A hint in this direction has come from the 'progressive and left-leaning' German newspaper Die Tageszeitung, in an article published on May 9th 2020, only a day or so ago, discussing the topic of Victory Day celebrated in Russia. The article is entitled Putin ist der zweite Stalin (Putin is the second Stalin) which is an interesting departure from the common allegation that he's another 'Hitler'.
I will post the article in English here for everyone to read.
Putin is the second Stalin
The Kremlin leader has created a new ideology for Russia in the 21st century. His fight against fascism is hypocritical - like everything he does.
The Kremlin leader has created a new ideology for Russia in the 21st century. His fight against fascism is hypocritical - like everything he does.
In Putin's Russia, a veritable cult around May 9, the "Victory Day," has developed over the past 20 years. This cult has nothing to do with the real history of the Second World War. This cult can be summarized as follows: The Russian people are Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself for all mankind and liberated the world from the horrors of Nazism. But the ungrateful world - Americans, British, Poles, Estonians, Ukrainians and others - does not recognize this sacrifice and does not want to bow to the Russian people. Therefore, all of them must be punished.
This central position of the cult is borrowed from the attitude of the Orthodox Church towards the Jews. Christ sacrificed Himself and took upon Himself the sins of mankind, but the Jews did not recognize this. That is why they have to die. This cult is not turned to the past, but to the present. It is a justification for the most horrible actions towards a world that neither recognizes nor appreciates this sacrifice of the Russian soldier.
This is the cult of a new Russian totalitarianism, whose ideology is very simple. Russians are the best, most self-sacrificing, most humane nation. Those who do not want to see this are Nazis. And these Nazis must be mercilessly and completely exterminated.
Stalin fought Nazis and Bandera people in Ukraine in his time and Putin is doing it again today. Putin is the second Stalin. It is impossible to fight this cult without radically rethinking the main propaganda clichés that still stubbornly persist in the West from the time of the war. At that time "Uncle Joe" was still an ally of the USA and Great Britain.
Ally of Hitler
American politicians, newspapers and films made every effort to present their allies in the most favorable light possible and to expose Hitler as the sole culprit in the war. It was even forgotten that Stalin had been an ally of Hitler in the first two years of the war and that this war had broken out one week after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
The real story of the Second World War is that Stalin had planned this war, which was to cover the whole world and end only when even the last Argentine Soviet republic would have become a part of the USSR. He had planned this war - long before Hitler came to power.
During this war, the whole Soviet Union was transformed into a weapons factory. This process became known as "industrialization." It began in 1929, long before Hitler came to power, and it had nothing in common with the real industrialization of an agrarian society.
The Soviet Union produced only weapons. It produced tanks, steel to make tanks, or electricity needed to melt the steel that was then used to make tanks. At the beginning of the war, Stalin had more BT-type tanks alone than all other countries combined. To pay for these tanks and the factories, Stalin had peasants rounded up into collective farms, stripped of all their property, and tens of millions of people starved to death.
Months of positional battles
The impoverishment of the peasants had another consequence. These disenfranchised, humiliated, and deprived of all things henceforth filled the ranks of Stalin's army - a mass army that was to overcome the impregnable fortifications of the enemy. Generals had always prepared for the ultimate war, and Stalin was no exception. The main feature of World War I was months of positional fighting, owing to the impossibility of overcoming the enemy's impregnable fortifications along the front line.
Stalin came to a simple conclusion: these impregnable fortifications must be breached by physical force. To do this, it is necessary to build an army in which the soldiers are a disenfranchised mass, sent to their deaths by the thousands. At the same time, the administrative backbone of the force must be separate from the soldiers.
This is exactly the kind of army Stalin created. This is how Nikolai Nikulin, a member of the Russian Academy of Arts and a senior research fellow at the Hermitage, describes the losses among the soldiers who were forced to storm the German fortifications near Leningrad in 1941 near the Pogostiye railroad station.
