I heard that ditty on a podcast last year during an intermission.

VITALLY NECESSARY:

It is precisely because he “sounds a little anti-Semitic at times� that we should pay MORE attention to what he writes. Naming the Jew is critically important in serious political discourse.

Young guys fairly recently put out a catchy tune with refrain:

You haven’t said a damn thing UNTIL YOU NAME THE JEW.

For starters, your conclusion that Hitler’s ideology balanced the extremes between capitalism and marxism is at best way off the mark if not entirely wrong. He did no such thing because he essentially had no ideology, nor, as AJ.P. Taylor pointed out in “The Origins of WWII,â€� did he have much of a long-term plan. Indeed, the name of the party by itself gives away that balancing those extremes where the furthest thing from his mind. Where in fact was this balancing reflected in the name of the party that was instead one-sidedly called the National Socialist German Workers Party that thereby identified itself as umbrella group embracing all its named identifiers that specifically excluded one of the extremes that you claim Hitler was balancing – namely capitalists – but used two words identifying the group from the other extreme – socialism and workers.

Why do you suppose that is? It couldn’t be because including the word capitalist as an expressly included group would have exposed the extreme contradiction such a party encompassed that would have turned away workers of all persuasions from it? Not to worry, if you were a capitalist, however. After all, the word national completely included all of them as full fledged hidden members with reserved seats at the front row. So just as I pointed out, they were the ones hiding behind Hitler who was secretly advancing their agenda.

The party’s name gives away the game that it was purely to entice workers away from the real worker’s party in the guise of nationalism that applied to all Germans that thereby cleverly excluded all Jews. The party’s name was purely a propaganda exercise that told nothing about the real purpose of and the real the powers behind the party which was the capitalists and financiers as numerous books covering this topic have exposed since the war that included, among others in America Prescott Bush, Harriman and their ilk.

And then your suggestion about Hitler introducing ideas of his own as ways of balancing between the two, like “the racial and heroic component� reveals that you are entirely unaware that anti-semitism and German nationalist superiority were both long-standing components of German attitudes, and the heroic component went way back in German history.

The beginning of the long answer is that far from having any kind of a plan to balance the extremes between Marxism and capitalism, Hitler was essentially a brilliant opportunist whose guiding principles were those Machiavelli laid down for his prince about how to acquire and maintain power in a [city] state that involved manipulating, outmaneuvering, cajoling, suppressing, murdering, uniting or forming temporary alliances of convenience with anyone who could help him succeed at any point in time.

Among the abilities that enabled him to do so extremely effectively was that he was keenly able to read and respond to the moods, feelings and attitudes of the German people and how to frame his discourse about politics to mobilize them on his behalf. In this he is very much like Trump who is an absolute master at spinning deception, misrepresentation and fraud to mesmerize a substantial segment of the public to support him despite the fact that his policies are actually completely contrary to the interests of workers are behind him Hitler was greatly aided in his efforts by the back in the stab myth that purported to explain Germany’s defeat and the war guilt clause imposed on the Germans that, as a historian who lectured to our tour group in Berlin last year told us, infuriated the German people beyond measure across all social classes that prompted them to rally behind any leader who they saw would repudiate the shame it imposed on them, who turned out to be Hitler. And, of course there was the massive inflation that had destroyed the savings of and practically pauperized the middle class, as well as the massive unemployment resulting from the world wide depression which together generated enormous resentment that led to serious armed clashes and short term revolts in various German states. The effect of unemployment on Hitler’s fortunes is clearly reflected in the votes for the Nazis rising in direct proportion to the unemployment numbers, topping in 1933 when the Nazis became the largest party in Germany.

He was also immeasurably aided by what miltary historian Hans Adolph Jacobsen tells about him that“ One can well say without exaggeration that he [Hitler] had been one of the most knowledgeable military specialists of his time and in this connection had an astonishing many-sidednessâ€� (cited by Walther K. Nehring, “Die Geschichte der Deutschen Panzerwaffe 1916-1945″ (Stuttgart, Germany: Motorbuch Verlag, 2019), p. 61, (my translation). This ability served him exceedingly well in eventually gaining mastery over the Wehrmacht, but much too late to do him any good. That, however, is another story.

No. Conditions in Germany under Adolf Hitler and National Socialism were such that even former enemies like Lloyd George described it as the happiest people in the world. Hitler enjoyed immense support from the ordinary worker. Those who were lukewarm were the old order. Aristocrats, liberals and the priesthood. The capitalist class was content with the economic upswing, but would of course turn to the enemy when the war was lost. They were not however in any position to oppress the worker in Germany under Hitler. And the National Socialist government were not so irrational as to extinguish those in charge of heavy industry and entrepreneurship. They might view it as mollifying the worker, but National Socialism certainly did not see it that way.

The problem with capitalism and marxism is that they are extreme ideologies. Hitler’s ideology is a balance of the two, choosing what is best and what works. It also introduces ideas of its own, like the racial and heroic component. The result was spectacular. Which is why the elite class from both ends of the spectrum fiercely opposes it to this very day. They have no problem with communism though, because as every capitalist knows, it’s just the other side of their coin. The rich and resourceful will always gravitate towards the top in any society. The key is to keep them from taking control over the State. Not to give them free reign or slaughter them in the streets.

And National Socialism was not run by just “. . . another elite class oppressing the ordinary man even worse than before”? In fact, it was the old capitalist class hiding behind Hitler who were prepared to tolerate modest increases in the living standards of workers to mollify them and entice them away from Communism who were most served by National Socialism.

Moreover, note I said nothing nor tried to identify what the transformation would produce. The result will be the product of the dialectical transformation resulting from the struggle between the opposite of the divine right of property and the divine right of humanity to live equitable in community. It’s identified by the German word “aufheben” that Hegel referred to as the dialectical transformation that both destroys and preserves the old in the new.

That new will be the product of that struggle, and we in the present can at best have only a vague idea as to what it will be. Engels at best suggested it would tranform society from controlling people into administering things. Or as Marx put it, from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs, with the satisfaction of the full hierarchy of needs Maslow identified being the driving principal behind the organization of the community as opposed to the driving principles of divine right of property under which it is the satisfaction of the most preponents needs of the tiny few at the expense of consigning the many to barely satisfying physiological and safety needs, and stultifying their ability to regularly satisfy the more preponent belongingness, self esteem and self actualizing needs whereby human beings can realize their full human potential.

It is the capitalist denying the masses from achieving the higher needs by the imposing servile conditions on them through the wage slavery system that the diving right of property enables them to do that is their real crime against humanity.

This fictional divine right of propety is about to be transformed again into the real right of humanity to live equitably in a community.

If you mean Communism, that invariably turns into another elite class oppressing the ordinary man even worse than before. It’s essentially the old tyranny in the hands of less sophisticated, less emphatic people. That’s why the system has so much support from the capitalist class and originated with Jews, the two most loathsome groups in the history of the world.

What they both hate is National Socialism.

Force is indeed all that’s left. As Marx put it, between two rights, force decides. The point is exemplified in the tale of Robin Hood where he first meets up with Little John as they both seek to cross over a tree that had fallen and created a bridge over a creek. They meet in the middle, and Little John throws Robin Hood into the creek. That settled by force who had the right to cross first when each insisted on having that right.

It’s exactly the same between the capitalists class and the working lass. The capitalist ideologues keeps insisting they are right. The proletariat insists they are right.

The capialists rely on force to keep them in power, brooking no opposition and murdering millions to stay on top. Like the strikes they broke by shooting workers, imposing poverty on millions by compelling them to work for starvation wages, etc, etc. That’s all okay as long as force kept them on top.

Then the worm turns. The workers unite and now they use force against the capitalists to strike them down. And now we hear nothing but yammering from them about how terrible it is that force is being used against them. Like the Cuban exiles denouncing Castro and his revolutionaries for depriving them of their freedom to exploit and murder their peasants and workers to keep them in line. And what was the by word when the criminals were put before the people? “To the wall!” That scum really hated that, and continue to dream of a comeback.

I know. Payback is such a bitch. Get used to it. It’s coming. And I won’t hear you when it hits, like you don’t want to hear me now when I explain what a rotten bunch you are, and what it takes to create a more just and equitable community.

To put this all simplky into the proper place. At one time, humanity was under kings who ruled by divine rights. The capitalists transformed it the hallowed divine right of property because they, of course, own the property that are the material resources that are the essential foundation for producing the necessities of life that enables them to compel propertyless workers to toil for slave wages while the capitalists take from them the product of their labor.

This fictional divine right of propety is about to be transformed again into the real right of humanity to live equitably in a community.

Interesting facts. However as long man exists hierarchy will exist and elites will exist which is not unique. Donald Trump is also the wealthiest man to be elected president yet his support mostly comes from poor people, working class people, and middle class people. In fact he represents their interests far better than the frauds, charlatans, corrupt stooges, and two faces from those classes pretending to do that for the past twenty years AKA controlled opposition. When you can’t be socially shunned, fired from your job, blacklisted from working, and sued out of existence by the powers that be well now you’re extremely dangerous.

All that’s left is the use of force either from them or from you hence why political change and revolutions are violent. It’s called Marxism-Leninism because Marxists did not oppose capitalism they instead viewed capitalism as a necessary stage of history which was coming to an end and the conflicts of the modern era are all tied to that fact. Leninism represents Lenin who was rich, highly educated, and even a nobleman. So nothing wrong with being rich as long as rich people don’t dominate the political system at the expense of everyone else.

In 2014 a State Commission opened Titos personal safe in the National Bank of Serbia.Inside were 29,366 kg of gold in bars and dust,2,663 gold coins,a numismatic collection of 1,271 coins,26,219 U.S. dollars,36.000 German Marks,149 pieces of jewelry belonging to the Karađorđević royal dynasty,a blue sapphire that once belonged to the Romanovs,18 sets of silver cutlery and 83 pieces of gold pins,cigarette cases and medals,many of them jewel-encrusted.This representative of the working class had the best hunting lodges in former Jugoslavija reserved especially for him,countless wine cellars throughout the country and a private estate on the Brijuni islands which had a private zoo-among the critters was a parrot,to my knowledge still alive,which was taught to squawk Tito,Tito.Four naval vessels cruised around Brijuni each day costing two million Dinars a day in fuel alone.He had a private aircraft-helicopter fleet,yachts, a private train and ship.When he went abroad he took dozens of suitcases of suits and dresses for the wife.Aside from the White Villa on Brijuni ,he had the Villa Dunavka near the town of Illok,the Villa Dalmacija in Split,a villa on the Lapad peninsula near Dubrovnik,a villa in Kumrovec which was converted into his residence in 1962,a villa in the Plitvica Lakes,the most luxurious one built between 1948,which cost 150 million in todays Euros and a villa in Zagreb not to mention other residences which included castles an manor houses.Titos bunker in Konjic built between 1953 and 1979 as a nuclear fallout shelter 300 metres underground cost 4,6 billion U.S. dollars.Boy,how those working-class heroes loved those capitalist dollars and German marks.Whats the European aristocracy compared to the red one.

Marxism-Leninism was the defining movement of the 20th century. The Russian Social Democratic Labor party and its Bolshevik faction which became the Communist Party are historically important unlike you and your stupid jokes.

