How VE Day coverage distorted the full horror of Second World War

I WRITE to express concern at the limited scope of your coverage of VE Day (The Yorkshire Post, May 8). It came across as though the war mainly affected Britain when, of course, it did not. It was a world war in which 50 million people lost their lives, 26.6 million of them in the Soviet Union: 900,000 people died in the siege of Leningrad alone.

The suffering in our own country was bad enough, and great heroism was shown at Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. The Atlantic war against the U-boats was a mighty effort too.

However the fate of the fascist onslaught was settled not so much in Western Europe as in the east. My father was stationed in Belgium at the time. He told me that in his unit they all listened to the radio reports of street-by-street fighting in Stalingrad, fully aware that their own futures depended on the outcome.

Churchill himself remarked that the Red Army “tore the guts” out of the German war machine.

As you say, we lost 340,000 soldiers on the battlefield, along with 70,000 civilians. Readers can compare the figures for themselves. Too much suffering. War is a terrible thing and such horrors must not be repeated.

For a peaceful future, the true scope of the conflict should be explained for each new generation, lest we forget.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

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Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson