Oliver Stone's comments about a "Jewish dominated media" exaggerating the Holocaust have shocked some people, but they shouldn't. Like the rest of Stone's tirade about Western bankers and Hitler being a product of his time, it's copy and pasted from Soviet history textbooks. Like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, Oliver Stone's "Secret History of America" is the USSR's version of American history, backed by some domestic sources.
One of the left's dirty secrets is that the Soviet Union was the preeminent country engaged in Holocaust denial. At a time when Germany had outlawed Holocaust denial, the Soviet Union mostly suppressed any mention of the Holocaust, focusing only on Russian casualties as a whole. Unsurprisingly that is exactly the line that Oliver Stone takes, when he emphasizes that; "Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30 million killed". In 1982, Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO, and current leader of the Palestinian Authority, included Holocaust denial material in his doctoral thesis at a Moscow University. Unsurprisingly his doctoral thesis reads a lot like Stone's comments. That is because both are grounded in the Soviet Communist view of history.
Stone's comments about Hitler and Stalin come from the same source material. His apologetic for Stalin's atrocities, "he fought the German war machine more than any person" and the claim that Hitler needs to be seen in context as a tool of Western bankers all come gift-wrapped in the red and yellow. And of course they're also lies. Because this isn't just about Oliver Stone trafficking in the anti-semitism that is now fashionable on the left, it's about some of the big lies of the left about WW2.
The Big Lie that the left has desperately tried to cover up is the Soviet Union's complicity in Hitler's rise to power and the atrocities of Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union began by suppressing German Communists to pave the way for Hitler (just as it would later do to Egyptian Communists on behalf of the Hitler-besotted Gamal Abdel Nasser). Why would it do that? For the same reason that the USSR allied with Hitler in the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, which allowed Hitler and Stalin to carve up Eastern Europe.
Stalin wanted to replay WW1, with another war between Germany, England and France-- that would give him a free hand in Eastern Europe, and then allow him to occupy a weakened Western Europe. His plan backfired badly, because Hitler proved too unpredictable for him, and England and France buckled too quickly-- but when the dust had settled, the USSR got most of what it wanted, including a sizable chunk of Germany. In 1925, Stalin made his strategy clear; "if war breaks out we shall not be able to sit with folded arms. We shall have to take action, but we shall be the last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive weight on the scales, the weight that can turn the scales." The goal was for the rest of Europe to wear itself down through war, while the Communists would come and clean up afterward.
To that end the USSR did everything possible to strengthen Hitler's hand in order to make him a more formidable enemy for England and France. While millions of its citizens were starving, Russia provided massive amounts of supplies and aid to the Nazis. In fact trains carrying Russian supplies were still headed to Germany, even while the Nazis were launching their attack. This is particularly ironic in that the US would then go on to provide massive supplies to the Soviet Union of everything from powdered milk to army boots, which enabled the USSR to stay in the fight. After the USSR had supplied Hitler for two years, enabling his conquests in Eastern Europe and the beginning of the Holocaust.
At the end of September 1939, after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had both invaded Poland, and England, France and other allies had declared war on Nazi Germany-- the USSR and Nazi Germany issued a joint declaration endorsing their own invasion, and blaming England and France for the "state of war." Both even signed secret agreements to coordinate the suppression of Polish nationalism and allow the Nazis to remove any Reich Nationals, even inside Soviet held territory.
Hitler made it clear in his correspondence that Soviet collaboration enabled Germany's assault on Eastern Europe. For example on August 25, 1939, Hitler wrote to Mussolini saying;
The Soviet alliance with Hitler enabled the Nazis to achieve the gains they did by creating a balance of power, giving Eastern European countries no choice but to either cut a deal with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, or try to remain neutral and hope the Allies would rescue them. Every Nazi atrocity until the summer of 1941, including the Holocaust is deservedly placed at the door of the USSR as Hitler's partner in the conquest of Eastern Europe.
Stalin, should have been properly ranked with Mussolini and Tojo, as one of Hitler's allies, who jointly planned invasions and whose alliance strengthened the Nazis. Indeed the USSR did far more to strengthen Hitler, than Mussolini or Franco ever did. Yet post-1941 revisionism did its best to reinvent the USSR as one of the Allies fighting against Hitler. This is a blatant lie. The Soviet Union did not stand up to Hitler as one of the nations fighting Nazi aggression-- it collaborated with Hitler up until the moment that he stabbed it in the back.
The Soviet Union did not fight Hitler voluntarily-- it fought involuntarily for its own survival. Like Finland, it would up fighting against its former allies. Unlike Finland it had no excuse for making that alliance to begin with-- except greed and ambition. The USSR suffered huge casualties, because it was unwilling to believe that Stalin would turn on it so fast. And because Stalin's own atrocities had purged too many generals, and because his entire approach to the war was done without any concern whatsoever for the deaths of his own people. All this allowed the Nazis to gain a great foothold in Russia, which combined with Hitler's refusal to retreat, ended up inflicting huge casualties on German forces as well. But let there be no doubt, that the war between the USSR and Nazi Germany was a war between former allies.
Reading all this it should be obvious why Soviet history turned Russia into the victim and practiced Holocaust denial. It was in the USSR's interest to pretend that Nazi atrocities began in the summer of 1941, because it had been complicit in Nazi atrocities up until that point. This focus also turned the USSR into the chief victim of the Nazis, as a way of deflecting the accusation that the USSR had actually been collaborating with Hitler. All the prattle about the horrors of war and the huge numbers of Russians killed, resurrected by Oliver Stone, was and is meant to mask what had been an alliance between Soviet Communism and German Nazism.
