HAPPY D-DAY, EVERYONE !

We weren't debating facts, we were discussing possible alternatives, none of which happened.

When you refer to all Russians as "commies," that is a distortion from the beginning, and a product of the hysterical polemic which "informs" all of your claims. According to this Wikipedia article (which is well annotated for sources), party membership in 1939 was less than two million in a population of almost 150 million. To save you the strain of actually thinking, that's less than two percent of the population.

You habitually post distortions whenever there's the least possibility of peddling your usually hysterical and habitually polemical political rhetoric.

And David´s hysterical and habitually polemical political rhetoric. - as Sentanta well described it - would in another time, another country been perfect for political rallies for Nazis or Communists or any other form of dictatorship.
What they loved are types like David and his completely believing in his cause.

Of course the big problem with distortions such as that are that they lend themselves to demonization, the de-humanizing of the "enemy." It's OK to kill inhuman monsters. In the early 1930s, the NSDAP polled only 35% of the vote for the Reichstag. That was more than any other, single party, but it was not a majority. When Hitler ran against Hindenburg for President, he polled 35% of the vote. It would be reasonable to say that 35% of Germans were supporters of the NSDAP, at that time. There's no reliable way of knowing how much support there was after the Enabling Act and the Gestapo being turned loose on the country. But even if one assumes 35%, that's not a good reason to indiscriminately kill off large segments of the other 65%.

David would have been a perfect Communist dupe, finding good excuses for every atrocity that the Stalinist government committed, just as he is a good dupe for "his" government's propaganda today, finding excuses for every atrocious action the USA commits in the name of "freedom." The sad thing is he does not even realize nor wish to admit what a fine, upstanding Communist/Nazi he would have made.

Tone down "demonization" and, to a lesser extent "de-humanizing" and change "kill" to "ostracize" and it fits Setanta like a glove. One with no power thank goodness.

I have never held the opinion
that ALL the Russians believed in communist slavery.

( U distorted my post. )

Come to think of it, some of them refused re-patriation
after we freed some Russian POWs. Stalin got mad.
Indeed, there were Russian soldiers captured by the Nazis
who volunteered to fight to defeat communism at home.
I cannot judge what proportion of the Russian Army was anti-commie, for paucity of information.

The "Red Army" was fighting for Russia and for communist slavery; both.

My post did not seek to address the question of anti-commie, freedom-loving Russians.

Not all SS officers were Nazis; some were Jews.
I 've seen them interviewed on TV.

The accusation that my polemic debate is "hysterical"
is false; I 'm very happy, ELATED that we defeated
first the national socialists and later the international socialists.
If I decide give myself to hysteria,
it will be hysterical HAPPINESS for the success of Individual liberty.




David

Hmm...
This discussion of the Russians get me thinking about the Hitler-Stalin pact which paved the way to the invasion of Poland (the opening act in WW2 for us Europeans at least). Are we then to thank Stalin's cavier attitude to the lives of others for our eventual "success" ?

Whatever you've seen on tv - but that was (is) impossible.
The SS had an own "Rasseamt" ('race office') frpm the earliest start onwards - because from it's foundation onwards it should have been (quoting Himmler) "ein soldatischen Orden nordischen Typus" ('a soldatic order of Nordic type'). You needed a "Kleine Ariernachweis" (small Aryan certificate, going back to 1800) to become a normal SS-Mann, a "Große Ariernachweis" (going back at least to 1750) for officers, proving that you'd none Jewish ancestry.

They preferred Nazis (= members of the NSDAP), but especially in the early days there were some others, from other conservative parties and associations.

From 1937 onwards, higher ranked officers had to leave Christian churches - it was expected that lower ranks did so, too. (They became "Gottgläubig", believing in God.)

In 2004 (I think) a book was published by a historian-journalist, "Sherwitz, the Jewish SS Officer". But even the author questions whether Scherwitz was Jewish at all - suggesting he made up his Jewishness in order to save himself from the Americans.


There were a few French Jews who served in the 33rd Waffen-SS Grenadier Division "Charlemagne" - some 12 volunteers who were, however, from unsure origins.

In 1936, there were aabout 50 Jews (with one or two Jewish grandparents, colloquially called a "Halbjude" in German [half-Jew],in the SS. They were forced to give back the SS runes shield and eagles of their SS dagues.

There are also infos that Jews joined with Tartar's "Idel Ural Legion". But those followed Karaite Judaism

You misspelled caviar.

