officially history's greatest monster and Stalin isn't -- the reason you can have Soviet-chic bars but not Nazi-chic bars -- is simply that Russia was on our side at the end. Somewhat ironically, the main reason that we don't all commonly accept that the Russians were the principal factor in defeating Hitler is probably the Cold War. Chaise: "the main reason that we don't all commonly accept that the Russians were the principal factor in defeating Hitler is probably the Cold War." True enough but with some caveats. What is sadly true is that Soviet battlefield tactics seem to have had no regard for Soviet casualty rates -- the Soviet military objective was to win battles regardless and the Soviet Union had more manpower available than Nazi Germany. The Soviet military were more successful after Stalin had curtailed his interference in military affairs -- although that left Soviet Marshals and Generals open to take the blame if battles turned out badly. Fortunately for the Soviet side, Hilter increasingly interfered in military affairs as the war progressed, which led to the deployment of mythical German armies towards the end. In contrast, the western allies put much more weight on minimising battle casualties. That said, there seems to be a consensus that the Soviet T-34 tank was probably the best of its kind during WW2 and that mattered for armour battles on the North German plain. We shouldn't overlook that the threat of what eventually materialised as the Normandy invasion in June