Furthermore the USSR had a compelling reason to quash any general talk about atrocities, considering its own extensive history of massacres up until and during WW2. And since Soviet Commissars had been conducting executions of Jews, back when Hitler was still trying his hand at being a painter-- any talk about the mass murder of Jews would have been unhelpful. Particularly as Stalin had liked the Holocaust, enough to try and copy it in the 1950's with the "Doctor's Plot", which would have wiped out most of the surviving Jews in the USSR.
Post-war Soviet history would insist that America and England had actually been the ones to ally with Hitler. This theme would be fused with anti-Semitism when in the 1950's, Stalin's minions launched the opening of his planned Holocaust by accusing Zionist Jews of being agents of America and England to bring down the Soviet Union. Oliver Stone's narrative is virtually the same, except that he reverses the equation by accusing America and England of being agents of the Jews. And claiming that America and England had empowered Hitler.
The emphasis on seeing Hitler "in context" and arguing that he was really no different than any Western leader, is typical of the Soviet line that there was no real difference between FDR, Churchill or Hitler. In the Soviet narrative accepted by the left, they were all capitalists who made war for greed. This rhetoric was embraced by the anti-war left in the 30's and 40's to argue that war against Hitler would be just another capitalist war to enrich the arms merchants.
What does all this have to do with the left? Because the American and European left was complicit in it by allowing itself to be manipulated by the Soviet Union. Left wing groups, many of them Communist fronts, conducted propaganda against the war-- up until the Soviet Union itself was invaded, at which point they switched to a rabidly pro-war theme, and even helped the authorities suppress remaining Trotskyist anti-war groups and labor unions.
Many principled leftists broke with with the USSR and Communist front groups over the Hitler-Stalin pact. Most however did not. It would not be until Khrushchev's revelations much later as part of the official Soviet Communist line, that there would be a larger exodus. And even so, the Soviet narrative remains embedded in the left-- as Oliver Stone's propaganda demonstrates. And that narrative has been behind the left's historical revisionism.
That historical revisionism has been expressed in the attempt to "Hitlerize" every Western leader and every political movement hostile to Communism and the left's agenda. When liberals in 2006 were comparing Bush to Hitler, they were unknowingly echoing a Soviet narrative which equated all capitalist countries and their leaders. When in 2010, they accuse Israel of being just like the Nazis, they make use of Soviet rhetoric developed during the Doctor's Plot, which was meant to culminate in a second Holocaust.
If one looks at Soviet propaganda, it is virtually identical to liberal attacks on Israel in the present day. For example;
For example the following from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia rather obviously mirrors Stone's own rhetoric about the Jewish dominated media;
Everything you really need to know about Stone's views on Israel and the Jews is contained in the above sentences. It also sums up everything in his documentaries. As well as the dominant view now among the left. Which is completely indistinguishable from the Communist view.
The left's "secret histories" are really Soviet histories. After making a show of breaking free from Soviet domination, they parrot Communist memes out of Moscow without even realizing it. The left has not had a new idea since 1916, and it shows. Its universal "Hitlerization" is nothing more than historical revisionism, whether it's presented as Oliver Stone's "Hitler with Context" or Ward Churchill's "Little Eichmanns".
The great mistake of the 20th century was the failure to hold the Soviet Union accountable for its crimes, and those due to its collaboration with Nazi Germany. And to hold its leftist collaborators morally accountable for the aid and comfort that they provided to the USSR and indirectly to Nazi Germany. That failure has allowed the left to claim a moral high ground that is both dishonest and an obscene insult to the dead.
When Showtime airs Oliver Stone's latest batch of rantings, it is not only airing material from a bigot, but recycled propaganda from a regime that committed some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. If you wish to protest Showtime's actions, feel free to drop them a line at robin.mcmillan@showtime.net or jackie.ioachim@showtime.net.
Stone's comments about Hitler and Stalin come from the same source material. His apologetic for Stalin's atrocities, "he fought the German war machine more than any person" and the claim that Hitler needs to be seen in context as a tool of Western bankers all come gift-wrapped in the red and yellow. And of course they're also lies. Because this isn't just about Oliver Stone trafficking in the anti-semitism that is now fashionable on the left, it's about some of the big lies of the left about WW2.
The Big Lie that the left has desperately tried to cover up is the Soviet Union's complicity in Hitler's rise to power and the atrocities of Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union began by suppressing German Communists to pave the way for Hitler (just as it would later do to Egyptian Communists on behalf of the Hitler-besotted Gamal Abdel Nasser). Why would it do that? For the same reason that the USSR allied with Hitler in the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, which allowed Hitler and Stalin to carve up Eastern Europe.
Stalin wanted to replay WW1, with another war between Germany, England and France-- that would give him a free hand in Eastern Europe, and then allow him to occupy a weakened Western Europe. His plan backfired badly, because Hitler proved too unpredictable for him, and England and France buckled too quickly-- but when the dust had settled, the USSR got most of what it wanted, including a sizable chunk of Germany. In 1925, Stalin made his strategy clear; "if war breaks out we shall not be able to sit with folded arms. We shall have to take action, but we shall be the last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive weight on the scales, the weight that can turn the scales." The goal was for the rest of Europe to wear itself down through war, while the Communists would come and clean up afterward.
To that end the USSR did everything possible to strengthen Hitler's hand in order to make him a more formidable enemy for England and France. While millions of its citizens were starving, Russia provided massive amounts of supplies and aid to the Nazis. In fact trains carrying Russian supplies were still headed to Germany, even while the Nazis were launching their attack. This is particularly ironic in that the US would then go on to provide massive supplies to the Soviet Union of everything from powdered milk to army boots, which enabled the USSR to stay in the fight. After the USSR had supplied Hitler for two years, enabling his conquests in Eastern Europe and the beginning of the Holocaust.
At the end of September 1939, after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had both invaded Poland, and England, France and other allies had declared war on Nazi Germany-- the USSR and Nazi Germany issued a joint declaration endorsing their own invasion, and blaming England and France for the "state of war." Both even signed secret agreements to coordinate the suppression of Polish nationalism and allow the Nazis to remove any Reich Nationals, even inside Soviet held territory.
