But CoH2's single player campaign is rewriting history. This last mission brings the line under the whole company. The protagonist claims that millions of people died for the sake of a photograph of the flag over the Reichstag.
I belive there was a different context for this line. Before last mission there was a mission where you was supposed to cut german retreat and eliminate them in process. Protagonists says that cutting this retreat was pointless, because those feeling germans tried to escape in order to surrender to Western Allies. And main idea was that Red Army's Berlin Operation was rushed in order to capture it before Western Allies (which was true IRL) and therefor a lot of casualties from both Russian and German side could have been avoided if not for the soviet command desire to be first in Berlin. This is what this line about photo was about. But the shit writing arent making it clear enouth.
The main character is an officer who fights from the beginning of the war until the end of the war, he became a military correspondent and was supposed to see burned villages, massacres of civilians, concentration camps, civilians who were driven to forced labor in Germany (remember that in forced labor in Germany killed 2,164,300 Soviet citizens). And all this happened until the end of the war. And he says shit like that.
And there are, tho its never in focus (which is one of the problems). Thoughtout the campaign you can see dead civilians or killed wounded (especially in the polish sniper mission) by germans. In Lublin mission its clearly shown that Germans killed soviet POWs.
It actually represents the whole problem with the campaign. Relic for some reason desided to throw shit in the face and focus on shit much more then on actuall heroism of the Red Army. In order to see it you have to read between lines in pretty much every cutscene\mission discripion.
This pretty much somewhat proves, that relic didnt really intended to show soviets in a bad light, because otherwise such moments easily could have been cut out from the game.
Description in the mission in which it is said that the Red Army refused to help the Polish Army, apparently here it is worth understanding the Warsaw Uprising - a lie. The Warsaw Uprising began after a major Soviet offensive 500 kilometers deep and 500 kilometers wide, after which supply lines were thinned. And even in these conditions, Rokossovsky (an ethnic Pole) began to help the Uprising, an offensive began on Prague (a suburb of Warsaw), the Insurgents dropped more than 300 tons of supplies, artillery spotters were parachuted for more accurate artillery support.
Its considered, by western historians and poles themselfs, that Red Army intentionally didnt help during uprising. True or not, its not Relic lie persay. Its the narrative pushed by western historians, you cant really blame relic for this, because its pretty naive to think that their research went farther then the Wikipedia and few books maybe. Is it a lie? Maybe, but its not the lie Relic invented.
The whole CoH2 single company is a rewriting of history and its personal political vision, and I would very much like to know whose political vision of Quinn Duffy or the former THQ is, I hope someday some Relic employee who participated in the creation of a single company will tell us this story.
Again, its not political. I mean, Relic just look over narrative pushed by the mass media, known historians, hollywood movies and created the script. You cant really expect western developers to avoid having this kind of problem, especially considering that they, in a first place, want to create action movie.
I mean, sure some might have been offended by the campaign and the story. But people should really understand that it ended up like this, not because Duffy or Relic are neo-nazis, anti-soviets or came from hitlerjugend. They just took the most generic representation of the soviets which is common in a west culture and created the game. No more, no less, no ill intentions.