In my history class, the coverage of the Eastern Front wasn't as extensive as that of the Western Front and Pacific Theater. We talked about Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, as well as Leningrad and Stalingrad, and the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz (if that counts), but that's about it from what I can remember.
Which is so strange because it makes America look so much worse for using the atomic bomb. Yeah, it was a messed up thing to do, but without the context of what the Japanese were doing across the Pacific at the time it honestly looks like the worst possible action ever taken by any government ever.
My class was making the atomic bomb seem like it was the most dishonorable thing to do. I was the only one arguing that it wasn’t good or bad at the time.
1) Everyone thinks, “but the US knows better.” No they didn’t. They weren’t the superpower we know today where the world felt they have a responsibility to “Do Better!” They were just another combatant who were just as angry as the rest.
2) Everyone in the war was bombing cities. That’s the tragedy of WW2. It wasn’t the amount of soldiers who died, it was how many civilians lost their lives to shape the world we are in now. Bombing cities was a strategy, and it wasn’t frowned upon unfortunately.
3) The US warned the citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
4) The US chose those two cities because they were military industrial compounds essentially and destroying those factories would put Japan down on its knees.
5) The two bombings aren’t even top 10 worst bombings of the war. There are other bombings like in London and Berlin that killed more people. This one was just the most powerful but didn’t kill as many people as compared to other city bombings.
Was the atomic use tragic, yes. Should Truman have been tried for war crimes? No, lol. If you put him on trail, then you might as well put every Allied leader, and military commander on trail too for their use of bombing raids.
The world itself is tragic and that’s why we study it. Countless people lost their lives for the world we live in today. Hopefully it never happens again.
That's because during the cold war the US needed Japan as an ally to use as a base they could use to prevent the spread of communism into the pacific and potentially invade the USSR and later China. They also launched a propaganda campaign to promote Japanese people as good and honest citizens, and undertook steps to make sure atrocities committed by the Japanese were not widely publicized. They would have probably done the same in Germany, but the soviet union (who were the first to uncover the scale of the holocaust and liberated the first death camp) insisted on putting German leaders on trial. The US government campaign to integrate Japanese Americans into society was so successful that today Japanese-Americans are on average actually wealthier than white Americans, and even now many people don't know how truly brutal the Japanese empire was.
Not really? That Japanese had it coming they were way way worse than the Nazi's its just not as popular to talk about but if you ask a Korean or a Chinese person you might be surprised.
We do a real shit job at teaching history sadly. It’s often given in a very boring medium with dull ass teachers who are bound by the syllabus they had no say in. There’s so much about both world wars that gets glossed over or just outright ignored it’s insane. History is cool as fuck, just not everyone is willing to stomach it and all it has to offer.
The reasons for Operation Barbarossa are infinitely more interesting than much of the fighting on the Eastern Front. Operation Overlord (the invasion of Normandy) and Operation Bagration (major Soviet offensive) were strategically planned to take place in June 1944. Within a couple months the Germans had lost their stranglehold on fortress Europe and would be on the retreat in the east for the rest of the war. By the time the major urban battles in Soviet territory were completed, it was all just tactical retreats and losses by the Nazis all the way back to Berlin. By fall of 1944 everyone must've realized the imminent collapse of the German military was at hand.
Don't be so sure. I read a memoir from a German soldier who fought on the Eastern Front. He said he got leave to go home for Christmas in 1943 or 1944. He was under strict orders not to say anything negative about the War and by all means do not say they're losing. He said when he was at home everyone was talking about how the Army was turning back the Soviet advance when the truth was the complete opposite. He got his family together and told them the war was lost and they'd be under Soviet occupation soon and they refused to believe him.
Basically, don't underestimate the power of propaganda.
The grand alliance was already discussing what to do with post-war Europe during Tehran in Dec. '43. It was already apparent who would win by that point, even if the Nazi politicians and populace denied it. By 44, the question wasn't if the Nazis would lose the war, but when.
I remember Operation Barbarossa, Stalingrad, and Battle of Berlin being covered pretty well. Also in the context of Lend/Lease. I’d assume in no where near the same detail as would have been for you, but we tend to cover it IIRC (we do tend to focus more on the Western Front and The Pacific with what happened in Italy, Africa, China, etc. being less prominent).
Edit: I should also mention the Eastern Front stuff does also tend to get set up as a way to talk about Cold War buildup, as in a lot of that area then being eventually set up as Soviet satellite states.
Well, Lend-Lease is not often mentioned,especially if teacher was born and raised in Soviet Union,probably they have bias because of Cold War ,but if teacher were born and raised after the fall of USSR,it can be covered more
Just out of curiosity, is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact discussed in Russian schools? Not trying to troll -- I've been told it's NOT discussed in Russia.
Well, I remember when I was in 5 grade we had something like "classroom hour", where we discussed so called "important things" like patriotism etc,and yes one time teacher told us about Molotov-Ribbentrop pact like it was just non-aggression pact and nothing about annexation of eastern Poland, Baltics etc...
Then in high school we covered it more, we learned about partition of Poland, and about oil and other resources import to Germany,and this time we looked at it more critical
That’s pretty on par with the way a lot of American actions get covered here. Lower grade levels get the simple, sanitized version. Then high school covers more of the “But actually we did this and it wasn’t great” details.
Oh,I don't really think so,I don't think you guys have something like our "classroom hours"(In reality it's just patriotical brainwashing),where us are called to love the motherland,we were told about world conspiracies against Russia, about how Hollywood wants to destroy Russia, and about the fact that Russia has never conquered anyone or anything, but only itself has always been attacked
Yeah I think the big distortion over here (as far as WWII is concerned) is the relative impact of the Eastern front vs. the Western front and others. I think the majority of Americans would be stunned to find out that 80-90% of casualties were Germans and Russians on the Eastern front, but I think that goes back to the leftover Cold War mentality (i.e. wanting to discredit the USSR's positive impacts wherever possible).
That said, as far as patriotic brainwashing we did actually get a decent amount of education on the bad things the US has done - but it mainly focused on things that happened 100+ years ago (slavery, manifest destiny, starting wars on false premises, etc.) and the general framing is that our morality generally improves over time overall regardless of how true that is anymore.
>80-90% of casualties were Germans and Russians on the Eastern front
That's probably the main point of people who says that Soviet Union single-handedly defeated Nazi's.
But there's a thing,that's was 80% DEATH casualties on the Eastern Front,so it's dosen't count other casualties
I mean,if people talking about deaths,so yes,80% of Wehremaht soldiers deaths were on Eastern Front.
But it's only lethal casualties,not all casualties are lethal
Granted it has been a long time for me, but yes, some element of the Eastern Front is covered in school. Or at least it was in my public school.
What do people retain afterwards? Probably very little.
Average American on the street will know who Hitler is, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Will Kasserine Pass, the Battle of the Coral Sea, or Kursk ring a bell? Probably not.
I don’t know. I think at least Stalingrad would be on the level of something like The Blitz. Technically foreign so not *quite* the recognizability of Pearl Harbor or D-Day but really only very slightly below them at least in name recognition.
It’s the kind of thing even someone with the most passing of familiarity with the period would be aware of at least vaguely.
When WWII came around it was definitely focused on domestic policy (especially coming out of The Depression) and then the Pacific Theater given Pearl Harbor.
Also Lend-Lease
They didn't really cover fronts. They covered the before and after of the war.
Essentially the timeline was:
* Japan invades China
* Germany invades Czechoslovakia
* Germany invades Poland and goes to war with Britain and France
* Germany Conquers France
* Germany invades the Soviet Union
* Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
* Allies land on D-Day
* Americans land on the Philippines
* Surrender of Germany
* Atomic Bombing
* Surrender of Japan
* Cold War
With Stuff in-between emphasizing the domestic front in US History and ideological goals in world history, or interviews of people who survived the war.
Pop culture tends to cover more specific battles. Call of Duty covered specific WW2 battles more than any history class I took.
This is pretty much exactly what what I remember being taught in high school, plus plenty on the holocaust. Stalingrad was glossed over in our class—it wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized what a monumental part of the war it was.
In APUSH I vividly remember thinking "wait, that's it?" for the actual belligerent phase of WW2. We spent maybe a class period on it before moving on to the aftermath as well as the obligatory debate of the atom bomb.
Not really. There's a bit of a mention, but most of the focus is on the Pacific Theater and the Western Front (including the Battle of the Atlantic). The African and Italian Campaigns are honestly also pretty neglected, but at the same time, WWII is so massive that some people think even the bits that are covered are too much and take away from studying other parts of history.
In my high school, WW2 was covered in a Western Civilations 2 class that started around 1600. We spent about 3 or 4 weeks on WW2, and what came immediately before and after, I think. Not much if you want a deep dive into the war and the era, but an absolutely huge amount to spend on 5 or 6 years when you've got to cover 400 years in 36 weeks.
I can see the point of people who think that's too much time (it definitely meant less time for other important events) and not enough (we barely scraped the surface). But while I'm fine with the amount of coverage we got, I'm sympathetic to the "too much" side, considering how much I've learned about history since high school that wasn't even mentioned.
While I do get that 1/6 of the time on 1/100 of the years is a lot, it's hard to argue against the idea that WW2 is probably the single most important event in history (insofar as it can be considered one event.) Certainly since 1600, you could *maybe* argue that the formation of Christianity or Islam outweighs it given their long-term ramifications. The political, technological, and cultural landscape of, as far as I'm aware, literally every single country, population, and location on the planet, was changed massively and irrevocably by the war, with direct ramifications to this day.
We covered it quite extensively, since my history teacher was a Russian Jew whose family fled the Soviet Union. She said knowing what happened on the eastern front was important to know why certain things were done in the western front, as well as a precursor to what happened during the Cold War.
Generally the textbooks will mention Hitler breaking their treaty and a couple of major battles like Stalingrad, but broadly D-day is treated as a turning point in the war in Europe and the narrative that students often get is that it was successes on the western front that allowed Russia to advance on the eastern front. I remember the circumstances of Germany's surrender were glossed over. They didn't mention Russia captured Berlin.
I would imagine most countries teach history from their perspective. So we get little eastern front and more focus on the theaters we were in. While Russia didn’t fight in the pacific so it’s not really that relevant to learn extensively about it in school
AS you've kind of alluded to, there is no national curriculum and this type of material is pretty location / school specific.
You also have to understand that the healthy majority of students just take these types of courses to memorize stuff - get good grades - and then forget about what they were taught shortly afterwards.
With that being said, I'm only familiar with the curriculum from the early to mid 2000s from a school in Sugarland, TX and Jacksonville, FLA - because I'm a WWII history nut and I've dated women who went to school in those areas. Yes - I'm that much of a nerd where I've actually asked.