Hitler made it clear in his correspondence that Soviet collaboration enabled Germany's assault on Eastern Europe. For example on August 25, 1939, Hitler wrote to Mussolini saying;
The pact is unconditional and includes also the obligation for consultation about all questions affecting Russia and Germany. I may tell you, Duce, that through these arrangements the favorable attitude of Russia in case of any conflict is assured, and that the possibility of the entry of Rumania into such a conflict no longer exists!
Even Turkey under these circumstances can only envisage a revision of her previous position. But I repeat once more, that Rumania is no longer in a situation to take part in a conflict against the Axis! I believe I may say to you, Duce, that through the negotiations with Soviet Russia a completely new situation in world politics has been produced which must be regarded as the greatest possible gain for the Axis.
The Soviet alliance with Hitler enabled the Nazis to achieve the gains they did by creating a balance of power, giving Eastern European countries no choice but to either cut a deal with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, or try to remain neutral and hope the Allies would rescue them. Every Nazi atrocity until the summer of 1941, including the Holocaust is deservedly placed at the door of the USSR as Hitler's partner in the conquest of Eastern Europe.
The Soviet Union did not fight Hitler voluntarily-- it fought involuntarily for its own survival. Like Finland, it would up fighting against its former allies. Unlike Finland it had no excuse for making that alliance to begin with-- except greed and ambition. The USSR suffered huge casualties, because it was unwilling to believe that Stalin would turn on it so fast. And because Stalin's own atrocities had purged too many generals, and because his entire approach to the war was done without any concern whatsoever for the deaths of his own people. All this allowed the Nazis to gain a great foothold in Russia, which combined with Hitler's refusal to retreat, ended up inflicting huge casualties on German forces as well. But let there be no doubt, that the war between the USSR and Nazi Germany was a war between former allies.
Reading all this it should be obvious why Soviet history turned Russia into the victim and practiced Holocaust denial. It was in the USSR's interest to pretend that Nazi atrocities began in the summer of 1941, because it had been complicit in Nazi atrocities up until that point. This focus also turned the USSR into the chief victim of the Nazis, as a way of deflecting the accusation that the USSR had actually been collaborating with Hitler. All the prattle about the horrors of war and the huge numbers of Russians killed, resurrected by Oliver Stone, was and is meant to mask what had been an alliance between Soviet Communism and German Nazism.
Furthermore the USSR had a compelling reason to quash any general talk about atrocities, considering its own extensive history of massacres up until and during WW2. And since Soviet Commissars had been conducting executions of Jews, back when Hitler was still trying his hand at being a painter-- any talk about the mass murder of Jews would have been unhelpful. Particularly as Stalin had liked the Holocaust, enough to try and copy it in the 1950's with the "Doctor's Plot", which would have wiped out most of the surviving Jews in the USSR.
Post-war Soviet history would insist that America and England had actually been the ones to ally with Hitler. This theme would be fused with anti-Semitism when in the 1950's, Stalin's minions launched the opening of his planned Holocaust by accusing Zionist Jews of being agents of America and England to bring down the Soviet Union. Oliver Stone's narrative is virtually the same, except that he reverses the equation by accusing America and England of being agents of the Jews. And claiming that America and England had empowered Hitler.
The emphasis on seeing Hitler "in context" and arguing that he was really no different than any Western leader, is typical of the Soviet line that there was no real difference between FDR, Churchill or Hitler. In the Soviet narrative accepted by the left, they were all capitalists who made war for greed. This rhetoric was embraced by the anti-war left in the 30's and 40's to argue that war against Hitler would be just another capitalist war to enrich the arms merchants.
What does all this have to do with the left? Because the American and European left was complicit in it by allowing itself to be manipulated by the Soviet Union. Left wing groups, many of them Communist fronts, conducted propaganda against the war-- up until the Soviet Union itself was invaded, at which point they switched to a rabidly pro-war theme, and even helped the authorities suppress remaining Trotskyist anti-war groups and labor unions.
Many principled leftists broke with with the USSR and Communist front groups over the Hitler-Stalin pact. Most however did not. It would not be until Khrushchev's revelations much later as part of the official Soviet Communist line, that there would be a larger exodus. And even so, the Soviet narrative remains embedded in the left-- as Oliver Stone's propaganda demonstrates. And that narrative has been behind the left's historical revisionism.
That historical revisionism has been expressed in the attempt to "Hitlerize" every Western leader and every political movement hostile to Communism and the left's agenda. When liberals in 2006 were comparing Bush to Hitler, they were unknowingly echoing a Soviet narrative which equated all capitalist countries and their leaders. When in 2010, they accuse Israel of being just like the Nazis, they make use of Soviet rhetoric developed during the Doctor's Plot, which was meant to culminate in a second Holocaust.
If one looks at Soviet propaganda, it is virtually identical to liberal attacks on Israel in the present day. For example;
For example the following from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia rather obviously mirrors Stone's own rhetoric about the Jewish dominated media;
"The main posits of modern Zionism are militant chauvinism, racism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism...
International Zionist Organizations own major financial funds, partly through Jewish monopolists and partly collected by Jewish mandatory charities... influences or controls significant part of media agencies and outlets in the West"
Serving as the front squad of colonialism and neo-colonialism, international Zionism actively participates in the fight against national liberation movements of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America."
Everything you really need to know about Stone's views on Israel and the Jews is contained in the above sentences. It also sums up everything in his documentaries. As well as the dominant view now among the left. Which is completely indistinguishable from the Communist view.
The great mistake of the 20th century was the failure to hold the Soviet Union accountable for its crimes, and those due to its collaboration with Nazi Germany. And to hold its leftist collaborators morally accountable for the aid and comfort that they provided to the USSR and indirectly to Nazi Germany. That failure has allowed the left to claim a moral high ground that is both dishonest and an obscene insult to the dead.
