Tag Archives: USSR

The Unknown Cold War. Film 2. The Truman Delay. An RT Documentary

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This film looks at the final months of the Second World War and shows how Harry Truman’s presidency changed the dynamic between the United States and Soviet Union.


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Truman’s predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had been elected four times and was widely popular with the American public. When Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Vice President Truman stepped into the Oval Office.

FDR’s successor took a much tougher stance towards Moscow from the start, having made his position on the USSR clear in the very beginning of WW2 : “If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I do not want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.”

Under Truman, the relationship between the two powers soured. After the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Soviet scientists pushed ahead with their own nuclear programme, determined to protect their country and create strategic balance.

Truman’s foreign policy centred on containing the Soviet Union and pushing back against communism. The Truman Doctrine became a key pillar in that approach and later contributed to the founding of NATO.

👉 Watch also “Film 1 — The Unthinkable Allies”.

NATO: Beyond Law, Beyond Morality. An RT Documentary. With Soviet caricatures

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The film traces the history of NATO since its creation in 1949, allegedly to “ensure the collective security of its member states.” However, from the very beginning, the bloc’s true purpose was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” as the alliance’s first Secretary General, Hastings Ismay, formulated its mission in Europe.


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In 1955, the USSR and its allies created the Warsaw Pact, which was capable of counterbalancing NATO, and a fragile peace was maintained in Europe for nearly half a century.

However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the counterbalance to NATO disappeared. The North Atlantic alliance carried out dozens of military operations in various parts of the world, steadily advancing towards Russia’s borders through the accession of new member states.

Yugoslavia became the alliance’s first major “testing ground.” Under the guise of a “humanitarian operation,” the United States dropped thousands of bombs on homes, bridges, and factories. Middle Eastern countries – Syria, Libya, and Iraq – suffered wars that led to massive human casualties and widespread destruction.

In the 1980s-90s, while Western leaders verbally assured Moscow that NATO would never expand eastward, in fact, the alliance’s borders have gradually drawn closer to Russia since 1999, as Eastern European states joined the bloc, one after the other.

Today, NATO openly singles out Russia and Belarus as key potential targets in its military strategy. The deployment of troops and weapons in close proximity to Russia’s and Belarus’s borders is under discussion. The threat of nuclear war no longer seems abstract: NATO’s updated military doctrine includes the right of first strike.

Under the Old Guise

This caricature appeared in the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil”, issue № 06 in 1979. It had the title of “Under the old guise”

The drawing was accompanied by a news item, seen in the upper right corner:

The myths about the “Soviet threat” are not new… It was also referred to by those who created the NATO military bloc, directed against the Soviet country, which had lost 20 million people in the fight against the aggressor.

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The mystery of the death of the first commandant of Berlin, Nikolai Berzarin

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June 16 marks the 81st anniversary of the death of the first commander of Berlin, Colonel-General Nikolay Erastovich Berzarin.

On April 24th, 1945, as the Soviet troops were still in the process of taking Berlin, three-star General Nikolai Berzarin was appointed as the commandant of the city, by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, and tasked with restoring order in the former capital of the Third Reich.

A million and a half civilians still remained in the ruined city with no water, electricity, food, public transportation or anything else. Following an order of his command, General Berzarin brought the German city back to life and gave hope to its exhausted by the war inhabitants.

Soviet Colonel-General Nikolai Berzarin was in charge of the 5th Shock Army that took Berlin during the final push for victory that started on April 16th, 1945, and ended with the capitulation of Nazi Germany. He was appointed the first commandant of Berlin, and did a spectacular job bringing the city back to life.

Fifty-four days later, on June 16th, 1945, Nikolai Berzarin’s life was cut short in a terrible crash. But was it just an unfortunate road accident or something much more sinister?

Watch this great documentary, translated by Putinger’s Cat, showing some aspects of what was going on in East Germany immediately before the end of the Third Reich and right after.


