“He fought with us in World War II — and now everyone hates him”: Trump, Putin, and Historical Cretinism

Meanwhile, Germany and Japan are loved. Unfair. A mystery.

“I happened to be speaking to Putin at the time. And to be fair to him, he said: ‘We lost 51 million people and we were your allies.’ And now everyone hates Russia, but they love Germany and Japan. It’s a strange world, I’ll tell you that.”

These words were not spoken by a teenager on TikTok with a passion for amateur history. They were said by a sitting president of the United States. And no, this is not a quote from The Satirical Tragedy of the 21st Century.
This is Donald Trump — a man elected to govern a nuclear power, yet apparently incapable of understanding a single paragraph from a high school history book.

He simply doesn’t know the basics and treats any of Putin’s lies as absolute truth.

If we set aside the minor detail that Putin didn’t exist 80 years ago, and apply just a little logic, equating Putin with a WWII ally is about as accurate as calling Napoleon a G7 delegate. But Trump doesn't deal in facts.
If Putin said it — it must be true.

Putin indeed loves to wave around the number “51 million dead,” even though the USSR officially recognized 27 million losses.
Trump, without a second thought, swallowed this tale — a number larger than the entire population of France — because, again, Putin said it.
And Putin, of course, never lies. Especially when he’s talking about the dead. That’s his favorite currency.

But numbers are the least of it. The bigger issue is complete ignorance and a childish grasp of history.
Trump is genuinely surprised that Germany and Japan were once U.S. enemies. He’s baffled that former adversaries are now friends, while Russia isn’t.
In his mental archive, there’s no Cold War, no Cuban Missile Crisis.

Now imagine his shock if someone told him that in 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany started World War II — together.
That Red Russia, under Stalin, and Brown Germany, under Hitler, were de facto allies — dividing up Poland, signing pacts, exchanging gifts and congratulations.
All of it a prelude to the bloodiest slaughter of the century. And Trump has no idea.

He would never believe that Stalin and Hitler were partners. That the USSR, up until June 22, 1941, was supplying the Nazis with raw materials, grain, oil, zinc.

And he certainly doesn’t know that Germany and Japan went through a long, painful process of reckoning: admitting guilt, showing remorse, rejecting imperial fascism.

Russia, on the other hand, dug up its old, rotting ideology and now screams about its “great sacrifice” — while committing the very crimes that others were hanged for in 1945.

Germany and Japan learned from their past and became part of the architecture of a new world where war has no place.
Russia did the opposite — it glorifies war, normalizes it for its citizens, and exports it as a national product.

So what kind of respect can a country expect when it voluntarily chooses fascism while still calling itself its conqueror?
And how can anyone take seriously a man like Trump, who at every opportunity tries to excuse the crimes of a small, bitter, allegedly "unfairly punished" bloody dictator who just wants more blood?

What moral plane are we even discussing when one man bends over backwards to defend a war criminal — and the other lies shamelessly at every turn?

Respect and recognition in the world must be earned.
Putin has buried any claim to them.
Trump is trying to resurrect the corpse.

That is the essence of their historical alliance.