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A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

theatlantic.com

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Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#111

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

michaelmrose wrote: post #87
bobthechef wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"ut rather that in Soviet, and ultimately Russian, culture, human life is much more dispensable to those in power than it is in the West." It is easy to lay blame at the feet of a handful of leaders and forget that in centuries the Russian people put their arms, their strength, their blood behind such. It is easy to focus on a single tiny person within the scope of history and say of course this person had no power a…

At the time of war there is no such thing as freedom. You are given a rifle and ordered to kill. If you disobey, you are killed, it's as simple as that. Try to be in that situation and then talk about responsibility.

Tell me, who was responsible for the hundreds of thousands killed in the battle of Verdun: individual soldiers? Scared to death, trembling, half-insane, playing dead under the dead, left without any reasonable choice, resembling more animals than humans? Or someone else, who actually sent them there?

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#113

Post by aaimnr »

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…

"It’s amazing how quickly our Russian allies turned into our Cold War enemies at the end of WWII."

The 'our Russian allies' part sounds a bit strange. Are you aware that the Soviet Union started the war on the Hitler side? What's amazing is that in modern Russia most people don't believe it.

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

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

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#114

Post by jacobush »

olavk wrote: post #45
_m4r wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Red Army was indeed a savior. It is thanks to those masses of poor soldiers Regarding that point, when Soviets were "freeing" Poland after Hitler's fall, it was really common for them to raid houses of polish civilians. They didn't only steal and kill, but also rape women, children, infants alike (even impale them on sticks). I'm living on territories close to the one of extermination camps and soviets really b…

> 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?

Those people are not part of "us", you see.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#115

Post by AnimalMuppet »

aaimnr wrote: post #113
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…

"It’s amazing how quickly our Russian allies turned into our Cold War enemies at the end of WWII." The 'our Russian allies' part sounds a bit strange. Are you aware that the Soviet Union started the war on the Hitler side? What's amazing is that in modern Russia most people don't believe it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

Germany invaded Russia in June 1941. The US entered the war in December 1941. From the US perspective, the Russians were never anything but allies in the war.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#116

Post by zeveb »

greedo wrote: post #97
b0rsuk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Soviets also had the goal of exterminating the Polish professional class, hence their massacres at Katyn & elsewhere of, among others, Polish Boy Scouts.

Few people realise that the Soviet Union took roughly one-third of Poland when it & Germany invaded Poland at the beginning of the Second World War — and it kept that territory after the war. Polish society in those conquered territories was replaced with Russian society.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#117

Post by vkou »

tszymczyszyn wrote: post #24
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is true that Russians helped in ending WWII but as others pointed they were also one of the initial aggressors and allies of the Reich. If not for that the war might as well end faster.

The war would have ended even faster had Britain and France not let Chechoslovakia get partitioned. They proved themselves completely unreliable, and unsurprisingly, after a failed attempt to turn West, Stalin signed a deal with the devil.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was not signed without context. The USSR sought out, and was rejected from an alliance with Britain and France.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#118

Post by zeveb »

dang wrote: post #102
batushka2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, soviet (actually Russian) atrocities were far worse, yet we have to struggle every day to put equals sign between NAZI and Soviets

Please keep nationalistic flamewar off HN. This is a highly international community and the last thing we need is old regional resentments breaking out all over the place.

I think that pointing out that Soviet atrocities were worse than Nazi atrocities (and Maoist atrocities were worse still) isn't a matter of 'regional resentments' but of ground truth.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#119

Post by mamon »

blindwatchmaker wrote: post #105
badpun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviets were quite open about aiming for world conquest, starting with Europe. They tried it first in 1920, but Poland miraculously defeated them. WWII was another attempt (had Hitler not attacked first, Stalin would probably just attack Germany within a short period of time) - first Poland and Germany, then France, Spain, Italy, UK etc. It only stopped at Poland and Eastern Germany that time because of strong ba…

The Soviets were not bent on world conquest, but on securing a ring of buffer states around them as security for their country. Witness Stalin's betrayal of the communists in Greece as horse trading for influence elsewhere. Stalin's socialism in one country policy set against exporting revolution was in fact a huge point of contention with other factions of the Bolsheviks. While the Soviets did harbour imperial ambit…

Actually, it is pretty well documented that Germans forestalled Soviet offensive by just few weeks, maybe months. Red Army’s initial misfortunes after Germany’s attack in 1941 were caused by the fact that all the troops they had in proximity to USSR-German border were preparing to attack, not to defend themselves.

Re: A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012)

#120

Post by CapacitorSet »

mamon wrote: post #100
CapacitorSet wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 intelligen…

I'm not trolling. Rather, I'd think you were trolling, considering the earlier comment where you thought I was calling him a spy for having participated in the Polish resistance.

Speaking of Pilecki, of course he thought he believed he was acting in the name of a legal government, but that's not what is being discussed here. The Soviets were correctly claiming him to be a foreign spy, since he was spying for a country which is foreign to the USSR, and treated him as such.

The question of which was the "real" Polish government is not in discussion, though you're repeatedly trying to derail the conversation towards that issue; my original comment was about the fact that the Soviets killed Pilecki by virtue of him being a spy, which was also common for other countries (unlike torture). Can we agree that the Soviets correctly viewed Pilecki as a foreign spy?

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