I did personally know a person that was close to me (he passed away about a decade ago) who had been a soldier on that front, he was in Odessa, in Crimea and all the way East to the Don river. He considered that the war started when his commander in chief at the time, marshal Antonescu, had ordered him and his fellow Romanian soldiers to pass the Prut and attack the Soviets, in June 1941. As it happens marshal Antonescu is considered a war criminal, and he was indeed a war criminal if you look at what he did to the Jewish population from Romania. That didn't count for people like that close person of mine I had told you about, who regarded him as a hero because marshal Antonescu was one of the the only persons who really wanted "to defeat the Bolsheviks" (I'm quoting my close acquaintance on this). That's why history around these parts of the world is really, really complicated, is not black and white all the time.
Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell...
by paganel on Monday March 07, 2022 @03:16PM
(#30592774)
Yeah, I did, I grew up in Romania, which was also heavily and negatively affected by the the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (we lost everything East of the river Prut, Northern Bukovina and the county of Herța in June 1940, as a result of a Soviet ultimatum). Nevertheless, we did learn that USSR got into the war in 1941, i.e. when the Germans together with some of their allies (including us, Romanians) attacked them.
Did you perhaps grew up under Russian occupation, like I did, and not learn in school about Molotov–Ribbentrop Pacts? We were only taught the part after 1941 where Russia gloriously liberates Europe.