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Source of the video: SMERSH. The mystery of the death of the first commandant of Berlin Nikolai Berzarin

As a sidenote, in case you’ve never heard of it before or are not sure of what it means, SMERSH was a Soviet counter-intelligence organization that officially started working in April 1943 and was dissolved in May 1946. Coined by Joseph Stalin, the name “SMERSH” is a portmanteau formed by combining the first letters of two Russian words “смерть шпионам” meaning “death to spies”. SMERSH was tasked with subverting attempts of nazi forces to infiltrate the Red Army on the Eastern Front and perform subversive activities.

A Hero of the Soviet Union, an outstanding military commander and a man who played a key role in the post-war reconstruction of Berlin. It was he who organized food supplies, opened field kitchens, provided children with milk, delivered scarce medicines to the city and prevented a humanitarian catastrophe.

Under his leadership, the reconstruction of the infrastructure began: a power station was launched, bridges, roads, power lines and the city’s life-support systems were repaired. In just 54 days, he laid the foundation for the future peaceful Berlin.

Nikolay Berzarin tragically died in a car accident on June 16, 1945, in the streets of the liberated city.

On April 19, 2024, the name of Colonel-General Berzarin was officially assigned to a school at the Russian Embassy in Germany — in recognition of his heroism and historical significance.

👉 More information about his life, feats, as well as photo and video materials – on the dedicated website.

Source: Russian Embassy in Germany

The Unknown Cold War. Film 1. ‘Unthinkable’ Allies. An RT Documentary

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‘Unthinkable’ Allies is the first documentary in The Unknown Cold War series. The film explores how decisions made by Western leaders in the 1940s led to an era of nuclear tension.


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Watch the feature on the RT.Doc website.

In the summer of 1945, the leaders of World War II’s victorious powers – the USSR, US, and UK – convened in Potsdam to formalize agreements that would determine how the postwar world was to function after the defeat of Nazism. The leaders sat at the negotiating table, while reporters described the triumphant atmosphere – it seemed like the beginning of a new era, in which the great powers would live in peace. But it was precisely these agreements that became the starting point of a new war – the Cold War.

The cooperative image concealed a growing alienation. The new US president, Harry Truman, viewed the Soviet Union with distrust. While smiling at Stalin, Winston Churchill was discussing plans for a possible strike against the USSR. Instead of mutual understanding between former allies, a latent hostility was growing that would transform into a prolonged confrontation, step by step. The outcome was a world divided into opposing poles.

A review by the Russian Foreign Ministry

The film explores how the Western allies of the Soviet Union in the anti-Hitler coalition — whose peoples, side-by-side with our nation crushed Nazism — eventually abandoned allied solidarity forged in fire of WW2. Under the pressure of ideological differences and their profound rejection of the post-war model of development promoted by Moscow, the Allies embarked on the path of confrontation and containment of the USSR.

The evidence, files and testimonies presented in this feature elucidate facts behind some pivotal political decisions by the UK and US leaders driven by the determination to “defeat”, as they put it, the ‘Red Menace’. Those political superstitions reigning in the minds of the Western leaders and hostility toward the Soviet ideology effectively put the world into an era of bipolar confrontation with the unprecedented risks of mankind descending into nuclear catastrophe.

In the summer of 1945, the Potsdam Conference was held on the defeated Nazi German soil.

The Leaders of the victorious powers — the USSR, the United States, and UK — framed together the post-war world order and reached the final settlement of the German issue by dismantling Nazi military and industry, having eradicated Hitler’s ideology.

Nazism was defeated. The Reich was no more.

In the aftermath of the Great Victory, it seemed that a new era was upcoming — the final and, seemingly, long-awaited moment when the Great Powers, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, would build their relations upon the principles of constructive cooperation, mutual trust and respect, cemented by the common background of years of the allied fight against the evil of Nazism.

