits on that territory for more than 60 years, using military force and every possible harsh measure to ensure that they could keep their totalitarian dictatorship intact and keep their economy up by enslaving millions and shipping their products to Russia.
And that's not the complete list.
We're not even talking about the mass-shootings in Polish territory, the story behind the liberation of Warsaw, the horrific things the Russian army did to prisoners or the way they shot their own people who'd been captured because their Commissars thought they might be "infected" with alien ideas, etc., etc., etc.
There is plenty to be proud of, in the Russian people's determination to defeat the Germans and the sacrifices they made. There is almost nothing to be proud of, however, in how the Russians fought the war or what their leaders ordered their people to do, or the Russian people's unwillingness to demand that their leaders actually adhere to the things they agreed to, not once but over and over again, with the democracies they fought beside.
So, eh... those Italians... yeah. I'll take weak and inept ally over the Russian record any day of the week.
