Commie Liberators: They Raped Every German Girl From 8 To 80
The First Lemon
By Antony Beevor
The Guardian - London
5-2-2
Antony Beevor, author of the acclaimed new book about the
fall of Berlin, on a massive war crime committed by the
victorious Red Army.
"It was an army of rapists."
"Red Army soldiers don't believe in 'individual liaisons'
with German women," wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in
his diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in
East Prussia. "Nine, ten, twelve men at a time - they rape
them on a collective basis."
The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January
1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture
of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets,
Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to
the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light
field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts.
The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as
great as that of their military equipment. There were
freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there
were idealistic, austere communists and members of the
intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour.
Beria and Stalin, back in Moscow, knew perfectly well what
was going on from a number of detailed reports. One stated
that "many Germans declare that all German women in East
Prussia who stayed behind were raped by Red Army soldiers".
Numerous examples of gang rape were given - "girls under 18
and old women included".
Marshal Rokossovsky issued order No 006 in an attempt to
direct "the feelings of hatred at fighting the enemy on the
battlefield." It appears to have had little effect. There
were also a few arbitrary attempts to exert authority. The
commander of one rifle division is said to have "personally
shot a lieutenant who was lining up a group of his men
before a German woman spreadeagled on the ground". But
either officers were involved themselves, or the lack of
discipline made it too dangerous to restore order over
drunken soldiers armed with submachine guns.
Calls to avenge the Motherland, violated by the Wehrmacht's
invasion, had given the idea that almost any cruelty would
be allowed. Even many young women soldiers and medical staff
in the Red Army did not appear to disapprove. "Our soldiers'
behaviour towards Germans, particularly German women, is
absolutely correct!" said a 21-year-old from Agranenko's
reconnaissance detachment. A number seemed to find it
amusing. Several German women recorded how Soviet
servicewomen watched and laughed when they were raped. But
some women were deeply shaken by what they witnessed in
Germany. Natalya Gesse, a close friend of the scientist
Andrei Sakharov, had observed the Red Army in action in 1945
as a Soviet war correspondent. "The Russian soldiers were
raping every German female from eight to eighty," she
recounted later. "It was an army of rapists."
Drink of every variety, including dangerous chemicals seized
from laboratories and workshops, was a major factor in the
violence. It seems as if Soviet soldiers needed alcoholic
courage to attack a woman. But then, all too often, they
drank too much and, unable to complete the act, used the
bottle instead with appalling effect. A number of victims
were mutilated obscenely.
The subject of the Red Army's mass rapes in Germany has been
so repressed in Russia that even today veterans refuse to
acknowledge what really happened. The handful prepared to
speak openly, however, are totally unrepentant. "They all
lifted their skirts for us and lay on the bed," said the
leader of one tank company. He even went on to boast that
"two million of our children were born" in Germany.
The capacity of Soviet officers to convince themselves that
most of the victims were either happy with their fate, or at
least accepted that it was their turn to suffer after what
the Wehrmacht had done in Russia, is striking. "Our fellows
were so sex-starved," a Soviet major told a British
journalist at the time, "that they often raped old women of
sixty, seventy or even eighty - much to these grandmothers'
surprise, if not downright delight."
One can only scratch at the surface of the psychological
contradictions. When gang-raped women in Knigsberg begged
their attackers afterwards to put them out of their misery,
the Red Army men appear to have felt insulted. "Russian
soldiers do not shoot women," they replied. "Only German
soldiers do that." The Red Army had managed to convince
itself that because it had assumed the moral mission to
liberate Europe from fascism it could behave entirely as it
liked, both personally and politically.
Domination and humiliation permeated most soldiers'
treatment of women in East Prussia. The victims not only
bore the brunt of revenge for Wehrmacht crimes, they also
represented an atavistic target as old as war itself. Rape
is the act of a conqueror, the feminist historian Susan
Brownmiller observed, aimed at the "bodies of the defeated
enemy's women" to emphasise his victory. Yet after the
initial fury of January 1945 dissipated, the sadism became
less marked. By the time the Red Army reached Berlin three
months later, its soldiers tended to regard German women
more as a casual right of conquest. The sense of domination
certainly continued, but this was perhaps partly an indirect
product of the humiliations which they themselves had
suffered at the hands of their commanders and the Soviet
authorities as a whole.
A number of other forces or influences were at work. Sexual
freedom had been a subject for lively debate within
Communist party circles during the 1920s, but during the
following decade, Stalin ensured that Soviet society
depicted itself as virtually asexual. This had nothing to do
with genuine puritanism: it was because love and sex did not
fit in with dogma designed to "deindividualise" the
individual. Human urges and emotions had to be suppressed.
Freud's work was banned, divorce and adultery were matters
for strong party disapproval. Criminal sanctions against
homosexuality were reintroduced. The new doctrine extended
even to the complete suppression of sex education. In
graphic art, the clothed outline of a woman's breasts was
regarded as dangerously erotic. They had to be disguised
under boiler suits. The regime clearly wanted any form of
desire to be converted into love for the party and above all
for Comrade Stalin.
Most ill-educated Red Army soldiers suffered from sexual
ignorance and utterly unenlightened attitudes towards women.
So the Soviet state's attempts to suppress the libido of its
people created what one Russian writer described as a sort
of "barracks eroticism" which was far more primitive and
violent than "the most sordid foreign pornography". All this
was combined with the dehumanising influence of modern
propaganda and the atavistic, warring impulses of men marked
by fear and suffering.
The novelist Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent attached
to the invading Red Army, soon discovered that rape victims
were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did
young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been
sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for slave labour.
"Liberated Soviet girls quite often complain that our
soldiers rape them," he noted. "One girl said to me in
tears: 'He was an old man, older than my father'."
The rape of Soviet women and girls seriously undermines
Russian attempts to justify Red Army behaviour on the
grounds of revenge for German brutality in the Soviet Union.
On March 29 1945 the central committee of the Komsomol (the
youth organisation of the Soviet Union) informed Stalin's
associate Malenkov of a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front.
"On the night of 24 February," General Tsygankov recorded in
the first of many examples, "a group of 35 provisional
lieutenants on a course and their battalion commander
entered the women's dormitory in the village of Grutenberg
and raped them."
In Berlin, many women were simply not prepared for the shock
of Russian revenge, however much horror propaganda they had
heard from Goebbels. Many reassured themselves that,
although the danger must be great out in the countryside,
mass rapes could hardly take place in the city in front of
everybody.
In Dahlem, Soviet officers visited Sister Kunigunde, the
mother superior of Haus Dahlem, a maternity clinic and
orphanage. The officers and their men behaved impeccably. In
fact, the officers even warned Sister Kunigunde about the
second-line troops following on behind. Their prediction
proved entirely accurate. Nuns, young girls, old women,
pregnant women and mothers who had just given birth were all
raped without pity.
Yet within a couple of days, a pattern emerged of soldiers
flashing torches in the faces of women huddled in the
bunkers to choose their victims. This process of selection,
as opposed to the indiscriminate violence shown earlier,
indicates a definite change. By this stage Soviet soldiers
started to treat German women more as sexual spoils of war
than as substitutes for the Wehrmacht on which to vent their
rage.
Rape has often been defined by writers on the subject as an
act of violence which has little to do with sex. But that is
a definition from the victim's perspective. To understand
the crime, one needs to see things from the perpetrator's
point of view, especially in the later stages when
unaggravated rape had succeeded the extreme onslaught of
January and February.
Many women found themselves forced to "concede" to one
soldier in the hope that he would protect them from others.
Magda Wieland, a 24-year-old actress, was dragged from a
cupboard in her apartment just off the Kurf羨stendamm. A
very young soldier from central Asia hauled her out. He was
so excited at the prospect of a beautiful young blonde that
he ejaculated prematurely. By sign language, she offered
herself to him as a girlfriend if he would protect her from
other Russian soldiers, but he went off to boast to his
comrades and another soldier raped her. Ellen Goetz, a
Jewish friend of Magda's, was also raped. When other Germans
tried to explain to the Russians that she was Jewish and had
been persecuted, they received the retort: "Frau ist Frau."
Women soon learned to disappear during the "hunting hours"
of the evening. Young daughters were hidden in storage lofts
for days on end. Mothers emerged into the street to fetch
water only in the early morning when Soviet soldiers were
sleeping off the alcohol from the night before. Sometimes
the greatest danger came from one mother giving away the
hiding place of other girls in a desperate bid to save her
own daughter. Older Berliners still remember the screams
every night. It was impossible not to hear them because all
the windows had been blown in.
Estimates of rape victims from the city's two main hospitals
ranged from 95,000 to 130,000. One doctor deduced that out
of approximately 100,000 women raped in the city, some
10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide. The death rate
was thought to have been much higher among the 1.4 million
estimated victims in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia.
Altogether at least two million German women are thought to
have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a
majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape.
If anyone attempted to defend a woman against a Soviet
attacker it was either a father trying to defend a daughter
or a young son trying to protect his mother. "The 13-year
old Dieter Sahl," neighbours wrote in a letter shortly after
the event, "threw himself with flailing fists at a Russian
who was raping his mother in front of him. He did not
succeed in anything except getting himself shot."
After the second stage of women offering themselves to one
soldier to save themselves from others, came the post-battle
need to survive starvation. Susan Brownmiller noted "the
murky line that divides wartime rape from wartime
prostitution". Soon after the surrender in Berlin, Ursula
von Kardorff found all sorts of women prostituting
themselves for food or the alternative currency of
cigarettes. Helke Sander, a German film-maker who researched
the subject in great detail, wrote of "the grey area of
direct force, blackmail, calculation and real affection".
The fourth stage was a strange form of cohabitation in which
Red Army officers settled in with German "occupation wives".
The Soviet authorities were appalled and enraged when a
number of Red Army officers, intent on staying with their
German lovers, deserted when it was time to return to the
Motherland.
Even if the feminist definition of rape purely as an act of
violence proves to be simplistic, there is no justification
for male complacency. If anything, the events of 1945 reveal
how thin the veneer of civilisation can be when there is
little fear of retribution. It also suggests a much darker
side to male sexuality than we might care to admit.
Antony Beevor. mailto:www.antonybeevor.com
Berlin: The Downfall 1945 is published by Viking Penguin.The
BBC Timewatch film about researching the book will be shown
on BBC2 at 9pm on May 10.
Tom E.
"The First Lemon" <first...@wowmail.com> wrote in message
news:d865bec.02050...@posting.google.com...
> 'They Raped Every German Girl From Eight To 80'
Don't fret, those were "deformed workers penises". -Tom
Akorps666
to depopulate the terroritories in Eastern
Germany that he intended to fall into the
Soviet zone. The idea was the basic
strategy of primitive war societies; to
leave a buffer zone of undeveloped
wilderness, in this case between Russia
and the west, as a protective zone, in
case a future attempt was made to invade
Russia.
The main relevance this historical case has
to the present day, is that the hatred of
primitive war societies, such as the Islamic,
towards the civilized world, is as intense,
as the hatred the Russians had towards
the Germans. If Israeli peaceniks had
their way, and allowed the Islamic terrorists
to overrun Israel, you would see the same
raping of Israeli girls by Islamic males, as
when German resistance collapsed on the
eastern front at the end of WW2, in that
case Russian troops raping German women.
So the cycle of history turns full circle.
Civilization is again faced with being
overrun by primitive barbarians. Again the
civilized world squabbles amongst
themselves, and allows primitive war
socities, with less than 1% the military
and economic power of the developed
world, to overrun territory bit by bit. The
civilized world cowers like sheep, before
a tiny band of wolves, when, if the sheep
would only work together, they would have
a 10,000 to 1 crushing advantage in
military and economic force. But the sheep
prefer to sacrifice other sheep to the
wolves, instead of fighting back. Human
rights groups claim the Israelis are
committing war crimes, when Israel bends
over backwards to film every engagement
as evidence to prove they are fighting
lawfully, even at the extent of sacrificing
their own troops in house to house street
fighting. Israel could have leveled the
whole terrorist infrastructure without
taking casualties, their reward for their
excrutiating efforts to comply with the
rules of war to the last dot has been
further terrorist propaganda, creating myths
of Israeli war crimes. Meanwhile noone
complains about terrorist war crimes when
innocent civilians are blown up by homicide
bombers. Somehow when the terrorist
wolves kill innocent civilians it is not a war
crime. I guess it is just assumed that it is
in the nature of a wolf to kill, so no
penalty is involved.
The civilized world needs to get its act
together, strengthen its military, and hunt
down these terrorist wolves one by one.
It may be true that 100 baby wolves are
created each time a grown up wolf is
killed, but the 10,000 to 1 power of modern
mechanized society can kill terrorist
wolves so fast that even that 100 to 1
growth rate won't save them from extinction
if the civilized world has the will to act.
Like the machine gun in WW1, the terrorists
can be mowed down like corn as fast as
they can come at us. All we need is the
will.
Even the Western European sheep, living
in peace so long the Dutch are *shocked*
when a politician is assassinated (hint: do
you remember what happened in 1963?
Have you learned nothing in 40 years?
Oh, it is only an Americun problem, we
civilized Europeans could never experience
something like that in our own countries.
You damned Americun barbarians are
so crude and primitive, only in America
could such things happen.)
The basic war problem of the modern age
is that contest between advanced
techological societies, and primitive war
societies. It is absurd to see Western
Civilization trembling in fear from a few
terrorists, when the GNP of the civilized
world is many $$$trillions, and Osama
and his band of scum have only a few
millions. We can easily track them down
and exterminate them if we stop playing
political games to try to stab each other
in the back to win the next elections, and
get on with fighting the war to exterminate
the terrorists. The main problem is the
inner front, the leftist politicians are always
trying achieve power by promising Utopia
to the masses, at the cost of wrecking
the nation, in hopes of a few years in
power, presiding over the progressive
ruination of society.
wsdl
The First Lemon wrote in message ...
>'They Raped Every German Girl From Eight To 80'
>
>By Antony Beevor
>
>The Guardian - London
>
**lies snipped**
Why don't you, faggots, organise a summons to call Soviet war veterans into
your nice little court in the Haague. Let's see if you can lynch the men who
saved the world from the Nazi cancer. I'm afraid you'll get your teeth
kicked in in the process. Russia is no Serbia.
I think the whores of the western media are lying, as usual. Whatever
happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved and I'm
sure enjoyed the fucking. Their Nazi husbands did the same to the Russian
women with the only difference that they killed them afterwards. Now, who's
the bad guys, you faggots?
Robbie
wsdl <ws...@wherever.com> wrote in message
news:3cd92bec$0$15474$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>
>
> The First Lemon wrote in message ...
> >'They Raped Every German Girl From Eight To 80'
> >
> >By Antony Beevor
> >
> >The Guardian - London
> >
> **lies snipped**
>
>
> Why don't you, faggots, organise a summons to call Soviet war veterans
into
> your nice little court in the Haague.
Neither in the courts can try them.
> Let's see if you can lynch the men who
> saved the world from the Nazi cancer. I'm afraid you'll get your teeth
> kicked in in the process. Russia is no Serbia.
> I think the whores of the western media are lying, as usual.
Beevor isn't part of the media. He's an indepedent historian whom has
trawled the Soviet archives with the approval of the FSB.
> Whatever
> happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved and I'm
> sure enjoyed the fucking.
So is it a lie of not?
> Their Nazi husbands did the same to the Russian
> women with the only difference that they killed them afterwards. Now,
who's
> the bad guys, you faggots?
Any body who commits a war crime is bad. Sorry if this bothers you.
William Shapiro
That would be both sides. But that still doesn't excuse what either side did
to the civillian populations.
Bill
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Abbey
actions of these terrorist assholes? Just because Russia helped us at one
point does not mean all wrong-doings they have committed suddenly become
unimportant and excused. And the Germans were just as wrong for committing
the same crime. To justify it is to completely miss the point and to excuse
humans (men) from acting out like predators when there is no need to. It's
one thing to commit a crime in self-defense....quite another to go out and
become an offender simply because you feel it is your right or entitlement.
God forbid you ever find yourself as a gang rape victim! There are terms
for those like you...
--
"...and yet God has not said a word..."
"wsdl" <ws...@wherever.com> wrote in message
news:3cd92bec$0$15474$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>
>
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
The bad guys is , you and guys like you, i.e people with attitudes as depraved
as yours. You are not opposed to depravity. You revel in it. It probably
provides
you with your physical high and release.
