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A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

theatlantic.com

61–70 of 153 posts

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#61

It’s amazing how quickly our Russian allies turned into our Cold War enemies at the end of WWII. I’ve heard a lot of blame on both sides, the US stockpiling arms, McCarthyism fanning the flames. But the end of this story drives home just how brutal Russia was. A wwii hero who not only deliberately went to Auschwitz for three years, organized prisoners, compiled intelligence reports, then escaped and fought bravely fo…

This is a bone of contention and a heavily discussed subject, because the world is not a black-and-white place. The Red Army was indeed a savior. It is thanks to those masses of poor soldiers, of which eight millions died, that the horror of WWII last only five years or so. All Europe and all world indeed should be grateful to them. On the other hand, there was the Stalinist regime, ruthless rule, killing one's own p…

You have to take into account Soviet intent. Stalin was not interested in liberating Poland or the other countries occupied by the Nazis per se. Stalin was interested in Soviet domination. He had already tried to conquer Poland in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 (in which Pilecki fought, as the article mentions). They lost to the Poles. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was essentially a temporary agreement (that really, neither the Nazis nor the Soviets intended to stick to ultimately) that explicitly had as its aim the division and dismemberment of Poland between Germany and Russia. "Soviet liberation" may mean that the Soviet occupation of Poland and the countries of the Eastern bloc had the result of removing the Nazis, but the ultimate goal was not liberation but also occupation.

That many Russians died to secure Soviet control over Central/Eastern Europe is not proof that the Soviets were self-sacrificial liberators, but rather that in Soviet, and ultimately Russian, culture, human life is much more dispensable to those in power than it is in the West. The Tsars, and their Soviet successors, were tyrants who could decide the fate of any subject. To this day, the Russian leadership has no problem in carrying out assassinations of politically problematic people, even abroad. The Soviet-installed government in Poland following WWII operated according to similar principles and under Soviet directives, though not to the same extremes as the Soviet leadership. Pilecki is one of many who were brutally tortured and executed by the communists, many of them members of the Home Army. Both Nazis and Soviets took part in exterminating swathes of Polish society they saw as a threat or an inconvenience to their rule (e.g. Katyn massacre), during and also, in the case of the Soviets, following the War.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#62

It’s amazing how quickly our Russian allies turned into our Cold War enemies at the end of WWII. I’ve heard a lot of blame on both sides, the US stockpiling arms, McCarthyism fanning the flames. But the end of this story drives home just how brutal Russia was. A wwii hero who not only deliberately went to Auschwitz for three years, organized prisoners, compiled intelligence reports, then escaped and fought bravely fo…

When Americans arrived in Berlin they were quite horrified. Over 100,000 women in Berlin were systemically raped by Russian soliders [i]. As an American/Englishmen witnessing this and ordered not to intervene created hate and disdain for the Russian forces. The American forces had no concept of what the Russian forces endured -- still not an excuse for rape. Eventually generals on the western side began forming plans…

I hope that readers of this comment understand that this narrative of the "systematic rape" (quoting parent) of Germany by the soldiers of the Red Army, while factual, is a lot more complicated than meets the eye. It is a narrative that has been deliberately narrowed, with a strong political motivation, to the scope of 1945. Modern German historians see this narrowing of the Western European memory as the effects of Cold-War-era propagandizing, with the deliberate intention of shifting the narrative of the end of WWII, away from Nazi war crimes in Eastern Europe (especially Slavic Eastern Europe), where untold numbers of women, children, and elderly were massacred and entire villages were burned to the ground. This posturing was effectively utilized, politically, to justify the alienation of the USSR in a post-WWII era.

As for Operation Unthinkable, it is one of the better-known realities of WWII that Churchill and Stalin enjoyed a mutual (and, to a retrospectively large extent, mutually-unfounded) paranoid fear of each others' ambitions. It is in that context that Unthinkable was formed – retaliation for poor treatment of POWs might have been a politically-tasteful façade, but was not the root as the parent might suggest.

I believe in the saying that begins with two eyes and ends with zero. The parent's sentiment seems to preach on the failing moral integrity of the Red Army soldiers – after all, they went for that second eye. I'd like to think that I am morally well-formed enough to not rape and kill, even when provoked to some unknown, but hopefully high degree. When I try to imagine what it was like to be a Russian soldier in 1945, advancing against people whom you see directly responsible for the death by fire and famine of your brothers, fathers, cousins, wives, children; when you've seen men die instantly for standing in the wrong place in line, I can't. We call these things "shell shock", but it masks the depravity that we are unfathomably privileged to not endure. I can't imagine the person I would be. I don't think any of us could. Principles about eyes probably don't seem to carry weight when the only parts of your village left to come home to (that you passed, on your way to the front) are the parts that wouldn't burn.

In that sobering context, one finds that the Red Army's treatment of Germany was (this is very counter-narrative west of the curtain) perhaps shockingly docile. The Red Army did not give orders to execute unarmed political officers on sight, or to burn entire swaths of countryside, with its villages and inhabitants, to the ground. Many German POWs perished for a myriad of reasons, among the biggest being insufficient supply lines, and an incredibly harsh winter of '45. The western allies had much better supply lines, rebooted in place, while the Soviets largely had to make them up as they went along. And yet, at least those take prisoner were treated with enough human dignity, to be taken prisoner in the first place. Their soviet counterparts were not given the same courtesy. I am recalling the diary of a Wehrmacht soldier, who was shocked that his captors did not kill him on sight – so conditioned was he to the reciprocal action, not only towards soldiers, but unarmed civilians, whom he had been instructed to believe were sub-human. Now this sub-human, in the reverse role, offered him bread of his own ration!

