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*** FLASHBACK *** NOVEMBER 2020
NY Times:Military’s Role in Vaccine Strictly Behind the Scenes
While
no troops will be administering shots or dropping off doses, scores of
Defense Department employees are involved in the effort.
REBUTTAL BY
Though "The Editorial Board" of The Anti-New York Times continues to catch incoming flak (some of it downright nasty & surprisingly personal) for our recent defense of both Trump's strategically necessary (for the normies)
pro-vax comments as well as our claim that the magic jab -- in spite of
being totally unnecessary, based upon a hoax, and responsible for
adverse reactions in some -- is NOT the mass genocide / "Georgia
Guidestones" depopulation jab which the Globalist Cabal had originally
intended to force upon all of us.
That's our position and we're
sticking to it. Hopefully, today's presentation -- based on a Slimes
story from November 2020 -- will ease the anxiety and anger some of
"youse guys" are experiencing over Trump's recent comments.
Let's analyze this article.
Though
we have been bloodied (with tomato juice) --- RHC / ANYT stands by
Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" as being strategically necessary for
saving the economy from total melt-down --- and not mass genocidal as
the Deep State had intended.
NY Slimes: When
President Trump talks about efforts to deliver the coronavirus vaccine
to millions of Americans eager to return to their normal lives, he often
says he is “counting on the military” to get it done. Analysis:All along, the central thesis of Q and "The Storm" has been that the military elements (especially NSA, military intelligence & special forces) loyal to America constitute our last line of defense against the Globalists.
NY Slimes: Mr.
Trump has given the impression that troops would be packing up vials,
transporting them from factories to pharmacies and perhaps even
administering shots. In reality, the role of the military has been less public and more pervasive than this characterization suggests. Analysis:The
military's role has been "less public" and "pervasive" --
negative-sounding terms which reveal the Slimes' dissatisfaction with
the military's control over "Operation Warp Speed."
NY Slimes:Scores
of Defense Department employees are laced through the government
offices involved in the effort, making up a large portion of the federal
personnel devoted to the effort. Analysis: Having
so many White Hats "laced" within the project sure would make it kinda'
tough to slip a poison "mickey" and a nano-tracking chip into the magic
jab, one would think. No?
NY Slimes: Those
numbers have led some current and former officials at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention to privately grumble that the military’s
role in Operation Warp Speed was too large for a task that is, at its
core, a public health campaign. Analysis: The
murderous Deep State scum at the CDC "privately grumbled" about the
military's "pervasive" role in Op Warp Speed, eh? Boom! "Youse guys"
starting to feel a little better now?
NY Slimes: Paul
Ostrowski, the director of supply, production and distribution for
Operation Warp Speed. He is a retired Army lieutenant general who was
selected to manage logistics for the program by Gen. Gustave F. Perna,
the chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed. Analysis: A
"retired Army lieutenant" selected by an Army General who himself was
appointed by Trump to oversee a military role that was so "pervasive"
that it upset the CDC. Trump's trolling the Deep State? Seems that way.
Slimes: The military will also monitor vaccine distribution through an operations center. “They will know where every vaccine dose is,” Analysis:Patriots -- not the CDC, not Big Pharma, not Dr. Falsie, not the WHO, not the Bill Gates henchmen -- have been in control of the vaccine the whole time.
Inside Defense
Becker's Hospital Review
Government Technology
Stat News / September 28, 2020
It
would have been impossible for the Deep State to mass distribute
poisoned and nano-chipped vaccines under such a "pervasive" level of
military oversight. -- 1. General Gustave Perna with Trump // 2. Army
Lt. General Paul Ostrowski / 3. Flashback to Trump's 2017 inauguration
-- military men strangely walk up to stand behind Trump, and then leave
just as quietly.
Here's some more reassurance from the Stat News story accompanying that headline posted above. The main punchlines are enhanced by us in bold and red for your convenience:
Operation
Warp Speed is largely an abstraction in Washington, with little known
about who works there other than its top leaders, or how it operates. Even pharmaceutical companies hoping to offer help have labored to figure out who to contact.
Now,
an organizational chart of the $10 billion initiative, obtained by
STAT, reveals the fullest picture yet of Operation Warp Speed: a highly structured organization in which military personnel vastly outnumber civilian scientists.
The labyrinthine chart shows that roughly 60 military officials — including at least four generals — are involved in the leaders of Operation Warp Speed, many of whom have never worked in health care or vaccine development.
Operation
Warp Speed’s central goal is to develop, produce, and distribute 300
million doses of a coronavirus vaccine by January — andthe military is intimately involved.
It has also set up significant
cybersecurity and physical security operations to ensure an eventual
vaccine is guarded very closely from “state actors who don’t want us to
be successful in this,” .... many of the Warp Speed discussions take place in protected rooms used to discuss classified information.
The
military’s extensive involvement in the development and distribution of
a vaccine is a departure from pandemics of the past, but it is fitting
for Trump, who has gushed about his love for “my military” and “my generals.”
