Tag Archives: USSR

Targeting the USSR in August 1945 – The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements (September 1945) – Reblog

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This is a complete reblog of two articles, written by Alex Wellerstein, published April 27 and May 9, 2012. The original article is now only available at the WebArchive. This article, together with the reblogs of “From 1945-49 the US and UK planned to bomb Russia into the Stone Age” and “204 A-Bombs Against 66 Cities: US Drew up First Plan to Nuke Russia Before WWII Was Even Over” give a solid foundation for repelling future projections coming from the USA that the USSR wanted to start a nuclear war, a topic that we will be coming back to at a later point.

Targeting the USSR in August 1945

– by Alex Wellerstein, published April 27th, 2012

If the World War II alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom was the special relationship, what was the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union? The especially problematic relationship? The relationship that could really have used to go to counseling? A relationship forged out of extreme crisis that later seemed like a sketchy thing? (Easily abbreviated as the sketchy relationship, of course.) My wife suggests perhaps calling it the shotgun marriage.

Maybe special fits the bill there too, in the sense of it being odd. Case in point: by August 30, 1945 — before World War II was officially over — some part of the U.S. military force (I’m not sure what branch; the Army Air Corps are a likely suspect) had already taken the time to draw up a list of good targets for atomic bombs in the USSR… and even overlaid a map of the Soviet Union with the ranges of nuclear-capable bombers, along with “first” and “second” priority targets marked on it.1

How many other war alliances end with one side explicitly plotting to nuke the heck out of the other ally? Probably not too many.

This amazing map comes from General Groves’ files, and was sent to him in September 1945 as part of a list of estimates for how many atomic bombs Curtis LeMay thought the US ought to have. I’ll talk about that another time, but here’s a hint: it was so many that even General Groves thought it was too many. Whoa.

A few things: the majority of these “dark” plots are B-29s (the same bombers that carried Fat Man and Little Boy), and they are going out of all kinds of “allied” bases (some currently in their possession, others labeled as “possible springboards”) around the USSR (Stavanger, Bremen, Foggia, Crete, Dhahran, Lahore, Okinawa, Shimushiru, Adak, and Nome). Which is an interesting way to quickly conceptualize the Cold War world from a military standpoint.

The very large, empty plots are for B-36s, which didn’t exist yet. They wouldn’t get fielded until 1949, but were already in the planning stages during the war. The actual B-36s as delivered had somewhat longer ranges (6,000 miles or so, total, if Wikipedia is to believed) than the ones estimated on here.

The target cities are a bit hard to make out (the next time I’m at NARA, I’ll try to get them to bring me the original map), but the “first priority” cities include Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Stalinsk, Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, Kazan, Molotov, and Gorki. Leningrad appears to be listed as a “second priority” target, which surprises me, but it might just be the microfilm being hard to read. All in all, it’s not the most interesting list of cities: they have literally just taken a list of the top cities in the USSR (based on population, industry, war relevance) and made those their atomic targets.

NOTES

Citation 1: “A Strategic Chart of Certain Russian and Manchurian Urban Areas [Project No. 2532],” (30 August 1945), Correspondence (“Top Secret”) of the Manhattan Engineer District, 1942-1946, microfilm publication M1109 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1980), Roll 1, Target 4, Folder 3, “Stockpile, Storage, and Military Characteristics.” The microfilm image I had of this came in two frames, a top and a bottom, and I pasted them together in Photoshop. This took a little bit of warping of the bottom image in odd ways (using Photoshop’s crazy “Puppet Warp” tool) because it didn’t quite line up with the top one due to folds in the paper and things like that. So there is a tiny bit of manipulation here, though none of it affects the content.

The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements (September 1945)

– by Alex Wellerstein, published May 9th, 2012

The question of how large the American nuclear stockpile should be has long been a controversial one. Usually it is argued out as a question of how many nukes do we need to be safe?, where “safe” here means, “to make sure nobody wants to nuke us first,” i.e., deterrence.

It’s a fair enough question, although, as my readers all surely know, there are many sides to how one should pose it.

But for the Weekly Document, let’s go back to an earlier time. Today, I want to look closely at the very first attempt at coming up with a systematic estimate for how many nuclear weapons the United States should ideally have. This was completed in early September 1945 — well before nuclear deterrence was on the table, for at this point the United States still had a literal monopoly on nuclear arms.

The architect of this estimate appears to have been Major General Lauris Norstad of the US Army Air Forces (USAAF). Norstad would later go on to be one of the top Air Force planners, and later the Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO, but at this junction he was high-ranking staff at the USAAF headquarters in Washington, DC.

On September 15, 1945 — just under two weeks after the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II — Norstad sent a copy of the estimate to General Leslie Groves, still the head of the Manhattan Project, and the guy who, for the short term anyway, would be in charge of producing whatever bombs the USAAF might want. As you might guess, the classification on this document was high: “TOP SECRET LIMITED,” which was about as high as it went during World War II. (That the report came with an attached map showing projected US atomic capabilities in the USSR probably didn’t help with that.)1

Click the image to view the document as a PDF.

Let’s cut to the chase. How many bombs did the USAAF request of the atomic general, when there were maybe one, maybe two bombs worth of fissile material on hand? At a minimum they wanted 123. Ideally, they’d like 466. This is just a little over a month after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Of course, in true bureaucratic fashion, they provided a handy-dandy chart:

Click to enlarge (the image, not the stockpile). I wonder whether anybody would buy a mug with this on it.