There was no widespread prosperity prior to the 20th century either. Something big happened in a relatively short period of time which transformed the globe because mass poverty wasn’t just a third world phenomena it was common in so called advance countries as well. That changed only due to the Cold War and the threat posed by communist parties. That mass poverty has remerged in the 21st century in a big way. The middle class is slated to be the new poor hence why we see rebellion like Trump, Brexit, Yellow Vests, etc across the so called “free world”.

Law and ideology are forms of subjugation and control. Your bitterness is mostly due to political defeat and personal pride. Progressive minded people who cared about the middle class and poor people supported communism but its fair to say nobody wants to be part of someone else’s empire either.

The Russian Empire/Soviet Union Europe’s last great empire collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions like most empires do. Its legacy however remains strong and intact. The Cold War may have ended in Europe but never ended in the far east. Marxism-Leninism’s “second Rome” Red China still exists and thrives. Nations are only judged by economic/military power, who represents them internationally, and whether the productive forces of society are satisfied. By those metrics Russia/China are doing great today much better than most countries in fact and their people widely support their rulers. The rulers themselves are only judged by their character, quality, judgement, achievements, and successes. Mass man with all his vices, waywardness, follies, and other lowbrow shit that you pander to doesn’t matter anywhere and has never mattered at anytime in history.

An American dog,a Polish dog and a Soviet dog sit together.The American dog says-In my country,if you bark long enough,you will be heard and given some meat.The Polish dog says-Whats meat.The Soviet dog says What is bark-.Here is another old-time Soviet one.A man walks into a shop.He asks the clerk-Do you have any meat.The clerk says -No we dont have any fish,the shop that doesnt have any meat is across the street-.In every communist country thus far the worst and most worthless shit shit floats to the top.Not one self described-commie such as yourself sees himself as an ordinary working Joe.Every communist experiment thus far has imploded miserably and Karl Marx is still your favorite fantasy author-what a Sad Sack.Im just waiting for you to to give me the old line-But that wasnt real communism.You dont know shit about Russia or China.The Communist Party membership in China comprises 6.5 per cent of the population of 1.4 billion yet 90 per cent of the 1,000 richest people in China are Communist Party members.The richest man in China is Party member Jack Ma,net worth 42.3 billion U.S.All this while 800 million Chinese citizens live on less than 15 U.S. a day.

@ Pandour

I’m glad Marxist-Leninist Cuba was able to rid itself of criminals, unemployables, degenerates, and undesirables but it came at the expense of middle class white Americans with the area in and around Miami, Florida undergoing a massive crime wave which the movie Scarface highlights. White Europeans shouldn’t be upset now when their lands are flooded with rapefugees who are the armies their governments employ to topple foreign adversaries.

At least the communists always stood for good wages, generous subsidies, pension systems, law/order, and closed borders. Most people living in crapitalism countries could only wish for that now. Just look at the recent pandemic only Russia/China have handled the crisis well but cucks like you would call them “authoritarian” states. What that really means is regular people live well enjoying security, safety, health, and prosperity. We’re witnessing the discrediting of crapitalism and constitutionalism across the globe today.

One of the greatest movie lines ever,Al Pacino in Scarface-I kill a communist for fun,but for a green card I gonna carve him up real nice-.

Children and grandchildren of Polish refugees from Communism suffered worst in Detroit and other Michigan automobile factories as a result of the post-industrial collapse.

Having fled Communism, these Polish flooded into Michigan’s factory cities for labor jobs.

After the collapse of Detroit, these Polish-Americans suffered the worst. Their poverty in Michigan is incredible-many fled to smaller rural areas of Michigan because of exploding black crime in Detroit and Flint.

So which system was worse? Poland, or the raw capitalism of the US which left Poland’s kids trapped in semi-abandoned Michigan factory towns filled with violent gangs and crack houses.

Crow now cry later,thats my vision of the future for you.

Lol. You chose it, so live with it. No skin off my back, cop.

In a flippant mood I see.Come he slow or come he fast,it is death who comes at last.Are you ready.

I never met or heard of a red who had a sense of haha.No wonder your kind never amounted to anything aside from being a plague on mankind.So emotionally constipated and mirthless.You would be far,far better of if you had Corona.The disease you have is the deadliest imaginable.

Copper, flatfoot, plod, fuzz, filth, pig!

> “After 74 years of mayhem,mass murder and misery the Bolshevik Revolution failed.”

The population of the Ukraine reached its absolute historical peak – 53 mil. – in 1993, thanks to the Bolshevik rule. Whereas Christian globohomo have run the country into the ground – 20 mil. gone! Where is your condemnation?

> “The biggest country on earth,with abundant natural resources of all kinds could not meet the basic needs of its citizens.”

The population was growing. Unemployment was a criminal offense. Art was created. Women wore modest clothing.

> “The Bolshevik barbarians biggest targets were the family,religion and civil society.”

Bolsheviks used to say, “family is a cell of the society”. Religion? No, faggotry was not allowed.

> “When one mentions the Russian Revolution,the first thing that comes to my mind-I cant remember who wrote it-is that it was the second greatest crime in human history,the first being the murder of Christ.”

1. The Russian Civil War was waged by native Bolsheviks against foreign occupiers and interventionists.

2. Why should a White man care about the fate of one Jew Jesus?

I remember a joke going around the Soviet Union in the 1960s.At the usual stultyfingly boring after-work party meeting which typically lasted into the evening the theparty trade union leader gave a speech announcing that the Soviet Union would pass the United States in industrial and food production within two years.One worker stood up and stated that it would be a bad idea for the Soviet Union to pass the United State.Bewildered,the leader asked why.Because,the worker said,if we did so they would see our bare asses hanging out of our torn trousers.

A proud Chekist rules Russia in the 21st century so I’m pretty sure most people liked communism. However just because anti-Soviet ideologues are stupid doesn’t mean everyone else should reduce themselves to their level.

For example slavery didn’t exist anywhere in the world after antiquity and there was certainly no negro slavery only negro serfdom. So yes feudalism/serfdom existed in the west for nearly as much time as it existed in the east. Feudalism or semi-feudalism appears to be the most popular form of human economic organization since the advent of civilization.

Communism is a child of the Enlightenment. Unlike other forms of socialism like religious socialism, agrarian socialism, anarchist socialism, and national socialism Marxism had a scientific basis. Marx was pro-labor but also very technocratic.

The ghoulish conditions of Victorian and modern industrial society came later but were very real. It was Germany and Russia who led the way against them. The Kingdom of Prussia was the first state to embrace Marxism unifying much of central Europe under the Prussian banner forging the German Empire. Karl Marx himself approved and other socialists particularly anarchists often resented Marx for being too friendly and cooperative toward moneyed interests.

At the dawn of the 20th century Russia also embraced Marxism or more importantly Marxism-Leninism long before Soviet power was declared preeminent and supreme. It was the communists who refused to let Russian money, arms, manpower, and capital be squandered against Germany. The purpose of both world wars was to pit Germany and Russia against each other but Nazi apologists being puppets of capitalism refuse to see that.

This link was already posted above but it deserves a another reposting because it discusses the issues in depth.

https://eradica.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/old-and-new-gods/

“When one mentions the Russian Revolution,the first thing that comes to my mind-I cant remember who wrote it-is that it was the second greatest crime in human history, the first being the murder of Christ.”

…and the jews were responsible for both of them.

Just a comment. Stalin’s last secret police chief , beria, was Georgian. According to many sources beria was a serial rapist of both adult women and juvenile females. I’d guess Stalin knew about bestial rapes by beria but did nothing to stop it or punish beria. Within a year of Stalin’s death beria was executed. However no public show trial. Secret trial then executed. A public trial of beria on abuse of power would have resulted in the implication of others in Stalin’s inner orbit. Thus secret trial and speedy execution

Thanks for the added perspective. I agree with much of what you wrote.

Quite amusing how many on this site suffer from ideological and methodological blindness.After 74 years of mayhem,mass murder and misery the Bolshevik Revolution failed.The biggest country on earth,with abundant natural resources of all kinds could not meet the basic needs of its citizens.Along with political tyranny,Soviet history is a record of economic deprivation,The Bolshevik barbarians biggest targets were the family,religion and civil society.Murder of children became a norm after the syphilitic mongoloid Lenin ordered the extermination of Czar Nicholas II,his wife Alexandra,and their five children.In 1935 Stalin introduced Article 12 of the USSR Criminal Code,which permitted that children aged 12 and older be sentenced to death or imprisonment as adults.This so-called law was directed at the orphans of victims of the regime.Millions of families were rounded up and forcibly relocated to remote regions in Siberia and Khazakstan.Hundreds of thousands of children died of starvation or disease,many en route, and were buried in mass unmarked graves.On an island settlment in Siberia,of the 14,000 deportees who died there between June and August 1931 76 per cent were children.By June 1st 1938 in Moscow alone 15,347 children had been sent to orphanages.Starvation and malnutrition were a routine occurrence in orphanages.When one mentions the Russian Revolution,the first thing that comes to my mind-I cant remember who wrote it-is that it was the second greatest crime in human history,the first being the murder of Christ.

They say arguing with an idiot makes two of them so Ill just leave you alone on this one.

Thank you for the citation. I of course checked up on the author in Wikkepedia that was most easily available.

First, the translation of the title is slightly inaccurate and reflects its political bias. It’s more accurate rendering is “Stalin’s War of Annihilation” rather than “Extermination” that more aptly fits the subject matter.

Second, he has apparently been criticized for being too sympathetic toward the Nazi regime which, of course, is a big no no in today’s Germany. But that doesn’t as such discredit him in my eyes.

Third, his main thesis in that book is that Stalin was planning to attack Germany, and Hitler was sort of waging a preventative war, but not technically because Hitler was not actually aware of Stalin’s plans to attack.

So what we have here is a strongly anti-communist German author of military affairs who is seeking to rehabilitate and sort of validate Hitler’s attack on Russia. One of the ways he is evidently doing it is by demonizing the Soviets, Stalin and his commanders as brutal thugs and thereby elevating by comparison the stature of the Wehrmacht for seeking to do them in. But he can’t quite canonize them, so he tries to elevate them by debasing their opponents.

Thus his approach differs substantially from how the German generals sought to rehabilitate themselves after WWII by stressing how they fought honorably for Germany but had their hands tied behind their backs by Hitler the evil dictator who disregarded their sound military advice that would have enabled them to succeed and avoid defeat. That tack preserved their honor and enabled them to avoid responsibility for the defeat Germany suffered. That’s the best they could do after Nurenberg,

I therefore do not trust what he is serving up as evidence about the brutality of Soviet commanders using terror to generate cohesion in the Russian army and generating the will to fight that enabled them to defeat the upstanding Germany army that would never stoop to such measures.

And in point of fact, since he was a military historian for the Bundeswehr, he should have known better that to refer to commissars in the Red Army as “political officers” as you cited it. Had they really been called that, then Hitler’s “commissar order” calling for the peremptory execution of such officers would have been called the “political officer” order. The fact it was not tells all. Of course, the incorrect identification could have resulted from a bad translation from German.