One senior federal health official told STAT he was struck by the presence of soldiers in military uniforms walking around the health department’s headquarters in Washington, and said that recently he has seen more than 100 officials in the corridors wearing “Desert Storm fatigues.”
“Military personnel won’t be familiar with the health resources available in a community,” said John Auerbach, CEO of Trust for America’s Health, a group closely aligned with public health departments. (* Deep State players upset about the military takeover!)
“They
don’t know who the doctors are or where the community health centers
are located or what resources they have. They don’t know where the
pharmacies are. Public health people do know, that’s part of what they
do.” (* Waaah! Waaah! Waaah! cried the Deep State when Trump's military took the vaccine process away from them.)
******* If
some of "youse guys" who quit on Trump, quit on me and cancelled your
subscriptions are still lurking, please consider the positive
implications of this presentation as we head into 2022 -- and welcome
back to the RHC / ANYT family! (Donations / Subscriptions Here)
Deep State CDC under military control? Image & caption above from the US Department of Defense website *
The Soviets sent half a million "JOOZ" to Occupied Palestine! So, who is killing the Palestinians?
* BRITISH PM D'ISRAELI ORDERED THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN!
* US JOOZ AND THEIR MERCENARIES MURDERED THE CZAR AND HIS ENTIRE FAMILY!
* MASS MURDERER VLADIMIR PUTIN REMINDED CHABAD LUBAVITCH THAT MORE THAN 80% OF JOOZ FORMED THE FIRST SOVIET GOVERNMENT! OY VEY!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzsKnKcb1-A
Five myths of the Soviet effort in World War II – debunked
Posted on
Raising
a flag over the Reichstag (Yevgeny Khaldei). This iconic wartime image
has been compared to the famous Joe Rosenthal photograph of the US
Marines raising the American flag at Iwo Jima.
This Saturday (9 May) marked the 70th
anniversary of World War II (or the Great Patriotic War) in Russia and
the former Soviet Union. Yet, misconceptions of the Soviet involvement
in the war and its legacy persist in the West. Here are five of them –
debunked:
1. The Americans won World War II in Europe.
While one can justifiably state that the Americans won World War II in
the Pacific, in fact it is clear that the Soviet Union unambiguously won
the war in Europe. The battles of Stalingrad, Kursk, Kiev, and other
cities, as well as the sieges of Leningrad and Sevastopol, will be
forever burned in the collective memory of the people of Russia and the
former Soviet Union. The major Soviet sacrifice in the war can be best
illustrated factually by the sheer statistics. At least 27 million
Soviet citizens, or 14% of the USSR’s prewar population, died in the
war, compared to less than 1% of the British prewar population and less
than 0.5% of the American prewar population. 3 million Soviet soldiers
from the war remain missing in action action to this day.
Noted Russia scholar Dr. Stephen F. Cohen of NYU and Princeton stated in a recent interview
on the war that “when the Germans came in June 1941 and there was an
emergency call-up, they called up the class that graduated that May-June
from high [secondary] school. 18 year old boys. And sent ’em off to
fight. Of every 100 high school boys who went off to fight in June 1941,
only three came home… What that meant was, as life went on after the
war, was that millions of Soviet women never had a husband, never
married. And there was actually a name for them. They were called
‘Ivan’s widows.'”
2. The Soviet victory of World War II in Europe was a Russian victory alone.
In fact, the victory of the Soviet Union was not a Russian victory
alone. Even though Russians formed the highest number of military
casualties (close to 70%), soldiers of other Soviet nationalities also
sacrificed greatly for the victory. Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews,
Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, and others made major contributions to
the war effort. Some of the greatest heroes of the war were
non-Russians, such as Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and Marshal Ivan
Bagramyan, who were Ukrainian and Armenian respectively. Belarus, the
Soviet republic that served as a major center for partisan activity
during the war, proportionally suffered the greatest loss of life
against the Nazi onslaught – over 25% of its prewar population. The
Soviet soldiers who raised the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in the
famous World War II image were from Daghestan (Abdulakhim Ismailov),
Ukraine (Aleksey Kovalev), and Belarus (Leonid Gorychev) while the
photographer, Yevgeny Khaldei, was a Jew from the Ukrainian Donbas. To
this day, Victory Day is a major holiday in all non-Baltic former Soviet
republics.
3. The war is viewed very differently in Ukraine than in Russia.
In reality, this only applies to those areas of Western Ukraine,
annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939, where the Ukrainian nationalist
movement was active and where the Red Army was seen as an “oppressor.”
By contrast, throughout the rest of Ukraine, primarily in the Central
and Southeastern parts, the war is remembered as a patriotic endeavor
against the hated Nazi German invader. The war saw major figures emerge
from these parts of Ukraine. They included not only Timoshenko, but also
Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, Marshal of Armored Troops Pavel Rybalko,
General Mikhail Kirponos, fighter ace and Chief Marshal of Aviation Ivan
Kozhedub, and the sniper Major Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who was immortalized in song
by the American folk singer Woody Guthrie. The different perceptions of
the war in the different regions of Ukraine is perhaps best illustrated
by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski of the University of Ottawa in his study on the subject.
