Tag Archives: World War II

Remembering the Khatyn Massacre of March 22, 1943

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

🕯 We mourn together with the fraternal people of Belarus.

Source: Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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

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

149 people, including 75 children, were burned alive.

Since 1969, a memorial complex stands on the site of the burned Khatyn, commemorating the mass murder of civilians on the occupied territory of the USSR.
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Stalin against Nepotism

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Vasily Stalin

Unlike many prominent figures of those times, Stalin never sought to protect his family from the war. In total, the leader had four children – two native sons and a daughter, as well as an adopted son.

Iosif sent his eldest son, Yakov, to the front right with the outbreak of war on June 22, 1941. The man did not manage to stay in battle for a long time – a month later he was captured by the Germans.

According to legend, the Fascists offered Stalin to exchange Yakov for the captured German officer Paulus, to which he replied that “one does not exchange soldiers for field marshals”. Stalin’s son spent two years in concentration camps before his psyche broke down and he tried to escape in the hope that he would be shot. And so it happened.

The youngest son, Vasily, built a brilliant career at the front, but his father was also strict with him. According to historians, the officer was offered the rank of general many times, but Iosif always crossed him off the list – he left him there only on the 12th time, considering that now his son was worthy of such an honour.

Source: Historical Facts, translated by Beorn And The Shieldmaiden

When the liberators are made into enemies – Soviet war memorial vandalised in Norway

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“In Neiden in Southern Varanger, a memorial to Soviet soldiers has been subjected to serious vandalism. The incident joins a European wave of attacks on Red Army monuments. Soldiers who died fighting Nazism are now treated as political targets.”

By Dan-Viggo Bergtun, published at Steigan on March 7, 2026

👉 Make sure to read our series of materials on the liberation of Northern Norway at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, including For the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Northern Norway, the WWII History Is Being Rewritten There.

👉 The erasure of historical memory is nothing new. In our 2024 publication 80 Years since the Red Army liberated Northern Norway from Nazi German occupation we mention “Operation Asphalt”, when in 1951 the graves of Soviet soldiers were ravaged and the remains were taken to the island of Tjøtta, where they were buried in a common cemetery. The stated reason for this was the fear that visits to soldiers’ graves would become a cover for espionage operations of the Soviet intelligence.

Here is the memorial in Neiden that was recently torn down, probably with ropes and snowmobiles. Photo: Hallgeir Henriksen.

Vandalising of the memorial to Soviet soldiers in Neiden is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern that spreads throughout Western Europe. War memorials to Soviet soldiers are vandalised, removed, or politically delegitimised. In Norway, too, we are now seeing signs of the same development.

Neiden is a small village in South Varanger municipality in Finnmark, along the E6 at Neiden River, about 40 kilometers west of Kirkenes. Here stands a memorial erected in 1994 on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of East Finnmark. The monument was erected by Norwegian organisations and local initiatives to honour Soviet soldiers who fell in battle against the Nazi occupation in 1944.

On the memorial are the names of soldiers from the Red Army who were killed and buried in Neiden. They came from different parts of the USSR, including Ukraine. They died far from home during the fighting that led to the liberation of Eastern Finnmark from German control.

Nevertheless, this memorial has now been subjected to severe vandalism. The nameplates have been knocked down, probably by means of a snowmobile. This is not accidental vandalism. It is a politically motivated attack on historical memory that makes the liberators into enemies.

The same events are happening across much of Europe. In several countries, Soviet war monuments have been torn down or removed by political decisions. Elsewhere, they are vandalised or subjected to campaigns that attempt to portray them as propaganda.

This is not just a loss of history. It is moral decay.
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We will expose and destroy provocateurs and those spreading panicked rumours

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Before you is a poster by Vladimir Milashevski, published in Leningrad in 1941. Its caption reads: “We will expose and destroy provocateurs and those spreading panicked rumours”. The same was true for Moscow.

We present a publication from our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Just like in 1941, so now — be on guard and do not fall for provocative rumours that instil fear, uncertainty and doubt!