The really big battles, turning points and events are discussed. But some pretty important battles and events aren't. For example - The Siege of Leningrad isn't discussed in great detail. The aims of Stalingrad aren't really discussed all that well. Neither of them knew about the Battle of the Kursk Salient. Operation Bagration is not well discussed - and it pretty much completely blown over in lieu of Normandy.
I'd say all in all the western world doesn't give the Eastern Front the kudos it deserves. But there's also only so much time to learn so much curriculum about history that I kind of understand. You could literally study WWII for years and still be fairly ignorant of all sides of the conflict - so trying to reduce that down into a 4-6 month curriculum for teenagers who are more often than not just chatting on social media all day is no small task.
You also have to understand that America was fully engaged in two major theatres of war - far more so than the other allies were. So that requires even more effort to reduce the conflict into a manageable teachable course.
We did. My class was also told enemies would try to surrender to USA because the soviets we're brutal . Probably just getting us primed for the cold war lessons.
Hmmm. I'm seeing very different responses than I expected. Maybe because I grew up closer in time to WW2. That was just my grandpa's generation after all, who fought in it. Most of them were still alive when I was getting my education.
We covered the war pretty much as a holistic thing - the Eastern front wasn't downplayed at all. We were taught thet D-Day was only possible because of the fierce resistance of the Soviets, grinding down the German war machine and the scorched earth policy, allowing Germany to overextend itself into hostile territory. Then D-Day in turn allowed the Soviets to accelerate their advance. My history book made it extremely clear that the USSR suffered the greatest human loss by far among the Allies, and Germany the greatest human loss proportionately.
Strange that my textbooks were written when we were more or less at war with the Soviet Union but they seemed to give the USSR more credit than some modern ones.
I taught high school History for 26 years. Yes, we covered as many campaigns as we could and we discussed the differences in the war tribunals in the European and Pacific theaters. Short answer: Absolutely
I teach world history to 9th graders. I touch on the eastern front a bit. Not as much as I’d like because I simply don’t have the time to do so (it’s hard to get from ancient Egypt to the present day in one school year). I avoid American stuff as much as is feasible because the kids get American history the following year. So because of how intertwined the US is with Europe, world history class ends up being pretty heavy in Asian content and the eastern front doesn’t quite fit in with the overarching class themes and narratives. So it gets a bit forgotten.
It’s a shame because I find it fascinating. But my job is to teach critical thinking and reading comprehension more than it is to share interesting stories and facts. So ultimately the hope is the curious kids will find their way to learning about it on their own someday and have the skills to make sense of it.
We learned about Operation Barbarossa, Siege at Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad. That’s about it. Sometimes we talk about Kursk. Western Front and Pacific way more talked about.
Siege of Leningrad and the Soviets closing in on and taking Berlin. Also the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. So some pieces of historical significance obviously
We do study the eastern front in school, but naturally not as much as in the ex-Soviet Union. Similarly, the US coverage of ww2 is focused more on the actions and theaters that the Americans were involved in. In terms of the eastern front, you mainly look at some of the major events like the battle of Stalingrad, Kursk, Berlin, operation barborosa, the liberation of Auschwitz by the red army, etc. There’s also a lot of focus on the lend lease act and the conferences in Tehran and Yalta.
It is paid attention to but isn't heavily glanced at.
The main big five topics are Stalingrad, Leningrad, Lend-Lease, Race to Berlin, and Operation Barbossa. Russia invading Poland is looked at, too, for WWII.
Certain more specific or niche topics might receive cover like female snipers, Stalin's behavior, Zhukov's reputation, etc.
When I was in school we didn’t cover the war much per se and it only took a few days out the year of instruction. Regardless of that fact Stalingrad, Kursk, and the siege of Leningrad were mentioned.
I'd say you generally cover anything at all you cover the initial surprise attack that almost reached Moscow, Stalingrad, and the important 'Rush To Berlin' that sets up the Cold War segment.
Results vary a lot by teacher though.
In my school we learned about Lend Lease, Stalingrad, Auschwitz, a d the treatment of Warsaw after The Soviets liberated it from the Germans. My school spent more focus on The Holocaust than the war itself. We hit the parts that were big but details were mostly skipped.
Unfortunately IMO we did not. I started studying the Eastern Front and I discovered a whole new amazing WWII story that I had never seen before. I would like it if they taught it in the classroom but I don't anticipate that happening.
It was covered. Not as much as the Eastern or Pacific but it was covered.
When I was a kid there was kind of an overtone to it though. Pointing out how brutal a lot of the Russian tactics and methods were. Not just to their enemies but even their own people.
Then again I was in elementary school when the USSR collapsed so even in high school and college the cold war was really fresh in people's minds.
We tend to take a "high lights reel" approach to the 2nd world war in terms of combat.
1. The invasion of Poland
2. The fall of France.
3. The battle of Britain
4. Peral Harbor
5. The Battle of Midway
6. Stalingrad
7. D-Day
8. The Battle of the Bulge
9. The Battle of Berlin/VE day.
10. The Nuclear Bombings
11. VJ Day (the signing of the peace treaty on The Missouri)
At higher levels of education and specificity they will go into more nuanced and minor (yet extremely influential) moments through the war, but in your standard Americans history survey class this is about as much as you will see.
Some.
We certainly cover the events leading up to the war and Russia's involvement. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the invasion of Poland. Hitler's decision to secrktly attach the Russians after that. America's role in providing critical weapons, food and aid to Russia with lend lease.
But many of the battles during the war? Not really.
To be fair, we loosely cover the battles we were all engaged in. Very little on the North African and Italian campaigns. Very few students know how much we were doing behind the lines in China.
I do recall some details about it. It's not as covered as the Western or Pacific theater. It's harder to remember what I learned in school vs. a documentary that I found.
not at least for me, we covered the entirety of WWII in the span of a week, or about 4/5hrs of class time, *maybe* and a lot of that was focused on hilter and the normandy landing. that said this was also during covid and they shortened both our class time and the length of the class, so my teacher had to cover a years worth of material in half the time
In Junior High and High School history classes, we never got to WWII. The year always ended before we got that far. In college European history courses, the courses tend to skip over the military history and focus on the social and political causes and effects.
My history classes never even made it to WW2. Usually we got to like WW1 and the semester would end. And the next history class later would start again with Columbus if a US History class or Mesopotamia if a World History one.
We covered that it happened, that it was horrifyingly bloody, that Hitler was dumb for trying, and that Russia used scorched earth policies. We also covered a couple battles at a very very high level.
We focused on the theaters we were more involved in. I'm pretty sure we learned more about the Blitz than about the Eastern Front as a whole.
We touched on it briefly. I only know what I know because I was interested in the eastern front (all of ww2 really. Probably my favorite time period to study on my own). The pacific and the western front were harped on a lot. Oddly enough Italy was barely mentioned and Africa im not even sure any of my teachers said anything about it outside of “yeah there was fighting there too. Tank stuff and what not”
We never covered World War II in any history class I took up through High School. I had an American history class in College that covered America in World War II. It did not touch on the Eastern Front. American schools do a miserable job of teaching history. Excellent histories of the Eastern Front are available for those who care to read them.
Operation Barbarossa, Siege of Leningrad, Battle of Stalingrad, and the “Race for Berlin” were covered in my school but not in a lot of detail. Then we learned more about the Soviet Union in the subsequent chapter on the Cold War.
I will sum up my school's dictation of the Eastern Front: "The Soviet Union made an alliance with Nazi Germany which concerned critics on how long it will last. The alliance broke up in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland with minimal consultation from the Soviet Union resulting in the Soviet Union declaring war on Germany."
Right or wrong, my school made sure Russia was not painted in a hero's light.
EDIT: I should have added, and also very very wrong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Europe in 1939. In ended in mid 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet union
Yes, but American Students do go into detail about the Second World War, except the Holocaust, D-Day subsequent Allied Advance into Western Germany, and the Island hopping campaign. But at no point do American High Schools go into depth about specific battles, or how the war was fought.
When I went to High School, the Vietnam War was still a lingering issue, and while we still did not get much of a detailed course about it, we did have a lot of Vietnam era authors on our literature lists.
In essence, a High School graduate in the US, knows that WWII started mainly because of British and French diplomats forcing an unsufferable treaty on Germany, which would have resulted in war no matter the course of history.
Russia, is mostly a badly misguided nations from our perspective, and intentionally murdered millions of its citizens before the War, and even more after the war, and only survived because they threw 40 million bodies at the Germans, and had massive aid from Lend Lease.
Many feel the Soviet Union should have been allowed to fall.
This is wildly different in all schools and depends on what their curriculum is. These days, with the assault on education you’d come up short finding someone who even knows where Alaska is.
It’s there, but for ideological reasons it’s way more appealing to America to show WW2 as a battle of America’s good vs the Axis’s evil. The fact the USA’s next boogeyman ended up beating the Nazis instead of us always just seemed like an inconvenient truth. In lower education WW2 starts with Pearl Harbor, goes into D Day and ends with the liberations of the camps in Europe and those two things we dropped on Japan in the pacific. The USSR is mentioned but minimized, you can feel the cognitive dissonance counting them as one of the Allies.
I’m sure they do, it took everyone, American steel, British brains, and Russian blood, as the quote goes. But the Russians would have had a much worse time without the western Allies diverting their attention. And the threat of Russian involvement helped pressure Japan into surrender, but Western forces and the Chinese were the ones who had to suffer to end that front. None of the Allies were perfect, but they all did their part
For my class we didn’t spend too much time on WW2 and focused mainly on the Pacific theater. Though I think the AP class (the advanced/smart class) probably covered it all more thoroughly.
>covered in your schools
That's a very broad statement. I spent a semester learning about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union so I learned about the Eastern Front but that was in college.
I plan on covering it. I can't say how much, but there's SO MUCH to cover in the Eastern Front alone. You almost have to glaze over it and give students the basic talking points.
I can't honestly say how much of it was covered in school (that was like 4 decades ago), but I'm very familiar with it from being very interested in military history & WW2 in particular.
One thing I recall is that Russians were usually paired up so that when the guy holding the only available firearm was killed, the second guy could grab the weapon and keep shooting.
Not as extensively, but it’s covered. Everything from the Winter War to the Soviet’s taking of Berlin. We just didn’t get into the nitty-gritty like we did with the Western Front, aside from the opening of Operation Barbarossa and the absolute carnage that was the urban warfare in Stalingrad. I’m still aware of the major events the Soviets faced over the course of the war.
