Izvestia (Dec 13, 1941) honors Vlasov amongst eight other heroes of the Battle of Moscow.
Anybody who has spent any amount of time questioning the standard Soviet narratives about the first half of the 20th century will invariably be called a Vlasovite at some point. So far as neo-Stalinists are concerned, the turncoat general is an embodiment of monarchism, nationalism, White Guardianism, liberalism, Russophobia, fascism, Far Rightism, Nazism, Ukro-Nazism… feel free to insert any sovok expletive of your choice. They consider Vlasov to be the embodiment of a schizophrenic hodgepodge of mutually contradictory ideologies that serves as a convenient moniker to denote the enemies of their hive mind. Meanwhile, there is also a smaller tribe of wehraboos ranging from befuddled liberals to outright Naziphiles who buy into the above Soviet characterization of Vlasov hook, line, and sinker – with the critical addendum that they consider most or all of those to be good things. For all intents and purposes, they are opposite sides of the same Soviet ideological horseshoe.
But it just so happens that this entire narrative is almost entirely false. To demonstrate this, let’s have a close look at Andrey Vlasov’s actual biography.
Andrey Vlasov signed up to the Red Army early on in 1919, and joined the Communist Party in 1930. He made a successful career in the USSR, writing in his autobiography that he “carried out agitation work… was elected a member of the military tribunal… never had membership in other parties or opposition movements, nor participated in them. Never had any doubts [about the system]. Always stood hard on the line of the Party and always fought for it.”
Consequently, he did not have any troubles during the Red Army purges. To the contrary, as a member of the military tribunals of the Leningrad and Kiev military okrugs, he was one of the perpetrators – and one of the more zealous ones at that. Historians have been unable to find a single case where someone was found innocent on Vlasov’s initiative.
Next he was sent on a secret mission to China in autumn 1938 as part of a group of military advisors. Foreign travel in the Stalinist state was highly restricted, indicating that the Soviet authorities had a high degree of confidence in him. On his return, he was given command of the 99th Rifle Division, which was soon recognized as one of the best divisions in the Army in 1940. For this, Vlasov awarded with a golden watch by Marshal Timoshenko.
It has to be acknowledged that Vlasov had considerable military talent, and proved himself an able commander in the catastrophic months immediately after the German invasion of the USSR. His units evaded encirclement, he was recognized in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia, and awarded with the Order of the Red Banner for his role in the defense of Moscow. The only reason that his army was eventually surrounded and destroyed – and Vlasov himself captured – was on account of Stalin’s customary refusal to countenance retreats.
During his captivity in 1942-44, Vlasov was promoted by elements of the German military who wanted to use him as a figurehead around which to create an anti-Stalinist military force under German tutelage (the key figure, Captain Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, was a Baltic German who had fought for the Whites in the Civil War). However, this came to naught, since Hitler was uninterested, and saw any such Russian force as an impediment to his plans to Germanize all of European Russia. For his part, Vlasov whiled away the days playing cards under house arrest in Berlin, complaining about his living conditions and how the Germans viewed him as an Untermensch (“In Vinnytsia, after my capture, I had to wash my own clothes. I was not given a towel, and had to make do with a floor rug. Sure, I was a prisoner – but a General, nonetheless. But for the Germans I was an Untermensch, for whom a floor rug would suffice“), and about the unwillingness of the Germans to utilize his knowledge (“I know Stalin personally… I know all the top Soviet commanders, I can tell you what each one is capable of. But you Germans apparently know better. My opinion is of no interest to you.“).
By August 1944, Germany was getting desperate, and Hitler finally relented to Vlasov’s requests to raise the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), thanks to the intercession of Himmler, who had previously been strongly opposed to him.
This was soon followed by the Prague Manifesto in November 1944, which is the closest thing the “Vlasovites” ever had to an actual political program. Here are some highlights from it:
1. The Manifesto itself was proclaimed on behalf of “the Peoples of Russia” [i.e. not Russians as such, but the “multinational peoples of the Russian Federation,” to use the modern politically correct jargon].
- It condemned the “powers of imperialism headed by the plutocrats of England and the USA, the greatness of which is built upon the persecution and exploitation of other nations and peoples”, who are “covering their criminal aims with slogans of defense of freedom, democracy, culture, and civilization.” [i.e., against democracy].
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It praises the February Revolution for overthrowing the “obsolete Tsarist government”, which was supposed to realize Russians’ “desires for fairness, general well being, and national freedom” [i.e. a straightforward promotion of the liberal program that celebrates February, which is directly opposed to Russian nationalism].
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“Liquidation of forceful repopulations and mass exiles” [i.e., the return of the Chechens and the Crimean Tatars; which, in the event, ended up happening under Khrushchev].
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“Discontinuation of the war with Germany and a honorable peace with Germany” [reminder that this is November 1944, when Germany’s cause is already hopeless].
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“Self determination” and “self rule” for the “peoples of Russia” [i.e. presumably the independence of the Ukraine, Belorussia, and so forth, which is in direct opposition to the White program of a “Russia One, Great, and Undivided“]
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The main object of its criticism is not even the USSR as such, but the “Stalinist clique” that has usurped power and betrayed the holy ideals of the Revolution such as “social justice” and “people’s rights” [i.e. not the position of a Russian nationalist, or even of an anti-Communist, but of an International Leftist].
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Would “decisively reject all reactionary projects” [i.e. a return to early Bolshevik bromides against Great Russian chauvinism].
In the end, the ROA barely had time to get involved in any fighting. Its most notable battle was fought against the Germans, to protect the Prague uprising from a punitive Waffen-SS assault in May 1945. They had to leave soon after, since the Prague Rada was dominated by Communists; the Americans, too, refused to shelter them, due to existing agreements with the Soviets, and extradited them to the USSR. The ringleaders, including Vlasov, were hanged in Moscow in 1946, while the rest would spend the next few years in Soviet prison camps.
In the end, this purported “army” of “Russian liberation” failed to fight a single battle against Stalinism. Like all classic scapegoats, Vlasov was not so much tragic as pathetic; not so much demon or hero, as banally irrelevant.
Summing up, what we have in Vlasov is a faithful Stalinist servant who played a direct role in the mass terror against the commanders of the Red Army, who turned renegade soon after falling into German captivity, and henceforth promoted an idiosyncratic blend of pro-multinationality, progressivism, and German imperialist interests.
The Vlasovite program is perfectly congruent with the ideals of the rootless liberal elites who ruled Russia in the 1990s, and continue to exercise significant cultural and economic power today. Liberal elites who are themselves in large part just the mutant offspring of the late Soviet nomenklatura. (The case of Nobel Peace Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich is particularly instructive: A woman who transitioned seamlessly from writing cringeworthy odes to the ethnic Polish founder of the Soviet secret police Dzerzhinsky to penning hysterical Russophobic screeds, she is perhaps the quintessential representative of this “sovok-liberal” class).
It also has precisely zilch to do with Russian nationalism, which stands for a unitary Russia, condemns both revolutions, and has no truck with either liberalism or Stalinism.
Even so, it is of course Russian nationalists, not the sovoks (from whence he came) nor the liberals (where he arrived), who for some reason have to answer for Vlasov.
The explanation for this is that is a symbiotic relationship. The neo-Stalinists get to avoid hard questions as to why millions of Soviet citizens, many of them Russians, collaborated with an enemy committed to their own extermination – as much as 10% of all Soviet citizens who bore arms in WW2 fought on Hitler’s side, recreating the Civil War on a smaller scale. Meanwhile, the Russian liberals, their subsets such as Ukrainian nationalists (who like to call the Russian flag a “Vlasovite rag”), and Western Russophobes committed to a weak and nationally emasculated Russia all get to paint Russian nationalists as Hitlerite collaborators. The ultimate, mutual goal of all of these factions being to continue to marginalize, denigrate, contain, and repress Russians.
That’s a blatant lie. There were no ” millions of Soviet citizens who cooperated with the enemy, seek their own destruction.” The number of ROA was several tens of thousands of people. The ROA consisted of prisoners trying to escape death in concentration camps. Of course, the ROA was unable to fight (for this reason the Germans did not use ROA at the front).
Of course, in addition to the ROA were other formation of collaborators, but if we sum up all the collaborators, we won’t get “millions”. You retell absolutely ridiculous propaganda inventions.
I always thought they used the charge of “White Russian” long past its expiration date. All the anti-Russian stuff today just seems like a continuation of that, in short form.
But other Russian “nationalists” served Hitler, for example whites generals Krasnov and Shkuro. A great example is also your idol A. Solzhenitsyn-he fervently admired collaborationists, in particular Bronislaw Kaminsky ( Bronislaw Kaminsky was worse than a hundred of Vlasovs) .
I think the question that needs to be answered is why would a glorified Soviet general want to collaborate with Nazi invaders?
The kind of person, that rises to the top in a Soviet system, appears to have no real values or principles, other than a desire to put himself in position of power over others, to gain access to valuable resources, to “get a place at the trough”. He will serve Hitler if this gets him a place at the trough. You can see many politicians like this in modern-day Russia and the Ukraine. I would go so far as to say that majority of them are like this.
Catchy tune though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-UaKeYEOdE
If you add all different formations you will easily get to two millions. Then you have to add Ukrainian formation consisting of Soviet citizens as well.
Operation Keelhaul: The Story Of Forced Repatriation From 1944 To The Present. By Julius Epstein . Introduction by Bertram D. Wolfe. Old Greenwich, Conn.: The Devin-Adair Company, 1973. xv, 255 pp. $8.95.
The Last Secret: The Delivery To Stalin Of Over Two Million Russians By Britain And The United States. By Nicholas Bethell. Introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper. New York: Basic Books, 1974. xvi, 224 pp. $8.95.
The ROA wasn’t the only collaborationist organization. I just checked Wikipedia and they cite estimates from 1 to 2.5 million, though I’ve seen higher.
The Germans were indeed not enthusiastic about using their capabilities (at any rate, Hitler and the hardcore Nazis weren’t). Pretty stupid of them ofc. They’d have probably won otherwise. Still, the fact that so many Russians became collaborators is a pretty damning indictment of the Soviet system.
Sure, but Vlasov is by far the most famous one – the figurehead of treason for Russia (like Quisling is for Norway, Benedict Arnold for the US, etc).
AFAIK Solzhenitsyn wasn’t a fan of Kaminsky as such, but did have some nice words for the Lokot Autonomy. Considering that it was much freer than the rest of the USSR – for instance, collective farms were abolished, private property was restored, churches were reopened – during the short period of its existence (except for Jews, commissars, partisans and their families, and people mistakenly identified as partisans and their families), and that it was also the only part of Russia that was actually ruled by Russians (though overseen by Germans, who might or might not have exterminated them eventually), this is not an exceptionally illogical position to take.
It is not an exaggeration but just propaganda nonsense. You understand Russian? Then read https://fat-yankey.livejournal.com/20865.html
In 1944 10% of German POW taken on the Western front were Soviet citizens. Already then before the end of the war some of them were repatriated to the USSR via convoys to Murmansk.
Here are Soviet citizens who were not repatriated to USSR:
Of course (what I wrote). But there weren’t millions anyway.
There are more vile cesspools than Wikipedia, but there are not many such cesspools in the world. Look at least the link I presented above (you know Russian)
Many fair accusations can be made against the Soviet system, but this accusation is complete nonsense. Among the Russian (and even among all Soviet citizens, except residents of annexed in ‘ 39 regions) there were very few collaborators, especially in comparison with the mass collaboration in Western Europe.
So? You should compare the scale of collaboration among white emigrants (i.e. Russian “nationalists”) and among captured Soviet generals. Or compare the scale of collaborationism among white immigrants, and among just Soviet citizens. The result will be unpleasant for you.
Ah, that’s it. So what kind of freedom are preparing the “nationalist” for Russia!
I feel that a few more such statements, and I will become a staunch Stalinist.
Lokot freedom https://a-dyukov.livejournal.com/1354406.html :
“The inspection of corpses revealed gunshot, stab and cut wounds. There are a number of corpses at which stomachs are strung out, eyes are gouged out, the throat is cut, and one old man was stabbed with a bayonet in a breast and thrown in a burning fire, part of corpses have on a neck traces of suffocation. Among these corpses (I miss the long list) daughters Tatiana and Anastasia -13 years, Galya-10 years, Tolya-8 years and Julia-5 years,” etc., etc.
I know all the top Soviet commanders, I can tell you what each one is capable of. But you Germans apparently know better
They always do.
Upon his capture, Vlasov wasn’t a Soviet patriot, as evidenced by the very title of the army under his nominal command and their use of the tri-color. Of course, he didn’t criticize the Soviet system under Stalin while in its ranks – for the simple reason that would mean death.
In hindsight, it looks foolish to think that the Nazis had a chance to defeat the USSR. Back then, this scenario wasn’t considered as probable. Hence, Vlasov was essentially looking to get the best possible deal for Russia.
