Yet ask the average person how the Nazis were rolled back, and many will cite Winston Churchill's defiance in the face of huge odds and incalculable evil.

Of course, winning the Battle of Britain and resisting the Blitz - spanning July 1940 to May 1941 - undoubtedly provided that "time".

Crucially, British resilience stopped the Nazi advance long enough for two other big mistakes to seal Hitler's fate - the opening of a second front with his attack on Russia in July of '41, and Japan's Pearl Harbour attack in December that same year pulling America into the conflict.

The perception of British-American (ergo democratic) triumph over authoritarianism is reassuring, and became a founding trope of Western post-war confidence. Even moralism.

Less so the difficult reality that in large measure, the defeat of fascism turned on the most calculated expenditure of human life made by any country in history under the iron fist of another ruthless tyrant, the aforementioned Stalin.

The Germans enjoyed many advantages in technology, strategy, and surprise, but Stalin had the anonymous Red Army soldier in apparently endless supply. By most estimates, Russia suffered between 20 and 27 million deaths during the war, dwarfing the losses of any other nation, including the aggressor Germany, which lost around one-third of that at 7.4 million.

Interestingly given current regional sensitivities, the only other country to suffer World War II deaths in double-figure millions was China, with a range estimate of 15 to 20 million deaths.

The World Population Review, from which these numbers come, also notes that within the USSR, Russia itself sustained the highest death toll of the Soviet republics, followed by Ukraine "with 1,650,000 military deaths and 5,200,000 civilian deaths". Indeed, Ukraine saw much of the worst fighting.

Scroll forward 81 years and the very nation which gave the most in defence of Russia has itself been illegally attacked.

But while some things change, others stay the same.

As fighting intensifies in proto-democratic Ukraine, in the largest war in Europe since 1945, post-Soviet Russia is again under the heel of a heartless dictator, and again poor military planning, lousy logistics, unusable equipment, and a gritty Churchill-like opponent rallying his smaller nation towards greatness are factors.

And so, too, is the clinical Russian calculus that in the end, greater numbers and sheer bloody-mindedness will get it done.

Despite claiming it is all going to plan, Vladimir Putin must be coming to grips with the fact that he waited too long to launch his deadly attack - Beijing needed quiet to run its farcical Winter Olympics - and then he struck out on too many fronts.

Now the ground has thawed, and mud - perhaps the very mud that slowed Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in the 1940s - has immobilised Russian forces, bogging its vehicles, and forcing its tank columns onto narrow roads.

Russia, the reputed master of cyber warfare, has already lost the information war, being easily outplayed by Zelensky on the world stage. And its plummeting reputation has been further sabotaged by damning vision of rockets hitting apartment buildings and civilian bodies being carried away in bedsheets.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine's besieged capital, Volodymyr Zelensky has grown in stature and with him, his nation's resolve.

This war, from which no honourable retreat seems possible for either side at present, was easily foreseeable and was perhaps preventable. But this is now a mere debating point - a counterfactual unable to be tested.

Military experts expect Putin to double down on violence in order to regain lost time and status.

Yet his criminal brutality, and Ukraine's unyielding defiance, has unified a fragmented West like nothing in years.

Pacifist Germany - a country that, unlike Russia, has tried to atone for its atrocities - has suddenly committed to doubling its defence budget, pledged arms (so-called lethal aid) to Ukraine, and suspended the certification process for its crucial Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline. Neutral Switzerland is applying debilitating EU sanctions against Russia - preventing Russian oligarchs from hiding wealth in Swiss banks.

In Australia, the mainstream political community is also of one voice. Scott Morrison displayed his well-known penchant for clay-footedness initially with a $US3 million Ukraine aid pledge, before quickly upping that to "$US50 million of military assistance to support Ukraine's defence and $US25 million of immediate humanitarian assistance at a time of great suffering for Ukraine's people", according to a statement released after a snap meeting of the Quad on Friday morning.

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With Beijing committing to buy Russian gas and refusing to condemn an illegal war, Morrison's bellicose positioning against potential Chinese aggression on Taiwan looks more plausible by the day.

On this score, Beijing has miscalculated badly. Prior to Putin's madness, China's position had been more nuanced, with officials going to lengths to support the international rules-based order, albeit with the proviso that China's emergence as a global superpower meant the rules needed changing. Reform of the WTO and membership of the G7, for example.

It had a valid point, but that will be lost if its true aim turns out to be chaos, aligning with whatever violence is directed at innocent people and sovereign nations.

That Anthony Albanese has remained in lockstep with the government throughout this is telling. Clearly Labor wants to quarantine the international security crisis from any domestic debates. That is wise.

Albanese believes (or hopes) the election will be fought primarily on domestic concerns like the rising cost of living, climate change, corruption, health, and the PM's tainted character.

That is, unless he gives the doughty Morrison the slightest opportunity to make it about the growing China threat. Or China does.

Elections are a numbers game also.