I wish there was some way to hang a sign on you to warn normal persons
away so that they may not get hurt by you.
critter
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:3CD9DD26...@bellsouth.net...
I completely agree with the view point of wsdl. I am sure most people agree
with him as well.
--
critter
captain crap
....and in your massive cross-post you forgot to post to the german group.
chicken shit little boy. scared of what the germans would say to your post.
"wsdl" <ws...@wherever.com> wrote in message
news:3cd92bec$0$15474$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>
>
Fossil Cloud
It all turned out to the better in the end: the Cold War started
sooner and the Marshall Plan came more generous.
In the Hague we could only punish them once, without the Hague we'll
keep punishing ruskis for generations. The most of Russia-haters
happen to live around Russia, especially to the West of it, and that
is more than a coincidence. Keep smiling, ruskis, just smile away!
Stuart Wilkes
> wsdl <ws...@wherever.com> wrote in message
> news:3cd92bec$0$15474$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
> >
> >
> > The First Lemon wrote in message ...
> > >'They Raped Every German Girl From Eight To 80'
> > >
> > >By Antony Beevor
> > >
> > >The Guardian - London
> > >
> > **lies snipped**
> >
> >
> > Why don't you, faggots, organise a summons to call Soviet war veterans
> into
> > your nice little court in the Haague.
>
> Neither in the courts can try them.
>
> > Let's see if you can lynch the men who
> > saved the world from the Nazi cancer. I'm afraid you'll get your teeth
> > kicked in in the process. Russia is no Serbia.
>
> > I think the whores of the western media are lying, as usual.
>
> Beevor isn't part of the media. He's an indepedent historian whom has
> trawled the Soviet archives with the approval of the FSB.
Who is interested in detailing much more of the crimes Soviet soldiers
committed than the crimes German soldiers committed. And for a
western historian, that is far from unique.
The only recent exception I am aware of is the Israeli military
historian Omer Bartov.
> > Whatever
> > happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved and I'm
> > sure enjoyed the fucking.
>
> So is it a lie of not?
No, it is certainly the case that numerous rapes and other crimes were
committed by Soviet troops. It is also the case that Soviet soldiers
who committed such crimes as murder, rape, and looting could be, and
were, subject to trial by field military tribunals, or could be
summarily shot by a superior officer.
There were no such actions taken by the German military justice system
to deal with similar crimes committed in the Soviet Union by German
soldiers.
> > Their Nazi husbands did the same to the Russian
> > women with the only difference that they killed them afterwards. Now,
> > who's the bad guys, you faggots?
>
> Any body who commits a war crime is bad. Sorry if this bothers you.
Sure. But can we draw distinctions between those who were subjected
to a war of extermination in which there were no restraints imposed on
the behavior of soldiers regarding the civilian population, and those
who were not?
Stuart Wilkes
Mikhail Medved
> How can you say that??? How do you live with yourself after justifying the
> actions of these terrorist assholes? Just because Russia helped us at one
> point does not mean all wrong-doings they have committed suddenly become
> unimportant and excused. And the Germans were just as wrong for committing
> the same crime. To justify it is to completely miss the point and to excuse
> humans (men) from acting out like predators when there is no need to. It's
> one thing to commit a crime in self-defense....quite another to go out and
> become an offender simply because you feel it is your right or entitlement.
>
> God forbid you ever find yourself as a gang rape victim! There are terms
> for those like you...
The problem is two-fold: 1) truth, which is distorted in that "study"
to such extent that it becomes a lie, or, at least, propaganda; 2)
motivation, which is purely not to seek the truth but rather to peddle
a simple political agenda to further weaken Russia.
Everybody knows that in million-men army crimes, including rape,
happen. You don't call every army in the world "an army of rapists"
just because certain soldiers committed rape and weren't punished.
I am all for punishing concrete perpetrators. I am against inverting
the truth completely, calling the liberating army "rapists". Mind you,
all my older relatives served in that army, many were wounded and
killed. All kinds of things happened during that war, dirty and
unpleasant. But what that "historian" describes is pure fiction, not
just in the rape part, but at large.
If you choose to call that "history", that's your choice. You can as
well call "history" Hollywood war movies.
Medved.
Robbie
Stuart Wilkes <swi...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:d842ea3e.02050...@posting.google.com...
> "Robbie" <rob...@thehague.net> wrote in message
news:<abbbjf$8h5$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>...
> > wsdl <ws...@wherever.com> wrote in message
> > news:3cd92bec$0$15474$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
> > >
> > >
> > > The First Lemon wrote in message ...
> > > >'They Raped Every German Girl From Eight To 80'
> > > >
> > > >By Antony Beevor
> > > >
> > > >The Guardian - London
> > > >
> > > **lies snipped**
> > >
> > >
> > > Why don't you, faggots, organise a summons to call Soviet war veterans
> > into
> > > your nice little court in the Haague.
> >
> > Neither in the courts can try them.
> >
> > > Let's see if you can lynch the men who
> > > saved the world from the Nazi cancer. I'm afraid you'll get your teeth
> > > kicked in in the process. Russia is no Serbia.
> >
> > > I think the whores of the western media are lying, as usual.
> >
> > Beevor isn't part of the media. He's an indepedent historian whom has
> > trawled the Soviet archives with the approval of the FSB.
>
> Who is interested in detailing much more of the crimes Soviet soldiers
> committed than the crimes German soldiers committed.
It's called finding a new angle. The controversy over this book is evidence
of somone attempting to fill the gaps of knowledge about this period.
It's not to your liking obviously.
> And for a
> western historian, that is far from unique.
You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians whom don't
meet with your approval.
> The only recent exception I am aware of is the Israeli military
> historian Omer Bartov.
>
> > > Whatever
> > > happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved and
I'm
> > > sure enjoyed the fucking.
> >
> > So is it a lie of not?
>
> No, it is certainly the case that numerous rapes and other crimes were
> committed by Soviet troops. It is also the case that Soviet soldiers
> who committed such crimes as murder, rape, and looting could be, and
> were, subject to trial by field military tribunals, or could be
> summarily shot by a superior officer.
Yes, we all know about existing laws. It was whether they were adhereed to
is the question. The central issue to me is if the mass rapes occured and I
belieive they did they weren't punished for racial reasons. That is the
unpalatable fact.
> There were no such actions taken by the German military justice system
> to deal with similar crimes committed in the Soviet Union by German
> soldiers.
Irrelevant as you already know.
> > > Their Nazi husbands did the same to the Russian
> > > women with the only difference that they killed them afterwards. Now,
> > > who's the bad guys, you faggots?
> >
> > Any body who commits a war crime is bad. Sorry if this bothers you.
>
> Sure. But can we draw distinctions between those who were subjected
> to a war of extermination in which there were no restraints imposed on
> the behavior of soldiers regarding the civilian population, and those
> who were not?
I can't see why you need to bring this up. If you commit a war crime you
sign your own sentence by citing other crimes similar to yours as a defence.
Robbie
Mikhail Medved <mikhai...@mail.ru> wrote in message
news:78954e62.02050...@posting.google.com...
> I am all for punishing concrete perpetrators. I am against inverting
> the truth completely, calling the liberating army "rapists". Mind you,
> all my older relatives served in that army, many were wounded and
> killed. All kinds of things happened during that war, dirty and
> unpleasant. But what that "historian" describes is pure fiction, not
> just in the rape part, but at large.
You need to read the book first to judge whether it is fiction. Choose
ignorance if you wish.
The book hasn't been published. So his investigative or research methods
haven't been scrutinised in this case.
David Friedman
mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved) wrote:
> I am all for punishing concrete perpetrators. I am against inverting
> the truth completely, calling the liberating army "rapists". Mind you,
> all my older relatives served in that army, many were wounded and
> killed. All kinds of things happened during that war, dirty and
> unpleasant. But what that "historian" describes is pure fiction, not
> just in the rape part, but at large.
I'm coming into the middle of this, but two questions occur to me.
1. Why do you call the Soviet army "the liberating army?" I would have
said that Stalin was about as bad a tyrant as Hitler. Is freeing East
Germany from one tyrant in order to put it under the rule of another
"liberation?"
2. How do you know what happened--well enough to be confident that what
was described is pure fiction. If your grandfather, or his comrades,
engaged in mass rape with the permission or encouragement of their
command structure, do you think he would have told you about it?
The Vietnamese war is a good deal more recent than WWII, with lots of
participants still around, yet there seems to be quite a lot of
remaining disagreement as to what really happened. And that's in a
society with a free press, freedom of speech, and the like.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Scott D. Orr
>The main object Stalin had in mind was
>to depopulate the terroritories in Eastern
>Germany that he intended to fall into the
>Soviet zone. The idea was the basic
>strategy of primitive war societies; to
>leave a buffer zone of undeveloped
>wilderness, in this case between Russia
>and the west, as a protective zone, in
>case a future attempt was made to invade
>Russia.
>
That's just silly. It doesn't even merit a reply.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>Everybody knows that in million-men army crimes, including rape,
>happen. You don't call every army in the world "an army of rapists"
>just because certain soldiers committed rape and weren't punished.
No, it's pretty well-documented that the problem in the Soviet army
was much worse than for other armies at the time, or well-disciplined
armies of earlier eras. There was a clear message, from Stalin on
down, that stopping rape was not an objective of Soviet miltary
discipline (even in earlier eras, most officers tried to prevent
unnecessary depredations against civilians, since a, it's wrong and b,
a hostile populace isn't very helpful to your army). I don't know if
this was the result of militant nationalism (people who aren't "us"
are less than human), or what, but it was a uniquely serious problem
for the Soviets.
Scott Orr
Mikhail Medved
> In article <78954e62.02050...@posting.google.com>,
> mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved) wrote:
>
> > I am all for punishing concrete perpetrators. I am against inverting
> > the truth completely, calling the liberating army "rapists". Mind you,
> > all my older relatives served in that army, many were wounded and
> > killed. All kinds of things happened during that war, dirty and
> > unpleasant. But what that "historian" describes is pure fiction, not
> > just in the rape part, but at large.
>
> I'm coming into the middle of this, but two questions occur to me.
>
> 1. Why do you call the Soviet army "the liberating army?" I would have
> said that Stalin was about as bad a tyrant as Hitler. Is freeing East
> Germany from one tyrant in order to put it under the rule of another
> "liberation?"
For someone signing as David Friedman the answer should be obvious.
Count the number of victims under Hitler. Then compare that with not
exactly liberal but not genicidal either regime of East Germany. Did
East Germany have death camps? I don't think so.
> 2. How do you know what happened--well enough to be confident that what
> was described is pure fiction. If your grandfather, or his comrades,
> engaged in mass rape with the permission or encouragement of their
> command structure, do you think he would have told you about it?
I talked to real people. And we could discuss all sorts of things,
including rape in occupied Germany, if the level of discussion would
be different. Did rape occur in Germany? Of course. Among a few
hundred peace keepers in Yugoslavia, who never even fought a real
battle, there were rapists. Would you expect zero crime among a few
million soldiers drafted from all layers of society? Does that mean
that Red Army was army of rapists? Of course, not.
The command structure's purpose was always to maintain obedience and
discipline. That was maintained by court martials and shootings of all
who were disobedient. There was no "encouragement". Again, all sorts
of things happened in multi-million army. If you want to seriously
discuss the matter, I am for it. But, I am afraid, to do that you'll
have to abandon propaganda cliches you've read in "history studies",
whose only purpose was and is to demonize the former ally, who is now
perceived as enemy.
> The Vietnamese war is a good deal more recent than WWII, with lots of
> participants still around, yet there seems to be quite a lot of
> remaining disagreement as to what really happened. And that's in a
> society with a free press, freedom of speech, and the like.
I am afraid the comparison between the colonial war and the war of
survival is a little far-fetched.
Medved.
Mikhail Medved
> On 9 May 2002 08:36:40 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
> wrote:
>
> >Everybody knows that in million-men army crimes, including rape,
> >happen. You don't call every army in the world "an army of rapists"
> >just because certain soldiers committed rape and weren't punished.
>
> No, it's pretty well-documented that the problem in the Soviet army
> was much worse than for other armies at the time, or well-disciplined
> armies of earlier eras.
Well-documented, huh? Care to give references to original documents?
> There was a clear message, from Stalin on
> down, that stopping rape was not an objective of Soviet miltary
> discipline (even in earlier eras, most officers tried to prevent
> unnecessary depredations against civilians, since a, it's wrong and b,
> a hostile populace isn't very helpful to your army).
Clear message from Stalin? References, my friend, references.
Otherwise, your words are hollow.
> I don't know if
> this was the result of militant nationalism (people who aren't "us"
> are less than human), or what, but it was a uniquely serious problem
> for the Soviets.
You don't know - you don't know what you're talking about, that's
right.
Medved.
> Scott Orr
Stuart Wilkes
There aren't many gaps in Western knowlege of rapes in Germany by
Soviet troops.
> It's not to your liking obviously.
Why not? It's true, and widely known, that Soviet troops in Germany
and elsewhere committed many rapes, murders, and other crimes.
It's also true, and much less well known, that Soviet troops faced a
prospect of a field military tribunal, or being summarily shot for
their crimes.
It's also true, and much less widely known, that German troops who
committed such acts in the Soviet Union faced no such prospect from
the German military justice system.
> > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
>
> You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians whom don't
> meet with your approval.
What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
> > The only recent exception I am aware of is the Israeli military
> > historian Omer Bartov.
> >
> > > > Whatever
> > > > happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved and
> I'm
> > > > sure enjoyed the fucking.
> > >
> > > So is it a lie of not?
> >
> > No, it is certainly the case that numerous rapes and other crimes were
> > committed by Soviet troops. It is also the case that Soviet soldiers
> > who committed such crimes as murder, rape, and looting could be, and
> > were, subject to trial by field military tribunals, or could be
> > summarily shot by a superior officer.
>
> Yes, we all know about existing laws. It was whether they were adhereed to
> is the question.
John Erickson found evidence in Soviet military archives that there
were tribunals convened to try Soviet soldiers for crimes against
German civilians.
To include crimes against victims who happened to be Nazi Party
members.
> The central issue to me is if the mass rapes occured and I
> belieive they did they weren't punished for racial reasons.
Oh, really?
> That is the unpalatable fact.
And what is your evidence that these crimes were not punished for
racial reasons?
Stuart Wilkes
Robbie
Really. Let's see how the book sells then, eh?
> > It's not to your liking obviously.
>
> Why not? It's true, and widely known, that Soviet troops in Germany
> and elsewhere committed many rapes, murders, and other crimes.
>
> It's also true, and much less well known, that Soviet troops faced a
> prospect of a field military tribunal, or being summarily shot for
> their crimes.
Indeed, this was pretty much the practice in the SU but not apparently in
countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
> It's also true, and much less widely known, that German troops who
> committed such acts in the Soviet Union faced no such prospect from
> the German military justice system.
Irelevant. Can't you stick to the thread?
> > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
> >
> > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians whom
don't
> > meet with your approval.
>
> What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian concentrate on
the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
> > > The only recent exception I am aware of is the Israeli military
> > > historian Omer Bartov.
> > >
> > > > > Whatever
> > > > > happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved
and
> > I'm
> > > > > sure enjoyed the fucking.
> > > >
> > > > So is it a lie of not?
> > >
> > > No, it is certainly the case that numerous rapes and other crimes were
> > > committed by Soviet troops. It is also the case that Soviet soldiers
> > > who committed such crimes as murder, rape, and looting could be, and
> > > were, subject to trial by field military tribunals, or could be
> > > summarily shot by a superior officer.
> >
> > Yes, we all know about existing laws. It was whether they were adhereed
to
> > is the question.
>
> John Erickson found evidence in Soviet military archives that there
> were tribunals convened to try Soviet soldiers for crimes against
> German civilians.
No one is disputing this.
> To include crimes against victims who happened to be Nazi Party
> members.
>
> > The central issue to me is if the mass rapes occured and I
> > belieive they did they weren't punished for racial reasons.
>
> Oh, really?
Yep.
> > That is the unpalatable fact.
>
> And what is your evidence that these crimes were not punished for
> racial reasons?
The fact that there seemed to be an adherence to law in the SU but not
'liberated' East Germany.
I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in different forms
by all eventually.
Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
Stuart Wilkes
> wrote:
>
> >Everybody knows that in million-men army crimes, including rape,
> >happen. You don't call every army in the world "an army of rapists"
> >just because certain soldiers committed rape and weren't punished.
>
> No, it's pretty well-documented that the problem in the Soviet army
> was much worse than for other armies at the time
The Wehrmacht at the time chose not to make documents of the forcible
recreational sexual activities of their soldiers in the Soviet Union,
since Hitler himself had declared that acts against the subhumans
temporarily infesting the territory he desired for German "living
space" could not be crimes.
>, or well-disciplined
> armies of earlier eras. There was a clear message, from Stalin on
> down, that stopping rape was not an objective of Soviet miltary
> discipline
Tell that to Soviet soldiers who were tried by Soviet Army field
military tribunals for crimes against German civilians.
> (even in earlier eras, most officers tried to prevent
> unnecessary depredations against civilians, since a, it's wrong and b,
> a hostile populace isn't very helpful to your army). I don't know if
> this was the result of militant nationalism (people who aren't "us"
> are less than human),
Or having been subjected to a war of racial extermination, with
horrific results to those close to Soviet troops. It was interesting
to John Erickson that the fact that Germans had killed family members
of a Soviet soldier was not admitted as a mitigating factor in that
soldier's trial.
> or what, but it was a uniquely serious problem for the Soviets.
Oh, no. Far worse in the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union, because the
German Army took no legal or disciplinary action to limit the
depredations of German soldiers against Soviet civilians.
Stuart Wilkes
Stuart Wilkes
> Mikhail Medved <mikhai...@mail.ru> wrote in message
> news:78954e62.02050...@posting.google.com...
>
> > I am all for punishing concrete perpetrators. I am against inverting
> > the truth completely, calling the liberating army "rapists". Mind you,
> > all my older relatives served in that army, many were wounded and
> > killed. All kinds of things happened during that war, dirty and
> > unpleasant. But what that "historian" describes is pure fiction, not
> > just in the rape part, but at large.
>
> You need to read the book first to judge whether it is fiction. Choose
> ignorance if you wish.
>
> The book hasn't been published.
Then however did I get a copy, Robbie?
Stuart Wilkes
Robbie
> "Robbie" <rob...@thehague.net> wrote in message
news:<abec6a$np0$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>...
> > Mikhail Medved <mikhai...@mail.ru> wrote in message
> > news:78954e62.02050...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > > I am all for punishing concrete perpetrators. I am against inverting
> > > the truth completely, calling the liberating army "rapists". Mind you,
> > > all my older relatives served in that army, many were wounded and
> > > killed. All kinds of things happened during that war, dirty and
> > > unpleasant. But what that "historian" describes is pure fiction, not
> > > just in the rape part, but at large.
> >
> > You need to read the book first to judge whether it is fiction. Choose
> > ignorance if you wish.
> >
> > The book hasn't been published.
>
> Then however did I get a copy, Robbie?
So Berlin is published now. OK. And what is it about Beevor's methods of
research and theses do you object to?
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
> David Friedman <dd...@best.com> wrote in message news:<ddfr-45315C.1...@dfw-read.news.verio.net>...
> > In article <78954e62.02050...@posting.google.com>,
> > mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved) wrote:
> >
> > > I am all for punishing concrete perpetrators. I am against inverting
> > > the truth completely, calling the liberating army "rapists". Mind you,
> > > all my older relatives served in that army, many were wounded and
> > > killed. All kinds of things happened during that war, dirty and
> > > unpleasant. But what that "historian" describes is pure fiction, not
> > > just in the rape part, but at large.
> >
> > I'm coming into the middle of this, but two questions occur to me.
> >
> > 1. Why do you call the Soviet army "the liberating army?" I would have
> > said that Stalin was about as bad a tyrant as Hitler. Is freeing East
> > Germany from one tyrant in order to put it under the rule of another
> > "liberation?"
>
> For someone signing as David Friedman the answer should be obvious.
> Count the number of victims under Hitler. Then compare that with not
> exactly liberal but not genicidal either regime of East Germany. Did
> East Germany have death camps? I don't think so.
Well no the camps were not in East Germany. The Gulag camps were
mostly in the far north east, in Siberia, Vorkuta etc.
What fraction of the East Germans, that had the fortune to become
POWs of the Soviets, ever returned home?
>
> > 2. How do you know what happened--well enough to be confident that what
> > was described is pure fiction. If your grandfather, or his comrades,
> > engaged in mass rape with the permission or encouragement of their
> > command structure, do you think he would have told you about it?
>
> I talked to real people. And we could discuss all sorts of things,
> including rape in occupied Germany, if the level of discussion would
> be different. Did rape occur in Germany? Of course. Among a few
> hundred peace keepers in Yugoslavia, who never even fought a real
> battle, there were rapists. Would you expect zero crime among a few
> million soldiers drafted from all layers of society? Does that mean
> that Red Army was army of rapists? Of course, not.
Well of course that was not its primary purpose.
But there is a wide range between 0 and 100 %, and no one is implying
100%, just noticeably and significantly above 0.
Stuart Wilkes
Yup.
> Let's see how the book sells then, eh?
In the US its already in second-hand bookstores, which is where I got
mine.
> > > It's not to your liking obviously.
> >
> > Why not? It's true, and widely known, that Soviet troops in Germany
> > and elsewhere committed many rapes, murders, and other crimes.
> >
> > It's also true, and much less well known, that Soviet troops faced a
> > prospect of a field military tribunal, or being summarily shot for
> > their crimes.
>
> Indeed, this was pretty much the practice in the SU but not apparently in
> countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
Not true. The records of field military tribunals examined by
Erickson for his book "The Road to Berlin" were held for crimes
against German civilians, in Germany.
> > It's also true, and much less widely known, that German troops who
> > committed such acts in the Soviet Union faced no such prospect from
> > the German military justice system.
>
> Irelevant. Can't you stick to the thread?
Just 'cause you say so? Try again.
> > > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
> > >
> > > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians whom
> > > don't meet with your approval.
> >
> > What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
>
> Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian concentrate on
> the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
Where do you get this?
> > > > The only recent exception I am aware of is the Israeli military
> > > > historian Omer Bartov.
> > > >
> > > > > > Whatever
> > > > > > happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved
> and
> I'm
> > > > > > sure enjoyed the fucking.
> > > > >
> > > > > So is it a lie of not?
> > > >
> > > > No, it is certainly the case that numerous rapes and other crimes were
> > > > committed by Soviet troops. It is also the case that Soviet soldiers
> > > > who committed such crimes as murder, rape, and looting could be, and
> > > > were, subject to trial by field military tribunals, or could be
> > > > summarily shot by a superior officer.
> > >
> > > Yes, we all know about existing laws. It was whether they were adhereed
> > > to is the question.
> >
> > John Erickson found evidence in Soviet military archives that there
> > were tribunals convened to try Soviet soldiers for crimes against
> > German civilians.
>
> No one is disputing this.
Above you claim that it was pretty much the practice in the SU but not
apparently in countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
> > To include crimes against victims who happened to be Nazi Party
> > members.
> >
> > > The central issue to me is if the mass rapes occured and I
> > > belieive they did they weren't punished for racial reasons.
> >
> > Oh, really?
>
> Yep.
And your evidence for this notion?
> > > That is the unpalatable fact.
> >
> > And what is your evidence that these crimes were not punished for
> > racial reasons?
>
> The fact that there seemed to be an adherence to law in the SU but not
> 'liberated' East Germany.
There was <inadequate> adherence to the law in the SU as well.
> I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in different forms
> by all eventually.
>
> Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
Especially victims whose Army has an inadequate proportion of staff
officers for support functions like law enforcement, and hastily
trained combat arms officers with inadequate exposure to the
provisions of military law concerning the treatment of civilians.
Which facts did not spring into existence at the Polish or German
borders.
Stuart Wilkes
Stuart Wilkes
> Mikhail Medved wrote:
>
> > David Friedman <dd...@best.com> wrote in message news:<ddfr-45315C.1...@dfw-read.news.verio.net>...
> > > In article <78954e62.02050...@posting.google.com>,
> > > mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved) wrote:
> > >
> > > > I am all for punishing concrete perpetrators. I am against inverting
> > > > the truth completely, calling the liberating army "rapists". Mind you,
> > > > all my older relatives served in that army, many were wounded and
> > > > killed. All kinds of things happened during that war, dirty and
> > > > unpleasant. But what that "historian" describes is pure fiction, not
> > > > just in the rape part, but at large.
> > >
> > > I'm coming into the middle of this, but two questions occur to me.
> > >
> > > 1. Why do you call the Soviet army "the liberating army?" I would have
> > > said that Stalin was about as bad a tyrant as Hitler. Is freeing East
> > > Germany from one tyrant in order to put it under the rule of another
> > > "liberation?"
> >
> > For someone signing as David Friedman the answer should be obvious.
> > Count the number of victims under Hitler. Then compare that with not
> > exactly liberal but not genicidal either regime of East Germany. Did
> > East Germany have death camps? I don't think so.
>
> Well no the camps were not in East Germany. The Gulag camps were
> mostly in the far north east, in Siberia, Vorkuta etc.
> What fraction of the East Germans, that had the fortune to become
> POWs of the Soviets, ever returned home?
Over 80% of them.
Stuart Wilkes
Robbie
Doesn't seem to have been out long. It's a hardback. No reader reviews via US Amazon either but 2 5 stars at Amazon UK.
It'll be a best seller.
> > > > It's not to your liking obviously.
> > >
> > > Why not? It's true, and widely known, that Soviet troops in Germany
> > > and elsewhere committed many rapes, murders, and other crimes.
> > >
> > > It's also true, and much less well known, that Soviet troops faced a
> > > prospect of a field military tribunal, or being summarily shot for
> > > their crimes.
> >
> > Indeed, this was pretty much the practice in the SU but not apparently in
> > countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
>
> Not true. The records of field military tribunals examined by
> Erickson for his book "The Road to Berlin" were held for crimes
> against German civilians, in Germany.
Yes, there were some. However, much less as Beevor argues.
> > > It's also true, and much less widely known, that German troops who
> > > committed such acts in the Soviet Union faced no such prospect from
> > > the German military justice system.
> >
> > Irelevant. Can't you stick to the thread?
>
> Just 'cause you say so? Try again.
Stick to the thread.
> > > > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
> > > >
> > > > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians whom
> > > > don't meet with your approval.
> > >
> > > What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
> >
> > Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian concentrate on
> > the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
>
> Where do you get this?
Your implication.
> > > > > The only recent exception I am aware of is the Israeli military
> > > > > historian Omer Bartov.
> > > > >
> > > > > > > Whatever
> > > > > > > happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved
> > and
> > I'm
> > > > > > > sure enjoyed the fucking.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So is it a lie of not?
> > > > >
> > > > > No, it is certainly the case that numerous rapes and other crimes were
> > > > > committed by Soviet troops. It is also the case that Soviet soldiers
> > > > > who committed such crimes as murder, rape, and looting could be, and
> > > > > were, subject to trial by field military tribunals, or could be
> > > > > summarily shot by a superior officer.
> > > >
> > > > Yes, we all know about existing laws. It was whether they were adhereed
> > > > to is the question.
> > >
> > > John Erickson found evidence in Soviet military archives that there
> > > were tribunals convened to try Soviet soldiers for crimes against
> > > German civilians.
> >
> > No one is disputing this.
>
> Above you claim that it was pretty much the practice in the SU but not
> apparently in countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
That is correct. Depends what you mean by standard practice.
> > > To include crimes against victims who happened to be Nazi Party
> > > members.
> > >
> > > > The central issue to me is if the mass rapes occured and I
> > > > belieive they did they weren't punished for racial reasons.
> > >
> > > Oh, really?
> >
> > Yep.
>
> And your evidence for this notion?
See below. I wouldn't call it evidence.
> > > > That is the unpalatable fact.
> > >
> > > And what is your evidence that these crimes were not punished for
> > > racial reasons?
> >
> > The fact that there seemed to be an adherence to law in the SU but not
> > 'liberated' East Germany.
>
> There was <inadequate> adherence to the law in the SU as well.
Sure not as much as the what happened in East Germany.
> > I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in different forms
> > by all eventually.
> >
> > Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
>
> Especially victims whose Army has an inadequate proportion of staff
> officers for support functions like law enforcement, and hastily
> trained combat arms officers with inadequate exposure to the
> provisions of military law concerning the treatment of civilians.
> Which facts did not spring into existence at the Polish or German
> borders.
Whatever the reasons, Beevor estimates that 2,000,000 rapes occurred and the implication is that this was allowed for reasons of order and
reward by the very leadership of the SU. If you think this is OK so be it.
The fact that the victims were the women of those who were committing a racial war on Soviet citizens doesn't give one much thought to think
the rapes were racial in nature too.
Stuart Wilkes
Do you have it yet?
> > > > > It's not to your liking obviously.
> > > >
> > > > Why not? It's true, and widely known, that Soviet troops in Germany
> > > > and elsewhere committed many rapes, murders, and other crimes.
> > > >
> > > > It's also true, and much less well known, that Soviet troops faced a
> > > > prospect of a field military tribunal, or being summarily shot for
> > > > their crimes.
> > >
> > > Indeed, this was pretty much the practice in the SU but not apparently in
> > > countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
> >
> > Not true. The records of field military tribunals examined by
> > Erickson for his book "The Road to Berlin" were held for crimes
> > against German civilians, in Germany.
>
> Yes, there were some. However, much less as Beevor argues.
And where does he do the comparison?
> > > > It's also true, and much less widely known, that German troops who
> > > > committed such acts in the Soviet Union faced no such prospect from
> > > > the German military justice system.
> > >
> > > Irelevant. Can't you stick to the thread?
> >
> > Just 'cause you say so? Try again.
>
> Stick to the thread.
And who elected you thread-cop?
> > > > > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
> > > > >
> > > > > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians whom
> > > > > don't meet with your approval.
> > > >
> > > > What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
> > >
> > > Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian concentrate on
> > > the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
> >
> > Where do you get this?
>
> Your implication.
Whatsamatter with it?
> > > > > > The only recent exception I am aware of is the Israeli military
> > > > > > historian Omer Bartov.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Whatever
> > > > > > > > happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved
> > > and
> > > I'm
> > > > > > > > sure enjoyed the fucking.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > So is it a lie of not?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > No, it is certainly the case that numerous rapes and other crimes were
> > > > > > committed by Soviet troops. It is also the case that Soviet soldiers
> > > > > > who committed such crimes as murder, rape, and looting could be, and
> > > > > > were, subject to trial by field military tribunals, or could be
> > > > > > summarily shot by a superior officer.
> > > > >
> > > > > Yes, we all know about existing laws. It was whether they were adhereed
> > > > > to is the question.
> > > >
> > > > John Erickson found evidence in Soviet military archives that there
> > > > were tribunals convened to try Soviet soldiers for crimes against
> > > > German civilians.
> > >
> > > No one is disputing this.
> >
> > Above you claim that it was pretty much the practice in the SU but not
> > apparently in countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
>
> That is correct. Depends what you mean by standard practice.
I think I make that pretty clear below.
> > > > To include crimes against victims who happened to be Nazi Party
> > > > members.
> > > >
> > > > > The central issue to me is if the mass rapes occured and I
> > > > > belieive they did they weren't punished for racial reasons.
> > > >
> > > > Oh, really?
> > >
> > > Yep.
> >
> > And your evidence for this notion?
>
> See below. I wouldn't call it evidence.
Bald assertion more like.
> > > > > That is the unpalatable fact.
> > > >
> > > > And what is your evidence that these crimes were not punished for
> > > > racial reasons?
> > >
> > > The fact that there seemed to be an adherence to law in the SU but not
> > > 'liberated' East Germany.
> >
> > There was <inadequate> adherence to the law in the SU as well.
>
> Sure not as much as the what happened in East Germany.
And who did the comparison?
> > > I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in different
> > > forms by all eventually.
> > >
> > > Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
"non-victims" of the German Army, either directly, or close family
members, were kinda scarce in the Soviet Union by 1944-1945.
Certainly not enough to man an army. Would you prefer it if the
Soviets had stopped at the 1941 border? Winston and Franklin would
have been quite put out by that.
> > Especially victims whose Army has an inadequate proportion of staff
> > officers for support functions like law enforcement, and hastily
> > trained combat arms officers with inadequate exposure to the
> > provisions of military law concerning the treatment of civilians.
