John Mearsheimer

If they were taken prisoner, they would die.

So they fought like wild dogs, right?

Absolutely.

All you have to do is read The Hunger Plan.

And they also had a plan—what is it called?

Grand Planned East.

I forget the exact name of it, which made it clear that they were going to murder many tens of millions of people.

And by the way, I believe that—

they would have murdered all the Poles and all the Roma.

I mean, my view is that the Jews were number one on the genocidal hit list.

The Roma or the gypsies were number two, and the Poles were number three.

And of course, I just explained to you how many POWs they had killed.

So they would have ended up murdering huge numbers of Soviet citizens as well.

But people quickly figured out that this was happening.

Mm-hmm.

That's my point to you.

And that gave them, needless to say, very powerful incentives to fight hard against the Germans and to make sure that they did not win.

Well, clearly, the conventional wisdom is that Putin is principally responsible.

Putin is an imperialist.

He's an expansionist.