In Nazi captivity, he exhibited a Russian patriotism much more so than the modern Russians who bash Russia in Western mass media. That very attitude got hm in some hot water with the Nazi hierarchy. If anything, it’s pathetic to call Vlasov pathetic.
The anti-Soviet ROCOR views him favorably. His comments about looking to achieve the stated gains of the revolution for Russia comes across as a somewhat left idealism. Regarding the Prague Manifesto, he was seeking as much cooperation as possible, in conjunction with still feeling some pressure from the Nazis. Among other things, this included the attempt to have a viable alliance with the anti-Communist Chetniks under the command of Draza Mihailovic.
Yes, it is true.
Sometimes I wonder what were they thinking. Clearly there was no proper communication between Hitler, Himmler and Wehrmacht and some silly rivalries. That they waited till late 1944 to let Vlasov form his army is mind blowing. Did they think still in Spring of 1944 that they will win the war or that the Allies will offer them some sweet deal? Din’t they know that in Casablanca Roosevelt announced that the war would go until the unconditional surrender?
Imagine this: Gen. Erich von Manstein after being removed from his position in 1944 few months later in October or so he buys himself a large land estate in Western Pomerania. This is when the Red Army was on the Vistula river line? Did he plan to retire there? There is a possibility that it was money laundering or he was helping the estate owner to bail out before the Soviet arrival but it is rather strange. He was one of the smartest generals Hitler had.
A. Solzhenitsyn-he fervently admired collaborationists, in particular Bronislaw Kaminsky
I wasn’t aware that Solzhenitsyn was a fan of Kaminsky, can you provide some more information?
I presume she won the Nobel Prize in literature, rather than peace?
I won’t dispute your overall characterization, since the only thing I’ve read by her is Zinky Boys. I found it very moving, though I don’t know how factually accurate it was.
Szymborska (Nobel 1996) wrote gushing odes to Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin in 1950s.
Because he wasn’t.
It gives a figure of 1.2 million (which would make it one of several estimates, some of which are quite a lot higher). Of these, 450,000-500,000 were active fighters, while 700,000-750,000 were Hiwis.
It compares the military impact of Hiwis to Ostarbeiters. This is a big exaggeration. Logistics troops are a vital component of any military, and the Germans especially had a problem with that – while only every 3rd American soldier was directly involved in combat, the Germans had the opposite ratio, with the result that the average German soldier was much worse provisioned than the average American one. So Hiwis helped a great deal more than ordinary Ostarbeiters and I don’t think it’s legitimate to just cross them out.
The fact that Soviet collaborator forces were not enthusiastic about fighting for the Germans is not something I disputed. The Germans wanted nothing to do with them early in the war, while later in the war they were losing and you’d have to be an idiot to want to associate with them by that point. But this just makes the numbers involved all the more striking.
Not quite comparable, because the Germans were not waging a racial war of extermination in Western Europe.
Well, white emigrants had more reason to hate the Soviet regime than people who stayed (on average), so that is neither surprising nor unpleasant. I am not going to pronounce judgment on people who had to make exceedingly hard choices.
As I mentioned, the Lokot Autonomy was indeed very bad for partisans, their families, and people suspected of such. FTR I don’t support the Lokot Autonomy, though not so much on account of its nature (it wasn’t altogether bad compared to the ghastly circumstances of its surroundings) as that it helped the Nazi war effort, who wanted to end Russia as a civilization, if not as a race.
However, it was still much better than places under direct German military rule.
And it was indeed freer (with, yes, the exception of Jews, commissars, and partisans/their families & suspects) than the USSR as a whole.
One can cite individual cases of atrocities against partisans and their families, but individual cases aren’t statistics. Civil wars are grisly things in general. 10% of the Russian population died in the Russian Civil War. How many were killed in the LA? The figure I recall reading is 10,000, which would constitute 2% of its population (perhaps you can refute this with a sourced higher figure). For comparison, the death rate in the areas of direct German occupation was around 25%. For that matter, around 3 million people starved to death in the unoccupied USSR during WW2 (excluding Leningrad), implying a similar death rate to LA.
Conversely, this region of half a million people raised a militia of 20,000 people (even though the Germans weren’t really interested in having them do anything more than suppress partisans and make sure the supply trains ran unimpeded). Extended to the 70 million people under Nazi occupation in the USSR, under a different set of policies, that could potentially have yielded them 3 million soldiers – that’s half the typical standing strength of the Soviet Army in 1942-45. The Nazis really were idiots in this respect.
Among the Russian (and even among all Soviet citizens, except residents of annexed in ‘ 39 regions) there were very few collaborators
Question, as you seem to be better informed than some other commenters.
I am under the impression that there were significantly more collaborators and very significantly fewer partisans in the Ukraine vis-a-vis Belarus. Do you know if this is factual and can be documented?
«Мы не забыли и всенародное движение Локтя Брянского: создание автономного русского самоуправления еще до прихода немцев и независимо от них, устойчивая процветающая область из 8 районов, более миллиона жителей. Требования локотян были совершенно отчетливы: русское национальное правительство, русское самоуправление во всех занятых областях, декларация о независимости России в границах 1938 г. и создание освободительной армии под русским командованием»
In Western Ukraine (annexed to the USSR in 1939), local Ustashi were quite massive. They together with Germans exterminated Jews, and contrary to Germans carried out monstrous extermination of the Polish population. Eastern Ukraine was no different from Belarus or Russia. Guerrilla movement in Ukraine was relatively weak due to the steppe (not forest) landscape.
That settles it then.
Western Ukraine should be on its own and eastern Ukraine should be folded into Russia.
Review your exact phrasing:
Now the source Utu cited:
Auxiliary units running supply and maintenance services, not fighting units. What you’re saying would be equivalent to counting every Frenchman conscripted to work in German munitions factories as someone who “bore arms for Hitler.”
Furthermore, the description of these people as “volunteers” should come with some heavy caveats. Given that all employment and distribution of food in the Soviet Union ran through the Soviet government, who else was there to work for once the Soviet government had been driven out? What else could you do if you weren’t a farmer growing your own potatoes besides whatever menial labor the Germans were offering? Walk three hundred miles through the heat, mud, or snow to wherever the Red Army was now (would you even know where the Red Army was now)?
People who “volunteered” not to starve by doing support services for the invaders? Plenty of them. People who actually took up arms and fought alongside the Germans? Very few of them.
A soldier assigned to a logistical outfit in any of these armies is someone who has still been issued a weapon and trained to use it.
Compare that with the the locals in New Guinea and elsewhere who were conscripted to serve both sides as porters. Neither army could have operated in New Guinea without their Papuan porters to carry supplies, but no one would have counted them as soldiers the way that, for example, a US Army truck would be.
I know a guy (in Britain) whose Ukrainian father (i.e. a Soviet citizen) somehow made it here after WW2 despite fighting (as his son put it) “on the wrong side”. Very lucky guy as many if not most were returned to Stalin to be shot.
Hiwis were not collaborators – they were unarmed slaves who were used for dirty work, and who were killed in case of disobedience. Similarly, the Soviet troops used German Hiwis (even in spite of the orders of Stalin), read https://dr-guillotin.livejournal.com/tag/%D1%85%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B8
However, even if you count Hiwis , and if you take a fantastic figure of 800,000 Hiwis , even in this case, “millions” remain a fake .
It’s written by a man who writes in the same post
Definitely my sympathies to the Stalinists grow
.
Okay, let’s compare it to the Jewish police who served the Germans in the Warsaw ghetto. They were probably ideological fighters against Judaism, weren’t they?
And for example poles (from Western areas Poland) with 1944 mobilized as soldiers (soldiers!) in the Wehrmacht. On your logic (absurd logic) poles – ultra collaborators. Germans were waging a racial war of extermination aganist Poles, but Poles fight in Wehrmacht
Do you really not understand the difference between those killed and those who died as a result of the famine caused by the war?
The percentage of the killed which you called, far surpass the percentage of the killed in the terror of 1936-38. Well, now I will know what” freedom ” dream to arrange “nationalists” in Russia
Most of Shandruk’s troops were Galicians. He himself was not (he was a Petliurite from the the part of Ukraine that had been part of Russian Empire who escaped to Poland and never got Soviet citizenship).
Well, let’s see how effective your proposed policy would be. Here is a red Army Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Gil-Rodionov.
http://media.bloger.by/source/photos/2012/11/26/1770e391b74c4debb54a31135bf8d0a5.jpg
In 1941 he was captured by the Germans and offered them his services. He created a “Combat Union of Russian nationalists” recruited (among the prisoners) several thousand soldiers who received (from the Germans) weapons, SS uniforms, etc.
In August 1943 soldiers of “Combat Union” (under the leadership Gil-Rodionov, ha) exterminated German soldiers and officers, after what “Combat Union of Russian nationalists” gone (with prisoners and trophies) to guerrillas. Gil-Rodionov was made a Colonel of Red Army, and was awarded the order of the red star. In 1944 Gil-Rodionov killed in battle with the Germans. Here is a monument on his grave
https://www.sb.by/upload/medialibrary/6b7/6b7af8428f722e101d5423e285815871.jpg
Well the Germans did not believe in the help of Russian “anti-Communists”. But not because they (Germans) were idiots
If the father was from Galicia he was not considered a Soviet citizen. A lot of people from the Waffen SS Galician Division ended up in Britain.
No, there were still plenty of people working with the Germans in Eastern Ukraine. Such as the linguist George Shevelov:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Shevelov
It wasn’t exactly collaboration – they were just pursuing cultural work and had to go through German channels to do so. But I can’t think of many Russian Soviets who behaved this way.
The main reason why Galicians were friendlier was because they were treated much better. Had the Germans treated Eastern Ukrainians as they did Galicians, they probably could have gotten at least a million recruits.
Had the Germans treated Eastern Ukrainians as they did Galicians, they probably could have gotten at least a million recruits.
Doesn’t count. What we want to is where were the partisans and where were the collaborators. Circumstances and motivation are secondary.
More than meets the eye to the following;
Vlasov’s army wasn’t let go as a fighting unit, until the tail end of the war. At that point, it was pretty clear that the Nazis would lose.
Might’ve had Polish citizenship as well:
Before the Nazi attack on the USSR, Polish occupied western Ukraien was incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR. With success, Ukrainians who lived under Polish occupation between two world wars were able to claim a Polish citizenship. Otherwise, it was standard for the Western Allies to turn over Soviet citizens.
BTW, Vlasov’s army is said to have had 30%-40% ethnic Ukrainians.
Had the Nazis treated the Russians better, the former would’ve had a considerably greater support from the latter.
It was a village in the west of Ukraine, so may have been (can’t remember the name), though it was I think part of the Soviet Union when war broke out. He considered his dad to be Ukrainain, not Polish, in any event.
Ah, I think understand now – a chunk of Poland was pinched by the Soviets in 1939 including Galicia with its ethnic Ukrainians.
Did the border move after WW2? In other words did the Polish/Soviet frontier move west between 1938 (pre-Molotov/Ribbentrop pact) and 1945?
https://twitter.com/McGuate/status/1055252486024581120
Concerning the subject of Vlasov, here’s a good list of books:
Andreyev, Catherine – Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement – Cambridge University Press, 1987 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/vlasov-and-the-russian-liberation-movement/D736E0FC2C23137127DD644890F805C4
Reitlinger, Gerald – The House Built On Sand – Viking Press, New York, 1960 https://www.alibris.com/House-Built-on-Sand-Gerald-Reitlinger/book/8494127?matches=10
Steenberg, Sven – Vlasov – Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1970 http://searchassist.verizon.com/main?ParticipantID=euekiz39ksg8nwp7iqj2fp5wzfwi5q76&FailedURI=http%3A%2F%2Fv-books.used-books24.com%2FSTEENBERG%2C%2BSven–Vlasov—-1.html&FailureMode=1&Implementation=&AddInType=4&Version=pywr1.0&ClientLocation=us
Strik-Strikfeldt, Wilfried – Against Stalin & Hitler – The John Day Company, New York, 1973 https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=0381981851
Thorwald, Jurgen – The Illusion – Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York, 1975 https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=flDSW8-QOam5ggfLy6-IAw&q=jurgen+thorwald+the+illusion&btnK=Google+Search&oq=jurgen+thorwald+the+illusion&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30.1209.8892..10808…0.0..0.78.1689.28….2..0….1..gws-wiz…….0j0i131j0i10.uadHd-ABZRs
Wrong!
This region was annexed to the USSR in 1939 but the West didn’t recognize these borders and this region’s inhabitants were considered to be Polish. .
The new borders were recognized towards the end of the war. but people from here who left before the war ended were not considered to be Soviet citizens by the West. As a result, its residents were considered to be Polish citizens. So ironically, a lot of anti-Polish Ukrainian nationalists from Western Ukraine were saved from repatriation to the USSR by their Polish citizenship.