But let me cite another more balanced account about what was going on where Kirponos commanded Soviet forces.

“In he huge land mass of White Russia …. the fittest to command survived. A few commissars together with some Red Army officers of courage and foresight struggled day and night to form fresh units out of unarmed reservists, wandering stragglers, men on leave, and garrison brigades which littered the area…. Over the whole scene brooded [and here is what you are looking for] the ‘rear security detachments’ of the NKVD, machine gunners held ready ‘to check panic … and prevent unauthorized withdrawals.’” Indeed, several commanders were returned to Moscow and shot for cowardice. (Alan Clark, “The Russian-German Conflict 1941-1945“, p. 55).

Panic is what had to be stopped when an attack has inflicted a crushing defeat on military units and the situation appears hopeless, making it every man for himself for the survivors. It is then that shooting a few of the panicked soldier can stop it in its tracks. But that’s vastly different than supposedly using terror to compel men to fight against their will, as was originally claimed. It would also obviously be ridiculous to shoot them all, making it all that much easier for the enemy to advance against dead enemies.

That it wasn’t security detachments using terror that got Russians to fight is exemplified by the comment of a captain in the 18th Panzer division who Clark cites who noted that “‘. . . there was no feeling, as there had been in France, of entry into a defeated nation. Instead, there was “resistance, always resistance, however hopeless (e.a.). A single gun, a group of men with rifles . . . once a chap ran out of a cottage by the roadside with a grenade in each hand . . .’” (p. 56).

You simply do not generate that kind of resistance by terror.

That was and remains my point on this matter, and none of those contesting it have provided any credible evidence that disputes or refutes it.

> “Russian field commanders had little regard for human life and relied on senseless and meaningless frontal attacks to obliterate even minor nests of opposition,incurring hundreds of thousands of needless casualties.”

> “Can you imagine the fate of British or American commanders for such criminal mishandling of troops under their command.”

Hey, dude, have you forgotten of that little historical event called… World War 1? Where your beloved Britishers and Americans and Frenchmen sent exactly millions and millions of soldiers in human waves to die over the course of four years?

This is reality! People such as yourself exist! People that consider the Red Army as having a unique disregard for human life! After Verdun and the Somme! The anti-Soviet propaganda is mind-bogglingly widespread.

Not really doing this for you, but since I’m on a dreadful Covid19 lockdown, I might as well do it for the record.

From ‘Absolute War’ by C. Bellamy

During the withdrawal there were frequent cases of Soviet troops panicking, and Kirponos ordered the formation of ‘blocking detachments’, which would become infamous across the front, to shoot any soldiers who withdrew without orders. At this stage, these were drawn from the Red Army, and not provided by the NKVD.
…
Two days later, with typical contempt for the chain of command, Stalin and Shaposhnikov signed a Stavka Directive to all Front, Army and Division commanders, and to Timoshenko, commanding the South-Western Strategic Direction, ordering the formation of ‘blocking detachments’ in all divisions.
Each division would have such a detachment, made up of ‘reliable fighters’, of not more than a battalion, and typically a company. These were to be formed within the usual five days and would come under the divisional commander’s direct control. In addition to its normal equipment, a blocking detachment would have some trucks and tanks or armoured vehicles. Its role was to prevent ‘panic and flight’. It seems extraordinarily self-destructive that, in every division, some of the best fighting men, with more and better equipment than usual, should be employed to shoot Russians rather than Germans. However, that was seen as the way to ‘reinforce the order and discipline of divisions’.[55] …

[55]FSB Archives, Vol. II, Bk 2, Doc. 550, ‘Direktiva Stavki VGK No 001919 komanduyushchim voyskami frontov, armii, komandiram diviziy, glavnokomanduyushchemu Yugo-Zapadnogo napravleniya o sozdanii zagraditeVnykh otryadov v strelkovykh diiviziyakh.’, 12 September 1941, pp. 85-6.

IVAN’S WAR – THE RED ARMY 1939–1945 by Catherine Merridale

…These ‘blocking units’ were to supplement existing zagradotryady, the NKVD troops whose task had always been to guard the rear. Their orders were to kill anyone who lagged behind or attempted to run away.[11]
Order no. 227 was not made public until 1988, when it was printed as part of the policy of glasnost, or openness.
Velikaya Otechestvennaya, 2 (2), p. 278

The incident I described upthread involving the Soviet 164th infantry div. can be found in p.130 of the English translation of German military historian Joachim Hoffmann’s Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945 (“Stalin’s War of Extermination”), footnote 12 provides the archival ref.

At last someone acknowledges

That ruthless capitalism is in many ways indistinguishable from collectivisation in terms of the suffering it inflicts on the poor and the landless.

Except your next sentence that “acknowledging one does not preclude the other” is neither logical or practical conclusioin to be drawn from it since it appears t affirm what no one could argue. After all, it’s simple common sense that denying that Simpson committed the Bundy mrders does not at one and the same time deny that Stalin, communists or the NKVD murdered anyone. Of course not. Any school child knows that. Nor have I ever written anything that remotely even suggests it.

So I have never denied that Soviets used harsh methods to promote industrialization nor that they also used harsh methods to maintain the cohesion needed to secure victory against the Germans. Of course they did. My initial comments were directed to questioning and denying the Soviets relied on blocking units in the immediate front line to compel their solkdiers to fight against their will. The proponents of this idea then started off on wild goose chases to bring up one new issue after another after their last poisitioned was shattered.

So now we have come to the issue to the harsh methods the Soviets used to collectivise and industrialize Russia while the proponents of this idea apparently imagine the insutrialzation of the West occurred in a worker’s paradise and freedom

The whole poiunt at issue is what it takes industrialize and agricultural economy. It was actually he physiocrats in France who took up this issue that has since then been mainly ignored except to the extent that some efforts were made by social scientists especially in the US in the 1960’s and 70’s to explain how development could be kick started in the underdeveloped countries when the key issue was whether the communist or capitalist road was best. China and India were seen as the test cases. The test is over. India and the capitalist road lost long ago and the issue of which was best died a quiet death.

So anyone who really wants to address this issue needs realize that kley requirement for transforming a traditional, agricultural soiety into an industrialized one is generating the surplus agricultural production that is necessary for feeding workers taken off the farms and into factopries, and in turn creating surplus production in the industrialized sector that can be used for increasing the productive forces in society. The key issue to be resolved is how to extract from the producers and also accumulate the surplus production necessary to fund the dervelopment of technoloy and construct the tools that will greatly increase the productivity of labor to increase the suprplus that can be produced and extracted through each cycle of production.

And the capitalist ideologists wag their fingers at the Communist and denouncing them for engaging in terror and murder to achieve those aims while silently only implying that nothing like that ever happened under capitalism where capitalists were doing the same in the paradise they made for workers .

Really. Aside from using loans to bankrupt small farmers to drive them off the land, how aboput the tens of thousands of workers who were killed or maimed in industrial accidents while he apitlist owners compelklked them to produce under unsafe condiions. For example, while vising a coal mine in the Scranton area, the guiide told us how 30,000 workers had been killed in accidents while that mine had operated. That didn’t, of course count children under 14 who were discardable.

The capitalist owners, oif course,denied all responsibility. Aftert all, they had in place safety measures designed to protect the miners. The small flaw was that they also imposed a per ton daily productiong quota on miners who were docked for failing to fulfill it. Thje time it took to follow the safety standards like shoring up the mine shaft were, of curse, not inluded in the quota. So the onlyn way the minors could satisfy their production quota was to ignore the safety standards. See. It was their own fault if they got killed by failing to follow the safety standards the owners had in place. It was all pefectly legal, and the mnne owners made sure the state legislaure kept it that way. See how democracy works.

The, of course, there is slavery. Thouisands of balcks died on slave ships while beiong shipped here from Africa. And then they were subjugated to conditions slave owners imposed on them. How is that for working in gulags. Not only did the slave trade itself generate a handsome profit for the traders (mostly Jews), but the surplus stolen from the salves in the form of cotton generated a foreign trade surplus that circulated throughn the north to help fueld the growth of Northern industrial development.

And let’s not forget the extermination of the native Americans whose lands were stolen at gun point by white settlers wgo were given grants to land used for producing the food needed by city workers.

The refusal of the American Indians voluntarily to submit and part way with their traditions and wage war to protect them perfectly illustrates that force is always necessary to make any group of people give up their traditional life styles. The impetus for change within a group, however, depends entirely on whether the conditions under which they exist enables them to acquire the necesseties of life under their traditional ways. The main reason the Indians were not prompted to engage in technological innovation was that the Indian population was sufficiently sparse to enable them to produce the necessities of life without developing more productive technologies or to become sedentary and congregate in larger communities which gave individuals opportunities to become innovative and develop new technologies.

But even within societies it’s not easy to give up traditional ways.

And then the advocates of capitalism just wag their fingers and demonize the Communists for using force to achieve technological developments, while sanctifying whatever capitalists have done to achieve it that differs little in practice from what they demoinize.

Some of these people are way beyond the pale-past hope,past help,past care.The Soviets admitted and apologized for the Katyn massacre in April 1990,declaring it one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalin era.Russian military dead were four times greater than German,thanks in large part to Soviet tactics.Stalins whim to take to take Kiev by the 26th anniversary of the October Revolution on Nov. 7th alone cost 417,000 lives.Russian historians put the number of service personnel executed by the Soviets at 135,000.Russian historian Mark Solonin claims that 6-9 million Soviets were killed in Stalins repressions during the war.Documents from the Soviet archives number the total number of deaths in the Gulag from 1941 to 1945 at 621,627.In a report in 1995 Russian historian Viktor Zemskov noted-Due to general difficulties in 1941-1945,in the camps,the GULAG and prisons about 1.0 million prisoners died.Here is an interesting little aside.Bruno Bušić,a Croatian dissident,in former Yugoslavia worked at the Institute of the Workers Movement in 1965 in Zagreb,today the Croatian History Institute.There he amassed all available evidence at his disposal and concluded that in Croatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina,territories which roughly comprised the Independent State of Croatia during the war 1941-1945, 356,327 Partisans and civilians were killed in battle or were killed by Ustaša,Italians,Četniks-Serb royalists,Italians,Germans and Moslem militias or perished in camps.The number of those killed by the Partisans,military and civilians, and NOT listed in official sources was 454,983.This total only partially covers those killed in the immediate postwar period,May-Sept. 1945- to this one can add at around 150,000.In 1966 Bušić was sentenced to 10 months for reading immigrant publications and so-called enemy propaganda.He fled to Austria the same year.He was assassinated by the Yugoslav secret police in Paris on Oct. 16th 1971 for publishing his findings abroad.