4. The Americans liberated the prisoners of Auschwitz.
While it is true that the Americans liberated the prisoners of
Buchenwald, it was in fact the Soviet Red Army that liberated the
prisoners of Auschwitz on 26 January 1945. Further, the Holocaust itself
largely took place on the Eastern Front.
5. The orange-and-black St. George Ribbon sported by Russians and other former Soviet peoples on 9 May is a recent invention.
In fact, the St. George Ribbon has a history dating all the way back to
Tsarist times in the late 18th century. During World War II, the ribbon
was later re-adopted by the Soviet military. The ribbon gained greater
visibility and public significance in Russia under Putin, beginning in
the mid-2000s as a symbol representing the war effort, part of a greater
campaign focused on reviving Russian patriotism after the chaotic
Yeltsin years.
Since the Ukraine conflict in 2014, the
ribbon has become associated by the Ukrainian government and its
supporters with the pro-Russian rebels of Donbas. In response, the
Ukrainian government has controversially adopted a new symbol to
commemorate the war – the red-and-black poppy common in the UK, Canada,
and the British Commonwealth. The poppy is favored by nationalists in
the Ukrainian government because the red-and-black colors match those
used on the flags of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)
and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which collaborated with the Nazis
during the war. According to Ivan Katchanovski, the red-and-black
colors “in turn were adopted from the Nazi blood and soil colors.” The
move has consequently met with much controversy in Ukraine, especially
among veterans of the Red Army and the pro-Soviet partisan movement.
One
of the many posters dedicated to the Great Patriotic War myth.
Translation: "We won," "Glory to our great nation, the victorious
nation!" - J.Stalin
The myth of the Great Patriotic War is one of the driving elements of Russia’s expansionism and war in Donbas.
The Kremlin leadership uses this myth today as one of the foundational
elements of the modern Russian nation to solidify the support of
Russians for a strong military leader. As real World War II veterans
pass away (those that were 17 years old in 1941 are 93 in 2017),
supporting this myth requires new fake veterans,
appealing to the memory of deceased relatives, as seen in the “Immortal
regiment” marches now being held outside of Russia, and the
indoctrination of young children, including preschoolers, by military shows. Despite efforts made
after the Euromaidan revolution, the World War II historical discourse
in Ukraine still remains shaped by the Soviet narratives. The Great
Patriotic Myth itself was coined based on historical falsifications,
some of which we will address here based on the materials of historian
Yana Prymachenko writing for likbez.org.ua, an educational project to dispel historical myths.
The myth of May 9
The largest myth of the Great Patriotic War is the concept that
shifts its time boundaries and accentuates the Soviet-German military
conflict of 1941-1945. The start of the war, 1939, when Germany and the
USSR invaded Poland, fall out, as does the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and
Soviet-Japanese war.
The historical policy of the USSR embedded the date of May 9 as the end of World War II in the minds of Soviet citizens. In fact, the war ended for the USSR on 2 September 1945.
The act of unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany was signed late in the evening of May 8. The same day, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR immediately issued a decree announcing May 9 as Victory Day. Despite this, battles still continued at the front.
The Germans did not want to surrender to the Soviet army and at all
costs tried to break into the Western zones of occupation. Thus, Prague
was finally liberated on May 10, and the last group of German troops in Czechoslovakia and Austria were eliminated only on May 19.
Fulfilling obligations to its allies of the anti-Hitler coalition, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945. This war was seen as a direct continuation and part of the Great Patriotic War. On 2 September 1945, the day of Japan’s surrender, the USSR Supreme Soviet issued a decree announcing September 3 as the Day of victory over Japanese militarism.
Both holidays – May 9 and September 3 – were state holidays. But in
1947 these days again became working days. The country was devastated,
there were many widows and disabled people. Time was needed for
reconstruction.
Later, when the memory of the Great Patriotic War became the
cornerstone of Soviet ideology, the main emphasis was placed on the
victory over Nazi Germany. It eclipsed the rest of the armed conflicts
which the Soviet Union took part in during the Second World War (the
invasion of Poland, the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, Soviet-Japanese
War).
In 1965, May 9 became a state holiday once again, with compulsory
military parades in honor of the date. Thus, May 9 stuck in the public
conscience as Victory Day and the date when the war ended.
Formally, however, the war with Germany was over only on 25 January 1955 by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet “On ending the state of war between the USSR and Germany.”
