NO REVISION OF GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR HISTORY, SAY EXPERTS

RIAN ^ | 2005-04-13

[mainepatsfan]

D-Day have been pretty well covered.

[wideawake]

Thankfully. But there's so much more!

[mainepatsfan]

True. The Eastern Front has been greatly ignored because of decades of Soviet secrecy.

[dfwgator]

Every significant engagement and even some skirmishes of the American Civil War have been given painstaking, hour by hour, booklength treatments - WWII could benefit from that kind of work rather than volume after volume of sweeping, bird's eye macro analysis.

I don't know if it's on DVD, but on PBS they ran a fantastic WWII series called "Battlefield." It detailed most of the major battles of WWII. Best WWII documentary series ever, IMHO.

[warsaw44]

A handful. Most German and Japanese POWs vanished inside the camp system. Most of the Italian and Spanish POWs vanished as well. Adenauer managed to get quite a few released in 1955 but still, many more were held even longer or until they died in captivity. In 1973 testimony on USSR Labor Camps for Congress, former Russian inmates state that Germans were alive as late as the 1970s. It was further alleged that these men were held at Wrangel Island where any number of experiments were being conducted on inmates.

[mainepatsfan]

I saw a few episodes of that series and you're right it is excellent! I've looked for it on DVD but haven't seen it yet.

[sima_yi]

...most of the best officers were killed in late 30's.

I remember reading a long time ago an article which said that Reinhard Heydrich (Heydrich der Henker, Heydrich the Hangman, the Butcher of Lidice) fanned the flames of Stalin's paranoia by planting false intelligence that a number of his (Stalin's) officers were plotting to overthrow him, and this resulted in the purge of most of the Russian office corps in the middle to late 30's.

I have never been able to confirm this story, but if it is true, the Germans really had his number.

[dfwgator]

They also did Battlefield: Vietnam.

[mainepatsfan]

Really. Anything on Korea?

[dfwgator]

Not to my knowledge.

[Bald Eagle777]

True, and this isn't just Hollywood. NKVD were very naughy boys.

The truth is concealed due to all the Left Wing radicals in Russia and here in the States.

Communism, Marxism, Leninism are their religious ideals and Stalin is their (false) "god" incarnate, the Dictator of the Proletariat.

[mainepatsfan]

I just did a search for the DVD of Battlefield and all I found was this German store.

http://www.toysunlimited.nl/DVD's/dvd_battlefield.htm

[Ax]

Does this overall number include the victims of "Operation KEELHAUL?" This, from what I have read, involved the involuntary repatriation of Soviet POW or other Soviet citizens who fled west as the Red Army advanced on Berlin. At the cessation of hostilities, Stalin demanded that those Soviet citizens be repatriated. Once back in the USSR, they were transshipped out to Siberia. I don't know if anyone knows how many perished out there.

I will never understand why President Truman didn't tell Stalin to buzz off, unless it was to guarantee the repatriation of U.S. airmen who had been interned in the USSR after crashing because they couldn't make it back to their bases in China.

[Bald Eagle777]

40mil, maybe more, "not including war casualties" - correct. Check out Richard Pipes book “The Russian Revolution”.. I have noted that some (not this thread, but others) are not quite anti-Stalin, in that they gloss over just about all the dark deeds that this monster did and can not bring themselves to see the truth. It seems to many on FREEp that Stalin did no wrong and was an innocent little boy scout just helping us out. Some of these people belong on DU….

Conservative Russians NEED to turn up the historical heat on absolutely everything the Bolsheviks did from 1917 all the way up to Stalin. An American, Richard Pipes (Harvard), in "The Russian Revolution" put the death rate at around at least 60-80m. It was probably much higher due to the Communists' hiding their genocides, killings of Kulaks, towns, labor (death) camps etc. If one includes the atrocities of both the Bolsheviks and Stalinists (from 1917 up until March 6, 1953 - Stalin's death) the death toll is probably well over 80-100m. That's just Russia. Mao was probably good for a similar number, including Tibetans and others.

Careful documentation of all the mass murders, genocides and homicides perpetrated in the name of Communism from 1917 forward must be done to bring some balance into the historical picture.

One forfeits the right to discuss human rights, if one clearly "tows the Party line" and ignore crimes perpetrated by any and all parties. Some (not all) FREEPers are like that.

True objectivity is hard to find. The scales of Justice imply balance, and a careful weighting... There is nothing balanced about how so many gloss over Stalin's atrocities or just write them off with a shrug "ho hum it was 'just Russians". Utold numbers of Russian people suffered under Stalin and the full Truth may not come out due to how effective the Communists were at killing and imprisoning their own people en masse.

That is probably why only God Himself will have to Judge all of the Nations in the End at the Great White Throne of Judgment. We mere mortals are too mixed up in this mess to be perfectly objective and make strictly objective observations about every single case.

[Little Bill]

Agree, the problem is that most of us speak neither Russian or German, nor did it affect us as it did the Russians or Germans.

[dfwgator]

Yep, that's really too bad. I think the series was produced in the UK, must be some legal issues that prevent it from being released here in the US.

[mainepatsfan]

Well hopefully one day I'll see it on Amazon.

There's a British documentary on History International all about Stalin during World War II which does a really good job.

[Little Bill]

Dr. Pipes of Harvard, read every thing that he wrote, exchanged letters, great man, as is his son.

[dfwgator]

I wonder if that's the same one I saw before. It was called "Monster." The most notable thing about that series, is at the end they matter-of-factly state that Beria had actually poisoned Stalin, and told the rest of the Politburo, "I just saved all of you."

[mainepatsfan]

I just looked it up and it was called Russia's War Blood Upon the Snow. They cut Stalin no breaks in this documentary.

Was "Monster" about Stalin or more about Beria?