Wrong take,pal.Stalin did not sign the Geneva convention because he knew that in the case of war,mass desertion and surrender were inevitable and that no one would fight for that satanic system.To discourage such behavior he deliberately left his soldiers without protection under international law.We have no prisoners,only traitors to the motherland,the Great Humanitarian stated. Order 270 issued 18 August 1941 equated surrender with treason.To discourage soldiers from laying down their arms the government announced that family members of POWs were to be deprived of state assistance and families of commanders were subject to arrest.Generals Nikolay Kirillov and Pavel Poledelin,taken prisoner by the Germans in July 1941,after their return,were executed for treason in 1950.Ponedelins father and wife were sentenced to five years in camps as relatives of a traitor.Today in Russia Soviet POWs are still seen as a source of shame and are regarded as traitors and collaborators,Nice system,nice fellow Stalin,wonderful legacy. Stalin despised his son-after he attempted suicide,Stalin said that he couldnt even kill himself properly.Stalin was a degenerate and coward par excellence and cared about no one but himself.

Yes I understand that bank foreclosures drove people off the land. That ruthless capitalism is in many ways indistinguishable from collectivisation in terms of the suffering it inflicts on the poor and the landless. Acknowledging one does not preclude the others. Some orders from Stalin such as the “not one step back” order was in all likelihood necessary to hold the line. Similarly Hitler’s orders to the Sixth Army to hold fast in Stalingrad is supposed to have bought time for the other elements to regroup. All that may well be the case. But nonetheless the plain fact of the commisars in the rear shooting at those attempting to flee remains and so does the mass deaths of collectivisation.

What case? Blabber? When I rely on specific documentsa, I cite them. When I rely on specific authors, I cite them. That makes it available for everyone to check up on me. Anyone really interested and able to engage in discussions based on evidence can and will do the same.

So when someone cites “communication reports” from specifically identified military units, if they had that information, they would also have the necessary detailed evidence that establish who wrote it, when, etc. or they wouldn’t be able to cite the details they have. If they can’t cite the additional corroborating details, then that discredits the ones they cite.

From lengthy experience about identifying, preventing, protecting, writing legislation and developing policies to prevent deception, fraud and misrepresentation in the marketplace, I am well aware of the importance of relying on details to expose it. That’s Mark Twain’s point about “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” Right, because having experienced it, you will know all the details of the experience that you can recite to verify and validate it. It’s the liar who gets tripped up by details because he can’t remember and won’t know all the details that would be present if the event occurred as the details he provides appear to prove. It is also precisely because someone making up a story and not having experienced the actual details involved is unsure about how the event actually happened and what evidence he should provide to substantiate it. And then to make it believable, they are prompted to add some extra detail that doesn’t fit the others they provide that exposes it.

That was the clear tell-tale sign that exposes the claims about communications reports from one unit to another without also giving the other relevant details that should have been readily available had the other parts been true.

Or to give you another live example from the Simpson case. Clark presented a witness (Shively) to the grand jury who claimed to have been driving on San Vicente at about 45 mph and had seen Simpson racing away on Bundy from the crime scene at the Bundy and San Vicente intersection. She remembered him because as he whizzed by on Bundy, after she stopped she could then clearly see him from the driver’s window after she stopped and he stopped to void hitting a car going in the other direction on San Vicente. That sounded reasonable and here was a key witness who put Simpson near the murder scene around the time of the murder. Hey, that’s it, lock him up for murder.

Clark sure bought it, and no one would have known the difference until she had to ask a simple question posed by knowledgeable jurors about how far she was from Simpson when you “first saw him.” And she answered as close as a chair which Clark said was about three feet away. And she stupidly expanded by saying “Maybe closer. And she missed him when she was moving at 45 mph. Really.

Clark the next day dumped her as a witness for reasons I won’t bother to detail. But it’s all there in the grand jury transcripts for June 21 and 23, 1994 that provide the foundation for clear inferences that must necessarily be drawn from the facts that are presented. And the prosecution almost immediately thereafter called for dismissing the grand jury.

Done in by those details that made her account a physical impossibility.

It’s such details that expose all lies, especially those holohoax stories.

And I am not asking you to be my researcher. Merely suggesting that when you fail to present evidence that has to be there given your other claims, you definitely don’t count for me but you can also be sure I won’t let pass anything you say that fails the laugh test..

This sad little liar is still pushing Katyn on the Germans, year 2020!

Do you mean to say that they found that time machine that transported German bullets to the past, bullets that were found at Katyn but weren’t even produced before Germany occupied that area? Can I use it, please?

Why would Stalin or anyone else in the Soviet/Russian government enter into negotiations with Nazi Germany after they broke the non-aggression pact? You don’t ever trust an intriguer and betrayer. Nazi apologists falsely claim the Soviets were the aggressors citing some traitor with a book to peddle decades later. In reality Hitler violated every treaty and obligation imposed on Germany. He invaded neighbors as well and broke pacts regularly. This is the international consensus on his regime and not “Soviet propaganda”. The idea that you can ignore everything leading up to another ploy this time on the pretext of “prisoner conditions” is insane. There are no Russian prisoners and Stalin applied that to his own son who later died in Nazi custody after Stalin refused a trade.

I talk about apples you babble about avocados-what does anything you wrote have to do with what I said.

Well, InaneFromTN is just a Troll, so his behavior is the expected.
This sad little liar is still pushing Katyn on the Germans, year 2020!

You mentioned the NKVD murder of 1,384 prisoners during the evacuation of Lvov… and the Soviet propaganda machine already blamed the Germans for that, shades of the later Katyn episode.
I wonder how many of the quite unknown number of Soviet civilian losses during the war resulted directly from Stalin’s policies, such as scorched earth. A lot anyway.
You mentioned Stalin’s war on Soviet POWs;

Historian Nikolai Tolstoy, writes in his book ‘Victims of Yalta: The Secret Betrayal of the Allies 1944-1947’:

“…nor did it(Soviet government) become a signatory of the Geneva Convention of 1929, which defined more precisely the conditions to be accorded to prisoners of war.

Despite this, immediately after war broke out in June 1941, the German Government approached the International Red Cross Committee with a view to regulating the conditions of prisoners on both sides. Lists of Russian prisoners were passed to the Soviet Government until September 1941. They then stopped, in the face of continued Soviet refusal to reciprocate. Over the winter the Germans made further efforts to establish relations with the Soviets with a view to introducing the provisions of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, but were rebuffed again.4 The Red Cross Committee itself then took a hand, approaching the Soviet ambassadors in London and Sweden; these made favourable noises, but on referring the matter to Moscow reverted to an impassive refusal.5

Meanwhile Germany’s allies, Italy, Rumania and Finland, after likewise trying in vain to come to any mutual arrangement, decided to apply the terms of the Conventions unilaterally to the Russian prisoners in their hands. This generous gesture evoked no response either.6….

Not surprisingly, the attitude of the German Government to their Russian prisoners began to harden,8 and those sections of opinion that opposed ill-treatment lost the influence they might otherwise have had. …

Hitler himself urged Red Cross inspection of camps. But an appeal to Stalin for prisoners’ postal services received a reply that clinched the matter:
‘There are no Russian prisoners of war. The Russian soldier fights on till death. If he chooses to become a prisoner, he is automatically excluded from the Russian community.”

Since thatwas a phantom army, there was no end run around it, merely pasding empty desert.

And just as I though. The US flagrantly disregarded and indeed violated the uathorizing UN resolution 678 which merely authorized uysing all “means” not force necessary for gaining compliance with the obligation imposed by resolution 660 of 1990 which only called on Iraq to withdraw its forces into positions occupied by them before they entered Kuwait. Since there was actually only a phantom presence in Kuwait, Iraq had effectively complied before a shot as fired. The US instead used this resulotion as a pretext for sending their forces into Iraq after full compliance with Resolutioin 660 had already been obtained. The US then did the same thing over Libya and used the allegedly humnanitarian purpose of protecting civilians to demolish Libya and murder their leader.

Saddam could have stopped all this by admitting the obvious. He did not because doing so meant losing face, and I think he couldn’t believe his former ally on whose behalf he had fought the Iranians would double cross and do this to him. Little did he realize that Bush had headed the CIA who cuts anyone’s throat who gets in their way.

That’s why Russia and China have wised up and veto any US resolution that even hints at the use of force.

I guess you missed my point I was not comparing the records themselves but their credility as sources for the truth.

NOPE. Your “point” was and is simply the crudest misdirection.

Soviet propaganda against the Germans is obviously NOT credible and not a source for the truth.
Actual Soviet archival materials, often quite incriminating stuff, is a different story altogether.
It seems you are demanding that we transcribe the exact archival record data here, and I could even do that, but I ain’t your slave, have better things to do, and then again, what for? You’d just question the validity of it all. Ain’t gonna play that game.

So I have made my case, you made your “point”, those interested can check it out and decide for themselves.

Excuse me. It’ s you folks who keep pissing into the wind with no idea where the urinals eveer are by your continuing to shift positions whenever your last one was devastated.

I see we have now switched from using barrier troops to terrorize unwilling soldiers to fight for a cuse they obviously detest to how terror was used to collectivise agriculture. Wow. Talk about missing urinals while pissing into a hurricane.

You now want to talk about the Soviets using terror to collectivise agriculture, a practice that by comparison is obviously completely foreign to the democratic west. Then how do you suppose all those family farm in America were “collectivized” into the enormous corporate farms operating hundred of thousands of acres, or small dairy farms with herds of 80 to 100 cows being turned into milk production factories of hundred of cows each?

What got all those millions of farmers off their thousands of small farms, a process that is emptying rural America? I’ll tell you what – it was the quiet terrorism of bankruptcy and foreclosures that compelled them to leave slowly rather than the direct force the Soviets used to achieve the same aim more quickly because the small farmers could never produce the surplus food to feed the work force required for rapidly industrializing he country.

Let’s say Uncle Joe realized he should instead proceed with the more benign methods of capitalist America and merely nudged the peasants into corporate (collective) farming. How far do you think he would have gotten from the end of the Civil War around 1920 to 1941? How many T-34 would they have been able to build by then, not to say modern airplanes, artillery and everything else that goes to waging modern war?

Had Stalin been the nice guy you want him to be, the Wehrmacht would have been celebrating in Moscow in July 1941.

I notice also, for example, that one of your crew who cited communications reports allegedly from specific units that included referene to a politial “officer” along with a commander killing soldiers who didn’t obey has not addressed the the missing identifying information issues I raised for authenticating those reports that should have been readily at hand had he hjad them. Run and hide is your answer when specific issues are raised about your claims.

Yup, change the topic, launch feints in different directions. You’re experts at it. But address issues with real facts, logic. knowledge, truth? That’s unknown to you.

I guess you missed my point I was not comparing the records themselves but their credility as sources for the truth. Of course everyhing piled up at the Nurenberg trials about the holocaust was trash. Including the finding that Germans committed the Katyn massacres.

Moreover, I notice that while you claim that the proof that the Soviets used blocking forces to coerce cohesion and instill the will to fight in Russians is in the records that substantiate it, those advocating using them as evidence and proof are extrmely light in citing any credible documents that was the point of my NEWS FLASH.

Russian field commanders had little regard for human life and relied on senseless and meaningless frontal attacks to obliterate even minor nests of opposition,incurring hundreds of thousands of needless casualties.The Russian State Military Archive has a data base confirming 167,976 killed or missing in only 105 days during the Winter War against Finland in 1940 along with the soldiers names,dates of birth and ranks.There were 5,572 Soviet prisoners-fate unknown after repatriation -probably all shot by the NKVD,as Western sources claim,aside from at least 152 who who enlisted in the Russian Liberation Army in Finland.Can you imagine the fate of British or American commanders for such criminal mishandling of troops under their command.

