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Post by dodger on Oct 15, 2013 6:54:25 GMT
Superb study of World War Two's decisive front, 21 Sep 2012
This William Podmore review is from: Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East (Hardcover)
This is a splendid study of the Second World War's crucial eastern front, where the Red Army inflicted 78.5 per cent of German military deaths.
Hitler threatened on 30 January 1939, "if the international finance Jewry within Europe and abroad should succeed once more in plunging the peoples into a world war, then the consequence will not be the Bolshevization of the world and a victory of Jewry, but on the contrary, the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." Hitler projected onto the Jews his own exterminationist intent.
On 9 September 1939, Hitler's Chief of Staff General Franz Halder said "it was the intention of the Fuhrer and Goering to destroy and exterminate the Polish people."
On 30 March 1941, Hitler told two hundred Wehrmacht officers of the coming attack on the Soviet Union, "This is a war of extermination." His Generalplan Ost would have killed 30 million people through seizing Soviet food production.
The head of the Wehrmacht, Field Marshal Keitel, signed the final version of the infamous `Commissar Order' on 6 June 1941, "In the struggle against Bolshevism, we cannot count on the enemy acting according to the principles of humanity or international law. In particular the political commissars at all levels, as the real leaders of resistance, can be expected to treat prisoners of war in a hate-filled, cruel, and inhuman manner." Having attributed to the enemy the very treatment the Germans themselves planned to inflict, the directive went on: The troops must be made aware: 1. In this struggle to show consideration and apply principles of international law to these elements is wrong. ....2. Political commissars are the originators of barbaric, Asiatic methods of fighting. Thus, they have to be dealt with immediately and ... with the utmost severity. As a matter of principle, therefore, they will be shot at once."
Fritz sums up that Barbarossa "was not only the most massive military campaign in history, but it also unleashed an unprecedented campaign of genocidal violence, of which the Holocaust remains the best-known example."
In October 1941, Hitler said, "It's good when the horror precedes us that we are exterminating Jewry." He also said, "We are getting rid of the destructive Jews entirely." And "When we exterminate this plague, then we perform a deed for humanity ..." In January 1942, he said, "I see only one thing: total extermination. ... Why should I look at a Jew any differently from a Russian prisoner?"
Fritz observes, "in 1942 the Soviet Union alone, even without the contributions of Great Britain and the United States, would once again outproduce the Reich in virtually every weapons category. In the key areas of small arms and artillery, the advantage was three to one, while, in tanks, it was a staggering four to one, accentuated by the higher quality of the Soviet T-34."
Fritz often praises Stalin's role. He notes that Stalin's iron will saved the Soviet Union from collapse in the autumn of 1941, and points out, "Stalin, too, feared that his namesake city might fall at any time but in his usual fashion averted a nascent crisis by quick and firm action."
Fritz notes, "As far back as the autumn of 1943, Hitler had planned to stabilize the eastern front in order to transfer troops west to defeat the Allied invasion of France. ...The Soviets, however, had refused to cooperate and play their assigned role. Instead of sitting passively through the winter, the Red Army had launched a series of continuous offensives that had drained German resources and brought the Ostheer to the breaking point."
He points out, "The blow to Army Group Center, however, had been as spectacular as it had been swift. In a bit more than two months, it had lost almost 400,000 men killed, wounded and missing, making Operation Bagration a far worse disaster for the Wehrmacht than the comparable one at Stalingrad or even that of Verdun in the previous war." Of the Vistula-Oder offensive of January 1945, Fritz writes, "in three weeks, the Red Army had won perhaps its most spectacular victory of the war."
Nazi Germany fought a war of choice, the USSR a war of necessity, which determined its strategy and tactics, which largely explains its huge losses.
Fritz sums up, "Hitler also grossly underestimated the political and economic strength and resilience of the Stalinist system as well as the resources that would be necessary to win in the Soviet Union."