Yet, the Western block, emboldened by the successful testing of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos (at first, designed as a means of deterring Nazi Germany, but, following its final surrender, the bomb was further seen by US leadership as the deadliest instrument of blackmail) and by the bomb’s subsequent use against the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the hostility toward the Soviet Union and Soviet people was just increasingly growing and seemed implacable.

👉 In the UK government, the discussions were held on the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against Moscow — the infamous plan later exposed as the top secret Operation ‘Unthinkable’.

Instead of seeking better understanding and trust, the former WWII Western allies were nurturing aggressive plans that further evolved into dangerous Cold War confrontation.

Booby traps used by the Dushmans bear traces of American “technology”. Radio-controlled mines for adults, mines-toys for children

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Another case of US-backed Ukrainian terrorists booby trapping everyday objects has come to light. This time it is water bottles. Previously, ever since 2022, there had been reports of Ukraine dropping booby trapped everyday objects in Donetsk.

Afghan women choose LP records in a music store, before the Taliban came to power. Afghanistan, 1960.

Today, in the age of Internet, it is easy to ascertain who stands behind these atrocities, and we are not speaking about Ukraine, but about its handler – the USA. In light of this development, another era comes to mind – the war in Afghanistan, where USA also created and used a proxy, Taliban, and applied the same insidious “technologies” – planting bombs and then shifting the blame for them on to the USSR.

Let us first read an admission coming from the mass murderer, Zbigniew Brzezinski, admitting to the crime of terrorism, all in the name of breaking up the USSR, which in turn was the largest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century, after WWII. The collapse of the USSR, directly and indirectly, resulted in about 30 million Soviet people losing their lives due to poverty, malnutrition, crime, wars and conflicts. Today’s civil war in Ukraine, fuelled by the USA, is also a direct consequence of Zbigniew Brzezinski actions and the collapse of the USSR.

From a 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski on Afghanistan in Le Nouvel Observateur

Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

And now, let us move on to an article with an interview, published by “Argumenty i Fakty” on February 6, 1988, debunking the projected accusations directed by the murderer at its victim:

Booby traps used by the Dushmans bear traces of American “technology.” Radio-controlled mines for adults, mines-toys for children

Recently, the “Voice of America” program once again claimed that Soviet troops in Afghanistan continue to allegedly use mines disguised as children’s toys. Our correspondent asked a group of internationalist soldiers who served there over the years to comment on such reports: colonels A. GREBENYUK and A. LOGACHEV, officers of the engineering troops; A. DAVYDOV and S. VERASHCHAGIN, now students of the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute; S. VISLOYAN, V. KARIMOV, S. CHIKIN, workers of the AZLK; V. KARASEV, now a student at MGIMO.

CORRESPONDENT. Who uses mines more often in Afghanistan: Soviet troops or Dushman (Taliban) groups?

GREBENYUK. Our and Afghan troops are not in a defensive position, they have no military need for widespread use of mines. The dushmans defend themselves: striking from around the corner, stealthily, in order to escape from pursuit, they set up minefields, masking them very carefully.

But, in addition, mines are insidious and terrible sabotage weapons, automatic weapons of destruction, which make it possible to inflict losses without putting themselves in danger. Every year, thousands of mines are planted by Dushmans on roads and in populated areas.

DAVIDOV. This is not to say that mines are found in Afghanistan at every turn, but during my year and a half of service there, I was blown up in transport twice. The commander of my guard company, Captain E. Dymov, died, covering a land mine with his body. Last summer, while working in Kabul as part of a student medical team, our group almost fell victim to a motorcycle bomb explosion, we did not reach it by only forty meters.

CORRESPONDENT. Which mines do Dushmans prefer to use?
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“The New Adventures of Schweik”. A fragment of a 1943 Soviet film.

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“Iosif Schweik escaped from prison and enlisted in the army in the Balkans, where a punitive detachment operates. Without doubt or fear, he is trying to help the partisans by coming up with clever ways to kill Hitler.”


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The entire film source on YouTube.
Publication at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Before you is a fragment of a 1943 Soviet comedy film, created at the joint film studios of Stalinobad* and Soyuzdetfilm**.

