The Unknown Cold War. Film 4. Secret battles. An RT documentary

Reading time: < 1 minute

This episode explores how the Baltic region became one of the Cold War’s first testing grounds.


Backup at Rumble.

Even during the Second World War, some Baltic nationalists collaborated with occupying German forces. After the war, an anti-Soviet armed underground movement known as the ‘Forest Brothers’ gained momentum in the region.

In 1947, the United States National Security Council adopted NSC 4-A, a secret document tasking the CIA with conducting covert subversive operations against the Soviet Union and its allies.

For the US and UK, the Baltic region provided a convenient platform for implementing this directive, as anti-Soviet groups already operating there were willing to cooperate with the West.

The Soviet Union responded swiftly. State security agencies launched large-scale counterintelligence operations that infiltrated Baltic underground networks, intercepted communication channels with the West, and exploited failed enemy operations to their advantage.

👉 Watch also “Film 1 — The Unthinkable Allies”.
👉 Watch also “Film 2 — The Truman Delay”.
👉 Watch also “Film 3 — The Abduction of Europe… and the world”.

The Hasty Withdrawal of the Soviet Troops from the GDR and the Warsaw Pact Countries. The Consequences.

Reading time: 24 minutes

Before you is an account of the withdrawal of Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. In a 2025 interview to State TV and Radio of Iran, Lavrov rightly called it a betrayal:

“The German authorities, as conquerors, took control of all the lands of the former GDR, and all political figures were “removed” from the road. No future was offered to them. It was a takeover, not a merger.”

This publication consists of four overlapping articles, which we decided to present as is, for each article gives additional insights. More photos from that fateful time can be viewed here.

But first, how it all began…


June 10, 1945 – Based on the Directive of the Supreme High Command No. 11095 of May 29, 1945, the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany was established

May 9, 1945 — The Great Patriotic War ended victoriously. For the subsequent demilitarisation and denazification of Germany, as well as to protect the interests of the USSR in Europe, on June 10, 1945, the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany was formed on the basis of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts. The commander-in-chief of the GSOFG was Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov. In addition, he led the Soviet Military Administration established by the USSR Council of People’s Commissars to manage the liberated territories.

The Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany (from 1954 — Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, GSFG) carried out the protection of the border of the Soviet occupation zone, participated in measures to eliminate the fascist regime, and in the 1950s became the main unit of the Soviet Army, which was to deliver a crushing blow to NATO forces and liberate Western Europe in the event of a new war in Europe. The GSFG was the main guarantor of the inviolability of post-war borders in Europe and ensuring the security and peaceful life of socialist European states.

The Group of Soviet Forces in Germany existed until 1994. As a result of the betrayal of Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet Union pledged in 1990 to withdraw troops from Germany. The final withdrawal of troops was carried out in August 1994. A significant part of military property, including real estate, was left in Germany by the Russian leadership and received compensation of about 385 million dollars, while the real value of the property was approximately 7.3 billion dollars. A huge number of small arms, tanks, aircraft, helicopters, armoured vehicles were looted and sold to foreign countries.

With the cessation of the existence of the GSFG, security in Europe was put at risk. Taking advantage of the withdrawal of Russian troops from Germany, the United States and its NATO allies began to implement a policy of “expanding the alliance to the east”. The accession of Eastern European states to the alliance significantly weakened Russia’s defence capability and its geopolitical positions.

Source: CPRF


The humiliating withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1994 from Germany into the open field

It was the last day of August 1994, when the last military units leaving Germany marched in Berlin’s Treptow Park in the presence of thousands of spectators, as well as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

The Russian leader was drunk, and he delivered a heartfelt speech in which he emphasised that “there were neither winners nor losers in the war between Russia and Germany”. But it didn’t seem enough to him – if you party, go all out. He came down from the podium, took the baton from the conductor of the police orchestra and while “conducting” made the musicians play “Kalinka-Malinka”, while soloing into the microphone loudest of all.

It was a bitter scene of humiliation, as the liberating and victorious army, through the fault of a short-sighted politician, left like an unwelcome guest.
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35 Years Without the Union – memories of the bygone time in the GDR

Reading time: 11 minutes

As part of the project “35 Years without the USSR”, corresponded Georgy Zotov visited Germany, looking for the memories of the not so distant past. The article below appeared in “Argumenty i Fakty” on March 20, 2026.

“It was a nightmare and a murder.” The sad fate of beloved in the USSR goods from the GDR

Do you remember the Madonna tea set, the Florena cream, the toy railroad?