> > Which facts did not spring into existence at the Polish or German
> > borders.
>
> Whatever the reasons, Beevor estimates that 2,000,000 rapes occurred and
> the implication is that this was allowed for reasons of order
Yes, we know from past discussion that Beevor is willing to baldly
claim causality without demonstrating it. As you agreed.
> and reward by the very leadership of the SU.
So now summary shooting or a field military tribunal is a reward?
> If you think this is OK so be it.
When did I say it was OK?
> The fact that the victims were the women of those who were committing a
> racial war on Soviet citizens doesn't give one much thought to think
> the rapes were racial in nature too.
Just no evidence to support the assertion.
Stuart Wilkes
Robbie
Nope.
> > > > > > It's not to your liking obviously.
> > > > >
> > > > > Why not? It's true, and widely known, that Soviet troops in
Germany
> > > > > and elsewhere committed many rapes, murders, and other crimes.
> > > > >
> > > > > It's also true, and much less well known, that Soviet troops faced
a
> > > > > prospect of a field military tribunal, or being summarily shot for
> > > > > their crimes.
> > > >
> > > > Indeed, this was pretty much the practice in the SU but not
apparently in
> > > > countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
> > >
> > > Not true. The records of field military tribunals examined by
> > > Erickson for his book "The Road to Berlin" were held for crimes
> > > against German civilians, in Germany.
> >
> > Yes, there were some. However, much less as Beevor argues.
>
> And where does he do the comparison?
Dunno.
> > > > > It's also true, and much less widely known, that German troops who
> > > > > committed such acts in the Soviet Union faced no such prospect
from
> > > > > the German military justice system.
> > > >
> > > > Irelevant. Can't you stick to the thread?
> > >
> > > Just 'cause you say so? Try again.
> >
> > Stick to the thread.
>
> And who elected you thread-cop?
And who elected you thread-cop?
> > > > > > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians
whom
> > > > > > don't meet with your approval.
> > > > >
> > > > > What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
> > > >
> > > > Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian
concentrate on
> > > > the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
> > >
> > > Where do you get this?
> >
> > Your implication.
>
> Whatsamatter with it?
Don't you know?
According to Beevor he did.
> > > > I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in
different
> > > > forms by all eventually.
> > > >
> > > > Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
>
> "non-victims" of the German Army, either directly, or close family
> members, were kinda scarce in the Soviet Union by 1944-1945.
> Certainly not enough to man an army. Would you prefer it if the
> Soviets had stopped at the 1941 border? Winston and Franklin would
> have been quite put out by that.
I think you're missing the point Wilkes. No matter how much you cite wrongs
against Ukranains, Russians et al, the fact reamains that justice is served
by raping women.
> > > Especially victims whose Army has an inadequate proportion of staff
> > > officers for support functions like law enforcement, and hastily
> > > trained combat arms officers with inadequate exposure to the
> > > provisions of military law concerning the treatment of civilians.
> > > Which facts did not spring into existence at the Polish or German
> > > borders.
> >
> > Whatever the reasons, Beevor estimates that 2,000,000 rapes occurred and
> > the implication is that this was allowed for reasons of order
>
> Yes, we know from past discussion that Beevor is willing to baldly
> claim causality without demonstrating it. As you agreed.
Well...you tell me how anyone could demonstrate that his estimate of
2,000,000 rapes occured. It is (without) reading his latest and
extrapolation.
> > and reward by the very leadership of the SU.
>
> So now summary shooting or a field military tribunal is a reward?
Hee, hee. Your loyalty is something to behold.
> > If you think this is OK so be it.
>
> When did I say it was OK?
>
> > The fact that the victims were the women of those who were committing a
> > racial war on Soviet citizens doesn't give one much thought to think
> > the rapes were racial in nature too.
>
> Just no evidence to support the assertion.
The evidence is the disparity in unpunished rape offences and plain common
sense.
James A. Donald
David Friedman:
> The Vietnamese war is a good deal more recent than WWII, with
> lots of participants still around, yet there seems to be quite a
> lot of remaining disagreement as to what really happened. And
> that's in a society with a free press, freedom of speech, and
> the like.
While there is still quite a lot of disagreement about what really
happened in the Vietnam war, this is mostly because most people do
not want to know. The messy truth is disturbing regardless of
one's political agenda, and does not fit with any one side's
political agenda.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
ni66rKaEUoCC2NtGeqOJ7+iAnCYsnio6WXml24Wk
4/8jsP9nSwS/yUhjGjuPaHJBYhWmNOf9f5itFJexR
Mikhail Medved
>
> Well no the camps were not in East Germany. The Gulag camps were
> mostly in the far north east, in Siberia, Vorkuta etc.
> What fraction of the East Germans, that had the fortune to become
> POWs of the Soviets, ever returned home?
That's not even funny. German POW's were mostly used in reconstruction
of war-ravaged regions of USSR, which aren't in Siberia. There was a
large number of POW camps around Moscow with Germans working in
construction. (The quality of their work was generally high, by the
way.)
The country was in the time of hardship, and they had to share that
hardship. But it was nothing close to death camps.
As for percentage of those who returned home - I don't know, check the
numbers yourself. Then compare it with the percentage of Red Army
POW's who survivied German POW camps.
Medved.
David Friedman
> David Friedman <dd...@best.com> wrote
> > I'm coming into the middle of this, but two questions occur to me.
> >
> > 1. Why do you call the Soviet army "the liberating army?" I would have
> > said that Stalin was about as bad a tyrant as Hitler. Is freeing East
> > Germany from one tyrant in order to put it under the rule of another
> > "liberation?"
>
> For someone signing as David Friedman the answer should be obvious.
> Count the number of victims under Hitler. Then compare that with not
> exactly liberal but not genicidal either regime of East Germany. Did
> East Germany have death camps? I don't think so.
The fact that Hitler killed more of my relatives than Stalin did
doesn't imply that he was more of a tyrant. I don't have Rummel's book
on democide ready to hand, but I believe the number of his own
citizens that Stalin killed was comparable to, perhaps larger than,
the number that Hitler killed.
> > 2. How do you know what happened--well enough to be confident that what
> > was described is pure fiction. If your grandfather, or his comrades,
> > engaged in mass rape with the permission or encouragement of their
> > command structure, do you think he would have told you about it?
>
> I talked to real people.
And real people who have done things they aren't proud of, or watched
their comrades do such things, may or may not talk about it.
> > The Vietnamese war is a good deal more recent than WWII, with lots of
> > participants still around, yet there seems to be quite a lot of
> > remaining disagreement as to what really happened. And that's in a
> > society with a free press, freedom of speech, and the like.
> I am afraid the comparison between the colonial war and the war of
> survival is a little far-fetched.
I wasn't comparing the moral status of the two wars, I was comparing
the availability of accurate information. We ought to have much better
information about Vietnam than about the Russian front in WWII, both
because the former is more recent and because the people who fought it
(on the U.S. side) went home to a country with a free press, hence
when some of them did talk about ugly things that happened other
people could find out.
Stuart Wilkes
I'm not trying to be one. Unlike you.
> > > > > > > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians
> whom
> > > > > > > don't meet with your approval.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
> > > > >
> > > > > Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian
> concentrate on
> > > > > the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
> > > >
> > > > Where do you get this?
> > >
> > > Your implication.
> >
> > Whatsamatter with it?
>
> Don't you know?
Tell me please, Robbie, before I resort to increasingly bad British
Battlecruiser jokes.
Where?
> > > > > I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in
> different
> > > > > forms by all eventually.
> > > > >
> > > > > Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
> >
> > "non-victims" of the German Army, either directly, or close family
> > members, were kinda scarce in the Soviet Union by 1944-1945.
> > Certainly not enough to man an army. Would you prefer it if the
> > Soviets had stopped at the 1941 border? Winston and Franklin would
> > have been quite put out by that.
>
> I think you're missing the point Wilkes. No matter how much you cite wrongs
> against Ukranains, Russians et al, the fact reamains that justice is served
> by raping women.
That's either missing a "not", or you're off the deep end.
> > > > Especially victims whose Army has an inadequate proportion of staff
> > > > officers for support functions like law enforcement, and hastily
> > > > trained combat arms officers with inadequate exposure to the
> > > > provisions of military law concerning the treatment of civilians.
> > > > Which facts did not spring into existence at the Polish or German
> > > > borders.
> > >
> > > Whatever the reasons, Beevor estimates that 2,000,000 rapes occurred and
> > > the implication is that this was allowed for reasons of order
> >
> > Yes, we know from past discussion that Beevor is willing to baldly
> > claim causality without demonstrating it. As you agreed.
>
> Well...you tell me how anyone could demonstrate that his estimate of
> 2,000,000 rapes occured. It is (without) reading his latest and
> extrapolation.
I'm making no such claim, and so have no need to demonstrate anything.
> > > and reward by the very leadership of the SU.
> >
> > So now summary shooting or a field military tribunal is a reward?
>
> Hee, hee. Your loyalty is something to behold.
>
> > > If you think this is OK so be it.
> >
> > When did I say it was OK?
> >
> > > The fact that the victims were the women of those who were committing a
> > > racial war on Soviet citizens doesn't give one much thought to think
> > > the rapes were racial in nature too.
> >
> > Just no evidence to support the assertion.
>
> The evidence is the disparity in unpunished rape offences and plain common
> sense.
Who demonstrated the disparity, and please show the display of common
sense.
Stuart Wilkes
Stuart Wilkes
> "Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<3CDC17C2...@bellsouth.net>...
> ...
> >
> > Well no the camps were not in East Germany. The Gulag camps were
> > mostly in the far north east, in Siberia, Vorkuta etc.
> > What fraction of the East Germans, that had the fortune to become
> > POWs of the Soviets, ever returned home?
> ...
>
> That's not even funny.
No. Just ignorant.
> German POW's were mostly used in reconstruction
> of war-ravaged regions of USSR, which aren't in Siberia.
I stayed in an apartment building in Yaroslavl built by the German
POWs. Yaroslavl ain't Siberia.
> There was a large number of POW camps around Moscow with Germans working
> in construction. (The quality of their work was generally high, by the
> way.)
And it was still standing very nicely in the mid-winter of 1998.
Stuart Wilkes
> The country was in the time of hardship, and they had to share that
> hardship. But it was nothing close to death camps.
>
> As for percentage of those who returned home - I don't know,
About 80%.
> check the numbers yourself.
Boehme, Kurt W. "Die deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in sowjetischer Hand:
Eine Bilanz" [The German War Prisoners in the Soviet Union: A
Summary].
Vol. VII, Munich, 1966.
Or David Glantz's "When Titans Clashed"
> Then compare it with the percentage of Red Army
> POW's who survivied German POW camps.
About 40%
Stuart Wilkes
Robbie
Stop posting irrelevancy then no one will ask you to stick to the thread. Is
that so very difficult to understand?
> > > > > > > > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear
historians
> > whom
> > > > > > > > don't meet with your approval.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian
> > concentrate on
> > > > > > the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
> > > > >
> > > > > Where do you get this?
> > > >
> > > > Your implication.
> > >
> > > Whatsamatter with it?
> >
> > Don't you know?
>
> Tell me please, Robbie, before I resort to increasingly bad British
> Battlecruiser jokes.
Bring 'em on! I don't even who they are anyway. Pompus bloody names I agree.
In his book apparently. I've only read a couple of reviews, read some
articles and saw a Timewarch programme on BBC2 on friday which told the
story of the Battle of Berlin and showed his methods to get the sources for
his arguments.
Interstingly he said pondered as to why Stalin as so keen to get to Berlin
fast and Beevor thiks it was to get the Uranium Oxide which then kick
started the Nuclear bomb programme in the SU.
> > > > > > I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in
> > different
> > > > > > forms by all eventually.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
> > >
> > > "non-victims" of the German Army, either directly, or close family
> > > members, were kinda scarce in the Soviet Union by 1944-1945.
> > > Certainly not enough to man an army. Would you prefer it if the
> > > Soviets had stopped at the 1941 border? Winston and Franklin would
> > > have been quite put out by that.
> >
> > I think you're missing the point Wilkes. No matter how much you cite
wrongs
> > against Ukranains, Russians et al, the fact reamains that justice is
served
> > by raping women.
>
> That's either missing a "not", or you're off the deep end.
I think we can assume this. :))
> > > > > Especially victims whose Army has an inadequate proportion of
staff
> > > > > officers for support functions like law enforcement, and hastily
> > > > > trained combat arms officers with inadequate exposure to the
> > > > > provisions of military law concerning the treatment of civilians.
> > > > > Which facts did not spring into existence at the Polish or German
> > > > > borders.
> > > >
> > > > Whatever the reasons, Beevor estimates that 2,000,000 rapes occurred
and
> > > > the implication is that this was allowed for reasons of order
> > >
> > > Yes, we know from past discussion that Beevor is willing to baldly
> > > claim causality without demonstrating it. As you agreed.
> >
> > Well...you tell me how anyone could demonstrate that his estimate of
> > 2,000,000 rapes occured. It is (without) reading his latest and
> > extrapolation.
>
> I'm making no such claim, and so have no need to demonstrate anything.
Yes, that is what Beevor does. Extrapolation and estimation is sometimes
necessary for claims.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
> > > > and reward by the very leadership of the SU.
> > >
> > > So now summary shooting or a field military tribunal is a reward?
> >
> > Hee, hee. Your loyalty is something to behold.
> >
> > > > If you think this is OK so be it.
> > >
> > > When did I say it was OK?
> > >
> > > > The fact that the victims were the women of those who were
committing a
> > > > racial war on Soviet citizens doesn't give one much thought to think
> > > > the rapes were racial in nature too.
> > >
> > > Just no evidence to support the assertion.
> >
> > The evidence is the disparity in unpunished rape offences and plain
common
> > sense.
>
> Who demonstrated the disparity, and please show the display of common
> sense.
I've already asked you this Wilkes. Seeing as you have the book, Berlin by
Beevor - what is it that you object to about his methods of research?
William Shapiro
Are you sure the number for the teturning German POWs is correct. From what
I have read, I thought it was 80% did not return.
Bill
kirill
One thing is for sure and that German POWs didn't get the
same treatment as Soviet POWs of which 3.28 million died
in the same Nazi death camps in which over 6 million Jews
were murdered.
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
after the war?
What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
How were those refugees treated by the empire once repatriated?
mall...@yahoo.com
> O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
> former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
> What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
> after the war?
> What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
> in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
> What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
> forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
> How were those refugees treated by the empire once repatriated?
I told you, Rostyk, to stop asking and to start answering your own
so-called questions. It's not hard. Try it.
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>It's also true, and much less well known, that Soviet troops faced a
>prospect of a field military tribunal, or being summarily shot for
>their crimes.
Not in the initial stages of the occupation, no.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<s80mdu0sn4vdkk7ad...@4ax.com>...
>> On 9 May 2002 08:36:40 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Everybody knows that in million-men army crimes, including rape,
>> >happen. You don't call every army in the world "an army of rapists"
>> >just because certain soldiers committed rape and weren't punished.
>>
>> No, it's pretty well-documented that the problem in the Soviet army
>> was much worse than for other armies at the time, or well-disciplined
>> armies of earlier eras.
>
>Well-documented, huh?
Yes.
>Care to give references to original documents?
No. I gave the reference to Naimark, and Naimark gives meticulous
references to both Soviet and Western archives and other sources (it's
got 323 footnotes for 72 pages in the chapter in question, which is
decent for a history work), and there's no reason for me to duplicate
the effort. Check it out in the library if you want to see for
yourself.
>> There was a clear message, from Stalin on
>> down, that stopping rape was not an objective of Soviet miltary
>> discipline (even in earlier eras, most officers tried to prevent
>> unnecessary depredations against civilians, since a, it's wrong and b,
>> a hostile populace isn't very helpful to your army).
>
>Clear message from Stalin? References, my friend, references.
>Otherwise, your words are hollow.
I gave the references already.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<s80mdu0sn4vdkk7ad...@4ax.com>...
>> On 9 May 2002 08:36:40 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Everybody knows that in million-men army crimes, including rape,
>> >happen. You don't call every army in the world "an army of rapists"
>> >just because certain soldiers committed rape and weren't punished.
