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Author Topic: May 8/9: anniversary of the military defeat of fascism in Europe
N.Beltov
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posted 08 May 2008 05:33 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
May 8 marks the [63rd] anniversary of the surrender of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in 1945 and the defeat of Nazi Germany in Europe. Called Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) in the English-speaking countries, it is celebrated on May 9 in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union where it marks the victory of the Great Patriotic War. The defeat of fascism in Europe was a historic event with a permanent significance not only for Europe but for all peoples, who made the greatest contribution to its defeat. Imperialists can be stopped and their weapons silenced.

Shunpiking online link


A Soviet soldier hoists his flag over the Reichstag in Berlin.
The Nazi regime is no more!

[ 08 May 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 08 May 2008 10:49 AM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I am so glad that, when they themselves were attacked by Hitler, the Soviets then decided that they would no longer maintain their alliance with his regime.

Very principled.


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Cueball
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posted 08 May 2008 10:57 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes about as principled as dividing Persia with Great Britain in 1941, even though Persia was neutral. Churchill's idea of course.

Cutting suspicious deals with Adolph Hitler was all the rage after Britian surrendered the Sudentenland to Germany on behalf of the Czechs in 38, and Churchill himself certainly had no objection to Italy invading Ethipia, and made his views against sanctions on Italy well known in parliment. He questioned the idea that Ethiopians really deserved their own country.

But of course your concerns are in the directions of your own particular obsession, far be it from you to make an issue of the Ukraine returning Galicia to Poland, even though the border of Poland and the former Soviet republics are the invention of Mr. Ribbentrop and Mr. Molotov. Such details never cross your mind I am sure now that the Ukraine is part of "the club".

Perhaps we might want to consider as well the dastardly Japanese allies of the Hitlerites, who had the audacity to attack the peaceful British in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Signapore, sieze Indochina from the French, the Phillipines from the Americans, and Indonesia from the Dutch. What were the Japanese thinking? Empire is the private domain of white people obviously... what principle is that based on?

[ 08 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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N.Beltov
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posted 08 May 2008 11:09 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Jeff, you seem to have overlooked that the Nazis aimed at extermination of the Slavs no less than they aimed at extermination of the Jews. There was just a division of labour and timing in regard to when these policies were supposed to be carried out.

How does the "principle" of survival merit your sarcasm? The Non-Aggression Treaty was a different matter entirely, it is even the subject of furious debate, and is not celebrated as is the military defeat of the Nazis.

You don't really have any objection to the latter, do you?


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Cueball
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posted 08 May 2008 11:15 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That shot is of the second time the Soviet flag was raised over the Reichstag, a smaller one was raised the night before, immediatly after Russian soldiers fought their way to the roof. It was removed for the posed photo op we see above. Still an evocative photo mind you.

[ 08 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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N.Beltov
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posted 08 May 2008 11:24 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, the Merricans have their little performance art at Iwo Jima, so such things are expected ...

Up until reading about V-E Day this time around, I didn't actually know that the non-Soviet Allies were already distancing themselves from the Soviets in regard to the celebrations by holding them on different days. There was an unwillingness even to celebrate the victory on the same day. Good grief.


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Cueball
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posted 08 May 2008 11:24 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Interestingly, the final battle for the Reichstag was not between Germans and Russians, but between Russians and assorted "International" regiments of the SS. The German SS had mostly fled Berlin by that point in time, but their erstwhile allies from facist organization throughout Europe were left to fend for themselves more or less, being completely friendless pariahs, they fought to the death.
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jeff house
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posted 08 May 2008 11:34 AM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Jeff, you seem to have overlooked that the Nazis aimed at extermination of the Slavs no less than they aimed at extermination of the Jews.

OMG! You are saying you think the Soviet Union was ALLIED with a group dedicated to exterminating the Russian, Ukranian, and other Slavic peoples? And yet you give us these little picture postcards of Heroic Russian Communists at their last military victory of the twentieth century?

Actually, no serious historian believes what you have written.

Perhaps you could provide us with a specific document from the Nazis in which this equal determination to kill Slavs was expressed?


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N.Beltov
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posted 08 May 2008 11:41 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
BTW, there's a change in Russian festivities this year ...

quote:
ruvr: For the first time in 18 years Russia will demonstrate its tanks and other military hardware during the Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9. Tomorrow Russia celebrates the 63d anniversary of the Great Victory over Nazi Germany in WW II. This time Russia will roll out tanks and missiles for a Soviet-style Victory Day parade. The spectators will have a unique opportunity to see T-90 tanks, ‘Smertch” and “Iskander” missile systems and Topol-M long-range ballistic missiles. The army war jets will fly over the Red Square.

ruvr - Voice of Russia


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Cueball
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posted 08 May 2008 11:47 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:

OMG! You are saying you think the Soviet Union was ALLIED with a group dedicated to exterminating the Russian, Ukranian, and other Slavic peoples? And yet you give us these little picture postcards of Heroic Russian Communists at their last military victory of the twentieth century?

Actually, no serious historian believes what you have written.

Perhaps you could provide us with a specific document from the Nazis in which this equal determination to kill Slavs was expressed?


