V-Day: The Soviet Role in the Defeat of Nazis and Why the Cold War Followed

Today, Russia celebrates the surrender of Germany seventy one years ago. Historian Peter Kuznick examines why the dominant western narrative obscures the reality that the Soviet Union, its army and people, did the bulk of the fighting and dying in the eventual victory over fascism. Twenty seven million Soviet citizens died. He examines why Roosevelt and Churchill waited until 1944 to open up a western front against Nazi Germany. In this in-depth interview Peter Kuznick explains the real reason that the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. He argues that Japan was ready to surrender and that the dropping of the atomic bombs was really designed as the United States first shot in the Cold War, a global confrontation and nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union that dominated world politics for the next 45 years. The interview discusses the contrasting impact of the arms race on the Soviet and U.S. economies.