Partisans were mostly in Belarus but this may have had to do with geography. Eastern Ukrainians and Russians both seemed to have collaborated more than the Soviet media claimed; Eastern Ukrainians may have collaborated more but they were treated slightly better (for example., Eastern Ukrainian POWS were more often given the opportunity to work in concentration camps, and many did so, to save themselves, whereas Russian POWs did not have that chance). Eastern Ukrainians were initially greeting the Germans as liberators, more so than did Russians, but this might be because the Germans showed their true face by the time they got to the Russian border.
So, Vlasov was scum who did not care who to serve, as long as he was close to the trough and got kudos. What else is new? How is this different from the Soviet story?
If Wikipedia is a reliable source of info, I am the Emperor of the East.
Who in Ukrainian politics would remotely do the acts of selfless courage that Kobzon and numerous other Russian politicians did in (face-to-face) going into hostage situations and negotiating with terrorists?
Who are these no principles ” at the trough” at the top in Russia? Dvorkovich-yes , Shuvalov- yes, Gref of Sberbank, Kudrin?….well, Gref and Kudrin are open about what they are and at least think they are working to improve the country. It’s simply rude and ignorant to equate Russia and Ukraine like this.
Among many other things, Russia’s government spends 19 trillion on the country, Ukraines…not even 500 billion roubles, factor in all the respective waste and corruption in both…and I’d make that a distance of Russia spending 100x more on it’s people than Banderastan does
Russia is considerably less corrupt and much bettern run than Ukraine
Millions of Soviets killed as POW’s by the scumbag Germans in a very short space of time, France giving no resistance to fight the Germans, how the war in Finland went, starvation,torture, complete uncertainty over how the British and Americans would act…take your pick
Vlasov’s army did assist the Czech uprising in Prague in early May 1945. Yeah, you get that right, May 5 precisely. Czechs procrastinated until the last week of the war to choose a side. It worked for them beautifully – they had the lowest percentage casualties among all countries east of Germany.
Vlasov’s army for 2-3 days fought the die-hard Germans around Prague, mostly SS and fanatical Sudeten Germans. They most likely saved Prague from massive casualties and the plan to blow up large parts of it. It has always been appreciated by the locals, but it couldn’t save them from the Soviet wrath.
Prague was almost completely peaceful during the war, one of the more tranquil parts of Europe in 1939-45. Then suddenly in the first few days of May 1945 everybody found a gun, militias popped up, random shooting, large armies were everywhere: local militias, Wehrmacht and SS, Red Army, Vlasov, even Americans marginally. It was a few days deadly circus. Then it was over. Too bad for the Vlasov soldiers that nuance was not part of the zeitgeist and they were on the wrong side for too long. But people around Prague still remember Vlasov soldiers fondly – they did the right thing at the end.
There were collaborators, including some Crimean Tatars, some North Caucasus people, some Cossacks from Don, etc. Likely a few hundred thousand total. More than that, if one counts Waffen SS divisions from Western Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, and several bandit outfits, like OUN-UPA. The combat worth of all of these was as close to zero as makes no difference. They were all “heroes” against unarmed women and children (including Jews), but when they met the Red Army, they folded very quickly. For example, when Germans out of desperation sent Ukrainian Waffen SS division Galitchina (Officially 14th Waffen Grenadier division of the SS, or 1st Galician, or Galizische in German) to the front, it did not last more than a day against the Red Army, after which it was sent back for reorganization, and was never reorganized.
There is black humor joke about a Ukrainian veteran of Waffen SS division Galitchina, who was asked to advise modern Ukrainian soldiers. He says:
– I can give you only one advice: saw off the front sights of your machine guns.
The commander says:
– What do you mean?
The guy answers:
– When the Red Army solders captured us, one took my machine gun, stuck it up my rear end, and turned. So, my advice to you is, saw off the front sights of your guns.
However, as to the numbers of anti-Nazi guerilla fighters, among other things it reflects the terrain. Belarus is covered with forests, where the guerilla fighters hid, whereas most of Ukraine is steppe.
Wiki’s source is an Osprey Publishing booklet which itself cites no source for the “25% of the Sixth Army” claim. It’s garbage, do not base your arguments on Wikipedia.
Manfred Kehrig in Stalingrad Analyse und Dokumentation Einer Schlacht on pages 662-663 lists some 38,747 Hiwis serving with German troops at Stalingrad on November 16. It is important to note that there is no distinction made here between those who were fighting and those who were serving only as laborers. Total strength of the Sixth Army when it was surrounded was about 250,000 (this is not counting the hundreds of thousands of men meat-grindered away before that). The Hiwi fraction of the total force is therefore smaller than Wiki states, and it remains unsupported as to what fraction of them were actually serving as “front line” troops.
The fact that so many of them were still around that late in the battle further suggests that most of them were not front line fighting troops (or else they would have suffered casualties previously on par with those of the Germans).
Not disputing what you are saying, but I always felt that the Czechs were significantly more disgusted with the Nazis from 38-45, than they were with 44 years of Soviet rule……you can see and feel this even today , officially and from the people
No:
More like he sensed the USSR’s possible defeat, in conjunction with hoping to get the best deal in the event of that occurrence, by seeing that not all Germans were obsessively anti-Russian. Familiarize yourself with Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt.
Also recall (if I’m not mistaken) Goebbels saying in his memoirs on how German policy was towards Vlasov. As previously noted at this thread, Vlasov’s pro-Russian comments got him in some hot water with the Nazi hierarchy. In Nazi captivity, he didn’t come close to verbally crapping on Russia like some of the Russians regularly appearing in Western mass media.
As for Vlasov’s Soviet past, people can change. Denikin to my knowledge never demeaned Vlasov and vice versa.
Wiki is the lazy man’s history. See the bibliography in comment 37 at this thread.
Should be:
Also recall (if I’m not mistaken) Goebbels saying in his memoirs on how German policy towards Vlasov was (undercutting him) wrong.
Are you arguing whether it was 25% or 15%? Here is a discussion that seems to be civil by some history aficionados who do come across as having an axe to grind like some people here. The number might be higher than what you claim because some Hiwis were attached to “Zugeteilte Einheiten”.
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=150515&start=120
I cited wiki to point out that Hiwis were in combat units. That’s all.
There are different opinions among Czechs, and the distribution of their opinions changes all the time. However, Czechs certainly did not distinguish themselves during WWII. There is black humor joke about that.
Russian, Serbian, and Czech guerilla fighters meet after WWII.
Russian guerilla fighter says:
– I remember how we blew up rails to derail German trains…
Serbian guerilla fighter says:
– I remember how we ambushed and shot German soldiers…
Czech guerilla fighter says:
– I don’t even understand what you are talking about. During the war all these things were strictly prohibited.
Shot? Not likely. He’d be sent to a camp and then amnestied by Khrushchev in 1955. No one would’ve bothered him after that. Enough of these “wrong side” soldiers had survived into the modern times to march in regular SS veterans’ parades.
Clearly Czechs were smarter than Serbs, Poles or Russians. The latter three allowed themselves to be sucked in into the guerrilla warfare that lead to awful civilian losses. The actions of the fabulous Soviet or Yugoslav or Polish partisans did not shorten the war by one day but only lead to the campaign of reprisals and terror. London and Moscow which instigated the partisan movements bear equal responsibility with Germans for the destruction and civilian death. The real goal of these partisan movements was to keep the civilian populations in check because they were willing to cooperate with the occupier which understandable. Soviet partisans killed more civilians than they killed German soldiers.
Polish-Soviet border moved east after WWII. Stalin returned certain areas to Poland. A bad decision, in retrospect.
That’s true for most people. Although there is a small vocal minority mostly working for Western NGO’s and some artistic types in Prague who like to pretend otherwise.
WWII Nazi occupation was bad, but it wasn’t absolutely evil, people could live relatively normal lives. It was the long term future if Germans won that was scary: there were not going to be any Czechs in that future.
Soviets only occupied Czechoslovakia for 21 years: 1968-89. After WWII, Red Army left within months and Czechoslovakia was ruled by local communist/leftist who were very loyal to Moscow, but relatively independent. Communists won in a free election in 1946 – one of those facts that doesn’t fit Western narratives, so it is constantly relativised or forgotten.
Sorry to disappoint, but your last sentence is simply untrue.
In general, your advice reminds me of another black humor joke:
– What should you do when you are being raped?
– Relax and try to enjoy it.
The usual nonsensical Sovok fairytales.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)#Brody
On 13 July, Soviet forces under the command of Marshal Ivan Konev launched their attack. By the next day, they routed a German division to the north of the 13th Corps and swept back an attempted German counterattack. On 15 July, the 1st and 8th Panzer Divisions along with the Galicia Division bore the brunt of a fierce assault by the Soviet Second Air Army, who in only a five-hour period flew 3,288 aircraft sorties and dropped 102 tons of bombs on them as they attempted a counterattack.[19] On 18 July, the division’s Field Replacement Battalion was destroyed with its remnants fleeing west, whilst the remainder of 13th Corps, consisting of over 30,000 German and Ukrainian soldiers, was surrounded by the Soviets within the Brody pocket.[18]
Within the pocket, the Galician troops were tasked with defending the eastern perimeter near the castle and town of Pidhirtsy and Olesko.[18] The Soviets sought to collapse the Brody pocket by focusing their attack of what they perceived to be its weakest point, the relatively inexperienced Galician Division, and on 19 July attacked.[18] The 29th and 30th regiments of the division, supported by the division’s artillery regiment, put up unexpectedly fierce resistance. Pidhirtsy changed hands several times before the Galicians were finally overwhelmed by the late afternoon, and at Olesko a major Soviet attack using T-34 tanks was repulsed by the division’s Fusilier and Engineer battalions.[18]
On 20 July, the German divisions within the pocket attempted a breakout which failed despite early successes.[18] The Division’s 31st regiment was destroyed in fighting. A second German breakout attempt that began at 1:00 am on 21 July ended in failure. ten miles (16 kilometres) to the west of the pocket, however, a German Panzergrenadier Regiment broke through Soviet lines and briefly established contact with the Brody pocket, resulting in the rescue of approximately 3,400 soldiers, including approximately 400 Galicians, before being repulsed.[18] By the end of that day, in the face of overwhelming Soviet attacks, the 14th Division as a whole disintegrated.[18] Its German commander, Fritz Freitag, resigned his command and decreed that everyone would be on his own during the breakout. He and his staff formed their own battle group and headed south, abandoning the division.[18] Some Ukrainian assault groups remained intact, others joined German units, and others fled or melted away. The Ukrainian 14th SS Fusilier battalion, which at this point had also largely disintegrated, came to form the rearguard of what was left of the entire 13th Corps. Holding the town of Bilyi Kamin, it enabled units or stragglers to escape to the south and was able to withstand several Soviet attempts to overwhelm it. By the evening of 21 July, it remained the only intact unit north of the Bug River.[18]
In the early morning of 22 July, the 14th Fusilier battalion abandoned Bilye Kamin. The Brody pocket was now only 4 to 5 miles (6.4–8.0 kilometres) long and wide. The German and Galician soldiers were instructed to attack with everything they had by moving forward until they broke through or were destroyed.[18] Fighting was fierce and desperate. The German and Ukrainian soldiers surging south were able to overwhelm the Soviet 91st Independent Tank Brigade “Proskurov” and its infantry support, and to escape by the hundreds. The remaining pocket collapsed by the evening of 22 July.[18]
::::::::::::
From 1 April until the end of the war, with a strength of 14,000 combat troops and 8,000 soldiers in a Training and Replacement Regiment, the division fought against the Red Army in the region of Graz in Austria[27] where in early April it seized the castle and village of Gleichenberg from Soviet forces (including elite Soviet airborne troops from the 3rd Guards Airborne Division) during a counterattack and on 15 April repulsed a Soviet counterattack. The division at this time maintained a 13-km front.[11][28]… Due to his performance during the battles surrounding Gleichenberg, Waffen-Obersturmführer Ostap Czuczkewycz was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st class.
Would any of this even matter if Hitler had followed Guderian’s advice and the Germans had taken Moscow in the autumn of 1941?
Collaboration is often that magic moment where avarice meets opportunity.
Czechs have had a reputation of not fighting like others. On this point, Poland has been used as a contrast. That said, Czechs weren’t happy with Germany during WW II. Vlasov’s forces were well received in Prague as was the Red Army when it initially entered into that city.
The events of 1948 and 1968 led to a decrease of pro-Russian sympathy among Czechs. Anti-Russian sentiment in Czechia is still not as bad as some other areas. Jaromir Jagr had no problems playing in Russia, while wearing his famed number 68, commemorating the Prague Spring. In turn, Russians en masse weren’t offended with Jagr.
Poland lost territory with rebellious Ukrainians, while gaining some valuable land that belonged to Germany. In turn, that Soviet move made it more popular with pro-Soviet Ukes – in addition to reuniting territory which comprised the Rus entity.