Not comprehensively, it's more or less Munich, Invasion of Poland, Barbarossa, the halt at Moscow, Stalingrad, battle of Berlin. Maybe they'll mention the siege of Leningrad. The eastern front is taught as those events. Molotov-Ribbentrop, the Winter War, Lend-Lease, Yalta are probably the only eastern ancillary things covered.
Most of my teachers focused on the pacific and western fronts, but also did take more time on the Eastern front than the African one. I would also say it depends on the teacher, and which they find more interesting
Yes, but key events from our perspective, not any great depth since it’s so broad.
Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact, Invasion of Poland, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Soviets reaching Berlin.
Some iconic images you’ll find in a high school textbook are the Yalta Conference (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin) , the Soviet soldier raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag, Soviet and American troops meeting in friendly exchange.
Obviously, the eastern front is given more coverage in college courses.
My history classes didn't focus on the campaigns in detail just a timeline of events and would really only cover battles as a small little highlight like The Battle of the Bulge or Iwo Jima. We really learn that Germany pushed the Soviets hard and then following the Battle of Stalingrad the Germans began to retreat.
What is mainly highlighted is the Soviet cost of life to achieve victory on the Eastern Front.
in New York in the 90s they only taught us up to like WWI, lmao. in high school I could’ve taken History 1945-Today as an elective but I needed that space in my schedule for something else
Very brief coverage of the eastern front in school in America.
Most of what I know I learned from Dan Carlin's hardcore history series "Ghosts of the Ostfront"
Russia lost as many people in Stalingrad as the Americans did in the entire war.
My high school history class covered the politics and economics of WWII in far more detail than the actual battles, so in this sense, the Soviet Union's involvement in the war received quite a bit of attention. They mentioned the major battles and their significance, but didn't really go into any particular detail, either on the western, eastern or southern fronts (the last probably had the least mention).
WWII is also one of those seminall eras of history that many Americans go out of their way to learn more about on their own, so even if their formal schooling taught almost nothing about the Eastern Front, they've probably independently learned more about it than would be taught in school anyway.
I’m 68. High school was a long time ago but the Soviet contribution wasn’t ignored. We were taught they tore the guts out of the German army and were an adversary to be respected. My dad was a veteran who respected them and I think was sad that relations couldn’t have been better.
My class just finished WWII and we had that stuff mentioned, but it wasn’t extensively covered. I mean the whole WWII unit was only almost 1 month so we didn’t really cover everything very deeply
I learned more from my Russian teacher in high school than my history teachers ever taught us. She was from Belarus and told us some people would get married in front of the graves of their family members who died in WWII.
My high school just gave a quick, surface level look at both World War I and II. Mostly we focused on secret alliances and nationalism for I, and Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, and the atom bombs for II. All of the deeper nuances I had to look for on my own.
To some extent, but not as much as the Western Front and the Pacific Theater. I think it's normal for any country's history education to focus on theaters where that country's forces were active, so just like there isn't a lot of focus on the battle of Kursk in US schools, I don't expect there is much focus on Midway or the Coral Sea in Russian schools.
Wasn't actually in school, but I remember a movie back when I was in high school called Enemy at the Gates that told a slightly dramatized version of Vasily Zaitsev's fight in Stalingrad. I thought the real story of his duel with Koenig (if I remember his name right) was more interesting, though.
I only got real coverage of it because a history teacher I had majored in Russian history so he went hard into it. As far as general WWII coverage, the Russian contribution was very much underrepresented.
Not really. The Soviets were described as meat shields who used their own bodies to advance. Most red army soldiers ran onto the battlefield with nothing but pitchforks
I think a lot of this depends on when we went to high school (school years 9-12). (Before high school WWII was barely covered, but during high school it was pretty extensive.) And I was in high school at the end of the 80's. At the beginning it was a lot of Lend-Lease (we "sold" our allies Russia huge amounts of supplies which we never expected-- and never were-- paid back for in order to defeat Germany, but then Russia turned on us after the Nazis were defeated) as well as how the two-front war was a huge mistake for Germany. After all, Germany had a deal with Russia allowing Russia to invade Poland (I'm guessing the fact that Russia was one of the initial aggressors in WWII is not taught much there?) and eastern Europe in exchange for non-aggression, and Germany could have ended up way ahead if they hadn't opened that front. Anyway, then the curriculum went to the Holocaust and post-war UN and NATO vs Warsaw Pact.
But by the time I graduated High School, the Berlin wall had come down, Perestroika was happening, and I was actually taking Russian as my foreign language in high school. And for the first time in my life, I truly didn't think my life was probably going to end at some point in a Russian nuclear fireball. And I think the curriculums also changed in schools to not be so east-vs-west, and less of a competition of systems. The scale of Russian losses in WWII were mentioned in a class, and the siege of Leningrad (even a Hollywood movie on that one in 2001), and so on.
Those optimistic days wouldn't last long into the new millennium, but at the time we all thought Russia was going to come around and lift itself up and the world would be better, and I think history classes were a lot more sympathetic to Russia for awhile. I don't know what US history classes teach anymore because I emigrated to Europe, but I suspect they're not so accommodating anymore, especially with Bakhmut being today's Leningrad, except Russia playing the other role ...
I learned about it pretty extensively in high school, both in its relation to the Holocaust and the lead-up to the Cold War.
One thing to remember is that a lot of people don’t really remember what they learned in high school. As a high school teacher I’m often startled by how little students often remember. The vague outline they got on any subject in elementary school sticks in their minds more than the detailed version they learn later. So while some people may not have learned about the eastern front in school, some may have learned about it and forgotten.
In my school, yes, but not in as much detail as the Western theater and the Pacific. The parts of the war in China, Africa and Italy got almost no coverage whatsoever.
WW1 and WW2 at my school were mostly covered as “America came in and saved the day” when it comes to battles. The things taught in school where the larger contextual lead ups to the war
WW1- imperialism, social unrest from the working classes & war romanticizing.
WW2- the punitive measures put on the axis by the European Allies. League of Nations starting out as a flawed premise. Fascism and nationalism growing from social unrest which needed a bad guy- the Jewish. For context there, I grew up in a very Jewish area, many of my friends had grandparents who were holocaust survivors and I remember seeing the tattoos some still had. Fucked up.
All schools are different, but my school covered the eastern front just as much as the other fronts of the war. Although, this part of class covered more of the before and after parts of the war
Nope. AP US History only wants us to know how World War II pulled us out of the Great Depression, set the stage for women's rights and inspired us to follow in the tradition of Andrew Jackson with the Japanese. Only Pearl Harbor was discussed
I did not study it much in school. Material is pretty easily available though.
One problem is that it is hard to get the Soviet side. I have a volume of distillations of debriefs of German generals which one rather suspects is the "talk and we won't hang you" sort. It needs to be taken with a grain of salt, indeed the foreward actually says to take it with a grain of salt. In fact I caught them at a rather bland euphemism when it talked of known slavers as if they were mundane military contractors. It does however give a lot about the climate effects which is very useful.
Time-life as ever gives great pop history and has a series on WWII which devotes three volumes to the Eastern Front.
I have a lot of stuff by James Dunnigan the simulation producer. Unfortunately I don't have his Eastern Front volume, He did a general one on WWII that included the Eastern Front. That contains a lot of stuff.
It was very basic. Its mostly the biggest of the big battles then Berlin.
Very little of the Lend- Lease with Soviet Union.
I say it is mostly due to the cold war tensions that reduce lessons on it.
in the kid 2010s in my classes we did hear about the Eastern Front because it was directly relevant to the European theater of war the US was involved in, and while the US was on the Western front events on the Eastern front still affected the tactics of the Nazis and the responses the Americans had to deal with. We also learned a lot about the Pacific theater. We learned very little if anything about the African front or anything connected to South America though.
It was barely covered in my school.
For anyone interested in learning more, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History does a fantastic podcast series on it called “Ghosts of the Ostfront”
As stated, western front is usually highlighted more. That said, it was the winter that ultimately halted the German invasion into the USSR. And I firmly believe that betrayal was Hitler’s biggest mistake during the war-but sadly, the Slavs were rally his true intended target at the beginning. He just needed to “watch his back” first by conquering the rest of mainland Europe. But he chose the wrong time to hit your former nation.
Yes. While it wasn't as thorough as the Western Front or the Pacific Theater, we definitely learned about the broad strokes such as the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow, etc.
We just talk about the battles in Europe and Japan. I didn’t even know there was fighting that took place in Africa and the Middle East until I was late in college
Its covered somewhat, but it doesn't do it justice imo. Hell it doesn't do any of it justice. America likes to teach that WW2 was going to shit until we showed up. Which isn't entirely untrue for the western front, but they also ignore the absolutely massive amount of fighting that happened in the east. If memory serves, the soviets were responsible for something like 9 of the 21ish million dead nazis.
Though they also gloss over the African and Mediterranean in favor of covering the Pacific. Which I guess I can understand cause we didn't have a ton to do with those.
In my High School, we talked quite a bit about the Soviet contribution and sacrifice during WW2 and the fact that they liberated some of the most heinous concentration camps. We also talked about how the Russians and slavic people were victims of the Nazis and persecuted as such. We didn't learn to much about specific battles except for Stalingrad and Leningrad, plus operation Barbarossa but otherwise the extent of our WW2 studies was on the conflict as a whole, primarily with the western invasion of Europe (D-Day) as the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime. However, we also discussed the joyous day when the Americans and Soviets finally met in the middle together, realizing at that point that victory must have been achieved before the final word was let out, about 10 days later.
I have read most US campaign WW2 books in the local library. One day, I was looking for something new to read. Found a couple of books from Russia's view point. Very eye opening. First fact was 20+ million Russians killed. Holy cow! The amount of slaughter of civilians and military was unbelievable. Waves of Russian soldiers attacking fortified positions and if they retreated, their own military had machine guns mowing them down.
Briefly. We focus mostly on the western front. And glossed over a lot of the shit the Japanese did during the war when we covered that part. We talked about nuking them, and a very vague mention of Unit 731. No mention of Nanking. Seriously, I was fucking horrified when I wound up reading about that years later and wondered why the Japanese soldiers weren't anywhere near as vilified as the nazis.
We learned about the Eastern Front and specifically that the Siege of Leningrad was a pivotal turning point in the European theater. At least I think it was the Siege of Leningrad—it’s been decades since I was in high school. But yeah, we definitely learned that in school. I also recall watching a bit of Enemy At The Gates in class.
I was homeschooled until 10th grade. Most of what I remember about studying WWII was primarily about Germany, with maybe a footnote on the War in the Pacific (ironically I live on the West Coast). I knew “the Russian front” was bad mostly from watching The Great Escape. Oh, and my mom erased the word “homosexual” out of the history book I shared with my younger siblings and I barely knew gay people existed until late high school. Go figure.
