Even 80 years after a fateful Sunday in June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, questions still abound. Why did the invasion come so close to victory before faltering? How did Russia turn catastrophe into a triumph that made the Soviet Union a superpower for the next 50 years?
Whatever the answer to these questions are, there is no question World War II transformed the world we live in. Eastern Europe was redrawn, leaving contested borders, bitter feelings, and smoldering conflicts from Poland and Ukraine to Chechnya. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, glorifying the Great Patriotic War isn’t just commemoration of 27 million dead Soviet soldiers and civilians but also a political lifeline. The T-34 tanks that drove from Moscow to Berlin—and now clank through Moscow’s streets on Victory Day parades—are a reminder of what Russia once was and what nationalists hope Russia might be again.