George Kenney, a U.S. foreign service officer who resigned from the State Department in 1992 to protest U.S. policy toward the crisis in Yugoslavia, told me recently that the full-throated embrace of military violence is the fastest, surest way for the best and brightest to get ahead in Washington, and that their delusive faith in military violence as a humanitarian salve cannot be disentangled from their cynical careerism
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/09/16/foggy-bottom-and-the-fog-of-war/diplomats-have-been-dropping-their-pens-and-waving-guns
Madeleine Albright, when serving as President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, asked Colin Powell, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”–
What question would a Nazi pose a to the post Nuremberg USA/UK political aspirants of today ?
This is complete nonsense (which is typical for Wikipedia).
Here’s from an interview with historian Alexei Isaev, who researched the battle of Stalingrad using German documents: https://www.kp.by/daily/26728.3/3753325/
“ British historian Anthony bivor in his book” Stalingrad ” argues that during the battle of the Volga on the side of German troops fought more than 50 thousand Soviet citizens.
Isaev – Such number: 50 thousand-isn’t confirmed at all by the German documents. In documents of the 6th army is 20 thousand so-called Hivi. These are people who were captured and doing dirty work in the German troops. They were unarmed, they built, they moved weights, but they didn’t fight. And there was also a rear part of the police of the Ukrainians (collaborators). But it is several tens, at most hundreds people.
There is a legend about the division “Stumpfeld”, which allegedly consisted of Russian. But this nonsense — it was a division assembled from the Germans…. They were recruited from rear units in Rostov and other places.”
He’s the only one wearing glasses, and the only one staring at you. He stands out.
At the time, Kenney followed that route, with his resignation taking the neolib/neocon slant that the US should do more in the form of Serb bashing.
After shifting course, Kenney was subjected to personal attacks. His shift is in the better late than never category.
IMO, it’s better to support those who got it right from the get go.
Out of curiosity, how many troops would be needed to capture Moscow? In what amount of time?
I am just looking at the fact that a significantly smaller city of Stalingrad successfuly swallowed up an entire army, the 6th.
So how would Germans fare against Soviets in a much larger city with extensive sewer and metro system?
Yugoslav partisan actions are a total myth and result of thorough propaganda.
The actual relevant war contribution was done by JVuO, Chetniks, commiting sabotages from 1941 to 1943 on the main logistical route to Greece and Mediterranean and mining/smelting operations (Bor copper facility produced almost 30% of Reich copper for example), in face of 100-for-1 reprisals.
The three biggest “Yugoslav partisan” actions were three desperate escapes by Tito and his scum from German/Croat attempts at eradicating them. Naturally, accompanied by atrocious losses, something like 20x that of the Axis forces involved.
There was widespread opposition to London-ordered acts of sabotage and resistance among Chetniks/Yugoslav Army remnant after severe German reprisals were instituted. This, combined with the fact of British ultimatum to Yugoslavia in January 1941, over time led to the decision to stop active resistance against Germans to avoid huge civilian suffering. For example, the aftermath of 1941 Užice uprising was a total of 70 000 Serbs killed.
Yugocommunists, being dominated by non-Serbs, had no qualms about losses to civilians and fighting cadre. Until the end of 1943 the Partisans were 95+% Serbs, yet the goals of Yugocommunists were dismemberment of Serbia, Serbian rule and Serbian nation, as outlined in pre-war CPY/KPJ congresses in Vienna(!) and Dresden(!) and newspapers/proclamations. The most indicative is the fact that Yugocommunists actively sabogated the resistance to Nazis and Fascists in April 1941 war, and greeted the invading armies. Not even the institution of racial laws and first mass crimes had any impact, the symbolic decision to “start resistance” came only after Germans invaded USSR, on June 22nd 1941.
The desperate people fleeing Ustashe knives and camps didn’t really have much choice, apart from Dalmatia/Italian zone, where they joined VMAC, anti-communist militia organised by Italians.
Good examples. Guerrilla warfare is awful and always leads to horrors. And it is always based on lies. It is never what is portrayed in propaganda of either side. Yugoslavia is a good example of it. Nevertheless the myth persists and many Russian commenters here are unable to face the fact that their whole lives they were told false unbalanced stories. People love stories of heroism and sacrifice. They often are needed and can help sustain culture but also they lead to a serious pathology because they live in a fog without a clear visions of reality. Then ones becomes an easy subject of manipulation. It is very hard to snap out from it.
They had orders form Moscow. The same was happening in Poland and France before June 22, 1941. Cases of communists working hand in hand with Gestapo are known but obviously they were retconned form history after the USSR was forced by Hitler to be on the good side.
Czechs in the Protectorate are for me a great example of people who managed to make a right decision and avoid being sucked up into the bloody game of children playing the bloody game of cowboys and Indians and running and hiding in the woods. Moscow partisan warfare in Russian and Belarus is responsible for the awful civilian losses there.
Sure you won’t mind docunetig the link betweenGeorge Kenney and the neocon.
BTW Gen Zinnie was openly angry disgusted with the neocon-Israeli efforts to get US in the war against Iraq but he nonetheless still decided to support the sanitization of MEK, long after the disaster of Iraq war were evident .
Will anybody from Obama a or Bush 2 cabinet would ever admit of doing the most horrendous things ever on earth since the demise of the practices of burning the witches or the slaves at the stakes ?
it reflects the terrain. Belarus is covered with forests, where the guerilla fighters hid, whereas most of Ukraine is steppe.
Thanks, this is certainly a mitigating factor. Do we know if all the partisans in the Belarus forests were Belarusians, or did other partisans make their way there? If western Ukrainians could make their way to Belarus, I think “true” partisans would have gone.
Thanks, a good informative post.
I guess all that remains for us innocent bystanders is to decide whether Galicians are “real” Ukrainians.
Thanks to you and @inertial for answering my questions.
“I may not be wiser, but I’m better informed”
Because a lot of local population was Polish, there was substantial Polish AK partisan activity there (including my grandfather). They were however attacked by Soviets; their usual tactic was to invite Poles for talks about cooperation, then arrest or kill the leaders (e.g. case of Miłaszewski in Naliboki forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kacper_Mi%C5%82aszewski) and leave the rest a choice between joining glorious SOviet partisans or die.
If memory serves, Denikin and quite a few big shots among White Russians refused to serve Hitler on the grounds that they don’t fight against their own country. That shows that they had honor, in contrast to Vlasov.
Quite so, any acquaintance with German memoirs will dispel the idea that Hiwis were part of the fighting force.
Thanks, that Stalin was a treacherous one. I read that he even shot the defecting German communists who deserted and warned them about Barbarossa. Apparently there was no hint of loyalty in the man.
The Polish/Russian divide seems truly to be a bridge too far. AFAIK the Poles used to play at being kangz and nobles, so it comes around.
It would be rather hard to find an actual Russian nationalist who “has no truck with either liberalism or Stalinism”. Certainly people who agitate against “Kremlins” in the name of “honest elections”, Hajnalcel values and becoming like the “civilised west” don’t fit that description for one reason, and the great mass of patriots, being pretty comfortable with Stalinism, don’t fit it for the opposite reason. So there is a “no true Scotsman” flavour to the definition.
It is not necessary to read tales
Aw, mel, say it ain’t so. I thought you were a straight-shooter.
C’mon, Russian elections are a joke! You don’t need to be a liberal to demand honest ones.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/electoral-fraud-in-primorye/
These are people debating a head count of how many there were (which remains unresolved). They aren’t talking about whether or not the Hiwi served as combat soldiers and have no sources which support that they did – while Melanf has provided you one that says they did not.
This is not being pedantic, this is debating a substantive point. Let me make that clear with another example. There were 150,000 women who served in the US Army’s Women’s Auxiliary Corps, doing various logistical tasks.
Now what if I factored that in to the total of how many men served in the US Army during the war and then used that figure to assert that “women were X% of the US Army’s combat strength in World War II?”
Do you not think that my statement would be misleading?
There is an important difference – women in the American army served really voluntarily. Khivi were slaves who were forced to work under threat of death. The analogue of Khivi is Korean and Chinese girls who were mobilized for Japanese army brothels. As for the soldiers of the Vlasov army, they were recruited in concentration camps, where the systematic extermination of Soviet prisoners of war was carried out. If the Germans had created a ” Jewish liberation army “and recruited” volunteers ” from Auschwitz, it would undoubtedly have turned out that hundreds of thousands of Jewish volunteers wanted to fight for Hitler.
Welcome to the club! The US elections are a farce.
More importantly, public opinion appears to have some influence on Russian and Chinese elites, whereas the US elites don’t give a hoot. When you start talking about democracy, well-informed commenters chime in saying that according to the US Constitution the country is a republic (i.e., not a monarchy), not a democracy. Indeed, the electoral college was created by the Founding Fathers because they did not think that the populace can be trusted to elect such an important figure as President. Case closed.
‘…as much as 10% of all Soviet citizens who bore arms in WW2 fought on Hitler’s side…’
This is relevant to something that has occurred to me.
If one considers the environment in the Western Soviet Union during the war years, the motive for serving with the Germans becomes obvious.
Being in German uniform was probably your best bet. You certainly wouldn’t want to be in a Soviet uniform — the Red Army was fantastically profligate with the lives of its soldiers. Remaining a civilian merely exposed you to starvation when one side or the other made off with the food supply, or led to your conscription either as slave labor for the Germans or as cannon fodder for either the partisans or the regular Red Army.
That left joining the Germans; usually a regular food supply and a military leadership that preferred to preserve the lives of its troops. Ironically, serving in the ranks of a German infantry division may have been one of the safer places to be in the war years in the Western Soviet Union.
As for those who would criticize the choice — have you ever been in a position where your life was in very real jeopardy? If so, did you deliberately choose a course of action that increased the odds that you would be killed?
Another irony is that we’ll never know the extent of such participation; Hitler had banned it, so the number of Russians in the ranks of the Wehrmacht was camouflaged. However, one starts to get a revised image of a German infantry division circa 1943-1944; not simply a mass of uniform German manhood in Feldgrau but perhaps more of a gypsy caravan of men, women, and maybe even children of varying nationalities, uniformed to varying degrees and all moving together around their best guarantee of surviving the immediate future; that military unit and its place in the German supply network.
Just a thought. Among other things, it might explain the persisting combat value of what were at least officially very under-strength German units. If much of their personnel were off the books, so to speak, then they would have had a greater combat value than the official numbers would imply.
Kenney himself acknowledged being misled when he resigned from his government position on the premise that the US wasn’t doing enough in former Yugo, when the 1990s war there first broke out. At the time, that position of his had the Serbs pegged as the overwhelming bad guy – meshing with the neocon/neolib spin.
‘…Isaev – Such number: 50 thousand-isn’t confirmed at all by the German documents. In documents of the 6th army is 20 thousand so-called Hivi…’
The difficulty with this line of argument is that Hitler has explicitly forbade the use of Russians as combat troops — so of course it wouldn’t be confirmed in documents. For a divisional commander to permiot such a document to come into being would be tantamount to saying ‘please court martial me for insubordination — here is my confession.’
Information I’ve seen suggests that by 1942, most German infantry divisions in at least Army Group South were already fielding a ‘tenth battalion’ made up of Russian Hiwis. It just couldn’t be officially admitted. These units generally seem to have been intended for rear area security, labor, etc — but necessity being what it is, were no doubt used in a front-line combat role when the need proved pressing enough.
…and who knows how matters progressed as the German need for manpower grew more desperate? It’s even worth noting that although Germans continued to surround and destroy Soviet units into late 1943, the prisoner hauls from those engagements became curiously small. There are a number of possible explanations for that — but just to speculate, perhaps it was becoming common practice simply to impress them into the empty slots in the ranks of the German units rounding them up?
This isn’t to call all this fact. It’s simply to note that we don’t really know — and of course both at the time and afterwards, most of those involved would have been concerned to suppress the story. No White Russian living quietly in Michigan was going to write From the Caucasus to the Oder: my Career with the German __th Infantry Division.
Yes and no to this excerpt:
Denikin and most (not all) of the exiled White Russians did such. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia gave kudos to Denikin on that matter. However, Denikin also acknowledged the complexity Vlasov and his forces faced – in a way that fell short of negatively attacking him and his forces in the manner as some have.
Vlasov and his forces ended up not doing much fighting against the Soviets, while contributing to the liberation of Prague against the Nazis. In the area of Pskov, I heard of a not fully verified account that there was an unofficial ceasefire arrangement between Vlasov’s forces and partisans fighting on the Soviet side.
In Nazi captivity, Vlasov exhibited a considerably greater pro-Russian sentiment than a good number of contemporary Russians utilized by Western mass media. Vlasov was hoping that a realist/Russophile element in Germany would win out. His forces being kept on hold for much of their existence is a tell all sign that the Nazi hierarchy were suspect about someone whose stated belief was that Stalin had retarded Russia’s progress, in conjunction with seeking a strong Russia.