Who determines what a serious historian is? You?

I am presently reading The Russo-German War, by Colonel Albert Seaton, who is as a staunch an anti-communist as you can get, and he has written numerous books on the subject, and is considered a the pre-eminent western military historian of the subject, and that is precisely how he charachterizes the German campaign in Russia. In fact, it is clear that he comes across as bemoaning the fact because he feels that Germans missed opportunities to defeat the Russians, because their racialist anti-slavic policies made it impossible for the Germans to make deals with anti-communist elements among the Russian people. It is a flaw in their plan, other than that, it does not appear that Seaton has any objection to the German invasion of Russia.

In fact almost all "serious" historians, regardless of political stripe, who have studied the record based in the original German source material charachterize the German policy toward slavs in this manner. I defy you to find one who does not.

Perhaps David Irving does not, is that the "serious" historian you are talking about?

[ 08 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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N.Beltov
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posted 08 May 2008 11:50 AM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
For Jeff: Generalplan Ost. See also the so-called Wetzel Memorandum ... which was crucial as "nearly all the wartime documentation was deliberately destroyed". Here's some key paragraphs from Wiki:

quote:
The final version of Generalplan Ost, essentially a grand plan for ethnic cleansing, was divided into two parts; the Kleine Planung ("Small Plan"), which covered actions which were to be taken during the war, and the Grosse Planung ("Big Plan"), which covered actions to be undertaken after the war was won (to be carried into effect gradually over a period of 25-30 years)....

In ten years' time, the plan called for the extermination, expulsion, enslavement of most or all Poles and East Slavs living behind the front lines in Europe. (With some small amounts being Germanised) Instead, 250 million Germans would live in an extended Lebensraum ("living space") of the 1000-Year Reich (Tausendjähriges Reich). Fifty years after the war, under the Große Planung, Generalplan Ost foresaw the eventual expulsion and extermination of more than 50 million Slavs beyond the Ural Mountains.


'Execution of Russian civilians by a shot in the back of the head. Nazi indoctrination portrayed Slavs as Untermensch, "sub-humans" '. (Wiki)

Incidently, the actual Wiki entry provides a link to the reconstructed German text of Generalplan Ost.

Knock yourself out, Jeff.

[ 08 May 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


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Cueball
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posted 08 May 2008 12:08 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
For example, Hitler ordered in 1941 that Moscow was to be surrounded starved and reduced, not captured by direct assault:

quote:
The liquidation of the commissars, communists and intelligensia, gypsies, Jews and civilians hostages in the early stages of the war was to be followed by the Furhrerbefehle, forbidding the acceptance of surrender of Leningrad and Moscow, and ordering the encircled cities to be raised to the ground by shell fire and bombing. The female population of Stalingrad was to be transported and the males destroyed. (*)

From the Russo-German War, 1941-45, by Colonel Albert Seaton page 55.

* Footnote from the original, Seaton Text: Kreigstagebuch -- Halder F. at one time Chief of the OKH General Staff.


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jeff house
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posted 08 May 2008 12:35 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Who determines what a serious historian is? You?

It is pretty funny that the Celebrants of Stalin, above, quote a Wikipedia document which refers to a document which does not exist.

Reading the wiki entry, we find that

"Although no copies of the actual document have survived, much of the essential elements of the plan have been reconstructed from related memos, abstracts and other ancillary documents."

I have no interest in minimizing Nazi atrocities.
Still, it is a longstanding trope in Eastern Europe to "relativize" the Holocaust out of existence. "We were victims too!" goes the refrain. "Don't blame us for the Holocaust!"

I can understand why those who start a thread for propaganda purposes for Stalin, like this one, would want to turn attention away from Soviet support for Hitler. Unfortunately, not just "serious historians" but also buffoons, recognise that the Soviets strengthened Hitler before they helped to defeat him.


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N.Beltov
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posted 08 May 2008 12:40 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
# Eichholtz, Dietrich "Der `Generalplan Ost' Über eine Ausgeburt imperialistischer Denkart und Politik from Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Volume 26, 1982.
# Heiber, Helmut "Der Generalplan Ost" from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 6, 1958.
# Madajczyk, Czesław Die Okkupationspolitik Nazideutschlands in Polen 1939-1945, Cologne, 1988.
# Rössler, M. & Scheiermacher, S. (editors) Der `Generalplan Ost' Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Plaungs-und Vernichtungspolitik, Berlin, 1993.
# Roth, Karl-Heinz "Erster `Generalplan Ost' (April/May 1940) von Konrad Meyer from Dokumentationsstelle zur NS-Sozialpolitik, Mittelungen, Volume 1, 1985.
# Madajczyk, Czesław "Generalny Plan Wschodni: Zbiór dokumentów", Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Warszawa, 1990
# Szcześniak, Andrzej Leszek "Plan Zagłady Słowian. Generalplan Ost", Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, Radom, 2001

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lagatta
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posted 08 May 2008 12:46 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm sure as hell no celebrant of Stalin, but it should be pointed out that the Zionists have taken the opposite tack, pretty much hiding or minimising all the non-Jewish victims of Nazism or the central role crushing the labour movement (whether Communist, Socialist, Anarchist or Social-Christian etc) played in fascism, including Nazism, which also played up the racialist madness.