Let’s cut to the chase. How many bombs did the USAAF request of the atomic general, when there were maybe one, maybe two bombs worth of fissile material on hand? At a minimum they wanted 123. Ideally, they’d like 466. This is just a little over a month after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Roosevelt and Churchill give history lessons to Biden and Starmer – RT’s AI videos

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RT is giving voice to REAL quotes the US and UK can’t silence! Kudos to our reader, JMF, for drawing our attention to these videos.

RT’s AI Roosevelt gives Biden a WW2 history lesson


Backup at Rumble.

On the European front the most important development of the past year has been without question the crushing counteroffensive on the part of the great armies of Russia against the powerful German Army. These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies—troops, planes, tanks, and guns—than all the other United Nations put together.
— Fireside Chat, 28 April 1942

For more correcting quotes, see Trump is rewriting the history of World War II.

From our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”

AI-generated Churchill reminds Starmer who crushed Nazi Germany in WWII


Backup at Rumble.

An RT video uses a quote from the wartime prime minister praising the Red Army for ‘tearing the guts out of’ the Wehrmacht

RT has released an AI-generated video of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill speaking about the crucial role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazi Germany and other Axis powers in World War II.

As the world prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory next week, the video responds to a tendency in the West to overlook or downplay the USSR’s contribution. The Soviet Union destroyed the bulk of the German forces and lost around 27 million people in what is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War.

In the video, Churchill is shown reacting to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s remarks during a visit to the White House in February. “No two countries have done more together to keep people safe,” Starmer said. “And in a few weeks’ time we’ll mark… the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe. Britain and America fought side-by-side to make that happen.”

Churchill’s quote used in the video is authentic, taken from a letter to Joseph Stalin.

“I shall take the occasion to repeat tomorrow in the House of Commons what I have said before, that it is the Russian army that tore the guts out of the German military machine and is at the present moment holding by far the larger portion of the enemy on its front,” he wrote on September 27, 1944.

The letter was written as the Red Army was on the offensive, following its decisive victory over the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Kursk.

From our reader, JMF: a simple graph (originally from Wikipedia) makes it abundantly clear that the US and Great Britain did NOT win the war “all by themselves” — far from it! And Soviet casualties are even relatively understated.

SOURCE: “Fascism is sweeping across Europe” by Valeriy Krylko

Number of World War II casualties by country (From InfoDefenceEnglish)

The video was initially used in the article “Trump insults the memory of the Soviet sacrifice in WWII”
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“Accidental” bombing and sinking of ships with KZ prisoners by the British Royal Air Force. With new testimonies, declassified by the Russian FSB!

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USA has Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden on their consciousness; for Britain it is the sinking of the ships filled with Soviet POWs. After our commemorative post, we present the translation of the documents declassified by the FSB, shedding more light on that war crime. We also include the ORC’ed source text. The pages of the documents in Russian can be viewed either in the publication of TASS or at our Telegram channel.

Introduction by “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”

On May 3rd 1945, 7,700 KZ prisoners (possibly up to 12,000) died in the world’s biggest ship disaster.

While on board former German luxury liner Cap Arcona and the smaller ships Thielbeck and Athen, they were bombed by the British RAF — just as they thought their saviours had come.

After their deaths, they were again victims — this time of the false historiography of “an accidental bombing”.

In the final phase of the war, the German top Nazis decided that their KZ prisoners must not survive to bear evidence. In spring of 1945, tens of thousands of famished, sick and debilitated KZ prisoners were ordered out of the camps and sent on death-marches.

In late April, prisoners from three KZ camps, Neuengamme, Mittelbau-Dora and Stutthof, were marched to the German Baltic coast, the majority of prisoners were Soviet POWs and Jews.

Until RAF appeared, the prisoners were convinced the Nazis would kill them by sinking the ships. But then, out of the blue came the rescue! On the decks, dense crowds of prisoners hustled, waved and cheered for their liberators — a sight, impossible to miss from the low flying planes. And then, RAF opened fire, bombed and sank the ships.

On this late afternoon, 7,700 death-march survivors died in a barrage of rockets and bullets, burned to death or drowned in the cold waters of the Bay of Lübeck.

The few who miraculously managed to swim ashore were shot by the SS. Not many survived.

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The site of Thielbeck’s sinking, May 3rd 2022

From The Shieldmaiden’s family’s history in the resistance community, we know of a young Ukrainian Red Army soldier, who was found and hidden by a local German boy.
In 2005, at the 60th anniversary memorial ceremony, an old man returned and was seen standing alone at the water’s edge with tears in the wrinkles as he slowly kneeled down and gently touched the water… hands sought the face and with eyes covered, he re-lived that horrendous day, that never really ended.

The conclusion of the article at “RT in Russian”, telling about the documents and the massacre, sums it best:

“Civilian vessels flying the white flag were bombed. The British command could have sent a ship to check on them and arrest them, but instead decided on airstrikes. It looks like a deliberate mass murder,” Dmitry Surzhik, chief specialist of the expert and analytical department of the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of Russia, said in an interview with RT.

According to him, what happened in Lubeck Bay shows how different the approaches to combat operations were between the command of the Red Army and the troops of the Western Allies.

“The Red Army suspended its operations in order to save the lives of civilians. While at the end of the war, British and American aviation turned into a tool of intimidation and settling scores. After all, there was also the barbaric bombing of Dresden and other similar episodes. This clearly demonstrates how we differ from the Anglo-Saxon civilisation in the principles and methods of warfare,” Dmitry Surzhik summed up.

