I think even if they tried so, they did a piss poor job. The reason for the burning in CoD World at War is for the atrocities at Stalingrad, clearly shown in the game. So as a player, you have a certain "justified vengeance" feeling. Okay, it is bad and inhumane, but at least you saw the reason why they did it. World at War did a better job in balancing the war crimes. It showed both sides.
I think they did a nice job in CoD:WaW. They didn't show any war crimes by the Germans, but they made a lot of references to the crimes via dialogue. Which was enough to justify the Russian crimes in that game.
The Russians themselves also were passionate about defeating the Germans, unlike in this game. Just compare the last missions of CoD:WaW and this game. In CoD, you raised the flag on the Reigstag to claim final victory over the nation that burned and raped your country. In this game, it's portrayed as a senseless loss of lives for a pretty picture.
In CoD, you follow a group of soldiers who will stop at nothing to clear the fascist invaders out of their motherland. You can see them commit war crimes, you can feel their hatred and their desire for vengeance. You can also understand their feelings because the nazi war crimes are referenced throughout the game.
In This game however, only your commanding officer and the commissar show any interest in defeating the Germans. All other characters seem more interested in not fighting at all, despite the fact that the Germans have killed millions of their people and burned half their country. Instead of an inspiring speech before entering Stalingrad, we get a sarcastic remark about the no-retreat policy. I'm not even remotely Russian, but it bothered me. I mean really, was it that hard to give a speech like "Today we drive the murderous fascist pigs out of our city!" or something?
In short, here is the feeling I got from both games:
CoD:WaW = The Fascists are ruthless, they have burned our country, killed millions. You MUST stop them, reclaim your motherland, drive the murderous cowards back and destroy them, whatever the costs!
CoH2 = We have been invaded! Use whatever means necessary to drive the invaders back! Oh what's that? You don't care? Well, here is a bullet in the back! Now go and do unspeakable things before I shoot you again.