I don't think that the USSR counts. It actually handled the Nazis pretty well and were gaining ground before the Allies pulled D-Day. The theme is surviving the Nazis under oppression. If you want a country that did that, what you need is the Brits.
This was supposed to be funny, because the Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire) continued to survive for 250 years in their dying phase. Another state in their phase would be long defeated by then, and you can see that many places tried to do it for them in the amount of failed sieges of Constantinople.
The Danes got all ready for war, then when Germany threatened them, they surrendered, but that's not really related to the meme, since it only involved France, Norway, and Greece, not Denmark.