…About ten years ago, I visited the city of Karl-Marx-Stadt, which is now called Chemnitz. Once upon a time, the main industry of the GDR was concentrated there. I saw a center full of Arab immigrants, repainting the facades of panel houses (to make them look brighter and more cheerful), and dilapidated factories that used to produce products that were the pride of the socialist camp. Some of them were sold to new owners, then they went bankrupt, unable to withstand the competition. Some of them were abandoned immediately, the workers were fired, and all the equipment was stolen from them. A huge amount of goods from the GDR were sold in the USSR — I myself had a toy railway from the GDR as a child, and my mother used East German Florena cream, buying it in the Leipzig store. When I was in the former GDR, I tried to find out what was left of those brands, and whether the names of streets and cities had changed everywhere, as in the case of the well—known Karl-Marx-Stadt?

The Museum of the GDR

Sold, fired, closed

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“The USSR was the Sun.” Interview with the last Secretary General of the GDR, Egon Krenz, by Georgy Zotov

Reading time: 14 minutes

As part of the project “35 Years without the USSR” (#ZotovUSSR35), Georgy Zotov interviewed the last Secretary General of the GDR, Egon Krenz. In leu of introduction, here is the greeting from Egon Krenz, posted by Georgy Zotov a few days before the interview itself was published:

– Dear friends! I am sending you from Germany the most sincere greetings and wishes of all the best.
I was often in the Soviet Union, even studied for three and a half years in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union for me was always like a second homeland, and you can say it was like the Sun for me. I am very sorry that the Soviet Union is gone, but my friendly feelings for the people of the Russian Federation are very close to me and I love Russia. All the best!

– Thank you very much.

Kirill Brenner acted as a translator, and commented thus his impression of the interview at his Telegram channel:

…I was also present in this room at that moment and helped with the translation (Krenz spoke most of the time in German, sometimes switching to Russian). But despite the fact that Krenz is slightly confused in endings and cases – it’s been a long time since he had a conversational practice – he speaks Russian better than I do in German…


In an interview with the columnist of the DarkZotovLand Telegram channel, the former leader of the German Democratic Republic, 89-year-old Egon Krenz, expressed amazing things about the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

– Comrade Krenz, what exactly did you feel when you came to the USSR for the first time in your life?

– The best feeling was that I was treated with great kindness. I just turned 18, and I got to the Soviet Union on the Friendship train. People were so happy to see us! But I am a German, I belong to a nation of former enemies: only ten years have passed since the bloody war, the year is 1955. But we were greeted with joy, as if we were old friends, and this made a great impression on me and other young Germans.

– What surprised you most about the Soviet Union then?
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By their death they death averted. Remembering June 22, 1941

Reading time: 11 minutes

The following article was written by Nikolai Dolgopolov and published in “Rossijskaya Gazeta” on the 85th anniversary of the most tragic day in the Soviet Union’s, and now, Russia’s, history – June 22, 1941.

While all that is written in the article is historically correct, it is vital to remember the wider context while reading it. In the days before the War, not only correct reports about Nazi German invasion were coming to Moscow, but also numerous false reports from reputable source. Not because those sources has some ill intentions, but because the fog of war had already descended.

From our article The pre-War sabotage of the Soviet peace efforts by Britain and France, seen through the memoirs of Georgy Zhukov and the modern British press, Marshal Georgy Zhukov recalled in his memoirs:

The spring of 1941 was marked by a new wave of false rumours in Western countries about large-scale Soviet war preparations against Germany. The German press raised a howl about them and complained that such information tended to throw a cloud on German-Soviet relations.

“Don’t you see?” Stalin would say. “They are trying to frighten us with the Germans and to frighten the Germans with us, setting us one against the other.”

⚡️⚡️⚡️

For example, on June 13, 1941, Admiral Kuznetsov proposed to recall Soviet ships from German ports.

Navy Commissar Admiral Nikolay Kuznetsov attended a meeting with Stalin on June 13 and reported that German ships were leaving Soviet ports, and requested permission to recall Soviet ships from German ports.

The admiral also reported that on June 13, Captain 1st Rank Vorontsov had informed Moscow from Berlin that “the Germans planned a surprise attack against the USSR between June 21 and 24, 1941. The attack would target airfields, railway junctions, industrial centers, and the Baku region.”

On May 6, Kuznetsov, based on information from Vorontsov, had already reported about an impending attack on May 14. Stalin remembered this previous report. “The boss,” wrote Stalin’s secretariat chief Poskrebyshev, “threw him out.”

Source: WWII Day by Day, translate by Beorn And The Shieldmaiden.


By their death they death averted

Our border guards saw, felt, and were ready. Photo: Social Media

I bow with a low to those, who 85 years ago warned of the coming war, and in its first hours disrupted the fascist blitzkrieg.

There is no date in the annals of the country more tragic than June 22, 1941. We often talk about Stalingrad, the Kursk Bulge, and the shattered Reichstag. Of course, it’s more pleasant to remember the victories than the hard first days. And we also knew less about that time: the June hours of the first military dawn seemed to be just a black nightmare, they were heard by the footsteps of the fascist horde, they were reverberated by huge losses.

