Tag Archives: World War II

85 Years Since the Tragedy of Babi Yar: “They Were All Soviet Citizens, Murdered by Fascists”

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Words of remembrance by historian, Yaroslav Listov.

September 29th marks the 85th anniversary of the beginning of mass shootings at the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev. While it has become an exclusive symbol of the Jewish Holocaust in the post-Soviet era, the tragedy that occurred here was deeper, more extensive, and more devastating.

🕯️ The shootings at Babi Yar did not begin with Jews. Just days before the tragedy of September 29-30, 1941, the Nazis murdered 752 patients from the Ivan Pavlov psychiatric hospital, which was located near the ravine. Hundreds of people were shot, unable to escape, hide, or understand what was happening.

🕯️ Then it was Kiev’s turn. On September 29, 1941, an order was posted throughout the city: all Jews were to gather on the outskirts. In two days, approximately 60,000 people were exterminated in the ravines of Babi Yar.

🕯️ Among the victims were tens of thousands of Jews – from the elderly to children of Kiev, but they were not the only victims of fascism. In Babi Yar, partisans, communists, Komsomol members, underground fighters, and prisoners of war – Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, and people of other nationalities from the vast Soviet Union – were shot. The “factory of death” operated throughout the entire period of German occupation.

🕯️ On January 10, 1942, approximately 100 sailors from the Dniepropetrovsk Detachment of the Pinsk Military Flotilla were executed here. They were driven through the frost naked and barefoot, and they sang «The Internationale» before their deaths.

🕯️ Babi Yar became the site of the execution of five Gypsy camps.

🕯️ Near Babi Yar, the Syrets KZ camp was established, where communists, Komsomol members, underground fighters, prisoners of war, and others were held. At least 25,000 people died there.

An experimental soap factory was set up in Babi Yar to produce soap from the murdered. The Germans did not manage to complete its construction.
Prisoners were used for the most horrific task – burning the corpses. Semyon Berlyant, one of those who worked near the furnaces, testified:

“All of us, 180 people, worked (in Babi Yar) chained in iron. People literally collapsed and could not work. The gendarmerie beat these people with sticks and rifle butts… and shot and burned them in these furnaces.”

⚡️ As they retreated from Kiev and tried to hide their crimes, the Nazis partially destroyed the camp in August-September 1943, digging up and burning tens of thousands of corpses in the open “furnaces.” The bones were crushed in machines brought from Germany, and the ashes were scattered around the area.

⛓️ On the night of September 29, 1943, a rebellion broke out in Babi Yar involving 329 prisoner-of-war inmates who were working near the furnaces. 18 people survived. The remaining 311 were shot.

🗣️ The memories of witnesses are chilling:
Nadezhda Gorbacheva, a resident of Kiev:

“I personally saw Germans throwing infants into the ravine. There were not only those who had been shot in the ravine, but also the wounded, as well as living children. The Germans were burying the ravine, and it was noticeable how a small layer of earth moved from the movement of living people.”

Dina Pronicheva, an actress who miraculously survived:

“I saw women, old people, and children being undressed group by group… They were all led to an open pit, and machine gunners shot them… I saw this horror with my own eyes…
Young people became gray before my eyes.”

Raisa Dashkevich, who lost her entire family:

“The procession was terrifying – a stream of thousands of people doomed to death was moving towards Babi Yar. There was still hope that they would be sent somewhere… but when they were ordered to undress and led to this ravine – our grave – everyone realised that it was the end.”

🕯️ According to various estimates, between 100,000 and 200,000 people were shot in Babi Yar between 1941 and 1943. People of different nationalities. Different views. Different destinies.
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“Mission to Moscow” – The Two Missions of Joseph Davies

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Yesterday we presented at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden” the 1943 film “Mission to Moscow”, along with the contemporary Soviet review. We are bringing this review here, followed by a translation of one chapter, speaking of the book and how the film came to be, titled “The Two Missions of Joseph Davies” from a book by Lev Ashotovich Balayan, simply called “Stalin”.

The following review, written by N.Krugkov was published in the Soviet Red Army newspaper “Red Star” on July 30, 1943. The film in question is possibly one of the two truthful films about the USSR, coming from Hollywood, the other one being “Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia”.