The FSB declassified data on the sinking of ships with Soviet prisoners of war by England

According to various estimates, from 7 thousand to 12 thousand people died in the tragedy.

MOSCOW, May 3. /tass/. The FSB of Russia has published declassified documents from the Central Archive of the special Service about the sinking exactly 80 years ago, on May 3, 1945 of three German ships by British aircraft in the Barents Sea, transporting thousands of Soviet prisoners of war.

“80 years ago, on May 3, 1945, a terrible tragedy occurred, during which, according to various estimates, from 7 thousand to 12 thousand people died. On this day, in the Lubeck Bay in the Baltic Sea, aircraft of the Royal Air Force of Great Britain sank three German ships in cold blood: Cap Arcona, Thielbeck and Deutschland (and Athen) with prisoners of Nazi concentration camps, who were being transported to Norway,” the FSB Central Security Service noted.

Vasily Salomatkin, one of the former prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp, told the details of this tragedy. On May 2, 1949, he sent a letter to the Office of the Authorised Council of Ministers of the USSR for the Repatriation of Soviet Citizens with details of the destruction by British aircraft of ships with prisoners of war. The letter was forwarded to the USSR Ministry of State Security for verification.

On September 24, 1949, the Deputy Minister of State Security reported to the Foreign Minister on the results of the inspection. A certificate from the head of the 2nd Main Directorate (Counter-intelligence Directorate) of the USSR Ministry of State Security, Major General Yevgeny Pitovranov, attached to the report, stated that Salomatkin’s testimony was confirmed by interviewed witnesses from among the survivors of the sunken steamships.

Due to the approach of British troops, the Germans transported Soviet prisoners of war from concentration camps, including the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, to the coast, where they transferred 12,000 prisoners of war onto barges.

The sinking of the Cap Arcona

The sinking of the former cruise ship Cap Arcona (named after Cape Arcona on the German island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, which was transferred to the German Navy in 1940) was one of the biggest tragedies at sea in World War II, the FSB Central Security Service recalled. At the end of the war, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler issued a secret order for the evacuation of concentration camps. In the last days of April 1945, the SS sent more than 10,000 prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp to Lubeck on foot or in freight trains. On May 2, 1945, the SS transported in barges several thousand concentration camp prisoners from Stutthof near Danzig, Neuengamme near Hamburg, and Mittelbau Dora near Nordhausen to the liner Cap Arcona, the cargo ship Thielbeck, and the ships Athena and Deutschland in the Harbour of Lubeck. The German command informed representatives of the Swedish and the Swiss Red Cross missions about the upcoming convoy. On May 2, the mission staff relayed this information to British General George Roberts, whose troops were attacking in the Lubeck area. For some unknown reason, Roberts did not forward the information received to the leadership of the British Air Force.

Translation of the declassified documents

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE USSR – Comrade GROMYKO A.A.
On II 42/DPU dated 16.VI-I949.

According to your request, I am sending you a certificate on the results of the investigation of the statement by repatriate SOLOMATIN about the sinking of German steamships with Soviet prisoners of war by British aircraft on May 3, 1945, and copies of the interrogation protocols of witnesses KOZUL, AMVROSIEV, PANKIN, and STRANDBERG.

DEPUTY MINISTER OF STATE SECURITY OF THE USSR, OGOLTSOV
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What transpired in the «Red Shore» concentration camp for children

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Before you is a short documentary about the Red Shore KZ-camp for children in Belorussia, from where children were transferred to Salaspils for further “processing”. Yes, that same Salaspils, which has now been erased from the KZ maps in the Fourth Reich!

So let us not forget that the Baltics had some of the most ardent Nazi collaborators that matched in brutality the Ukrainian Banderites. During the war, one of the most gruesome concentration camps was located in Latvia — Salaspils, where the very blood was sucked out of the children. Literally.

Georgy Zotov showed this map of the Nazi concentration camps from Dachau. And Salaspils was deliberately erased from it again, just like on the same map in Majdanek.

Well, according to the new history version, Salaspils is no longer a concentration camp, but an educational and labour institution. Almost a sanatorium.

What transpired in the «Red Shore» concentration camp for children


Backup at Rumble.

Only the wind roams this classroom. It’s creepy here even during the Spring. The desks are forever silent about the 13 million children who died in World War II. Almost 2000 of them were taken away by the concentration camp “Red Shore”.

Children were stationed in these barracks, the boys being kept separately from the girls. They were washed either in a river or in a banja (sauna), and then they were led to this mansion house. A German hospital was situated here. Blood was taken from the kids. Initially the blood was taken for a clinical test – the Germans needed only the healthy kids.

The most in-demand was the first blood type (O) and the positive rhesus factor (note: should have been said Rh-), because this type, being universal, could later be used as donor blood.

They sat behind some curtain, and only their arm would be in the hands of those who collected blood.

In June of 1944 Germans brought here children in batches and then sent them either to the Latvian blood factory “Salaspils” or to the forced labour in Germany. A tag hanging around the neck served as a passport.

When it comes to Salaspils, up to 100,000 people perished behind the barbed wires. Children were the best suited for the experiments. New medicines that were previously never tested, were brought there – various vaccines – leading to deaths. They were smeared with poisonous salves.
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Trump is rewriting the history of World War II

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In January we reacted to Trump’s history rewriting with the post Trump insults the memory of the Soviet sacrifice in WWII. Yesterday, Trump doubled down on the historical insult by coming up with an impudently deceptive message! Our response from “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

One could laugh at Trump’s ignorance, but… it’s not a laughing matter! It’s yet another step in the systematic rewriting of WWII history, aimed at writing the USSR out of it, despite the USSR playing the decisive role in the Victory.

