In other words MRGA. Make Russia Great Again.
Posted on 01/18/2018 1:30:31 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour.
Beria and Stalin, back in Moscow, knew perfectly well what was going on from a number of detailed reports. One stated that "many Germans declare that all German women in East Prussia who stayed behind were raped by Red Army soldiers". Numerous examples of gang rape were given - "girls under 18 and old women included".
Calls to avenge the Motherland, violated by the Wehrmacht's invasion, had given the idea that almost any cruelty would be allowed.
A number of other forces or influences were at work. Sexual freedom had been a subject for lively debate within Communist party circles during the 1920s, but during the following decade, Stalin ensured that Soviet society depicted itself as virtually asexual. This had nothing to do with genuine puritanism: it was because love and sex did not fit in with dogma designed to "deindividualise" the individual. Human urges and emotions had to be suppressed...
Most ill-educated Red Army soldiers suffered from sexual ignorance and utterly unenlightened attitudes towards women. So the Soviet state's attempts to suppress the libido of its people created what one Russian writer described as a sort of "barracks eroticism" which was far more primitive and violent than "the most sordid foreign pornography".
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
"The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms."
Genghis Khan
Ukrainians, too. It's sad that so many Soviets lost their lives, but Stalin didn't care, he welcomed the decrease in population, less mouths to feed, he felt that it led to the "optimal" population in the Soviet Union.
Also, Stalin was more than happy to let Hitler take care of Stalin's "Jewish Problem", until the tide of war turned.
yes but the Nazi atrocities are well-documented and acknowledged. Largely due to the efforts of German people (with the help of Marshall Plan recovery/American assistance, Nuremberg trials, etc...)
Not so with the Soviet atrocities, and this is why much of the Eastern and Central European world is still so anti-Russian.
No, what we need to do is support the Jews having their own homeland.
In other words MRGA. Make Russia Great Again.
“If it was the US Army, we could have pretty much taken it without a shot, or with minimal resistance. “
I don’t buy that. Where was any offer from the Germans to surrender Berlin to the Americans? I haven’t seen that documented anywhere. Remember, the worst of the nazis were still there and in charge.
Adolph was still ordering around phantom divisions and killing jews as long as he could. He wasn’t rational.
It’s more likely we would have faced a very bitter and brutal battle, than that Hitler would have suddenly made his first good decision.
But even if we only lost 15 or 20 soldiers. Why should we destroy 20 American families back home to save Berlin from the red army fate it so well earned?
If the Russians wanted to lose 100,000 to take it, and we lose no Americans, that’s a fine deal in my book. There are honest to God living breathing Americans today out there who wouldn’t exist if they, or they father or grandpa would have died in the battle for Berlin.
The Russians raped, killed or ate almost everything in their path. The Russians came across a herd of Lipizzaner stallions and mares in Czechoslovakia and those that they couldn’t harness to wagons they shot and ate. Neverminding that the horses were more valuable than gold to the state. Colonel Hank Reed of the 2nd Cavalry found out about those in Western Czechoslovakia and negotiated with an Austrian officer and veterinarian to surrender the rare Arabians and Lipizzaner’s from Poland and Austria. He then contacted Patton who gave him the green light to go after them in a clandestine operation to get the horses West. Had the Russians got there first the Spanish Riding School in Vienna and the bloodline of Witez would have been nothing but a footnote in history.
No, I believe he was correct in saying the Russkies cannot be trusted (and he was blasted in the press and IKe for saying so), but at that point, he was correct in the mindset. We just didnt have the manpower with the fighting in the Pacific.
NO Maceman.
The difference is America, chaotic though we seem, we try to self-critique and reflect upon our mistakes and crimes. We acknowledge the progress made, but not without forgetting the struggles of the past.
There would never be a Martin Luther King Jr. day equivalent in Russia, they are too busy celebrating Stalin and Lenin. Honoring memory of those who stood up against them has been postponed for the next generation.
The problem with the WEST is that we don’t take CREDIT for the things we’ve done RIGHT.
Really?
If that were true, the Russians would have summarily executed several hundred Russian soldiers - and that would have been the end of mass rapes.
They did in the Gulag before and after.
Yes, I was going to post that too. Patton is like Trump. He got crucified by the leftard press for his actions and words.
>Americans on the other hand, don’t seem to want to take credit for anything. Even though by and large, the collective memory of Europeans who survived the war view our contributions favorably and NOT the USSR. (Many Europeans and to deal with the occupations and conquests of BOTH Soviet and Nazi troops.)
I doubt you’ve ever read the real story of the Allied occupation of Germany. There was a very real attempt by Truman’s government to starve the German population to death. He outlawed farming, used German POWs and Civilians as slave labor without giving them enough food, and didn’t provide food supplies for civilians. The man who came up with the occupation plan, Henry Morgenthau hated Germans and wanted to see them all dead. 2 Million Germans died after the war ended from hungery and privation.
Wikipedia gets a lot of the details wrong, but it’s a good overview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan
The primary reason the Morgenthau plan failed was German women trading sex for food on a mass scale with allied troops to keep their families fed.
http://www.ihr.org/other/july09weber.html
>Accordingly, British and American authorities denied access by International Red Cross representatives to camps holding German prisoners of war. Moreover, any attempt by German civilians to feed the prisoners was punishable by death. / 11 Many thousands of German PoWs died in American custody, most infamously in the so-called “Rhine meadow camps,” where prisoners were held under appalling conditions, with no shelter and very little food. / 12
By and large, the US army hated what their political masters in DC wanted to do to Germany, General Patton chief among the detractors. Before he was possibly assassinated he’d planned to write a book about the occupation.
Exactly. I wouldn’t want a single American to die to prevent Berlin from the fate awaiting it. We lost plenty for the right reasons. But no American GI should have died to save the nazi capitol from someone else.
Just my .02 cents.
I almost forgot to mention, johnyboy - JUST IN THIS WEEK: the author of this article has a book about Stalin that’s been banned in UKRAINE of all places.
So Ukraine doesn’t like him. Guess you’re with the Ukrainians on this one!
He cited a passage that purportedly said “Ukrainian nationalists were tasked with shooting the children” in order to “spare the feelings of SS Sonderkommando,” a reference to forced work units made up of death-camp prisoner
https://www.rferl.org/a/beevor-historian-ukraine-ban-stalingrad/28980932.html
“Patton was right all along.” “ Ike fired him for it.”
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” ~IKE
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