When Showtime airs Oliver Stone's latest batch of rantings, it is not only airing material from a bigot, but recycled propaganda from a regime that committed some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. If you wish to protest Showtime's actions, feel free to drop them a line at robin.mcmillan@showtime.net or jackie.ioachim@showtime.net.
Comments
First rate newsgathering!
ReplyDeleteI do plan on sending emails to Showtime.
Other than indulging in their own anti-Semitism, what do these historical revisionists hope to accomplish? They must know it's all lies.
An excellent article filled with some difficult history.
ReplyDeleteNoticeably missing is the usual canard about Hitler being a leftist. Of course he wasn't and Hitler's views, plans and strategies regarding communism and the Soviet Union really should have been pointed out. Very early in the history of the National Socialists, Hitler proposed that "the East" was lebensraum, "living space" or room for expansion for the German people and that the Slavs were unfit to live off the rich land in the east. He also claimed that communism itself was a Jewish conspiracy along with democracy in the west used to enslave the "Nordic" European peoples of the world. The National Socialists, "Nazis", were neither socialist nor nationalists. Hitler himself was not even German, he was Austrian. Also significant is that Stalin was not Russian, he was Georgian.
Anti-semitism makes for strange bedfellows. Stalin and Hitler were not natural allies, no matter how soft Stalin was on the Nazis. There is also a rich history of the struggles of his military advisors to explain what a threat Hitler was. Stalin was forced eventually to come to the West to become a part of the Axis against Germany and how this happened really deserved to be pointed out as well.
wow - Stone looks like Saddam Hussein (YmShm)
ReplyDeleteThank you, Daniel, for providing with a much needed reminder of Soviet crimes, duplicity, and their rewriting of history.
ReplyDeleteAlso, let's not forget how East Germans continued with their Jew killing through their close association with the PLO.
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But we should also unravel the mythology the Allies have built for themselves as saviors of the European Jews.
While we are deeply grateful to Allied soldiers who sacrificed so much to fight the Nazis, and to the individuals who helped European Jews, the fact remains that Allied governments and the elite behind them did not help them.
On the contrary. They put every obstacle to prevent their escape. A blatant example is the shameful behavior of the British in Palestine.
After the war, the Allies and the Vatican facilitated the escape of top Nazis. The USA even gave some of them cushy jobs in the State Department.
Jews ought to make sure that this semi-hidden history is discussed in the media and taught to future generations.
Jews were slaughtered not only because of the Nazis but because the Allies refused to help.
The Allies' complicity in the Holocaust, as well as the long and bloody history of European persecution and murder of Jews, must not be forgotten.
Israel should have a memorial dedicated to those 2000 years of persecution and murder.
And Yad Vashem should include an exhibit showing the part played by the British and other Allies in the Holocaust.
Unfortunately Israel does not want to annoy Europe and the USA by telling the truth.
Maybe it's out of fear of alienating them and their support - or what passes for support.
But this Jewish tendency to cover up the Allies' shameful past inspires their contempt and disrespect.
Just like the government's refusal to feel insulted, no matter how shabbily it's treated by foreign governments.
Israelis should also have a large memorial to victims of Muslim terror. The fact that they don't goes to show the insanity of political correctness.
You could have gone further. This type of antisemitic vile spewed by Oliver Stone is also the centerpoint of such radio programs as Alex Jones and nearly every one of his guests. They blame Israel and the Jews for just about everything.
ReplyDeleteThis pretty much shows the distorted Muslim world view in one article. I think Muslims probably will glean more nuance from it than non-Muslims, but enough Muslim speak won't go over our heads:
ReplyDelete"Muslims need to tackle Jewish Islamophobia"
http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=195609
I have sent emails regarding this loser.
ReplyDeleteThanks Daniel.
Mr. Greenfield, you are missing a few things:
ReplyDelete1) The Soviet Union "allied" with Nazi Germany in August 1939 after long failed attempts to form a united front against Hitler with Britain and France. This is why the Jewish Foreign Minister, Maxim Litvinov, was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov immediately before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. Litvinov was made the Soviet ambassador to the US. I put "allied" in quotes because it was more an act of appeasement than a genuine alliance. After the liquidation of the Red Army's elite personnel, and poor performance in the Spanish Civil War and skirmishes with Japan, Stalin feared Hitler and knew that the Soviet Union needed more time, hopefully till 1944, to prepare for war against Hitler's Germany. So one can certainly say that Stalin had an "excuse" to "ally" with Hitler.
2) Regarding Commissars murdering Jews, this is simply not true. Jews were never targeted as Jews by the Bolsheviks between 1917 and 1939. During the Russian Civil War and the Soviet-Polish of 1919-21, Trotsky's Red Army was the only force in the land that did NOT perpetrate antisemitic massacres and did not engage in antisemitic propaganda. In fact, this is what motivated many Jews to enlist in the Red Army in the first place. During most of the first two decades of the Soviet Union, Jews were heavily overrepresented in the Party bureaucracy; one can plausibly say that during this period Jews materially had it better than any other ethnic group in the USSR. This of course does not mean that Bolshevism was a Jewish Conspiracy. But for all of its atrocities and barbarism, Soviet Boslhevism was NOT particularly antisemitic before WWII.
3) Stalin greatly facilitated the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine by decisive UN votes, and men and materiel (including sending experienced Jewish Red Army veterans) during Israel's war of independence.
The Soviet Union was the chief instrument of Jewish salvation during the war, for many it was their only hope. The USSR shouldn't be blamed for WWII atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and her allies, and Soviet antisemitism shouldn't be exaggerated.
S.
ReplyDeleteI believe you're covered the Soviet apologetics quite thoroughly.