"When the snow melted in the spring, everything that had been underneath came to light. On the ground lay dead men in summer uniforms, with uniform jackets and shoes. These were victims of the autumn battles of 1941. There were bodies piled up of marines in caban jackets and wide black pants. Siberians in sheepskin coats and felt boots, political fighters in quilted jackets and tattered hats. On them bodies in overcoats and camouflage coats, with and without masks on their heads."
Chance meeting
In World War II, American generals were there when their troops landed. Japanese generals fought alongside their troops. Guderian and Rommel led the battle directly. Not so the Soviet generals.
Nikulin describes a chance meeting with the same general who had sent all those people whose bodies were on top of each other to their deaths as follows: "I peered through the crack of a half-open raincoat that replaced the door. By the light of an oil lamp I caught sight of a drunken general, relaxed and wearing an unbuttoned tunic. On the table was a bottle of vodka, next to it bacon, sausage, canned food, bread. Mountains of gingerbread, doughnuts, honey jars - just arrived gifts from Tataria for the brave and heroic Soviet soldiers who fought at the front. There was also a half-naked woman at the table, she was also drunk."
When Soviet soldiers encountered a minefield, they attacked as if there were no mines, General Georgi Zhukov had explained to the astonished U.S. General and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the time.
This attitude toward their own soldiers was accompanied by terror against the local population. Stalin's terror was merciless, mass and, above all, effective. Most of the Stalinist "partisan movement" behind the German lines and especially in Ukraine was precisely the terror of Stalin's saboteurs, who had to stay behind the front or were left behind the German lines during the retreat. Moreover, this terror was directed primarily not against the Germans but against the local population.
Acts of sabotage staged
Peasants were forcibly recruited by the partisans under the threat of extermination of their entire families. After such a hostage had participated in several raids and even massacres, she became a full-fledged member of the partisan detachment from which there was no escape.
Very often the "partisans" deliberately staged acts of sabotage near a village, knowing that the Germans would attack that village as a result. People suspected of being sympathizers of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) had their skin peeled off and their eyes gouged out. They were subjected to inhumane torture and their families were killed.
But even this extremely cruel and effective terror, the basic principles of which were later adopted by the Chinese Communists and Viet Cong fighters, was nothing compared to the bloodshed inflicted by the Red Army after its invasion of Ukraine. Villages sympathetic to OUN fighters were burned to the ground.
Sometimes Stalin's executioners performed miracles of ingenuity. In the archives of the NKVD, the secret service of the time, there are cases of NKVD brigades disguised as Bandera people arriving in a village and being greeted joyfully by supporters of Ukrainian independence. These people were shot and then declared "traitors" who would have worked for Moscow.
Burned up as cannon fodder
The ordinary soldier, used as cannon fodder by the generals, vented his anger on the population. On German territory, Soviet soldiers raped Russian women who had become prisoners of war and liberated concentration camp inmates.
In the novel "The 25th Hour" by Romanian writer Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu, the mass rapes and murders committed by Stalin's "liberators" on the territory of Romania are described in great detail. On this foundation of bones, blood and flesh Putin builds his cult of May 9 - the cult of the Great Patriotic War.
The very name of this war in Russian speaks for itself. For Russian propagandists, World War II does not exist, the war that began on September 1, 1939, and in which Stalin entered alongside Hitler. In the course of this war, Stalin conquered part of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, western Ukraine, part of Romania and Finland. There, the terror machine was immediately set in motion everywhere.
In total, in the first two years of World War II, Stalin, as Hitler's ally, occupied territories with 23 million inhabitants. The Great Patriotic War began on June 22, 1941, when Hitler attacked Stalin. So, if we compare Putin's strategy and tactics with Stalin's strategy and tactics, we undoubtedly see similarities - not with the propagandistic image of "liberators of Europe from Nazism", but with the real practice of Stalinism. Putin embodies both Hitler and Stalin at the same time. Putin's army is still Stalin's army.
