Stalin’s NKVD and Hitler’s Gestapo Cooperated Closely Even Before Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Eurasia - New Series ^ | Jan 12, 2019

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Perhaps the only thing that outrages Russian defenders of Stalin more than the obvious parallels between his regime and Hitler’s is any reference to the alliance the two dictators formed in 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, one that opened the way to war in Europe and lasted until Hitler turned on his former ally in June 1941.

But now there may be something even more offensive to such defenders of Stalin and his system: the discovery of documents which confirm that the NKVD cooperated closely with the Gestapo well before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed and that may have paved the way to its signature.

Dmitry Volchek of Radio Svoboda reports that documents recently released from the archives of the KGB offices in Ukraine show that “the NKVD handed over to the Gestapo refugees from Germany who had hoped to find in the USSR salvation from Hitler” (svoboda.org/a/29704294.html).

Beginning well before 1939 and continuing right up to the German invasion, the Soviet secret police sent “hundreds” of refugees to their imprisonment, torture and in many cases death at the hands of the Gestapo. At first, it involved mostly German citizens; but later, this “cooperation” expanded to include others as well.

German historian Wilhelm Mensing has set up a website, “The NKVD and the Gestapo” at nkwd-und-gestapo.de/ devoted to the fate of those who fled Hitler’s Germany only to be arrested in the USSR, sent to the GULAG or handed back to the Nazis. (Mensing is also the author among other books of Von der Ruhr in den GULAG (2001).)

The documents from Ukraine are especially important for two reasons: In East Germany, any reference to this practice was prohibited; and there are few documents about it in Stasi files, Mensing says; and in Russia, the secret police files that presumably do contain documents about it remain classified and thus inaccessible to researchers.

Volchek asked Mensing about similarities between the NKVD and the Gestapo. The German historian answered that they shared “the specific qualities of the secret police. The Gestapo exterminated the Jewish population in occupied countries: this was its unique feature.” On the other hand, “the number of victims of the NKVD was apparently larger.”

“The numbers varied, but the pitilessness was the same,” he continued. “Both the Gestapo and the NKVD were instruments in the hands of criminal rulers and despotic tyrants.”

[EC Washington]

Same with any Russian official who was in China helping Mao. Stalin killed every Soviet who was in Mao’s inner circle.

[central_va]

The big difference between the FBI and the Gestapo is that Hitler had some control over the Gestapo and they never attempted a coup d’etat.

[goldstategop]

Putin doesn’t trust the FSB to prevent a color revolution so he set up the Federal National Guard Service to act as an additional check on the FSB and the army.

The FSB doesn’t conceal its origins in the Soviet Cheka.

[otness_e]

That, and the FBI originally was a force of good before getting turned for evil purposes since Clinton at the very least, while the Gestapo was pretty much evil from the start.

[ClarityGuy]

You might be interested in a period essay called “Slave Labor in Soviet Russia” published in English in 1937. It was written by a German Nazi who died at the end of the war, a certain Dr. Hermann Greife, and offers firm proof the Nazis knew exactly what the S*viets were doing. You just have to wade through a heavy dose of Nazi propaganda along the way.