«Mission to Moscow»

A new American film

Mr. Davies, the former United States Ambassador to our country, has published a book called “Mission to Moscow”. The book was a great success. It described the events leading up to the war in the language of facts and documents. The factual nature of the book, written with a sharp pen of a publicist, created its success. For the American reader, who was poorly informed about the USSR and European affairs, Davies’ book was in many ways a revelation.

Director Michael Curtiz created a movie based on the book by Joseph Davis. Of course, it was not an easy task. Davies’ book, which is a political document, did not pretend to be artistic in its presentation, it is entirely factual, and seemingly plotless. However, the events described in it are so dramatic, so close to us, people experiencing the storms and tempests of the World War, that they fit neatly within the script and allowed to create a film that makes a great impression.

Of course, to us, the Soviet people, a lot of things in the picture seem naive and sometimes even funny. Russia, apparently, remains an exotic country in the eyes of Americans, and the desire to convey to the viewer the uniqueness of the country clearly dominates the direction.

Therefore, the film carefully emphasises the shots designed, according to the authors, to show Russian exoticism. Of course, the film features a mighty-sized samovar, some bearded people dancing “hopak” at a skating rink, a sled painted with flowers, and so on. All this makes our audience smile involuntarily. But at the same time, we see the efforts of the film’s authors to show our factories built during Stalin’s five-year plans, our endless collective farm fields and our new people — energetic and courageous builders and creators of a new life.

J. Davis went to Germany before coming to the USSR. He saw the stupid German military, heard the roar of drums, the incessant brass roar of military marches, children beating the goose step, a rampant, muzzled Germany, a country where preparations for war were going on at a furious pace, where everything was trembling under Hitler’s heel.

— Tin soldiers, he said of the Germans.

And so he crossed the border: a new world, the USSR. The lively people, the ease of communication, the smiles on their faces, even the air was different, clean and fresh, and the Americans who arrived immediately felt free and simple.

This noticeable difference between the two countries is perfectly captured in the picture.

The Soviet and foreign chronicles abundantly presented in the film give the picture a documentary character, making up for what could not be done in the studio, making you feel the pulse of authentic life.

The film says: The USSR is a great country, inspired by high common and social ideals, inhabited by courageous, energetic and talented people.

The film shows political figures of the USSR and other countries. The direction did not achieve an exact similarity of images — neither in external nor in internal expression. It was satisfied with the conditional similarity, the sketchy outlines. However, even actor Walter Huston, who plays the role of Davis, did not strive to accurately reproduce the image of his character.

Some events in the film are shifted in time, apparently in order to develop the plot more dynamically, but this does not deprive the film of truthfulness, because it is based on actual facts, real events.

We see and feel the ardent desire of the film’s authors to honestly comprehend and reflect the life of our fatherland — they have succeeded in many things, some have failed — but in any case, we can rightfully say: This is the voice of our overseas friends.

The Soviet Union, which bore the brunt of the Hitlerite horde that threatened to incinerate the whole world, attracted the sympathies of all advanced humanity with its courageous struggle. America, which is fighting alongside us, has feelings of recognition and respect for the Soviet people. The film “Mission to Moscow” expresses these feelings.

You are about to read a chapter from Lev Ashotovich Balayan’s book “Stalin”. After Lev Balayan’s passing, the book was made public domain by his son, Yan Bayalan, at the site stalin.su between 2003 and 2015. The site itself is now available through the WebArchive. The book can also be found at LitLife Club.

The Two Missions of Joseph Davies

The bestseller of the 40s

Davies and Stalin in May of 1943

At the end of 1941, Joseph Davies’s book “Mission to Moscow” was published in the United States of America. This man was the US ambassador to the USSR, or rather, Franklin Roosevelt’s personal envoy to the Soviet capital, where he arrived with a very specific mission: to obtain an audience with Stalin, to deeply study and analyse the internal political situation in the Soviet Union and its foreign policy, as well as to gather information on the defence capability of our country. Davies’s work as U.S. Ambassador to the USSR lasted from January 1937 to the spring of 1938, that is it fell on the peak of “political repression”, and therefore F.Roosevelt’s personal envoy and his testimonies about the events that took place at that time, as well as his book itself, are of great interest. It is not for nothing that President Roosevelt left this inscription on his personal copy of the “Mission to Moscow: “This book is a phenomenon, it is for all times.”
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Fritzes of This Summer

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Before you is the first part of an article written by Ilya Ehrenburg, and published in “Red Star” on July 30, 1943.