The ground operation was an end run around the concentrated Iraqi forces in Kuwait.

Heroic. Both shadow and AnonfromTN respond to replies based on documentation with irrelevancies. TN for example refers to flat earthers and Mormons. Then comes up with some silly jokes . .shadow instead uses the old tried and true method of pissing in every other direction except the urinal. If the responses get longer and belabour points already responded to with a rearrangement of sentences , without adducing new facts then its a sure sign of a Rogerian kind of argument. A childish solophism where they respond by rearranging the sentences.

> “In another book, ‘Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime’, General Volkogonov stated that between 1929 and 1953 the Soviet regime caused the deaths of 21.5 million Soviet people.”

A little-known fact – WW2 was started by Germany. German aggression against Russia in 1941 cost the lives of 27 mil. Soviet citizens. It would have costed even more – had it not been for Stalin’s successful defence of Russian statehood and race.

> “On average, over the more than twenty-year span of Stalin’s rule, 1 million people were shot, incarcerated, or deported to barely habitable areas of the Soviet Union every year.”

Yeah, so what? Russia is big. And the population increased nonetheless from 137.7 mil. in 1920 to 168.5 mil in 1939. That means the population of Russia grew by 1.6 mil. every year under Stalin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union

(No, not because of Uzbeks.)

I talk about apples you babble about avocados-what does anything you wrote have to do with what I said.During the Soviet retreat in June and July 1941 the NKVD rearguard murdered nearly 100,000 prisoners,this thoroughly detailed in Soviet archives.For example,according to Soviet sources-Novaia i Noveishaia Istoria no.5,1990,the NKVD during the evacuation of Lvov murdered 1,384 prisoners.Also from Soviet archives-from June 22 to 19th October 1941 NKVD tribunals shot 10,321 deserters.The document detailing the executions was signed by Beria.When the Germans,approached the Soviets,through Sweden,to negotiate observance of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war,Stalin refused.Please tell me why Stalin did not sign the Geneva Convention-maybe some things might become clear to you.Russian historian G.F. Krivosheev,on the basis of NKVD documents writes that after the war,the NKVD send 233,400 former Russian POWs to the Gulag.The total does not include Soviet citizens who served in the German forces,such as Cossacks-an entire Cossack corps under German command fought in Yugoslavia.

Russia at the dawn of the 20th century was already a powder keg with a major conflict between the regime and the revolutionaries underway from 1900-1905 and again from 1905-1917 long before Soviet power was declared preeminent and supreme. Did some of you miss the fact Russia was invaded FIRST after the October Revolution during the Russian Civil War both by the Allies and Central Powers? That was the true start of the Cold War. Their puppets also waged a brutal war on Soviet power. Plus various gangs, warlords, armies, and terrorists began carving out their own states as well but all were defeated. They were not only given a good beating but crushed and their foreign backers given a bloody nose. However they continued to support various uprisings, rebellions, espionage, and subversion hence harsh repressive measures. In their next phase against Soviet power they built up Nazi Germany but they were not only defeated but destroyed with the enemies of Soviet power both in Europe/Asia castrated so as to never rise again. The global mafia being gangsters also fought among themselves weakening and crippling each other instead of uniting against their common foe world communism and Russia.

Soviet Russia used every tool of statecraft to win WW2 political, economic, diplomatic, intelligence, and military. They won WW2 basically on their own fair and square but if America supported the Soviets then its fair to say all of Europe supported the Nazis.

For the record:
Soviet General Dmitri Volkogonov, who was Director of the Institute for Military History and had unrivalled access to Soviet military archives, Communist Party documents and secret presidential files, wrote in “Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy”

“To repeat: the restructuring of the agrarian economy could have been accomplished entirely without recourse to the terror and the tragedy that, both in scale and consequence, exceeded the repressions of 1937-38. It goes without saying that in both cases the use of force was criminal. The successful ‘liquidation of the kulaks as a class’ inflated Stalin’s confidence in himself as a dictator and he did not hesitate to liquidate all those who either had or might still come out against him. …

Stalin’s forced ‘agrarian revolution’ condemned Soviet agriculture to decades of stagnation. The bloody experiment costing millions of lives brought the country no relief.”

In another book, ‘Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime’, General Volkogonov stated that between 1929 and 1953 the Soviet regime caused the deaths of 21.5 million Soviet people.

The marks left by Stalin on the face of the earth cannot easily be wiped away. Whether the thousands of buildings in the Stalinist style of architecture, the canals, highways, blast furnaces, mines and factories – built to a large extent by the slave labor of millions of anonymous inmates of his Gulag – or nuclear weapons, his traces are steeped in blood.

Between 1929 and 1953 the state created by Lenin and set in motion by Stalin deprived 21.5 million Soviet citizens of their lives. No one in history has ever waged such war on his own people.
Dmitri Volkogonov. Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime. pp. 139

Another leading Russian historian of the Stalinist period, Oleg Khlevniuk, a senior researcher at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, wrote in his book “Stalin: new biography of a dictator”, regarding the victims of the regime:

Between 1930 and 1952, some 20 million people were sentenced to incarceration in labor camps, penal colonies, or prisons. During that same period no fewer than 6 million, primarily “kulaks� and members of “repressed peoples,� were subjected to “administrative exile�: forced resettlement to a remote area of the USSR. On average, over the more than twenty-year span of Stalin’s rule, 1 million people were shot, incarcerated, or deported to barely habitable areas of the Soviet Union every year.
…
Furthermore, in addition to the 26 million who were shot, imprisoned, or subjected to internal exile, tens of millions were forced to labor on difficult and dangerous projects, arrested, subjected to lengthy imprisonment without charges, or fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes for being relatives of “enemies of the people.� Overall, the Stalinist dictatorship subjected at least 60 million people to some sort of “hard� or “soft� repression and discrimination.

To this figure we must add the victims of periodic famines or starvation, which during 1932–1933 alone took the lives of between 5 and 7 million people. The Stalinist famine was largely the result of political decisions. In its campaign to break peasant opposition to collectivization, the Stalinist government used famine as a means of “punishing� the countryside. All opportunities to relieve the situation—such as purchasing grain abroad—were rejected. Starving villages had their last stores of food expropriated.

NEWSFLASH: THE HOLOCAUST IS WELL DOCUMENTED IN RECORDS PRODUCED AT THE NURENBERG TRIAL OF MAJOR AR CRIMINALS BY RECORDS INTRODUCED THAT GERMANS USED GAS CHAMBERS, ELECTROCUTED RUSSIAN BY PUTTING THE OPN FLOORS COVERED WITH WATER AND ELECTECUTING THEM AS WELL AS GAS FUELED BY DIESEL ENGINES AND BEST OF ALL, IN HUTS BY USING THE ENGINES OF T-34 TANKS.

You of course, believe all this, especially when the sources are the Soviets.

Pure SOPHISTRY…

Your pathetic false analogy is to compare Soviet or other Allied atrocity propaganda with actual Soviet records made available after the fall of the Soviet Union when the Russian government partially opened their archives to researchers.
When an increasing number of Russian historians who researched the archives began to reveal too many unsavory facts, particularly those shattering the myth of a purely defensive Soviet foreign policy, the archives were again closed & legislation was passed in Russia to punish those historians who disputed the “facts” established at the Nürnberg show trials, especially those re the “great patriotic war”.

As for the holocaust atrocity propaganda no documentation exists, to say nothing of material evidence.
Already in 1951 the Jew Léon Poliakov, who had been part of the French delegation at the Nuremberg trial (1945-1946),

stated his conclusion that we had at our disposal an overabundance of documents for all points of the history of the Third Reich, with the exception of one point alone:
the “campaign to exterminate the Jews�. For this, he wrote,
“No document remains, perhaps none has ever existed� (Bréviaire de la haine, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1974 [1951], p. 171; English version: Harvest of Hate, New York, Holocaust Library, 1979, revised and expanded edition)

You have also stupidly stated that the Red Army would not have used terror measures such as barrier troops because that would be ineffective or something; yet they did do it and it is well known from Soviet archival materials.
According to your “logic” the Stalinist regime should not have used terror measures in its modernization drive of the Soviet economy since in theory it would be less efficient but it did & it is also very well documented, including all the human suffering and the sometimes disastrous effects, such as with Soviet agriculture.

It was hardly necessary for them to do that when there was barely a phantom army in Kuwait to contest the imperialist forces.

One clear sign that Saddam had few troops in Kuwait is that a private company obtained satellite photos of the area Saddam’s troops had occupied, but there waere few if any signs of tread tracks armor would have left in the desert had large numbers of them been deployed there. Conclusion: no tread tracks, no armor. Second, number of casualties claimed didn’t even closely match the bodies that had to be buried. My favorite example, however, was a photo of a Syrian tank allegedly destroyed by the valiant allied forces beating up Saddam’s army that was carried by all the media. Major problem with it that destroyed its authenticity as a casualty of the Kuwait war. The track on the left side of the tank was entirely missing; it was not on the bogeys nor under them; it was not anywhere in the area where the hull was positioned. The fact the tank was intact indicated clearly it had not suffered a catastrophic hit, but its track had instead been hit and the tank kept rolling on the tread as it kept moving until the break reached the sprocket roller, and in that case, the segment the tank had run over up to the break would have been on the ground in front of or behind the direction it had been moving. The the segment that stopped moving after the break reached the sprocket wheel would have then been left under the tank.

The absence of the tread anywhere in the area where it was is proof to a certainty the tank had been damaged elsewhwere (on the Iran-Iraq front, most likely), and had been moved there from the front and positioned by the Iraqi Army where it was found as a dummy target. Having one dummy target like that is the sound foundation for inferring that Iraq had place dozens if not hundereds in the area to place a phantom army into Kuwait. That’s the army the invasion forces pulverized.

As for how Bush triggered that war to make Hussein appear as the agressor, read all about it in how Bismarck suckered Napoleon III into declaring war on Prussia to trigger the Franco-Prussian war that led to France’s catastrophic defeat at Sedan or, in more recent times, how the British triggered WWI while making the Kaiser out to be the aggressor.

No answer on substance? Why am I not surprised? Your side lost the war 70 years ago. Still butthurt? Take heart: the South lost the war more than 150 years ago, and some people are still butthurt.

Up to yer old tricks again, I see…

Except that in the past you idiotically claimed that the Germans had lost more men fighting over Pavlov’s house than during all of the 1940 summer campaign in France, a RIDICULOUS LIE.

Now you have changed that by saying the Germans lost more men ‘storming “Pavlov’s houseâ€� in Stalingrad … that taking Paris’.
Very “clever”, since there was no battle for Paris, given that the French government declared Paris to be an open city in order to avoid its needless destruction.

Now, had the Soviet Union been the same size of France in territory and manpower, it would have been crushed just as quickly as the French were, if not faster.
The many crushing defeats the Soviets endured in 1941 should serve as sufficient proof to anyone, trolls such as yourself excluded.
Yes, the Soviets won the war but they did NOT do it alone, not even close. In fact the notion they did is one of the 3 key Soviet myths, one which has gained considerable traction in the West as well.