It very abruptly stops being a comedy when the monologue of Aunt Adele (played by the legendary Faina Ranevskaya) tears right through at your soul. It is Motherland speaking on behalf of all those mothers, whose children were killed by the Nazis. It is an accusation of Nazism and a declaration of the ultimate judgement to come, a public judgement which, as we know, manifested in the Nuremberg Trials.

Transcript:

Schweik: Oh, you, despicable dog! Who are you calling for, fool?
You’ve killed everyone, but you should’ve started with me.

After all, I am Iosif Schweik. Yes, yes, the very same! The book about whom you burned on the squares of Berlin. The one that hates you, like all the Czechs, like all the Slavs, the whole world!

Close your mouth! Stand at the wall!

Aunt Adele: What are you going to do, Schweik?

Schweik: I want to shoot him, Aunt Adele.

Aunt Adele: Put the revolver away. We are going to judge him.

Listen, you! I don’t even know how to call you. There is no suitable word in the human language. My children were shot at at your behest. Thousands of graves are along your way, and in each lies my child, killed by you. I fed and watered each one of them, taught them to walk, waited for each one of them, but the wait was in vain. No one came back home, did not sit at the table with me, did not lead the old me along the street by my hand, and at night, did not breathe with one breath under the same roof with me.

Why did you kill them?!

Are you silent?!

But you will answer us, you will answer to everyone, for whom you brought suffering and grief.

Schweik: Not so fast! Nothing will help you now.

♦️♦️♦️

Trivia:

This film might have served as an inspiration to the 1978 Italian comedy “Uncle Adolf, Nicknamed Führer”, a fragment from which we posted earlier.

* Stalinobad is the name of the present-day Dushanbe — the capital of Tajik SSR. It was called thus between 1929 and 1961 — literally the Stalingrad of Tajikistan. Dushanbe means “Monday”, and stems from the name of the village, where the capital was founded in 1925. Before that, the village was literally called Dyushambe-Bozor — “a market on Mondays”.

** Soyuzdetfilm is an abbreviation for “The Union’s Children’s Films”.

Who Created Hitler

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In just two minutes, this short clip from 2023, formed as a cinematic film teaser, lays bare who stands behind the fascist War — both past and present.


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The clip is also published at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

🦇 One important remark regarding Nuremberg Trials: it was Iosif Stalin who insisted on the open trials over the Nazi criminals, documenting their crimes. The Western “allies” wanted to simply quietly finish them off.

From our post “Nuremberg Tribunals 1.0” at Beorn And The Shieldmaiden:

It was primarily the Soviet Union that insisted on its [Nuremberg’s] implementation, while the Western powers, who had suffered significantly fewer casualties in the war, were not averse to dealing with the Nazi leaders without trial. This idea was expressed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill back in 1942, and US Secretary of State Cordell Hull said that he would prefer to “shoot and physically destroy the entire Nazi leadership”.

The leadership of the USSR turned out to be much more far-sighted and wiser than many Western politicians, advocating a legal procedure for punishing war criminals. When Churchill tried to impose his opinion on Joseph Stalin, he firmly objected:

“Whatever happens, there must be … an appropriate judicial decision. Otherwise people will say that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin simply took revenge on their political enemies!”

👉 Documentary “The Great Unknown War”, which we translated earlier, tells in great detail about the construction of the Third Reich with the Western Capital.

♦️♦️♦️

👉 Raw video source, kudos to ЭТО Я from a friendly channel’s chat for the lead. We tried to locate the author and the source, but only the following AI-generated response could be traced, with no sight of the mentioned channels themselves:

Original source: The video was published on the account @vladimir_gron (https://t.me/vladimir_gron) (Владимир Грон – Vladimir Gron) on Instagram and TikTok. Date of appearance: Late 2023. Voice: The text was read by a professional narrator (or by the author himself using high-quality equipment) specifically for creating content in the style of “behind-the-scenes secrets”.