The face of fascism never changes, nor its dynamics. Today, totally mobilised Ukrainians are in the same shape and form as the “Total Fritzes”, the brainwashed youths of Ukraine are just as brainwashed as were their German predecessors. And Tigers… where are the vaunted Leopard II and Challengers, that were supposed to have become the “game-changers”? Article first translated to “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Voluntarily mobilised Ukrainians are being sent to the front in a fully demoncratic fashion.

“Tigers” and Germans, who were conscripted into military service in February-March of this year on “total mobilisation”, are the highlights of the German season.

“Tigers” have been described more than once. I will try to describe the Total Fritzes. I saw them coming out of the woods, raising their hands in the air. I talked to them before they had time to put their feelings in order and find decent formulations. Total Fritzes were the last to arrive at the front, but they are the first to surrender.

In 1943, after the defeat at Stalingrad, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels cried for “Total War” and “Total Mobilisation”.
Here, Adolf Hitler is “vacuuming” the streets of Germany in search of fresh soldiers, as so aptly depicted by the Soviet artist Boris Yefimov.
The non-elected puppet Führer of Ukraine, Volodomyr Zelensky, is now doing the same thing 80 years later to provide fresh cannon fodder for his western masters.
Source: Beorn And The Shieldmaiden

Here’s a middle-aged, sad German. The military uniform does not give him a military appearance. Until March, Heinrich Sturman lived in Emden and was considered “irreplaceable”. But the Germans are masters at substitutions: a French prisoner of war replaced Heinrich Sturman. The latter was sent to the marching battalion. The training lasted two months. Heinrich Sturman learned how to shoot a rifle. He did not venture close to either a machine gun or a mortar. On July 14, he arrived at the front line. The day was quite noisy, and the music unpleasantly surprised the Total Fritz. However, even in Emden he had become unaccustomed to silence. He says that three-quarters of his city was destroyed by British bombs, but he adds: “But there were shelters there after all…” And here Heinrich Sturman found himself in a field. He climbed into a small hole. From the excess of impressions, he fell ill with dysentery. He sat in the hole, not moving, for two days. Our fighters had gone past him a long time ago, and Total Fritz was still squatting. He was discovered by our signalmen.

I’ve seen a lot of such warriors. The harvest of total mobilisation gave Hitler very mediocre soldiers. Here they are both weak-witted, and blind-sighted, and fingerless. Forty-year-old Fritzes are not suitable for the “eastern campaign”. These are mostly asthmatic, hemorrhoidal, gouty townspeople. They were afraid to sit on the grass in a German park, so as not to catch a cold. It is easy to imagine what they are going through in the Bryansk forests.

Total Fritzes are poorly trained. In the diary of the commander of the 32nd sapper battalion, Gerhardt, whom I mentioned, there is the following assessment of the replenishment: “The marching battalion is indescribably bad. They have no bearing, and they don’t understand anything.”
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«Fritz in Russia»

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A caricature series by Boris Yefimov from the 1943 book “Hitler and His Pack”. The series consists of 12 frames and covers the first year of Fritz’ stay in Russia. First published at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Let’s take a closer look at each frame!


1.
— Dear Martha, I’m not saying good-bye, because I’m going to come back in a month. The Fuhrer said that the war would last three weeks. I’ll spend a week in Moscow shops, and then head right back home…
— See you soon, Fritz!.. Remember that the size of my shoes is 38…



2.
— Dear Martha! Russians are a dark and uncultured people who do not know foreign languages. Judging by yesterday, they simply did not read Goebbels’ statement that they no longer have airplanes, guns and tanks… Your Fritz. July 1941.

⚡️⚡️⚡️

🦇 At this point we had to take a break for laughing, as the second frame came to us in Ursula von der Lying’s voice of 2022…

⚡️⚡️⚡️

“Tomorrow we will be corpses”
— A German testimony from an article in Historian Magazine.