One of the main weaknesses of Saadam Hussein’s forces in the First Gulf war was that he had to keep some of the best troops in the rear to shoot deserters.

These stories, repeated ad nauseam by people with clear selfish interest that has nothing to do with establishing the truth, do not gibe with the fact (which cannot be disputed) that the USSR won the war with Germany. That was in sharp contrast to many “democratic� European countries that lost it, in many cases in the most ignoble manner.

Germans lost more soldiers storming “Pavlov’s house� in Stalingrad, which was surrounded by Germans and where NKVD had no access, that taking Paris. While Paris was taken by Germans, Pavlov’s house was not. Now how do you explain that?

Perspective you say-truly an Orwellian inversion.Ask yourself why over a million Soviet citizens fought for Germany in WW II,bucko.Maybe you can enlighten us on the use of Shtrafbats,Soviet penal battalions.At Stalingrad alone the Soviets shot 13,500 men within a few weeks.Between July and October 1942 more than 650.000 Soviet soldiers were arrested for desertion or being away from their units.The real nature of the Soviet regime and leadership is revealed by the Chartsysk massacre of Sept. 18th 1941 where the NKVD murdered 370 children aged 14 to 16.The children were members of the F.S.U. Trade and Craft School in Stalino.As the Germans neared the city the victims were force-marched 60 km. Utterly exhausted they begged for transport.Instead they were machine-gunned by the NKVD.

You nailed it. That’s period, paragraph, end of story.

Damn, you’re right, my percentage was way wrong. I can only blame my calculater since I took it right off the screen. The number seemed odd, but how could the calculator be wrong. See, never trust without verifying. I can’t exaplin it, maybe I punched the wrong numbers.

But even .5% or .005 is still a tiny number.

Of course deserters are shot in every army. People who run from the enemy can’t be decorated or who would stick around and fight. In fact, the conditions that produce cohesion or disintegration of armies is a very complex matter. The issue was actually studied after the war to understnad how the German army in the main maintained its cohesion almost to the end. The final conclusion of the study was that it wasn’t ideoplogy or politics that did it, but belonging to primary groups who fought for each other. That was, however, only partly right as is evidenced by the cohesion in the primary groups in Vietnam bringing them together to to smoke pot and avoid contact rather than fight that, among other things, compelled Nixon to start Vietnamizing the war and drawing down US troops.

As for your claim that the Darwinian selection of troops on the battlefield being imaginative but nothing more than that, in point of fact, the same thing happened during the battle of the Falaise pocket. The determined German soldiers broke out to fight again and were reconstituted, held up the allies and even inflicted defeats. On the other hand, thousands of the much less determined and faint hearted quit and became prisoners. Many of each were also killed. The key thing that led to the demoralization of the Germans was the overwhelming Allied air superiority against which they were more or less powerless. Even worse was rarely seeing the Luftwaffe in action on their behalf. That will inspire a defeatist attitude that shooting deserters is not going to change.

And no, I don’t take my history from TV. I rely on books written by those who led and who studied campaign. Two perfect examples that tell you about Guderian is his own book”Panzer Leader, and the one written by Hoth, who commander Panzergruppe 3 and who guardedly criticized Guderian for his failure to close both the Minsk and Smolensk pockets. Gudeerian’s reputation has taken a hit since the Russian campaign has started to be scrutinzed by “revisionist” authors who have started digging beneath the tale first told by key participants who mostly sought to exhonerate themselves.

Russia is a land based civilization and Russian nobility is different than abroad. Russia needs unity to survive and being surrounded by enemies on all sides (as well as internal enemies) it cannot afford weakness, cowardice, disgrace, and defeat. Like it or not people were loyal to the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party later the Communist Party and subsequently the Soviet/Russian state. People who say otherwise are mostly rightwing and Russia’s foreign enemies. Russia splitting its massive army into several regional commands and numerous smaller local commands protecting the north, south, east, west, all while maintain domestic order was no easy feat. They had to satisfy domestic needs while funding security and defense. They also had to improve, modernize, upgrade, and reform constantly since they were never under treaty imposed restrictions.

After massive investment in human capital via good wages, less work, better conditions, more vacations, generous subsidies, cushy pensions, low prices, tax breaks, and heavy state support in medicine/education the Soviet/Russian elite had a right to expect political loyalty and a certain level of work performance. Tens of millions were mobilized during WW2 in a wide number of areas civilian, government, economic, and military. If some executions were conducted on the front even in large numbers (still miniscule) then they were legitimate. The purpose of SMERH which was the Red Army’s wartime counterintelligence agency staffed by NKVD officers but overseen by Red Army commanders and the Red Army high command was to hunt traitors, spies, cowards, and defeatists. They also secured the rear executing criminals, looters, degenerates, and filth. While Soviet artillery was the greatest killer during the war SMERSH did an excellent job as well preventing Nazi penetration of Soviet wartime efforts. Given the Soviet victory and final conquest of Berlin I’d rate SMERSH highly. In a war of mass extermination the Soviets had every right to believe prisoners captured by the Germans were traitors. After the war they were arrested, processed, screened, and imprisoned if necessary while most were forced to live with the disgrace of being cowards rightly so given their surrender.

632,000 of them were sent back to the front and 3321 of them were shot.

Although I am sure you missed the irony in your remarks, they fully proved my point. Let’s see, the 3321 who were shot makes up .00002 percent (that’s right, four zeroes before the decimal sign) of all who retreated rather than stand up to the Germans. When only such a miniscule proportion of all those who had engaged in a headless retreat were actually shot, …

3,000 out of 600,000 is 0.5%. The percentage you quote amounts to one eighth of a single soldier. So it’s back to school for you.

It may be that most of the 632,000 were not actually deserters but arrived still as intact units, or at least as dispersed parts that simply had become separated from their larger units during the fighting. Such groups would of course be sent back.

The shooting of deserters is commonplace not just in the Russian army; it also happened in the German army, particularly when they had entered their losing streak in 1943/4. As far as I know, General Ferdinand Schoerner earned quite a reputation in this regard.

As for the immediate Darwinian selection of Russian troops on the battlefield, with the brave ones breaking out but the fainthearted perishing – that is very imaginative, but nothing more than that. Surely the vast majority of the soldiers broke out or were captured with their entire units, not as individuals. You probably just watch too much TV.

Further from http://www.racerealist.com/eckart_2.htm

Moses Mendelssohn passed for a downright wonder of wisdom. Yet, lo and behold, he found it actually shocking that the Jews still didn’t have the dominion over the earth which was due them!” [57]

Communism is a child of the enlightenment. Both the United States and Soviet Union in particular are deeply masonic creations.

In one way of looking at it, it is true. The “Russian” Revolution was a long continuation of many revolutions such as the “French” revolution, “English” Revolution (Cromwell), “Mexican” Revolution etc… But to understand the Bolshevik revolution, we may have to go all the way back to Ancient Egypt, the trick is using the goyim commoners to revolt against their own elites, so that Jews can replace the old goyim elite and become lords of the lowly goyim masses who they had used for the “revolution” anyways.This is the best explanation of the Bolshevik Revolution

From http://www.racerealist.com/eckart_1.htm
Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: A Dialogue Between Adolf Hitler and Me

“And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother and every one against his neighbor; city against city and kingdom against kingdom. And the spirit of Egypt shall fall in the midst thereof; and I will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards (Isaiah 19:2-3).

…snip…

“And in 1871, in Paris, the Jewish defense also ran according to plan. There the communists destroyed whatever they could, but the many places and houses of the Rothschilds remained completely intact. [4] All this enables us to understand the place in Exodus according to which ‘a mixed multitude’ also left Egypt with the Jews.”

“In Egypt the scoundrels’ scheme succeed only about halfway,” he finished. “The Egyptians became masters of the situation at the last moment and sent the ‘mixed multitude’ to the devil, together with the Jews. There must have been a desperate struggle. The slaughter of the firstborn reveals that clearly enough. Just as they have done with us, the Jews had won the great lower stratum of the population for themselves — ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!’ — until one night they sent out the order, ‘Down with the bourgeois! Kill them, the dogs!’ but things didn’t turn out so well as they had expected. That portion of the Egyptian nation that had remained patriotic turned the tables and booted Moses, Cohn, and Levi out of the country, followed by the inhabitants whom they had incited. During this exodus they carried along as much stolen booty as they could manage, the Bible reports with satisfaction. It also reports, in no uncertain terms, that the Egyptians were glad to be rid of them (Exodus 12:35-36; Psalms 105:38). The best, though, was the reward the Jews gave their stupid accomplices. Suddenly they began calling them ‘rabble,’ [5] whereas formerly they had called them ‘comrade’ and pretended to love them. Imagine the faces these deluded ones must have made in the desert when they heard this.”

“The murder of seventy-five thousand Persians, in the Book of Esther, no doubt had the same Bolshevist background,” I answered. “The Jews certainly didn’t accomplish that all by themselves.”

“No more,” he confirmed, “than the dreadful bloodbath over half the Roman Empire, which took place during the reign of Emperor Trajan. Hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish nobles in Babylonia, in Cyrenaica, in Egypt, and on Cyprus butchered like cattle, most of them after the most abominable torture! [6] And today the Jews still rejoice over that. ‘

…snip…

“By now, the Egyptians had forgotten dear Joseph, who was dead and gone but there was no lack of others on whom to blame the state of affairs, namely the landowners, the industrialists, the bourgeois. According to the Jews, no one else was responsible. ‘Proletarians of all countries, unite!’ And the masses believed it and turned on their own flesh and blood for the sake of the ‘chosen people,’ who had brought on all their distress in the first place. But to us they touchingly read aloud in school the beautiful story of Joseph and his brothers. No doubt many teachers ‘wept a good while.’ It’s enough to drive one to despair.”

Wow. Now that’s very impressive. In bold face no less. For the record the terror methods are well document by various directives and testimony.

NEWSFLASH: THE HOLOCAUST IS WELL DOCUMENTED IN RECORDS PRODUCED AT THE NURENBERG TRIAL OF MAJOR AR CRIMINALS BY RECORDS INTRODUCED THAT GERMANS USED GAS CHAMBERS, ELECTROCUTED RUSSIAN BY PUTTING THE OPN FLOORS COVERED WITH WATER AND ELECTECUTING THEM AS WELL AS GAS FUELED BY DIESEL ENGINES AND BEST OF ALL, IN HUTS BY USING THE ENGINES OF T-34 TANKS.

You of course, believe all this, especially when the sources are the Soviets.

Okay, all governments lie. It’s not the source but the content of the lie that discredits it as all those documents proving the ridiculous

I am, however, impressed your citing “special communications” reports “from the Special Department of the NKVD of the 264th infantry division to the Chief of the Special Department of the NKVD of the 26th Army, reported on the first battle of the 1060th infantry regiment in 1941. When the soldiers of the 4th company, 2nd Battalion failed in the attack, heavy MGs opened up on them from behind, killing ‘at least 60′. The commander and the political leader also shot all who tried to surrender.