Here, for example, is a memorial coin that USA released in 2019. This is from Beorn’s Beehive article History being rewritten in front of our eyes… published on May 23, 2019:

A US-made collectable coin lists Britain and France among the honored US allies in WWII, but, strangely, the Soviet Union, whose Red Army delivered a crushing blow to the Nazis in Europe and fought Japan, is omitted.

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In 2020 it continued with renewed force. Here is a fragment from the article at the Beehive USA and the West are continuing to impudently re-write the WWII history:

“While May 1945 brought the end of the Second World War in Europe, it did not bring freedom to all of Europe. The central and eastern part of the continent remained under the rule of communist regimes for almost 50 years. The Baltic States were illegally occupied and annexed, and the iron grip over the other captive nations was enforced by the Soviet Union using overwhelming military force, repression, and ideological control.”

The statement was remarkable for a number of reasons. There was no mention of the staggering losses suffered by the Soviet Union in the war against Nazi Germany, or even any acknowledgment of the Soviet contribution to the victory in World War II.

There was no mention of the fact that it was the Red Army that liberated every country that co-signed this statement with the United States. Most troubling of all was the menacing tone of the statement’s conclusion

The White House has marked the victory over Nazi Germany in a tweet hailing the role of the US and the UK, while leaving out the nation that sacrificed the most – the Soviet Union. […] “On May 8, 1945, America and Great Britain had victory over the Nazis!” the White House said in a message posted on its official Twitter.

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The Russian Federation may propose to the United States, in connection with the Victory Day declared there, which will be celebrated on May 8, to hold an international scientific conference on the topic of historical truth. This was stated by State Duma Deputy Speaker Chernyshov.

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Maria Zaharova responded to Trump with quotes from Roosevelt. Here we bring them in the original wording:

On the European front the most important development of the past year has been without question the crushing counteroffensive on the part of the great armies of Russia against the powerful German Army. These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies—troops, planes, tanks, and guns—than all the other United Nations put together.
— Fireside Chat, 28 April 1942

As Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, I congratulate you on the brilliant victory at Stalingrad of the armies under your supreme command. The one hundred and sixty-two days of epic battle for the city which has forever honored your name and the decisive result which all Americans are celebrating today will remain one of the proudest chapters in this war of the peoples united against Nazism and its emulators.

The commanders and fighters of your armies at the front and the men and women who have supported them in factory and field have combined not only to cover with glory their country’s arms, but to inspire by their example fresh determination among all the United Nations to bend every energy to bring about the final defeat and unconditional surrender of the common enemy.
— President Roosevelt to the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union (Stalin), Feb 4, 1943

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International May 1st Greetings!

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From the family archive has emerged this beautiful 1961 May Day card from Red Square by artist A.A. Gorpenko – a reminder of happier times.

Today, on the eve of the outbreak of the most sincere systemic crisis in the western capitalist economy, we, the working people of the world, need to stand united against the parasitic class of imperialist global exploiters, getting increasingly desperate and having no scruples sacrificing our common future to hold on to their accumulated wealth and dominance.
The fascist “solution” is already being incorporated throughout the so-called western democracies and the delusional US elites dream of WWIII to reset their economic and political hegemony.

The only way for us to change the cause of events and block the trajectory to our ruin is to organise.

“In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchical competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back into the ‘lower depths’ of utter destitution, savagery and degeneration, the proletariat can and will inevitably become an invincible force only when its ideological unification in accordance with the principles of Marxism is consolidated by the material unity of and organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.” ~ Lenin

Therefore, let the old communist wake-up call “Workers of the World, Unite!” sound loud and decisive on this 1st of May and let its necessity take root in the hearts and minds of all.

Special greetings of solidarity and hope to our fighting anti-fascist spearheads in Donbass and Palestine and to the countless numbers of selfless organisers of working people all over the world.

“Bukvar” Greets You on the 1st of May

This May Day greetings card was created out of a photo of an illustration in the Russian ABC for first graders, “Bukvar”, the 1983 edition in The Shieldmaiden’s library.

We wish all of our readers and all working people a happy International Workers Day!

Support and trust each other, stand together against imperialism and remember, the future is unwritten!

Germany cancels the Soviet Union on Victory Day!

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The news coming from Germany, with the question arising: Is the war with Nazi Germany definitely over?                                                

Decree of the Berlin government.
Restriction of general use of public squares and freedom of assembly from May 8, 2025, 06:00, to May 9, 2025, 22:00.

The following is prohibited:

a) wearing a military uniform or its elements;
b) wearing military insignia;
c) a separate or highlighted display of the letters “V” or “Z”;
d) demonstration of St. George’s ribbons;
e) demonstration of flags and banners with Russian symbols, coats of arms of the USSR, Belarus, the Chechen Republic, as well as images of the heads of the respective states;
f) demonstration of symbols and signs capable of glorifying the Russian-Ukrainian war, including:
– flag of the USSR;
– Russian and Soviet military flags;
– images of the Ukrainian territory without Donbass (Lugansk and Donetsk regions, Kherson, Zaporizhie and Crimea);
– flags of the separatist regions of Luдansk and Donetsk, as well as territories under Russian control (Kherson, Zaporizhie, Crimea);
g) reproduction and performance of Russian marching or military songs, in particular all versions of the song “Holy War”.