But world history, which has always been harsh towards Russia, has turned towards us in such a way that our slumbering and forgiving memory has awakened. Not for everyone, but for many. In recent years, an interest in the truth has awakened, a desire to understand how it was at the most terrible beginning. Even the children of front-line soldiers are now over 70. And if we missed the chance to ask, to hear first-hand accounts, now that the thirst for truth has been revived, careful research by scientists and newly declassified documents that seemed to be buried alive in archives, have come to the rescue. The cradle of Victory, achieved after the 1418 days of the Great Patriotic War, originate in the forgotten first battles.
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Alfred Rosenberg — The Failed Coloniser of the East. A documentary by Aleksey Denisov, 2021

Reading time: 24 minutes

Alfred Rosenberg is one of the most sinister figures of the Third Reich. It is believed that he is the author of the concepts of “racial theory” and “the final solution to the Jewish question.” Having become head of the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Territories on Hitler’s orders in 1941, Rosenberg had the opportunity to put his theory into practice. The task of Rosenberg’s department was to colonise the entire European part of the Soviet Union.

No “independent states” were supposed to be established in these territories. The Nazis planned to partially exterminate and partially evict the indigenous population, and “Germanise” the remaining ones. After the final victory of the Reich, the ideologists of Nazism planned to make those inhabitants of the USSR whom they decided to leave alive slaves serving the German colonists and “Greater Germany.”

This film is another reminder of the future that was in store for the big and small nations of Europe in the event of the victory of Hitler and his satellites. The film uses rare footage of captured German newsreels, photographs from the personal archives of Nazi leaders captured during the storming of Berlin by soldiers of the Red Army. Many of them have never been shown on the air.


Backup at Rumble.
Raw video source at the site of the VGTRK


Additional strokes to Rosenberg’s portrait

An uplifting caricature by Boris Yefimov from 1936, depicting the Ukrainian nationalists marching right from an important appointment with a mug of “Beer”.

Their banner, carrying the proud symbol of Ukraine — with a cherry on top — has the words in a mix of Ukrainian and German:

“Long live our father Rosenberg!”

The words are addressed to Rosenberg — whom Hitler called “the church Father of National Socialism” — standing on the drums of the German Nazi propaganda – the “Völkischer Beobachter”.

♦️♦️♦️

‼️ Both Beobachter and Rosenberg made appearance on the pages of the Danish underground publication “2 Years”, where we can find many a pearl of the German propaganda.

Alfred Rosenberg (1893 – 1946). Top Nazi and the party’s leading racial ideologist, incarnate anti-communist and anti-Semite. Born in Estonia, sentenced to death and executed in Nuremberg for, among other, crimes against humanity.

In the early years, he exercised a decisive influence on the development of Hitler’s thinking and nurtured his visions of his own divine significance.

Rosenberg held powerful political posts in the party and state. He was an influential figure in the occult Thule Society of the nazi elites. He published anti-Semitic literature and was the holder of the Nazi “Blood Order”.

Völkischer Beobachter (“People’s Observer”) – the official newspaper of the Nazis, published by the Eher Verlag, owned by the Nazi Party NSDAP (Nationalsocialistische Deutche Arbeiterpartei), appeared as a weekly from late 1920 to 1923. From 8. February 1923 to the end of april 1945 the newspaper was published as a daily with Alfred Rosenberg as editor.


All Is in the Past — Adolf Rosenberg in His Domain

The caricature by Boris Yefimov appeared in the combined issue №11-12 of the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil” in April of 1944.
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85 years later, Germany is once again preparing to bomb Russia

Reading time: 5 minutes

An article by political scientist Vladimir Kornilov for RIA Novosti on June 22, 2026, and translated by us for our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

“Marching towards abyss”. AI-generated image by RIA Novosti.

June 22nd. The Day of eternal remembrance, the day of national mourning, and at the same time, the day as a symbol of the indomitability of our people. The day when each of us remembers our ancestors who died in the Great Patriotic War. And as you know, “there is no family in Russia without own hero to be remembered…”

Since the collective historical memory of that war and the Great Victory over a Europe united by Nazism is the core of our state, Europeans will always fight against our monuments. It is enough to recall what was done in recent years with monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators in the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic and Ukraine after the victory of Nazi ideology there.

Admittedly, Germany has stayed away from these trends for a long time. First of all, in connection with the publicly recognised collective guilt of the Germans for the crimes of the Second World War. But as anti-Russian hysteria escalates, the process of liberation from these self-restrictions is rapidly gaining momentum there.