In his speech at the Red Square parade on the 7th of November 1941, Iosif Stalin said:

The enemy is not as strong as some frightened intellectuals portray it. The devil is not so terrible as they paint him.
The «frightened intellectuals», in today’s terms, would be the liberal 5th column.

Here is a short fragment of an article «How Stalin dismantled the 5th column in the fall of 1941».

♦️♦️♦️

The problem of the 5th column existed, exists and will exist, perhaps, forever. It is not so easy to identify the 5th column, only the master can do this. And Stalin did it in October 1941!

Reading the memoirs of Academician Vernadsky, you discover two details that seem to contradict each other. Many people see this in the media about the Defence of Moscow: they say that the hardest days were October 16-17, that’s when panic arose. The «worst» part of the population, it must be assumed, imagined that German tanks were about to enter Moscow, trampling the streets with their tracks. There were some reasons for this hallucination – first of all, the fact that on the morning of October 16, the Sovinformburo did not give, as always, a summary from the theatre of military operations, and it was briefly reported that the Germans broke through the front. And that’s it.

In addition of the case with the radio, the top management instructed to open industrial goods stores, where everything was distributed for free — take as much as you like. And grocery stores received instructions to dispense food on the food cards up to the end of the month and even gave more than what the card norms provided for — from which many concluded that all food stocks are being liquidated and this can only mean one thing — the end. Even the trams stopped running.

Some strangers called the institutions and shouted at the directors that it was necessary to leave Moscow immediately, leave it as soon as possible. Many directors who had transport at their disposal filled these trucks with food, plus grabbed huge amounts of state money, and tried to leave Moscow, but the population quickly organised themselves into people’s outposts, these cars were stopped and panickers were killed. There is a (very poor) reconstruction of these posts in the 1985 movie “Battle for Moscow”.

By the evening, policemen joined the people’s outposts and also began to participate in the elimination of alarmists.

But not everyone rushed out of the city, obeying the calls of unfamiliar voices on the phone, not all the directors turned out to be cheap panickers — there were many who continued their work. Many people not in high positions remained calm — they formed the backbone of the people’s outposts, which dealt with the alarmists.

♦️♦️♦️

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya was in fact in Moscow on November 16-17 and participated as a member of Komsomol in the people’s outposts. She is the epitome of steadfastness! Reportedly, according to her mother’s words, Zoya said about the 5th columnists at that time: «The ship is not yet sinking, but the despicable rats are already running.»

The French-Lithuanian falsification of WWII history by SBS

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On 8 February, SBS aired the film The Anti-Soviet Fighters (French-Lithuanian co-production), which is built entirely on lies and a cynical falsification of history.

Members of the “Forest Brothers” armed gangs are portrayed as heroes who “waged a decade-long fight against Soviet control in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia”.

In fact, the core of this “movement” was composed of former military personnel of the Baltic states belonging to the territorial SS battalions. They were involved in bloody crimes against civilians. The Nuremberg Tribunal designated all persons officially admitted as members of the SS as criminals.

According to official figures, between 1944 and 1956, the “Forest Brothers” killed more than 25’000 people in Lithuania, including over 1’000 children (52 of them were under the age of two), more than 2’000 in Latvia and 800 in Estonia. The overwhelming majority of the victims were local common people who supported the Soviet authorities or simply refused to assist underground bandit formations.

❗️This film is an attempt to brainwash the SBS audience, revise the outcomes of the Nuremberg Tribunal and glorify murderers depicting them as “freedom fighters”.

Rewriting the history of the Second World War is a dangerous path to revival of Nazism and to tragedies which must never be repeated.

From: Russian Embassy in Australia

The Liberation of Krakow

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Below are two fragments from chapter 7 of the book «1945. The Red Army’s Blitzkrieg» by Valentin Aleksandrovich Runov, which we initially presented at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Contrast the following testimony to how Anglo-Americans treated Dortmund, Dresden, Prague, Königsberg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and more….

Wawel castle and its cathedral

Writer Boris Polevoy shared his impressions of his stay in Krakow on the first day of its liberation:

Yes, it is fortunate that this city was saved. We were driving through medieval streets, and the guide was telling us: the fifteenth century, the sixteenth century, the eighteenth century.