Source: the channel of the political analyst Razvozzhaev, translated by us at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”

In fact, by imposing these restrictions, Germany unequivocally confirms two things: that Russia is fighting with fascism in Ukraine; and that Germany is abhorred by the Victory over fascism 80 years ago, thus seeing the need to erase all the symbols of that Victory from public view!

‼️ This is continuation of the fascist practice, with further tightening of the screws. Last year we described it in the post German “humanistic” intermezzo over – Berlin back to its good old fascist inclinations. However, last year, in a display of public disobedience, not dissimilar to that displayed by the good people of the occupied Europe, someone projected the Victory banner on the Brandeburg gate.

👉 First time this was introduced in May 2022, it was the St.George ribbon that became forbidden. We wrote about it in the Beehive article The “Immortal Regiment” broke through the prohibitions in Germany – a reportage from Frankfurt. People came with white ribbons with the words “I am the St. George Ribbon, forbidden in Germany” written on them. We shall see if there will be more creative approaches to the civil disobedience against Fascism this year. Maybe red garments with a yellow flower arrangement on the chest could become fashionable! Or striped shoelaces in black and orange!

“We freed them, and they will never forgive us for this.”
— Georgy Zhukov
Photo: Georgy Zhukov and Konstantin Rokossovsky in Berlin, July 12, 1945

Next up, are two excellent commentary posts by “The Islander”:

Germany’s Nazi Amnesia: When Baerbock Bans the Liberators

In an act soaked in historical irony and Russophobic revisionism, German FM Annalena Baerbock, a descendant of a Wehrmacht officer (highly decorated and a true believer Nazi) now seeks to ban Russian and Belarusian officials from attending commemorations of Nazi Germany’s defeat. The very nation whose grandparents ignited the deadliest war in human history is now arrogating moral authority to deny those who paid the heaviest price for Europe’s liberation from fascism.
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«Eighty Years After the Great Victory: Europe has Once Again Fallen in the Shadow of Nazism» – Reblog of Russia’s Foreign Ministry Report

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📄 Russia’s Foreign Ministry published a report «Eighty Years After the Great Victory: Europe has Once Again Fallen in the Shadow of Nazism», accompanied by a Telegram post at their channel, highlighting the key points of the report. We reproduce in full both the post and the entire report on the pages of the Beehive.

In May of 1945, amidst the wave of universal jubilation, it seemed that Nazism had been eradicated forever. The world, Europe, and especially the Soviet people paid the highest possible price for the Victory over the “brown plague.”

However, as life has shown, only the visible part of this sinister iceberg was destroyed in that war. The roots and the breeding ground remained, and today Nazism is once again rearing its head in Europe.

🇱🇹🇱🇻🇪🇪 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and Western European countries <...> actively indulged revanchist sentiments in the newly formed States, especially in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, where today the whitewashing of Nazism has been elevated to the rank of State ideology. <...>

🇵🇱 In Poland the task of falsifying the history of World War II to suit the political situation is being actively pursued. The decisive contribution of the Soviet Union and the Red Army to the Victory over Hitler’s Germany and the liberation of Europe from Nazism is denied.

Warsaw and the Baltic “troika” became the main driving forces behind anti-Russian initiatives by the collective West. <...>

The West is trying in every possible way to whitewash the darker chapters of its own past.

🇫🇷 In France, which was designated as one of the “victors” after the war, significantly more Frenchmen fought on the side of the German army than participated in the Resistance and fought on the side of the Allied forces. <...>

🇫🇮 In Finland, the country’s participation in the Great Patriotic War as an ally of Nazi Germany is portrayed in muted terms. <...>

🇧🇪 In Belgium there is a tendency to hush up the fact that during the years of fascist occupation, Belgians actively joined the ranks of collaborators. <...>

🇮🇹 Despite the fact that Italy’s current 1947 Constitution prohibits the re‑establishment of the fascist party in any form, the ideas of anti-fascism were gradually eroded in the post-war period, and Italians’ attitude towards the period of Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship is far from unequivocally negative. <...>

🇬🇧 In the United Kingdom, there is an established practice of juggling the concepts of “Nazism” and “Fascism” for opportunistic interests – to describe any “undesirable” phenomena in the country or on the international stage, or to characterize public and political figures. <...>

🇩🇪 The desire to turn a blind eye to its Nazi past is already becoming commonplace in modern Germany as well. Active attempts are being made in various forms to blur this “burden.”

The strengthening of Russia’s position in international affairs became a consolidating factor for European countries around the goal of inflicting maximum damage on our country’s authority. And the Special Military Operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine and to protect the civilian population of Donbass became the trigger for a massive Russophobic information attack. <...>

❗️ The European bureaucracy nurtured the Nazi regime in Kiev in order to unite Europe under racist and Nazi banners for a war against Russia. The explicit ignoring of gross human rights violations in Ukraine is evidence of the European Union’s indulgence of neo-Nazi ideas. <...>

☝️ Russia, as the country that suffered the most from the horrors of World War II and the Great Patriotic War, and that bore immense sacrifices to restore peace on the continent, will never allow the lessons of the past to be forgotten. <...>

A key priority for Russia remains the preservation of the memory of the genocide committed against the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War. <...>

☝️ For the sake of our shared future, everything must be done to prevent the rehabilitation of Nazism and the glorification of Nazi criminals, so that the people of Europe are never again forced to ask, “For whom the bell tolls?”, fully understanding what the answer will be if this mission fails.

