Enjoy the DVD as it is greatly enlightening into life in Russia under Stalin. There are too many factors leading up to Russia entering the war to raise on here but the main ones were that Russia's biggest fear was an attack by Japan from the east via China. Stalin was happy to trust Hitler because of the non-aggression pact they made so his main armies were in that area. Fortunately for all the allies Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour changed everything. Incidentally, Stalin had been told that Russia was not Japan's goal but he would not believe it. The loss of Russian lives was large when viewed in statistical casualties, but the cost of lives to Stalin was immaterial until he was running out of people. Bit unfair to claim the West was lied to about WW2 as not a lot of information was forthcoming from Russia. One last point about is that he was asking for a second front from 1943 but he would never acknowledge that the Africa/Italian front was already that and was keeping the Germans busy, otherwise they would have been in Russia.
I once read a book about the siege of Leningrad. Absolutely terrible. People resorting to eating the dead just in order to survive. Thousands died of starvation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad
Spot on about Africa. My Granddad was there and then through Sicily and Italy after originally coming back from Dunkirk. In fact, had Rommel not been occupied fighting the Rats then i'm sure the Germans (and especially their armored divisions) would have managed to overrun the Russians.
a few extra images on this link http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/06/scenes-from-d-day-then-and-now/100752/
