Azaran on 23/8/2023 at 20:49
(
https://hungarytoday.hu/black-ribbon-day-remembering-the-victims-of-totalitarian-dictatorships/) Today is Black Ribbon day
It was on this day in 1939 that the Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact that shocked the world. Since 2011, 23 August has been a day to commemorate the victims of totalitarian dictatorships.
Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany signed a non-aggression pact, after Joseph Stalin, failed to negotiate with the Western powers on mutual security guarantees. The reconciliation suited the German Führer Adolf Hitler as well, who had decided to invade Poland and then Western Europe, and was able to carry out his aggression unhindered.
The document, signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs
It was on this day in 1939 that the Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression pact that shocked the world. Since 2011, 23 August has been a day to commemorate the victims of totalitarian dictatorships.
Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Stalinist Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany signed a non-aggression pact, after Joseph Stalin, failed to negotiate with the Western powers on mutual security guarantees. The reconciliation suited the German Führer Adolf Hitler as well, who had decided to invade Poland and then Western Europe, and was able to carry out his aggression unhindered.
The document, signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs
Speaking at the international conference on Europe's Conscience and Communism in Prague in June 2008, former Czech President Václav Havel said that Europe bears an extraordinary responsibility for Nazism and Communism, the two totalitarian regimes that have emerged on this continent.
MEPs from Hungary, Estonia, the UK, Germany and Latvia proposed that:
23 August, the day on which the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, should be declared a day of remembrance for the victims of totalitarian regimes.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution on this in April 2009. On 10 June 2011, at their last meeting under the Hungarian EU Presidency, EU justice ministers adopted a joint resolution on the victims of totalitarian regimes, on the initiative of Poland, Hungary and Lithuania.Starker on 23/8/2023 at 21:30
Also, notably, the pact had a secret protocol which divided up Poland and the rest of Europe between the powers, beginning decades of terror and oppression for the invaded areas. One of the participants of this pact was punished.
I mean, somehow from this part...
Quote:
The reconciliation suited the German Führer Adolf Hitler as well, who had decided to invade Poland and then Western Europe, and was able to carry out his aggression unhindered.
...it often gets left out that Russia also attacked Poland and was able to carry out its aggression unhindered.
Azaran on 23/8/2023 at 21:51
Quote Posted by Starker
Also, notably, the pact had a secret protocol which divided up Poland and the rest of Europe between the powers, beginning decades of terror and oppression for the invaded areas.
The Gestapo and NKVD even held meetings around that time to discuss how best to terrorize Poland into submission. This is where the Nazis gained deeper knowledge of Soviet terror methods, which they then used and abused all over eastern Europe
Azaran on 23/8/2023 at 22:02
Some of the most horrific shit about the Nazis and Soviets I've seen is how they enabled each other, even after they became enemies.
The Germans would massacre entire villages if there was even suspicion of Soviet partisan activity in the area (I even read somewhere that they machine gunned 100 civilians because the local Nazi commander heard a shot - later they found out the shot had been fired by a German). Many soviet partisans ended up attacking Nazis near soviet villages to deliberately bring the wrath of the Germans on the local populace, and thus prevent any potential collaboration.
Then there's the Warsaw uprising crackdown, where the Nazis massacred 200.000 people and leveled the city. The Soviet army was nearby and could have intervened, but Stalin told them to stay back (he wanted the Nazis to eradicate Polish resistance, so he could then easily take over).
The Soviets would later reuse some Nazi camps for their own victims.
mxleader on 24/8/2023 at 00:38
The crazy thing is that the general public in the US really has no idea about the atrocities committed by the Russians. I wonder if that has a lot to do with the Cold War and the general attitude towards Russia as a whole in the US. It's not like we didn't know for decades. I recall that information being taught in US History classes in the 1980's but most people ignored it and focused on the Nazis. I recall a conversation with some coworkers a while back and their general attitude was that it wasn't a big deal because Russia was mostly killing it's own people, and a few others, and Germany was killing Jewish people and others. I had to remind them that those Jewish people and others living in Germany at the time were German. They just happen to be from a different faith. I guess the concept of German-Jew is too difficult for some to understand. Anyway, not sure where I was going with this.