What an incredibly detailed report. Who could doubt any of it? At least not until you notice that the citation is at one and the same time too detailed and vastly too vague to count that is the sure sign of deception. Given that it is as detailed and specific as you make it, it has to come from a particular document or record originally written by the persons identified that has to be sourced to a specific file or book.

So, did you personally read the original document? If you did, do you speak Russian? Where is the document filed? Who wrote it? What is its date? To whom was it sent? And if you didn’t personally review the document, in what book or documented contained the information, and what is the identifying citation?

You see, if the document contained information as detailed as you identify it, all that other authenticating information should be readily available to you that you could have shared with everyone to give your detailed claim real credibility. The fact it’s all missing relegates your claim to the scrap pile until you furnish it.

I am not holding my breath waiting for it because your identifying the source as a “‘special communications’” report again says both too much and too little by using entirely redundant words. Thus, the information contained in it would be identified in a real message either as a “special communication” or as a report, but never by combining the redundant identifiers since doing so makes the sender look stupid.

That you are, however, completely unfamiliar with Soviet practice is made clear by your referring to the “political leader” joining the commander to kill all who wanted to surrender. The title in the Red Army of such political leaders was “commissars” or political commissars. But if you really know what your were talking about, you would have known that.

Dressing in leather as did the NKVD, the SS, is a sign of “Maennerbund” reversion, that is, a throwback to Werewolf associations (cave man initiations), like the Hell’s Angels and other Motorbike gangs, and many others.

For the record: The reality of the use of blocking/barrier units and other terror measures in the Red Army is well documented by various Soviet directives and orders as well as by testimony.

Beyond the numerous Soviet directives and orders in this connection there are also specific reports detailing specific incidents.
For example, a “special communication” report from the Special Department of the NKVD of the 264th infantry division to the Chief of the Special Department of the NKVD of the 26th Army, reported on the first battle of the 1060th infantry regiment in 1941. When the soldiers of the 4th company, 2nd Battalion failed in the attack, heavy MGs opened up on them from behind, killing ‘at least 60′. The commander and the political leader also shot all who tried to surrender.

The Stalinist regime was so ruthless that Soviet airstrikes targeted, on purpose, overcrowded Soviet POW camps, such as Orel and Novgorod-Severkij. In the Soviet military, surrender was not allowed. Officers, if they surrendered, would be executed if taken back (or later repatriated) and their families arrested.
Conscripts faced same fate but families ‘only’ lost state support. Many soviet soldiers who were captured, from lowly privates to Generals, expressed their great fear of the NKVD. It also terribly affected the performance of Soviet forces. Major General Kirpichnikov stated that because of the commissars they were totally stifled in their tactical creativeness and operational thinking.
Despite all this terror, millions of Soviet soldiers surrendered or deserted.
This does not fit very well with a view of mass patriotism. Initially, Soviet propaganda aimed at fighting for Stalin and Communism, as it was ineffective, this was later changed to defense of the motherland which proved much more efficient. Still, terror measures remained an important component in keeping the Red Army fighting.

Soviet data shows that during the war, more than 2.5 million Red Army personnel were sentenced and 217.000 soldiers were shot.
SMERSH: Stalin’s Secret Weapon

“During the war, military tribunals sentenced more than 2.5 million Soviet military men and women. … and a total of 217,000 were shot; of those, 135,000 were sentenced by military tribunals of the Red Army. Death sentences were usually executed by an OO (later SMERSH) officer or a Red Army platoon attached to the OO/SMERSH Department, before the eyes of the formation.
The enormity of these executions becomes evident from a comparison with death sentences in foreign armies.”

As Marshal Georgi Zhukov noted:

“In the Red Army, it takes a very brave man to be a coward.�

As to your last point first, it obviously escaped you that I cited that example merely to illustrate the futility of using force in such situations as the movie depicted which was all too real rather than as evidence of the point at issue. That was when the czarist armies disintegrated starting in 1917 when no amount of force would keep them fighting.

AS to your second point that you didn’t really say blocking kept the red army fighting but were merely saying they existed, citing Beria and Milshtein (obviously Jews) as sources, it reveals your striving to make yourself into a moving target to avoid being hit by the barrage aimed at your last position.

The point isn’t whether they existed as you now claim, but their purpose. When this issue was first raised, their clear purpose was setting up commissars behind the lines to terrorize soldiers to keep fighting or they would be shot by those blockers. My initial comments addressed the point by explaining why terror would not and could not work to compel masses of soldiers to keep fighting.

So now you actually acknowledge that the purpose of those “blocking forces” “detained 657,000 soldiers in the three months after war started, amid all the chaos and men cut off from units. 632,000 of them were sent back to the front and 3321 of them were shot.”

Although I am sure you missed the irony in your remarks, they fully proved my point. Let’s see, the 3321 who were shot makes up .00002 percent (that’s right, four zeroes before the decimal sign) of all who retreated rather than stand up to the Germans. When only such a miniscule proportion of all those who had engaged in a headless retreat were actually shot, it is clear that the terror of being shot by the blocking forces is not what got them back into line because they could and would easily have crushed them had they been determined to stop fighting.

Your admission exposes that the real purpose of these so called “blocking forces” was not to terrorize the soldiers to stay in the line and compel them to fight but to act as collection points for soldiers streaming back from units that had been disintegrated by the German attacks and merely needed to be reorganized and replenished to be able to resume the fight.

Indeed, if you actually knew anything at all about fighting on the Eastern front, you would know that Guderian’s pig headedness in rushing headlong forward as far and fast as he could and ignoring his flanks rather than conducting a closer encirclement of bypassed Russian forces that became impossible when his armored forces raced too far ahead of the following infantry created encirclements that the Russian forces could easily break through that actually aided the Russian in saving those forces. Moreover, not only did it help the Russians save those forces, the loose encirclements actually ensured that only those most determined to keep fighting and had become experienced to do it more effectively were the ones who were most likely to escape, and that it was the faint hearted who were left behind. Thus the loose encirclements unintentionally acted as a sieve that sorted out the strong from the weak and worked to strengthen the fighting spirit of the Red Army.

But your remarks make clear you sure wouldn’t know a damn thing about any of this.

As to how ones makes the judgment about which historians or accounts to believe, check out Col. Boyd’s OODA loop and it will explain it to you.

You are obviously clueless about the issue if you imagine that blocking units were what kept the Red Army fighting when they would obviously have been most needed in 1941 and early 42 when millions of Russians surrendered. Where were these blocking units then and how effective could they have been given those mass surrenders.

I didn’t say blocking units “kept the Red Army fighting.” I simply said they existed. Vadim Birstein quotes a report from Milshtein to Beria (you know who they are, of course!) to the effect that blocking units and NKVD units behind the lines detained 657,000 Russian soldiers in the three months after war started, amid all the chaos and men cut off from units. 632,000 of them were sent back to the front and 3321 of them were shot. Apparently they were very effective. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?

Unfortunately, true, no historian is perfect and many essentially work for the establishment. A man who is well-read in history can distinguish the good from the bad, of course. You point out a researcher you evidently believe. Why do you believe that one? How do you make the judgment? Your case is not helped much when you cite movies as evidence, by the way.

A poll conducted in 1989 reported that homosexuals were the most hated group in Russian society and that…people and 5 percent labeled their sexual orientation “unfortunateâ€�.[48]

I wrote about the early Soviet State. All that promiscuity, homosexuality was repressed later as time went on in the Soviet State.

Your rebuttal that relying on the good work of historians and archival material is the best way of assessing such historical questioins (presumably referring to my point about ising terror to compel soldiers to fight) reveals you are thoroughly intellectually challenged about these matters. Nor do you have the slightest idea about what I know about these matters, having thoroughly delved into especially the subject of the Russian front.

Col. General Balck is one of the best examples of someone who explains in his book “Order in Chaos” what it takes to get soldiers to fight and what doesn’t work. You are obviously clueless about the issue if you imagine that blocking units were what kept the Red Army fighting when they would obviously have been most needed in 1941 and early 42 when millions of Russians surrendered. Where were these blocking units then and how effective could they have been given those mass surrenders.

Clear thinking should tell you that soldiers who lack the will to fight can never be compelled to do so by terrorizing them with force because first, the soldiers themselves are armed and could destroy the puny blocking forces and two, they could simply choose to surrender. It’s the simple unwillingness of soldiers to continue fighting plus political agitation by the Bolsheviks that brought about the collapse of the Russian army in WWI. The scene in Dr. Zhivago where the troops leaving the front shoot officers of fresh recruits headed to the front perfectly illustrates this phenomenon that does not, however account for it.

Yes, tell me about all the good historians and their works. The fact is that the most revered and cited are court historians who are nothing more than propagandists for the history the ruling elite want told that enable them to gain and maintain their grip on power. It is these court historians who selectively use records and document that support their predetermined points of view of how history is to be told and what is to be buried.

Indeed, the only real sources for those “blocking unit” stories are Germans who failed to comprehend how the Red Army could be offering the such determined resistance after they had inflicted massive losses on them, and anti-Soviet Russians who relied on it to account for why their fellow Russians were fighting so hard for a system they detested. I can certainly understand why he Germans felt that way. What accounts for Russians who do the same? Their refugee from Communism status accounts for most of it.

The fact is that during the Vietnam war the Viet Cong determination to fight the invaders was explained as drug induced fanaticism. Explain how well that worked to promote the drug induced soldiers in Vietnam to fight hard against the Viet Cong. They however certainty turned to fragging their officers.

Oh, and by the way, do you realize that Herbert Hoover, in the guise of engaging in relief work after WWI went around securing the documents of the foreign offices of the major warring powers and relocated them to his institute where they have remained under lock and key for over a century, available if at all only to a select few. How is that for an effective way to bury the truth.

If you doubt it, look it up in “Hidden History” by Dockerty and Macgregor who do document that the court historian account of Germany starting the war is complete hokum. And then read all about it in the books by court historians who used reams of document crammed into the Warren Report to insist it was Oswald with an unaligned scope who fired a magic bullet that went through two bodies, struck 2 ribs and a wrist bone and landed on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital in practically pristine condition.

I knew it was nonsense the moment they said it. But I bet you still believe it because it is historians using those methods that tell you so.

The Shadow is right. Plus the world of education, schools, colleges, universities, and academia is tightly controlled by the powers that be. Like medieval rulers who once endowed these institutions our current rulers own them today as well. Private schools are still good but they’re not perfect.

People go on endlessly about politics when the state and the institutions of the state be they political, economic, diplomatic, intelligence, and military remain the same across time.

Many modern researchers, historians, academics, and writers aren’t educated as lawyers and therefore struggle to separate fact from fiction. They fail to weigh the scales of justice evenly. They routinely engage in myth making as well. They also exaggerate beyond belief going into every possible detail when in reality nothing has changed much in human history. People are the same today as they were ten thousand years ago being driven by the same goals, motives, ambitions, and desires. The role of money, power, status, and sex is never discussed just a series of dates, figures, facts, and tragedies.

The problem with relying on the tools historian use for writing and documenting history is not a very sound basis for assessing the credibility of issues like whether a military used terror to compel its soldiers to fight against their will such as by using so called blocking units. For one thing, its unlikely such orders would ever be written down so actual participants in combat would most likely be the only real source of such information.