Report by the MFA of Russia «Eighty Years After the Great Victory: Europe has Once Again Fallen in the Shadow of Nazism»

25 April 2025 10:48
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“Black Pain”, a Chernobyl documentary by Alexander Igishev

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“Balck Pain” – the title in Russian plays on the word “Chernobyl”, which means “Black stem”.

The short film by the Soviet director, documentarist, Chernobyl liquidator, and a real Human, Alexander Igishev.


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Black Pain was filmed in 1987 in Pripyat at his own initiative. It was only after the reel got international approval that Odessa film studio, where he worked as a director at the time, started listing the film as its own. The film combines documentary footage from Pripyat with scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”, that was created 8 years before the disaster.

📖 At the end of the film, one can hear recital of the New Testament, Book of Revelations (6 : 12-17). The word “Chernobyl”, in addition to the literal meaning of “black stem”, is also the name of a grass – wormwood. The “Star of Wormwood” is an image from Revelations (8 : 11), referring to a star that shall fall upon the Earth and make the drinking water bitter, poison it.

Alexander Igishev’s works include films for children: “To Be a Human Being”, “I Am Hortitsa”, “The Fate of the Drummer”, and many other.

👉 Video source: From the YouTube channel of the grandson of the cameraman, Evgeny Kozinsky. YouTube deleted the source, so Evgeny re-uploaded it to HD Rezka (this hosting is “freedom-of-speeched” in the West, though). We also uploaded the untranslated source to Odysee and Rumble.

From our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”

The Chernobyl accident was a nuclear accident that occurred on Saturday, April 26, 1986, at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, 2.7 km from the city of Pripyat, 18 km from Chernobyl, and 17 km from the border with Belarus. It is considered the worst nuclear accident in history, and, along with the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, the most serious on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

🔻 Some facts about the Chernobyl tragedy:
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Anatoly Sobchak talks about Ukraine and Crimea in 1992

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Listen to Anatoly Sobchak, the one and only mayor of Leningrad/St. Petersburg, speak about Ukraine in 1992, shortly after the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991.

Read also: The referendum on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991: how Kravchuk deceived Sevastopol and Crimea

The translated video and the transcript of the fragment by Putinger’s Cat.


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USSR 1922

USSR in 1922

In this case, there’s only one possible lawful scenario, which is legally correct and just. The founding republics that formed the USSR in 1922, after the annulment of that 1922 agreement, should return into the borders they had at the time of entering the USSR. Anything else, all other “territorial gains”, so to speak, are matter for discussion, negotiation and decision-making, because the foundation has been annulled.

As to the Black Sea fleet’s fate, I don’t want to talk about, say, territorial claims, fate of the Crimea, but there is a good number of precedents when naval bases belonging to one country were located in the territories of another one. Even if we suppose such absurdity that Crimea is a territory of Ukraine, Sevastopol has never been the naval base of Ukrainian Navy. It has always been a Russian Naval base. And this is a situation that cannot change under the influence of some momentary circumstances. It is impossible to change in one day that which has come together over centuries, even if it was decided by the representatives of the communist establishment along with nationalists.

The actions of Ukraine in relation to, let’s say, the Soviet army and navy pose a colossal threat to humanity as a whole. I am opposed to solving any territorial conflicts by force. There should be negotiations, but time must not be lost. Ukraine must not be allowed to create an army, which, if it does create, it will certainly use. I don’t doubt that for a minute. And I think that today we are placing a mine not only under our future, but also under the future of all mankind.

This is a cut from an hour-long video of Sobchak answering journalists’ questions (in Russian):

The SVR has published new declassified documents on the Nazis’ ties with the West in 1945

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The article about the newly-declassified document appeared in RIA Navosti (freedom-of-speeched in the West) on April 7, 2024. It is re-printed on the site of the press office of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SRV). Here we present the machine-translated images of the three pages of the documents, while the originals can be found at the Presidential Library. Click on the images to enlarge.

The SVR has published new declassified documents on the Nazis’ ties with the West in 1945



Draft memorandum of the head of the NKGB of the USSR, V. N. Merkulov to I. V. Stalin

The Presidential Library has published on its website declassified archival documents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service regarding the plans of the leaders of Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945 to establish contacts in neutral Ireland and Sweden with representatives of the United States and Great Britain in order to jointly oppose the Soviet Union.

Monday marks the 80th anniversary of the day when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, in his correspondence, pointed out to the US President Franklin Roosevelt the inadmissibility of separate negotiations between the West and Germany behind the back of the USSR. According to historians, it was in a letter dated April 7, 1945, that the Soviet leadership praised the work of Soviet intelligence.

“As for my informants, I assure you that they are very honest and modest people who perform their duties carefully and have no intention of offending anyone. We have repeatedly tested these people in action,” Stalin wrote to Roosevelt.

One of the main tasks of Soviet foreign intelligence during the Great Patriotic War was to extract information about the behind-the-scenes contacts of the leadership of Nazi Germany with the West regarding their possible truce.
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The “TASS Windows” – the windows to our struggle in the Great Patriotic War

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Following the opening of the TASS exhibition “Their Feat Is Immortal”, where “TASS Windows” were mentioned in Lavrov’s opening speech, we present an extended translation of a publication by TASS made in 2021, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the creation of “TASS Windows”.

The article below is extended with insets, where we add our translation of each of the presented Window. After the article, we will show several other Windows from the posts at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

80 years of “Windows of TASS”

Who and how created the posters that even Goebbels was afraid of

About one and a half thousand posters with a total circulation of more than 2 million copies. With printing for the army and partisans, filmstrips and exhibitions during the War being done in the USSR, Great Britain, Sweden and China. All these are “Windows of TASS”, which were produced during the Great Patriotic War to raise the morale of the Soviet soldiers.