At the very beginning of the SMO, the then German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a speech in which he repeatedly made references to the history of the Great Patriotic War. And some media interpreted the speech precisely as “Germany’s rejection of historical guilt towards Russia.” Note that Berlin has repeatedly officially announced that its sense of historical guilt over the Holocaust determines its policy towards Israel. And recent statements by the Luftwaffe commander about his readiness to bomb St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad indicate that the shackles of collective responsibility towards Russia and the Russian people have finally been thrown off.

The Germans have not yet encroached on monuments to Soviet soldiers, being limited by their laws and international obligations to preserve graves. But a different kind of encroachment began there. So, recently, a heated debate has unfolded in Germany around the monument to the Soviet Soldier-liberator in Berlin’s Treptow Park. Moreover, these debates were started by Ukrainian activists who did not like the Soviet symbols and the fact that the memorial complex was covered with Stalin’s quotations.
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Ukrainian Nazis, with their US-NATO backers, destroy panorama “The Defence of Sevastopol 1854 -1855”. Just like what the German Nazis had done in 1942

Reading time: 5 minutes

Defence of Sevastopol panorama destruction in 2026

There’s nothing left of the panorama canvas and the interior decoration of the “Defence of Sevastopol” museum, reported the city’s governor, Razvozhayev.

“Everything has been digitised, all the materials are available, and everything will be recreated in the best possible way.”

Source: ANNA NEWS


Ukrainian Nazis with their US-NATO backers destroy panorama “The Defence of Sevastopol 1854 -1855”

The epic panorama “The Defence of Sevastopol 1854 -1855”, now destroyed by the Ukrainian US-backed Nazis.
Click on the image for high-resolution view.

Maria Zaharova writes:

We have now witnessed an attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the panorama “The Defense of Sevastopol 1854 – 1855”. According to media reports, it has been almost completely destroyed. Let me remind you that Franz Roubaud’s panorama “The Defense of Sevastopol 1854 – 1855” is a world-famous work of battle painting, dedicated to the key battle of the Crimean War* — the assault on Malakhov Hill on June 6, 1855, when the Russian troops managed to repel the attack of the superior forces of the Anglo-French army.

This is yet another proof of why Westerners are using the Kiev regime for their own interests. They need, among other things, to destroy evidence of their crimes and defeats.

They have already become adept at destroying historical monuments in their own territory, and now they want to destroy monuments in the post-Soviet space as well. They tried to destroy them with our own hands by spreading pseudoscientific materials and pseudo-historical textbooks, trying to influence our domestic politics. It didn’t work.
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A history lesson for the United Europe of the Fourth Reich

Reading time: 9 minutes

There is a saying that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. An even more forceful version was suggested by Dmitriy and Putinger’s Cat:

“Those who alter history will have their geography altered”

Ukraine is now living this axiom. The Baltics are eager to “find out”. Will Germany follow that path to the end, too?

The next materials are history lessons for assorted Merzes, Macrons, von der Leyens and other fuhrers-wannabe of a united Europe in its new “Drang nach Osten”. This series appeared first at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.


A meeting with an ancestor

A meeting with an ancestor

Only five minutes left till death.
Melting ice cracking under Fritz.
And one last time, he sends to Bertha-fiancé
His soldier’s farewell.

While in the waters, meeting Fritz,
And banging with his rusty armor,
Teutonic knight is rising from the depth,
Saying: “Soldier, wait!

Tell me, my descendant, have
My German kin
Not gotten wiser over seven centuries,
That Russians they engage in battle?

The Slavs have beaten me on ice;
And now the Slavs are beating you.
Have you forgotten history?
You now acknowledge history no more?”

And Fritz’s voice was hard to hear,
Already going deep under the ice:
“We aren’t allowed to learn from history
By maddened Fuhrer!”

TASS Window poster №460, drawn by N.Radlov with the verse by Sergey Mihalkov.


The French are the hungry rats, commandeered by the head woman Vasilisa

The French are the hungry rats, commandeered by the head woman Vasilisa
– A.G.Venetsianov, 1813


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Sweden in the service of the Third Reich

Reading time: 6 minutes

Sweden — the not so neutral “neutral state”!

The collection of documents covering years 1939 – 1945, declassified by the SVR on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Victory, holds a treasure trove of revelations.

We have extensively covered the Finnish part both at the Beehive here, and at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden” in theie aggression against the USSR. But the neighbouring “neutral” Sweden was also not neutral at all. It has long been know that Sweden supplied Germany with iron ore, which became tanks, killing Soviet people.

The document, received and deciphered on July 29, 1941, shows that Sweden was also in the same boat with Finland, almost literally.

According to the verified data, it was established through various sources:

1. Starting from July 14, 2-3 Finnish steamships run daily from Sweden to Finland with ammunition and food received from Sweden. The vessels, each with a displacement of 2,000 tons, are escorted by Swedish torpedo boats and submarines. In the opposite direction, they are escorted by one Finnish motorboat.

