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The Soviets jacketed exaggerated warcimes on the Germans to divert attention from their own war crimes. The chief Soviet prosecutor at Nuremberg was a prominent judge in the Stalinist show-trials, this was his speciality. But I agree it's not a sufficient story because the USSR was not really that interested in generating this persistent narrative of Jewish victimhood. The Jews in the United States took that football and accelerated the cultural impact of the Holocaust narrative starting in the 1960s. Really the whole thing is the conjugation of the efforts of Hollywood and the apparatus of Stalinist propaganda. Unlike most historical events that peak in the public consciousness in the immediate aftermath and fade over time, I wouldn't peg the peak of Holocaust consciousness until the 1990s at least. That wasn't caused by the USSR that was caused by Jews in the United States.
The firebombing of civilian population centers, the nuclear attacks on Japan, the rape of Berlin by Soviet troops. Do you know that the Germans fielded the largest foreign volunteer army in history consisting of Slavs desperate to fight against the Soviets? The notion that the Allies fought in a more "civilized manner" is entirely downstream from the Gas Chamber and Extermination Camp accusations. The Western Allies demanded unconditional surrender, a barbaric and murderous war aim that Hitler did not even aspire for. Your narrative fundamentally relies on the Holocaust, because without it the entire WW-II narrative you have in your head falls apart.
That's the exact reason I said the Western Allies, meaning America, England France and not "the Allies." My entire point was that the war in the West was fought largely based on civilized European norms and yes bombing cities is part of that. Everyone in World War II and World War I did it. The war in the East was a racial war of extermination between two totalitarians nightmare states. Both of which destroyed entire peoples. Yes the Germans were able to field huge number of locals desperate to fight against the Soviets. And they were welcomed in a lot places in the Western Soviet union. Until the locals realized the German plan was not to restore private property but keep them on their collective farms and starve them to feed their armies. A lot of groups made choices between the Nazis and the Soviets and most got squeezed and ground into paste no matter what side they chose.
No I don't need the Holocaust for a World War II narrative. Germany and Japan both declared war on America after having started half a dozen wars of naked aggression and conquest between them. Fighting them would be totally justified without the Holocaust why wouldn't it be？ Germany and Japan were aggressive expansionist enemies of America and the West. Indeed the entire war was fought without the Holocaust being a central aspect of war propaganda because the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor. Your verging on being one of those Tankies who lifts up Stalin because he fought the Nazis. The Nazis fought the Soviets sure but they were also a totalitarian expansionist state and they only fought the Soviets after subjugating all of Western Europe and invading many neutral countries. They also didn't fight the Soviets for altruistic reasons but to steal and settle their land and alienated a huge number of the Soviet population with their brutality.
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