Answering the question about Great Victory’s cost the authors provide statistical data about human and material losses of World War II main participants and their expenses for warfare and post-war reconstruction, analyze the USSR’s economic performances before and after war, refer to The Third Reich era’s documentary record and come to a conclusion:
Victory’s cost goes far beyond losses taken for it; moral and geopolitical aftereffects of catastrophe the humankind survived are still present in new millennium.
Keywords: World War II; blitzkrieg; Great Patriotic War; Great Victory; demographic loss; national economy devastation; cold war.
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