General Günther Blumentritt, who in 1941 was chief of staff of the 4th Infantry Army, recalled after the war:

“With astonishment and disappointment, we watched the Russians in late October and early November, realising that they did not seem to care that their main forces had been defeated. During these weeks, the enemy’s resistance only intensified, and the battles became more fierce with each passing day.”



3.
— The weather is hot here. An athlete has awakened in me, and sometimes I run at night, on both short and long distances.… It’s called a marathon steeplechase and without pants. Your Fritz. August 1941.



4.
— Yesterday, I participated in a very fierce attack. Be calm, Martha, your Fritz remains unharmed. If you could have heard how our enemies were running around, how they were trying in vain to get into the air, how I grabbed my opponent along with the guano… that is, with a gun… Your brave husband Fritz. September 1941.


5.
…Russian nature is very picturesque. I am writing to you, sitting in a large birch grove. Many of my friends liked this place so much that they decided to stay here permanently… Fritz. October 1941.


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Fritz the Forerunner

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Before you is an article by Ilya Ehrenburg, published in “Red Star” on August 11, 1943.

The Fritzes who came to us for the “living space” had a forerunner. I have before me a work by Professor Karl Jentsch called “Neither Communism nor Capitalism” (“Weder Kommunismus Noch Kapitalismus”). This book was published in Leipzig in 1893, and the Fritzes can celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its publication.

The professor liked to speak bluntly. He begins his opus with the question: “Where does the land for our colonisation lie?” Having learned that the Germans are “cramped in Germany,” Karl Jentsch exclaims indignantly: “The number of Russians is enormous, while their morals are at a very low level”. Therefore, “the scientist” offers the Germans the best way out: “Russia is for us what the lands of the Slavs east of the Inn and the Elbe were for our ancestors, that is, a country designed by nature for our colonisation”.

The possessed Fuhrer was four years old at the time, and his forerunner was already developing a detailed plan for the “colonisation of Russia”. Karl Jentsch wrote that in the new colony “some will be masters, others slaves”. Long before the rogue Rosenberg, the rogue Jentsch calmly assured that “the Germans bring culture to the Russian barbarians” and that “there is no intelligentsia in Russia.” Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov, Mendeleev, Mechnikov, Sechenov lived and worked then, and the quasy-scientist Karl Jentsch smugly said that it was necessary to “send ten million Germans to Russia in order to enlighten this country”.

There were no planes or tanks yet, and Fritz the forerunner limited his projects to artillery. He wrote: “Why turn guns against our brothers, the German unemployed, when it is possible to conquer new spaces and untold riches?” Anticipating the “racial theory”, Karl Jentsch is not satisfied with the ears of the Russians. The spiritual father of Ribbentrop and Hess writes: “The first task of diplomacy is to raise and direct the whole of Europe against Russia”.

The book by Karl Jentsch ends with the call: “We need to act! The land we need will not grow by itself for us, it will have to be conquered”.

As you know, since then the Germans have twice tried to capture Russia. The rough rehearsal was conducted by the Kaiser. The Germans frolicked in the Ukraine for a while. Returning to their Swinemunde and Schweinfurths, they caught their breath and began to prepare for a decisive campaign.

The possessed one fulfilled Professor Jentsch’s dream: ten million Fritzes were sent to Russia. Colonisation has begun. But the cultural traders were in for an unpleasant surprise: the Red Army intervened in their plans. Where is the Chief Governor of the Caucasus? Where is Rostov’s advisor for commerce? Where is the Herr Commandant of Oryol? Running away, they lost not only guns and slippers, but even the scientific work of their great-grandfather Karl Jentsch.

We will remember everything: the ashes of Oryol, and the vile writings of the Leipzig professor. Don’t let them say that Hitler fell from the sky. Don’t let them blame everything on one crippled man. Jentsch lived before the crooked one. Before Hitler, they were already thinking about how to colonise Russia. It was no accident that they burned Yasnaya Polyana and the Turgenev Museum in Oryol. They’ve been dreaming about this for half a century now. They will not be able to present in a difficult moment that Hitler has “retired” and that the non-commissioned Hitlers are as pure as Easter lambs. It is necessary to rip out the snake’s sting once and for all. We need to show them that the Russian land, awakened by the invaders, gets up, goes on and punishes. The Fritzes had forerunners. But we swear over the ashes of our cities that there will be no Fritz students.