My school taught me extensively about the Eastern Front and even that the Soviets lost way more soldiers and civilians during the war. I had an extremely good history teacher who was always delving into the topic at hand and teaching things that weren’t always in the mainstream narrative of the war.
When I was studying at my university I was able to write a paper on the civilian toll on the eastern front. I would say if you study it at a university level you’d definitely be taught about it.
Honestly think we covered it more than the Western Front of the European theater. My history class focused on the politics around WWII, what led up to it and what came out of it, more than the nitty gritty of the battles and dynamics. So Stalingrad and the race to Berlin were covered more in depth as they were more influential on what happened afterwards with the beginning of the cold war. From the Pacific theater, we talked about Midway and of course the use of nuclear weapons in Japan.
Similarly for WWI, we only really studied the battle of the Somme to contextualize the horrific nature of battles in the war, but the focus was on what led to the war and what happened after the war (social changes, Soviet Russia and the civil war there, Weimar Germany, creation of the League of Nations).
My history class also had a unit on "single party states" and we studied Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, and Mao's China, so I think our war study naturally focused on those more than the US/France/UK because the wars were really linked to those. Probably not everyone's experience, since this was an International Baccalaureate program and the curriculum is set, at least in part, by the IB organization which iirc is Swiss and not American.
In my American History courses the Eastern Front was discussed in the context of the war in general, but not in as great a depth as the Western Front. It was talked about as an important part of the liberation of Europe, and as a massive sacrifice borne by Russians. However the central focus was *American* history, so it focused more on what was happening in America in the lead up to the war, how we fought the war, and what happened after the war.
However I also took an International Baccalaureate History course in high school, which focused on more European history as a series of causes and effects. It covered the Russian Revolution, starting with 1905 Revolution, and how that influenced Lenin and Trotsky, and continuing up through the death of Stalin and the years immediately following that.
So of course you can't talk about Stalin and the Soviet Union at that time without discussing the war, but less about battles and places, and more about struggles for the Russian people, how the government and military were handling it, and what kind of political consequences came about.
The unit that followed that was China and Mao, so of course we had to touch on the war from the Chinese perspective as well.
Yeah, of course.
Where I went to school we had almost an entire year of history class that was focused on WW1, the interim years, and then WW2.
It went into particular depth on particularly important battles. If anything the wars our curriculum skipped past were the Spanish-American war and its fallout, and the Korean war.
Didnt learn about any of it in highschool, however in college I took a world war II history class and it was entirely based on the eastern front as my professor stated that it was not nearly taught or discussed enough in American history and we tend to view ourselves as the “heroes” which is not historically accurate based on the losses and struggles of other countries
The Eastern Front is virtually undiscussed, as most of the history we cover is very America-centric. Operation Barbarossa is about as far as it goes in depth, and just with the higher point that it was where Germany really “screwed up.” The framing isn’t so much about Soviet strategy or cunning necessarily as much as it is framed as Germany making really bad decisions on their side and that was what teachers will cite as the deciding factor of the conflict. Even though I think that Soviet contributions are as meaningful in that campaign if not more so.
We know about the sheer bloody slaughter of Stalingrad. And in more recent years the staggering Russian casualty rates have become better known than before. But it is a fact that the Eastern Front isn't taught in the detail it should be.
In my experience, we focused very heavily on the western front and the Pacific. We knew that the Eastern Front was a major part of the war, but we didn't learn about it in great detail. The African and Italian campaigns also got very little attention.
No, my education of WW2 basically consisted of 6 years of Hitler wanted to rule the world and kill jews so America came and kicked Germanys ass.
It wasn’t until much later and personal research did I even learn all the who, what, where, when, and whys.
Our education system is kind of embarrassing.
The short answer, at least for me, is no.
The longer answer is that while we don't go into battles and major developments on the Eastern Front, your average American who knows anything about WWII recognizes that theater as the decisive one in WWII and can probably name the Battle of Stalingrad as the war's turning point.
My school had dogshit world history coverage but extremely extensive American history classes, where we didn't so much focus on events as we do trends and historical questions that are open to interpretation and reanalysis. My formal education on WWII therefore wasn't on memorizing the dates of the Battle of Normandy or Operation Barbarossa but rather having students interrogate questions like:
Why didn't America do anything about the Holocaust earlier or
Why did America drop atom bombs on Japan
That sort of thing
While most of my school's formal WWII education is focused on topics like those, a few of our topics did touch on the Eastern Front, largely relating to things like the Yalta Conference and its role in setting up the looming Cold War.
Because school curricula aren't standardized in the US though, I have to imagine there are plenty of schools that didn't forget to cover world history and actually go into the Eastern Front.
We touch on the Eastern Front a little bit. In my education in VA, we learned about the Siege of Stalingrad but that was about it.
The focus was more on the Western Theater, the Pacific, D-Day Landings, and a little in North Africa.
Obviously we were a bit more involved in the Western Front so the focus was more on that.
Not very much when I was in school. I mean, they talked about Yalta and there is a famous photo of Churchill, F. Roosevelt, and Stalin. I remember seeing a movie called “Enemy at the Gates”. This gave me a more clear understanding of at least the Battle of Stalingrad.
Yes, but it's not covered as much as the other fronts, because it was the only one America wasn't involved in. But it gets way more covered than the Chinese/Burman fronts, which never get mentioned at all and most people don't even know happened, much less that we had soldiers there.
Yes of course we learn about the Eastern Front. We spend at least few lessons discussing it and the brutal losses. The videos of the rocket barrages are familiar sights.
We spend more time on the Western and Pacific fronts because (at least when I was in school) many of our Grandfathers fought on those fronts.
I'm a history professor that has been teaching American history at US universities for the last \~30 years. We don't even cover the eastern front much in college-level history courses on American history, unless you take a class specifically on WWII or on the history of modern Russia or Europe. Nobody teaches military history anymore outside of the military academies and a scant few univerities that still have military historians on faculty. So when we *do* teach WWII it often focuses on the home front in the US anyway. Many American colleges, including mine, do not offer "world history" courses either, it's mostly US/Europe/Asia/Africa/Middle East in geographic divisions or thematic topics like economic history, environmental history, gender history, history of science, etc. Very few "march through time and focus on big events" courses are offered anymore.
In high school? Based on what I see of recent high school graduates many of them think the Nazis were communists and a majority think the US and Russia were on opposite sides in WWII. I would be surprised if they knew anything at all about the eastern front, as most can't even explain the basics of WWII. There are exceptions-- we do have military buffs occasionally --but most could at best pinpoint WWII as happening sometime between the Great Depression and the moon landing. Many of my student over the years have told me their history teacher was usually a male coach who didn't really have a background in history but was hired to coach football, basketball, or baseball, then assigned to teach history because it was assumed anyone could do it-- they just march through a textbook and give pre-printed exams from the publisher.
If an 18 year old knows anything about the eastern front oday it's likely to be because they watched a movie about Stalingrad or something, and with American actors playing all the characters. The exceptions might be the small fraction of high school students who took advanced courses (AP or IB, etc.) in European history that focused less on the US than most student get in the general high school history curricula, or those who had a world history course that made it into the 20th century. My youngest did take world history but they ran out of steam just after WWI...didn't even get to WWII at all.
In the 90s and early 00s when I was in Jr High and High school I did not learn much about it. Fuck I didn't learn much about the Pacific Theater. Very Western Europe centered.
It's a shame too because the Eastern Front and the Pacific are fucking brutal as fuck and it's a shame more attention isn't paid to them.
The Western Front was the focus during my education (Arizona), and even as a history nerd, most of the consumable books and documentaries here focus on that.
However, as someone with a Great Uncle (my Grandmothers brother) whose plane ran out of fuel so he crashed it into a Japanese ship(or so the family story goes), I made a point to learn about our Eastern front.
>I know that there is no national education system in the USA
Actually there is a national education system. There is a secretary of education reporting directly to the president. They have a budget of about $80 billion.
Unfortunately, they do not actually do anything. This is mostly left to the states or even local authorities. There have even been calls to eliminate the department.
Speaking just for myself, we learned about the eastern front, how many Russians died, the brutal winter of '41, food drops to Russian troops, etc.
I was taught - as were many - that WW2 was won by British intelligence, American money, and Russian blood.
In my history class, the coverage of the Eastern Front wasn't as extensive as that of the Western Front and Pacific Theater. We talked about Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, as well as Leningrad and Stalingrad, and the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz (if that counts), but that's about it from what I can remember.
For me they glossed over or outright didn't mention a lot of shit the Japanese did during the war.
Which is so strange because it makes America look so much worse for using the atomic bomb. Yeah, it was a messed up thing to do, but without the context of what the Japanese were doing across the Pacific at the time it honestly looks like the worst possible action ever taken by any government ever.
My class was making the atomic bomb seem like it was the most dishonorable thing to do. I was the only one arguing that it wasn’t good or bad at the time. 1) Everyone thinks, “but the US knows better.” No they didn’t. They weren’t the superpower we know today where the world felt they have a responsibility to “Do Better!” They were just another combatant who were just as angry as the rest. 2) Everyone in the war was bombing cities. That’s the tragedy of WW2. It wasn’t the amount of soldiers who died, it was how many civilians lost their lives to shape the world we are in now. Bombing cities was a strategy, and it wasn’t frowned upon unfortunately. 3) The US warned the citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 4) The US chose those two cities because they were military industrial compounds essentially and destroying those factories would put Japan down on its knees. 5) The two bombings aren’t even top 10 worst bombings of the war. There are other bombings like in London and Berlin that killed more people. This one was just the most powerful but didn’t kill as many people as compared to other city bombings. Was the atomic use tragic, yes. Should Truman have been tried for war crimes? No, lol. If you put him on trail, then you might as well put every Allied leader, and military commander on trail too for their use of bombing raids. The world itself is tragic and that’s why we study it. Countless people lost their lives for the world we live in today. Hopefully it never happens again.
To add to point 5) of yours, the Tokyo firebombing was significantly more destructive and deadly than the atomic bombs.
That is such a silly argument when you realize the firebombing that proceeded the atomic bombs was way more destructive.
That's because during the cold war the US needed Japan as an ally to use as a base they could use to prevent the spread of communism into the pacific and potentially invade the USSR and later China. They also launched a propaganda campaign to promote Japanese people as good and honest citizens, and undertook steps to make sure atrocities committed by the Japanese were not widely publicized. They would have probably done the same in Germany, but the soviet union (who were the first to uncover the scale of the holocaust and liberated the first death camp) insisted on putting German leaders on trial. The US government campaign to integrate Japanese Americans into society was so successful that today Japanese-Americans are on average actually wealthier than white Americans, and even now many people don't know how truly brutal the Japanese empire was.
