Talk:Company of Heroes 2

New journal article regarding the COH 2 controversy in Russia
I have an article by a prominent WWII historian who addresses the "controversy" surrounding COH 2 with a lengthy analysis of the real issues prompting the moral outrage from the Russians. I plan to add it shortly once I have his permission. He's publishing it in one of the journals so I'm not authorized to post it yet, but I'd like to give the abstract so I can figure out how to incorporate it.

In a nutshell: after three-quarters of a century, most people in the US, UK and Russia are able to believe that their soldiers were "mostly good people" despite a general consensus that things such as the aerial bombings of Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden etc. were regrettable at best and reprehensibly amoral at worst. There is a sort of ability from the general public to appreciate the complexity of the war and the vast variety of interconnected parties and motivations, and to recognize that some were good, some were bad, and its impossible to stamp anything so huge as WWII with monolithic labels. This includes the German army, the Russian army, and everybody's army.

In Russia, there is no such public discourse and no such deviation. At all. Not even a little bit. There were no good Germans except the dead ones. There were no bad Russians except those who died without having killed any Germans. Two decades after the demise of Communism, it is still called the "Great Patriotic War". Russian school textbooks do not make a single mention of how Stalinism co-opted Russian patriotism and twisted it into a gruesome, brutal, wasteful caricature. Nothing of the commisars who approved every order issued based on it's "ideological soundness" and sent thousands of men like Solzhenitsyn to the Gulag or the grave on the flimsiest pretense. Nothing of the NKVD "blocking squads" who followed Stalin's orders to kill any man who retreated, no matter how pointless the assault, no matter how hopeless the battle. Nothing of how the Stalin's Great Purge murdered 45% of the officer corps on trumped up charges, including the finest armor tactician in Russian history, all while Hitler observed and plotted how to take advantage of it. Nothing of how Stalin refused to admit the USSR had been invaded for almost a full week after the start of Barbarossa, threatening to execute those who said so and refusing to even cut off Soviet grain deliveries to Germany, and then finally went into sulking isolation for almost a month, leaving Molotov to address the nation. Nothing of how average Soviet citizens were given armbands and sticks and sent out of Leningrad to attack a panzer army and were slaughtered to the last man without inflicting a single casualty. Nothing of the literally millions of rapes inflicted on the German population by the vengeful Soviet army.

comment: sorry to disturb you, but Soljenitsyn has never been in GULAG. comment 2: well, this paragraph is some kind of propaganda. We learn about The Great Purge at schools and we have all kind of discussions about the Great Patriotic War as a part ow WWII. If I were you I would not believe this historian without any relevant links.

Any attempt to bring up the above issues is likely to elicit a howl of visceral patriotic rage from your average Russia. Because they genuinely don't believe any of it. To this day, they still believe Stalin's propaganda: there are things that glorify Mother Russia, and there are Nazi sympathizer spies who deserve to be shot. There is no middle ground. There is no debate. There is no complexity. Media portrayals are either one or the other, glory or slander, with every Western media portrayal basically being slanderous in one way or another. The professor lists several examples, such as the howls of rage that came from Enemy at the Gates daring to show blocking squads shooting retreaters, "one man gets the rifle, the other gets the ammo" and other true examples of the sheer inhumanity endured by the average Soviet soldier at Stalingrad (despite the fact that the movie is a heroic film about a great Russian sniper vs. a diabolical German!).

73% of the Russian population currently believes Stalin was "a mostly good person". How can any reasonable human being hope to please such a fanatical population? Court Appointed Shrub (talk) 19:49, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * "In Russia, there is no such public discourse and no such deviation. At all. Not even a little bit." This is a blatant lie, there was constant discourse back then (1945-1991) and now (1991-2022). What is different is that from 1991 the informational censorship was broken and US (RFERL and similar Mund-Smith PL sponsored projects) misinformation has started influencing the ex-USSR, specifically targeting schools and media. But they are easily debunked since USSR was insanely bureaucratic and documented nearly everything, but censoring negative things, which would hurt its image internally (like real situation with OUN in UkrSSR, which would hurt Ukrainian image in Soviet state). 89.1.155.154 (talk) 02:40, 30 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Even with your overview we would require the source first and foremost. You mention having such a piece, if this is the case once you have permission (see Requesting copyright permission), I would strongly recommend to link it here in the talk page first for the best way to, if even at all to mention said reference. For now can you give a name since you have mentioned said person being "prominent". Thank you. Stabby Joe (talk) 18:14, 1 September 2013 (UTC)


 * @User:Court Appointed Shrub: I will echo Joe: it seems you forget to cite your source. Please link to the article... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 17:13, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I`m sad to dissapoint you, but those "examples" of rage against the "truth" are totally inadequate. First of all the facts of blocking squads and shortage of rifles could not exist at the same time! There could have been problems with weapons and ammo distribution at the begining of the war in USSR (in 1941) but blocking squads were created (using german expirience by the way) at the end of the 1942-nd! At that time there was shortage of soldiers rather then weapons... This and other cliches and disinformation are things that drive us nuts.

The main point of rage against the game was exactly about the horrible disinfo when words, written by people long before the WWII were used as a proof for the games plot - that is something Gebels would do!

Russians do admit there were real facts of war crimes. And people who comited them were punished... But those crimes do not negate the ones the other side did! That is the main point you should never forget. By the way there is no good or bad at war, there are allies and enemies! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.16.143.91 (talk) 08:19, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

PS: sorry for my bad English...

You should probably put somewhere that the story presented in the campaign is fictional. The description does not properly convey that information Usename policies (talk) 04:36, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Outside info
I was wondering if you wikipedians wanted to get any information about the game design from credible and high-ranking members of the game's community (such as myself and others) from the community forum's staff. I'm not sure how this would work with wikipedia's policies around information sources. Usename policies (talk) 04:22, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Differences between german and english article version concerning "controversy" section
I think someone should pick up on and translate the german "controversy" section here into english as in comparison the english bit appears a bit softer, less specific /factual and leaves out some stuff such as CoH2 having been criticised acceptedly as anti-soviet propaganda. One example section quoting Sergey Galyonkin mentions the comparison to a "world war 2 Mordor" and that "in a sense it attributes nazi warcrimes to the soviet army" (a Ukranian game dev voice, not included in english article version). It makes no mention of how the game was Metacritic bombed nor explicitly mentions a shitstorm. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:120B:2C75:A230:79D5:BF75:84E6:8F8A (talk) 22:07, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * There is a thing called "informational warfare" and games are part of it. There is no need to take long walks, compare COH and COH2 official title images. US are using green uniforms in bright light, where Soviets are in shadows with dark-blood color around (red color used by USSR flag, for example, was bright red) - two distinct subliminal messages: good US guys in COH vs bad USSR guys, who fight even worse guys in COH2. That´s visual propaganda. 89.1.155.154 (talk) 02:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)