Starker on 24/8/2023 at 01:50
I think it's partly because people in the US have generally a poor understanding of the world and are used to lumping people in along vaguely racial/ethnic categories. At least a lot them seem to presume that anyone who looks middle-eastern is an "arab", anyone from Eastern Europe is a "slav", anyone from South America is "hispanic", etc...
Hence they have no difficulty in placing Jewish people and German people apart, since in their minds they belong to different categories, but it gets much more difficult with people who they think are in the same general group.
Russia itself, for example, is a very multi-ethnic empire with many vastly different groups of people living there, and people like the Tatars or the Udmurts are no more "slavic" than the English or the Germans are "slavic".
And the extermination of ethnic groups in the USSR is generally not known or talked about. Hence you can even today come across silly ideas, such as Crimea being historically "Russian" when there was an extensive ethnic cleansing campaign carried out there that was completed only as recently as under Stalin's regime.
SD on 24/8/2023 at 02:16
As the Nazis swept eastwards, they found plentiful support in the local populace. The bulk of my family left Lithuania in the late 19th century due to Tsarist persecution, mainly to the US and Britain; it was as well they did, because virtually every Jew who remained did not survive WWII. In fact after the retreat of the Red Army, Lithuanian nationalists and fascists slaughtered thousands before the Germans had even arrived.
heywood on 24/8/2023 at 14:20
Americans my age and older completed our high school education during the cold war, and at that time we didn't learn much about the history and culture of places that were behind the iron curtain.
WWII is a good example. When I was going through high school in the US in the late 1980s, it was a considerable topic, but the history of the war we knew mostly came from our own military, our field reporters, diplomats, our allies, and the refugees that came here during the war. We knew a lot about the naval war in the Pacific theater because we had lots of people who experienced it, but we had little insight into the war in China beyond the high level view of moving fronts and major events. We didn't know any more because Mao closed the country off at the end of the war and their history didn't get out. Likewise, we knew the history and battles of northern Africa and the western front in Europe well, we knew about life in occupied western Europe, and we knew about the Holocaust. But we didn't know much about the war in Eastern Europe beyond major movements and Stalin's view of things, because after that the Soviet Union went dark and the history didn't get out.
Azaran on 24/8/2023 at 14:47
Something related I didn't learn until my early 20's, is just how bad Lenin was. Every book I looked through back then glossed over his crimes, painted him as an overzealous idealist who made a few mistakes, but had many useful ideas about reforming society. Until Stalin came along, perverted Lenin's vision and imposed his dictatorship over the Soviet Union.
The truth is Lenin was as (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror) ruthless a dictator as Stalin, Hitler, or Mao. Yet you still see otherwise intelligent people quoting him.
Also a bit of a (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin) hypocrite:
Quote:
Lenin never witnessed this violence or participated in it first-hand,[279] and publicly distanced himself from it.[280] His published articles and speeches rarely called for executions,
but he regularly did so in his coded telegrams and confidential notes.
Quote:
"Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now underway everywhere. An example must be made.
Hang (absolutely hang, in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, fatcats, bloodsuckers.
Publish their names.
Seize all grain from them.
Designate hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
Do it in such a fashion, that for hundreds of verst around the people see, tremble, know, shout: "the bloodsucking kulaks are being strangled and will be strangled".
Telegraph receipt and implementation. Yours, Lenin.
P.S. Find tougher people."
Nicker on 24/8/2023 at 19:04
After watching the movie, Tracker, which made comparisons between the the Boers and the Maori, under British rule, I did a little research into the Boer Wars.
Turns out, the Nazis didn't invent modern concentration camps. They got that model for processing large numbers of non-combatants, from the British in South Africa.
Plenty of atrocity to go around.