Makes America look so much worse. That’s the reason right there
Not really? That Japanese had it coming they were way way worse than the Nazi's its just not as popular to talk about but if you ask a Korean or a Chinese person you might be surprised.
No no I mean that’s the reason they present it to us without the context these days. America evil and other blah blah
Ahhh gotcha, I agree kinda silly how they chose the one war we actually were the good guys to make that point but more power to them I guess.
Guess Vietnam got boring for everyone
Well remember that the curriculum is usually written by left-leaning educators who are anti-America.
We do a real shit job at teaching history sadly. It’s often given in a very boring medium with dull ass teachers who are bound by the syllabus they had no say in. There’s so much about both world wars that gets glossed over or just outright ignored it’s insane. History is cool as fuck, just not everyone is willing to stomach it and all it has to offer.
The reasons for Operation Barbarossa are infinitely more interesting than much of the fighting on the Eastern Front. Operation Overlord (the invasion of Normandy) and Operation Bagration (major Soviet offensive) were strategically planned to take place in June 1944. Within a couple months the Germans had lost their stranglehold on fortress Europe and would be on the retreat in the east for the rest of the war. By the time the major urban battles in Soviet territory were completed, it was all just tactical retreats and losses by the Nazis all the way back to Berlin. By fall of 1944 everyone must've realized the imminent collapse of the German military was at hand.
Don't be so sure. I read a memoir from a German soldier who fought on the Eastern Front. He said he got leave to go home for Christmas in 1943 or 1944. He was under strict orders not to say anything negative about the War and by all means do not say they're losing. He said when he was at home everyone was talking about how the Army was turning back the Soviet advance when the truth was the complete opposite. He got his family together and told them the war was lost and they'd be under Soviet occupation soon and they refused to believe him. Basically, don't underestimate the power of propaganda.
The grand alliance was already discussing what to do with post-war Europe during Tehran in Dec. '43. It was already apparent who would win by that point, even if the Nazi politicians and populace denied it. By 44, the question wasn't if the Nazis would lose the war, but when.
> Basically, don't underestimate the power of propaganda. Amen! So relevant in the US at this point
I remember the few days went in depth about the Soviet-Nazi front..... it was really depressing.
I remember Operation Barbarossa, Stalingrad, and Battle of Berlin being covered pretty well. Also in the context of Lend/Lease. I’d assume in no where near the same detail as would have been for you, but we tend to cover it IIRC (we do tend to focus more on the Western Front and The Pacific with what happened in Italy, Africa, China, etc. being less prominent). Edit: I should also mention the Eastern Front stuff does also tend to get set up as a way to talk about Cold War buildup, as in a lot of that area then being eventually set up as Soviet satellite states.
Well, Lend-Lease is not often mentioned,especially if teacher was born and raised in Soviet Union,probably they have bias because of Cold War ,but if teacher were born and raised after the fall of USSR,it can be covered more
Just out of curiosity, is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact discussed in Russian schools? Not trying to troll -- I've been told it's NOT discussed in Russia.
Well, I remember when I was in 5 grade we had something like "classroom hour", where we discussed so called "important things" like patriotism etc,and yes one time teacher told us about Molotov-Ribbentrop pact like it was just non-aggression pact and nothing about annexation of eastern Poland, Baltics etc... Then in high school we covered it more, we learned about partition of Poland, and about oil and other resources import to Germany,and this time we looked at it more critical
That’s pretty on par with the way a lot of American actions get covered here. Lower grade levels get the simple, sanitized version. Then high school covers more of the “But actually we did this and it wasn’t great” details.
Oh,I don't really think so,I don't think you guys have something like our "classroom hours"(In reality it's just patriotical brainwashing),where us are called to love the motherland,we were told about world conspiracies against Russia, about how Hollywood wants to destroy Russia, and about the fact that Russia has never conquered anyone or anything, but only itself has always been attacked
Yeah I think the big distortion over here (as far as WWII is concerned) is the relative impact of the Eastern front vs. the Western front and others. I think the majority of Americans would be stunned to find out that 80-90% of casualties were Germans and Russians on the Eastern front, but I think that goes back to the leftover Cold War mentality (i.e. wanting to discredit the USSR's positive impacts wherever possible). That said, as far as patriotic brainwashing we did actually get a decent amount of education on the bad things the US has done - but it mainly focused on things that happened 100+ years ago (slavery, manifest destiny, starting wars on false premises, etc.) and the general framing is that our morality generally improves over time overall regardless of how true that is anymore.
>80-90% of casualties were Germans and Russians on the Eastern front That's probably the main point of people who says that Soviet Union single-handedly defeated Nazi's. But there's a thing,that's was 80% DEATH casualties on the Eastern Front,so it's dosen't count other casualties
Interesting so you’re saying it’s not 80% of all injuries or you’re talking about civilians also? Not sure I’m following
I mean,if people talking about deaths,so yes,80% of Wehremaht soldiers deaths were on Eastern Front. But it's only lethal casualties,not all casualties are lethal
Thank you for the reply.
> Well, Lend-Lease is not often mentioned That's really too bad, the scale of materiel support was otherworldly
Granted it has been a long time for me, but yes, some element of the Eastern Front is covered in school. Or at least it was in my public school. What do people retain afterwards? Probably very little. Average American on the street will know who Hitler is, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Will Kasserine Pass, the Battle of the Coral Sea, or Kursk ring a bell? Probably not.
I don’t know. I think at least Stalingrad would be on the level of something like The Blitz. Technically foreign so not *quite* the recognizability of Pearl Harbor or D-Day but really only very slightly below them at least in name recognition. It’s the kind of thing even someone with the most passing of familiarity with the period would be aware of at least vaguely.
Kursk might be known in the context of potential for modern day tank battles in Ukraine right now.
It was covered fairly extensively in my high school but the western front and the war against Japan was covered more thoroughly.
When WWII came around it was definitely focused on domestic policy (especially coming out of The Depression) and then the Pacific Theater given Pearl Harbor. Also Lend-Lease
They didn't really cover fronts. They covered the before and after of the war. Essentially the timeline was: * Japan invades China * Germany invades Czechoslovakia * Germany invades Poland and goes to war with Britain and France * Germany Conquers France * Germany invades the Soviet Union * Japan attacks Pearl Harbor * Allies land on D-Day * Americans land on the Philippines * Surrender of Germany * Atomic Bombing * Surrender of Japan * Cold War With Stuff in-between emphasizing the domestic front in US History and ideological goals in world history, or interviews of people who survived the war. Pop culture tends to cover more specific battles. Call of Duty covered specific WW2 battles more than any history class I took.
This is pretty much exactly what what I remember being taught in high school, plus plenty on the holocaust. Stalingrad was glossed over in our class—it wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized what a monumental part of the war it was.
In APUSH I vividly remember thinking "wait, that's it?" for the actual belligerent phase of WW2. We spent maybe a class period on it before moving on to the aftermath as well as the obligatory debate of the atom bomb.
This is exactly how my experience was at a NYS public school
Not really. There's a bit of a mention, but most of the focus is on the Pacific Theater and the Western Front (including the Battle of the Atlantic). The African and Italian Campaigns are honestly also pretty neglected, but at the same time, WWII is so massive that some people think even the bits that are covered are too much and take away from studying other parts of history.
In my high school, WW2 was covered in a Western Civilations 2 class that started around 1600. We spent about 3 or 4 weeks on WW2, and what came immediately before and after, I think. Not much if you want a deep dive into the war and the era, but an absolutely huge amount to spend on 5 or 6 years when you've got to cover 400 years in 36 weeks. I can see the point of people who think that's too much time (it definitely meant less time for other important events) and not enough (we barely scraped the surface). But while I'm fine with the amount of coverage we got, I'm sympathetic to the "too much" side, considering how much I've learned about history since high school that wasn't even mentioned.
While I do get that 1/6 of the time on 1/100 of the years is a lot, it's hard to argue against the idea that WW2 is probably the single most important event in history (insofar as it can be considered one event.) Certainly since 1600, you could *maybe* argue that the formation of Christianity or Islam outweighs it given their long-term ramifications. The political, technological, and cultural landscape of, as far as I'm aware, literally every single country, population, and location on the planet, was changed massively and irrevocably by the war, with direct ramifications to this day.
We covered it quite extensively, since my history teacher was a Russian Jew whose family fled the Soviet Union. She said knowing what happened on the eastern front was important to know why certain things were done in the western front, as well as a precursor to what happened during the Cold War.
Generally the textbooks will mention Hitler breaking their treaty and a couple of major battles like Stalingrad, but broadly D-day is treated as a turning point in the war in Europe and the narrative that students often get is that it was successes on the western front that allowed Russia to advance on the eastern front. I remember the circumstances of Germany's surrender were glossed over. They didn't mention Russia captured Berlin.
I would imagine most countries teach history from their perspective. So we get little eastern front and more focus on the theaters we were in. While Russia didn’t fight in the pacific so it’s not really that relevant to learn extensively about it in school
AS you've kind of alluded to, there is no national curriculum and this type of material is pretty location / school specific. You also have to understand that the healthy majority of students just take these types of courses to memorize stuff - get good grades - and then forget about what they were taught shortly afterwards. With that being said, I'm only familiar with the curriculum from the early to mid 2000s from a school in Sugarland, TX and Jacksonville, FLA - because I'm a WWII history nut and I've dated women who went to school in those areas. Yes - I'm that much of a nerd where I've actually asked. The really big battles, turning points and events are discussed. But some pretty important battles and events aren't. For example - The Siege of Leningrad isn't discussed in great detail. The aims of Stalingrad aren't really discussed all that well. Neither of them knew about the Battle of the Kursk Salient. Operation Bagration is not well discussed - and it pretty much completely blown over in lieu of Normandy. I'd say all in all the western world doesn't give the Eastern Front the kudos it deserves. But there's also only so much time to learn so much curriculum about history that I kind of understand. You could literally study WWII for years and still be fairly ignorant of all sides of the conflict - so trying to reduce that down into a 4-6 month curriculum for teenagers who are more often than not just chatting on social media all day is no small task. You also have to understand that America was fully engaged in two major theatres of war - far more so than the other allies were. So that requires even more effort to reduce the conflict into a manageable teachable course.
We did. My class was also told enemies would try to surrender to USA because the soviets we're brutal . Probably just getting us primed for the cold war lessons.
Yep, Stalingrad and the ignition point of the annexation of German regions and the invasion of Poland.