It's a bit much to suggest that Stalin's attitude was cavalier. It was calculating and self-serving. As far as Poland is concerned, he likely thought to erect a buffer between himself and Germany, and of course his attitude was "Poland be damned." He was rather inept, though, and the initial success of the German invasion a little more than a year and half later is evidence of his lack of military acumen. Unlike Hitler, however, Stalin could and did learn, and was eventually able to deal with the near disaster of the German invasion. In large measure, that was because of the fecklessness of Japan as an "ally" of Germany. In 1941, Japan was soundly defeated by a large Soviet army near the border with Mongolia. Japan completed a neutrality agreement with the Soviet Union. When it became clear that Japan would honor the agreement, and was irrevocably committed to its southeast Asia adventure, Stalin was able to transfer more than 100,000 troops to the European Soviet Union, which stopped the Germans at the gates of Leningrad and Moscow. The number of naïve fools in power in that war is incredible. The Japanese were said to have been surprised when the Soviet Union declared war on them in 1945. Manchuria was invaded by Soviet troops (a token force--nothing more was needed at that stage) one hour after the declaration of war.

That there was a cynical realpolitik operating in Moscow, as in Berlin and London, at that time should surprise no one. Churchill was the biggest, loudest-mouthed anti-Bolshevik in England in the 1920s and -30s. However, by the time he took office in 1940, he'd have allied himself to Beelzebub in order to defeat Hitler. One could be forgiven for suggesting that that is exactly what he did.

I don't recall anyone suggesting that Stalin should be thanked. He obviously was not prepared for the invasion of nearly four million German and German-allied troops, and he obviously had not adequately prepared for the scale of the invasion, nor given thought to the possibility of invasion on so wide a front, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. I suspect, but can't say to a certainty, that he was surprised that Romania, Hungary and Italy contributed significant forces, along with token forces from Slovakia and Croatia.

In the event, Stalin did what he had to do, given that the Soviet Union had been invaded. The only nation which can be said to have acted "honorably" in the entire hexenkessel of that war in the east is Finland. Finland allied itself to Germany and accepted aid from the Germans; but having recovered the land which the Soviets had taken from then in the Winter War, Finland was reluctant to become involved in major operations against the Soviet Union--once again, realpolitik is a bitch. Churchill reacted with his usual bluster, and was in no position to do anything. Roosevelt was also in no position to do anything, and Finland publicly rejected his calls for the Finns to withdraw to their 1939 borders. However, a secret agreement was concluded between the Finns and the Americans, and Finland agreed to cease their operations against the Murmansk railroad. (Before England and the United States fiddled Iran, and set up a puppet government under a paper Shah, that was the only way to get supplies to the Soviet Union. The sacrifice of British and American merchant seamen on the "Murmansk Run" has become one of the legends of the war.)

The Finnish border was just 25 miles from Leningrad. Had Roosevelt and Finland not come to an understanding, it is difficult to see how Leningrad could have held out. Holding Leningrad was absolutely critical to defending the Soviet Union.

From the time of the Normandy invasion, and almost until American and Soviet troops met at the river Elbe, German troops outnumbered Allied troops in western Europe. It was not until March of 1945 that the American build-up had reached a point at which Allied troops in the west were no longer outnumbered. There were two reasons that it was possible for Eisenhower to take such a calculated risk. One was air supremacy--the German troops used to say if you see a white plane, it's the Tommies, if you see a black plane, it's the Amis (Americans), and if you don't see any planes at all, it's the Luftwaffe. The other reason was the millions of troops tied up in the Soviet Union.

In the end, the biggest friend of the western Allies in Europe was Hitler. His stupidity and pig-headed insistence on no retreat policies assured the eventual defeat of Germany. I don't see how it could have been done without the Red Army, but maybe one of you holier-than-thou geniuses could explain that.

Bullshit, i didn't distort anything. This is what you wrote:



When you make no distinction between Russians and "commies," don't tell me i distorted anything. That's a lie, and that makes you a liar.

commendable!

In all this talk about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact being a way to divvy up Poland between Hitler and Stalin, it's easy to forget that one of the main reasons Stalin was eager the pact be kept secret was because it gave him a perfect excuse for invading the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) before Hitler even invaded Poland and thus set off the fuse. The Russians needed to establish defensive bases against the Germans, Stalin said. He was trying to reclaim former Tsarist-ruled territories which had been lost to Russia following the 1917 revolution. Hitler, of course, double-crossed him. But the independence -- or, rather, lack thereof -- of these three nations became one of the major bones of contention during the so-called Cold War, following WW II.

Indeed ! How far back should we take the narrative providing the backcloth to D-Day ? Should we, for example, argue that the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was instrumental in the rise of Hitler in the first place ?