— Please, stop here.

We went out, and the teacher solemnly declared:

— This is the tenth century. The chapel of Felix and Adauctus (https://wawel.krakow.pl/en/exhibition-constant/the-lost-wawel-1). The pearl of Europe.

And indeed, one could admire the example of magnificent architecture. The architecture is strict and at the same time peculiar, unique. The building would definitely be flying, aiming at the sky.

Then the old man took us to some kind of cathedral. We could hear our footsteps somewhere ahead of us, and the echo diligently duplicated our voices, as if responding to us from somewhere under the dome. Excellent sculptures were looking at us, but the guide kept leading us forward, not letting us stop.
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Firebombing of Königsberg by the British Air Force in 1944

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We present a translation of an extensive historiographic article “Why the British bombed Königsberg asunder?” by Stanislav Pahotin. Several fragments from it were first presented last year at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Read also: “Accidental” bombing and sinking of ships with KZ prisoners by the British Royal Air Force. With new testimonies, declassified by the Russian FSB!

On the night of August 27 and 30, 1944, the British Air Force carried out a raid on Königsberg, which resulted in the deaths of over 6,000 civilians and the destruction of the city’s historic center. These raids have sparked much debate among historians and experts, who have raised questions about the effectiveness of the carpet bombing of Königsberg, the Hintertraugheim district, and the Rosgarten district.

Questions without answers

On the night of August 26-27 and August 29-30, 1944, the British Royal Air Force carried out bombing raids on Königsberg. There are bombings during the Second World War that are known all over the world, such as the bombing of Stalingrad and Dresden. The bombing raids on Königsberg, on the contrary, remain little known to the general public. If you ask the question of why the Royal Air Force bombed Königsberg, then it will not be difficult to answer it. The Second World War was unleashed by Germany. Britain fought against Germany, led by the National Socialists, and was an ally of the Soviet Union, the United States, and other countries. There is no doubt that the struggle was against a misanthropic ideology. Based on this, we can answer the question “Why?”. Because it was a German city, because Germany was under Nazi rule and Britain was fighting against the Nazis.

But why did the British Air Force bomb only the historical center of Königsberg, and not train stations, barracks, port facilities and other military installations? Why were the raids carried out at a time when the Red Army was already on the outskirts of the borders of East Prussia?

480 tons of aerial bombs

Let’s turn to the well-known facts. The first bombing raid on Königsberg took place on the night of August 26-27, targeting the northeastern parts of the city, including Hintertraugheim and Rosgarten. The operation involved 174 four-engine Lancaster bombers from the 5th Squadron of the Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force, led by Major John Woodroffe.

Approximately 480 tons of ammunition were dropped, with one-third being fragmentation bombs and two-thirds being incendiary bombs. The Supreme Commander of Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, considered this ratio necessary in order to arrange a real fire tornado in the city and thus destroy the maximum number of inhabitants. He is often referred to as Bomber Harris, but the pilots nicknamed him differently: Butcher Harris, perhaps because they realised the consequences of his orders.

During the first bombing, about a thousand Königsbergers died. The second raid, which involved 175 Lancaster bombers and dropped 480 tons of ammunition, took place on the night of August 29-30 and resulted in the destruction of the entire central part of Königsberg, including its historic neighbourhoods. These include Altstadt, Kneiphof, and Lebenicht, the Royal Castle, the Cathedral with its Wallenrod Library and many cultural treasures, the old warehouse districts of Lastadie, the beautiful Baroque churches of Königsberg, the old university, its new building on Paradeplatz, the opera house, the famous Grafe und Unzer bookstore, the city’s historical museum, which housed many exhibits related to Kant (displayed in four rooms), and the state library with its valuable first editions. It was all destroyed. About 5,000 people were killed in the raid, but the exact number of deaths has never been determined.

‼️ Konigsberg is just one of 131 German cities that were destroyed by British aircraft in a similar way between March 1942 and April 1945.

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“The World Was Saved By The Soviet Soldier” interactive project

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“The World Was Saved By The Soviet Soldier” is an interactive project that was launched back in 2021 by the “Immortal Regiment” portal.