The Soviet troops and the civilians of Stalingrad and Leningrad weren't signatories to the Stalin-Hitler Pact.

There were seamy sides to the capitalist partners among the Allies as well, especially dividing up the world and neocolonial empires.

Still, I think the defeat of fascism remains something to celebrate.


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M. Spector
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posted 08 May 2008 12:50 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Was fascism actually defeated, or did it just suffer a temporary setback?
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 08 May 2008 12:52 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
lagatta: Still, I think the defeat of fascism remains something to celebrate.

Agreed. Others can speak for themselves.


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Cueball
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posted 08 May 2008 12:54 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jeff house:

It is pretty funny that the Celebrants of Stalin, above, quote a Wikipedia document which refers to a document which does not exist.

Reading the wiki entry, we find that

"Although no copies of the actual document have survived, much of the essential elements of the plan have been reconstructed from related memos, abstracts and other ancillary documents."


They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You are a catastrophe.

Please find for me a copy of the original "Final Solution" order. There is none. Its existance is inferred by the existance of a cover letter from Heydriech to Hitler. The actual "minutes" from the meeting have never been located.

Its existance, and the specific content of the minutes of Wanssee confrence, are inferred from the overt actions of agencies acting on behalf of Reich, and their references to the existance of such a policy in subsidary documents. In other words, precisely this: "much of the essential elements of the plan have been reconstructed from related memos, abstracts and other ancillary documents."

For example, I referenced Col-General F. Halder, a one time Chief of the Wermacht General Staff responsible for operation in Russia, specifically describing orders, and meetings with Hitler where these issues were discussed. Such as the extermination of the people of Moscow and Leningrad through bombardment.

You of course would never dare question the reality of the final solution, because there is "no copy" of the notes from the Wansee conference and you would demand that if anyone were to even question the relevant data regarding the Wansee conference, be banned immediatly for Holocaust Denial, but when it comes to Slavic extermination even the most tendentious denial is not beyond your craven biases.

[ 08 May 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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N.Beltov
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posted 08 May 2008 01:09 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There's more, including extensively footnoted sources, on Generalplan Ost over here.
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Cueball
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posted 10 May 2008 03:11 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

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CMOT Dibbler
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posted 10 May 2008 05:13 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Still, I think the defeat of fascism remains something to celebrate.

You can't defeat an idea.


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Policywonk
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posted 11 May 2008 03:15 PM      Profile for Policywonk     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Was fascism actually defeated, or did it just suffer a temporary setback?

It survived in Europe (in Portugal and Spain) for another 30 years.


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M. Spector
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posted 12 May 2008 09:25 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
It is impossible to assess either the causes of World War II, or its consequences for the exploited and oppressed the world over, without recognizing that it was actually three wars in one.

First, it was the second interimperialist slaughter in a quarter century waged over the redivision and plunder of the world. The victory in that war by Washington, London, and their allies over Berlin, Tokyo, and Rome did nothing to weaken, let alone eliminate, the worldwide system of imperialist oppression and capitalist exploitation, which is the social root of the march toward depression, fascism, and war that have continued to confront humanity to this day. U.S. finance capital used the war to consolidate its position—economically and militarily—as the world’s mightiest (and, we should add, final) dominant imperialist power….

Within World War II was also a historic war to defend the Soviet Union, to preserve the state property, economic planning, and related social conquests that workers and peasants fought and died for in making the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution of October 1917. That revolution, unlike the U.S. Defense Department’s false claim about their victory in World War II, truly was “the pivotal event of the 20th Century.” The Red Army’s victory at Stalingrad in early 1943 over the invading forces of German imperialism — at the cost of the lives of some one million Soviet soldiers and civilians — was a turning point not only in the struggle to defend the USSR but against imperialist oppression and domination worldwide.

In the years leading up to World War II, U.S. capitalism faced the decision of whether to seek to crush the Soviet workers state before or after establishing its dominance over its imperialist rivals in Europe and Asia. U.S. and British imperialism chose to take on Berlin and Tokyo first, hoping the Soviet Union would be so devastated by the German imperialist invasion that it could be brought down in the war’s aftermath. Once the Axis had been defeated, Washington, London, and other imperialist powers lost no time in launching a global crusade against “communism” at home and abroad. Among their central aims was to roll back the October Revolution and restore the dominance of capitalist social relations throughout the USSR.….

A third inseparable conflict within what is generally called “World War II” was the exploding wars of national liberation by colonial peoples across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Foremost among these national liberation struggles was the nearly decade-long resistance by the people of China against occupation by imperial Japan. That was a struggle of such magnitude and blood that protests demanding of Tokyo a public apology, justice, and restitution continue to rage today.

Other colonial peoples, too, took advantage of the conflict among their respective imperialist overlords (both in the Axis and Allied blocs) to advance their battles for national sovereignty, independence, land redistribution, and labor rights. As the war headed toward its conclusion, these movements were strengthened and inspired by the victory of the Soviet Union, as well.


Source

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