The myth of the great victory of the Soviet people
Leonid Brezhnev (left) laid the foundation of the Great Patriotic War myth defining Russian policy today
“If we talk about the main hero of the Great
Patriotic War, this immortal hero is the whole friendly family of
peoples who inhabit our country and are welded together by the
unbreakable bonds of the brotherhood. Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians,
Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Lithuanians, Moldovans,
Latvians, Kyrgyzians, Tajiks, Armenians, Turkmens, Estonians – in short,
the sons of all the nations of the Soviet Union rose to defend their
Motherland. (Applause.) The Leninist national policy of the
Party has stood the test of war. Fascism failed to drive a wedge between
the socialist nations. Their fraternal alliance showed its strength and
vitality, was one of the main sources of victory over the fascist
invaders. Let the indestructible friendship of our peoples live forever,
grow stronger and flourish!
Brezhnev, L. The Great Victory of the
Soviet People, Brezhnev, L. I. The Leninist Course. Speeches and
articles. In 2 volumes, T. 1. – M .: Publishing House of Political
Literature, 1970.
On 8 May 1965, Leonid Brezhnev, the first Secretary of the Central
Council of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made a report at a
ceremonial meeting in the Kremlin palace of Congress dedicated to the
20th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great
Patriotic War, “The great victory of the Soviet Nation.”
This report laid the foundation for a new heroized image of the
Soviet people and the mythologization of the Great Patriotic War. The
images of the “Great Victory” and the “Victorious Nation” became one of
the key components around which the Kremlin ideologists started building
a new historical community – the “Soviet Nation.”
The Brezhnev report became a manifesto of a new Soviet memorial policy.
It defined the ideologically “correct” image of the Great Patriotic War
in the Soviet public space. The “Great Victory” and “Victorious Nation”
became the main component of this myth, which overshadowed the
mythology of the Civil War [leading to the creation of the Soviet Union
in 1922].
The victory of the Soviet people in
May 1945 was proclaimed a natural consequence of the advantages of the
socialist system, the Leninist national policy, and the wise leadership
of the Communist Party.
The friendship of the peoples of the fraternal republics of the USSR,
the moral and political unity and patriotism of the Soviet people were
declared the determining factors of victory.
The victory itself proclaimed to be of global historical significance, since it saved humanity from fascism.
The significance of the assistance and contribution of the Allied
forces to the victory over Hitler was in every way understated. But the
role of the Communist underground and partisan movements in the occupied
countries and allies of Nazi Germany were, on the contrary,
exaggerated.
The Soviet ideologists proclaimed
that the struggle and defeat of fascism raised a wave of socialist
revolutions that liberated the people of Europe from reactionary
regimes.
Thus, the formation of communist governments which were friendly to
the Soviet Union in “liberated” European countries appeared to be quite
natural.
Basically, the history of the Soviet-German war was emasculated.
Everything which didn’t fit into the image of the unity of the Soviet
people in the fight against fascism, like the national liberation
movements of the non-Russian peoples of the USSR or collaborationism,
which was treated as a marginal and not a mass phenomenon, was left out.
Like the Soviet defeat of the first days of the war, the tragedy of
Soviet prisoners of war, and the fate of the Ostarbeiters.
Neither was there a place for the Holocaust. Soviet ideologists did
not want to highlight the sufferings of the Jewish people out of the
overall picture of Nazi crimes against peaceful Soviet citizens.
The conflict-less, one-dimensional,
lacquered myth of the Great Patriotic War and the images of the “Great
Victory” / “Victorious Nation” were put in the basis of the formation of
a new progressive community – the “Soviet Nation.”
And was the Soviet Nation a winner? Sure. They were millions of
people who risked their lives and died in the most cruel human meat
grinder of history. But each of them was a Person, and not a bargaining
chip of someone’s ideology.
Ukraine is still influenced by this black-and-white discourse of the Great Patriotic War, which envisions
that there were the “right” Ukrainians who fought in the Soviet Army,
and the Nazi collaborators. This doesn’t take into account the the
120,000 ethnic Ukrainians who fought in the 1-million Polish army in
1939, out of whom 8,000 died in the first days of the conflict [and the
UPA insurgent army fighting against both the Red Army and the Nazis].
Today, Russia attempts to privatize the Victory over Nazi Germany,
with Russian President Vladimir Putin dropping remarks that Russia would
have won over Nazi Germany without the other nations of the Soviet
Union. This is why Ukrainian historians counted how many Ukrainians
fought in the ranks of the Red Army and what price Ukraine paid for the
war.
According to the estimates of the Ukrainian Institute of Demography,
approximately 5.2 million civilians died on the territory of Ukraine,
and over 3.5 million were relocated into the deep hinterland together
with the factories where they worked. Over 2.8 million Ukrainians died
while fighting in the ranks of the Red Army.
Yana Prymachenko completed a PhD in history and works at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine.
S. Loskutov, Soviet Information Bureau Photograph Collection, Davis Center Collection, Harvard Library
As
the world marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, it
would be much better not only for the history of Russia but also for the
country’s future if Russian leaders were willing to permit—and even
encourage—a more even-handed discussion of the Soviet Union’s role in
the war.