1. You've got the USSR being forced to ally with Hitler. Of course the USSR was also forced to invade and carve up all those countries, because it just had no choice. (Naturally after the war it had no choice but to do the same, after all it was afraid of America.)
Stalin and Hitler had common interests, that of carving up Eastern Europe into their spheres of influence. Stalin would never have gotten the go ahead for that from the Allies at the time. (He did after the war, as a recognition of a fait accompli.)
2. The Communists began by approving pogroms, they took Jewish hostages, and once in power began the wholesale suppression, imprisonment and execution of Jewish communities and organizations.
The Communists calculatedly spoke out against anti-Semitism and were less likely to engage in pogroms than any other faction, but de facto, the Communist party leadership was anti-Semitic. Its Jewish members were purged, their presence was treated as a phase.
Reading Babel's Red Cavalry, should disabuse you of the idea that the Communist forces were any fundamentally better than their enemies regarding Jews.
3. Stalin supported Israel because he hoped to launch a Communist takeover of Israel. That plot was quietly suppressed, arms caches were seized and the participants interrogated. Once that happened, the Soviet line on Israel began to change dramatically.
During WW2, the USSR was as likely to execute Jewish refugees, as to take them in. The chief salvation for Jews involved escaping Soviet territory once the war was over.
Paul,
ReplyDeleteHitler was not a leftist, and he was hardly the first German leader to try and "Steal the Thunder" of the left by using socialism.
The Nazis viewed Slavs as a slave race, which was a convenient way of justifying the economic needs to balance socialism for German workers, with slavery for their victims.
Tracy,
ReplyDeleteindeed. Saving Jewish lives has rarely been a priority, and considering the fairly open bigotry of FDR or his successor, it's not terribly surprising either.
For the British, Jewish survivors would just create more problems in Israel.
Mark Penn,
ReplyDeleteStone markets some of the same material, but really he's a Communist posing as a conspiracy theorist, as a convenient plot.
Alex Jones and a lot of that crowd package together existing conspiracy theories from all quarters, many of which of course focus on the Jews, as a moneymaking tool.
In occupying small Eastern European states the Soviet Union acted in its interests, just as Poland had when it helped itself to a piece of Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of Munich. Does this mean Poland was allied with Nazi Germany in 1938? The different Slavic tribes of the region had long had rivalries over conflicting territorial claims that have nothing to do with Hitler.
ReplyDeleteDuring the Civil War the Poles and the Ukrainians murdered tens of thousands of Jews, for being Jews. There was simply no camparable antisemitism from the Bolshevik side. Sure, they suppressed Judaism and Zionism, but that is because they were anti-religious (in general) and anti-nationalist (in general). Not because of antisemitism.
Funny you should mention Babel's Red Cavalry, I'm reading it now. Any specific places where you wish to direct my attention?
The Soviet Union collaborated with Nazi Germany to carve up Eastern Europe. What happened to the Jews under Nazi rule was the result of a Soviet conspiracy with Hitler.
ReplyDeleteThe Bolsheviks not killing Jews on the same scale as the Ukrainians (at the time) is not much of a defense. It's actually not a defense at all. And the only reason they didn't kill Jews was because they had a use for them. Once their system was more securely in place, they began disposing of Jews at an increasing rate.
If you're reading the book, you don't need me to tell you where.
Sultan:
ReplyDelete"The Soviet Union collaborated with Nazi Germany to carve up Eastern Europe. What happened to the Jews under Nazi rule was the result of a Soviet conspiracy with Hitler."
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. You couldn't possibly mean that the Holocaust, engineered by the Nazis and set forth at the Wansee conference, was the result of a Soviet conspiracy with Hitler. The best you could possibly be meaning by this is that what happened to the Jews under Nazi rule - in the east - was the - indirect - result of a Soviet conspiracy.
The Holocaust is best described as conspiracy of Nazi occupied Europe. The Nazi occupation of the east and the attempt to exterminate Jews there may have been more complicated. Especially since the Nazis were also attempting to exterminate slavs. The perpetration of the Holocaust in Europe was greatly facilitated by sympathetic anti-semites in countries outside of Germany. For many countries, their enthusiasm eclipsed the German's own, Croatia for example, who didn't have enough Jews, really, to keep up with their appetite for slaughter and were happy to make up for it on the Serbs. More slavs, if you can imagine that the Croatians are not slavs.
I mean, very simply, that the Soviet Union's actions in carving up Eastern Europe with Hitler, enabled the Holocaust to take place
ReplyDeletesee article
"The Soviet alliance with Hitler enabled the Nazis to achieve the gains they did by creating a balance of power, giving Eastern European countries no choice but to either cut a deal with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, or try to remain neutral and hope the Allies would rescue them. Every Nazi atrocity until the summer of 1941, including the Holocaust is deservedly placed at the door of the USSR as Hitler's partner in the conquest of Eastern Europe."
"Every Nazi atrocity until the summer of 1941, including the Holocaust is deservedly placed at the door of the USSR as Hitler's partner in the conquest of Eastern Europe."
ReplyDeleteso you're saying that the Soviets are responsible for the Holocaust Daniel? I have some questions, would the Holocaust have happened at all if Europe hadn't been Christian? Let us suppose this analysis is correct, that means that if Hitler had not partnered with Stalin, the Holocaust would not have happened.
There was a common denominator in pogroms and genocide against Jews, and it wasn't Stalin or Russia or Hitler for that matter.
The Jew hatred that enabled the Holocaust to take place was there long before Hitler, or Stalin.
Or to put in context, the Holocaust could still have happened without Stalin and Hitler partnering. The cause nor reason was their partnership.
"The Soviet Union collaborated with Nazi Germany to carve up Eastern Europe. What happened to the Jews under Nazi rule was the result of a Soviet conspiracy with Hitler."