2. By July 26, there were 4 German ships in Abo with 4-5 thousand tons each, one Finnish and two Swedish. The Abo city is completely destroyed, but the port has minor damage.

3. On July 26, 3 companies of German infantry arrived at the port of Abo.

4. At the time of the explosion, there were 60 German wagons loaded with ammunition and bullets, and 9 Swedish platforms loaded with German guns, including 12 ten-and-a-half-centimeter guns and 9 40-millimeter guns.

5. The commander of the eighth German army, General Braskovich, has been dismissed.


The article by Lara Mikhalevskaya was published in Swedish at Steigan.no. All that you are about to read, and more, is covered in the must-see documentary “The Great Unknown War”!


Sweden among those who financed Adolf Hitler and his war

It is a separate story that Sweden, despite formally remaining neutral during World War II, actively cooperated with Nazi Germany by providing strategic resources, financial support and logistical assistance. This cooperation played a significant role in maintaining the war machine of the Third Reich.

Iron ore supplies

Iron ore was a key resource that Sweden supplied to Germany. In 1939, 70% of Swedish iron went to Germany, and in 1940, 11.5 million tons of the 15 million tons of iron used by German industry came from Sweden. Between 1940 and 1944, Sweden sold more than 45 million tons of iron ore to Germany. By 1944, Germany had exported 38 million tons of iron ore from Sweden, covering about 90% of the country’s needs. Each German tank or cannon contained up to 30% Swedish metal. The Swedish iron ore was of particular value, since it contained approximately 60% of pure iron, which is made of the manufacture of the military equipment is more profitable as a result of Germany.
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Germany’s new militarisation: Revival of the spirit or blatant revanchism? An article by Dmitry Medvedev

Reading time: 47 minutes

On the eve of Victory Day, on May 7, 2026, Dmitry Medvedev published this article on the pages of RT.

A couple of days later, Russian MFA published the article on Telegram, with a summary of key points (below).

To make the article more accessible, we re-blog it in full, especially since we have already republished many of Dmitry Medvedev’s articles – see the relevant tag. Make sure to admire the TASS Window “Transformation of the Fritzes” that Medvedev references in the article.


Key points:

• Germany’s current leadership has recently been speaking ever more loudly about its claims to hegemony in the Old World, while at the same time hollowing out – in public perception – the responsibility borne by its ancestors for the crimes of Nazism.

There is nothing new in the actions of the modern-day Germany’s elites and leadership – above all, those of Merz & Co., the descendants of the Nazis. The defeated state began making attempts to revise the unfavourable outcomes of the Second World War almost immediately after the war ended.

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg convicted only a small fraction of the main Nazi criminals. Many of those who had built the regime’s economic and financial foundations, as well as its administrative hierarchy – and who were therefore guilty of war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity – escaped punishment.

The Federal Republic of Germany never underwent any genuine denazification. Archival materials of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, including a 1952 report on the political situation in West Germany, convincingly show that, instead of carrying it out, “the Western powers took the path of justifying Nazi war criminals”. The entire process, conducted with much fanfare – apart from the liquidation of openly pro-fascist organisations and the cleansing of public spaces – turned into an empty farce.

Today, the top political leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany has declared Russia the “main threat to security and peace”. In Berlin, the task of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia has been officially articulated. The most aggressive Russophobes, whose ancestors fought on the Eastern Front in the Second World War with savage ferocity, are intoxicated by calls to “show the Russians what it means to lose a war”.

• In implementing the EU’s belligerent course, set out in the March 2025 White Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030, the German Cabinet is pursuing the task of turning the Bundeswehr into Europe’s strongest army and rapidly rearming it.

• The military-industrial complex and the German political establishment have already forged a robust lobbying alliance, a development that strengthens the role of the defense industry in the making of decisions that are most important for both the domestic and foreign policy of Germany. Humanity remembers the extremely dangerous linkage between defense industry actors and political figures in the 1930s and 1940s.

❗️Messages about the need to “consider” acquiring Germany’s own nuclear weapons are already being injected into the country’s socio-political discourse – not too loudly for now, somewhat vaguely and from afar, but persistently.

The issue of a “German nuclear programme” can and must be taken up immediately by the international community – with all the ensuing consequences: stepped-up IAEA inspections, condemnation by the UN Security Council and the introduction of lawful international restrictive measures, in order to nip these odious nuclear ambitions in the bud.

A militaristic Germany is of no use to a shrivelled and feeble-minded Europe, which would like to preserve at least some political subjectivity in a new multipolar world. Such a Germany holds no value for us in the future either – it is both dangerous and unpredictable. Therefore, Berlin has only two options.

👉 Option one is war and the shameful burial of its own statehood, without any hope of yet another “Miracle of the House of Brandenburg”.