Poster No. 13 “Chatterbox is a godsend for a spy”, 1941. Artist A. Radakov

Poster No. 13 “Chatterbox is a godsend for a spy”

Here you see their different shapes:

– A tongue so long it can let slip a military secret.
– Two ears from each side: a fly flies into one, an elephant emerges from the other (a play on the saying “to make an elephant out of a fly”, that is, to magnify rumours).
– Glasses that are rosier than roses: he sees wolves-spies as innocent kids.
– Catch these helpers of the enemy, BE ON GUARD!

On June 22, three hours after the radio announcement of the outbreak of war, members of the Moscow Organisation of the Union of Artists: Mihail Cheremnyh, Nikolai Denisovsky and Pavel Sokolov-Skala met at the art salon at 11 Kuznetsky Bridge. They discussed the creation of an editorial office for the production of propaganda posters to help the front.
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Poyehali! – Soviet cosmonauts opened the space age for humans

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On April 12 we marked the Day of Cosmonautics, the day, when Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel to Space, an achievement possible to the huge collective effort of the Soviet state.

At our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden” we presented the jubilation though the eyes of the contemporary Soviet drawing in “Krokodil” as well as the reflection of the voyage in the Western press.

We also translated two short films, in addition to last year’s translation with Gagarin wishing Earthlings peace: “Long Live Peace” – Message from the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, restored in colour.

Incidentally, another fragment of that 1962 interview, in the original black-and-white, was translated by a friendly channel Putinger’s Cat. There, Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, shares his greatest dream:


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Poyehali! — Let’s Go!

Yuri Gagarin’s famous words heard in the lift-off exchange with Sergey Korolyov:


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Soviet cosmonauts, participants of the Great Patriotic War

Do you know which Soviet cosmonauts took part in the Great Patriotic War?

These heroes showed courage on the battlefields against the Nazis, and after the war they went down in history as conquerors of space.

On Cosmonautics Day, the Victory Museum tells about their amazing destinies. Watch our video!


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Source: Victory Museum Telegram channel

To Save Vienna: How the Red Army liberated the Austrian capital 80 years ago

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Commemorating the liberation of Vienna, we re-blog the Telegram post from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, followed by an article-transcripts of “TV Zvezda” video-reportage from the Austrian capital.

Read also Georgy Zotov’s article from 10 years ago, Blood and Vienna.Even After 70 Years the Soviet Soldiers Are Respected in Austria!

One thing is clear: if not for the titanic self-sacrifice of the Soviet people, there would be no Vienna, no Krakow, no Prague… just like there is no Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki!

80 years ago, on April 13, 1945, the Soviet forces liberated the capital of Austria during the Vienna Offensive.

By the spring of 1945, the Red Army drove the Nazi invaders out of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia and rapidly launched an offensive towards Germany. The Third Reich’s defeat was only a matter of time: the Soviet forces were preparing to attack Berlin.

Austria, annexed by the Nazis as a result of anschluss in 1938, served as a shield for the Third Reich’s southern regions during WWII. The capital of Austria — the city of Vienna — was a strategically important point of the Nazi defence, which the enemy was committed to hold at any cost.

In March 1945, during the successful offensive along the Austrian line of advance, the Red Army broke the resistance of the Nazi units deployed between the Danube and Lake Balaton (Hungary) and defeated the troops of the Nazi army group ‘South’. Having advanced by that time up to 80 kilometers to Vienna, the Soviet forces launched the operation to liberate the Austrian capital.

The enemy undertook extensive preprations to hold the city. The streets were barricaded and mine-strewn. Firing points were set up in residential buildings. Destroyed houses were used to camouflage tanks and artillery pieces. All bridges over the Danube were prepared by the Nazis for demolition. In the event of retreat, the Nazis were ready to tear down the Austrian capital to the ground, including by destroying (!) its historical architectural heritage.

On April 5, 1945, the Soviet forces attacked the Nazi garrison in Vienna. Intense fighting erupted on the city outskirts. The Red Army was confronted by the most prepared enemy units and formations, including SS tank divisions. Soviet soldiers fought to death against the Nazis for every quarter and every building of the city.

With a view to prevent victims among the city’s population and protect Vienna from destruction by the Nazis, the Soviet command addressed local residents:

The Red Army entered Austria not to occupy its territory but only to defeat the enemy Nazi troops and liberate the country from German occupation. It also called on the Vienna residents to help fight the Nazis — this call was answered by many Austrian patriots.

On April 13, the last enemy point of resistance in the city centre was crushed, with Vienna being completely liberated from the Nazis.

During the fierce and brutal fighting for Vienna, the Red Army crushed Wehrmacht’s 11 armoured divisions, destroyed the 6th SS Tank Army, and captured more than 130,000 enemy soldiers and officers. The Soviet people paid a high price for the liberation of Vienna from the Nazis: 18,000 Red Army soldiers gave their lives for saving the city from fascists. (BATS note: we corrected the number in the MFA post, which must have been a typo, given at 38,000)

Having liberated Vienna, our country provided aid to the city residents. The population was supplied with food: hundreds of tonnes of grain, meat, sugar, salt and other products were given to the Austrians. After the war, the people of Vienna recalled how their “fear of hunger had disappeared” and spoke with gratitude about the generosity of the Soviet people, which “exceeded all expectations.”

An excerpt from the briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova (April 9, 2025):

“By acting swiftly and selflessly, the Soviet forces prevented the destruction of Vienna.

