Having seen this thread for the first time, I would just like to go back to a quote or two from a few posters regarding WWII. I think it's greatly overlooked (or under appreciated) by the US and a few of the Western allies, the amount of sacrifice that the Eastern Europeans put during the War. Not only were there heavy military losses, but civilian losses were also significant. From civilians that fought alongside the militaries, the ones that were persecuted as prisoners, the ones that help hide jews and other minorities. The Partisans in the former Yugoslavia really were front and center in the Balkans, trying to stave off the Nazi's and the Axis. Some things that usually go unnoticed by media, for some reason: The Nazi's and the Fascists in Italy had puppet 'armies' or 'guerillas' in the region: Cetniks in Serbia and Ustase in Croatia. Those 'legions' were brutal and while they were affiliated with the Germans, they were more or less doing as they pleased. At the end of the war, once the country was liberated by the Partisans, they had their own "Nuremberg" trials to deal with it and like the Germans, some of them were executed, others were put in prison, some escaped, but very few. Staying with the Axis and their 'puppets,' the Bulgarians, Hungarians and Romanians had some Partisans, but by and large, they were aligned with the Axis. The Bulgarians helped wipe out the Macedonian Jewish population. It wasn't terribly large to begin with, but 90%+ of the Jewish population in the country perished. The Bulgarians, to my knowledge, haven't apologized for this. They, of course, were also a Soviet satellite during the Cold War, so they haven't been aligned with the nicest regimes, have they?
Going back to the casualties, according to Wikipedia (I know what you are going to say, 'don't trust Wikipedia..'), Poland lost up to 17% of its population, Yugoslavia anywhere between 6 to 11%, Greece 7-11%, Estonia 7.3%, Hungary 6.18%, Latvia 12.5%, Lithuania 14.36%...The Soviets lost HUUUGE numbers. Both civilians and military. Some say that the Soviet involvement in helping defeat the Nazi's is overrated. I think that can be disputed, but had the Soviet Union fallen, it could have been anybody's guess as to what would have happened in the Eastern theater and Europe as a whole. Let's remember, the US wasn't budging until Pearl Harbor.