>>
>> No, it's pretty well-documented that the problem in the Soviet army
>> was much worse than for other armies at the time
>
>The Wehrmacht at the time chose not to make documents of the forcible
>recreational sexual activities of their soldiers in the Soviet Union,
>since Hitler himself had declared that acts against the subhumans
>temporarily infesting the territory he desired for German "living
>space" could not be crimes.
I don't know if a comparative study has ever been done, but I'm not
sure in any case that the question is entirely relevant at the moment,
unless you think that an individual who happens to share a national
identification with a criminal somehow "deserves" to be a victim of
rape because of some sort of collective guilt.
But if your point is that the Soviets were no worse than the Nazis,
sure, I'll grant you that point, at least in the general sense. I
think however that the controversy of this topic in Russia stems from
the fact that the Soviets thought of themselves as _much_better_ than
the Nazis, as liberators rather than tyrants.
>>, or well-disciplined
>> armies of earlier eras. There was a clear message, from Stalin on
>> down, that stopping rape was not an objective of Soviet miltary
>> discipline
>
>Tell that to Soviet soldiers who were tried by Soviet Army field
>military tribunals for crimes against German civilians.
For the most part, they weren't--not in the early occupation. As
Nairmark notes:
"It was not until the replacement of pure military commanders with
more experienced administrators in late June 1945 that a concerted
effort was made to stop the waves of rape and pillage in the zone, but
even then some commandants simply ignored the problem." He further
notes that whenever new troops arrivedi n the zone or troops were
shifted from one barracks to another, the problem began again.
Also:
"In his [the police chief of Merseburg's] view, the ability of the
perpetrators to withdraw to their barracks and caps without being
arrested by the police made crime too easy for them."
And:
"After the summer of 1945, Soviet soldiers caught in the act of rape
were generaly punished, though the harsheness of the punishement
varied." [Note the implication that before the summer of 1945, they
were not generally punished; note also that this refers only to
soldiers actually caught in the act.]
Later in that same paragraph:
"But far too often, there seemed tobe no punishmenet at all. At the
same time, it was difficult if not impossible for a German woman to
bring a Soviet soldier to justice."
Naimark further notes that this state of affairs (and various other
problems with civil relations) lasted until the Soviet authorities
decided to deal with it in the spring and summer of 1947.
I really can't do justice, however, to Naimark's detailed and
extensively documented account with just a few quotes.
>> (even in earlier eras, most officers tried to prevent
>> unnecessary depredations against civilians, since a, it's wrong and b,
>> a hostile populace isn't very helpful to your army). I don't know if
>> this was the result of militant nationalism (people who aren't "us"
>> are less than human),
>
>Or having been subjected to a war of racial extermination, with
>horrific results to those close to Soviet troops.
While no "war of racial extermination" occurred against Slavs (it well
might have had the Nazis gotten around to it after killing the Jews,
but they never had the opportunity--I've heard from Poles that the
Germans finally started shipping Catholic Poles to the death camps at
the end of the war), Naimark does note that the incidence of rape by
soldiers from regions that suffered under the brutal Nazi occupation
was higher.
>It was interesting
>to John Erickson that the fact that Germans had killed family members
>of a Soviet soldier was not admitted as a mitigating factor in that
>soldier's trial.
And rightly so--you don't get a free pass to kill people of a given
national group because other members of that group committed a crime
against you or your family. Killing the actual person who committed
the crime might be a mitigating circumstance, but his guilt isn't
magically shared with people who not only are personally innocent but
are only related to him in (literally) an imagined way.
>
>> or what, but it was a uniquely serious problem for the Soviets.
>
>Oh, no. Far worse in the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union, because the
>German Army took no legal or disciplinary action to limit the
>depredations of German soldiers against Soviet civilians.
Perhaps comparative numbers would be interesting (if not important
morally), but certainly it was a unique problem among the Allies.
Scott Orr
William Shapiro
In any even, Soviet treatment of German POWs does not in any diminsh the
German conduct against the Soviet POWs or the Jews, the homosexuals, the
gypsies or any of the other groups which the Germans killed as part of their
ideology.
Bill
"kirill" <kir...@university.ca> wrote in message
news:3CDE9A86...@university.ca...
John Lacny
> Oh, no. Far worse in the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union,
> because the German Army took no legal or disciplinary
> action to limit the depredations of German soldiers
> against Soviet civilians.
Good point. About the only time the Nazi authorities prosecuted their
soldiers, police or paramilitaries for rape was when they raped Jewish
women -- and they were prosecuted not for rape, but for violation of
the Nuremburg racial laws' prohibitions on sexual intercourse between
"Aryans" and Jews.
One figures it should go without saying, but the fascists were sick
motherfuckers indeed.
But I guess that doesn't go without saying in today's climate of
knee-jerk anticommunism, where a facile "moral equivalence" between
Nazi Germany and the USSR is always on offer. About the only time the
real depth of the crimes of the Nazis are acknowledged is when (1)
they're used as a non-sequitir justification for Israel's
dispossession of the Palestinian people or (2) when some academic hack
wants to draw a comparison between Nazi Germany and the USSR, to the
USSR's disfavor.
John Lacny
Mikhail Medved
> On 9 May 2002 22:46:45 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
> wrote:
>
> >Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<s80mdu0sn4vdkk7ad...@4ax.com>...
> >> On 9 May 2002 08:36:40 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Everybody knows that in million-men army crimes, including rape,
> >> >happen. You don't call every army in the world "an army of rapists"
> >> >just because certain soldiers committed rape and weren't punished.
> >>
> >> No, it's pretty well-documented that the problem in the Soviet army
> >> was much worse than for other armies at the time, or well-disciplined
> >> armies of earlier eras.
> >
> >Well-documented, huh?
>
> Yes.
>
> >Care to give references to original documents?
>
> No. I gave the reference to Naimark, and Naimark gives meticulous
> references to both Soviet and Western archives and other sources (it's
> got 323 footnotes for 72 pages in the chapter in question, which is
> decent for a history work), and there's no reason for me to duplicate
> the effort. Check it out in the library if you want to see for
> yourself.
OK, now it's clear what we're talking about: "The Russians in Germany
: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949" by Norman M.
Naimark.
I'll check it out, indeed, and then we'll return to this discussion.
What group do you usually read (for I don't want to cross-post to
irrelevant ones)?
Medved.
Mikhail Medved
> mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved) wrote
>
> > David Friedman <dd...@best.com> wrote
>
> > > I'm coming into the middle of this, but two questions occur to me.
> > >
> > > 1. Why do you call the Soviet army "the liberating army?" I would have
> > > said that Stalin was about as bad a tyrant as Hitler. Is freeing East
> > > Germany from one tyrant in order to put it under the rule of another
> > > "liberation?"
> >
> > For someone signing as David Friedman the answer should be obvious.
> > Count the number of victims under Hitler. Then compare that with not
> > exactly liberal but not genicidal either regime of East Germany. Did
> > East Germany have death camps? I don't think so.
>
> The fact that Hitler killed more of my relatives than Stalin did
> doesn't imply that he was more of a tyrant. I don't have Rummel's book
> on democide ready to hand, but I believe the number of his own
> citizens that Stalin killed was comparable to, perhaps larger than,
> the number that Hitler killed.
I am not going to dispute the fact that Stalin regime was tyrany. I
fail to see, though, how that affects the subject. Tyrany or not, the
goal of Red Army was to get Hitler regime out of the way. Genocide was
never a goal of the Soviet Union, nor was it practiced on the
territory occupied by Red Army.
Medved.
Mikhail Medved
>
> O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
> former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
> What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
> after the war?
> What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
> in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
> What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
> forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
> How were those refugees treated by the empire once repatriated?
Soviet empire was never "Russian Empire". You can try to absolve the
members of your tribe from all bad things which happened in our common
history - you won't succeed, though. Russian people should take
responsibility for what happened - but so should all others.
As for your questions - I'd be glad to hear the answers based on
facts. I read answers based on individual's accounts, literary works
etc. I'd be glad to read a serious history study, the one whose goal
wouldn't be to prove the pre-defined conclusion that the Soviet Union
was "evil empire".
Medved.
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<3CDEAE7A...@bellsouth.net>...
>>
>> O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
>> former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
>> What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
>> after the war?
>> What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
>> in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
>> What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
>> forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
>> How were those refugees treated by the empire once repatriated?
>
>Soviet empire was never "Russian Empire".
It was never called that, but it was run by Russians, as only Russians
(and Ukrainians and Byelorusians, by virtue of being considered
"Russian") were allowed to hold positions of ultiamte authority. It
based its culture mostly on Russian traditions, and imposed that
culture on non-Russian peoples. That the Soviet empire was "Russian"
has long been noted by many scholars--it's not a silly point.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
>But I guess that doesn't go without saying in today's climate of
>knee-jerk anticommunism, where a facile "moral equivalence" between
>Nazi Germany and the USSR is always on offer.
There's nothing facile about drawing moral equivalance between the two
regimes--both killed millions of people in the name of a "greater
good" that was impracticable. The Nazis may have attempted genocide
against the Jews and Gypsies, but in raw numbers the Soviets killed a
lot more people--is it "better" to kill more people but not try to
wipe out any one group? I think the very attempt to argue over which
was worse is itself morally bankrupt, at least to the extent that it
implies that one was somehow excusable because it wasn't as bad as the
other.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
soc.history.war.misc--but I hate to cut the discussion off from anyone
else who may be reading.
In refrence to Stalin, there is of course his one famous quote when he
was addressed with complaints about rapes to effect that his "boys"
needed to "have some fun" (or words to that effect). Naimark includes
one other remark of Stalin's that brushed off rape accusations as
attempts to defame the reputation of the Red Army.
Scott Orr
David Friedman
mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved) wrote:
> > > > 1. Why do you call the Soviet army "the liberating army?" I would have
> > > > said that Stalin was about as bad a tyrant as Hitler. Is freeing East
> > > > Germany from one tyrant in order to put it under the rule of another
> > > > "liberation?"
> > >
> > > For someone signing as David Friedman the answer should be obvious.
> > > Count the number of victims under Hitler. Then compare that with not
> > > exactly liberal but not genicidal either regime of East Germany. Did
> > > East Germany have death camps? I don't think so.
> >
> > The fact that Hitler killed more of my relatives than Stalin did
> > doesn't imply that he was more of a tyrant. I don't have Rummel's book
> > on democide ready to hand, but I believe the number of his own
> > citizens that Stalin killed was comparable to, perhaps larger than,
> > the number that Hitler killed.
>
> I am not going to dispute the fact that Stalin regime was tyrany. I
> fail to see, though, how that affects the subject. Tyrany or not, the
> goal of Red Army was to get Hitler regime out of the way. Genocide was
> never a goal of the Soviet Union, nor was it practiced on the
> territory occupied by Red Army.
I didn't say that it was. I asked why you called the Soviet army "the
liberating army" when it was simply replacing one tyranny with another.
To "liberate" is to make free.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Andrew J. Brehm
For many people the Soviet army was the "liberating army" in any sense
one could think of.
And I don't think anybody can seriously doubt (unless they apply
ignorance) that the East German regime was a lot friendlier than the
Nazi regime.
No army ever made a country "free", all they could do was to make a
country "more free". The Soviet army certainly did that for Germany.
(Outside Germany, in Hungary and other countries, it was different
though.)
--
Fan of Woody Allen
PowerPC User
Supporter of Pepperoni Pizza
mall...@yahoo.com
If, according to you, there are no finer grades of evil between "bad"
and "bad", then numbers do not matter anymore, do they?
Then killing even a single POW is just as evil as killing a 100,000 of
them, is it not?
And I hope, even you will concede that, e.g. US Army mistreated far more
then a single POW, will you not?
Therefore, according to your own logic, the US Army conduct was just as
evil, just as reprehensible as, let say, Red Army, was it not?
It was your own notion that differentiating between "evil" and "evil"
is, how you put it... "morally bankrupt", remember? Congratulations!
Robbie
Stuart Wilkes
> I asked a question. I did not claim to know the answer.
And in the post you replied to, I named a couple of sources for my answer.
Stuart Wilkes
Stuart Wilkes
And where do you get off telling me what can and can't be in my posts?
> > > > > > > > > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear
> historians
> whom
> > > > > > > > > don't meet with your approval.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian
> concentrate on
> > > > > > > the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Where do you get this?
> > > > >
> > > > > Your implication.
> > > >
> > > > Whatsamatter with it?
> > >
> > > Don't you know?
> >
> > Tell me please, Robbie, before I resort to increasingly bad British
> > Battlecruiser jokes.
>
> Bring 'em on!
Increasingly bad British Battlecruiser jokes on the way!
> I don't even who they are anyway.
Really?
Well, one fine day, after the success of his "Dreadnought" notion,
Jacky Fisher got a bee in his bonnet over a concept of a ship that
could crush anything smaller and outrun anything its size or bigger,
and he called it "HMS Perfection". Guns of a battleship, a bit of
armor, and speed of around 30 knots. It was as big and expensive as a
battleship too. The first of them was HMS Invincible.
And it was all very nice, as the destruction of Graf Spee's Armored
Cruiser Squadron at the Battle of the Falklands demonstrated.
But the Germans followed "HMS Invincible" with "SMS Von der Tann",
with a bit smaller guns, equal speed, about 60% more belt armor, and
much more compartmentation. (Admiral Tirpitz had his own ideas about
warship design considerations: "First, a warship must float. Second,
a warship must float. third, a warship must float.".
The two concepts of Battlecruiser design had a no-holds-barred clash
at Jutland. Five German, against nine British (Beatty with six with
the Battlecruiser Fleet, and Jellicoe had Hood's three with the Grand
Fleet).
Three of the British blew sky-high fighting the five German
Battlecruisers, while four of the German charged into the massed
cannonade of the 24 dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet and lived to tell
the tale.
One of the German, SMS Lutzow, was immobilized before the "death
ride", but survived for a good while because accompaning German
torpedo boats put a smokescreen around her. The crew got off and she
was scuttled.
> Pompus bloody names I agree.
All I can say is that you've better put more than seven inches of
armor on the turrets of anything you're gonna call "Invincible".
Turret penetrations and subsequent explosions was what did them in.
HMS Invincible, Hood's flagship, was one of the ones that blew, and
the only survivors were the Gunnery Officer and four others in the
foretop.
Maybe. I'll see.
I've skimmed it. Gimme a while.
Stuart Wilkes
Robbie
> > I've already asked you this Wilkes. Seeing as you have the book, Berlin
by
> > Beevor - what is it that you object to about his methods of research?
>
> I've skimmed it. Gimme a while.
Good...'cos when all is said and done, if you have no beef with his methods
of research, you'll just have to grin and bear his assertions or write your
own tome. :))
A. G. Phillbin
wrote:
^
^Stuart Wilkes <swi...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
^news:d842ea3e.02051...@posting.google.com...
^> "Robbie" <rob...@thehague.net> wrote in message
^news:<abec0d$nn2$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>...
^> > Stuart Wilkes <swi...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
^> > news:d842ea3e.02050...@posting.google.com...
^> > > "Robbie" <rob...@thehague.net> wrote in message
^> > news:<abbbjf$8h5$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>...
^> > > > wsdl <ws...@wherever.com> wrote in message
^> > > > news:3cd92bec$0$15474$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
^> > > > >
^> > > > >
^> > > > > The First Lemon wrote in message ...
^> > > > > >'They Raped Every German Girl From Eight To 80'
^> > > > > >
^> > > > > >By Antony Beevor
^> > > > > >
^> > > > > >The Guardian - London
^> > > > > >
^> > > > > **lies snipped**
^> > > > >
^> > > > >
^> > > > > Why don't you, faggots, organise a summons to call Soviet war
^veterans
^> > into
^> > > > > your nice little court in the Haague.
^> > > >
^> > > > Neither in the courts can try them.
^> > > >
^> > > > > Let's see if you can lynch the men who
^> > > > > saved the world from the Nazi cancer. I'm afraid you'll get your
^teeth
^> > > > > kicked in in the process. Russia is no Serbia.
^> >
^> > > > > I think the whores of the western media are lying, as usual.
^> > > >
^> > > > Beevor isn't part of the media. He's an indepedent historian whom
^has
^> > > > trawled the Soviet archives with the approval of the FSB.
^> > >
^> > > Who is interested in detailing much more of the crimes Soviet soldiers
^> > > committed than the crimes German soldiers committed.