This diversion started with a post above suggesting we remember the WW2 "sacrifices" of the Russians, but it seems to me that that argument is simplistic in the extreme.

I don't know that Stalin every publicly said that ne needed a buffer between Russia and German conquests, although certainly that can reasonably be said to have been one of his motives. That was naïve on his part, though, because the summer, 1941 offensive against the Soviet Union was carried out by nearly four million German and German allied troops, on a front that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Seas. Stalin was never much of a military man, although, unlike Hitler, he could and did learn from his mistakes.

The fate of the Baltic states and of Finnish Karelia was certainly a result of the loss of that territory during the First World War, but not inevitable. If one wanted, one could allege that it stretches back to the Great Northern War, when Russia took Ingria, Livonia and Courland away from Sweden. A century later, Finland was established as an independent grand duchy, within the Russian Empire, in another showdown of the Swedes by the Russians. But the Baltic states as they are so often called never actually existed independently until the Russian revolution of 1917 (an earlier and distinct event from the Bolshevik revolution), when that territory was overrun by the Germans under Max von Hoffman. One could say that that helped to precipitate the fall of the Karensky government and set the stage for the Bolshevik revolution of November, 1917 (October by the Julian calender, and therefore, "Red October"). One could trace the resurgence of Russian power after the defeat of Kolchak's White army, and the attempt to invade and conquer Poland, turned back by Pilsudski in 1920.

But all of that would miss the particular interplay of personalities and perceptions in realpolitik in 1939. In 1917, Balts, Letts and Finns wanted independence, and the German invasion coupled with the collapse of Russian power looked like giving it to them. In riposte, the Red Army tried to drive west. I suspect that had they taken Warsaw, they would have attempted East Prussia next. It was certainly a tenant of Leninist Marxism that the revolution be exported, but i don't think that Lenin was ever more than a lukewarm supporter of the export of Bolshevism by force of arms. Stalin and Trotsky had been active in St. Petersburg before the arrival of Lenin (or rather, had not been active, which appears to have been Lenin's opinion). After Lenin's break with Trotsky (1921? 1922?) he granted Stalin more power, as a useful counterweight to other politicians like Trotsky who appeared as a threat to him (Lenin). But Lenin never fully trusted Stalin, any more than he trusted any of the powerful members of the Politburo. After Lenin's stroke in 1922, Stalin began the power struggle which would eventually lead to his rise to power. In his "testament," Lenin was highly critical of Stalin, including on ideological grounds, and stated that Stalin should be removed as general secretary of the central committee. Lenin's testament was suppressed by the Politburo after his death, to clear the stage for the ensuing power struggle. Lenin had been equally critical of Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky, and considered most members of the Politburo to be ideologically "incorrect."

I consider the diplomatic games between Germany and the Soviet Union in the period 1939-41 to have purely a product of the personalities of Stalin and Hitler. Finland alone might have held out against either power--the so-called Baltic states, which had only really existed because of the power vacuum after the March (February) 1917 Russian revolution, were living a dream. When Stalin started his Winter War against Finland, Hitler sent naval forces to blockade Finland so that the western allies could not send troops or aid. As with the separate non-aggression pact signed with Japan in 1941, all of these moves and diplomatic games only served the men in power at each stage in the games as they saw it at the time. I really don't think historical claims meant anything to any of them, other than excuses for their own internal consumption.

Say what you will about the prickly son-of a ....bitch
Nobody debates history like Setanta.
Good stuff Boss!

I used some talcum after bathing . . . so i'm not prickly . . . for now.

Thank you for your kind remark.

I don't call it the "Cold War" (too ofen). I call it the 3rd World War.
That 's what it was.

(That enumeration is based on the notion
that the "2nd World War" was not simply a continuation
of the First World War, after a recess -- a questionable proposition.)





David

Its been maybe around 3 years since I saw that
on a TV news show like 20/20, Dateline, or 60 Minutes,
which showed maybe 12 to 20 Jews who fought, in many
different ranks, officers & enlisted men in both the Waffen SS
and the Army.
I cannot remember their individual names.
I can only mention seeing them attest to their experiences.
One said that if his good friends found out that he was Jewish,
thay 'd have hanged him to the nearest tree.

Perhaps a better researcher than me can track down
this program. It was on a major network.


I find it hard to deem the Nazis "conservative".
Thay were radical, not orthodox.
Conservative means orthodox.

I doubt that the race office got to Hitler himself,
whose father appears to have been half-Jewish.





David