In Nazi captivity, Vlasov exhibited a considerably greater pro-Russian sentiment than a good number of contemporary Russians utilized by Western mass media. If he were alive today, I’m sensing that Vlasov wouldn’t be so actively opposed to the present Russian government.
As is well known attempts by the Germans to use “Russians as combat troops” were made, but the result was a failure (see post 28 in this thread).
The information is quite at the level of news about Bigfoot and the planet Nibiru. You claim the majority of German divisions were ‘tenth battalion’ made up of Russian, however, in the documents (both German and Soviet) of these battalions no information. Soldiers need weapons, clothing, food – but all this is mysteriously not reflected in the documents. This is ridiculous.
The “impartial” western media does that all the time. When the Brits left Kabul in 1842 they had about 4,500 combatants and 12,000 camp followers – women, servants, cooks, porters and entrepreneurs supplying them. Yet the BBC will tell you that
Another anti-British liberal, William Dalrymple, makes an interesting point (in 2014) about Afghanistan. He’s not just anti-British, he’s anti-US too. We must be fair.
You may note that Obama didn’t withdraw, and four years on Trump shows no signs of it either.
(* were casualties really that high? What were they doing, wiping out entire rebel villages?)
Hiwis were not women and they were issued guns.
All fanatics are idiots and make incredible mistakes. On many occassions they are lucky , at the same time. Ukraina nazis killed soviet general Vatutin too, the defender of Stalingrad. They are beasts and no one like them .
‘…The information is quite at the level of news about Bigfoot and the planet Nibiru. You claim the majority of German divisions were ‘tenth battalion’ made up of Russian, however, in the documents (both German and Soviet) of these battalions no information. Soldiers need weapons, clothing, food – but all this is mysteriously not reflected in the documents. This is ridiculous.’
http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/Infanterie.htm
Scroll down to ‘VI. Osttruppen und Freiwilligenverbände’
You appear, from your posts here, to be an educated person. You know, some formal schooling, interests in history,society and such.
So, re that “good examples”, just a quick question, out of curiosity:
Do you believe in what “Epigon” stated in the comment 68?
Just “yes” or “no”.
It’s, sort of, re my interest in observing how much “Balkans affairs” are known outside of the region.
Thx in advance.
Heck, I’d come back from exile to America to turn a bunch of Obama libtards into swiss cheese if they somehow managed to gain control and execute millions of Christians and good people.
Not a simple choice but not a bad one either.
Kudos to the satanic Brits for turning brave Krassnoff over to the Soviets to be murdered, the insidious bastards.
I can’t verify everything and his numbers but I believe that the general picture is correct. The stories about fabulous and glorious partisans are mostly not true. They are responsible for unnecessary escalation that lead to cycle of reprisals. But they were communist and communists do not care for human life.
And what did they really fight for? They followed Stalin’s orders. But their efforts did not shorten the war. Balkans including Greece needed 7 divisions to police while on the Eastern Front Germany had 170 divisions deployed. Would 4% make much difference? Then after Italy bailed out in 1943 and Germany had to deploy more but not to fight the partisans because this more or less under control and they were mostly killing each other but to protect the Adriatic coast in case of Allies invasion.
On another thread I had a conversation on related issue with a Serbian.
https://www.unz.com/article/a-freedom-fighter-to-his-last-breath/#comment-2594358
That Stalin was the nearest thing to the Devil that we had in the last century. Yet we have some nut-cases like Israel Shamir arguing that he wasn’t so bad after all. Stalin has of course his admirers among those like me who simply can’t help but be seduced by the sheer scale of the evils that Stalin perpetrated, while managing to remaining master of the situation. But that does not mean that he was a misunderstood Russian nationalist as some of the bovines who comment here aver.
Any fool knows who thinks about the events surrounding June 22, 1941 would know that if there is any justice in the world, Stalin had to be strung up till dead, for his criminal actions in ordering the Red Army to stand down in the face of clear intelligence that the Germans were preparing to attack. The enormous, mind-blowing casualties that the Reds suffered in the initial months was all due primarily to the unpreparedness of the Red Army, which Stalin himself maintained on pain of death.
‘…Balkans including Greece needed 7 divisions to police while on the Eastern Front Germany had 170 divisions deployed…’
I’d add that the troops deployed in Yugoslavia and Greece tended to be security divisions or severely depleted units that needed time to absorb replacements in any case — so the diversion from the front was minimal. There were exceptions — but typically no more one or two divisions that could have been used at the front were diverted to fight partisans in Yugoslavia.
True, who are we to judge? They were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
‘… for his criminal actions in ordering the Red Army to stand down in the face of clear intelligence that the Germans were preparing to attack…’
Yes and no. One interesting point is that both Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and Stalin’s own aggressions in 1940 had been accompanied and preceded by a series of escalating demands. It’s been suggested that Stalin expected such preliminaries and couldn’t believe that Germany would simply attack out of the blue, with no ultimatums at all. He may have anticipated an interval before the actual assault that he didn’t get. No one dimmed the lights in the lobby to announce the curtain was about to go up.
A related thought is that Stalin simply wasn’t ready for war in 1941. The Red Army would have been far better prepared if hostilities could have been delayed until 1942. So Stalin may have been prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to appease Germany so as to gain the necessary time. In June 1941, that translated into doing nothing that Germany could possibly regard as a provocation.
While none of this excuses Stalin’s unreadiness, it may help to make it comprehensible. He assumed he would get a final warning he didn’t get, and in any case, he was determined to delay the outbreak of hostilities until he was better prepared.
‘…True, who are we to judge? They were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea…’
Indeed. It’s one reason I’m less than enthusiastic about these cases brought against elderly Ukrainians and such who were concentration camp guards or whatever. And the alternative was?
Often, the alternative was starving to death in a German P.O.W. pen. Perhaps they should be tried, but it’s hard not to reflect that the worst physical threat most of their judges have ever had to face was perhaps a short fist fight in junior high school. How can they be so certain in their self-righteousness?
Stalin’s game plan was to allow the French and Germans slug it out and then march in to pick up the pieces. In the event the French fell quickly in 1940. From then on his focus was to avoid war with Hitler, till as you say 1942 whereupon he would effect his own plans to invade Europe with a much better prepared Red Army. He was very clearly suspicious of the ‘imperialists’ such as Churchill who were warning him at every opportunity of Hitler’s intentions. He was a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ by catechism after all. Ironically Rudolf Hess’ ‘secret flight’ of May 10, 1941 probably sealed the deal for him – it convinced him that there was behind the scenes deal in the offing between the Brits and Germans. That pretty much doomed the 2.6 million Red Armymen who fell to the German mercies, as Stalin’s paranoid mind confirmed itself. Reading accounts such as this gives me some context to understand God in the Bible ‘hardening Pharoah’s heart…’, its just a way of the gods making mad those whom they wish to destroy.
Stalin was strategic genius, He took parts of Poland and added them to USSR and took parts of Germany which he then added to Poland. Basically he shifted Poland few hundred kilometers to the west.
The idea being that by adding German territory to Poland, he wanted to make them dependent on Russia for protecting those newly acquired German lands. Because there is no way the Polaks could defend those lands against Germany – if they ever decide to take back what was taken from them.
This idea would have worked, except for the fact that Stalin didn’t foresee the creation of NATO. But, as they say, nothing last forever, once NATO is gone, I would really like to see how the Polaks will manage to keep those German lands gifted to them by Stalin without begging Russia for help. Maybe reminding the Germans that they are Catholic and western will dissuade the Germans from whooping Poland’s a** and taking their land back – but I don’t think so.
Especially when Jewish lobbies like the ADL have to constantly wave the red flag to keep the troops in line. One generally does not see the, say the Russians or Vietnamese for example, carrying on and on about the crimes done to them. They have forgiven and forgotten. But not for those for whom the Amelakites are a convenient and constant presence.
This is a well-known formation created by the Germans (with whom the Germans suffered a General failure). About the mythical tenth battalion (Russian) in most of German divisions in your link has no information.
You should familiarize yourself with the topic before writing such phenomenal nonsense. Intelligence did not give any clear warnings. Just before the attack of the Germans, Stalin gave the red army an order to prepare for the attack. Just before the German attack, Stalin ordered the red army to prepare to repel the attack. Here is this order:
“Передаю приказ Наркомата обороны для немедленного исполнения:
Задача наших войск — не поддаваться ни на какие провокационные действия, могущие вызвать крупные осложнения.
Одновременно войскам Ленинградского, Прибалтийского, Западного, Киевского и Одесского военных округов быть в полной боевой готовности, встретить возможный внезапный удар немцев или их союзников.
ПРИКАЗЫВАЮ:
а) в течение ночи на 22 июня 1941 г. скрытно занять огневые точки укрепленных районов на государственной границе;
б) перед рассветом 22 июня 1941 г. рассредоточить по полевым аэродромам всю авиацию, в том числе и войсковую, тщательно ее замаскировать;
в) все части привести в боевую готовность. Войска держать рассредоточенно и замаскированно;
г) противовоздушную оборону привести в боевую готовность без дополнительного подъема приписного состава. Подготовить все мероприятия по затемнению городов и объектов;
д) никаких других мероприятий без особого распоряжения не проводить.
Тимошенко Жуков
Павлов Фоминых
Климовских”
Oh? Is that why he was not seen in public till one week later? Now being made of sterner stuff than mere flesh and blood, he recovered. But that does not change anything. All accounts, including the memoirs of those who were there are consistent in saying that Stalin criminally ordered the Army down. There may have been an order to retaliate in the event of German firing within the last one or two days, but no active preparations were to be undertaken and in the event did not make the slightest difference. I have read and thought more about these matters than was profitable since I was a boy in the 70s, so don’t try to talk down to me. I do not read Russian notwithstanding my name.
O.K.
Thx for the reply.
Let’s just say that we have different perceptions of most of that, leave it there, and move on.
Goble’s Twisted Take On Cossackia
Re: http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/10/when-cossackia-existed-in-northern-italy.html
It’s safe to say that the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn would’ve no problem with the following –
Anti-Russian propagandists like Paul Goble can’t deny that a Cossackia never existed on the territory of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Cossackia was very much a Nazi project, pathetically reignited by the anti-Russian Captive Nations Week, which in bigoted fashion blamed Russia/Russians for the evils of Communism. That kind of bigotry is more prone to getting accepted than the one holding Jews responsible for Communist repressions.
Overall, the Cossacks as a group have tended to identify with Russia.
An example of Goble’s anti-Russian bias which his factually off:
In the first months of 1945, the Cossack units were shifted from the German military to the command of the Vlasov forces, the anti-Soviet Russian forces and people whom many of the Cossacks despised.
The detailed works of Philip Longworth, Gerald Reitlinger, Sven Steenberg, Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt and Jorgan Thorwald, reveal that most of the WW II era anti-Soviet Cossack forces willingly accepted coming under the command of Vlasov. True, some of the older Cossacks like Peter Krasnov thought differently, believing Vlasov to be suspect on account of his Red Army background, going back to the Russian Civil War.
In any event, the Italian town of Tolmezzo for Cossacks is understandably nowhere near on par with what Jerusalem is for the Jews or Kosovo to the Serbs.
CIA official site review of What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa
Incidentally, Murphy was the CIA Head of station that the CIA’s counterintel (and Israel desk) chief JJ Angleton suspected of being a Soviet agent.
In their early careers all three were considered the most brilliant officers in their respective country’s army. Determination is the great requirement for a soldier. Von Bock, no theoretician he, always lectured cadets that dying for one’s country was the very highest honour, yet in front of Moscow he showed an sudden flash of real military genius.
If it’s true that Murphy was a Soviet agent, he could be trying to shift responsibility for the initial Soviet disaster away from Stalin.
Alternatively, “Stalin, the man who trusted no one” would likely be persuaded more by an account devious behavior (on the part of Hitler) since this was his own mode of operation.
The enemy had no intention of “exterminate[ing]” Soviet citizens. We don’t know how many Soviets chose the Germans over the Soviets, but the people that did side with the Germans had good reasons. From the time of the revolution until WW II millions of Soviets were murdered by their gov’t, which had a powerful Jewish influence and according to many people (including President Putin), a dominating Jewish influence and many Europeans, particularly east Europeans, were well aware of that Jewish influence. While others did not welcome Soviet troops, the Jews often did, making them stick out as traitors too. Besides the Latvians and Estonians, western Ukrainians and Byelorussians also often preferred the Germans to the murderous Jews, indeed the Germans were liberators of millions of people from a gov’t that was hostile to its own people. Consider that the same gov’t that banned Christianity also banned “anti-Semitism”.
