Posted on 03/14/2009 7:48:20 AM PDT by PotatoHeadMick
You used the term ‘terrorist’. The document refers to them as ‘bandits’. Big difference.
I implied no such thing.
He was involved in violence against civilian targets in pursuit of political aims, today he would be called a “terrorist”, I agree that “terrorist” is a much over-used and often inaccurate term but there are many people who would regard men like Robin Hood today as a “terrorist”, that is a fact.
I dislike the term “terrorist” but in King John’s England a “terrorist” is what Robin Hood would be.
Well, allying with the Soviets was a necessary evil, since the Communists sent special forces troops behind German lines to identify, contact and liquidate partisan groups not clearly subordinate to Moscow to prevent the emergence of an anti-Communist nucleus to post-war resistance to Stalin’s rule.
It’s shocking, but the Soviets probably killed as many anti-Nazi partisans behind German lines as the Nazis.
But the Bielski brothers’ assassination of Polish peasants for the mere crime of paying occupation taxes was indeed a war crime meriting their deaths.
>>> it wasn’t just Germans who were on the receiving end of partisan activities many ordinary people who wanted no truck with the Nazis but who just as importantly wanted nothing to do with Soviet backed Communists either were often victims of the partisans. <<<
Oh, so the Polish and other partisans in Nazi-occupied Mitteleuropa were just “Soviet backed communists”? Fighting merely for ideological reasons? Really, Mister history-buff? I had no idea that situation then was so simple! Certainly not as simple as your over-generalizations.
>>> Try reading a bit of history before you fly off the handle. <<<
Try choosing your words carefully before you slander those who died defending their communities and nations from Nazi slavery.
Now, outside of the document, he might have been considered a terrorist, but not in the context of this post.
We are perhaps over-concentrating on Poland, in vast swathes of occupied Soviet territory the “partisans” were often little more than gangs of brigands, frequently deserters from the Red Army, who lived off the land by robbing, murdering and pillage, after the Germans were defeated they could dress up their activities as “resistance” to the Nazis, it is not always the case that their victims would have agreed.
Any partisan who fought the Nazis on the other hand gets my full support and respect, my point is that it is usually best not to adopt simple black and white historical narratives towards situations that are often very shady and mixed up.
Looks like the Daily Mail writer is imputing one heck of a lot of his own thought into this little scrap. Besides, everybody knows Errol Flynn was a good guy!
Dear Lord help us!
The term “terrorist” didn’t even exist until the nineteenth century and wasn’t in common parlance until the latter half of the twentieth, furthermore the document is in Latin so of course the English word “terrorist” is not used, that is why I suggest that the 13th Century term “bandit” with all its connotations would be roughly equivocal to the 21st century term “terrorist”; ie a politically loaded term used by pro-government media.
Try to keep up.
I have an even different picture to paint. King Richard the Lionheart, a Norman viking, was a bloodthirsty tyrant always looking for an excuse to go to war, and the pope gave him one in the form of the crusades. He leaves his brother, Prince John an able administrator, to mind the kingdom while he is away and to ensure that the English crusaders stay adequately equipped and paid.
Getting all the odds and ends that an army in the field needs across a long distance doesn’t come cheap. In his efforts to raise the necessary cash to support his brother, Prince John raises taxes. Which results in decreased productivity and more taxes, which starts civil unrest and the brigands we know as Robin Hood and his merry men.
Of course, then King Richard comes home to restive populace and finds an easy scape goat in his brother for costs that he made necessary.
“Oh, so the Polish and other partisans in Nazi-occupied Mitteleuropa were just “Soviet backed communists”?”
Er no, and nowhere did I suggest that all partisans were Soviet backed Communists, but a heck of a lot of them were and the victims of such people might not share your peculiarly starry eyed view of those men’s activities.
Try not to view everything in black and white, don’t be so naive, not everything breaks down into simple ‘good guy/bad guy’ narratives.
Almost any partisan who survived the war to live anywhere behind the Iron Curtain was by definition Soviet-backed: the Soviets killed all the partisans they could find who didn’t subordinate themselves to Communist control.
Not at all. A bandit in the context of those days was a clear definition.
Perhaps you are looking for a usurper or someone who is trying to over throw the King. But, there is no reference to that at all. You implied from the very beginning terrorist. That context was not used at all for RH any word form.
A good point, there were many “partisans” but as you rightly say, those who didn’t conform to Uncle Joe’s ideology probably didn’t last long after 1945.
The clear definition of banditry in those days included the notion of the rejection of duly constituted authority in the area in which the bandit operated, which indeed amounted to subversion of the entire political order with both political AND theological implications.
Which made the term possibly even more condemnatory than “terrorist” today.
I won’t bug you anymore. Thanks for posting the article about Robin Hood. Have a good weekend FRiend.
I don’t know what the post-Soviet opening of archives showed, but the CIA officially believed that an anti-Communist partisan organisation survived in the Baltic states until at least the mid-50s.
But it was also a standard Soviet counter-intelligence practice to foment counterfeit resistance organisations to flush out dissidents and snare foreign intelligence agents attempting to contact them.
So no one knows for certain how long the anti-Communist partisans lasted before they were transformed into KGB Trust operations.
Oh I’m sorry I thought you knew the story of Robin Hood, he was a man who led a guerrilla campaign against what he regarded as the illegitimate government regime of England.
He killed and robbed civilians whom he regarded as political enemies and government collaborators by means of ambush and murder.
See what that makes him?
Well to anyone who supports his ideology he is of course a ‘freedom fighter’ but anyone who supported the government, including those in the media (monastic scribes being the nearest thing to a mass media in those days), would have regarded him as an outlaw or a bandit or in modern terms, and here I pause to let you contemplate a really difficult mental picture, a “terrorist”.
Hence my original point.
Not too hard to work out, really now is it?
Actually when I was in the Museum of Occupation (which encompasses the Soviet Occupation, the Nazi Occupation and then the Soviet Occupation up until 1990) in the Latvian capital Riga a few years back I seem to recall that even after the defeat of the anti-Communists who did indeed fight on with CIA support right into the 1950’s (and one never hears about that sort of thing in the history books) it was not until 1991 with Latvian independence that the last of the old resistors finally came out of the woods.
Kinda impressive I thought and it makes those Japanese found in Pacific islands in the 1970’s seem like pikers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.