You are arguing from ignorance. Actually, relying on the work of good historians and archival evidence is usually the very best way to assess such historical questions. The documents describing blocking units exist and are cited in a number of books. One good example is “SMERSH: Stalin’s Secret Weapon” by Vadim Birstein, who cites actual documents as well as first-hand testimony of Russian soldiers, pp. 133-35.

The real reason for doubting that any military organization relied on, and effectively used terror to instill compliance on a large scale is that it wouldn’t and didn’t work …

Governments very frequently implement strategies that don’t work. The real reason you doubt it is that you are ignorant of this patch of history, and of modern historiography in general. There’s no shame in that, but there is in attempting to give lectures to those who are not.

The problem with relying on the tools historian use for writing and documenting history is not a very sound basis for assessing the credibility of issues like whether a military used terror to compel its soldiers to fight against their will such as by using so called blocking units. For one thing, its unlikely such orders would ever be written down so actual participants in combat would most likely be the only real source of such information.

The real reason for doubting that any military organization relied on, and effectively used terror to instill compliance on a large scale is that it wouldn’t and didn’t work, neither in the Red nor the German army during the opposite periods in the war when each side tried on a limited scale to do so.

The reason such efforrts would not work on a significant scale is that were the soldiers ordered to attack or defend and did so only because of the fear of blocking units shooting them from behind were they to refuse, their easiest recourse for avoiding that fate was surrendering to the enemy and avoid entiely the blocking units behind them that were allegedly forcing them to fight.

That even if they had tried it, that it didn’t work for the Soviets in 1941 and 1942 is evidenced by the millions of the Red Army who then surrendered to the Germans. The Germans ran into the same problem in late 44 and 45 when Germans oftent surrendered by the thousands, especially on the Western front. The Germans were more likely to fight to the end on the Eastern front not because being terrorized by the threat of being hanged as also happened, but because they feared reprisal from the Soviets.

By the same token, relatively few German soldiers surrendered while the war was going favorbale for them, just as relatively few Russian soldiers surendered once the war was going in their favor after 1942. Thus it was really the military conditions the armies faced that was most telling about whether the combatants were prepared to fight or not, rather than their side obtaining compliance by terror blocking units generated.

The situation in which executing or simply shooting soldiers on the spot for failing to or for unwillingness to fight can work is stopping sudden panic or temporary demoralization that may be induced by significant but apparently temporary setbacks that could be turned around by renewing the determination of the soldiers to fight by ferreting out defeatists from the ranks. Thus when Zhukhov acknowledged that 13,000 had been executed by the Soviets during the battle of Stalingrad, that was a paltry number compared to the hundreds of thousands who did their duty and were killed in action. There is simply no way that “blocking units” would have generated that kind of determination no matter how many were lurking in the rear to mete out summary punishment to alleged shirkers.

The claim that this is how the other side got their soldiers to fight is almost always made by their actual opponents or by their ideological opposition who cannot imagine why their opponents could be so determined to fight them when they know that God is on their own side that convinces them they are in the right and their opponents must obviously be in the wrong and could not therefore be as determined as they are to fight them.

There are lots of historians that publish contradictory accounts of pretty much every event. So, one has to select what appears more plausible. That’s exactly what I do. Every “historian�, just like every “political scientist�, only cites what agrees with his/her preconceived ideas, and ignores everything that contradicts them. Objective historian is a contradiction in terms. As the joke puts it, if you have two witnesses, you get three versions of what happened.

professional historians

We all know what the most ancient profession in human societies was. Self-appointed historians (of all persuasions) are no farther from it than presstitutes.

“When someone repeats something that “historiansâ€� say based on what they have heard (not necessarily from the actual witnesses), it is hearsay squared or cubed.”

We’re not in the days of Herodotus anymore, when historians traveled around and recorded what their informers told them, with little verification. Historians now (and have for a long time) actually do research in official government archives, and quote actual documents that have all sorts of official information, such as, but not limited to, the orders that led to the establishment of such blocking units, their unit names, their commanders, their objectives and scope, and their actions. When a historian puts this in his book, it is subject to the investigations of other historians, who can verify or disprove what the first historian wrote. This is how modern historiography works. A sloppy historian will quickly become exposed and discredited.

The fact that you “heard” from several participants in the Russo-German war and that they disavowed knowledge of such blocking units, has practically zero weight compared to what the professional historians have concluded on the matter.

New [USSR] laws on marriage and the overall atmosphere of breaking with the past encouraged promiscuity and casual approach to sex, unthinkable just years ago.

Am reminded here of George de Mohrenschildt reminiscences of Marina Oswald and the purported ‘Soviet type orgies’ she described having taken part in before having met Oswald.

But she [Marina Oswald] would remember some handsome fellows she had met and shared [her] bed with, of real Soviet type orgies. She confided in Jeanne. Those parties were organized in Minsk by richer sons of the bureaucrats who disposed of comfortable apartments while their parents were gone. The kids drank and slept indiscriminately. “This was terrific,� she [Marina] reminisced.

http://22november1963.org.uk/george-de-mohrenschildt-i-am-a-patsy-chapter07

Avery

Ron should have awarded you a red swastika instead of a gold star for your service to der Führer.

Heil Hitler!
Sieg Heil!

Dear daisy, you are clearly pretending not to know where you are, since Ron Unz’s position re WW2 is actually quite similar to my own & Unz is hands down the best writer around here. Why don’t you try your pathetic Nazi routine on him, daisy? We know why.

ARTICLES by Ron Unz re WW2, the first 2 must’ve given sad little liar, avery, nightmares:

American Pravda: When Stalin Almost Conquered Europe
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-stalin-almost-conquered-europe/

American Pravda: Holocaust Denial
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/

American Pravda: Understanding World War II
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-understanding-world-war-ii/

American Pravda: Secrets of Military Intelligence
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-secrets-of-military-intelligence/

American Pravda: Post-War France and Post-War Germany
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-post-war-france-and-post-war-germany/

So you “logically and intellectually crushed” me, did you? LOL
Joker, you never even touched me! Your idiotic comments are nothing but fact-free TROLLING.
I notice you are still pushing the notion that people from Turkey are “nomadic Uighur savages” from China, year 2020, even after plenty of people showed you the genetic evidence proving you a LIAR. You would not know logic/intellectual honesty if you bumped your lying face into it.
Phil Giraldi described you best: “sh*thead”! LOL

Here is the clarification. Yes, when I repeat something I’ve heard, it is hearsay, legally speaking. When someone repeats something that “historians� say based on what they have heard (not necessarily from the actual witnesses), it is hearsay squared or cubed. Take your pick.

I’ve talked to the people who fought Germans in 1941-45 in the USSR. None of them defected anywhere, I talked to them in the USSR. I moved to the US (eventually to TN) myself in 1991 to continue working in my research field. Even though the US Congress is doing its level best to destroy American science, it is still better than in most places, including present-day Russia.

Did I clarify things for you?

As far as “blocking units� go, I believe what I’ve heard

Then:

hearsay is not admissible

Could this be why I find your other comments in this thread so confusing?

You talk of hearts and minds, but forget the terror. You dismiss historians cited by the author, whilst presenting “what you’ve heard” as something other than hearsay.

And unless you heard from men who fought the Germans within the USSR (who later defected to TN?) what they say about conditions there should count for nothing at all really.

Agree with one correction: the swastika should have been black on white, as approved by parteigenosse Hitler, not red.

> “male homosexuality was a criminal offense under the Tsars until Bolsheviks came onto the scene”

A poll conducted in 1989 reported that homosexuals were the most hated group in Russian society and that 30 percent of those polled felt that homosexuals should be liquidated.[35] In a 1991 public opinion poll conducted in Chelyabinsk, 30 percent of the respondents aged 16 to 30 years old felt that homosexuals should be “isolated from society”, 5 percent felt they should be “liquidated”, 60 percent had a “negative” attitude toward gay people and 5 percent labeled their sexual orientation “unfortunate”.[48]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Russia

> “Marxists, faced with the imperfection of the Soviet Union, often see it as “not living up to Marxist Principlesâ€�. They are thus able to remain believers in Marxism as an ideal, while criticising the USSR in practice. This criticism was often directed at Stalin, the scapegoat for all that went wrong.”

Alright, that is correct.

Troll: L.K

You are still the same low-grade, low-intellect troglodyte Brownshirt Schweinhund who started spewing your Hitlerite nonsense to me years ago. I logically and intellectually crushed you so thoroughly that you had nowhere else to go but start with insults in frustrated desperation.

(anyone who is interested can go back since about the start of UNZ.com and see for themselves that the Hitler apologist started the chain of insults. to which I amply responded, and have since)

Ron should have awarded you a red swastika instead of a gold star for your service to der Führer.

Heil Hitler!
Sieg Heil!

If you want to play ‘Abbott & Costello “Who’s On First” “INVADED” ‘ game, we can: as long as you want, and as long as UNZ moderators allow it.

Nazi Germany re-militarization of the Rhineland was on 7 March 1936, looooong before France declared war on Nazi Germany – for INVADING Poland, Frances ally by treaty. German military forces entering the Rhineland was in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties.

Before INVADING Poland, Nazi Germany INVADED Czechoslovakia in October 1938, and grabbed the Sudetenland. France and England (reluctantly) agreed with the Nazi land grab.
…….
Would you like to go back to WW1 and start from there or would you like to go back to – ohhhh, I don’t know – to when Roman empire was battling fierce Germanic tribes……

Free market economics is a myth. It might work as a theoretical construct, like ideal gas, but it does not exist in real life. Competition inevitably leads to monopolization, which destroys competition. I’ve seen it many times with my own eyes in scientific products. As soon as a small start-up comes up with any superior product, it is bought up by one of the big companies. Superior product gets discontinued, while inferior product of that big company remains and becomes more expensive.

There is no need to destroy the state, destroy the monarchy, destroy nationalism, destroy the church, and destroy the family to have a great standard of living and quality of life. That is the impression they give us, the need to destroy traditions for a better future. Yes there is a need to destroy some of the negative elements of traditional society, you are right but not all of it, no need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Look at the USA, in the last few decades we have seen more destruction of religion & destruction of family and the real standard of living is going down from the days of the 1950s. Both the working & middle Class are collapsing, there is more misery and the drug problem is more rampant. Culturally the United States has definitely gone left since the 1950s but now more wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few than it was during the 1950s.
Compare that to Third Reich Germany, where the new NSDAP Government supported the family, supported nationalism, supported traditionalism and crushed the socially destructive forces of the Wiemar Republic and yet the standard of living and quality of life of the German working classes (& even the middle classes up to some extent) improved by miles since the misery of the Wiemar days.

which is as realistic as an ideal gas in Physics

The nature of gases is such that ideal gas theory is a pretty good approximation. With liquids and solids you get all kinds of complications.

Free market economic economics is the worst kind of economics, except for all of the others. It’s not all that realistic, but it’s a lot more realistic than Marxism.

Thanks for your testimony. Of course that is why my post was about the early days of the Soviet state.
That is why the fall of the USSR in 1990s was actually a tragedy.