The author’s (Vladimir Gron) main links: Instagram: vladimir_gron — here the video gained millions of views and went viral. TikTok: @vladimir_gron (https://t.me/vladimir_gron) — a duplicate platform with similar content. Telegram: GRON — a channel where the author posts his thoughts and full versions of the texts from the videos.

Transcript of the clip

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A history lesson for the United Europe of the Fourth Reich

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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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“Stalin’s Delaying Tactics Against Hitler. Two Years of Astute Manoeuvring”

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In the present, the West is howling, recalling the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Meanwhile earlier, they were admiring Stalin’s cunning in concluding this pact. Not just immediately after the treaty was signed, but even while waging war against Hitler.

I came across a large and competent analysis of Soviet-German relations, published in the “Times” exactly 85 years ago – on May 1, 1941, a month and a half before the start of the Great Patriotic War. As you can see, the article is titled: “Stalin’s Delaying Tactics Against Hitler. Two Years of Astute Manoeuvring”.

The author, thoroughly analysing Stalin’s motives, writes: “On May Day two years ago, Soviet Russia looked like a country under the greatest threat.” The subtitle reads: “The Threats Have Been Eliminated.”

Speaking of Stalin, the “Times” pays him tribute:

“Perhaps. His strong, complex, pragmatic Caucasian mind is less inclined to theorising than to strategic facts. Since 1939, Soviet Russia has indeed avoided major threats. When Stalin saw that Germany had decided to move east, he withdrew from negotiations with Britain and France and met Germany halfway, making it easier for the Germans to go to war, while keeping the Soviet Union out of it.”

At the same time, the author directly writes that Germany continues to prepare for war with the Soviets, about which German officers are quite openly talking everywhere. He mentions, by the way, the Germans’ preparation of Ukrainian militants to fight against the Soviets. And he even hints unambiguously at the time of the possible start of a German attack on the USSR — the coming summer.

He also writes about how the Russians, taking advantage of the respite, are intensively preparing for the upcoming war. Both in military and ideological terms. In particular, he notes that recently the Soviet media have been writing less about the “world revolution”, and more about the “Soviet Motherland”, which needs to be defended…

A very sensible analysis. And no hysteria about the “devilish conspiracy” and the “cunning tyrant”. I emphasise, by that time, the British had been at war with the Germans for almost two years!

Source: @newsEconomics

Translation from our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”. In this context it does good to remind that the Soviet-German non-aggression pact was far from the first signed between Germany and other world powers. Read: The complete list of pacts concluded between Germany and other European countries before and during World War II

The “Burned villages” layer has been updated on the public cadastral map on Belorussia

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On the eve of the Great Victory Day, the Belorussian National Cadastral Agency, together with the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic of Belarus, updated the information layer “Burnt Villages” on the public cadastral map.

This thematic layer, published in 2021, has become a kind of digital monument to the victims of the war and an important tool for preserving historical memory. Its content is based on data obtained by the Prosecutor General’s Office during the investigation of the criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people. According to the results of investigative actions over 5 years, more than 4,000 previously unaccounted-for settlements were additionally mapped.

Results of the current update:

  • 15 villages identified during the investigation have been added.;
  • The descriptive information for more than 300 villages has been clarified;
  • The location of 35 villages has been adjusted.

Today, the map contains data on 12,858 affected villages. A special place in this list is occupied by 290 settlements that shared the sad fate of Khatyn. These villages were burned down along with their inhabitants, disappearing forever from the map of the country.

Data collection, verification, and updating are ongoing.

Each marker on the map is not just a dot, but a tribute to the memory of millions of innocent victims, and our duty is to protect the truth about the events of the Great Patriotic War and pass it on to future generations.

📖 Out of the Fire

Make sure to read the book “Out of the Fire”, available at the Internet Archive!