This
year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II—the end of
the fighting in Europe in May 1945 and the end of the fighting in Asia
in September 1945. Although precise numbers of those killed in the six
years of warfare from 1939 to 1945 are impossible to tabulate, the total
deaths attributable to the war exceeded 70 million, more than in all
other wars in history combined. Roughly two-thirds of those who died
were non-combatants.
The war in Europe began on 23 August 1939, when the Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany signed a pact that created a partnership between them in
dividing up Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Under the terms of
this pact, the German Wehrmacht moved into western Poland on 1 September
1939, and the Soviet Red Army moved en masse into eastern Poland
sixteen days later. Great Britain, which had signed a bilateral defense
treaty with Poland earlier that year, declared war against Germany as
required by a secret protocol to the treaty. However, the protocol, as
we now know, applied only to defense against Germany, not against any
other country. Similarly, France, which also had signed a bilateral
defense treaty with Poland that expressly applied only to Germany,
declared war against Germany hours after Britain did. But neither the
British nor the French government declared war against the Soviet Union.
In Britain, where the public did not know about the secret provision to
the British-Polish defense accord, the failure to declare war on the
USSR was controversial at the time, seeming to give carte blanche to the
Soviet Union for its conquests.
The Wehrmacht encountered stiff armed resistance in western Poland
but rapidly consolidated its hold and inflicted severe reprisals against
the communities that tried to resist. By the time the Red Army entered
Poland from the east, most of the resistance had been quelled. Soviet
and German forces set up brutal occupation regimes in their respective
spheres and forcibly transferred hundreds of thousands of Polish
citizens to forced-labor sites. On 22 September the Soviet and German
forces celebrated the conquest of Poland with a joint military parade at
Brest-Litovsk (Brześć-Litewski), a small city on the demarcation line
established under point 2 of the secret protocol to the Nazi-Soviet
Pact. Sporadic fighting continued for the next two weeks, but by early
October 1939 the Polish state had ceased to exist.
It
would be much better not only for the history of Russia but also for
the country’s future if Russian leaders were willing to permit—and even
encourage—a much more even-handed discussion of the Soviet Union’s role
in the war.
Mark Kramer
Even
as the Red Army was imposing Soviet rule on eastern Poland, Soviet
troops also began moving into the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania), which had enjoyed some two decades of independence after the
First World War. In subsequent months, as Soviet military and state
security forces continued to pour into the Baltic countries, they
compelled the local governments to comply with Moscow’s demands.
Eventually, in mid-1940, Soviet occupying forces replaced the indigenous
governments with puppet regimes that voted for “voluntary”
incorporation into the USSR. The same pattern was evident in the
formerly Romanian territories of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which
the Soviet Union occupied and annexed in late June 1940.
The only major impediment to the expansion of Soviet rule in Eastern
Europe came in Finland, where the entry of Soviet troops at the end of
November 1939 sparked a brief but intense war that exposed grave
weaknesses in the Red Army—weaknesses that stemmed in part from Joseph
Stalin’s wholesale purges of the Soviet High Command in 1936–1938.
Although the vastly outnumbered Finnish forces eventually had to retreat
and yield sizable parts of Finnish territory, the three-and-a-half
months of fierce combat in 1939–1940 inflicted devastating losses on the
Red Army, including the deaths of at least 126,875 soldiers and the
wounding of 264,908. Stalin prohibited any public disclosure of the full
magnitude of Soviet casualties, depicting the conflict with Finland as
an unblemished success for the USSR.
This history is important to bear in mind nowadays because the Soviet
Union’s role in the war has been obscured in myths—myths that arose
initially during the Soviet period and that have multiplied in recent
years under Vladimir Putin. One of the more disingenuous myths, fostered
last year and earlier this year by Putin, is that Poland started the
war—a bizarre claim that turns history on its head. Another myth is that
the Soviet Union’s role in the Second World War began on 22 June 1941,
when the Wehrmacht attacked the USSR. In reality, the Soviet Union was a
leading participant from the very start, colluding for nearly two years
with Nazi Germany.
The brutality of the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, including
massacres and widespread rapes, is a taboo subject in Russia nowadays
under legislation adopted in May 2014 at Putin’s behest. The legislation
allows criminal charges, punishable by up to five years of prison as
well as large fines, to be brought against anyone in Russia who “spreads
information on military and memorial commemorative dates related to
Russia’s defense that is clearly disrespectful of society” or who
“spreads intentionally false information about the Soviet Union’s
activities during World War II.” Russian scholars who wish to
investigate and write about sensitive topics, such as the collaboration
of Russians with the Nazi occupiers or the atrocities committed by
Soviet troops, are deterred from doing so lest they be sent to prison.
Prosecutions and convictions have indeed occurred.