“As of late, more and more publications, the authors of which reshape historical events of the Second World War, appear in foreign media. We must not forget our common history and must stand together against all attempts to rewrite it. One can only resist with reasoned truth.

Videos created for the project are meant to depict how Europe was liberated from fascism.”

All film-related materials translated by Putinger’s Cat. We present the 30 episodes in the rough chronological order of the events.

Read also:

CHINA

China was attacked by Japan even before the official beginning of WWII, with the war raging between July 7, 1937 and September 9, 1945.


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POLAND (Part 1)

World War II began on September 1st, 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland. After the Red Army liberated Poland in 1945, the Soviet Union took an active part in bringing Poland back from ruin.


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“Их традиции” – Илья Эренбург, 1944

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Илья Эренбург был военным корреспондентом и публицистом, и его слова стали одним из самых мощных интеллектуальных орудий в борьбе с нацизмом. Его тексты укрепляли волю к сопротивлению, вселяли надежду и формировали нравственное самосознание того времени. Его вклад в победу до сих пор считается неотъемлемой частью исторического и культурного наследия.

Казалось бы, все статьи, написанные Ильей Эренбургом, должны быть известны и описаны. Действительно, на сайте Военной Литературы есть хронологический список его произведений военного времени.

И все же в датском издании произведений Ильи Эренбурга от 1944 года мы наткнулись на название, которого не было в списке. Да и основной текст (переведенный с датского на русский) не появился бы ни в одной антологии. Мыыпедставляем вашему вниманию: “Их традиции”, переведенные с датского обратно на русский.

По-фашистки – “победитель”, а по-нашему – грабитель
Карикатура Дмитрия Моора на военную тематику, одна из многих, представленных на цифровой выставке библиотеки имени Некрасова “Художники победы”.

Их традиции

Передо мной письмо, написанное лейтенантом Рудольфом Шакертом. Посмотрите, что хочет сказать этот немецкий офицер, который находится в госпитале за линией фронта:

“Ты поймешь меня, дорогой Эрнст, моё сердце вот-вот разорвется. Пока ты сидел на крайнем севере, я сражался за Крым. Там погибли мои лучшие друзья. Со школьных лет мы помним, что земля, которая пила немецкую кровь, – это немецкая земля, но, по-видимому, Крым скоро будет эвакуирован. Ханс Тильт говорит только об одном — он не может вынести эвакуации Житомира. Я утешаю себя одним: мы завоевали эти земли своей кровью, кровью лучших, и даже если из-за предательских действий плутократов мы проиграем эту войну, Германия никогда не забудет, что ее дети были на Украине и в Севастополе. Волгу можно назвать походом, но Украина и Крым – это завоевания. Если я пройду через это, я расскажу Отто о садах Крыма, и он будет мечтать о том времени, когда вырастет и сможет вернуть утраченное. У меня такое чувство, что началась столетняя война; возможно, будут паузы, но мы добьемся своего…”

Я прошу читателей задуматься над письмом Шакерта. Он не одинок в мечтах о новых войнах: таких немцев много. Недостаточно того, что мы прогоним немцев. Мы также должны отправиться в Германию. Это необходимо для судьбы будущих поколений. Мы должны отучить немцев от многого — и этого не добьёшься проповедями и речами.
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“Their Traditions” – By Ilya Ehrenburg, 1944

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Ilya Ehrenburg, as a war correspondent and publicist, his words became one of the most powerful intellectual weapons in the fight against Nazism. His texts strengthened the will to resist, gave hope, and shaped the moral self-understanding of the time. His contribution to the victory is still considered an indispensable part of the historical and cultural heritage.

It would seem that all the articles, written by Ilya Ehrenburg would be known and annotated. Indeed, there is a chronological list of his War-time works at the Military Literature site.

And yet, in a Danish edition of Ilya Ehrenburg’s works from 1944 we came across a title, not listed anywhere. Nor would the body of the text (translated to Russian) would come up in any anthologies. so here it is: “Their Traditions”, translated by BATS to English from Danish, and first published at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”. In the next post we will also re-translate the publication back to Russian, to bring back this lost, but found article.