Yes, the Red Army committed war crimes. But it is important to consider that the morale of their troops begged for war crimes far worse than those committed.

In all, I humbly submit the idea that we are not in any position to judge. Citations from BBC magazine wikipedia, and youtube notwithstanding.

At this point, I'm surely rambling, but I just want to close by saying that as we inherit our popularly-told modern history, it is important to keep in mind that there are humans in every story, and that we gain nothing but bigotry from deliberately excluding the experiences of one over the other. Lest we repeat their mistakes of irrational hatred, which begets more, and so on.

On that note, I encourage us all to, at some point, read balanced histories of that era, which were inevitably written after the cold war. Shirer, whose account was authoritative while many of us were growing up, is a journalist who was the product of his time. His books are mostly regarded as a primary source by modern scholars. "Concise History of the Third Reich" by Wolfgang Benz, "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder, "The Unwomanly Face of War" by Svetlana Alexeivich, and "Burned Bridge" by Edith Sheffer are solid scholarly entry points for those of us for whom this more nuanced and even approach is appealing. For those of you who get to visit Berlin, I'd also strongly recommend the German-Russian Museum in Karlshorst – it's both utterly fantastic and utterly empty (on every day except for the May 8/9, when a large number of observant Russians come to pay respects), due to being so far away from the city centers. The guides there are some of the most knowledgeable people on this subject I've met.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before that Germany and Poland joined forces together to invade Czechoslovakia....

Your insinuation is kind of grotesque.

It's not insinuation, but a part of history that's overlooked:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaolzie

"The Zaolzie region was created in 1920, when Cieszyn Silesia was divided between Czechoslovakia and Poland. Zaolzie forms the eastern part of the Czech portion of Cieszyn Silesia. The division did not satisfy any side, and persisting conflict over the region led to its annexation by Poland in October 1938, following the Munich Agreement. After German invasion of Poland in 1939, the area became a part of Nazi Germany until 1945. After the war, the 1920 borders were restored."

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#64
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Red Army was indeed a savior. Many who ended up in the soviet sphere of influence would beg to differ.

It's not like there were better alternatives at the time.

That's fallacious thinking. Even if we assumes that nothing could be done to stop the Soviets (and that is debatable: some have argued that the US was fully capable of pushing back against Soviet domination in the eastern Bloc, but instead caved in to Soviet demands), the result was a nasty occupation by the Soviets. "No alternative" does not mean it wasn't objectively bad. We're not talking about running out of your favorite ice cream topping here and having to compromise for your second favorite topping.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#65
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of this book should be treated with extreme skepticism. His stated goal is to "free this world we call home from the Jewish slavery it now finds itself in for these past hundred years" by writing about the "real Holocaust" [i]. He writes about "racial reality" and "Jewish masters who want to flood Sweden with Third World trash" [ii]. His agenda is Nazi apologism and bald-faced antisemitism. [i] https://che…

Yeesh, I wasn't aware of that. Thank you for the info, I removed the link.

No problem! It looks like the places that sell the book do their damnedest to make the author look like any other historian.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before that Germany and Poland joined forces together to invade Czechoslovakia....

Your insinuation is kind of grotesque.

What insinuation are you referring to?

To my knowledge there's no evidence that Germany and Poland colluded in the annexation of Czechoslovakia but Poland definitely did take the opportunity to annex part of it. And the Germans weren't particularly unhappy about that as it played very well for them internationally.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#67
post #57
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> soviets really brought us more harm than nazis durning WW2 I presume you are not counting the three million Polish Jews who were murdered by the nazis?

This is very wide topic and I would like to not discuss it over Internet because I've had plenty of similar discussions with people I've met, and it would really require us to write essays :| Soviets killed about six million of polish people (until 1956). Not to mention harm that was done to the polish culture, dignity, economy, science for the 45 years.

> I would like to not discuss it over Internet because

So you would like to make your statements, but not to have them challenged?

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#69
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s amazing how quickly our Russian allies turned into our Cold War enemies at the end of WWII. Why? The US were were the last major country to recognise the USSR (in late 1933, just before the USSR joined the LoN), and the USSR's various stated purposes (collectivisation, state atheism, …) were very much polar opposites to the US's. The alliance was against Nazi Germany, not for anything.

Also don't forget the US largely financed the WW2 efforts of Germany exactly to fight communism, in Germany and Russia. Without the US-backed german industry Hitler never would have been able to attack Russia. E.g. from the 7 IG Farben board members 4 were US industrialists. You won't learn that at school in this century, maybe in the next. The large fascism homefront in the US consisted of the industry, the press (W…

If you're going to make the colossal claim that the US "largely financed" Germany in WW2, you're going to have to present better evidence than obscure factoids like 4 out 7 IG Farben board members being American (and [citation needed] on that as well).

The claim that the US was "largely fascist" after WW2 also seems... questionable.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#70
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like there were better alternatives at the time.

That's fallacious thinking. Even if we assumes that nothing could be done to stop the Soviets (and that is debatable: some have argued that the US was fully capable of pushing back against Soviet domination in the eastern Bloc, but instead caved in to Soviet demands), the result was a nasty occupation by the Soviets. "No alternative" does not mean it wasn't objectively bad. We're not talking about running out of your…

Would the Allies stand a chance if the Soviets didn't help? Would the Allies stand a chance if the Soviets allied with the Axis?
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