By Gil Barndollar
Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin seem to agree on one thing: The proxy war their countries are fighting in Ukraine is a new World War II. In his Victory Day speech this month, Putin extolled the sacrifices made during what Russians refer to as the Great Patriotic War — and continued to describe the Ukrainians as Western-backed neo-Nazis. A few hours later, Biden signed the evocatively named “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022,” invoking the same victory in Europe, 77 years ago.
Other leaders and experts have been even more full-throated. To Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), “This is the 1930s all over again.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Congress that Ukraine is the Sudetenland. Ben Wallace, Britain’s defense secretary, said Putin and his generals are “mirroring” the tyranny of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hailed America for again assuming the role of the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
Beneath this avalanche of historical analogies, however, is a less grandiose reality. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t World War II — not even close. No war since 1945 has had the magnitude or the impact of what future president Dwight D. Eisenhower rightly termed America’s “crusade” against Nazism.
The scale of World War II dwarfed the current conflict in Ukraine. Nazi Germany sent its panzer divisions to the gates of Moscow and the doorstep of Cairo. The Red Army of Putin’s father fought from Siberia to Silesia. The Russian Army of today is being humbled in a regional intervention on its border. Putin deployed perhaps 200,000 troops into Ukraine; the Red Army lost more than three times as many men just at Kiev in 1941. The war in Ukraine is a brutal, high-intensity conventional conflict, but it isn’t in the same league as the Gotterdammerung of World War II’s Eastern Front.
This piece was originally published in The Hill on May 30, 2022. Read more HERE.