In fascist-speak it’s ‘a victor’, while in ours, it’s ‘a robber’
A War-time caricature by Dmitry Moor, one of many on display at the digital exhibition of the Nekrasov library, “The Artists of Victory”.

Their Traditions

In front of me is a letter written by Lieutenant Rudolf Schackert. See here what this German officer, who is in a hospital behind the front, has to say:

“You will understand me, dear Ernst, my heart is about to burst. While you were sitting in the high north, I was fighting for the Crimea. My best friends were killed there. We remember from school days that land that has drunk German blood is German land, but apparently the Crimea will soon be evacuated. Hans Tilt speaks of only one thing — he cannot bear the evacuation of Zhitomir. I console myself with one thing: we have claimed these lands with our blood, the blood of the best, and even if the treacherous actions of the plutocrats should cause us to lose this war, Germany will never forget that her children were in Ukraine and Sevastopol. The Volga can be described as a campaign, but Ukraine and Crimea are conquests. If I get through it, I’ll tell Otto about the gardens of Crimea, and he will dream of the time when he grows up and can win back what was lost. I have a feeling that a 100 Years’ War has begun; there’ll probably be pauses, but we’ll get there…”

I ask readers to think about Schackert’s letter. He’s not alone in dreaming of new wars: there are many such Germans. It is not enough that we chase the Germans out. We must also go to Germany. It is necessary for the fate of future generations. We must wean the Germans off a lot — and that will not be achieved with sermons and speeches.
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The anniversary of Ilya Ehrenburg

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135 years ago, on January 26, 1891, the Russian and Soviet poet Ilya Ehrenburg was born. We translated at out Telegram channel a commemorative post by the Russian Embassy in Germany.

Ilya Ehrenburg among army newspaper staff, August 1, 1943. Photo by Sergey Loskutov

🖋 Ilya Ehrenburg has gone down in Russian and Soviet history as a writer, poet, journalist, war reporter, and photographer. His words became one of the most powerful weapons in the fight against Nazism. His contribution to the victory is rightly considered an inseparable part of the heroic heritage of our people.

🖋 Ehrenburg was born in Kiev in 1891 and spent part of his youth between Russia and Europe. He lived, among other places, in Paris and Berlin, where he exchanged ideas with artists and writers of European modernism.

🖋 As a writer, Ehrenburg created novels, essays, and memoirs that became important testimonies of their era. Works such as “The Unusual Adventures of Julio Jurenito,” which paints a multifaceted, mosaic-like picture of life in Europe and Russia during the First World War and the Revolution, or his autobiographical memoirs “People, Years, Life” combine literary form with political analysis and personal experience.

🖋 Particularly influential was Ehrenburg’s role during the Second World War. As a war correspondent and publicist, his words became one of the most powerful intellectual weapons in the fight against Nazism. His texts strengthened the will to resist, gave hope, and shaped the moral self-understanding of the time. His contribution to the victory is still considered an indispensable part of the historical and cultural heritage.

🖋 After the war, Ehrenburg advocated for understanding, peace, and cultural dialogue. He was a voice against antisemitism, against new enemy images, and for the right to remember. Of particular significance was the “Black Book” about the genocide of Soviet Jews, which he co-edited with Vasily Grossman and was the first major documentation of the Shoah.

🖋 In 1954, Ehrenburg also wrote the story “Thaw,” which was published in the magazine “Znamya” and gave its name to an entire era of Soviet history.

The Forgotten Victory Parade of the Allies on September 7, 1945

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The allied forces of the Anti-Hitler Coalition held a parade in honour of the end of the Second World War. Parade taken by Soviet troops in Chief Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the commander of the 3rd U.S. Army General George Patton, the British General Robertson and French General Marie-Pierre Kœnig.

The parade was almost cancelled due to General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery declining the invitations shortly before the parade, but at Iosif Stalin’s insistence, took place anyway.

