The ruthlessness of the Soviet state was indispensable to confound Hitler. No democracy could have established as icily rational a hierarchy of need as did Stalin, whereby soldiers received the most food; civilian workers less; and “useless mouths,” including the old, only a starvation quota. More than 2 million Russians died of hunger during the war in territories controlled by their own government. The Soviet achievement in 1941–42 contrasted dramatically with the feeble performance of the Western Allies in France in 1940. Whatever the limitations of the Red Army’s weapons, training, tactics
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