The revulsion of Trump's WW II history, so to speak

I missed this characteristically ignorant Truth Social post:

Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II. I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I. We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything—That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! We are going to start celebrating our victories again!

Aside from the deep repugnance of Old Bone Spurs associating himself with bravery and military brilliance, historical ignorance emanating from the White House is the worst possible breed of willful unawareness, given its bully-pulpit contaminating effect throughout the citizenry. In this instance, Trump reinforces the already unfortunate inclination of Americans seeing the United States not only as the center of the globe but as the only indispensable nation on the planet now — and then.

No one denies America's immense contribution to defeating the fascist powers of WW II, chief among which was Nazi Germany, hence our "Europe First" policy. But asserting the U.S. "did more than any other country" and by far is to utter sheer falderal. That in doing so Trump reveals once again that he's full of nothing else is nothing new in the way of daily reports on America's decay and decline owing to his aggressive ignorance. Nonetheless, we the plucky and hopeful shall persist in efforts to lighten the oppressive national weightiness of a historically oblivious Oval Office.

Given its own fascistic evolution it sticks in one's craw — mine, anyway — to acknowledge that in the Second World War no country fought harder, suffered and sacrificed more against Nazi Germany than Russia. Among military historians (which I am not) it is widely estimated that three-fourths of all European casualties and matériel losses took place on the Eastern Front. Thus did British historian Richard Overy write in response to Trump's ignorance: "[It's] an extraordinary distortion of history," and he'd "benefit from reading more." (That was an error on Overy's part; Trump hasn't read any; for Christ's sake he had to ask his Chief of Staff John Kelly what 1941 Pearl Harbor was about. As for Trump's remark about WW I, Overy said that's "even more of a distortion.... The British, French, and Italians defeated the Central Powers, with some U.S. help in the last months.... His claim as it stands is nonsense."

Though military historian I am not, I consider another British historian's thesis on the Second World War as the most incisive, that of Andrew Roberts in his book, The Storm of War. Not many tomes do I label magisterial, but this is one. His argument is threefold.

One, Great Britain initially provided the time with which the Allies could prepare and mobilize for war against Hitler, chiefly through its ineffable courage in the Battle of Britain and its prime minister's absolute refusal to entertain even the notion of surrender after France's fall. Two, America's most significant contribution to defeating Nazi Germany was in providing the enormous material and financial resources necessary for its defeat. Third, as already noted, the Soviet Union provided the motherlode of the fighting, eventually knocking out the Wehrmacht's ability to resist. (On military and civilian fatalities, from Statista: the Soviet Union, 24 million; the U.K., 450,700; the U.S., 418,500.)

Ponder, for instance, the Soviet offensive known as Operation Bagration, commenced roughly two weeks after Western Allied troops first set foot in France, 6 June 1944. Just as Hitler was personally taking on more military decisions — big mistake on the little corporal's part — Stalin was relinquishing strategy to his top brass. The intertwining result was decisive.

In the two-monthlong bloodbath of Belarus the Red Army deployed what became known as the "Deep Battle Doctrine," which involved breaking through Nazi lines in multiple narrow segments so as to gain a foothold behind the enemy's lines, then closing in from all directions. In this one operation, the Germans sustained 350,000 casualties, a loss considered to be the largest military defeat in history, notwithstanding the Nazis' pounding in the Battle of Stalingrad.

The essential point of Operation Begration is this: Subsequent to its success, the Soviet Union could have single-handedly finished off Hitler's regime. Stalin nonetheless welcomed the Allied advance from the west as a means to reduce Soviet losses. From June '44 on, the Germans were fighting on two fronts, spelling inevitable doom.

Hitler might well have won the Second World War had he not committed two monumental blunders: invading the Soviet Union, which in manpower far outstripped Germany's, and declaring war on the United States, which unleashed its tremendous industrial war-machine capabilities. Also of critical note is that in discussing the great powers of WW II we too often overlook the totality of civilization's sacrifice and fatalities, which is staggering; various estimates ranging from 70 million to 85 million deaths — in Europe alone, those of heroic Canadians, the Dutch, Poles, Greeks and Yugoslavians, as well as refugees from, and insurgents in, Nazi-occupied nations.

Yet today America's commander in chief blathers through ignorance, arrogance and a hefty serving of just plain stupidity that "we did more than any other Country, by far," in winning the Second World War. It's Donald Trump's utterly repellant place in U.S. modernity that makes me want to transport back to the presidential epoch of FDR's wisdom, humility and humanity — then our most challenging era, one of vast economic depression and a monstrous global war, but also an age of American honor at its highest level of leadership.