The German attack against the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, codenamed
Operation Barbarossa, constituted the largest invasion in history, with
millions of troops, tens of thousands of tanks and artillery systems,
nearly 5,000 combat aircraft, and hundreds of thousands of combat
vehicles. The all-out onslaught of the Wehrmacht nearly knocked the Red
Army out of the war in the initial days and weeks, yet somehow, despite
appalling conditions at the front, Soviet soldiers managed to rally
back. Over the next four years, the Red Army bore the brunt of the
fighting in Europe, eventually launching massive counteroffensives that
drove the Wehrmacht out of Eastern Europe and back into Germany, where
the final surrender took place on 9 May 1945 in Berlin. The Soviet Union
suffered by far the largest absolute number of casualties in Europe,
with nearly 25 million killed, but on a per capita basis Poland actually
endured greater losses. The Wehrmacht and SS fought with horrifying
brutality, but the Red Army and NKVD also perpetrated systematic
atrocities both during the war and in the early postwar occupations of
Germany and Eastern Europe.
The wanton cruelty and destruction of the war in Europe should temper
commemorations of it in Russia in this anniversary year. The immense
heroism of Soviet soldiers in fighting the Wehrmacht is undeniable, but
the much darker side of the Soviet war effort is also undeniable. It is
unfortunate that in Russia nowadays only glorious images and speeches
are tolerated. It would be much better not only for the history of
Russia but also for the country’s future if Russian leaders were willing
to permit—and even encourage—a much more even-handed discussion of the
Soviet Union’s role in the war.
The Kremlin obscures Stalin’s cooperation with Hitler.
By
Ian Ona Johnson
Print
Text
A rehearsal for Victory Day celebrations in Moscow, May 4.
Photo:
sergei chirikov/Shutterstock
The final defeat of Nazi Germany 75 years ago closed the
bloodiest theater in humanity’s most violent war. Nowhere was the cost
of the conflict higher than in the Soviet Union, where at least 26.6
million perished. This year’s Victory Day commemorations in Moscow have
been postponed due to Covid-19. Yet even as Russians wait for the chance
to honor Russia’s fallen, fresh battles are under way over World War
II’s legacy.
As President
Vladimir Putin
has grown more autocratic at home and adventurous abroad, he has
rewritten history for political ends. Within Russian borders, an
emphasis on the Soviet war effort helps promote Mr. Putin’s vision of
national purpose, justifies autocracy, and distracts from the struggling
economy. In international affairs, Mr. Putin describes a Russia
threatened by U.S. unilateralism and “expansionist” liberalism, evoking
Germany’s 1941 invasion. This provides a historical rationale for
aggressive foreign policy in Russia’s near abroad.
Mr. Putin’s version of history depends on two myths: that the
Soviet Union started the war on the right side, and that autocracy was
necessary to win the war. To align the facts with these fictions,
educational reforms have rewritten Russia’s history textbooks. They now
provide little detail about Stalinist repression or the Soviet role in
the war’s beginnings.
In 2014 Mr. Putin signed a law criminalizing criticism of the
Soviet war effort. At an informal Commonwealth of Independent States
summit last December, he delivered lengthy remarks on the war’s origins,
declaring that “the Soviet Union was trying to the utmost to use every
opportunity for establishing an anti-Hitler coalition.” It was
“attempting to prevent the outbreak of World War II,” he said, “but it
practically remained alone and isolated.” Stalin’s interwar diplomacy
aimed only to deter Hitler, he argued.
The record shows otherwise. After victory in World War I, the
Allies sought to demilitarize Germany. To avoid Allied inspection teams,
the German military formed a secret partnership with the U.S.S.R. in
1922. They established a network of military bases, industrial
facilities and research laboratories inside the Soviet Union to rearm
both states. There could have been few doubts on the Soviet side about
the militaristic intentions of their German partners. On the weapons
ranges at their joint bases, officers fired at dummies dressed in Czech
and Polish uniforms. German tank prototypes tested in the Soviet Union
were carefully designed to fit French and Belgian railway cars. German
ambitions became even clearer in 1933, when Hitler became chancellor and
accelerated rearmament.
Despite tensions, the two sides renewed their collaboration six
years later in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Under its terms, they
partitioned Eastern Europe. Stalin provided Germany millions of tons of
oil, grain and other resources for the war against the U.K. and France.
He even hosted a German military base on Soviet soil. Whatever Stalin’s
calculus might have been, he helped rearm Germany, then assisted in
Hitler’s conquests for two years. That is hardly a narrative Mr. Putin
can use at home or abroad.
Stalinist repression failed to improve the security of the
U.S.S.R. Beginning in 1937 Stalin decapitated the Red Army, discharging
or arresting over 30,000 army officers as the prospect of war grew. The
disastrous Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939 demonstrated the
resultant weaknesses in the Red Army and encouraged Hitler’s later
invasion. Stalin’s decision to purge his intelligence services, coupled
with his stubborn refusal to accept evidence indicating Hitler’s plans
to attack the Soviet Union, meant disaster when the German Army launched
Operation Barbarossa.
Rewriting history does nothing to honor the sacrifice of
millions of Soviet soldiers who gave their lives to defeat Nazi Germany.
And, as the seen in the U.S.S.R., historical half-truths aren’t a
durable foundation for political order. Mr. Putin would be wise to avoid
making history his enemy.