ReplyDeleteThat has to be one of the most disturbing aspect of WWII that has been succesfully swept under the carpet. Most non-historians were simply taught in high school that the USSR were the "good guys" helping the US to defeat Germany.
Ask most Americans and that's the anwer you'd get. Simplistic but yes, that's what you'd get.
The Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust. The Soviet Union enabled it by helping Germany carve up Eastern Europe, much as the Allies were responsible for what happened in Czechoslovakia.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that the tragedy of the Nazi years was partly brought about by the relentless Socialist and Communist undermining of the Weimar Republic. Many of those Leftists were Jewish, so there's an irony for you.
ReplyDeleteOf course the situation was a lot more complicated, with the influence of the army and other issues.
But the extreme right and Hitler would not have succeeded if it were not for a population spooked by the fear of Bolshevism and political and economic chaos as experienced after WWI.
Daniel and others, I wonder whether you would care to comment about this.
(BTW an echo of that situation occurred in Chile in the seventies, when an out-of-control extreme left wing pushed the Allende democratic government so hard that it precipitated the bloody military coup in which they and many others were victimized.)
when the far right and the far left get in a no holds barred fight for power, whoever wins the results will be horrific
ReplyDeleteActually Hitler was a leftist. Saying he wasn't is just further pushing the lie that Hitler was "right wing" and that all Nazis were and are "right wing."
ReplyDeleteHow was Hitler left wing? It's blatantly obvious. The only problem is that these facts are usually swept under the carpet by the people selling this "collective guilt" to Germans these days, which means: German politicians and media telling Germans people who were born after the war, that they bear responsibility for the Holocaust, which is, in fact, a Nazi principle by itself. It was called "Sippenhaftung". One member of a group committed a crime and thus all members of the group were criminals.
Anyway.
First of, national socialism is exactly that. Socialism on a national level, focusing primarily on this strange idea of "race" instead of "class". "Race" is nothing new in socialism. It was an important point long before Hitler. Plus, Hitler's national socialism has plenty of "class warfare" themes. Even today you can watch one national socialist country: North Korea. It's always sold as stalinist, but North Korea has copied the "Aryan master race" idea and calls it "national bloodline", for which people are murdered, similar to what the Nazis did.
Most importantly though are the statements of Nazi leaders themselves.
Göbbels said in a speech in December 1933 that the NSDAP is, by definition, the Germal left wing (he called it "die deutsche Linke") and that they hate nothing more than a "rechtsstehendes Besitzbürgertum", a right-wing bourgeousie (literally a "right-wing property owning citizenry".)
In early 1945 Hitler held a conference of the Gauleiters. During this Hitler lamented that, while the Nazis had succeeded in destroying the "Klassenkämpfer" (lit. "class warriors", aka the Communists, Hitler's direct competition for power) they had failed to destroy the German right wing. Hitler called this their biggest sin.
In comparison, right wing people under Hitler were men like Stauffenberg.
And if we go back into the history of the socialist movement, then we find men like Karl Kautzky, chief ideologist of the German Socialist Party, SPD, which still exists today. Kautzky once wrote, in 1914, that the ultimate goal must be the destruction of capitalism, because if you destroy capitalism, you destroy the Jews, and that is good.
And even the founder, Karl Marx himself, ranted about how "inferior classes and races must be wiped out."
Genocide is part of the program, coming from Marx himself. Lenin. Hitler. Stalin. Mao. Pol Pot. Che. Castro. And so on. They all just followed the orders from Marx himself. Without Marx there wouldn't have been a Holocaust. Without Marx no gulags, no famines from Lenin, and so on.
Also, calling Hitler far right is a logic falacy.
Communism, socialism always lead to what? Oppression, dictatorship, mass murder, as history proves without a doubt. If we call Hitler "far right", then the extreme opposite to socialist mass murder and oppression is... socialist mass murder and oppression. Which doesn't make much sense, does it?
Far right, that's not the Nazis, that's the extreme support of liberty, freedom and democracy.
Hitler borrowed some ideas from the left, but he was not a leftist. His political allies and power came from the right. He was good however at co-opting left wing ideas, and ideas from all over the spectrum and using them.
ReplyDeleteHitler could play socialist protecting the workers against capitalism and capitalist protecting the industrialists against the left with equal ease. Just as he could play atheist and christian at the same time.
Sultan - it would be better if you'd replaced every use of the word "Communist" with "Soviet", "Leninist",
ReplyDelete"Stalinist" or even "Marxist".
Nobody knows what Communism is. Even "Marxism" is a vague term. We should keep to factual and descriptive language.
The communist ideal of "to everybody by their needs, from everybody by their ability" is certainly implausible now but is not evil per se and can be seen as the ultimate empowerment of the individual. The evils of modern political self-procaimed communist systems and parties came all about as attempts to prematurely force the fake solutions under the false pretences. As long as it is kept were it belongs - in the realm of ideas far removed from Reality and ideals far removed from The Present, to be approached by slow and true process of organic development and no fakery is forced under its banner, it is OK. The merits of non-hierarchical society can be safely discussed and evaluated as long as nothing is forced. Remember, No Coercion.
Now, about Nazi ideals none of the above is applicable, because they specifically evoke violence as the core part of their doctrine. The chief guilt of "the Jew" was to instill "the gentile" with morals, under Hitler's view, to prevent him from using the "sacred violence" in advancement of his "interests" (compare that with the "interests" worship of today's Washington's "realist" crowd).
So no, Communism and Nazism are not both Evil ideologies. The Soviet ideology post-Stalin wasn't even as evil as the Nazi one, because there were no claims to Superiority and Domination (unlike in Islamism too), and the "victory" of "the Communism" was supposed to come about only by its supposed merits. Officialy.
Sultan, when using too pictorial a language one should be cautious not to let it cloud your judgment. Re your use of "carving up Eastern Europe" bit.