English translation of Out of the Fire [Я з вогненнай вёскі (Ya z vognennaj vyoski) / Я из огненной деревни (Ya iz ognennoj derevni) / I Am From a Fire Village], published by Progress Publishers in Moscow in 1980. Originally published in Belarus in 1975/6. Writers Ales Adamovich, Yanka Bryl, and Vladimir Kolesnik conducted interviews with survivors – mainly women and grown children – of fascist Germany’s genocidal violence against the Soviet Union, when hundreds of Belarussian villages were burned to the ground and their inhabitants murdered. Some snippets of these transcriptions would later work their way into Adamovich’s novel Khatyn. His script for Come and See also used this same source material. An anti-fascist masterwork of horror and hope. Translation by Angelia Graf and Nina Belenkaya. Book design by Arlen Kashurevich.

Europe Rehabilitates Fascism While Erasing the Communists Who Defeated It – A Politsturm reblog

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Communists and the Soviet Union played a vital role in liberating France, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany from Nazism. 81 years later, efforts are underway to erase their role from public memory.

Fascism against the Soviet memory

Details. Over the past two years, governments across Europe have moved to criminalise communist ideology, destroy Soviet monuments, and ban communist parties – while far-right and fascist parties freely grow in popularity. Politsturm prepared a review of European countries where the persecution of communists has intensified over the past year, in comparison with the contribution made by communists and the USSR to the liberation of these countries from fascism.

France

The far-right National Rally – founded by former Waffen-SS members as “National Front” – is now on course to win the 2027 presidential election.

► In 2025, the annual fascist march in Paris proceeded with legal permission – with far-right delegations from Hungary, Germany, Italy, and Spain – and openly using WW2 Axis symbolism. The march deliberately coincided with Victory Day commemorations. Meanwhile, counter-protests were banned, and multiple counter-demonstrators were arrested.

► On Victory Day this year, a WW2-era fascist collaborator anthem was played on public loudspeakers in a French town with a National Rally mayor. Last year, an official monument dedicated to the “victims of communism” was revealed in another French city. To justify it, the mayor cited the debunked “100 million deaths” statistic from The Black Book of Communism.

Historically, communists formed the backbone of French anti-fascism. Before the war, the Communist Party of France led the formation of the Popular Front against fascism, winning the 1936 elections and bringing about major social reforms for workers, while significantly weakening fascism in France.

► During WW2, the communist-led “Francs-Tireurs et Partisans” was one of the largest resistance forces in occupied France, claiming 1,500 operations in three months of 1943 alone. Many thousands of Soviet citizens who found themselves there as prisoners of war or driven into Nazi slavery took an active part in the French Resistance movement.

► The French “Normandie-Neman” Squadron fought as part of the Red Army’s 303rd Fighter Aviation Division from 1942 to 1945. French pilots flew over 5,000 combat sorties on the Eastern Front, shooting down 268 and damaging 80 German aircraft in aerial combat, losing only 46 men.

Germany

The far-right Alternative for Germany leads electoral polling at 27.5% as of 2026. The party has been repeatedly linked to fascist currents within its ranks, with senior figures investigated over the use of Nazi-era slogans.
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The Great Unknown War. A must-see documentary about the WWII prelude. By Andrey Medvedev

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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 Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Soviet People – We shall never forget!

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Reading time: 13 minutes

‼️ As a reminder to the assorted Fascist and Zionist media, the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Soviet People had been observed in Russia on April 19 for quite some time, since 2020, but unofficially. We first marked it on “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden” in 2024. What changed in 2026, is that the Day is now officially written into the Laws of Russian Federation!

✍️ Let’s recall — the choice of April 19 as a memorial date is due to the fact that it was on this day in 1943 that Decree No. 39 of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued “On punishments for Nazi villains guilty of murdering and torturing Soviet civilians and captured Red Army soldiers, for spies, traitors to the Motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices”. It was the first act to record evidence of a systematic and purposeful Nazi policy of exterminating civilians in the Soviet Union.

