I'm always surprised when no one understands the underpinnings of WWII and what fascism is or how it always starts or what it promises to solve in a broken nation.

But then, I'm the only person in my IRL circles who refers to it as the Great Patriotic War, and one of only three who know the Nazis targeted trans people first (and one of those other two only knows that much because he's trans and one of those left anarchists - he's a pain, but he'll probably come around when he's older and infighting with him gets me nowhere so I just shut up when he talks politics), so I shouldn't be that surprised. And I'm not. I'm pleasantly surprised when anyone I actually know understands that WWII was about more than the Holocaust and that fascism is about far more than genociding a single scapegoat group, because that is a surprisingly high bar to clear. When I hear a fellow Western person use the term "Great Patriotic War" though, I do expect that they know at least as much as I do, but I'll forgive not knowing much about the Western Allies, if they know a reasonable amount about the Soviets. I've never been let down too badly in that context, at least.