ReplyDeleteStalin was re-taking the territories once under Russian Empire's rule. When offered more land by the Nazis, in Poland, he refused. This is not to apologize Stalin, but to defuse the emotionally charged language.
Similarly you're wrong on Bolshevism vs. the Jews. It were the White forces that were heavily antisemitic, indulging in mass pogroms. But on the Reds side pogroms were declared a capital offence. Many *many* comissars were indeed ethnically Jewish. Zionists and religious Jews were persecuted as dissenters, as ideological opponents to the totalitarian regime (not to make light of that persecution in any way). Russian Orthodox clergy was desimated too.
You are wrong there.
Communism is the officially sanctioned political doctrines of the Communist party, as it was directed out of Moscow.
ReplyDeletePlease don't talk about Communist ideals. If we went by ideals, the Nazi party was a wonderful organization that wanted to promote a sense of national pride and worker's rights.
There is no "slow way" to approach what is a class warfare doctrine cloaked in Utopian fairy tales about a better world. You can't transform human beings into something they're not. All you can do is cause a lot of misery trying.
If you define down Nazism, the way you defined down Communism, you can turn it into some airy ideal about national pride that's harmless too. It's when you deal with the reality of it, that you can't.
Communism and Nazis were both evil, because both apportioned unlimited power to themselves. The post-Stalin Communism was mainly an oligarchy interested in stealing everything, but it was still horrendously evil.
Carving up Eastern Europe, was exactly what Germany and the USSR did. Disguising that with euphemisms has no place when discussing two monstrous entities. Yes, more emotionally charged language. About events that more dispassionate observers at the New York Times buried far out of sight. So perhaps there is a need for emotionally charged language after all.
ReplyDeleteAs for Stalin, by the time he was done, he had all of it, and used brutal force to control and hold it.
The Whites and Reds were both anti-semitic. The difference is that the Reds had a temporary use for Jews, before wiping them out down the road. That was why they less likely to conduct massacres then.
Those Jewish "commissars" wound up purged down the road anyway. And those Jews who fought for the Reds wound up in a system that was anti-semitic and sought their extinction.
Jews were persecuted for being Jewish, regardless of how much they supported the Soviet Union. Communist Jewish intellectuals were eventually massacred anyway. Communist Jewish leaders were eventually massacred too.
It was not the same thing as the Church. It was an attack on Jewish identity, not just religion. It was the suppression of an entire language, eventually of Jewish culture-- all in line with a policy of destroying Jews as a group.
These comments of yours are disgusting and wrong. They amount to a defense of an ideology and a regime covered in blood. Jewish blood not the least of it.
Daniel - I know I weren't defending the USSR regime and ideology, nor were I defending the ideology of Marxism, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't do anything of the sorts, in the end.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the "communist" ideal of "better word" is no different than that of "tikkun olam", and CPSU doesn't get to define it for me, just because they fraudulently used that name - by itself very vaguely defined.
What is not defined vaguely, is Marxism, and Leninism, and Stalinism, and Maoism. And when you say that Communism is evil, what it sounds like is as if you're saying, the ideal of "tikkun olam" is evil. I know you don't say that, but it sounds like it. That is why my original plea to you was to use a well-defined political terms (Leninism etc) for political phenomena. Communism as a word can refer not only to policies and ideology, but ideals also, and one has nothing to do with the other.
And no, this can't be done with the nazi ideals, and I wrote at length about WHY it isn't so.
As to the facts of different levels of Soviet persecution of Jews at different historical periods, your use of single word "persecution" to describe them doesnt help. One thing is ghettos, another is gas chambers, and restricted access to higher education is something else entirely. You also mix different periods too easily; 10 years is a lot of time for people who actually live out their lives. Some policies were inacted since the 1950s, some since 1930s, and during the civil war the Bolsheviks were the most anti-antisemitic force in the former Russian empire.
As for "carving up" Poland and the Baltic states, they only existed for 20 years at the time. The Baltics were all natural allies of the nazis, and Poland nearly came to be one as well, rejecting Hitler's offer out of their sheer sense of national grandiosity. I refuse to take offense at their misfortune.
That Jews were also present there is a tragedy of historical coincidence.
Plus, Poland and the Baltics were all highly antisemitic societies at the time.
ReplyDeleteTo clarify: bolshevism/Leninism was indeed evil ideology and political force; it too abolished what it called "the old, Bourgeois morals", just as NAzism did. Internally, if we take the Jews out of the equation, it was even more evil than Nazism was. The everage German had it relatively good under the Nazis, compared to the average Soviet.
The political Communism of the Modern world is wrong and evil. But this has nothing to do with the ideals of a better word, a caring society of free and responsible individuals. As long as nothing is forced on anyone. How to get there, is what the political Communism got entirely wrong, and it become evil when it set out to enforce its fake solutions on people. It was more evil to use these ideals as cover for its totalitarian control and oppression. Still, it does not disqualify the ideals themselves.
Since Tikkun Olam as it's used today is a way to translate left wing ideology into Jewish terms, that isn't much of a defense of Communism.
ReplyDeleteEvery ideology has ideas of a better world. What matters is the reality of their application. The form of Communism that matters is the one that is applied.
Sure it can be done with Nazism. Worker's rights. National pride. Political reforms. A just and equal society for those who do the work. Not too different from Communism in some ways.
The Nazi persecution of Jews differed across different periods as well.
Poland, Russia and the Baltics were all highly anti-semitic societies, still are.
ReplyDeleteThe correct parallel to Nazism is Leninism/Stalinism, not Communism. There were/is many disparate political dogmas and ideologies under the banner of "communism" and the only common denominator of them all - what can only be referred to as "communism" itself - is the vague notion of a better life for all. "Of everybody by their ability, to everybody by their needs" is a good ideal. Unimplementable at that time, and this, but who's to say about the future. Free and caring uncoercive society of responsible individuals, whose goal is the flourishing of each and all, is entirely good in my book. As long as no fake premature solutions are forced on anybody. No coercion.