👉 Option two is sobering up, followed by geopolitical recovery, with a complete redrawing of its foreign policy bearings on the basis of a difficult but important dialogue.


Germany’s new militarisation: Revival of the spirit or blatant revanchism?

Threats by Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO, expressed on March 27, 2026, at an investment forum in Miami, statements by J.D. Vance about Europe’s loss of its identity during an interview with Fox News on March 15, 2026, along with the refusal of European countries to directly join the aggression against Iran and participate in the adventure of the ‘military unlocking’ (and then – blocking) of the Strait of Hormuz are dividing Europe and America more than ever in the last 100 years. These developments demonstrate that European ‘strategic autonomy’, so desired by the liberals, is much closer than it seems. The main question is who will dictate the future agenda in the current toothless and frigid Europe. There are enough applicants: disgusting Brussels eurocracy, chatty and smug Gaulish sodomites and, finally, the German leadership that has grown increasingly vocal about its claims to hegemony in the Old World, while emasculating the responsibility of its ancestors for the crimes of Nazism in the public perception. Let us focus on the latter in more detail.

There is nothing new in the actions of the German leadership (first of all, the descendant of the Nazis Merz & Co). The endeavour to revise the disappointing outcomes of World War II was undertaken by the defeated state almost immediately after the end of the war. The purpose of Nazi followers was to compensate for the political, territorial, ideological and economic costs incurred as a result of the complete military defeat and collapse of German statehood. Along the way, they tried to neatly filter out the atmosphere impregnated by the spirit of Prussian militarism and the stench of National Socialist ideology. The German elites remaining in the western zones of occupation formally and quickly abandoned the legacy of Hitler, who had led his thousand-year Reich to collapse. But they had no desire to truly reject the very ideology of Nazism. Why?

The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg convicted only a small number of the top Nazi criminals. Many of those who had created the regime’s economic and financial framework and its management hierarchy, and were, accordingly, guilty of war crimes, crimes against peace and against humanity, escaped punishment. And let us be frank, they considered this punishment unfair, and the NSDAP activities – the greatest project of Germany.
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The Great Unknown War. A must-see documentary about the WWII prelude. By Andrey Medvedev

Reading time: 60 minutes

It is assumed in our historiography that the USSR and its allies – the United States, Britain and France – fought with Nazi Germany, which was supported by its allies – Hungary, Romania, Italy, and Japan. And the Soviet Union won this unbearably difficult war.

But it is very important to understand whether our allies were really sincere, on whose side were the so-called neutral countries, and why the war on the Eastern front was so violent with mass destruction of the population.

Without understanding who brought Hitler to power, who financed him, who earned money from the war, we will never realize the greatness of the feat of the Soviet people.

Without a deep understanding of the causes of the war and an analysis of diplomatic agreements, we will not see that the attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 was the result of a serious geopolitical process.

An important question is: who was behind Hitler, who in Europe needed such a Germany and why? Aggressive, militarized, anti-Bolshevik and anti-Russian.

What would Germany be without American loans? Without investment from American companies? Germany could not have fought in the East without receiving for free the top-notch factories of Czechoslovakia, which it gained by the Munich Conspiracy of 1938, when England and France gave up the whole country to Hitler. What for? What were the Western politicians planning?

Why did the allies take so long to open a Second front and what is the Bank for International Settlements? Why did its participants meet every month throughout the Second World War?

How many foreigners fought in the SS, and who defended the Reich Chancellery in May 1945? For whom in Europe were Hitler’s ideas so dear: nationalism, anti-Semitism and living space in the East.

The film “The Great Unknown War” is a story about what the Soviet Union actually faced. And the terrible cost at which we won a war that we were not supposed to win.

Please read the very relevant to this documentary, poignant, and important insights in President Vladimir Putin’s article The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II, published in The National Interest on the 18th of June 2020.


We published the first translation of this documentary 6 years ago, on June 20, 2020.
On March 16, 2022, YouTube freedom-of-speeched the Russian-language channel Rossia24, where the official untranslated video of the documentary was hosted, so we uploaded the film with embedded subtitles to Odysee platform.
Now, on May 8, 2026 we present an updated version with revised and corrected subtitles.


Backup at Rumble.
Original video source at the VGTRK.

During the work on the translation, a lot of background checks were done, and every date and name was verified. Most quotes of the Western politicians are re-translations from Russian, except for a few, where open original sources were available. The links to the sources are added both to the transcript further down the page and the downloadable subtitles (as comments).

While watching the documentary, it was hard to shake off the feeling of the stark parallel of how the Nazi Germany was propped up, and how, in much the same way, the Nazi Ukraine is being propped up now. One example: just replace the name of Henri Deterding of the British-Dutch “Shell” with that of Biden Jr. to see the present-day play of interests. Or replace “Bank for International Settlements” (BIS) with the International Monetary Fund. But there are big differences, too. While Germany was heavily invested into, to make it into a battering ram against Russia, Ukraine is being turned into an ideological battering ram, while at the same time being plundered of its last Soviet industrial legacy.