Fear and hatred
The generals are still wasting the lives of the soldiers. These soldiers come from the lowest strata of society. These oppressed, demotivated and scared to death people take out their fear and hatred on the civilian population. They rape Ukrainian women saying, "You are a Bandera supporter, you need this."
At the same time, they eagerly discuss with their wives what else they could steal in order to sell the items on the Russian classifieds website Avito and then share the profits with the commanders.
But differences are also becoming apparent. The most obvious one is that the basis of the Stalinist system was totalitarianism, while the basis of the Putin system is fakes and theft. Even Putin's fascism is a fake, like everything else he does. Stalin really knew about weapons. He actually had more tanks built than all the other armies in the world combined.
Putin's entourage, however, has built only palaces and yachts. On the battlefields, we don't see the vaunted T-14 tank or any of the other miracle weapons that Russian propagandists praise to the skies and that exist only on TV screens.
Bombard chicken coops
Iskander missiles go out, obsolete surface-to-surface missiles are used instead. Russia has Tu-95 bombers taking to the skies with Ch-101 strategic missiles. These were incredibly expensive and obsolete even in Soviet times. They are designed to carry nuclear warheads. Now they are used to strafe chicken coops because the missiles (as well as the troops) are traveling with outdated maps.
Putin managed to believe his own lies. He believed he had a battle-ready army with miracle weapons - but there was neither a miracle weapon nor a battle-ready army. On this he built a military campaign.
Stalin had succeeded in creating a totalitarian ideology that people believed in and were willing to give their lives for. In essence, this is the main goal of any totalitarian ideology. But Putin's propaganda does not have this power. In Russia, young men do not line up outside recruiting offices to be sent to slaughter by ignorant generals. And the same National Guardsmen who take pleasure in beating up protesters against the war are applying in droves to be discharged as soon as they are to be sent to Ukraine.
One more thing. Stalin managed to make the whole free world his ally. This was the most important factor for victory. The whole world helped the Soviet Union fight Hitler, but turned a blind eye to who Stalin was, his regime and his army. Now the free world is helping Ukraine and no one will look away.
The article is decent, and for leftists their critical evaluation of the Soviet Union and Stalin is commendable, as well as their recognition of his aggressive territorial aspirations and interest in seeing a new world war engulf Europe. After all, if Stalin had chosen to join Great Britain in her attempt to encircle Germany there's little reason to think Hitler would've moved against Poland in fear of a world war, which he didn't want and hoped to avoid. (as the German historian Immanuel Geiss admitted in his brief slandering of David L. Hoggan: "[Hoggan] proved, quite correctly, that Hitler did not want World War II . . . Indeed, a Second World War would really have been the last thing Hitler could have wished for to fulfill his ambitious world policy, and he tried to avoid it.", quoted in: Stefan Scheil, Ribbentrop: Oder Die Verlockung des nationalen Aufbruchs. eine politische Biographie, p. 250.)
However, it should be said that nobody had "forgotten" that the Soviets were the allies of Hitler, people have just chosen to ignore the fact that the Soviets were just as involved in the destruction of Poland (which supposedly justified a war) as the Germans were. They were no less "culpable", and everyone knows it. It's impossible to ignore and explain away, although some have tried but not with facts - for there are none which can do this - but with erroneous arguments they pretend are mutually exclusive, for example the frankly unhinged German historian Volker Ullrich wrote:
. . . in order to buy time for a conflict it knew was coming, the Soviet Union temporarily allied itself with its mortal enemy and became complicit, in the short term, in Hitler’s policies of aggression. None of that changes by one iota Nazi Germany’s sole responsibility for the catastrophe that was set in motion with the invasion of Poland.
Source: Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall 1939-1945 (London: The Bodley Head, 2020), p. 52.
Source: Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall 1939-1945 (London: The Bodley Head, 2020), p. 52.
