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40 Fascinating But Lesser Known Facts About WWII

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2019 25 min

World War II - European theatre of World War II — Raising the Red Banner over the Reichstag. Anarkismo

Soviet soldiers with captured German unit banners at the 1945 Moscow victory parade. Reddit

13. Taking on the Red Army in 1945 Would Have Been a Daunting Prospect

By 1945, the Red Army was not the rabble it had been in 1941 when the Germans invaded, but had grown into a veteran and battle-hardened force that had won bigger campaigns against significantly greater opposition than the Western Allies had faced. Churchill’s generals concluded that taking on the Soviets would be ill advised, because far from being a pushover, the Red Army in 1945 was dangerous, vicious, and huge. If war broke out, the Red Army was more likely to end up conquering all of continental Europe, rather than get chased back to the USSR.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.