However, the target was always Russia, and WWII was just a fifth act in a war that lasted for several hundred years, dotted by a few armistices. Here is a list of those wars (with some documentaries in Russian):

  1. The Napoleonic Wars of 1812
  2. World War 0 of 1853-1856, mis-nomered as “The Crimean War”, when that was but one of many battles. Just think of one simple fact: if Russia lost the Crimean War, why did Russia retain Crimea?
  3. The war with Japan and the first attempt to conduct a coup d’etat in Russia in 1905
  4. World War I, which was a suicide for Europe, started in 1914, and culminated in the capitalistic coup d’etat in Russia in February of 1917.
  5. World War II and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945…
  6. …immediately followed by the Cold War, which was planned to not be that cold. Even before it started Winston Churchill ordered development of the “Plan Unthinkable”, the goal of which was to strike the USSR in July of 1945. I am not quoting The Guardian often, if ever, but this article from 2002 is worth the read: The Soviet threat was a myth
  7. This “Cold War” lead to another coup d’etat in Russia and a forced instalment of the bloody Yeltsin regime in November of 1993, the Wild 90’s that took the lives of over 30 million Russian and Soviet people over the course of 7 years of oligarchic rule; and the destruction of the Yugoslavia by NATO in the process.

It is all intertwined. But now, let as zoom in on the developments between WWI and WWII.

One other parallel that sprung to mind is how the German Weimar Republic and its achievements were appropriated and privatised by the Anglo-Saxon (or, rather, “Naglo-Saxon” West), while the Republic itself became demonised once West-sponsored Hitler took power. The same happened to the great legacy of the Soviet Union now, after the West-sponsored Yeltsin took power in Russia. For example, IG Farben Industries, which gave to humanity fertilisers, magnetic tape and magnetophones and many other things during the Weimar Republic, but once it got taken over by the Nazi state and developed the murderous gas “Zyklon B”, that’s all that remained, while origins of the prior works were earased and ascribed to the “victors” after WWII. More about it in the article “IG Farben – the main weapon of the XX-th century“.

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The Third Reich’s genocidal strategy of famine, aimed at the Soviet population

Reading time: 15 minutes

April 19 is Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, committed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

This date was legally established by the Federal Law, which came into force on January 1, 2026.

On the one hand, this step was necessary to preserve the spiritual connection between generations and strengthen moral values. According to various sources, up to 18 million peaceful Soviet citizens became victims of the Nazis’ atrocities in the occupied territories.

Their memory is sacred to us.

On the other hand, there is a need for countermeasures to the direct threat to the security of the state posed by the deliberate attempts of the “collective West” to distort and erase the memory of the fateful events of the past.

To counter this concept, a law was signed on April 9 by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the introduction of criminal liability for denying or approving the genocide of the Soviet people, for insulting the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people and for desecrating their graves on the territory of the Russian Federation or beyond its borders.

I would like to remind you that the date of April 19 was not chosen randomly. On this day in 1943, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued Decree No. 39 “On measures of punishment for German-Fascist villains guilty of murders and tortures of the Soviet civilian population and prisoners of the Red Army, for spies, traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens, and for their accomplices”. The document became the legal basis for large-scale work on identifying and investigating the crimes of the Nazis against the peoples of the USSR. This work continues to this day by the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation.

◼️ According to the commission, there were fully or partially destroyed and burned:

🔻 1710 cities and urban-type settlements,
🔻 more than 70 thousand villages and hamlets,
🔻 over 6 million buildings,
🔻 deprived of shelter by about 25 million people.
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Remembering the Khatyn Massacre of March 22, 1943

Reading time: 7 minutes

83 years ago, the peaceful Soviet Belarusian village of Khatyn was wiped out – nearly all of the inhabitants were burned alive and shot by the SS punitive unit Dirlewanger (Sonderkommando Dirlewanger) and the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion.

Khatyn – a small village of just 26 households – was located 54 kilometres northwest of Minsk. (BATS note: A short node about the name of the village. There is no sound “k” in Khatyn – the first sound is “h” as in “he, home”.)

On March 22, 1943, Belarusian partisans intercepted a Nazi motor convoy in the area, inflicting casualties, including killing a German officer. In retaliation, the Hitlerites encircled Khatyn and decided to unleash their fury on defenceless civilians – women, the elderly and children.

All residents – 149 people, including 75 children – were forced into a wooden barn, locked inside and set ablaze. Those who, in desperation, tried to escape were ruthlessly shot at point-blank range.