It is known as a “forgotten parade”, as it was mentioned in only a few Western sources, and only showed once in the USSR. The forces of four Allies also participated in another Berlin parade several months later, on the Charlottenburger Chaussee, in front of the Brandenburg Gate, on the first anniversary of the German surrender on 8 May 1946, in the Berlin Victory Parade of 1946. This parade was connected to the inauguration of the Soviet War Memorial at Tiergarten. Soviet troops were not present at the much more widely known in the West London Victory Celebrations of 1946.


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We presented this translation first at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Word to Georgy Zhukov, “Recollections and Reflections”, volume 2, 1974 edition, translation from 1985, page 427-428

By common agreement the salute was to be taken by the Commanders-in-Chief of the Soviet, US, British and French Forces.

All arms of the land forces participated in the Berlin Parade. It was decided not to call in the air forces and navies as they were considerable distances away from Berlin.

The appointed date was approaching. The Soviet troops carried out a thorough preparation. We sought to invite to this parade primarily those soldiers, NCOs, officers and generals who had displayed particular gallantry in the storming of Berlin and particularly its main strongholds of resistance — the Reichstag and the Imperial Chancellery. Everything was going on according to our agreement with the Allies.

But on the very eve of the parade, we were suddenly informed that for a number of reasons the Commanders-in-Chief of the Allied Forces could not come to Berlin for the Victory Parade, and had authorised their generals to attend.

I immediately put a telephone call through to Stalin. He heard my report and said:

“They want to belittle the political importance of the parade of troops of the anti-Hitler coalition countries. Just wait, they’ll be up to something else next. Ignore the refusal of the Allies and take the salute yourself, all the more so, as we have more rights to do it than they.”

The parade of troops in Berlin was held on September 7, 1945, exactly at the appointed time. Participating were the Soviet troops which had stormed Berlin, and American, British and French troops which were stationed in Berlin in order to carry out occupation duties in the western sectors of Berlin set aside for them.

After reviewing the troops drawn up for the march-past, I made a speech noting the historic merits of the Soviet forces and the Allied Expeditionary Forces.

The Soviet infantry, tanks and artillery marched in impeccable order. A particularly memorable impression was made by our tanks and self-propelled artillery. Among the Allied troops the best-drilled were the British.

About 20,000 Berliners gathered to see the Parade. It was a ceremony symbolising the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition over the bloodthirsty fascist aggression.

And so, the parade became forgotten, pushed out of mind.

In the West, because celebrating the Victory on September 7 drove home the point that it was Socialism that won the battle over its mortal enemy — Fascism, the tool of Imperialism. As Zhukov had said, the West would not forgive USSR for liberating it — it already commenced a new war on the USSR, and this reminder did not fit into the plans.

As for the USSR, it chose to forget that parade for different reasons, one of them being the contempt that the West showed.

The feat of a Russian partisan: how to single-handedly blow up 600 Wehrmacht soldiers

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Reading time: 14 minutes

While we recall the manifestations of Nazism – past and present – let us not forget those, who fought against the Nazis, both at the front and behind enemy lines. The recounting of their feat makes for an inspiring reading!

Below, is our translation of an article by Alexander Neukropny at TopCor.ru. The article was published in 2020 for the 75th anniversary of the Victory over Nazism.

If you imagine the history of the Great Patriotic War in the form of a book, then it will probably be a huge folio in a luxurious cover, gilded and intricately decorated. Inside, anyone who opens it will find not only smooth lines and beautifully designed illustrations, but also huge gaps, mercilessly retouched and rewritten many times, or even “torn out with to the core” pages and entire chapters.

Alas, despite the titanic work of entire generations of both professional historians and amateur searchers (often much more efficient, and, most importantly, impartial and objective in their work), despite the truly reverent and caring attitude of most of our fellow citizens towards the Great Patriotic War, its chronicle still gapes with “white spots”. Forgotten exploits, unrecognised heroes, battles and skirmishes that remained unknown, each of which should serve as an example of the highest courage and steadfastness of the defenders of our Motherland… Sometimes even the brightest episodes of a great epic find themselves in a completely undeserved “shadow”, which some immediately begin to try to fill up with their own vile fabrications. We will recall one of these episodes today.