Source : http://WWW.IHR.ORG
“As German forces advanced into the Soviet Union in 1941, many people welcomed the troops as liberators from Bolshevik tyranny. The welcome was especially warm in the Baltic countries, western Belarus and western Ukraine. As this four-minute video (no narration) shows, grateful people express appreciation for the troops who brought freedom from harsh Soviet rule, and restored ancient rights. German soldiers, as well as troops of German-allied nations, often helped local people repair homes and buildings, fix damaged infrastructure, and re-open churches that the Bolsheviks had shut down or destroyed.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg6mukX9EsQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Tyq_ymWd8
Where Germany may have failed was in appreciating and handling this warm welcome properly. The Soviets (again, with a lot of Jewish involvement) made partisan warfare a major part of their effort and Germans took revenge not only against Jews, who were known to be greatly involved, but other locals as well. This amy have turned those sympathetic to Germans against them, no doubt what the Soviets wanted.
Which part in particular triggered you? Seeing how you brought “belief” and “opinion” into the domain of historical facts.
Superb comment.:
It applies not only to guerilla warfare, but to unprovoked aggression in general. I know that because I’m an Amerikan (a subject of one of the most aggressive entities ever) and have been fed lies by political operatives all my life. Most of what my fellow Americans apparently believe about its wars are lies as well, and horrifically simplistic ones at that. What you say about Russians applies equally well to my fellow citizens as far as I can tell.
Thank you.
Btw, I love this phrase from the article,
Anyone aspiring to power ought to realize that they are, in the end, suckers and fools, and the principle applies to nations as well as individuals.
In that other thread you refer to you make the following statement:
Is this correct? Can you give a source?
Warning!
This article and comments are for entertainment only.
Due to high battle casualties, most German divisions were desperately short of personnel by 1942. They filled the gaps by recruiting Soviet Prisoners of War. Many of these “Hiwis” served in front line combat roles. 25% or more of some German divisions were composed of Hiwis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiwi_(volunteer)
As I said above, there are more vile cesspools than Wikipedia, but there are not many such cesspools in the world. You should (at least) read this discussion before repeating idiotic myths (which have already been referred to in this discussion)
Your comment is worth exactly what your moniker is, halfpenny. While there were Russian turncoats in German fighting troops (which the Red Army soldiers did not take as prisoners, shot on the spot instead, despite numerous orders), their number was relatively small. Rephrasing former British PM Disraeli, I can say that there are lies, damned lies, and Wikipedia. You can see this for yourself: edit any Wiki entry, add any BS, and then see it remain on the Wiki page.
watch how fast its reverted if you try to add something legit but less than flattering about a leftist politician
Yes, censorship is there, but censors don’t give a hoot about the truth, only about their favorite narrative. It’s exactly like in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia.
Pay no attention to my posts.
I read that comment of yours just to remind myself as to approach to WW2 in Balkans by a member of one of…ahm…. “interested” parties. You, for example, appear to be from “Chetnik” side.
Discussing that period, or any conflict period there, with your types is….let’s just say I prefer to do something else.
Feel free to resume educating people around here. If/when they buy it, all good. Free will and such.
So, basically, Himmler was right not to trust this guy?
Actually, I am ideologically against Chetniks, because they were Anglo puppets and Yugoslav ideology fighters. They supported March 27th coup, doomed Serbs, delivered them to Yugocommunism. Czechs and Slovaks played the WW2 best.
The notorious “Chetniks” were smaller units outside of Serbia, operating nominally as part of the JVuO, the original recognized Army of Government-in-Exile in London, but de facto independent. Some of those units were denounced, and some commanders even sentenced in absentia for collaboration or crimes.
Even they commited significantly smaller number of crimes. I can give you total numbers per state/ethnicity, and from Yugocommunist/Croat/Bosniak, in other words, antagonistic sources.
I don’t force anyone to buy anything, I just prefer sensible discussion using primary sources and data. One of my favourite works is dispelling propagandistic nonsense about Yugoslavia/Greece German operation saving USSR or moving the start of Barbarossa operation, for example.
Australia received a fair share of Ustashe in the last 70 years, but also Serb dissidents and refugees in 1990s.
On account that Vlasov had expressed the desire to see Stalin overthrown, for the purpose of seeking a stronger Russia – something that went against the aims of the Nazi hierarchy.
Meantime, there were some German Russophiles who sought a strong Russia that was united with Germany.
Bullshit:
There continues to be a considerable misunderstanding of his aims, in addition to him not being such a great topic when it comes to those associated with the history of Russia and the USSR.
You got me….hehe……
Was expecting the usual Chetnik reply. Or, you are one of the new breed, more, say, sophisticated? We’ll see. A test, if you don’t mind?
Say….had you been there, what party you would’ve joined in 1941 in Balkans? Plenty of them to choose from.
Am I mistaken a lot if I feel you’d prefer, say…..Serbian Volunteer Corps?
As for
I see.
As for:
Hehehe..”Ustashe” and “Serb dissidents and refugees”. I just have a feeling had a Croat written that it would’ve been “Croat dissidents and refugees” and “Chetniks”.
Anyway….you are correct about the former but not quite accurate about the later. Understandable.
From Wiki (yes, I know, but still):
My bold.
“In Nazi captivity, he exhibited a Russian patriotism much more so than the modern Russians who bash Russia in Western mass media.”
Most “Russians” in Western mass media are Jews who have a centuries-long ethnic hatred of Russians
I am a fan of Stojadinović and his politics.
My sympathies go to Bojović and Nedić, though the latter will never get the fair and just treatment, nor will his plight be publicly understood.
Serbia, due to geopolitical and diplomatic concerns, will never rehabilitate him (primarily due to Israel).
I despise Yugoslav ideology, Karađorđević dynasty, freemasonry (which ran rampant, along with pro-Anglican plants in Serb Orthodox Church) and present a tiny minority of Serbs in my views.
You missed the mark with Australia comment. Vast majority of Royalist Serbs ended in USA, UK and France. The numbers you quoted speak for themselves, a trinket compared to previously mentioned countries, where Chicago alone has 400 000 Serbs and Serb-descended people today. 1990s saw larger Australia emigration due to sanctions and war. Also, the wikiquote is problematic because only former VMAC “Chetniks” succeeded in escaping Yugoslavia. One mustn’t forget the fact that around 200 000 Serbs were taken to internment across Reich in the aftermath of April 1941 war. From Norway camps to German ones, but also to farms and mines (German farmers treated my family member well). So, even though they were often Royal Yugoslav Army officers, soldiers, or potential troublemakers for Germans (intellectuals, lawyers, doctors, nationalists), they couldn’t be part of wartime Chetnik resistance.
Furthermore, when I say dissidents, I mean 1990s anti-Milosević dissidents, closer to fifth column than nationalism, and actual refugees escaping Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo&Metohija conflicts. Just take a look at demography of those areas in 1990 and compare it to 2000.
Ironically, most of Serb diaspora lives in “eternal enemy” lands of Austria, Germany and USA today. Historically, Britain inflicted most damage to Serb national idea and interests.
I don’t think there are any male choirs that compare to the Russians.
This is electrifying, not just the musicianship, but the historical background.
And why the hell would YouTube quarantine this? Stalin and the USSR are both long dead. (I suppose I am naive. Once a commie, always a commie.)
O.K.
Good luck there. You have your work cut out for you.
And not in the lands of “eternal friends”, like Russia for example.
People, a?
I had a comment about it:
https://www.unz.com/article/a-freedom-fighter-to-his-last-breath/#comment-2594742
which about the tribal of Wehrmacht generals for crimes in Balkans. This is how the four ruled:
(1) Reprisals, executing hostages: “The tribunal also remarked that both the British Manual of Military Law and the U.S. Basic Field Manual (Rules of Land Warfare) permitted the taking of reprisals against a civilian population. (The British manual did not mention killing, but the US manual included killing as a possible reprisal.) Nevertheless, the tribunal still found most of the accused guilty on count 1 of the indictment because it considered the acts committed by the German troops to be in excess of the rules under which the tribunal considered hostage taking and reprisal killings lawful.”
(2) Executing guerrillas: “the partisan fighters in southeast Europe could not be considered lawful belligerents under Article 1,” “Consequently, no criminal responsibility attaches to the defendant List because of the execution of captured partisans.”
A Serb activist friend of mine said that in the US, wherever there’s a good sized population of Serbs, there’s also likely going to be a decent sized contingent of Croats and/or Albanians.
If Vlasov was merely an opportunist, this would explain his willingness to offer his services to the Germans when he was captured in 1942. But why 1944, when it was obvious the Germans would lose the war?
One should be discriminating in using any source of information. Apart from making some, possibly justified, charges that aspects of Wikipedia are watched over carefully with a view to re-editing anything against the party line, how would you rate Wikipedia in comparison with e.g. the BBC, PBS, Financial Times, Economist, Google search with several links…?
Contrast and compare Napoleon’s taking of Moscow with your hypothetical one.
Vlasov offered his services to the Germans in 1942, and in 1942 the betrayal of Vlasov was used in German propaganda.
in 1944 the Germans attempted to create a Pro-German Russian army (before 1944 the Germans rightly believed such a project is useless). Of course, such a project ended in failure.
Stalin was happy for Soviet pows to be badly treated as he considered anyone who surrendered to be a traitor to the USSR. Hitler offered to treat captured Red Army soldiers according to the Geneva Convention if Stalin would do the same for German prisoners. Stalin refused. Read the following article by Russian author Yuri Teplyakov – https://codoh.com/library/document/2526/ See also – https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7627
It is highly probable that he was helping.
One of the unsung crimes of the National Socialist regime is the deliberate failure to evacuate civilians in time.
This merits highlighting.
Would that Polish patriots gave some serious thought to the phenomenon as well.
That’s bullshit.
This is a blatant lie
A very interesting book about the attraction of communism to (former) aristocracy in E Europe, Europe here defined as the continent that ends in the Ural mountain, is
Czeslaw Milosz, ‘West und Östliches Gelände’, 1986 Munchen, (Rodzinna Europa, 1959)
The essence of what Milosz writes is that these young former aristocats, who had no experience with commercial and free W European countries, could not envisage such a society.
So they moved from one totalitarian society to another.
Milosz in the end broke with communism, gave up his post of ambassador.
The society he grew up in is well described in
Czeslaw Milosz, ‘Tal der Issa’, Köln, 1961
you’re comparing cat sh1t to rat sh1t
Exactly right! Although Google search, despite their best censorship efforts, is somewhat better: among choices in the 20-s and 30-s there are sites telling the truth (or at least part of it). The first 10-20 are usually libtard BS, like the BBC, PBS, FT, the Economist, NYT, WP, and the rest of hawkers of propaganda and fake news.
You should give some serious thought to sterilising yourself before you can pass on your moronic genes
‘Especially when Jewish lobbies like the ADL have to constantly wave the red flag to keep the troops in line. One generally does not see the, say the Russians or Vietnamese for example, carrying on and on about the crimes done to them. They have forgiven and forgotten. But not for those for whom the Amelakites are a convenient and constant presence.’
I think that’s an excellent point.
However, to be fair to Jewry, one needs to understand that in modern America, where only a minority of Jews take their religion seriously, and where such identities as ‘Jewish’ pale against the great black/white/Hispanic racial divisions, ‘Jew’ as a meaningful identity is rapidly evaporating.
They are left with an often reluctant identification with a rather nasty little neo-Nazi state in the Levant, and with the memory of the Holocaust. That last is about the only shared cultural element they have left that they can feel good about. Toss it away, and Jewishness ceases to have much meaning at all.
‘Contrast and compare Napoleon’s taking of Moscow with your hypothetical one.’
It can’t of course be proven, but my own belief is that if Hitler had simply blitzed straight through and taken Moscow at some point in September (and I think the Germans could have done that), the Soviet state would have collapsed.
It’s worth pointing out that everyone — not just the Germans, but the British and Americans as well — fully expected Russia to fold up and collapse in the Summer of 1940, and I think that if Hitler hadn’t conceived his diversion to Kiev, it would have.
The Soviet state in 1941 wasn’t Tsarist Russia in 1812. It was a far more fragile and far less popular entity, dependent both on the command and communication net centered on Moscow and on the ability to terrify anyone who even thought of defying it. Moscow falls without the German advance ever having been even appreciably slowed, and it’s all over for the Bolsheviks. Everyone starts thinking about ol’ number one.
Hahahahahaha……….oh man….
I mean…don’t know what to say.
Wow…..
‘This is a well-known formation created by the Germans (with whom the Germans suffered a General failure). ‘
! Your reply is a non-sequitur. I can only conclude you didn’t go to the link. You don’t seem to have even read the title.
English bombed the hell out of Romanian Plosty oilfields. It was in the middle of winter.
Germans did not have enough fuel to reach Baku. Even if they would take Stalingrad
Germans had no chance.
Also when Stalin woke up from his drunken stupor after the first couple of weeks after the German attack, the first speech that he made, he addressed the Russians as: “Brothers and sisters”, and scared the crap out of the Russians, who thought – holly cow, we are even in a bigger trouble than we thought we were, he has never called us brothers and sisters before.
