Posted on 06/12/2019 9:34:00 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov chastised Western powers in an article published in Russia's International Affairs magazine on Tuesday, ahead of events in Europe to mark the D-Day landings on the Nazi-occupied Normandy coast.
"False interpretations of history are being introduced into the Western education system with mystifications and pseudo-historical theories designed to belittle the feat of our ancestors," Lavrov wrote.
"Young people are being told that the main credit in victory over Nazism and liberation of Europe goes not to the Soviet troops, but to the West due to the landing in Normandy, which took place less than a year before Nazism was defeated."
"Our detractors seek to diminish the role of the Soviet Union in World War II and portray it if not as the main culprit of the war, then at least as an aggressor, along with Nazi Germany," he wrote.
"They cynically equate Nazi occupation, which claimed tens of millions of lives, and the crimes committed by collaborationists with the Red Army's liberating mission."
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I highly recommend the movie “Stalin” with Robert Duvall.
Lavrov’s statement is essentially correct. I don’t know about “valiant” but they killed far more nazis than anyone else until the Allied invasion of North Africa and Italy in 1943. The fact that Stalin had signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler before hitlers invasion of Poland, then scooped up chunks of Poland and tried to seize Finland and the Baltic countries before hitler turned on him is often forgotten. Stalin also had no problem feeding soviet troops and civilians into the nazi grinder without regret. However it was proven to be necessary to kill nazis, but valiant had nothing to do with it.
No one is denying the Soviet Union’s decisive military efforts, but if you examine the language of Mr. Lavrov, he uses words like ‘liberate.’ - The real battle is over who gets the credit for the MORAL victory of liberating a continent.
To begin with: it’s irritating that the massive acts of rape and pillage which accompanied Soviet military ‘victories’ particularly west of Russia hardly gets mention. Some people have vague ideas about the ‘Rape of Berlin’ but too many German women found their memories far too difficult to rehash and keep in the spotlight of history. The estimated numbers of women affected are in the hundreds of thousands.
Secondly, the Soviet Union’s moral role can only be properly examined in light of the context of the continent *preceding* the war. If properly understood, the Soviet Union was equally responsible for inviting carnage as they were in defeating their fellow carnage-makers. Whether it was Bolshevism or National Socialism, both societies were in their own collective state of delusional, murderous psychosis. Both societies threatened to swallow up the globe with their detestable ideologies.
Finally, and most egregious of all, is the trend among disenchanted American conservatives to not only downplay our country’s role in the War, but to BLAME IT for our current state of lefty globalism. Coinciding with this is a downplaying of the Holocaust and anti-Semitic sentiments in general. When really, it’s precisely the lingering influence of Soviet (socialist) values and elements which continue to weaken the West.
I cannot imagine anything more sick than asking US Soldiers to partner up with the nazi army and help them in the east. Why in God’s name would America do that?
How many US soldiers do you think should have been killed to save the nazi Germany from their fate? Besides, by that point in the war the nazi army was falling apart. They would have been of little use to the US Army machine.
Ask the Poles if they felt “liberated” by the Red Army?
It worked, and "only" cost tens of millions of lives needlessly, all because Stalin was a psychotic tyrant. Good job. Be "proud" if you must. You were a part of the victory formula... but everyone else actually tried to value the lives of their soldiers, and didn't treat them like cannon fodder. The Soviet ideal of treating life as worthless is not something we want to celebrate anymore, though. FYI.
The Russians didn’t have a navy that ended the U boat threat in the North Atlantic and they didn’t posses a strategic air force that pounded German cities and war industries into dust. And they didn’t fight the Japanese all through the islands of the Pacific. Russia’s input was minimal at most.
Agreed with your post until this... nothing was "proven". It worked, but many other methods could have worked as well... meaning it wasn't "necessary"... and almost certainly with fewer casualties... which would qualify as "a better solution" in the minds of just about any rational human being. Stalin refraining from murdering every competent general would've been a mighty good start.
I give them credit for defending their own country.
They wouldn’t have done Jack, if they weren’t attacked by the Nazis.
Nevertheless Larov has a point. The Russians suffered by most historical consensus 12-20,000,000 casualties in less than four years of war and huge amount of material destruction. There is no question that the Nazi regime was evil in philosophy and deed. America was righteous to play a huge role in its destruction. However whatever motivated the average Soviet serviceman and despite the vile nature of communism and their leaders, the sacrifices and deeds they performed in monumental battles that few in the West are know, their efforts were instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The tragedy that most conservatives are beginning to realize is that Europe including Russia lost forever from 1914-1945 its best virile genetic stock. Combine those losses with post war widespread birth control, abortion and neo pagan social decadence, it is no mystery why their culture is collapsing and they are being overrun and supplanted by aggressive culturally alien migrants.
If my WWII Airborne dad were still alive...he’d answer...
“Suck It, Sergei....”
In fluent English, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, AND German, just for spite.
Patton also believed in reincarnation. In some ways, he was a genius. But like all geniuses, in some ways, Patton was an idiot. His idea to open a war with the Red Army in some bizzare bid to “save Germany” was a fool’s errand. Nobody was in a mood to protect Germany while the invasion of Japan still loomed, and while the death camps were still being cleaned up. And asking the US Soldier to do so at that moment was a height of bad judgement.
he was a cavalryman, not an administrator.
He’d have more of a leg to stand on, if once they “liberated” eastern europe, they didn’t spend the next 45 or so years oppressing it.
“Ironic, since the Germans ridiculed the Poles for their cavalry. “
And the true story of that Cavalry attack was solid heroic work by the Poles, and well executed. The damned nazis turned it into a comical joke by pretending Polish idiots on horseback attacked tanks with pikes and sabers.
Polish cavalry attacked an exposed German infantry unit effectively. An armored unit emerged from an unseen position and counterattacked.
“Russia’s immense size was the biggest factor, the lands the Nazis seized in the early days of Barbarossa exceeded the combined land masses of all the other countries. The Russians could simply fall back behind the Urals and let the Nazis exhaust their supply lines.”
I contend that if America was ever in a land war with Russia our supply lines would indeed be long and of great girth. Nobody does logistics like the American military. We would be moving supplies and war material from Alaska to Siberia, over the Arctic ice to Siberia, up through the black sea in the Crimea, and through the Baltic states into European Russia. We would build roads, bridges, runways, and railroads that they could only envy.
Very true.
The rape of Berlin happened. But no more than what the nazis did in the east with massive sexual humiliation followed by a bullet to the head beside a ditch.
Always weird to hear the Sturm und Drang about the sexual abuse of women in Berlin after the behavior of the nazi army in the east for the 3 years prior.
It’s a bitch to get done to you what you did to others i guess.
Yeah, it is hard to work up any tears.
As with Dresden, well, before Dresden, there was Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, etc.
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