This weird irate argument is so self evidently absurd, you have to will yourself to take it seriously. Of course the first thing that should be obvious is that whether Stalin allied with Hitler in the "short term" or not, it doesn't allay the responsibility of any acts wilfully committed. Whether you're a law abiding citizen for half your life and one day decide to murder somebody for short term gain doesn't absolve you from the guilt of murder! Ullrich's reasoning doesn't provide a mutually exclusive response to the obvious fact that the Soviets must be considered just as guilty for the invasion of Poland. After all, nobody forced the Soviet Union to make the choice to help destroy Poland, it was in her strategic interests to do so, and in-fact it was the Soviets who suggested it! A fact Ullrich completely ignores. It allowed the Soviets to expand further into Europe, like they wanted.
The second odd thing about this, is that if the Soviets were truly expecting an attack from Germany (which there is pretty much no reason to beleive, Ullrich just says this citing nothing in support) it makes little sense to take a step which would bring your territory to the point of sharing a common border with the enemy who you think is going to attack you. Keeping Poland between them would've been the preferable option. This would actually give them more time and perhaps by allying with the West, completely thwart any "aggression" from Germany in the first place. Yet Stalin did none of this, making Ullrich's "arguments" completely hollow and frankly nonsensical.*
If Ulrich thinks he can justify the "sole responsibility" argument with the idea that Nazi Germany was the "instigator" of events in the first place (a silly argument which assumes the one who speaks first must be responsible for whatever follows allowing others to camoflage their own intentions and responsibility) as if the advocation of ones interests is somehow wrong because it's inconvenient for others, this is a ridiculously hollow basis which only makes the Germans superficially "responsible" for nothing more than pursuing their own interests and taking them to its logical conclusion, even if it meant a military confrontation. Such things happen from time to time, and if that makes one guilty then so be it. It's not the same as being wrong.
This can probably be explained by the fact that Ullrich seems to apply different standards to 'the Nazis', and would expect they should've abandoned all their efforts if it meant war. Of course, he ignores that this argument can also be applied to the other powers involved. The fact that the "catastrophe that was set in motion with the invasion of Poland" could've been avoided if the Western powers simply stayed out (especially since there was nothing she could do to aid Poland or militarily confront Germany), and if Roosevelt in America was not sending his emissaries from Washington to give assurances to both Poland and her allies for military support if she remained obstinate. Ullirch totally ignores this.
But this doesn't get to the crux of the vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.
As said, the Germans were simply not "solely responsible", certainly not because they were the prime movers and shakers of events. The Soviets by making themselves "complicit" actually facilitated the invasion of Poland (or at the very least helped to facilitate it) by allying with Germany and securing her rear from Allied encirclement; they also furnished Germany with arms material and supplies. If the Soviets had shared the same "moral compass" and therefore "goal" as Poland and her Western Allies, then they simply wouldn't have done any of this; they might have even continued to adhere to their so-called policy of neutrality. But this wasn't so. Even if their "motives" were not the same, in practise they are no less responsible because of their complicity and facilitation. Not to mention that they clearly had an imperialistic motivation as well. It's hard to think of a compelling reason why the Soviets had to ally with Germany, and Ullrich doesn't provide one; and even if there was it wouldn't change the fact that they are no less responsible than Nazi Germany.
*For further information on Stalin's aggressive intentions and his playing on both the West and Germany, see chapter 14 in the Swedish historian Sven Allard's book Stalin und Hitler: die sowjetrussische Aussenpolitik 1930-1941, pp. 148-165. Concurring with Allard and citing this chapter, the historian Carl O. Nordling on page 94 of his article "Did Stalin deliver His Alleged Speech of 19 August 1939?" published by the Journal of Slavic Military Studies - Vol. 19, No. 1 - writes that Stalin "had actually induced Hitler to make the proposal and he had probably written the text of the Pact himself." Which is also something other historians like Sean McMeekin and Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof agree with also.
Anyway. The article I posted above is a good sign, hopefully we can expect historical scholarship to shift in that direction and provide us with more truthful and detailed works which de-mythologize the Soviets in WW2.