^> >
^> > It's called finding a new angle. The controversy over this book is
^evidence
^> > of somone attempting to fill the gaps of knowledge about this period.
^>
^> There aren't many gaps in Western knowlege of rapes in Germany by
^> Soviet troops.
^
^Really. Let's see how the book sells then, eh?
Why would anyone need to buy a book to verify what can be verified by
watching the History Channel? Soviet soldiers raping German women when
they defeated the Germans is not a new idea. If you didn't know it, it
says volumes about the gaps in your knowledge of history. So also is
your apparent inability to fathom why they occured, or why they were
rarely punished. Your idiotic claim of "racial reasons" also
demonstrates something rather disturbing about the inner workings of
your mind.
^
^> > It's not to your liking obviously.
^>
^> Why not? It's true, and widely known, that Soviet troops in Germany
^> and elsewhere committed many rapes, murders, and other crimes.
^>
^> It's also true, and much less well known, that Soviet troops faced a
^> prospect of a field military tribunal, or being summarily shot for
^> their crimes.
^
^Indeed, this was pretty much the practice in the SU but not apparently in
^countries 'liberated' by The Red Army.
^
^> It's also true, and much less widely known, that German troops who
^> committed such acts in the Soviet Union faced no such prospect from
^> the German military justice system.
^
^Irelevant. Can't you stick to the thread?
^
^> > > And for a western historian, that is far from unique.
^> >
^> > You too and all, eh? Disappointing attempt to smear historians whom
^don't
^> > meet with your approval.
^>
^> What smear? and what grounds for disappointment?
^
^Do me a favour. Your implication is that western historian concentrate on
^the 'crimes' of the Red Army as something to be suspicious of.
Isn't it? The "West" was the ideological opponent of the SU for
decades, and vice versa, even during WWII. They are hardly objective
observers of one another. The "focus" is myopic, considering the
reasons the SU soldiers behaved as they did. And no, it wasn't
"racial," as you so stupidly put it. It was revenge, pure and simple.
^
^
^> > > The only recent exception I am aware of is the Israeli military
^> > > historian Omer Bartov.
^> > >
^> > > > > Whatever
^> > > > > happened, I don't think sorry for the Kraut bitches, they deserved
^and
^> > I'm
^> > > > > sure enjoyed the fucking.
^> > > >
^> > > > So is it a lie of not?
^> > >
^> > > No, it is certainly the case that numerous rapes and other crimes were
^> > > committed by Soviet troops. It is also the case that Soviet soldiers
^> > > who committed such crimes as murder, rape, and looting could be, and
^> > > were, subject to trial by field military tribunals, or could be
^> > > summarily shot by a superior officer.
^> >
^> > Yes, we all know about existing laws. It was whether they were adhereed
^to
^> > is the question.
^>
^> John Erickson found evidence in Soviet military archives that there
^> were tribunals convened to try Soviet soldiers for crimes against
^> German civilians.
^
^No one is disputing this.
Interesting. I didn't know the Soviet military had even bothered with
this in Germany, at least not initially. They may have stepped in
later in order to foster a more orderly occupation.
^
^> To include crimes against victims who happened to be Nazi Party
^> members.
^>
^> > The central issue to me is if the mass rapes occured and I
^> > belieive they did they weren't punished for racial reasons.
Only a pinhead could ignore the far more compelling motives of
vengeance for what the German army had done in Russia.
^>
^> Oh, really?
^
^Yep.
What a witty rejoinder!
^
^> > That is the unpalatable fact.
^>
^> And what is your evidence that these crimes were not punished for
^> racial reasons?
^
^The fact that there seemed to be an adherence to law in the SU but not
^'liberated' East Germany.
^
^I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in different forms
^by all eventually.
^
^Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
We agree here.
^
^
A. G. Phillbin
wrote:
^On 12 May 2002 20:18:17 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
^wrote:
^
^>"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<3CDEAE7A...@bellsouth.net>...
^>>
^>> O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
^>> former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
^>> What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
^>> after the war?
^>> What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
^>> in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
^>> What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
^>> forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
^>> How were those refugees treated by the empire once repatriated?
^>
^>Soviet empire was never "Russian Empire".
^
^It was never called that, but it was run by Russians, as only Russians
^(and Ukrainians and Byelorusians, by virtue of being considered
^"Russian") were allowed to hold positions of ultiamte authority.
So how come Stalin was a Georgian? Why was Dzerzhinsky a Pole, and a
count, to boot? How about Ordzhonokidze (Georgian)? Or Beria (half
Georgian)? And what about all the Russian and Ukrainian Jews (Trotsky,
Kamenev, Zinoviev) that made it into the Politburo (keep in mind that
Russians and Ukrainians tended to regard Jews as foreigners)? You are
actually somewhat correct in your conclusion, but your premises need
some reworking.
^ It
^based its culture mostly on Russian traditions, and imposed that
^culture on non-Russian peoples. That the Soviet empire was "Russian"
^has long been noted by many scholars--it's not a silly point.
^
^Scott Orr
A. G. Phillbin
^mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved) wrote
^
^> David Friedman <dd...@best.com> wrote
^
^> > I'm coming into the middle of this, but two questions occur to me.
^> >
^> > 1. Why do you call the Soviet army "the liberating army?" I would have
^> > said that Stalin was about as bad a tyrant as Hitler. Is freeing East
^> > Germany from one tyrant in order to put it under the rule of another
^> > "liberation?"
^>
^> For someone signing as David Friedman the answer should be obvious.
^> Count the number of victims under Hitler. Then compare that with not
^> exactly liberal but not genicidal either regime of East Germany. Did
^> East Germany have death camps? I don't think so.
^
^The fact that Hitler killed more of my relatives than Stalin did
^doesn't imply that he was more of a tyrant. I don't have Rummel's book
^on democide ready to hand, but I believe the number of his own
^citizens that Stalin killed was comparable to, perhaps larger than,
^the number that Hitler killed.
Excerpts from Rummel's book can be found online, although I don't have
a url available. You could probably do a search on the name "Rudolph
Rummel." Both his method, and his conclusions, are essentially crap.
He claims a minimum of 60 million deaths and a maximum of 120 million
deaths by "democide" in the USSR. The pre-war population of the
Russian Empire (1913 census?) was around 110 million. The population
of post-Stalin USSR was over 180 million. Even using Rummel's low end
estimate, it means that the population of the territory in question
was simultaneously more than halved and tripled during the same
period. It is clearly impossible. The highest credible estimate that I
have read was in the Black Book of Communism. That was 20 million, for
the same period. Since Hitler killed over 20 million people just in
the USSR, he is already a greater murderer in absolute terms than
Stalin and Lenin combined. Considering that Hitler ruled for only 12
years, and Stalin for 29, and Lenin for a little over 6, what does
that telll you?
^
^> > 2. How do you know what happened--well enough to be confident that what
^> > was described is pure fiction. If your grandfather, or his comrades,
^> > engaged in mass rape with the permission or encouragement of their
^> > command structure, do you think he would have told you about it?
^>
^> I talked to real people.
^
^And real people who have done things they aren't proud of, or watched
^their comrades do such things, may or may not talk about it.
^
^> > The Vietnamese war is a good deal more recent than WWII, with lots of
^> > participants still around, yet there seems to be quite a lot of
^> > remaining disagreement as to what really happened. And that's in a
^> > society with a free press, freedom of speech, and the like.
^
^> I am afraid the comparison between the colonial war and the war of
^> survival is a little far-fetched.
^
^I wasn't comparing the moral status of the two wars, I was comparing
^the availability of accurate information. We ought to have much better
^information about Vietnam than about the Russian front in WWII, both
^because the former is more recent and because the people who fought it
^(on the U.S. side) went home to a country with a free press, hence
^when some of them did talk about ugly things that happened other
^people could find out.
A. G. Phillbin
wrote:
^On 9 May 2002 08:36:40 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
^wrote:
^
^>Everybody knows that in million-men army crimes, including rape,
^>happen. You don't call every army in the world "an army of rapists"
^>just because certain soldiers committed rape and weren't punished.
^
^No, it's pretty well-documented that the problem in the Soviet army
^was much worse than for other armies at the time, or well-disciplined
^armies of earlier eras. There was a clear message, from Stalin on
^down, that stopping rape was not an objective of Soviet miltary
^discipline (even in earlier eras, most officers tried to prevent
^unnecessary depredations against civilians, since a, it's wrong and b,
^a hostile populace isn't very helpful to your army). I don't know if
^this was the result of militant nationalism (people who aren't "us"
^are less than human), or what, but it was a uniquely serious problem
^for the Soviets.
The depredations against the people of the SU by the Wermacht were
also "uniquely serious," engendering a "uniquely serious" response on
the part of the Soviet soldiers who defeated Germany. Not nice, not
even justifiable, but quite understandable. The Soviets didn't set up
death camps or slave labor camps for German nationals after the war,
however authoritarian the Moscow aligned E. German regime was. By
contrast, the Wermacht invasion killed over 20 million Soviet
citizens. Figure it out.
^
^Scott Orr
Mikhail Medved
All of the above is complete fantasy - it's hardly even worth
replying. Check the names, nationalities, biographies of the Soviet
leaders. I am not going to argue with someone whose knowledge of
Russia borders with something like "they all drink vodka, and you can
see brown bears running on their streets".
Medved.
Mikhail Medved
I understood very well what you said. That was the goal of Cold War
propaganda - to put on the same page Hitler regime and the Soviet
Union. I've never believed in Soviet propaganda, and I don't see the
reason why all of a sudden I should believe in the western one.
Red Army liberated, that is, set free from Nazi regime, countries west
of the USSR. And indirectly, it liberated Western Europe too, for it's
hard to imagine victory on the part of western allies alone. You think
nothing changed because of Red Army sacrifice, just one tyrrany was
replaced by another - I am afraid, yours is kind of unconventional
point of view, to say the least.
Robbie
A. G. Phillbin <agfi...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:h1tvdu4145rvpbi57...@4ax.com...
I prefer books which have a cetain respect rather than a channel I never
watch.
Is that a problem for you?
> Soviet soldiers raping German women when
> they defeated the Germans is not a new idea.
Who said it was, sunshine? The claim is that it was allowed by certainly the
officers of the Red Army and was condoned by Stalin.
> If you didn't know it, it
> says volumes about the gaps in your knowledge of history. So also is
> your apparent inability to fathom why they occured, or why they were
> rarely punished.
And how have you deduced thatv I don't know why they occured or why they
were rearely punished?
Perhaps you enlighten us, sunshine?
> Your idiotic claim of "racial reasons" also
> demonstrates something rather disturbing about the inner workings of
> your mind.
Actually, if you think there wasn't a racial element to these events after
the racaial nature of Nazi polices this demonstrates something rather
disturbing about your mind.
No.
> The "West" was the ideological opponent of the SU for
> decades, and vice versa, even during WWII. They are hardly objective
> observers of one another. The "focus" is myopic, considering the
> reasons the SU soldiers behaved as they did. And no, it wasn't
> "racial," as you so stupidly put it. It was revenge, pure and simple.
Revengfe has no meaning unless you find reasons for revenge.
Revenge upon their racial oppressors. Raping women because they were German
seems to me to be of racial nature.
Why is that so difficult for you to understand? The SU used racism as a tool
often.
If you didn't know it, it says volumes about the gaps in your knowledge of
history.
Did you miss that History channel programme? Prat.
> ^> To include crimes against victims who happened to be Nazi Party
> ^> members.
> ^>
> ^> > The central issue to me is if the mass rapes occured and I
> ^> > belieive they did they weren't punished for racial reasons.
>
> Only a pinhead could ignore the far more compelling motives of
> vengeance for what the German army had done in Russia.
Like I said, if you can;t see a racial angle to essentailly what was a
racial war in the East, you are the pinhead, pinhead.
> ^> Oh, really?
> ^
> ^Yep.
>
> What a witty rejoinder!
>
> ^
> ^> > That is the unpalatable fact.
> ^>
> ^> And what is your evidence that these crimes were not punished for
> ^> racial reasons?
> ^
> ^The fact that there seemed to be an adherence to law in the SU but not
> ^'liberated' East Germany.
> ^
> ^I'm assuming that the race war in the East was practiced in different
forms
> ^by all eventually.
> ^
> ^Victims do not make very good guardians of justice on the whole.
>
> We agree here.
So why deny there was a racial element to it?
Robbie
Mikhail Medved <mikhai...@mail.ru> wrote in message
news:78954e62.0205...@posting.google.com...
> Red Army liberated, that is, set free from Nazi regime, countries west
> of the USSR. And indirectly, it liberated Western Europe too, for it's
> hard to imagine victory on the part of western allies alone.
I can very easily. Atomic bombs which would have been dropped on Germany by
the US.
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>"William Shapiro" <we...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<bECD8.6401$Nt3.5...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
>> I asked a question. I did not claim to know the answer.
>
>And in the post you replied to, I named a couple of sources for my answer.
>
In the future, can we try snipping unnecessary quoted material?
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
Stalin is the exception that proves the rule. You'll note that during
his political career, he never identified himself as Georgian--he, in
effect, became Russian. When he wanted to rally the country, he
relied on Russian patriotic symbols and terms rather than Soviet ones.
>Why was Dzerzhinsky a Pole, and a
>count, to boot? How about Ordzhonokidze (Georgian)? Or Beria (half
>Georgian)?
Yes, I'll agree there were exceptions, especially in the early days,
but the highest positions of power were overwhelmingly dominated by
Rusisans--and the people who weren't Russians never stressed that they
weren't.
>And what about all the Russian and Ukrainian Jews (Trotsky,
>Kamenev, Zinoviev) that made it into the Politburo (keep in mind that
>Russians and Ukrainians tended to regard Jews as foreigners)?
The answer lies in the "tended"--at least at the time, all these
people were seen as Russians (before the anti-Semitism in the Soviet
camp in the post-war era), and heck, they even had Russian names.
>You are
>actually somewhat correct in your conclusion, but your premises need
>some reworking.
No, I was generalizing.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
I took three years of Russian and I study some of the post-Soviet
states for a living.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
<agfi...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>Excerpts from Rummel's book can be found online, although I don't have
>a url available. You could probably do a search on the name "Rudolph
>Rummel." Both his method, and his conclusions, are essentially crap.
>He claims a minimum of 60 million deaths and a maximum of 120 million
>deaths by "democide" in the USSR. The pre-war population of the
>Russian Empire (1913 census?) was around 110 million. The population
>of post-Stalin USSR was over 180 million. Even using Rummel's low end
>estimate, it means that the population of the territory in question
>was simultaneously more than halved and tripled during the same
>period. It is clearly impossible. The highest credible estimate that I
>have read was in the Black Book of Communism. That was 20 million, for
>the same period. Since Hitler killed over 20 million people just in
>the USSR, he is already a greater murderer in absolute terms than
>Stalin and Lenin combined. Considering that Hitler ruled for only 12
>years, and Stalin for 29, and Lenin for a little over 6, what does
>that telll you?
The estimates for the Ukranian famine alone are over 10 million dead
(that is, probably more than the 10 million killed in the Holocaust),
and once you add in the Stalinist purges, Stalin easily "beats"
Hitler. Mind you, should HItler "get more points" for doing it
faster? Could this argument be more absurd?
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
The Soviets did in fact set up slave labor camps not only for Germans,
but for anyone they were suspicious of in any Eastern European
country. Hundreds of thousands of people were deported, and most
never returned (many survived in exile). For example, a recent book
published in Latvia claims that 40,000 of the pre-war population of
325,000 were deported or killed between 1940 and 1959--that's 17
percent of the population.
Did the Soviets single out entire ethnic groups/nations for
extermination? No (though they did occasionaly single groups out for
collective punishment, often through mass deportation, such as the
Crimean Tatars). But by singling out people as dissidents or
suspicious, they ended up killing even more people than the Nazis did.
Stalin's regime alone has been blamed credibly for over 30 million
deaths among its own people.
So are the Soviets "better" because they killed more people but not in
a way that was "genocidal"? Are they "better" because they didn't
kill as quickly as the Nazis? What a DUMB argument to be having.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
>"Scott D. Orr" wrote:
>>
>> On 12 May 2002 17:13:25 -0700, john...@yahoo.com (John Lacny) wrote:
>>
>> >But I guess that doesn't go without saying in today's climate of
>> >knee-jerk anticommunism, where a facile "moral equivalence" between
>> >Nazi Germany and the USSR is always on offer.