✍️ From the interrogation record of Ostap Knap, a collaborator from the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion, a native of the Lvov region (31 May 1986):

“The roof was thatched and immediately caught fire. Screams of horror rose from the barn as those trapped inside, facing certain death, began forcing the door. The policemen surrounding the site opened fire on them”.

Only six people managed to escape the inferno alive – five children and one adult, 56-year-old blacksmith Iosif Kaminsky. He regained consciousness late at night after the perpetrators had left the burnt village. Among the bodies of his fellow villagers, he found his son Adam, who died from his wounds in his father’s arms…

❗️ The atrocities in Khatyn were carried out by the 118th Ukrainian Police Battalion, formed in October 1942 in Kiev largely from Ukrainian nationalists and members of the Organisation of Ukrainian nationalists. Earlier, its members took part in mass executions of Jews at Babi Yar. The battalion was commanded by Konstantin Smovsky, born in the Poltava Governorate, who later fled to the US, where he died in 1960. The Supreme court of Belarus has found him guilty of genocide.

***

In 1969, one of Belarus’s most revered memorial sites – the Khatyn Memorial Complex – was opened on the site of the destroyed village, a silent witness to the monstrous crimes of Nazism. At its centre stands a six-metre bronze sculpture, The Unconquered Man, depicting Iosif Kaminsky carrying his dead son in his arms. Each of the 26 burned homes is marked by a symbolic log structure with an obelisk in the shape of a chimney, bearing the names of those who perished and a bell that tolls every hour.

The tragedy of Khatyn has become a symbol of the inhuman cruelty of Nazism – a living reminder of hundreds of annihilated villages and thousands of innocent civilians of the Soviet Union whose lives were shattered by Nazi perpetrators and their accomplices – a genocide of the Soviet people. Our duty is to ensure that these crimes, which have no statute of limitations, are never forgotten.

On April 19, by Presidential Decree, Russia established the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People during the Great Patriotic War. According to even the most conservative estimates, 13.7 million civilians were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

🕯 We mourn together with the fraternal people of Belarus.

Source: Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs


Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in an Izvestia article

✍️ Today marks the anniversary of one of the most heinous crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices – the destruction in 1943 of the Belarusian village of Khatyn together with all its inhabitants.

149 people, including 75 children, were burned alive.

Since 1969, a memorial complex stands on the site of the burned Khatyn, commemorating the mass murder of civilians on the occupied territory of the USSR.
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Goebbels’ Factory of Lies: Nemmersdorf and the Nazi staging to frighten and terrify Germany

Reading time: 5 minutes

The following material is from the German Telegram channel FKT – History of the Soviet Union, translated by us for Beorn And The Shieldmaiden.

“Victory of Bolshevism”. After the fall of the Third Reich, this slogan would be picked up by the Fourth Reich overseas

According to Nazi propaganda, Soviet soldiers in Nemmersdorf allegedly raped all women between the ages of 8 and 84 and then crucified the naked victims alive at barn doors. They also claimed to have found bodies in wells and that the Soviets killed French and Belgian prisoners only because they spoke foreign languages.

👉 Read also: Millions of raped German women: where the legs grow from? Reblog of a detailed research article

On October 21, 1944, the Red Army captured the Prussian village of Nemmersdorf, but held it occupied for only two days. On October 25, SS officers and war reporters arrived in Nemmersdorf, and a day later the Völkischer Beobachter published an article entitled “The Rage of Soviet Beasts”. It said: Germans, this is what awaits you. They will rape, crucify and kill all but the last man. A hastily convened “international commission” headed by the Estonian Hjalmar Mäe (one of those responsible for the extermination of the Jews in Estonia) quickly investigated the case and presented “evidence” of the “heinous crimes of the Bolsheviks”.

This is just one example of a whole series of fakes produced by the propaganda machinery of the Third Reich under Joseph Goebbels. The goal of the Minister of Propaganda was to stir up panic and hatred among the German population, and he fulfilled this task perfectly.

The Wehrmacht soldier Bernhard Fisch later wrote in his book:

The bodies of the victims were brought by members of the SS from various villages of the surrounding area, and no one checked their names; they were simply invented spontaneously.

👉 This is exactly the same method, which was used to create the Bucha hoax in 2022. Read: The staged Bucha “massacre”, White Helmets style and Bucha massacre – the script from the German Nazi false flags of 1945; Killing of the Russian POWs by UkroNazis

In 2001, German TELEVISION shamefully admitted that there were “probably no rapes,” and the witness of the events, non-commissioned officer Helmut Hoffmann, stated:

The soldiers of the Red Army did not nail the women to crosses. This is what the members of the “Goebbels special unit” did: some of the bodies were crucified in barns, some were pictorially placed in front of the houses with their clothes pulled up before the arrival of the journalists.

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