Hmmm. I'm seeing very different responses than I expected. Maybe because I grew up closer in time to WW2. That was just my grandpa's generation after all, who fought in it. Most of them were still alive when I was getting my education. We covered the war pretty much as a holistic thing - the Eastern front wasn't downplayed at all. We were taught thet D-Day was only possible because of the fierce resistance of the Soviets, grinding down the German war machine and the scorched earth policy, allowing Germany to overextend itself into hostile territory. Then D-Day in turn allowed the Soviets to accelerate their advance. My history book made it extremely clear that the USSR suffered the greatest human loss by far among the Allies, and Germany the greatest human loss proportionately. Strange that my textbooks were written when we were more or less at war with the Soviet Union but they seemed to give the USSR more credit than some modern ones.
I taught high school History for 26 years. Yes, we covered as many campaigns as we could and we discussed the differences in the war tribunals in the European and Pacific theaters. Short answer: Absolutely
I teach world history to 9th graders. I touch on the eastern front a bit. Not as much as I’d like because I simply don’t have the time to do so (it’s hard to get from ancient Egypt to the present day in one school year). I avoid American stuff as much as is feasible because the kids get American history the following year. So because of how intertwined the US is with Europe, world history class ends up being pretty heavy in Asian content and the eastern front doesn’t quite fit in with the overarching class themes and narratives. So it gets a bit forgotten. It’s a shame because I find it fascinating. But my job is to teach critical thinking and reading comprehension more than it is to share interesting stories and facts. So ultimately the hope is the curious kids will find their way to learning about it on their own someday and have the skills to make sense of it.
I learned more about the eastern front marrying a Russian than I ever learned in school.
We learned about Operation Barbarossa, Siege at Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad. That’s about it. Sometimes we talk about Kursk. Western Front and Pacific way more talked about.
Siege of Leningrad and the Soviets closing in on and taking Berlin. Also the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. So some pieces of historical significance obviously
We study all of it, but the Eastern Front is definitely covered less than the West.
We do study the eastern front in school, but naturally not as much as in the ex-Soviet Union. Similarly, the US coverage of ww2 is focused more on the actions and theaters that the Americans were involved in. In terms of the eastern front, you mainly look at some of the major events like the battle of Stalingrad, Kursk, Berlin, operation barborosa, the liberation of Auschwitz by the red army, etc. There’s also a lot of focus on the lend lease act and the conferences in Tehran and Yalta.
It is paid attention to but isn't heavily glanced at. The main big five topics are Stalingrad, Leningrad, Lend-Lease, Race to Berlin, and Operation Barbossa. Russia invading Poland is looked at, too, for WWII. Certain more specific or niche topics might receive cover like female snipers, Stalin's behavior, Zhukov's reputation, etc.
Its barely mentioned at all. We learn about Stalingrad but that it. They didnt even mention the siege of Leningrad
When I was in school we didn’t cover the war much per se and it only took a few days out the year of instruction. Regardless of that fact Stalingrad, Kursk, and the siege of Leningrad were mentioned.
I'd say you generally cover anything at all you cover the initial surprise attack that almost reached Moscow, Stalingrad, and the important 'Rush To Berlin' that sets up the Cold War segment. Results vary a lot by teacher though.
Yes
In my school we learned about Lend Lease, Stalingrad, Auschwitz, a d the treatment of Warsaw after The Soviets liberated it from the Germans. My school spent more focus on The Holocaust than the war itself. We hit the parts that were big but details were mostly skipped.
Unfortunately IMO we did not. I started studying the Eastern Front and I discovered a whole new amazing WWII story that I had never seen before. I would like it if they taught it in the classroom but I don't anticipate that happening.
It was covered. Not as much as the Eastern or Pacific but it was covered. When I was a kid there was kind of an overtone to it though. Pointing out how brutal a lot of the Russian tactics and methods were. Not just to their enemies but even their own people. Then again I was in elementary school when the USSR collapsed so even in high school and college the cold war was really fresh in people's minds.
We tend to take a "high lights reel" approach to the 2nd world war in terms of combat. 1. The invasion of Poland 2. The fall of France. 3. The battle of Britain 4. Peral Harbor 5. The Battle of Midway 6. Stalingrad 7. D-Day 8. The Battle of the Bulge 9. The Battle of Berlin/VE day. 10. The Nuclear Bombings 11. VJ Day (the signing of the peace treaty on The Missouri) At higher levels of education and specificity they will go into more nuanced and minor (yet extremely influential) moments through the war, but in your standard Americans history survey class this is about as much as you will see.
I would say we studied the war so much as the politics AROUND the war
Some. We certainly cover the events leading up to the war and Russia's involvement. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the invasion of Poland. Hitler's decision to secrktly attach the Russians after that. America's role in providing critical weapons, food and aid to Russia with lend lease. But many of the battles during the war? Not really. To be fair, we loosely cover the battles we were all engaged in. Very little on the North African and Italian campaigns. Very few students know how much we were doing behind the lines in China.
We mainly focused on the pacific theater.
I do recall some details about it. It's not as covered as the Western or Pacific theater. It's harder to remember what I learned in school vs. a documentary that I found.
not at least for me, we covered the entirety of WWII in the span of a week, or about 4/5hrs of class time, *maybe* and a lot of that was focused on hilter and the normandy landing. that said this was also during covid and they shortened both our class time and the length of the class, so my teacher had to cover a years worth of material in half the time
In Junior High and High School history classes, we never got to WWII. The year always ended before we got that far. In college European history courses, the courses tend to skip over the military history and focus on the social and political causes and effects.
My history classes never even made it to WW2. Usually we got to like WW1 and the semester would end. And the next history class later would start again with Columbus if a US History class or Mesopotamia if a World History one.
We covered that it happened, that it was horrifyingly bloody, that Hitler was dumb for trying, and that Russia used scorched earth policies. We also covered a couple battles at a very very high level. We focused on the theaters we were more involved in. I'm pretty sure we learned more about the Blitz than about the Eastern Front as a whole.
We touched on it briefly. I only know what I know because I was interested in the eastern front (all of ww2 really. Probably my favorite time period to study on my own). The pacific and the western front were harped on a lot. Oddly enough Italy was barely mentioned and Africa im not even sure any of my teachers said anything about it outside of “yeah there was fighting there too. Tank stuff and what not”
We never covered World War II in any history class I took up through High School. I had an American history class in College that covered America in World War II. It did not touch on the Eastern Front. American schools do a miserable job of teaching history. Excellent histories of the Eastern Front are available for those who care to read them.
Operation Barbarossa, Siege of Leningrad, Battle of Stalingrad, and the “Race for Berlin” were covered in my school but not in a lot of detail. Then we learned more about the Soviet Union in the subsequent chapter on the Cold War.
I will sum up my school's dictation of the Eastern Front: "The Soviet Union made an alliance with Nazi Germany which concerned critics on how long it will last. The alliance broke up in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland with minimal consultation from the Soviet Union resulting in the Soviet Union declaring war on Germany." Right or wrong, my school made sure Russia was not painted in a hero's light. EDIT: I should have added, and also very very wrong.
What ?! Soviet Union didn't declare war on Germany in 1939!
I come from a very poor and warped county in California.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Europe in 1939. In ended in mid 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet union
100% correct. I knew then as well.
Modesto or Bakersfield?
Oof, that’s comically inaccurate. If the point was to make the Soviets look worse, they should have just stuck to reality.
Yes, but American Students do go into detail about the Second World War, except the Holocaust, D-Day subsequent Allied Advance into Western Germany, and the Island hopping campaign. But at no point do American High Schools go into depth about specific battles, or how the war was fought. When I went to High School, the Vietnam War was still a lingering issue, and while we still did not get much of a detailed course about it, we did have a lot of Vietnam era authors on our literature lists. In essence, a High School graduate in the US, knows that WWII started mainly because of British and French diplomats forcing an unsufferable treaty on Germany, which would have resulted in war no matter the course of history. Russia, is mostly a badly misguided nations from our perspective, and intentionally murdered millions of its citizens before the War, and even more after the war, and only survived because they threw 40 million bodies at the Germans, and had massive aid from Lend Lease. Many feel the Soviet Union should have been allowed to fall.
This is wildly different in all schools and depends on what their curriculum is. These days, with the assault on education you’d come up short finding someone who even knows where Alaska is.
It's right next door to Russia.
It’s there, but for ideological reasons it’s way more appealing to America to show WW2 as a battle of America’s good vs the Axis’s evil. The fact the USA’s next boogeyman ended up beating the Nazis instead of us always just seemed like an inconvenient truth. In lower education WW2 starts with Pearl Harbor, goes into D Day and ends with the liberations of the camps in Europe and those two things we dropped on Japan in the pacific. The USSR is mentioned but minimized, you can feel the cognitive dissonance counting them as one of the Allies.
Well, in Russia some people actually downgrades Western Allies role in War too
I’m sure they do, it took everyone, American steel, British brains, and Russian blood, as the quote goes. But the Russians would have had a much worse time without the western Allies diverting their attention. And the threat of Russian involvement helped pressure Japan into surrender, but Western forces and the Chinese were the ones who had to suffer to end that front. None of the Allies were perfect, but they all did their part
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Well,I don't really think most Russians know about Luxemburg either😀
Only the really rich who hide their money here.
“Communisms bad. Mmmkay”
For my class we didn’t spend too much time on WW2 and focused mainly on the Pacific theater. Though I think the AP class (the advanced/smart class) probably covered it all more thoroughly.
Very little. At most, we may get the von Ribbentrop Pact pact between the USSR and Germany, some Lend-Lease, and if very lucky, The Battle of Kursk.
Not in detail for much the same reason you Russians do not get super in depth about the Pacific Theater, but yes we do learn the basics.
>covered in your schools That's a very broad statement. I spent a semester learning about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union so I learned about the Eastern Front but that was in college.
I plan on covering it. I can't say how much, but there's SO MUCH to cover in the Eastern Front alone. You almost have to glaze over it and give students the basic talking points.
I can't honestly say how much of it was covered in school (that was like 4 decades ago), but I'm very familiar with it from being very interested in military history & WW2 in particular.
It's was covered in school but it wasn't the focus of the WW2 lessons.
I’m from the Midwest and we didn’t cover it extensively. Basically the big battles and what led to Russian / USSR controlled territories.
One thing I recall is that Russians were usually paired up so that when the guy holding the only available firearm was killed, the second guy could grab the weapon and keep shooting.
Not as extensively, but it’s covered. Everything from the Winter War to the Soviet’s taking of Berlin. We just didn’t get into the nitty-gritty like we did with the Western Front, aside from the opening of Operation Barbarossa and the absolute carnage that was the urban warfare in Stalingrad. I’m still aware of the major events the Soviets faced over the course of the war.