Mr. Johnson is an assistant professor of military history
at Notre Dame and author of “The Faustian Bargain: Secret Soviet-German
Cooperation in the Interwar Period,” forthcoming in February 2021.
Updated: May 8, 2021 10:42 AM EDT | Originally published: May 7, 2021 10:00 AM EDT
More than 75 years after V-E Day—the
German surrender on May 8, 1945, that ended the physical fighting on
the Western Front in World War II—myths and misconceptions about the war
remain.
TIME asked the Senior
Historian at the National World War II Museum, Rob Citino, which myths
he has spent the most time debunking in his career as a professor of
military history and author of 10 books.
“Historians
owe it to the millions of people who participated in this event, and
unfortunately, the millions of people who died in World War II, to delve
as deeply as possible into why this all happened,” he says. “Often when
you delve into the why, you bump into those myths of history. When you
try to dig as deeply as possible, you’ll often peel back the layers that
you did not even suspect were there.”
Here, Citino explains, in his own words, the five biggest myths he sees:
Myth: President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor in advance
President
Franklin D. Roosevelt (wearing black armband) signing declaration of
war as others look on, following Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Thomas D. Mcavoy/The LIFE Picture Collection—Getty Images
The big one and the one I
get asked all the time and the one I’ve spent most of my career
debunking is the notion that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor
in advance and let it happen anyway, and is responsible for the death
of nearly 2,500 American servicemen in cold blood. I label it the
biggest myth of World War II. People are willing to entertain the
craziest conspiracy theories. There are no documents that come anywhere
close to saying that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance.
From
the beginning, there was a group of scholars you could call
revisionists, who have this whole theory that FDR maneuvered us into war
by the back door. John Toland’s 1982 book described a “Seaman Z”
who picked a message about the attack on Pearl Harbor and passed it out
to his superiors and it was never worked on. In answer to all that, I
say, putting together an intelligence picture is not as easy as it
sounds. You have a million messages in the air, and 999,000 of them are
noise.
Myth: Erwin Rommel a.k.a. “the Desert Fox” was the greatest German general of all time
A circa 1941 portrait of German General (and later Field Marshall) Erwin Rommel.
einrich Hoffmann/The LIFE Picture Collection—Getty Image
Not by a long shot.
Rommel
was a mountain infantry man in World War I; he perfected the art of the
rapid surprise attack—the troops suddenly appearing over a mountain
ridge, taking their enemy by surprise—and he was awarded the equivalent
of the American Medal of Honor by the German army. In the inter-war
period, he taught tactics at the German war school. He caught Hitler’s
attention one day, and Hitler completely sponsored his career, made him
what he was. Eventually Rommel got to command a pretty big force in
North Africa, the Afrika Korps,
and this is where he becomes known as the Desert Fox based on surprise
maneuvers, rapid attacks, nighttime marches that confound the enemy.
But
he can never win anything lasting. He never, for example, gets to the
Suez Canal. Why? Because he doesn’t care about logistics. He just thinks
logistics and supply are someone else’s problem. Logistics is
everything in the fight in the desert. Every bottle of water, every
shell, every replacement tank tread had to be shipped from continental
Europe across the Mediterranean to North Africa. It’s not like you just
go to the store and pick one up. Logistics is the art of modern war.
It’s not just running around the countryside. Rommel was good at running
around the countryside, but he wasn’t particularly good at admin. His
final act was to try to ward off D-Day, the invasion from the western allies on June 6, and he 100% failed to do that.
Myth: Hitler was solely to blame for the German defeat in World War II
Adolf
Hitler (center, in glasses) and members of his General Staff review
plans for 'Operation Bodenplatte' (also known as 'the Great Blow'), an
airstrike in support of the Ardennes offensive, late 1944.
Heinrich Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection—Getty Images
This notion is in 90% of
the books written on the war in Europe, which is that every mistake,
every wrong turn the Germans made, every stupid offensive they decided
to launch, was Hitler’s idea. I’d love to blame Hitler for everything;
he certainly started World War II, and he’s the author of the Holocaust,
there’s no doubt about that. But he certainly wasn’t responsible for
every bad decision that the German Army made and every rotten offensive
it undertook and every wrong turn it made, because the generals were at Hitler’s side every step of the way.
They liked him when he was a right-wing politician who promised to
restore pride to Germany. They liked him when he came to power and
started rearming the country because it meant the army got bigger, and
suddenly there was room for the promotion of all these officers that are
sort of stuck in the 1920s and 1930s.
When
German generals wrote their memoirs after the war, they told this fable
of “Hitler put us all in jeopardy.” But they’re conveniently forgetting
the enthusiasm with which they carried out his plans, and they stayed
loyal to the very end. The top German officers, the generals, bear a
large share of the responsibility for unleashing the war, for fighting
the war, and for keeping the war going long past any chance of victory.