Odessa resident from Gorlovka

Meet Konstantin Alexandrovich Chekhovich. A Soviet partisan who could rightfully have been awarded the title of “The most efficient saboteur of the Great Patriotic War”. It is no joke to send to hell in one fell swoop, at the very least, a battalion of Nazi scum, or even one and a half (according to various estimates, this Wehrmacht combat unit could number from 500 to 600 units of personnel), and in addition, several dozen representatives of senior and senior commanders, who belonged not only to ordinary army personnel, but also to Nazi intelligence and counterintelligence!
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The Nazi Roots of Today’s European Union

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Reading time: 6 minutes

An article by Pål Steigan from October 21, 2025, translated by us from Norwegian.

Walther Funk, Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Provided by: Robert Jackson.

There are clear similarities between today’s EU and Nazi Germany’s plans for a Greater Germanic Reorganisation of Europe. This may seem like a drastic claim, but if we read the Nazis’ own plans and compare them with how the EU works, and not least how the EU is developing, it is not difficult to see the similarities.

The most interesting document in this context is a speech given by Hitler’s Minister of Economics Walther Funk on April 25, 1940: “Die wirtschaftliche Neuordnung Europas”.

This was a key speech in which Funk, as German Minister of Economics, outlined Nazi Germany’s plans for an economic reorganisation of Europe under German domination, including the exploitation of resources from occupied countries such as Norway.

The document promotes the idea of ​​a “European economic community” dominated by Germany, with a focus on self-sufficiency, rational allocation of resources, and the elimination of “unnecessary” competition.

These are the key points of the document:
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Forgotten History – The Moscow Negotiations of 1939

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Reading time: 5 minutes

On September 30, we remembered the 1938 agreement between Britain, France, Italy and Germany to dismember and abandon Czechoslovakia, and we commented on this Munich Betrayal connecting it to the start of World War II. In August of 1939, the USSR had no other way, but to sign a non-aggression agreement with Germany.

However, in March-April of 1939, the USSR still tried to prevent the looming War, trying to talk sense into Britain, Poland and France, in order to jointly reign in German militarism.

The following material from FKT – Geschichte der Sowjetunion (History of the Soviet Union) is about that attempt (first translated at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”).

Forgotten History – The Moscow Negotiations of 1939

❓ Was there a chance to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War?

Yes, and not just one. The last such chance was the trilateral negotiations between the Soviet Union, France, and Britain. They were initiated in April 1939 by the government of the USSR.

The Moscow negotiations, or rather their failure, marked a definitive end to the last possibility of preserving peace in Europe.

A brief summary before we go into details

🔽Background

Basically, the start of the Second World War was already preordained in 1935 when Hitler refused to comply with the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. This event took place on March 16, 1935.

Germany embarked on a consistent course of militarisation. The European countries, victors of the First World War, were content with half-hearted “protests.” The peaceful and naive Western democracies sincerely believed, according to many liberals, that the reorganised and rearmed Reich army would only participate in battles “around the harvest.”

Then followed the transfer of the Saar and Rhine regions to Hitler—of course, the USSR was blamed—the Anschluss of Austria, and finally the signing of the Munich Agreement. As a result, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist.

🔽Start of the negotiations

By early 1939, even the indigenous people of the Tuamotu Islands knew that a major war in Europe was inevitable. This was also clear to the leadership of the USSR.

No state wants to wage war alone. A government’s foreign policy is always aimed at finding allies. The Soviet Union was no exception.

Under the conditions of the escalating Polish-German conflict, the USSR proposed to Poland’s allies, namely England and France, to conclude a joint treaty to protect the Polish state. This format is referred to in historical terminology as Stalin’s “system of collective security.”

On March 18, 1939, People’s Commissar Litvinov proposed through the British ambassador in Moscow to convene a conference of six countries: USSR, England, France, Romania, Poland, and Turkey. The goal of the conference was a joint agreement to prevent the expansion of German aggression. England refused, calling the proposal “premature” and suggested limiting it to a declaration.

❗️Against all odds, the Soviet government managed to organise trilateral negotiations. These began in April 1939. England proposed to the USSR to give Poland unilateral guarantees in case of German aggression. The Soviet Union insisted on signing an official treaty between the countries.

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