ReplyDeleteThe racial supremacy of Nordics Whites is not a good ideal. Nor is the explicit renouncing of morals in favor of struggle for supremacy in the name of profit - not for all, but for a chosen, specifically at the expense of all others. Where coercive, murderous violence is proclaimed to be "sacred".
Yes the Nazi persecution of Jews differed actoss different periods too, and that is entirely the point. Were they not to make that final step of extermination, instead stopping just at segregation, it would be ENTIRELY different story then. Zionism too supports national segregation of Jews from their Dispersal into the one nation state. Were the Germans and Poles and Hungarians to revoke citizenship from Jews and support their repatriation to Israel, what can I tell you, I wouldn't have so much of a problem with that.
But that couldn't be, with the Nazis (unlike the Hungarians for example) precisely because of their core values that are entirely evil - at the level of ideals. Unlike those of "communism". It is explicitely NOT "better life for all". It is "better life for all Nordic Germanic Whites". First - inclusive, second - exclusive. Just like the Muslim notion of peace and brotherhood for the believers, and subjugation, slavery and death for all others.
And this is a very important thing to distinguish, because if not, than it's not important who won in the WWII, they were all the same, and the Germans were singled out unfairly by the scheming British Imperialists, victims of allied propaganda about the non-existent gas chambers, about to be overrun by the evil Stalinist commissars and so just had to defend themselves with a preventive attack (which actually can be argued on merits, as we now know from Victor Suvorov's work), and all that cr*p.
See, rabid anti-communism leads to neo-nazism. As easy as 1-2-3.
I've written a lengthy reply, and your page just ate it.
ReplyDeleteCommunism as an ideal is all-inclusive. "Good life for all", a free society of responsible individuals where each and all get to flourish. You say it is unrealistic, I say people can choose to be nice to each other, rationally, with open eyes.
Nazism, like islamic sharia, is exclusive. That's the key difference. Nazism is all about the natural state of man-beast, and how the morals are restrictive and artificial.
The Communism that matters is as it was implemented and practiced in the USSR, the PRC, and so on and so forth. It's not some sort of vague ideals about the world being a nicer place if everyone would only learn to get along with each other. It's a political and economic system.
ReplyDeleteNeither racial warfare nor class warfare is a particularly good model for a society. Which covers both Nazism and Communism. Both are exclusive to a chosen group, both suppress dissent to create an absolute tyranny with a handful of people at the top.
The Nazi persecution of Jews eventually culminated in genocide. The Communist persecution of Jews nearly culminated in genocide, and then finally settling for cultural genocide.
The Nazis and the Communists were both evil. One does not and should not choose to justify one evil in order to condemn another.
Equivocating Communism with Nazism is the favorite petpeeve of Nazi apologists. Communist ideals are about equality, however misapplied by a communist political doctrine(s) of the time. Class warfare was never a part of core ideals, but rather a part of political dictrines of Marxism/Leninism, deemed (wrongly) as "the necessary evil". It is not necessary, and is pure evil.
ReplyDeleteNazi ideals are about supremacy and domination. In the end, everyday people dont care for ideologies, but the relevant question is, what did the followers of Communism and Nazism, good-natured, naive and misguided, had to believe in, individually? The followers of Communism believed in equality and better life for all. The followers of Nazism had to believe in supremacy, domination and enslavement, in the name of better life for themselves. They were offered a Devil's bargain, and accepted it.
The distinction is crystal clear.
The insistence that Communism is somehow better than Nazism because of its ideals is the pet project of the left, because it identifies with Communism.
ReplyDeleteMany millions of dead under one tyranny. Many millions of dead under another.
Churchill would disagree with you on that one, Daniel, the great and uncompromising anti-Communist that he was. He did, in fact.
ReplyDeleteAnd again I repeat, I was never talking about Communist political doctrine as it was, compared to the Nazi one (both were exclusive and brutal); but rather of ideals. The distinction should be drawn not in the least because the "average person" are not usually specialists in doctrines per se, but rather are moved by ideals, and pledge allegiance to the political doctrines according to those ideals. They can be duped by scheming politicos, but ideals do matter, most of all on the individual's level. The ideals of Nazism are evil to begin with, and those of Communism are not.
The idea that a political doctrine and system of Communism is somehow better than the Nazi's is a firm conviction of the Left (heck, they believe it's better than Liberty and Freedom itself). I never claimed any such thing.
Even without Communism ever existing I would still claim that the Nazi political doctrines, systems and ideologies of supremacy, domination and enslavement were evil, and the Nazi ideals of natural a-moral top-predator man-beast are evil themselves.
And even without Nazis ever existing, I would still claim that communist political doctrines, systems and ideology of collectivism and tyrannical class warfare are evil, but communist ideals of betterment of mankind, of equality, brotherhood and freedom for all, are not.
I think it is important to point out that the delay of the entry of the US into WWII was entirely based on Nazi Germany's anti-communism. For many to this very day, Nazism's anti-communism is justification and validation for many of the values espoused by the Nazis. The USSR was well established by the time WWII came along and many Jews were well established among it's leadership, Trotsky, for example. But Trotsky was expelled, exiled and later assassinated by the hand of Stalin all the way from Moscow to Mexico City. Hitler called communism a Jewish invention engineered to enslave the Christian (Nordic) west and many people in the US continue to believe this.
ReplyDeleteCommunism and Nazism share false ideals and an ugly reality.
ReplyDeleteThe delay of the US was based primarily on a reaction to WW1, and the distance of the conflict. The US was not more enthusiastic about war during the Hitler-Stalin pact, than it was afterward.
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