6 - Russia’s Contributions to WWII
Russia has a pretty bad reputation. First there were the czars. Then
there were the Bolshevik revolution, the reign of Lenin, Stalin’s
tyrannical atrocities, and the whole cold war not so long ago. So in
many ways, they’ve earned their reputation. But it’s worth noting that
without their efforts during WWII, Western civilization as we know it
might not exist.
In school, most Americans were taught that America won WWII. The efforts
of our allies, aside from maybe England and Winston Churchill are
rarely mentioned, and the fact that war had been raging in Europe for a
good two years before America joined the effort isn’t usually front and
center in the narrative. And it’s almost never acknowledged that without
the help of The Soviet Union, Europe might have fallen to the Nazis.
But the fact is Russia bore the biggest burden of any of the Allied
countries, accounting for about 95 percent of all the Allied casualties!
Think about this one; Russia suffered more than all of the Allied
countries combined. The US who did indeed play a big role in altering
the trajectory of the war, lost about 400,000 soldiers but virtually no
civilians.
Russia, on the other hand, lost at least 11 million soldiers, and
anywhere between 7 and 20 million civilians based on a few different
estimates. In the Battle of Moscow alone more than half a million Soviet
troops were killed, while the battle itself proved to be a huge setback
for Hitler. The Soviet’s relentless defense of the city wore the Nazis
down and resulted in a domino effect of strategic failures for Hitler
and his demented plans.
When Hitler tried to invade Russia he was initially successful. But it
was the Battle of Moscow and the Soviet’s heroic efforts that stalled
his advances. For a man who supposedly studied Napoleon and STILL tried
to invade Russia during the winter, part of Hitler’s undoing was his own
blind ambition and his unfettered thirst for conquest.
But the Russian counter offensive forced Germany back, and led to the
failure of Hitler’s small scale offenses in Russia as well as Operation
Barbarossa, the code name for Hitler’s large scale invasion. Without a
doubt, that helped shift the war in the Allie’s favor.
So while Russia has had less than a charming relationship with the rest
of the world, we’d be foolish to forget how they helped save the very
same world they’ve been menacing. Kind of ironic, don’t ya think?
5 - Ants weigh more than what?!
Ants can be really annoying. They crawl all over everything at picnics
and some ants, such as fire ants, can inflict some pretty painful bites.
Oh yeah, don’t forget Bullet ants, whose bite is said to be one of the
most painful things known to man. It’s almost like the world would just
be better without them. Right?
Wrong. Here, I’ll prove it. Say for example that ants all just died
tomorrow, or they said “screw it” and packed up and went to another
planet. Either way, let’s just say they’re all gone. That would cause a
sh*t storm of consequences like you couldn’t imagine.
The ecological imbalance that would create would ultimately cause many
species to go extinct because Ants actually prey on insects that spread
diseases. They also enrich the soil, which helps us grow food, and they
protect vital plants in our ecosystem.