>>
>> There's nothing facile about drawing moral equivalance between the two
>> regimes--both killed millions of people in the name of a "greater
>> good" that was impracticable. The Nazis may have attempted genocide
>> against the Jews and Gypsies, but in raw numbers the Soviets killed a
>> lot more people--is it "better" to kill more people but not try to
>> wipe out any one group? I think the very attempt to argue over which
>> was worse is itself morally bankrupt, at least to the extent that it
>> implies that one was somehow excusable because it wasn't as bad as the
>> other.
>
>If, according to you, there are no finer grades of evil between "bad"
>and "bad", then numbers do not matter anymore, do they?
Now you're getting it. I used the numbers to show how absurd the
argument is.
>Then killing even a single POW is just as evil as killing a 100,000 of
>them, is it not?
No, and you can't derive such a conclusion from what I said.
[Snipped the rest.]
Scott Orr
David Friedman
mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved) wrote:
> > I didn't say that it was. I asked why you called the Soviet army "the
> > liberating army" when it was simply replacing one tyranny with another.
> > To "liberate" is to make free.
>
> I understood very well what you said. That was the goal of Cold War
> propaganda - to put on the same page Hitler regime and the Soviet
> Union. I've never believed in Soviet propaganda, and I don't see the
> reason why all of a sudden I should believe in the western one.
Have you read _Conspiracy of Silence_? The author was an Austrian
communist, a physicist, who got caught up in the Great Purge. You might
find it interesting. I don't think he was writing western propaganda.
So far as I can tell, both Hitler and Stalin were talented madmen
willing to kill more or less unlimited numbers of people to get their
way, and both killed millions of people. Hitler's killing was at least
nominally largely on ethnic grounds, Stalin's on "class" grounds--but
neither limited himself to people in the targetted groups. Their systems
weren't identical, but they were indeed "on the same page," at least so
far as I can tell.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Mikhail Medved
Very smart. But hardly real. I can't imagine Winston Churchill
authorizing such an operation. Not to mention the Soviet Union.
Now you'd say that the US could do whatever they wanted. No, they
couldn't at that time.
Mikhail Medved
Then how do you say such things as above? Do you mean that Stalin,
Beria, Mikoyan, Shevardnadze, et cetera, et cetera, were nobodies in
the Soviet power structure?
A. G. Phillbin
wrote:
^On Mon, 13 May 2002 17:12:24 GMT, A. G. Phillbin
^<agfi...@pacbell.net> wrote:
^
^>On Mon, 13 May 2002 01:09:20 -0400, Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com>
^>wrote:
^>
^>^On 12 May 2002 20:18:17 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
^>^wrote:
^>^
^>^>"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<3CDEAE7A...@bellsouth.net>...
^>^>>
^>^>> O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
^>^>> former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
^>^>> What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
^>^>> after the war?
^>^>> What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
^>^>> in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
^>^>> What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
^>^>> forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
^>^>> How were those refugees treated by the empire once repatriated?
^>^>
^>^>Soviet empire was never "Russian Empire".
^>^
^>^It was never called that, but it was run by Russians, as only Russians
^>^(and Ukrainians and Byelorusians, by virtue of being considered
^>^"Russian") were allowed to hold positions of ultiamte authority.
^>
^>So how come Stalin was a Georgian?
^
^Stalin is the exception that proves the rule. You'll note that during
^his political career, he never identified himself as Georgian--he, in
^effect, became Russian. When he wanted to rally the country, he
^relied on Russian patriotic symbols and terms rather than Soviet ones.
Wrong. He never emphasized his Georgian heritage, but he never denied
it, either. Everyone knew his given name was Djugashvilli. He tended
to mix both types of symbols. However, your argument is somewhat like
saying that Colin Powell is in effect really white.
^
^>Why was Dzerzhinsky a Pole, and a
^>count, to boot? How about Ordzhonokidze (Georgian)? Or Beria (half
^>Georgian)?
^
^Yes, I'll agree there were exceptions, especially in the early days,
^but the highest positions of power were overwhelmingly dominated by
^Rusisans--and the people who weren't Russians never stressed that they
^weren't.
Again, you're making Colin Powell white. The people who were Great
Russians, such as Lenin, Andropov, and Gorbachev, never stressed that
they were Russians, either.
^
^>And what about all the Russian and Ukrainian Jews (Trotsky,
^>Kamenev, Zinoviev) that made it into the Politburo (keep in mind that
^>Russians and Ukrainians tended to regard Jews as foreigners)?
^
^The answer lies in the "tended"--at least at the time, all these
^people were seen as Russians (before the anti-Semitism in the Soviet
^camp in the post-war era), and heck, they even had Russian names.
Wrong again. Anti-Semitism is not unique to the Soviet era, and was in
fact far less virulent during the Soviet era than during Czarist
times. There were no Soviet pogroms. If anything, Russian and
Ukrainian Christians under the Czar hated Jews even more. Trotsky was
a pseudonym; his real name was Bronstein. I believe Zinoviev was
really Apfelbaum. Lenin, the Great Russian, was also a pseudonym; his
name was Ulyanov.
^
^>You are
^>actually somewhat correct in your conclusion, but your premises need
^>some reworking.
^
^No, I was generalizing.
Read Robert C. Tucker's book, Stalin in Power, to get a more nuanced
view.
^
^Scott Orr
A. G. Phillbin
wrote:
^On Mon, 13 May 2002 17:14:02 GMT, A. G. Phillbin
^<agfi...@pacbell.net> wrote:
^
^>Excerpts from Rummel's book can be found online, although I don't have
^>a url available. You could probably do a search on the name "Rudolph
^>Rummel." Both his method, and his conclusions, are essentially crap.
^>He claims a minimum of 60 million deaths and a maximum of 120 million
^>deaths by "democide" in the USSR. The pre-war population of the
^>Russian Empire (1913 census?) was around 110 million. The population
^>of post-Stalin USSR was over 180 million. Even using Rummel's low end
^>estimate, it means that the population of the territory in question
^>was simultaneously more than halved and tripled during the same
^>period. It is clearly impossible. The highest credible estimate that I
^>have read was in the Black Book of Communism. That was 20 million, for
^>the same period. Since Hitler killed over 20 million people just in
^>the USSR, he is already a greater murderer in absolute terms than
^>Stalin and Lenin combined. Considering that Hitler ruled for only 12
^>years, and Stalin for 29, and Lenin for a little over 6, what does
^>that telll you?
^
^The estimates for the Ukranian famine alone are over 10 million dead
^(that is, probably more than the 10 million killed in the Holocaust),
^and once you add in the Stalinist purges, Stalin easily "beats"
^Hitler. Mind you, should HItler "get more points" for doing it
^faster? Could this argument be more absurd?
Whose estimate is 10 million? The estimates I've read are three to
five million. How is it that these "estimates" get larger and larger
every time I turn on my computer? And yes, Hitler does get more points
for doing it faster -- it shows a far greater level of murderous
potential and intent. Or did you imagine Hitler had a stopping point
in mind somewhere below Stalin? Hitler killed more than those included
in the Holocaust. over 20 million were killed in Russia alone.
Hitler's death toll was closer to 40 million across Europe.
^
^Scott Orr
Robbie
> "Robbie" <rob...@thehague.net> wrote in message
news:<abp1ts$b3o$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>...
> > Mikhail Medved <mikhai...@mail.ru> wrote in message
> > news:78954e62.0205...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > > Red Army liberated, that is, set free from Nazi regime, countries west
> > > of the USSR. And indirectly, it liberated Western Europe too, for it's
> > > hard to imagine victory on the part of western allies alone.
> >
> > I can very easily. Atomic bombs which would have been dropped on Germany
by
> > the US.
>
> Very smart. But hardly real. I can't imagine Winston Churchill
> authorizing such an operation.
Interesting question.
> Not to mention the Soviet Union.
>
> Now you'd say that the US could do whatever they wanted. No, they
> couldn't at that time.
I think there was serious consideration within the American government and
military.
b.ross ashley
agfi...@pacbell.net says...
Hmmph. Lenin was *culturally* a Great Russian, but his father was a
Chuvash and his mother was a Volga German.
Just as Colin Powell is *culturally* white ... ::grin, duck, and run::
--
Ross Ashley http://members.rogers.com/brashley46/
A. G. Phillbin
<brashley...@rogers.com> wrote:
^In article <6fh2eu8tpd51q4cem...@4ax.com>,
^agfi...@pacbell.net says...
^> On Mon, 13 May 2002 20:32:21 -0400, Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com>
^> wrote:
^>
^> ^On Mon, 13 May 2002 17:12:24 GMT, A. G. Phillbin
^> ^<agfi...@pacbell.net> wrote:
^> ^
^> ^>On Mon, 13 May 2002 01:09:20 -0400, Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com>
^> ^>wrote:
^> ^>
^> ^>^On 12 May 2002 20:18:17 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
^> ^>^wrote:
^> ^>^
^> ^>^>"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<3CDEAE7A...@bellsouth.net>...
^> ^>^>>
^> ^>^>> O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
^> ^>^>> former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
^> ^>^>> What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
^> ^>^>> after the war?
^> ^>^>> What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
^> ^>^>> in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
^> ^>^>> What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
^> ^>^>> forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
^> ^>^>> How were those refugees treated by the empire once repatriated?
^> ^>^>
^> ^>^>Soviet empire was never "Russian Empire".
^> ^>^
^> ^>^It was never called that, but it was run by Russians, as only Russians
^> ^>^(and Ukrainians and Byelorusians, by virtue of being considered
^> ^>^"Russian") were allowed to hold positions of ultiamte authority.
^> ^>
^> ^>So how come Stalin was a Georgian?
^> ^
^> ^Stalin is the exception that proves the rule. You'll note that during
^> ^his political career, he never identified himself as Georgian--he, in
^> ^effect, became Russian. When he wanted to rally the country, he
^> ^relied on Russian patriotic symbols and terms rather than Soviet ones.
^>
^> Wrong. He never emphasized his Georgian heritage, but he never denied
^> it, either. Everyone knew his given name was Djugashvilli. He tended
^> to mix both types of symbols. However, your argument is somewhat like
^> saying that Colin Powell is in effect really white.
^>
^> ^
^> ^>Why was Dzerzhinsky a Pole, and a
^> ^>count, to boot? How about Ordzhonokidze (Georgian)? Or Beria (half
^> ^>Georgian)?
^> ^
^> ^Yes, I'll agree there were exceptions, especially in the early days,
^> ^but the highest positions of power were overwhelmingly dominated by
^> ^Rusisans--and the people who weren't Russians never stressed that they
^> ^weren't.
^>
^> Again, you're making Colin Powell white. The people who were Great
^> Russians, such as Lenin, Andropov, and Gorbachev, never stressed that
^> they were Russians, either.
^>
^> ^
^> ^>And what about all the Russian and Ukrainian Jews (Trotsky,
^> ^>Kamenev, Zinoviev) that made it into the Politburo (keep in mind that
^> ^>Russians and Ukrainians tended to regard Jews as foreigners)?
^> ^
^> ^The answer lies in the "tended"--at least at the time, all these
^> ^people were seen as Russians (before the anti-Semitism in the Soviet
^> ^camp in the post-war era), and heck, they even had Russian names.
^>
^> Wrong again. Anti-Semitism is not unique to the Soviet era, and was in
^> fact far less virulent during the Soviet era than during Czarist
^> times. There were no Soviet pogroms. If anything, Russian and
^> Ukrainian Christians under the Czar hated Jews even more. Trotsky was
^> a pseudonym; his real name was Bronstein. I believe Zinoviev was
^> really Apfelbaum. Lenin, the Great Russian, was also a pseudonym; his
^> name was Ulyanov.
^>
^
^Hmmph. Lenin was *culturally* a Great Russian, but his father was a
^Chuvash and his mother was a Volga German.
^Just as Colin Powell is *culturally* white ... ::grin, duck, and run::
Actually, his father was part Great Russian and part Kalmyk (an
Asiatic tribe), if I recall correctly. Lenin never emphasized any part
of his heritage. Colin Powell wouldn't agree with you. Colin Powell's
own definition of his heritage is West Indian, not black American or
white American. Or is the "cultural" definition of Colin Powell by an
American Trotskyist more decisive than Colin Powell's own ethnic
self-definition? What is it that makes Colin Powell "white," exactly,
in your estimation?
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
Yeah, yeah. But how about getting answers to my questions, posted in
rebuttal to Mr Wilkes. Namely:
O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
after the war?
What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
A. G. Phillbin
<urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
<HUGE SNIP>
^
^Yeah, yeah. But how about getting answers to my questions, posted in
^rebuttal to Mr Wilkes. Namely:
^
^ O.k. I admit that I was mistaken in stating that all the captured slaves,
^ former POWs, were sent to the camps in Siberia.
^ What percentage of Red Army POWs were kept incarcerated in the west
^ after the war?
^ What percentage of Red Army POWs were incarcerated, (kept incarcerated),
^ in the east after the war , i.e. by the soviet Russian empire.
^ What percentage of refugees from the soviet occupied lands were
^ forcibly turned over to, and forcibly repatriated by the soviets?
^ How were those refugees treated by the empire once repatriated?
Why don't you tell us, along with the source of your information --
that way we'll all know. I hate playing guessing games.
^
^
Scott D. Orr
Please don't say "wrong" in reaction to what I said, and then
paraphrase what I said as the "right" answer. That's the single
fastest way to keep me from reading anything else you write.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>Then how do you say such things as above? Do you mean that Stalin,
>Beria, Mikoyan, Shevardnadze, et cetera, et cetera, were nobodies in
>the Soviet power structure?
No, I mean that they were atypical. They were also more common
during the earliest era of the regime--and wasn't Shevardnadze's being
Georgian often commented upon as being odd?
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
Well, I suppose I can buy the idea that Eastern Europe ended up better
off under the Soviets than it would have under the Nazis...but that's
not saying a whole lot.
Scott Orr
b.ross ashley
agfi...@pacbell.net says...< snip >
> ^
> ^Hmmph. Lenin was *culturally* a Great Russian, but his father was a
> ^Chuvash and his mother was a Volga German.
> ^Just as Colin Powell is *culturally* white ... ::grin, duck, and run::
>
> Actually, his father was part Great Russian and part Kalmyk (an
> Asiatic tribe), if I recall correctly. Lenin never emphasized any part
> of his heritage. Colin Powell wouldn't agree with you. Colin Powell's
> own definition of his heritage is West Indian, not black American or
> white American. Or is the "cultural" definition of Colin Powell by an
> American Trotskyist more decisive than Colin Powell's own ethnic
> self-definition? What is it that makes Colin Powell "white," exactly,
> in your estimation?
>
>
that it really matters. And Powell *is* ethnically West Indian, but
culture is so subjective ... I did mean it sort of in jest. Trying to
illustrate the ridiculousness of these ethnic/racial/cultural
classifications. Powell is North American.
--
B. Ross Ashley http://interactive.rogers.com/BRossAshley/doc
David Friedman
A. G. Phillbin <agfi...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Hitler killed more than those included
> in the Holocaust. over 20 million were killed in Russia alone.
> Hitler's death toll was closer to 40 million across Europe.
It's been a while since I looked at Rummel's book, but my memory is that
in trying to measure democite he was limiting himself to governments
that killed their own citizens/subjectsd, at least loosely defined. I'm
pretty sure he didn't include things like bombing of civilian
populations in wartime. I don't know if he included civilians murdered
by occupying powers. He didn't include soldiers killed by the enemy.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
A. G. Phillbin
wrote:
^In article <c6i2eu0rvo7m1hr8c...@4ax.com>,
^ A. G. Phillbin <agfi...@pacbell.net> wrote:
^
^> Hitler killed more than those included
^> in the Holocaust. over 20 million were killed in Russia alone.
^> Hitler's death toll was closer to 40 million across Europe.
^
^It's been a while since I looked at Rummel's book, but my memory is that
^in trying to measure democite he was limiting himself to governments
^that killed their own citizens/subjectsd, at least loosely defined. I'm
^pretty sure he didn't include things like bombing of civilian
^populations in wartime. I don't know if he included civilians murdered
^by occupying powers. He didn't include soldiers killed by the enemy.
I believe he did include those who were murdered by occupying powers.