👉 Read also: The European Genocide of the Russian People and The text of Hitler’s statement on the extermination of Slavic peoples has been published in Russia for the first time

Unveiling the forgotten history: German soldiers’ brutal eradication of Slavs – raped, looted, and burned their way through Soviet villages

— By Rina Lu on X


Stop ignoring how the Wehrmacht acted against the Slavs. Increasingly, we hear claims like “maybe Hitler wasn’t a bad guy.” Perhaps this is because all you’ve heard is the story of the six million.

But here’s the real story🧵👇

During WWII, Nazi Germany carried out a full-blown “war of annihilation” in the USSR killing, torturing, raping, and looting millions of civilians. Most people in the West barely know about it. Nazi leaders had branded Slavs “sub-humans” and even issued orders saying soldiers weren’t accountable for violence against civilians. As one German corporal casually wrote in 1942, “The Russians are animals. We can do whatever we want to them.”

Rape as a Weapon

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Following the trail of the missing January 19 order “On behaviour on the territory of Germany”, and presenting authentic documents on the topic

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Reading time: 10 minutes

Presumably, on January 19, 1945, the USSR People’s Commissar of Defence Iosif Stalin signed an order “On behaviour on the territory of Germany”. Many reputable historical sources recite the wording of the supposed order. Last year, we too, presented a translation of the text, only later coming to realise that the order as such does not exist.

For the reference, here is the text of the “order” and additional information that was provided by Historian Magazine back then:

On January 19, 1945, the USSR People’s Commissar of Defence Iosif Stalin signed an order “On behaviour on the territory of Germany”, which stated:

“Officers and Red Army soldiers!

We are going into the enemy’s country. Everyone must maintain self-control, everyone must be brave…

The remaining population in the conquered areas, regardless of whether they are German, Czech, or Polish, must not be subjected to violence. The guilty will be punished according to the laws of wartime.

Sexual relations with the female sex are not allowed in the conquered territory. Those guilty of violence and rape will be shot.”

Stalin’s order was followed by orders from the commanders of the 1st and 2nd Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts, Marshals of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov (January 29), Konstantin Rokossovsky (January 21, order No. 006) and Ivan Konev (January 27), who prohibited “oppressing the German population, robbing apartments and burning houses.”

The commanders called on the Red Army soldiers to direct their feelings of hatred “to the extermination of the enemy on the battlefield.”

Where do the legs grow from..?

Let us perform source research of the above text.
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The USSR – a Realm of Goodness and Reason!

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Reading time: 8 minutes

We present translation of an article from the German Telegram channel FKT – History of the Soviet Union, first published at our Telegram channel Beorn And The Shieldmaiden. The article debunks more of the black myths about Stalin and the USSR of the 1930s. Make sure to also read their other article that we have translated: The Myth of the “Stalinist Purges”.

Under Gorbachev, we were indoctrinated with the brazen slander about the “Stalin repressions”, which the orthodox anti-Sovietist Solzhenitsyn invented – supposedly, the “bloody tyrant” Stalin killed 100 million of the “best sons of the Fatherland”. And millions of people actually believed it, because the more brazen and unbelievable the lie, the easier it is for fools to believe it – as the fascist Goebbels noted, and the liar Solzhenitsyn took advantage of it.

Here’s the clarification of a few fundamental questions:

Why are the fights against the enemies called “repressions”?!

Because for many, the word “repressions” associates with the punishment of innocent people.

Where are the bodies of 100 million victims?

Without their demonstration, the criticism of Stalin by the liar Solzhenitsyn is obviously unscientific. With the same success, any terrorist from Guantánamo and indeed anyone could write a book titled “The Camps of Guantánamo” and, apart from the revelations of a dozen terrorists imprisoned there, claim the following without evidence:

“Every US President tortured 100,500 million Americans on a hydraulic press and drank their blood for breakfast, lunch and dinner”

And then you could award the Nobel Prize for Literature to the author of the book, and it would be the truth?
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