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A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

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Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#91

Post by gumby »

spunker540 wrote: post #6

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…

The soviets were also the enemy, going back to the Russian revolution and US participation in the counter-revolutionary invasions. They were simply an ally of convenience for the relatively brief period between the end of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop pact to cessation of hostilities in Europe.

Remember Patton wanted to rush to Berlin and the. Keep on going to Moscow — that was the enemy he had been trained to hate.

And this was quite effective for the other allies — they shipped materiel to the USSR who in exchange did the majority of the actual fighting. Not to discount the efforts of the western allies, but the level of USSR fatalities was enormous, while Eisenhower (a logistics specialist, not a tactician) delayed the proposed invasion for anyear in order to get his supply lines in order and to minimize casualties for his side.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#92

Post by reitanqild »

j2bax wrote: post #88
reitanqild wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree to a lot of it. But it would probably have more weight if you didn't compare Trump and Putin with the systems that systematically tortured and killed millions of people. And for the record: I'm no big Trump fan. Edit: as usual I'm honest and I'm not trying to troll anyone. And as the downvotes pile up it would be interesting to know what I've written that was so horribly wrong or offending. Edit2: I don't care…

I didn't vote you one way or another, but what I gathered from the post was that he/she doesn't put Trump/Putin anywhere even close to the atrocities of the Nazi's and despite how he feels about them, times are far better than they were. Your post is essentially agreeing with him while chastising him, which is why I can imagine some have down voted you. I think looking back on history and far darker times, is an acce…

Ok. I see. I misread.

Downvotes deserved and I'm happy I got an explanation for the (good) reason.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#93

Post by [deleted] »

zipwitch wrote: post #38
ransom1538 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pure anecdote and likely shaded by the Cold War, but I remember my WWII veteran grandfather (European theater) telling me how after the war he had talked to fellow US and British officers responsible for turning POWs over to the Soviets. (I don't recall if he said whether they were the soliders of Axis powers being turned over to the Russians under some agreement, or soldiers from Russia or from Soviet occupied count…

[deleted]

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#94

Post by krzat »

CapacitorSet wrote: post #86
mamon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Polish Resistance soldiers who so bravely fought Nazis are considered "foreign spies"? That's basically what Soviets were doing in Poland: arresting all the members of Polish Home Army [1] they could find and sentencing them to death. So yes, that's brutal and it makes the Red Army just another invader, not a "savior". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Army#Postwar

Pilecki was not considered a "foreign spy" for his fighting the Nazis, but for organizing an intelligence network of his own and leaking information to the West. That counts as a foreign spy in my eyes, and I'm sure someone who did the same in eg. France would also be considered as such.

Not sure if you are trolling or what. By that logic Jews were rightfully sent to the death camps because they were enemies of the state.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#95

Post by Spooky23 »

ransom1538 wrote: post #16
spunker540 wrote: post #6

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…

Not to make excuses, but there were widely varying levels of discipline in the Red Army.

My understanding was that the "A team" shock troops and mainline motor infantry/armored divisions were well disciplined, but the later echelon of conscript infantry went into combat and gunpoint, didn't have functional unit leadership and were raping and pillaging.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#96

Post by dandare »

reitanqild wrote: post #82
dandare wrote: post #76

In my book, Witold Pilecki is in the same folder as Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish nurse who smuggled hundreds of Jewish kids from the ghetto, who was tortured so severely that the Nazis bastinado-fractured her feet - to no avail. Un-fucking-believable bravery that inspires me every day to resist the silly trumps and putins of our time.

Agree to a lot of it. But it would probably have more weight if you didn't compare Trump and Putin with the systems that systematically tortured and killed millions of people. And for the record: I'm no big Trump fan. Edit: as usual I'm honest and I'm not trying to troll anyone. And as the downvotes pile up it would be interesting to know what I've written that was so horribly wrong or offending. Edit2: I don't care…

trumps and putins in lowercase as archetypes, not Trump and Putin specifically.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#97

Post by greedo »

b0rsuk wrote: post #74
olavk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would very much depends on who you were. If you had German ancestry you would be better off under the Germans, if you were Jewish you were far worse off. A lot of people in the former USSR occupied areas like the Baltics or Ukraine actually greeted the Germans as liberators, but they quickly changed their mind when they realized the Germans considered Slavs subhumans.

Hitler had this list of peoples to exterminate: * Jews * Romanies ("gypsies") * Slavs (Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, modern Macedonians, Serbs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Slovenians...) Jews took the biggest blow, but Hitler didn't plan to stop there. And not all of it was even ethnic. For example, he hated homosexuals and disabled people. He was going to clean the race. Communists were a target, too. The reason he…

As well as almost any Polish professionals: Teachers, professors, lawyers, government officials, religious figures. The goal of the Germans was to dismantle almost all of Polish society and replace it with German society.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#98

Post by mdomans »

spunker540 wrote: post #6

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…

Well, yeah. This is the level of oppression Soviet Russia was. The horrors of Nazi camps are often discussed - not many people discuss Russian camps on Siberia.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#99

Post by totalZero »

konpoly wrote: post #90
dandare wrote: post #76

In my book, Witold Pilecki is in the same folder as Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish nurse who smuggled hundreds of Jewish kids from the ghetto, who was tortured so severely that the Nazis bastinado-fractured her feet - to no avail. Un-fucking-believable bravery that inspires me every day to resist the silly trumps and putins of our time.

Putin actually has his opponents murdered. Look up what happened to Boris Nemtsov, he was gunned down right outside the Kremlin. I would take Trump over Putin any day.

What's more, Nemtsov isn't the only one who was killed by Putin.

Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with processed Po-210, which was determined to have come from a facility owned by the Russian state. It was placed in his tea by two Russian agents, and an investigation by the British government concluded that Putin probably personally signed off on the murder.

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

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090324/htt...

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#100

Post by mamon »

CapacitorSet wrote: post #86
mamon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Polish Resistance soldiers who so bravely fought Nazis are considered "foreign spies"? That's basically what Soviets were doing in Poland: arresting all the members of Polish Home Army [1] they could find and sentencing them to death. So yes, that's brutal and it makes the Red Army just another invader, not a "savior". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Army#Postwar

Pilecki was not considered a "foreign spy" for his fighting the Nazis, but for organizing an intelligence network of his own and leaking information to the West. That counts as a foreign spy in my eyes, and I'm sure someone who did the same in eg. France would also be considered as such.

You're probably just a troll, but for sake of the others reading this: Pilecki was the officer of Polish Home Army, which was a branch of Polish Underground State - which in turn was basically the pre-war Polish government, with its top officials being in exile in London.

So, Pilecki was by no means a spy: he was a member of legal Polish intelligence agency, reporting to legal Polish government and passing intelligence information to our official allies (Poland had signed military pacts with both France and Great Britain in 1939).

What wasn't legal was the communist government that killed him in 1948, government formed by usurpers, backed by Soviet occupants.

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