Anyhow, I think it was Tolstoy who once compared Balkan style patriotism to the Russian one. He said that people from the Balkans get patriotic very quickly (being hotheads, I guess). He said that in comparison, Russian patriotism is slow to awaken, but once it gets going, it doesn’t extinguish. Stalin played on this and was able to get the Russian patriotism going, the rest was just a matter of time.
‘Hahahahahaha……….oh man….
I mean…don’t know what to say.
Wow…..’
Look at a map. By July 16th — less than four weeks after the start of the campaign — the Germans were in Smolensk. That’s two-thirds of the way to Moscow.
There’s a lot more to be said on the subject, but the campaign was eminently winnable for the Germans — but only if they moved fast and went straight for the jugular.
Confused.
You appear to be interested in the topic, compose your posts well, and are civil in disagreements.
And yet……
It is. Haha….but that one third left……
True..true.
There is much more to be said about “moving fast”, “going for the jugular” etc. let lone “eminently winnable”.
I get the fascination of the topic to some people, but, it’s been done ad nauseam by much smarter people than anybody on this site. Tons of material.
I’ll pass the opportunity to repeat some of it, again, here.
not really
what it most likely showed is that his advisors and the intel community were hopeful or wanted him to be and don’t be surprised if his commie-riddled administration was painting an overly optimistic picture of the situation in Russia
‘…I get the fascination of the topic to some people, but, it’s been done ad nauseam by much smarter people than anybody on this site. Tons of material.
I’ll pass the opportunity to repeat some of it, again, here.’
I’m aware of the material; I’m less than impressed.
For one, there is a school of historians who will inflexibly insist that everything that in fact happened therefore had to happen — as if the fact that a tossed coin comes up heads proves that it had to come up heads.
For another, the Germans went down to Kiev, came back, then attacked a Red Army before Moscow that had had been gifted another two months to rebuild itself and retrain — and still went through it like a knife through butter.
For a third, most of the supposedly crippling supply difficulties, etc simply don’t appear in the diaries and writings of the generals concerned: Halder, Bock, Hoth, Guderian. These were professionals — and good ones. If they thought they could do it, surely it’s at least possible they in fact could have?
” – Roosevelt didn’t. He was fairly certain that the Russians will prevail – shows that he was smart. ”
FDR at the time knew that Japan would attack the USA, his oil and steel boycott.
He then would have the attack that would make it possible for him to wage war on Germany in the open, in the Atlantic the USA fleet already was at war, and the LendLease law was ready to be implemented, what would make it possible for him to provide the USSR with anything it needed, but also Great Britain.
FDR was smart, indeed, very few at the time understood what he was doing.
Even the America First Committee was surprised, shocked, Lindbergh got a phone call on Pearl Harbour day ‘he got us in through the back door’.
If you don’t think that Stalin considered soldiers who surrendered to be traitors then go ahead and refute the following article by Yuri Teplyakov – https://codoh.com/library/document/2526/
Hitler’s offer to treat Red Army pows according to the Geneva Convention if Stalin did the same for German pows is on the diplomatic record. Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t mean it is a lie.
https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7627
Robespierre fell because he spent all money building roads trying to connect all cities to Paris.
Russian Communist were all aware of it so they did have certain aversion to building roads.
German blitzkrieg did not work in Russia. Rain changed the roads to mud. Trucks and Tanks get stuck in mud.
The detailed strategies of German army was changing daily. It was for Germans unexpected setback.
Stalin Had time to move all armament industry beyond Ural mountains. Russian armament industry outperformed Germans, and soon Russians had four times firepower of Germans.
Another thing was that Germans had precise guns with tiny tolerances these guns did tend to jam in Russian cold.
Many Czechs were pro-German or at the very least, not the German haters the lying allies have talked about for almost 100 years. There had never been a country called Czechoslovakia until the allies stole Bohemia and Moravia, including the Austrian city Prague from Austria to create Czechoslovakia. There was never any vote to see how many people wanted a new country. The 3 million Germans living there would have definitely voted against the new state, as would at least some and perhaps many Czechs. The new state was created to weaken, actually destroy Austria by other counbtries jealousy of Germany’s (including their Austrian brothers) world supremacy in virtually everything.
“1942 –
At a mass meeting in Prague, 200,000 Czechs pledge loyalty to their homeland and to the German Reich. Czech Minister Emanuel Moravec addresses the large rally on July 3, 1942, on Wenceslas Square, near the historic statute of St. Wenceslas. He concludes with an expression of confidence in a better future for the Czech people, and of support for the “new Europe,” the “National Socialist revolution,” “our leader, Adolf Hitler,” and “our state president, Dr. Hacha.” Emil Hacha, head of the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia government is present, along with many other officials. The meeting concludes with the crowd singing the Czech national hymn. Three minute newsreel clip, with Czech naration.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wd8CqkKNjk&bpctr=1540913639
” Soviet union was fragile” lol.
Do not forget about Soviet people fighting. Were they just give up like French and Brits no amount of mud and cold would prevent germans from winning. And our guys were feeling cold just as germans did. They were suffering from rasputica too.
‘” Soviet union was fragile” lol.’
Of course it was fragile. Look at the massive defections of just about every ethnic minority in the country: all three of the Baltic peoples, the Ukrainians, the Cossacks, the peoples of the Caucasus. The Germans were able to form a whole infantry division (the 162nd) from Turkmenian prisoners alone.
Then there was the morale of the Russian troops themselves. Ever notice something about Stalin’s July 1942 ‘not one step back’ order?
The troops kept retreating anyway. The Russian withdrawal in the summer of 1942 wasn’t some brilliant strategy; their soldiers simply would not fight.
As it was, the Soviet Union came damned close to collapsing. Had the Germans exploited that fragility, had they gone straight for Moscow and taken it quickly, I find the notion that the Soviet state would have survived distinctly improbable.
‘Do not forget about Soviet people fighting. Were they just give up like French and Brits no amount of mud and cold would prevent germans from winning…’
I’m curious what your example of the British giving up would be.
Also, while French conduct was less edifying, I’ll point out that the Germans did advance almost effortlessly as far as Smolensk. Map out where that would put them in France.
‘FDR at the time knew that Japan would attack the USA, his oil and steel boycott.
He then would have the attack that would make it possible for him to wage war on Germany in the open, in the Atlantic the USA fleet already was at war, and the LendLease law was ready to be implemented, what would make it possible for him to provide the USSR with anything it needed, but also Great Britain.’
We were sending aid to Russia before Pearl Harbor. As soon as the Germans attacked, we went to the Russians: ‘what do you need? How can we help?’
I believe the first agreement was signed in September 1941.
Actually, Pearl Harbor could have led to an entirely undesirable outcome. Absent Germany being so good as to declare war on us, it would have been hard to argue against a ‘Japan first’ strategy — which was something Admiral King, among others, was advocating in any case.
You are right. Off-course. (And many died. Many more than Germans.)
‘– Evacuating from Dunkirk maybe?’
On the part of the commander — Lord Gort — the decision to withdraw to Dunkirk was one of the more morally courageous choices on record. He could rather easily have continued to pretend the French ‘plans’ were actually going to come to fruition and gone along with the march to destruction. Instead, he realized ‘the time to get out is now,’ and acted on that realization.
On the part of the troops, while Rundstedt/Hitler’s halt order was certainly one half of their salvation, the other half was the persistent, very stubborn resistance they offered first to Bock’s thrusts, and then to the more general German attack that opened up once the Germans realized the cat was getting out of the bag.
Without wishing to denigrate the French, the Germans immediately noticed the difference when they encountered British troops — even second-line, under-equipped territorials sent over to France as labor and to complete training. The British fought hard, and would neither retreat nor surrender until they had literally no choice.
‘That aerial ballet that the Germans and the British performed over GB looked more like gay courting than a real war. ‘
I’m not sure what would meet your apparent expectations.
Less publicized than the Battle of Britain proper was the daylight bombing campaign the British attempted to conduct in 1940-1941.
Casualties were spectacular. One replacement recalls arriving at his squadron and being advised not to bother unpacking: ‘you won’t be around that long.’ Another time, a squadron sent out eleven Blenheims on a strike against an airfield in Scandinavia.
Lord Haw-Haw came on and said all eleven had been shot down: seven by flak and four by fighters. Clearly, an exaggeration…
But time passed, and no one came back. Would you say these Britons weren’t fighting hard enough?
Although she was born in Pasadena in 1926, my mother wound up spending the war years in Britain. She didn’t make herself out to be a martyr, but her recollections hardly suggest a people that weren’t fighting very, very hard. She recalled smuggling canned goods back to her school; everyone was hungry, you see. Then there were summers; working in the fields with German and Italian POW’s (the Germans worked hard; the Italians chased the English school girls around). Finally, of course, there was the exasperation of being bombed in London. First you were supposed to go down into the cellars, then the Germans started dropping incendiaries, so you were supposed to go up onto the roof to fight the fires.
So I think the British fought. There are certainly criticisms to be made of their conduct of the war — but they fought hard enough. Moreover, unlike — say — the Russians, they didn’t start out allied to the Nazis. They chose to fight; to fight evil things, and by opposing them, to end them.
Very funny:
“Yuri Teplyakov studied journalism at Moscow State University. He worked as a journalist for the Moscow daily newspapers Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda, and for the APN information agency. From 1980 to 1993 he worked for the weekly Moscow News.”
https://history.wikireading.ru/4916 (the link provides links to relevant research historians)
“on 1 March 1944 by the NKVD tested 312 594 former red Army soldiers liberated from German captivity. From their number:
sent to the Red Army 223 272 71,4%
transferred to work in the defense industry 5716 1,8%
transferred to the staffing of NKVD 4337 1,4%
has left in hospitals 1529 0,5%
died 1799 0.6%
on formation of assault battalions 8255 2,6%
arrested 11 283 3,6 % ”
This statement is an extremely brazen lie. Hitler waged a war of extermination, destroying both prisoners and civilians. He never propose “treat Red Army pows according to the Geneva Convention”. Quite the opposite:
“On July 17, 1941 the NKID of the USSR addressed with a note to Sweden with a request to inform Germany that the USSR recognizes the Hague Convention of 1907 about the maintenance of prisoners of war and is ready to carry out it on the basis of reciprocity. There was no response. On August 8, 1941, ambassadors and envoys of the countries with which the USSR had diplomatic relations received a circular note from the Soviet government of similar content. Finally, on November 26, 1941 “Pravda” published a note of NKID, handed on the eve of all diplomatic missions. …..”
However read: http://statehistory.ru/36/Povliyalo-li-nepodpisanie-SSSR-ZHenevskoy-konventsii-na-uchast-sovetskikh-voennoplennykh-/
Where in your link it says about mythical tenth battalion (Russian battalion) in most of German divisions ?
https://cdn1.savepice.ru/uploads/2018/10/30/f7d07321a6017306356de87c4f264988-full.png
That’s right. Those treacherous Russians fighting side-by –side with the Germans. I remember seeing footages of T-34 strolling down Champs Elysees, and Il-2’s bombing the hell out of London.
Do you know the difference between “alliance” and non-aggression pact? The only reason why Stalin chose “alliance” with Hitler was because he wanted to at least deny him half of Poland, otherwise he would have helped himself with all of Poland – bringing him closer to Russia instead of putting a border with Germany in the middle of Poland.
It’s called strategy, not exceptionally good one when you supplement it with killing
40 000 of Red Army commanders, but it was better than letting that moron Hitler ubermenschening himself across all of Poland
‘That’s right. Those treacherous Russians fighting side-by –side with the Germans…’
This fails to address my point. The British chose to fight Hitler. The Russians didn’t.
‘Where in your link it says about mythical tenth battalion (Russian battalion) in most of German divisions ?’
Click on ‘Ostbataillon’ in particular — but go through the other headings as well. Of course, this merely represents the formally organized and recognized units.
Horseshit:
The Brits only really chose to fight Hitler after he attacked them. Stalin offered to defend Czechoslovak territory in 1938. The West refused that offer – instead appeasing Hitler.
I. e. there is no information in your link about mythical tenth battalion (Russian battalion) in “most of German divisions”. There is only information about well-known formation created by the Germans (with whom the Germans suffered a General failure, because these ostbataillons was not able to fight).
the Soviets didn’t?
Brave men, those British.
Anyhow, I got a story to tell you, it’s up to you decide whether it’s true or not. It goes like this:
In the fall of 1939, when the Germans were in the process of trashing Poland, the British were caught trying to reach Poland. The German customs agents stop them and asked them: “Do you have anything to declare?” The British replied: “Yes, we declare war”.
I mean it was nice of the British that they declared the war and all that, they didn’t try to smuggle it to Poland, which was going to be illegal. But anyway, when the Germans told them how much duty the British will have to pay on that war, the British lost the enthusiasm.
So the Germans confiscated the war and held on to it until the spring of 1940, when they gave it to the British and the French. But this wasn’t the same war, the one that British gave up, was supposed to be a gift from them to Poland, the one that they got in 1940 was a gift from Germany to them.