It was thanks to the decision by the Soviet command not to use artillery that Vienna has preserved its historical outlook.”

A monument to the Soviet soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the liberation of Austria from Nazism was unveiled on August 19, 1945, on Schwarzenbergplatz in the centre of Vienna. The country has 217 monuments and war graves on its territory.

Tens of thousands Red Army soldiers, who saved Europe from the Nazi plague, are buried in Austria.

❗️ In 1955, under the State Treaty for the Re-establishment of Independent and Democratic Austria (Art.19), Vienna took the obligations to respect, preserve and maintain the graves of the soldiers on Austrian territory.

To Save Vienna: How the Red Army liberated the Austrian capital 80 years ago

(Follow the link to the source article to watch the video reportage)

Memorial at Helmut Zilk Square

The Wehrmacht troops were preparing to blow up the city in case of retreat.

Exactly 80 years ago, the completion of the assault on the Austrian capital became the final part of the Vienna offensive. The complete liberation of the city is celebrated on April 13. On the eve of this date, Rossina Bodrova, a correspondent for Zvezda, visited places in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe that recall the horrors of the Second World War.
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“Their Feat Is Immortal” – TASS photo exhibition dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory

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“TASS is authorised to declare that…” These words heralded may a pivotal moment in the history of the 20th century. TASS – the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union, as the abbreviation goes – also played a key information role in the years of the Great Patriotic War.

On April 8, 2025 the presentation ceremony of the TASS photo exhibition “Their Feat Is Immortal”, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and prepared using the agency’s photo archive, was held in the atrium of the first building of the Russian Foreign Ministry. As TASS General Director Andrey Kondrashov said, “this exhibition should be shown to the West”, a statement with which we fully agree, and will do so on the pages of the Beehive.

We start with a re-blog of the official opening statement by the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, followed by a translation of the exposition’s presentation by TASS, and finally presenting five of the information stands, courtesy to the journal “The international Affairs”.

Russian TV channel NTV has a short video reportage from the opening of the exhibition at their site.

The title of the exhibition is “Their Feat Is Immortal”, and can also be translated as “Their Immortal Heroism”.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement at the opening ceremony of a TASS photo exhibition, “Their Immortal Heroism,” Moscow, April 8, 2025


– The video of Lavrov’s speech (in Russian) can be watched at The International Affairs

Mr Kondrashov, Your Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, Friends,

We are delighted to open a photo exhibition, Their Immortal Heroism, at the Foreign Ministry today. It includes archival photographs, official statements and reports by TASS correspondents made in the past few months of the Great Patriotic War.

I would like to begin by expressing gratitude to the TASS management and staff for their contribution to preparing this unique exposition. It opens a series of events dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and organised for the diplomatic corps accredited in our country.

When speaking about the Great Victory, we recall the combat heroism of Soviet soldiers, who have saved the world from the Nazi plague. The “information army” greatly contributed to the common efforts to defeat the enemy. The courageous TASS correspondents risked their lives every day to create a chronicle of the 1,418 days of that war. To this day, their photographs and reports remain a vital source of reliable information about those events.

TASS played a special role in exposing Nazi propaganda. The Agency’s materials revealed the criminal nature of Nazism and its deadly threat to humanity. Thanks to the journalists’ work, the world learned about the courageous defenders of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad and about the atrocities the invaders committed in the occupied Soviet territories. TASS photographs were included in the verdict of the Nuremberg Trials.

The “TASS Windows” war-time posters made an invaluable contribution to Victory. They showed that art and satire can be a lethal weapon in capable hands. These posters have become widely popular not only in our country but also beyond it, where they could be acquired by subscription and included in the exhibitions held in Washington, Johannesburg, London, Beijing, Istanbul, Stockholm and Tehran.

This TASS legacy is especially important today when more and more attempts are being made in the West to rewrite history and overhaul the political, international legal and moral results of the Great Victory in the Second World War. Our country’s role in defeating the enemy is being deliberately played down. The monstrous crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices and collaborators are being justified. The very principle of outlawing the man-hating Nazi ideology is being undermined. I would like to remind you that it is one of the fundamentals principles of the post-war world order, known as the Yalta-Potsdam world order, alongside the primacy of international law and the central role of the UN, and primarily its Security Council, in balancing the interests of states.

In this situation, TASS remains a reliable keeper of historical truth. The archival materials collected during the war are an effective weapon in the battle against the falsification of history.

A relevant example is a letter, which you can see at the exhibition, from the head of Poland’s Provisional Government to the Soviet leadership, dated February 16, 1945, with assurances of eternal friendship between Polish, Russian and all other Soviet peoples. Equally eloquent are the photographs made in the liberated European cities, showing people welcome Soviet soldiers with joy and present them with flowers. The EU prefers to forget about these documents and is trying to eradicate this memory, but facts cannot be erased from history.

Keeping the truth about the war is our common responsibility to those who have given their lives for peace and freedom. I believe that this exhibition can be shown not only in Russia but also beyond it, also based on the possibilities of the embassies and Russia Houses, wherever they exist.

In conclusion, I would like to note that we also regard this exposition as our tribute to the 17 TASS journalists who perished in the war, as well as to our colleagues from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs who died in battle and while delivering diplomatic bags or accompanying foreign journalists to the front line.

Kondrashov: the TASS exhibition “Their feat is immortal” should be shown to the West

TASS Director General called on everyone “who is rewriting history in the West” to pay attention to the exhibition
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