🦇 Alas, there came von der Leyens and Merkels and Merzes…

Online Course “The Road to Victory”

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The online course “The Road to Victory” is an educational project marking the 80th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

The project explores the key events of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War, the role of the USSR in the defeat of Nazism, international diplomacy, the heroism of the Soviet people, and the preservation of historical memory.

The online course is intended to preserve the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War, promote academically grounded knowledge about the events of the Second World War, and foster a greater understanding of the decisive contribution made by the Soviet people to the Victory over Nazism.

The course was developed by the HSE University and the BRICS-Russia Expert Council, with support from the BRICS Civil Council.

Watch the series in English. 👇

Episode 1 – The World on the Eve of the Second World War. The USSR and the Struggle for Collective Security

Episode 2 – The Terrifying Face of Nazism: The Genocide of Peoples, Crimes Against Human Beings and Humanity

Episode 3 – The Sacred War: Mobilising the Soviet People to Fight the Invader

Episode 4 – The Unconquered: The Role of the Defenders of Leningrad and Moscow in Foiling Operation Barbarossa

Episode 5 – “My Part in the Front-Line Report”: Stalingrad, Kursk, and the Home Front

Episode 6 – The Childless Face of War: Children and Women During the Great Patriotic War

Episode 7 – Guerrilla Warfare: Operation Concert

Episode 8 – The Fronts of the Second World War. The Resistance Movement

Episode 9 – The Anti-Hitler Coalition and Its Contribution to the Defeat of Nazism

Episode 10 – The “Russian Soldier”: The Liberation of Europe and the Far East

Episode 11 – The Nuremberg Trials and the Post-War World Order

Episode 12 – The Legacy of the Second World War: Why Manipulate Memory?

📺 “The Road to Victory” – YouTube page
📂 Download the video files in HD

Donbass Is Behind Us – The unofficial anthem of Donbass

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This song, “Donbass Is Behind Us”, dedicated to the 77th anniversary of liberating Donbass from the fascist invaders, came out in the fall of 2020 and quickly became an unofficial anthem of Donbass.

July 3rd, is Independence Day of the LPR, Lugansk People’s Republic. Here’s a translation of the song, performed by Natalia Kachura and Margarita Lisovina, to English.


Backup at Rumble.
Source of the video: “Донбасс за нами” официальный клип
Translation, adapted to preserve rhyme and rhythm, and subtitles by Putinger’s Cat

🇷🇺 🇷🇺 🇷🇺

In total darkness, came awake the Beast,
And he announced to God a heavy price.
Everyone bent, even brothers in Christ,
Everything bent, but not my Motherland.

A leap year brought rich harvest to the land,
And death was drunk, having a feast of blood,
The sky was bending under clouds of lead,
Everything bent, but not my Motherland.

Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Donbass is behind us, and with us is God!
Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Russia is with us, and with us is God!

Here, fathers’ memory was not betrayed,
Grandfathers’ land stayed in descendants’ hands,
Words can’t describe the heavy price they paid,
Not sparing own lives for the Fatherland.

And now, once more, Russia’s strength fills the hands,
For life and death for Motherland are grand.
Holding the sky, through centuries, she stands,
My unbroken and unconquered land.

Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Donbass is behind us, and with us is God!
Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Russia is with us, and with us is God!

Perhaps, we’re meant to perish on the cross,
But we won’t ever be seen kneeling down.
Out in a bloodied field, alone, for all,
Holding the sky, Donbass is holding ground.

Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Donbass is behind us, and with us is God!
Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Russia is with us, and with us is God!

🇷🇺 🇷🇺 🇷🇺

Liberation of Debaltsevo railway station on September 3, 1943. Painting by Ivan Ryzhkov, 1947. Photo by Sergey Kopylov, 2015.