Most of the murders of the Holocaust were carried out in areas
occupied by Germany, not within Germany. I believe Rummel's figures
include these. But shouldn't we look at all of it, if we're trying to
get a clear picture?
Stuart Wilkes
Rummel's, I believe.
> The estimates I've read are three to five million.
I wonder what Rummel would think of the following:
http://www.un.org/popin/unpopcom/32ndsess/statements/ukraine.pdf
Statement to the Commission on Population and Development
Thirty-second session, March 1999
As written
Statement by representative of Ukraine at the 32-nd session
of the UN Commission on population and development
agenda item 3 "Follow-up to ICPD"
Mr. Chairman,
<snip>
The general social and economic situation in Ukraine, and
particularly, the consequences of last year's financial crisis
continues to negatively impact the development of basic demographic
trends. Regrettably, these negative processes still impact population
reproduction. It is mainly conditioned by a social instability and a
common decline in living standards.
As of January 1, 1999 the Ukraine population was 50.1 million
(interrupt text - SW
Now the population of Ukraine is 48.7 million
In 1987 it was 51.2 million
resume text - SW)
of which
67.9% (34.0 million) live in urban settlements and 32.1% (16.1
million) in rural areas. Population distribution by sex is as follows:
53.3% (26.7 million) are females and 46.7% (23.4 million) are males.
The population age structure is as follows: population aged O-14
accounts for 19.2%, those aged 15-59 constitute 61.3% and people of
60 years old and over are 19.5%.
Over the last five years annual decline in the Ukraine population was
on average almost 0.4 million. One of the basic reasons for the
population natural decrease is the falling birth rate against a
background of high death rate of the Ukraine population. In comparison
with the beginning of the 1990's, the total birth rate in the country
has gone down by 31.4%. The country's birth rate is considered as
being inadequate since for a long time it does not ensure the simple
reproduction of the population. Almost a half of the total
number of families with'children under 18 is one child families. The
number of one child families and childless couples has been increasing
in Ukraine.
The second component of natural population movement is death. Over the
past seven years the total death rate has gone up by 15.5%. It reached
14.3 per 1 000 in 1998.
<snip>
Estimates for 2001 are that the death rate in Ukraine will be 16.3
deaths/1000 population.
So, for Ukraine, the birth rate since the fall of the USSR is down by
31.4%,
and the death rate for 2001 is up since the fall of the USSR by 31.6%.
Stuart Wilkes
Mikhail Medved
I don't think so. The short answer is that other nationalities had
significant representation in all branches of power, therefore, they
can't really in good conscience claim to be "ruled by Russians".
A longer answer will require an analysis of the central interests vs.
national-specific interests, and how nationalistic vs.
internationalistic cards were played by central authorities during
different periods of the Soviet Union.
But just to give you examples of more recent non-Russian influential
figures in Soviet/Russia's politics: Aliev (an influential member of
Politbureau); Pugo (USSR MVD minister and the member of GKChP);
Khasbulatov (Speaker for the Congress of People's Deputies).
Medved.
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<jmd3euge4c27d7eel...@4ax.com>...
>> On 14 May 2002 10:21:12 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Then how do you say such things as above? Do you mean that Stalin,
>> >Beria, Mikoyan, Shevardnadze, et cetera, et cetera, were nobodies in
>> >the Soviet power structure?
>>
>> No, I mean that they were atypical. They were also more common
>> during the earliest era of the regime--and wasn't Shevardnadze's being
>> Georgian often commented upon as being odd?
>
>I don't think so. The short answer is that other nationalities had
>significant representation in all branches of power, therefore, they
>can't really in good conscience claim to be "ruled by Russians".
The analyses I've read of the question (for example, the one in David
Laitin's book on Russians on the "Near Abroad" in the 1990's) were
pretty clear that the Russians were in charge. Russians were
something like half the population of the USSR, but I can't, for
example, think of any non-Russian leaders in the 1980's other than
Shevardnadze. I also can't think of any non-Russian heads of the
Communist Party other than Stalin. (Saying that Lenin was
half-Chuvash doesn't invalidate that--people who are "on the borders"
of a given nationality are usually more nationalist than the people
who have a firmer identity, probably because they feel a need to
affirm their chosen identity against challenges. For example, you'll
note that the formerly German regions of France have traditionally
been the most nationalistic areas of that country.)
Furthermore, you'll recall that part of the impetus for the break-up
of the Soviet Union was the fight in the late 1980's over whether the
heads of republic Communist parties in Central Asia should be members
of titular nationalities.
Laitin puts non-Russian minorities in three categories, with the
Ukrainians and Belarusians being treated essentially as Russians, with
most other groups being treated as subjects to Russian rule, and, and
with the three Baltic nationalities being treated as inferior to
Russians but given substantial autonomy to govern their own republics.
>
>A longer answer will require an analysis of the central interests vs.
>national-specific interests, and how nationalistic vs.
>internationalistic cards were played by central authorities during
>different periods of the Soviet Union.
>
>But just to give you examples of more recent non-Russian influential
>figures in Soviet/Russia's politics: Aliev (an influential member of
>Politbureau); Pugo (USSR MVD minister and the member of GKChP);
>Khasbulatov (Speaker for the Congress of People's Deputies).
But again, these were exceptions, and their proportions were nowhere
near the proportions of non-Russian minorities in the USSR.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>Estimates for 2001 are that the death rate in Ukraine will be 16.3
>deaths/1000 population.
>
>So, for Ukraine, the birth rate since the fall of the USSR is down by
>31.4%,
>and the death rate for 2001 is up since the fall of the USSR by 31.6%.
>
I'm afraid your point eludes me here (seriously). BTW, the numbers
for Russia are similar to this, though possibly not as bad, because
Russia's economic performance, while horrid, had not been quite as bad
as Ukraine's.
Scott Orr
Scott D. Orr
wrote:
>A. G. Phillbin <agfi...@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:<c6i2eu0rvo7m1hr8c...@4ax.com>...
>> ^The estimates for the Ukranian famine alone are over 10 million dead
>> ^(that is, probably more than the 10 million killed in the Holocaust),
>> ^and once you add in the Stalinist purges, Stalin easily "beats"
>> ^Hitler. Mind you, should HItler "get more points" for doing it
>> ^faster? Could this argument be more absurd?
>>
>> Whose estimate is 10 million?
>
>Rummel's, I believe.
I've actually heard estimates of 13 million--I was trying to be a bit
conservative.
Scott Orr
James A. Donald
David Friedman
> It's been a while since I looked at Rummel's book, but my memory
> is that in trying to measure democite he was limiting himself to
> governments that killed their own citizens/subjectsd, at least
> loosely defined. I'm pretty sure he didn't include things like
> bombing of civilian populations in wartime.
He was somewhat inconsistent about including bombing of civilian
populations in wartime -- including it primarily when the fans of
totalitarianism had made a big deal about collateral damage, which
usually happened when they were trying to balance or deny the
crimes of totalitarian regimes. This had the unintended effect of
including it when it made the US look bad, and excluding it when
it failed to make the US look bad. Obviously Rummel is not
hostile to the US, but in gray areas, he tries to go the extra
mile in a predictably unsuccessful effort appease those elements
of his audience who are intransigently hostile to the US.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
+owlriu5br45adhTiE/2mTX7JaoIPxUo88lKnHwt
4rX0VL51ZMjcksa0OhDMiycyHP0VNvQy7JUH/EV9l
James A. Donald
> to five million.
Then you can be reading the only the writings of those who denied
the crimes of Stalin until the twentieth congress of the communist
party.
Time to read something other than stuff written by blood crazed
totalitarians.
All mainstream estimates are between six million and eleven
million, and these differ primarily as to what they include as a
death caused by the terror famine.
Here is Sholokhov's report to Stalin about some of the villages
afflicted by the terror famine
: : The Vechenski district, along with many other districts
: : in the Northern Caucasus, failed to fulfill its grain
: : quota this year not on account of some "kulak
: : sabotage", but because of bad
: : leadership at the local party headquarters [...]
: :
: : Last December the Party regional committee, with a view
: : to accelerating the government's collection campaign,
: : sent the plenipotentiary Ovchinnikov. He took the
: : following measures: (1) he requisitioned all
: : available grain, including the advance given by the
: : kolhoz leaders to all the collective farmers for sowing
: : this year's harvest; and (2) he divided by family the
: : entire quota that was due to the state from the
: : collective farmers. The immediate result of these
: : measures was that when the requisitioning began the
: : peasants hid and buried the grain [....] And here are
: : some the measures that were used to recover these 593
: : tons, some of which had been buried since 1918:
: :
: : The cold method: The worker is stripped bare and left
: : out in the cold, stark naked in a hangar. Sometimes
: : whole brigades of collective workers are treated in
: : this fashion.
: :
: : The "hot method: the feet and the bottom of the skirt
: : of female workers are doused with gasoline and then set
: : alight. The flames are put out, and the process
: : repeated [...]
: :
: : [....]
: :
: : I could give a multitude of similar examples. These
: : are not "abuses" of the system, this is our present
: : method of collecting grain.
In his reply to Sholokhov, Stalin says:
: : [...] I have already thanked you for these letters,
: : which pick up on one of the minor inconveniences of
: : our system [...] You see one aspect of things, and
: : describe it quite forcefully, but it is still only one
: : aspect of things. [...] The fact that this sabotage
: : was silent and appeared to be quite peaceful (there
: : was no bloodshed) changes nothing -- these people
: : deliberately tried to undermine the Soviet state. It
: : is a fight to the death, Comrade Sholokhov.
The black book of communism, page 167, says that statistics now
made public show that for the year 1933, there were six million
more deaths than usual. The terror famine extended for several
years, though it reached its greatest intensity in the Ukraine in
1933. If we include more years, or if we take changes in
population, rather than excess deaths recorded, we get higher
numbers.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
l6rYntjolQ/YLTBsdxh0rvAVuzZw7c3aujT5T/ww
49LNQOy9+4Jr7XnwsMHV7wu526elECcTpjWaKoQWe
. The crimes that the communist
party endorsed, and continued to commit, you have endorsed and denied.
Stuart Wilkes
> On 15 May 2002 03:31:29 -0700, swi...@my-deja.com (Stuart Wilkes)
> wrote:
>
> >Estimates for 2001 are that the death rate in Ukraine will be 16.3
> >deaths/1000 population.
> >
> >So, for Ukraine, the birth rate since the fall of the USSR is down by
> >31.4%,
> >and the death rate for 2001 is up since the fall of the USSR by 31.6%.
> >
> I'm afraid your point eludes me here (seriously).
Just wondering if Rummel has gotten around to the subject of "death by
reform".
> BTW, the numbers
> for Russia are similar to this, though possibly not as bad, because
> Russia's economic performance, while horrid, had not been quite as bad
> as Ukraine's.
Actually, its been quite a lot better, especially since Russia ditched
the western advice to maintain a strong Ruble with high domestic
interest rates.
Stuart Wilkes
Mikhail Medved
> On 15 May 2002 09:20:23 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
> wrote:
>
> >Scott D. Orr <sd...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:<jmd3euge4c27d7eel...@4ax.com>...
> >> On 14 May 2002 10:21:12 -0700, mikhai...@mail.ru (Mikhail Medved)
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Then how do you say such things as above? Do you mean that Stalin,
> >> >Beria, Mikoyan, Shevardnadze, et cetera, et cetera, were nobodies in
> >> >the Soviet power structure?
> >>
> >> No, I mean that they were atypical. They were also more common
> >> during the earliest era of the regime--and wasn't Shevardnadze's being
> >> Georgian often commented upon as being odd?
> >
> >I don't think so. The short answer is that other nationalities had
> >significant representation in all branches of power, therefore, they
> >can't really in good conscience claim to be "ruled by Russians".
>
> The analyses I've read of the question (for example, the one in David
> Laitin's book on Russians on the "Near Abroad" in the 1990's) were
> pretty clear that the Russians were in charge. Russians were
> something like half the population of the USSR, but I can't, for
> example, think of any non-Russian leaders in the 1980's other than
> Shevardnadze.
Get to know your subject better, that's only advise I have.
> I also can't think of any non-Russian heads of the
> Communist Party other than Stalin. (Saying that Lenin was
> half-Chuvash doesn't invalidate that--people who are "on the borders"
> of a given nationality are usually more nationalist than the people
> who have a firmer identity, probably because they feel a need to
> affirm their chosen identity against challenges. For example, you'll
> note that the formerly German regions of France have traditionally
> been the most nationalistic areas of that country.)
Since there weren't that many, that hardly proves anything, especially
in the country with the majority being Russian. What is important is
representation in all branches of power, and that certainly was
provided to other nationalities.
> Furthermore, you'll recall that part of the impetus for the break-up
> of the Soviet Union was the fight in the late 1980's over whether the
> heads of republic Communist parties in Central Asia should be members
> of titular nationalities.
Not only I don't recall that, I don't recall any Russian head of
republican communist party not just in 80-s but in 70-s as well.
Again, your writings are fantasy.
> Laitin puts non-Russian minorities in three categories, with the
> Ukrainians and Belarusians being treated essentially as Russians, with
> most other groups being treated as subjects to Russian rule, and, and
> with the three Baltic nationalities being treated as inferior to
> Russians but given substantial autonomy to govern their own republics.
That's fiction (non-scientific). Baltic nationalities were never
treated as "inferior". There was some mistreatment of Central Asian
nationals in the army. There were deportation of peoples from
Causasian region and Krimea, resettlement of Koreans from Far East and
other "peculiarities" of Stalin's nationalities policy. There is a lot
to talk about if one needs a subject. But what always disturbes me, is
propagandists that just plainly make up stuff.
If your description of Laitin's work is correct, his "study" belongs
to the trash bin.
The same thing with Beevor. By just reading the published excerpt, I
can tell that it isn't a history study, and I don't want to waste my
time on it.
Naimark is different. I've read the first chapter, and it looks like a
solid historical work which is worth reading.
> >A longer answer will require an analysis of the central interests vs.
> >national-specific interests, and how nationalistic vs.
> >internationalistic cards were played by central authorities during
> >different periods of the Soviet Union.
> >
> >But just to give you examples of more recent non-Russian influential
> >figures in Soviet/Russia's politics: Aliev (an influential member of
> >Politbureau); Pugo (USSR MVD minister and the member of GKChP);
> >Khasbulatov (Speaker for the Congress of People's Deputies).
>
> But again, these were exceptions, and their proportions were nowhere
> near the proportions of non-Russian minorities in the USSR.
How do you know that those were "exceptions"? Do you have numbers on
your hands? I just pulled names from the top of my head, those among
the circle of the very top of the power pyramid, where the total
number of characters is 20-30 (and even there, I haven't listed all of
them).
If we go to the next level, we'll certainly see a lot more.
Medved.
> Scott Orr
Babai
One can hardly compare popution loss due to forced starvation/genocide
to population loss to emigration and not having children.
That being said, you should note that the bulk of the population loss
is occurring in Russian-speaking, Sovok eastern and southern Ukraine
(where it can be lableed "catastrophic")...
This is an older website reflecting data from 10 years ago and beyond:
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/ebspr98a.html
You can note particularly the 2.0 fertility (just slightly shy of the
2.1 needed for population replenishment)among Ukrainian women in 1989
versus 1.8 among Russians.
I couldn't find more info on the web from the last census; however I
have an article from "Mist" claiming population *increases* (very
small, less than 1%) in Ukraine's western oblasts.
The low fertility rate among Sovietized eastern Ukrainians is exactly
the same as that among their Western bourgeois brothers in Italy and
Spain and likely reflects the twin moral collapse of the Western
materialstic capitalist "culture" and its ugly half-brother
"Marxism-Leninism".
Babai
Stewart Millen
"Robbie" <rob...@thehague.net> wrote in message
news:abp1ts$b3o$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk...
>
> Mikhail Medved <mikhai...@mail.ru> wrote in message
> news:78954e62.0205...@posting.google.com...
>
> > Red Army liberated, that is, set free from Nazi regime, countries west
> > of the USSR. And indirectly, it liberated Western Europe too, for it's
> > hard to imagine victory on the part of western allies alone.
>
> I can very easily. Atomic bombs which would have been dropped on Germany
> by the US.
Maybe not. Maybe with Nazi Germany standing astride a
conquered Russia and able to make use of its resources,
the US decides it can't afford to sink resources, or many
resources, into something as "experimental" as the Manhattan
Project. Russian resistance helped give us the that luxury.
Stewart
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