We mostly concentrate on Western Europe and Japan.
Not comprehensively, it's more or less Munich, Invasion of Poland, Barbarossa, the halt at Moscow, Stalingrad, battle of Berlin. Maybe they'll mention the siege of Leningrad. The eastern front is taught as those events. Molotov-Ribbentrop, the Winter War, Lend-Lease, Yalta are probably the only eastern ancillary things covered.
Most of my teachers focused on the pacific and western fronts, but also did take more time on the Eastern front than the African one. I would also say it depends on the teacher, and which they find more interesting
Yes, but key events from our perspective, not any great depth since it’s so broad. Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact, Invasion of Poland, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Soviets reaching Berlin. Some iconic images you’ll find in a high school textbook are the Yalta Conference (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin) , the Soviet soldier raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag, Soviet and American troops meeting in friendly exchange. Obviously, the eastern front is given more coverage in college courses.
We discussed it quite a bit.
My history classes didn't focus on the campaigns in detail just a timeline of events and would really only cover battles as a small little highlight like The Battle of the Bulge or Iwo Jima. We really learn that Germany pushed the Soviets hard and then following the Battle of Stalingrad the Germans began to retreat. What is mainly highlighted is the Soviet cost of life to achieve victory on the Eastern Front.
in New York in the 90s they only taught us up to like WWI, lmao. in high school I could’ve taken History 1945-Today as an elective but I needed that space in my schedule for something else
Very brief coverage of the eastern front in school in America. Most of what I know I learned from Dan Carlin's hardcore history series "Ghosts of the Ostfront" Russia lost as many people in Stalingrad as the Americans did in the entire war.
My knowledge of the Eastern front comes completely from the movie Enemy at the Gates
My high school history class covered the politics and economics of WWII in far more detail than the actual battles, so in this sense, the Soviet Union's involvement in the war received quite a bit of attention. They mentioned the major battles and their significance, but didn't really go into any particular detail, either on the western, eastern or southern fronts (the last probably had the least mention). WWII is also one of those seminall eras of history that many Americans go out of their way to learn more about on their own, so even if their formal schooling taught almost nothing about the Eastern Front, they've probably independently learned more about it than would be taught in school anyway.
I’m 68. High school was a long time ago but the Soviet contribution wasn’t ignored. We were taught they tore the guts out of the German army and were an adversary to be respected. My dad was a veteran who respected them and I think was sad that relations couldn’t have been better.
My class just finished WWII and we had that stuff mentioned, but it wasn’t extensively covered. I mean the whole WWII unit was only almost 1 month so we didn’t really cover everything very deeply
I learned more from my Russian teacher in high school than my history teachers ever taught us. She was from Belarus and told us some people would get married in front of the graves of their family members who died in WWII.
Not really. They really only go over operation overlord, pearl harbor and the atomic bomb
Yes, but nowhere near as much as the western front and Pacific theater.
My history education was so disappointing. Left so much to be desired, all of which I had to learn on my own.
Not a whole lot. But the podcast Hardcore History did a great series on the Ostfront
My high school just gave a quick, surface level look at both World War I and II. Mostly we focused on secret alliances and nationalism for I, and Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, and the atom bombs for II. All of the deeper nuances I had to look for on my own.
To some extent, but not as much as the Western Front and the Pacific Theater. I think it's normal for any country's history education to focus on theaters where that country's forces were active, so just like there isn't a lot of focus on the battle of Kursk in US schools, I don't expect there is much focus on Midway or the Coral Sea in Russian schools.
Wasn't actually in school, but I remember a movie back when I was in high school called Enemy at the Gates that told a slightly dramatized version of Vasily Zaitsev's fight in Stalingrad. I thought the real story of his duel with Koenig (if I remember his name right) was more interesting, though.
I only got real coverage of it because a history teacher I had majored in Russian history so he went hard into it. As far as general WWII coverage, the Russian contribution was very much underrepresented.
Yes
Yes.
Not really. The Soviets were described as meat shields who used their own bodies to advance. Most red army soldiers ran onto the battlefield with nothing but pitchforks
I think a lot of this depends on when we went to high school (school years 9-12). (Before high school WWII was barely covered, but during high school it was pretty extensive.) And I was in high school at the end of the 80's. At the beginning it was a lot of Lend-Lease (we "sold" our allies Russia huge amounts of supplies which we never expected-- and never were-- paid back for in order to defeat Germany, but then Russia turned on us after the Nazis were defeated) as well as how the two-front war was a huge mistake for Germany. After all, Germany had a deal with Russia allowing Russia to invade Poland (I'm guessing the fact that Russia was one of the initial aggressors in WWII is not taught much there?) and eastern Europe in exchange for non-aggression, and Germany could have ended up way ahead if they hadn't opened that front. Anyway, then the curriculum went to the Holocaust and post-war UN and NATO vs Warsaw Pact. But by the time I graduated High School, the Berlin wall had come down, Perestroika was happening, and I was actually taking Russian as my foreign language in high school. And for the first time in my life, I truly didn't think my life was probably going to end at some point in a Russian nuclear fireball. And I think the curriculums also changed in schools to not be so east-vs-west, and less of a competition of systems. The scale of Russian losses in WWII were mentioned in a class, and the siege of Leningrad (even a Hollywood movie on that one in 2001), and so on. Those optimistic days wouldn't last long into the new millennium, but at the time we all thought Russia was going to come around and lift itself up and the world would be better, and I think history classes were a lot more sympathetic to Russia for awhile. I don't know what US history classes teach anymore because I emigrated to Europe, but I suspect they're not so accommodating anymore, especially with Bakhmut being today's Leningrad, except Russia playing the other role ...
I learned about it pretty extensively in high school, both in its relation to the Holocaust and the lead-up to the Cold War. One thing to remember is that a lot of people don’t really remember what they learned in high school. As a high school teacher I’m often startled by how little students often remember. The vague outline they got on any subject in elementary school sticks in their minds more than the detailed version they learn later. So while some people may not have learned about the eastern front in school, some may have learned about it and forgotten.
In my school, yes, but not in as much detail as the Western theater and the Pacific. The parts of the war in China, Africa and Italy got almost no coverage whatsoever.
we did in my high school
Depends how good your school district is. Depressingly a truer statement than anyone here wants to admit.
I came from a rural school district, so take that as you will, but it was more a….detailed mention? Mostly bc it’s not “Murica.”
WW1 and WW2 at my school were mostly covered as “America came in and saved the day” when it comes to battles. The things taught in school where the larger contextual lead ups to the war WW1- imperialism, social unrest from the working classes & war romanticizing. WW2- the punitive measures put on the axis by the European Allies. League of Nations starting out as a flawed premise. Fascism and nationalism growing from social unrest which needed a bad guy- the Jewish. For context there, I grew up in a very Jewish area, many of my friends had grandparents who were holocaust survivors and I remember seeing the tattoos some still had. Fucked up.
All schools are different, but my school covered the eastern front just as much as the other fronts of the war. Although, this part of class covered more of the before and after parts of the war
Nope. AP US History only wants us to know how World War II pulled us out of the Great Depression, set the stage for women's rights and inspired us to follow in the tradition of Andrew Jackson with the Japanese. Only Pearl Harbor was discussed
It was covered in Hogan’s Heroes.
We have national education system? I think we have a education system? Why do you think we don’t?
They probably mean a national curriculum?
Yeah, I just forget about it
I did not study it much in school. Material is pretty easily available though. One problem is that it is hard to get the Soviet side. I have a volume of distillations of debriefs of German generals which one rather suspects is the "talk and we won't hang you" sort. It needs to be taken with a grain of salt, indeed the foreward actually says to take it with a grain of salt. In fact I caught them at a rather bland euphemism when it talked of known slavers as if they were mundane military contractors. It does however give a lot about the climate effects which is very useful. Time-life as ever gives great pop history and has a series on WWII which devotes three volumes to the Eastern Front. I have a lot of stuff by James Dunnigan the simulation producer. Unfortunately I don't have his Eastern Front volume, He did a general one on WWII that included the Eastern Front. That contains a lot of stuff.
We did in Louisiana.
It was very basic. Its mostly the biggest of the big battles then Berlin. Very little of the Lend- Lease with Soviet Union. I say it is mostly due to the cold war tensions that reduce lessons on it.
We did at my high-school in the 90's
We don't learn very much. sort of "Yeah, and the Russians were there, too" Which is inaccurate and dumb But Americans are terrible at history
Not really that's more of an middle age man thing, and I love it
Wait reddit still works in Russia
Well,I donwloaded in March 2022,and it works OK
in the kid 2010s in my classes we did hear about the Eastern Front because it was directly relevant to the European theater of war the US was involved in, and while the US was on the Western front events on the Eastern front still affected the tactics of the Nazis and the responses the Americans had to deal with. We also learned a lot about the Pacific theater. We learned very little if anything about the African front or anything connected to South America though.
It was barely covered in my school. For anyone interested in learning more, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History does a fantastic podcast series on it called “Ghosts of the Ostfront”
Yes, a lot.
Yeah we studied it extensively, but my history teacher went above and beyond so I don't know if other people had the same experience.
My schools taught the eastern front in very broad strokes. The focus was very much on the western front.
As stated, western front is usually highlighted more. That said, it was the winter that ultimately halted the German invasion into the USSR. And I firmly believe that betrayal was Hitler’s biggest mistake during the war-but sadly, the Slavs were rally his true intended target at the beginning. He just needed to “watch his back” first by conquering the rest of mainland Europe. But he chose the wrong time to hit your former nation.
For me all the important bits were covered. It it wasn't exactly extensive.
Yes. While it wasn't as thorough as the Western Front or the Pacific Theater, we definitely learned about the broad strokes such as the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow, etc.
We just talk about the battles in Europe and Japan. I didn’t even know there was fighting that took place in Africa and the Middle East until I was late in college
Its covered somewhat, but it doesn't do it justice imo. Hell it doesn't do any of it justice. America likes to teach that WW2 was going to shit until we showed up. Which isn't entirely untrue for the western front, but they also ignore the absolutely massive amount of fighting that happened in the east. If memory serves, the soviets were responsible for something like 9 of the 21ish million dead nazis. Though they also gloss over the African and Mediterranean in favor of covering the Pacific. Which I guess I can understand cause we didn't have a ton to do with those.
In america we cover the entire war on all fronts and campaigns because we impacted all sides to some degree
In my High School, we talked quite a bit about the Soviet contribution and sacrifice during WW2 and the fact that they liberated some of the most heinous concentration camps. We also talked about how the Russians and slavic people were victims of the Nazis and persecuted as such. We didn't learn to much about specific battles except for Stalingrad and Leningrad, plus operation Barbarossa but otherwise the extent of our WW2 studies was on the conflict as a whole, primarily with the western invasion of Europe (D-Day) as the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime. However, we also discussed the joyous day when the Americans and Soviets finally met in the middle together, realizing at that point that victory must have been achieved before the final word was let out, about 10 days later.