Myth: Japan could have won World War II, if only the Japanese had bombed the oil depots at Pearl Harbor in addition to the ships
The
USS Shaw exploding during the Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific fleet
at their base in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, on the island of Oahu,
Hawaii.
Keystone—Getty Images
I hear this one all the
time. Many analysts say that Japan should have hit the oil depot, the
oil tanks, the port facilities, the repair hangers.
At
most, I think that have might delayed U.S. victory a few months. Japan
didn’t want to conquer America. I just don’t see the Japanese sailing to
California and fighting their way ashore, certainly not fighting their
way across the country to the other coast. What Japan wanted was a sort
of limited war: destroy our fleet and build a big Pacific empire free of
American interference while we were rebuilding our fleet. By the time
we were ready for action, Japan’s defense perimeter would be so strong
that the United States wouldn’t have the will to fight its way across
the Pacific.
More from TIME
Sunday morning is a special
time—at least it still was in America in the 1940s—and that surprise
Japanese attack on a clear blue sky meant that Americans were ready to
do just about anything, to make any sacrifice, to indeed, fight their
way across the Pacific. There are bigger issues at play than whether
Japan destroyed the fuel tanks, because we would have rebuilt those fuel
tanks, and we would have come at Japan at some point.
Myth: There was a turning point in World War II
American
shock troops huddle behind the protective front of a landing craft as
it nears the beachhead on the Normandy coast of France (Omaha Beach) in
front of Vierville-sur-Mer, June 6, 1944. (Photo by Photo12/UIG/Getty
Images)American shock troops huddle behind the protective front of a
landing craft as it nears the beachhead on the Normandy coast of France
American shock troops huddle behind the protective
front of a landing craft as it nears the beachhead on the Normandy
coast of France (Omaha Beach) in front of Vierville-sur-Mer, June 6,
1944.
Photo12/UIG—Getty Images
If you read histories of World War II, authors come up with dozens of turning points. In the Pacific, people say Midway in June of 1942, when U.S. forces sunk four Japanese aircraft carriers. A lot of people still say Stalingrad.
The Germans were deep inside the Soviet Union when the Soviets launched
a counter offensive in November of 1942 and cut the big German army off
at Stalingrad and eventually had to surrender. Other people say July
1943, the Battle of Kursk.
There are other people who say the real turning point of World War II
is when the Western allies landed in Europe on June 6, 1944. Russians
object to that kind of talk because they’d been fighting the Germans now
for three full years.
So the point is, if there’s that many turning points to World War II, then I’m just not sure there are any. I think the term takes an extremely complex phenomenon like global war and boils it down to terms that are overly simplistic.
4 Countries That Switched From the Axis Powers to the Allies
oslavia and Greece, albeit only by letting Germany attack via
Bulgarian territory, it did not declare war on the Allies until after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour. Bulgarian forces did participate actively in the occupation of Greece and carried out an estimated 40,000 executions there.
After taking a harsh beating from Allied bombing raids, in September
of 1944 a new Bulgarian government came to power. Bulgaria declared
itself neutral, expelled German forces and sought peace with the Allies.
It offered no resistance to a Soviet invasion and subsequently joined forces with the Allies, declaring war on Germany.
3. Finland
Never a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, Finland was nonetheless a
co-belligerent on the side of the Axis Powers. This was a result of the
Soviet invasion of Finland, as sanctioned by the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact.
With little or no support from other powers, Finland signed the Anti-Comintern Pact,
an anti-communist agreement of mainly fascist powers, in November 1941.
The main reason for Finland’s siding with Germany was to regain
territory lost to the Soviets in the Winter War of 1939 – 1940.
As opposed to Axis Power states and affiliates, Finland granted asylum to Jews and had Jewish soldiers serving in its military. It also refused to participate in the Siege of Leningrad.
By August 1944 Finland had a new president who began to hold secret
talks with the Soviet Union, negotiating a peace by September, which
also required the expulsion of German troops. This resulted in the
Lapland War between Finland and Germany (September 1944 – April 1945).
4. Italy
Mussolini and Italian Fascism provided inspiration to Hitler
and the Nazis long before the start of World War Two. Italy had its own
imperial ambitions — partly based on the Roman Empire and similar to
the German policy of lebensraum — which clashed with those of Britain and France.
Mussolini and Hitler both pursued an alliance between Germany and Italy, but Germany’s Anschluss with Austria was a sticking point.
On 27 September 1940 Japan, Germany and Italy signed the Tripartite
Pact, officially forming the Axis Powers. Though Germany began the war
by invading Poland, Italy did not enter the war until June 1940, and
then with the principal aim of taking over British and French colonies
in North Africa.
However, 3 years later Italy’s allegiances switched. After a series
of military failures, in July of 1943 Mussolini gave control of the
Italian forces to the King, Victor Emmanuel III, who dismissed and
imprisoned him. The new government began negotiations with the Allies.
The subsequent British invasion of Italy was unopposed.
By October Italy was on the side of the Allies. Fighting against German forces in Italy continued until May 1945.