By their death they death averted. Remembering June 22, 1941

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

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

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

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

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

⚡️⚡️⚡️

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

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

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

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

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

By their death they death averted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Raw video source at the site of the VGTRK

Additional strokes to Rosenberg’s portrait

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

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

“Long live our father Rosenberg!”

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

♦️♦️♦️

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

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

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

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

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

All Is in the Past — Adolf Rosenberg in His Domain

The caricature by Boris Yefimov appeared in the combined issue №11-12 of the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil” in April of 1944.
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When the War Is at the Doorstep. Interview with Nikolai Patrushev

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Interview of the Assistant to the President of Russia, Chairman of the Maritime Board of the Russian Federation N.P.Patrushev to Rossijskaya Gazeta on June 15, 2026.

Nikolai Patrushev: In Ukraine, we are saving our brothers who have fallen under the neo-Nazi occupation

On the lessons of the Second World War, forgotten today by politicians in Europe, who are leading their countries to a new catastrophe. On the role of Russia as a great maritime power. And also, for the first time, about something deeply personal – Nikolai Patrushev, Aide to the President of Russia and Chairman of the Maritime Board, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an interview about his parents who were front-line soldiers, his sister who did not survive the siege of Leningrad, childhood friends in Lithuania, and the undisclosed episodes of his service as director of the FSB.

Nikolai Platonovich, we are talking a few days before the anniversary of the most tragic date for our Motherland. The Great Patriotic War began 85 years ago. Do you think our great-grandchildren and their children will be as sensitive to the memory of the war as the generations whose parents still saw it?

Nikolai Patrushev: The Great Patriotic War is the cornerstone of national historical memory, an integral part of our culture. It is impossible to imagine a normal Russian citizen of any nationality who would not consider the memory of the War sacred. It is everyone’s task to fight uncompromisingly for the preservation of this memory. This is the best antidote to the new wars that are being unleashed on Earth today. I am sure that if people in the West were sufficiently deeply immersed in the history of World War II and knew the whole truth about the atrocities of Hitlerism, they would recoil in horror from their governments, which today support neo-Nazism.

There is anopinion that the number of citizens loyal to the Nazis and their active supporters in Europe was an order of magnitude greater than the number of resistance participants…

Nikolai Patrushev: Not an opinion, but a fact that even European historians recognise. Of the forty million French, about three and a half served the occupiers. I emphasise that they did not just sympathise, but actively served. About two hundred and fifty thousand French participated in the Resistance. The numbers are not comparable. The last defenders of the Reichstag were the French SS. Nevertheless, France became one of the victorious powers and won a seat on the UN Security Council thanks to the French anti-fascist movement and Stalin’s personal respect for General de Gaulle.

Storming of the Reichstag during the Berlin offensive. Troops of the 150th and 171st Rifle divisions of the 79th Rifle Corps of the 3rd Shock Army of the 1st Belorussian Front are fighting near the central sector of the building. Photo: Ivan Shagin / RIA Novosti

Few people know about the German occupation of the Normandy Islands in the English Channel, which belonged to the British. There, such mutual understanding was established between the British and the Germans that British police even patrolled the territory together with German soldiers. At the same time, many ordinary residents of the islands turned out to be more courageous than the British authorities and sheltered Soviet prisoners of war brought for forced labour by the Germans.

In general, it’s long been necessary to understand that the whole of Europe consciously fought against the USSR. Almost half of the SS divisions were staffed by representatives of other countries – Italy, Romania, Hungary, Finland, Slovakia, France, Croatia, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and several others.
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The mystery of the death of the first commandant of Berlin, Nikolai Berzarin

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Russian Embassy in Germany

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

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


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Watch the feature on the RT.Doc website.

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

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

A review by the Russian Foreign Ministry

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

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

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

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

Nazism was defeated. The Reich was no more.

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

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

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

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

“The New Adventures of Schweik”. A fragment of a 1943 Soviet film.

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


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

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

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

Transcript:

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

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

Close your mouth! Stand at the wall!

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

Schweik: I want to shoot him, Aunt Adele.

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

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

Why did you kill them?!

Are you silent?!

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

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

♦️♦️♦️

Trivia:

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

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

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

Who Created Hitler

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

♦️♦️♦️

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

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

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

Transcript of the clip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: @newsEconomics

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