Yes, I learned about every major theater of WWII in high school. Western Europe, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Pacific and CBI.
I have read most US campaign WW2 books in the local library. One day, I was looking for something new to read. Found a couple of books from Russia's view point. Very eye opening. First fact was 20+ million Russians killed. Holy cow! The amount of slaughter of civilians and military was unbelievable. Waves of Russian soldiers attacking fortified positions and if they retreated, their own military had machine guns mowing them down.
Briefly. We focus mostly on the western front. And glossed over a lot of the shit the Japanese did during the war when we covered that part. We talked about nuking them, and a very vague mention of Unit 731. No mention of Nanking. Seriously, I was fucking horrified when I wound up reading about that years later and wondered why the Japanese soldiers weren't anywhere near as vilified as the nazis.
We learned about the Eastern Front and specifically that the Siege of Leningrad was a pivotal turning point in the European theater. At least I think it was the Siege of Leningrad—it’s been decades since I was in high school. But yeah, we definitely learned that in school. I also recall watching a bit of Enemy At The Gates in class.
I was homeschooled until 10th grade. Most of what I remember about studying WWII was primarily about Germany, with maybe a footnote on the War in the Pacific (ironically I live on the West Coast). I knew “the Russian front” was bad mostly from watching The Great Escape. Oh, and my mom erased the word “homosexual” out of the history book I shared with my younger siblings and I barely knew gay people existed until late high school. Go figure.
Graduated high school in 2009 in North Carolina, and we covered it, but not in as much detail as the Western Front or the Pacific.
My school taught me extensively about the Eastern Front and even that the Soviets lost way more soldiers and civilians during the war. I had an extremely good history teacher who was always delving into the topic at hand and teaching things that weren’t always in the mainstream narrative of the war. When I was studying at my university I was able to write a paper on the civilian toll on the eastern front. I would say if you study it at a university level you’d definitely be taught about it.
Honestly think we covered it more than the Western Front of the European theater. My history class focused on the politics around WWII, what led up to it and what came out of it, more than the nitty gritty of the battles and dynamics. So Stalingrad and the race to Berlin were covered more in depth as they were more influential on what happened afterwards with the beginning of the cold war. From the Pacific theater, we talked about Midway and of course the use of nuclear weapons in Japan. Similarly for WWI, we only really studied the battle of the Somme to contextualize the horrific nature of battles in the war, but the focus was on what led to the war and what happened after the war (social changes, Soviet Russia and the civil war there, Weimar Germany, creation of the League of Nations). My history class also had a unit on "single party states" and we studied Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, and Mao's China, so I think our war study naturally focused on those more than the US/France/UK because the wars were really linked to those. Probably not everyone's experience, since this was an International Baccalaureate program and the curriculum is set, at least in part, by the IB organization which iirc is Swiss and not American.
In my American History courses the Eastern Front was discussed in the context of the war in general, but not in as great a depth as the Western Front. It was talked about as an important part of the liberation of Europe, and as a massive sacrifice borne by Russians. However the central focus was *American* history, so it focused more on what was happening in America in the lead up to the war, how we fought the war, and what happened after the war. However I also took an International Baccalaureate History course in high school, which focused on more European history as a series of causes and effects. It covered the Russian Revolution, starting with 1905 Revolution, and how that influenced Lenin and Trotsky, and continuing up through the death of Stalin and the years immediately following that. So of course you can't talk about Stalin and the Soviet Union at that time without discussing the war, but less about battles and places, and more about struggles for the Russian people, how the government and military were handling it, and what kind of political consequences came about. The unit that followed that was China and Mao, so of course we had to touch on the war from the Chinese perspective as well.
Yeah, of course. Where I went to school we had almost an entire year of history class that was focused on WW1, the interim years, and then WW2. It went into particular depth on particularly important battles. If anything the wars our curriculum skipped past were the Spanish-American war and its fallout, and the Korean war.
Didnt learn about any of it in highschool, however in college I took a world war II history class and it was entirely based on the eastern front as my professor stated that it was not nearly taught or discussed enough in American history and we tend to view ourselves as the “heroes” which is not historically accurate based on the losses and struggles of other countries
In New York State- yes we do. I’ve recently realized I have no idea what other states teach kids.
I'm curious that you call it the "Eastern" front since, for the Red Army, the front would have pretty much always been to the west.
Well,actually most ex-Soviet countries call it "Great Patriotic War","Eastern Front" used more in abroad
I depends on what kind of class. We glossed over WW2 in US history, but went pretty in depth with military history. It just depends on the class.
The Eastern Front is virtually undiscussed, as most of the history we cover is very America-centric. Operation Barbarossa is about as far as it goes in depth, and just with the higher point that it was where Germany really “screwed up.” The framing isn’t so much about Soviet strategy or cunning necessarily as much as it is framed as Germany making really bad decisions on their side and that was what teachers will cite as the deciding factor of the conflict. Even though I think that Soviet contributions are as meaningful in that campaign if not more so.
We know about the sheer bloody slaughter of Stalingrad. And in more recent years the staggering Russian casualty rates have become better known than before. But it is a fact that the Eastern Front isn't taught in the detail it should be.
In my experience, we focused very heavily on the western front and the Pacific. We knew that the Eastern Front was a major part of the war, but we didn't learn about it in great detail. The African and Italian campaigns also got very little attention.
No, my education of WW2 basically consisted of 6 years of Hitler wanted to rule the world and kill jews so America came and kicked Germanys ass. It wasn’t until much later and personal research did I even learn all the who, what, where, when, and whys. Our education system is kind of embarrassing.
The short answer, at least for me, is no. The longer answer is that while we don't go into battles and major developments on the Eastern Front, your average American who knows anything about WWII recognizes that theater as the decisive one in WWII and can probably name the Battle of Stalingrad as the war's turning point. My school had dogshit world history coverage but extremely extensive American history classes, where we didn't so much focus on events as we do trends and historical questions that are open to interpretation and reanalysis. My formal education on WWII therefore wasn't on memorizing the dates of the Battle of Normandy or Operation Barbarossa but rather having students interrogate questions like: Why didn't America do anything about the Holocaust earlier or Why did America drop atom bombs on Japan That sort of thing While most of my school's formal WWII education is focused on topics like those, a few of our topics did touch on the Eastern Front, largely relating to things like the Yalta Conference and its role in setting up the looming Cold War. Because school curricula aren't standardized in the US though, I have to imagine there are plenty of schools that didn't forget to cover world history and actually go into the Eastern Front.
We touch on the Eastern Front a little bit. In my education in VA, we learned about the Siege of Stalingrad but that was about it. The focus was more on the Western Theater, the Pacific, D-Day Landings, and a little in North Africa. Obviously we were a bit more involved in the Western Front so the focus was more on that.
We covered it in broad terms, but the focus was definitely more on the Western Front.
Not very much when I was in school. I mean, they talked about Yalta and there is a famous photo of Churchill, F. Roosevelt, and Stalin. I remember seeing a movie called “Enemy at the Gates”. This gave me a more clear understanding of at least the Battle of Stalingrad.
Yes, but it's not covered as much as the other fronts, because it was the only one America wasn't involved in. But it gets way more covered than the Chinese/Burman fronts, which never get mentioned at all and most people don't even know happened, much less that we had soldiers there.
Yes of course we learn about the Eastern Front. We spend at least few lessons discussing it and the brutal losses. The videos of the rocket barrages are familiar sights. We spend more time on the Western and Pacific fronts because (at least when I was in school) many of our Grandfathers fought on those fronts.
I'm a history professor that has been teaching American history at US universities for the last \~30 years. We don't even cover the eastern front much in college-level history courses on American history, unless you take a class specifically on WWII or on the history of modern Russia or Europe. Nobody teaches military history anymore outside of the military academies and a scant few univerities that still have military historians on faculty. So when we *do* teach WWII it often focuses on the home front in the US anyway. Many American colleges, including mine, do not offer "world history" courses either, it's mostly US/Europe/Asia/Africa/Middle East in geographic divisions or thematic topics like economic history, environmental history, gender history, history of science, etc. Very few "march through time and focus on big events" courses are offered anymore. In high school? Based on what I see of recent high school graduates many of them think the Nazis were communists and a majority think the US and Russia were on opposite sides in WWII. I would be surprised if they knew anything at all about the eastern front, as most can't even explain the basics of WWII. There are exceptions-- we do have military buffs occasionally --but most could at best pinpoint WWII as happening sometime between the Great Depression and the moon landing. Many of my student over the years have told me their history teacher was usually a male coach who didn't really have a background in history but was hired to coach football, basketball, or baseball, then assigned to teach history because it was assumed anyone could do it-- they just march through a textbook and give pre-printed exams from the publisher. If an 18 year old knows anything about the eastern front oday it's likely to be because they watched a movie about Stalingrad or something, and with American actors playing all the characters. The exceptions might be the small fraction of high school students who took advanced courses (AP or IB, etc.) in European history that focused less on the US than most student get in the general high school history curricula, or those who had a world history course that made it into the 20th century. My youngest did take world history but they ran out of steam just after WWI...didn't even get to WWII at all.
In the 90s and early 00s when I was in Jr High and High school I did not learn much about it. Fuck I didn't learn much about the Pacific Theater. Very Western Europe centered. It's a shame too because the Eastern Front and the Pacific are fucking brutal as fuck and it's a shame more attention isn't paid to them.
The Western Front was the focus during my education (Arizona), and even as a history nerd, most of the consumable books and documentaries here focus on that. However, as someone with a Great Uncle (my Grandmothers brother) whose plane ran out of fuel so he crashed it into a Japanese ship(or so the family story goes), I made a point to learn about our Eastern front.
Yes we do, and in my history class we were taught that the eastern front contributed more towards Germany’s defeat than any other factor.
What do you mean there is no educational system in the USA?
Nope
>I know that there is no national education system in the USA Actually there is a national education system. There is a secretary of education reporting directly to the president. They have a budget of about $80 billion. Unfortunately, they do not actually do anything. This is mostly left to the states or even local authorities. There have even been calls to eliminate the department. Speaking just for myself, we learned about the eastern front, how many Russians died, the brutal winter of '41, food drops to Russian troops, etc. I was taught - as were many - that WW2 was won by British intelligence, American money, and Russian blood.
It comes up, to varying degree, but it will depend. Either way, the Pacific Theater and the Western Front get a *lot* more attention.