Anyhow, the history recorded the war that the British tried to gift to Poland as “phony” war. I suppose they question the sincerity of the British, whether there was any gift from them to begin with. I don’t know if I agree with this, to me the British look like honorable people, my guess is that they were just a little bit cheap and didn’t wanted to pay the duty on the war that they were going to give as a present to Poland.
the Soviets didn’t. German prisoners (in Soviet captivity) received the same food rations as the Soviet civilian population. As is known from the history of the GDR, the Soviet Union did not carry out the extermination of Germans (and the Soviet Union did not plan the extermination of Germans)
hmm, well we know the Soviets raped hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of German women and girls
we also know they attacked the Finns and Poles for no reason
what else do you suppose they were capable of?
did they plan for the extermination of Poles?
You forget about the outcome of that”fragility”. Turncoats and traitors existed in all times. Majority however and the core was United. Going fast to Moscow ? Well, germans tried. You see it did not work exactly because majority did everything to prevent that.
Mostly due to their barbaric treatment of civilian population and Soviet POWs. Otherwise looks like numbers of military casualties are overall similar. You should not forget that until Soviet army broke it back wermacht was the finest fighting force in the world.
Germans did not have to starve 2 million people to death in Leningrad. It was not strategically necessary. They could have let convoys with food and white flag through like it was customary in wars before. So Germans were not conducting Gallant war as some here are suggesting.
Huh? When did the Germans attack Britain? What are you talking about?
neither did Soviets
and U.S. and UK firebombed cities like Dresden
only winners were the bankers
They all should at least watch unknown war series by USSR and USA. Very instructive as per gallant war.
You forget that it was germans who attacked. They conducted war of aggression and genocide. The goal of exterminating slavic population was stated in advance. You equates both sides. Typical game for the like of you. Have been Soviets behaving towards German civilians same way there would be far fewer germans left.
Soviets attacked Finns and Poles too, unprovoked
far from innocent
‘…Anyhow, the history recorded the war that the British tried to gift to Poland as “phony” war. I suppose they question the sincerity of the British, whether there was any gift from them to begin with. I don’t know if I agree with this, to me the British look like honorable people, my guess is that they were just a little bit cheap and didn’t wanted to pay the duty on the war that they were going to give as a present to Poland.’
One needs to understand that the First World War (which had ended only twenty one years earlier) left the British and French with a distinct aversion to war.
They could declare it, but they had enormous difficulty making themselves actually initiate the festivities.
I can sympathize. Consider Viet Nam. That left America reluctant to engage in warfare on any scale for almost as long (1973-1991). Yet per capita, our losses were something on the order of 1% of those suffered by France and Britain.
Imagine a Viet Nam that had been one hundred times as bloody for us as it was. Then picture us rushing to repeat the experience barely twenty years later. We’d have had to have been off our nut.
I seem to recall an earlier thread in which it was established that the Soviets would not sign the Geneva Convention as it was at the time because it provided for POWs to be racially segregated. They said, however, that they would abide by the Hague Conventions.
Here is the order of the German command about the fate of Leningrad – the population should be exterminated. German generals are worried that the extermination of “women, children and defenseless old men” can badly affect the nerves of the German soldiers.
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/labas/64933/397322/397322_original.jpg
Luftwaffe air raids.
Thank you!!!!
Russians did not attack Fins. Fins attacked Russians.
Read Urho Kekkonen(Finn): Last soldier on the battlefield.
Ever heard the joke about how the British were prepared to fight the Germans to the last French?
I think it was about WW1, but obviously the British had the same game plan for WW2. Unfortunately, the French folded way too fast, but I don’t see why the British couldn’t have stayed and fought the Germans in France. It’s a like a soccer game, one goal away counts as two goals at home.
But anyway, the British have the same mentality as the Americans – they are alliances prone, so they can masquerade someone else’s fighting as their own.
That’s what the declaration of “war” on Germany was all about when the Germans attacked the Polish. They declared the war, but they expected the dumb Polaks to do most of the fighting. When that didn’t pan out, they put the “war” in hibernation mode, and the next spring they expected the French to do the fighting for them.
What possible reason could the British have had not to want to pointlessly throw away hundreds of thousands of men while their home remained threatened with invasion?
Poland was attacked by germans. Soviet union just took what poles took on their way out before. Do you expect Soviet government would allow brotherly Ukrainian and belarussian population to fall under nazi rule? Are you aware that poles attacked Soviet Russia in 1921. Finns were asked nicely to exchange territories because of international situation heating up and possibility of Finland housing germans near Soviet union second largest city. Even if discount all that, did Soviet union commit crimes against civilians compared to what germans were doing?
Again we’re reminded how Team Russia is every bit as meat-headed as Team USA, even more so in some ways.
lol, sure
next you’ll claim the Poles attacked the Russians too
and the Nazis are responsible for Katyn
That’s the whole point, my friend. If the British stayed and fought the Germans in France, there wouldn’t have been a German invasion of GB.
Too bad that some of Dubya wisdom couldn’t have trickled down from the future to the British: “We’ll fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here”.
https://youtu.be/2BFILhtWdq0
you’re Soviet apologists, that’s all
probably waiting for the next “experiment” because its never been tried properly yet
How dumb do you have to be to think that it would have made strategic sense for the BEF to remain in France while the French army was collapsing and the French government was surrendering?
That might be even stupider than the claim earlier in the thread that Britain has been the greatest enemy of Polish nationalism
Which makes you Nazi apologist. Thanks to Communist experiment Russia at least has got means to protect herself effectively, educated population, scientific and industrial base. Taking backward dying country form where it was in 1917 to superpowerdom, not bad of experiment. we urgently need second experiment.
She has also stated (on another thread here) that “Russians don’t shoot their poets”. Clearly someone living in la-la land.
That would be bad enough, but he in fact equates the Soviet Union with Russia, which is just outright stupid.
protect yourself against who? certainly not the jew
you killed tens of millions of your best – anyone who dared stand up
yes i bet you can’t wait to kill off the rest
yes, we know how much Soviet govt cared about Ukrainians, lol
Then why declare a war on Germany? For entertainment purposes? Or declare the war to impress with the grandiose gesture and expect someone else to fight it for you? Declaring the war meant that Britain is going to take action and attack Germany, not retreat to home soil and wait to be attacked. When you declare a war you don’t assume defensive position, it means you are going to attack. Do you understand now, stupid? Did GB had the declaration of war prepared by a lawyer which stipulated that Britain declares the war on Germany and shell remain at war as long as France is in it too, if France capitulates, due to extenuating circumstances the declaration of war is rendered null and void. The brave British should have explained that to the Germans.
Your argument is a non-sequituur. When Britain declared war on Germany, it was not expecting France to be defeated and collapse within a year. You might argue that it was a bad or unjustified decision or based on incorrect assumptions, but the intentions at the time of declaring war are irrelevant to the fact that throwing away hundreds of thousands of soldiers in France after it had surrendered would have been completely pointless, and only a moron would think otherwise.
This is totally unfair. I only called you a stupid and you already promoted me to a moron. I feel that our bilateral relationship has rapidly deteriorated since 2 postings ago.
Honestly, I don’t care what you’re going to call me. As Pierre Trudeau used to say – I’ve been called worse by better people than you. My opinion still remains that the British are p**sies who don’t fight their own wars. I might not like the Germans too much, but at least they were honest and they fought their own wars, unlike the British and the Americans. Recruiting terrorists in the middle east to fight for them. What’s that all about? Americans know that they can’t fight a ground war – due to the casualty intensive nature of the endeavor (boo-hoo), so they stick to their area of “expertise” – mindless aerial bombings that more often than not don’t produce the desired results.
Vlasov?
Vlas means hair on the head. All other hair on body is khlp.
The name Vlasov in English means man with bushy hair.
Vlasov was leader contra-revolution (whites) against Bolsheviks (Reds).
After General party congress where nationalization of Russian land was approved, (By Bolsheviks (( city dwellers against the will of village dwellers (Mensheviks)), plans of collectivization were put in action.
In US and Canada the farmers usually have dwelling on their land.
In Russia and most of Europe the peasants did live in villages and they were going to work their fields in horse or ox drown carriages with tools.
And so Communist party (which from now on I will call Bolsheviks for your pleasure)
started dispatching commissars with armed guards to villages.
They were doing three things.
They eliminated markers from all fields.
They plowed all land to one unit.
They created organizational structure of the village, and called it kolkhoz.
These were the basics of COLLECTIVIZATION.
These actions created unexpected resistance particularly from Cossack’s of Ukraine.
Cossacks created small units and started to raid villages, killing Jewish and non-Jewish commissars and their guards. From here the conflict rapidly escalated. Bolsheviks were sending more and more guards, while more and more peasants were joining Cossacks.
Eventually the raiders created army (Whites) that was led by Vlasov. They did start to control most of the countryside. But Bolsheviks firmly controlled the cities.
Bolsheviks had great difficulties because their army consisted mostly of foot soldiers that were defectors from the front. Although hardened from the front they were loosing to highly mobile army of Vlasov.
Eventually Bolsheviks created their own cavalry but it did take some time.
Neither side had uniforms so they reached agreement. Vlasov’s army horsetails were tied in knot, while Bolsheviks cavalry had free tails.
It is understandable that Communist revolution did send shock waves around the world.
So when Contra-evolution did established itself in the countryside Americans decided to help. So they sent to Murmanks (far east) four ships with guns, ammunition, provisions and volunteers. They let Vlasov to know. But somehow Bolsheviks did find out also about the supply. So as Vlasov was moving east, Bolsheviks controlling the trans Siberian railway sent the couple of trains with soldiers.
When the ships unloaded and pulled away the Bolsheviks attacked killed all American expeditionary force and confiscated the goodies. And so Vlasov came back empty handed and exhausted. His movement through Russian territory resulted in loosing most of its soldiers.
I do not have any recollection about fate of Vlasov but I do not think that he survived.
And I think that after killing of so many Jewish commissars, Jewish Bolsheviks probably killed everybody in Russia named Vlasov. (That was their way you know!)
So I have no idea from where this Karlin’s Vlasov did pop out,
These events are very thoroughly described in Sholokhov’ Quiet flows the Don.
Anybody interested in subject could read it.
The hero of the story fought all during war on the side of the whites. But after American interference he joined the reds.
Sovok BS:
It was already an advanced country for in its time, showing a great potential to advance without the Bolshes.
Sovok BS:
Trumped up American interference .
FYI, Andrey Vlasov’s greatest fame occurred during WW II. During the Russian Civil War and prior to being captured by the Nazis, he sided with the Reds.
I do not think that your comment warrants an answer, but anyway.
So you are telling me that Nobel price laureate for literature Sholokhov whose work “Quiet flows Don
was translated and printed in practically all world languages is a liar?
You have such a tiny brain that you absolutely do not realize that what is coming out from your whatever.
No no. There was at least 100 million. Are not you tired from repeating this stale BS? Ever checked demographic statistics of the Soviet union? Always growing even after ww2 do se pite massive urbanization. Btw, the best died defending the country from your moral equals. Partners my ass.
Tsusima. Port arture. Lack of bullets and shells during ww2. Constant hunger of the peasants. Andrej Martyaniv posted here somewhere statistics of war time weapons production by all countries involved. Those numbers are not of advanced country. Population of advanced countries do not suffer constant hunger. Population of advanced countries do not suffer almost 50% children mortality by th e age of 3. You also might check numbers of military production by USSR vs all of Europe. If those numbers do not open your eyes. Than you as was told have no brain to speak about. Chao.
Agree.
this sounds about right
someone who makes a statement like this doesn’t care about his country or its people
Your sovok brain (if you could call it that) is even less.
Economic statistics confirm that Russia was a very advanced country on the verge of further advancement. Yes, Russia wasn’t ready in 1914 to engage an offensive war against Germany – never mind opposing the Habsburgites and Ottoman Turks as well.
Then again, in 1941, the USSR was nowhere near ready to launch any kind of a successful offensive in Germany.
Sovoks like Sergey Krieger and yourself (assuming the two of you aren’t the same person) lack intellect.
This is definitely a myth (considering that peasants, permanently increased the amount of money that they spent on vodka)
I see the discussion has entered the “more Slavic than thou” phase.
Is it true that the majority of leading Bolsheviks were Jews?
yeah, that’s probably a safe bet
same thing with the failed German Revolution in 1919(?) where for some reason 8 of the top 10 communist leaders were jews
go figure
Yes, it’s true. The only really debate is nitpicking over whether some were half-Jews, how deep into the Party machinery the over-representation went, etc. But there’s no serious disagreement on the main point. Stalin’s purges are best understood as directed against an essentially Jewish mafia. (Ironically on the eve of the German attack, the SU was not the “Judeo-Bolshevism” of the early years.)
i read that the Hungarian uprising of 1956 started out as basically the same thing – a revolt against a jewish occupied govt