Rick Atkinson : "The Guns at Last Light: The War in Europe, 1944-1945" 

They are all the same, and every one of a sad little creep.

National World War II museum symposia

no not really. the Bagration battle was able to happen partly because of Allied Efforts

Not really. The Soviets shouldered the bulk of the losses, consumed 80% the German military, and ultimately took Berlin. But without other allies they would have likely fallen (imagine 20-30 more divisions present at Stalingrad to hold the flanks, or another 10,000 88mm guns on the eastern front as they were no longer needed against allied bombers), but even if not, they would not have had the resources to pull off the long march towards Berlin. From 1942 on, the vast majority of their radios and trucks came from the West, primarily the USA. As did massive amounts of raw materials such as aluminum. You cannot conduct mobile tank warfare and deep penetrations without radios and trucks. They would have been a horse-foot army with poor coordination and far fewer airplanes. The USSR may well have suffered a 1917 situation and collapsed politically and economically after stalling out on the way west in 1943-45. Plants that made tanks would have had to shift to truck production, meaning they'd have run out of tanks given the heavy losses. With no allies Germany could have captured vast oil sources in the middle east. So it took the entire team to win.

And it needs to be said that the US was carrying the majority of the burden of fighting the Japanese, something the Soviets didn't get involved in until the very, very tail-end of that part of the war.

I heard recently, from Glanzt maybe, that 8 of 11 of German casualties were against t Russians.

That seems about right, but it doesn't address the fact that the Soviets relied upon American materiel to fight on their fronts. They wouldn't have been close to Berlin in 1945 if not for all the Studebaker trucks they used to move men, other war materiel and rations.

No countries were liberated by the Soviet Union, not a single one. Any country that became enslaved behind the iron curtain spent the next 50 years trying to escape west. Eastern Europe was literally better off under the Nazis.

The fight for freedom began in September 1939 and, post 1940, turned into a fight for the liberation of Europe, from Britain. USSR was late to the party - and a dollar short too.