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Post by dodger on Oct 15, 2013 7:00:38 GMT
Useful study of Operation Bagration and its aftermath, 14 Aug 2012
This Will Podmore review is from: Stalin's Revenge: Operation Bagration and the Annihilation of Army Group Centre (Hardcover)
Anthony Tucker-Jones has written widely on the history of modern warfare. This absorbing book studies the Red Army's Operation Bagration which annihilated Hitler's Army Group Centre in just 12 days in June 1944.
This crucial defeat cost Hitler 20 German divisions, 300,000 killed, 250,000 wounded, and 120,000 taken prisoner. He also lost 2,000 panzers and 57,000 other vehicles.
Tucker-Jones also provides a most illuminating account of the Red Army's subsequent struggle to liberate Warsaw. He points out that "In five weeks of fighting Rokossovsky had covered 450 miles (725km) and was within reach of Warsaw. The Polish capital now looked a tempting prize as a culmination of Bagration's remarkable success, but Stalin's summer offensive was beginning to lose momentum. Rokossovsky's 1st Byelorussian Front was at the very limit of its supply lines; ammunition and rations were exhausted, as were his men. In many ways the defence of Warsaw echoed that of Minsk - the eastern approaches of the Polish capital were protected by a 50 mile (80km) ring of strongpoints. The only difference was that this time Model had sufficient mobile reserves with which to parry Rokossovsky's forces."
As he observes, "Rokossovsky was facing twenty-two enemy divisions, including four security divisions in the Warsaw suburbs, three Hungarian divisions on the Vistula south of Warsaw, and the remains of six or seven divisions which had escaped from the chaos of Bialystok and Brest-Litovsk, that could be deployed between the Narev and the Western Bug. At least eight divisions were identified fighting to the north of Siedlice, among them two panzer and three SS panzer or panzergrenadier divisions."
He writes, "Rokossovsky simply could not fulfil his orders to break through the German defences and enter Praga by 8 August. ... After a week of heavy fighting the Soviet 3rd Tank Corps was surrounded by 4th and 19th Panzer; 3,000 Soviet troops were killed and another 6,000 captured. The Soviets also lost 425 of the 808 tanks and self-propelled guns they had begun the battle with on 18 July. ... The 3rd Tank Corps was destroyed and the 8th Guards Tank Corps and the 16th Tank Corps had taken major losses. The exhausted Soviet 2nd Tank Army handed over its positions to the 47th and 70th Armies and withdrew to lick its wounds."
Marshal Zhukov wrote later, "On instructions by the Supreme Commander, two paratroop officers were sent to Bor-Komorowski [the commander of the Polish Home Army] for liaison and coordination of actions. However, Bor-Komorowski refused to receive the officers ... our troops did everything they possibly could to help the insurgents, although the uprising had not been in any way coordinated with the Soviet command." Tucker-Jones comments, "In light of Rokossovsky's efforts to the north-east and south-east of Warsaw in the face of the tough Waffen SS, this is largely true."
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Post by dodger on Oct 15, 2013 7:21:06 GMT
Splendid study of this crucial battle, 16 July 2012
This William Podmore review is from: The Battle of Kursk (Modern War Studies) (Paperback)
David Glantz and Jonathan House summed up the results of this key battle on the crucial Eastern Front: "The battle of Kursk meant an end to blitzkrieg in a strategic and operational sense. For the first time in the war, a German offensive was contained in the tactical or shallow operational depths. ... Even more striking, Kursk also spelled doom for German blitzkrieg in a tactical sense ... because the Soviets had learned ... that the only effective defense was one that exploited all arms and possessed both depth and flexibility. ... As a result, the Soviets proved that a determined and properly constructed infantry-based defense could defeat the tactics of blitzkrieg. Hence, Kursk marked a turning point in the war strategically, operationally and tactically. Building on the lessons of Kursk, the Soviets also applied their new combined-arms techniques to offensive situations, at first tentatively and later with greater effect."
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Post by dodger on Oct 15, 2013 7:48:49 GMT
Excellent study of the vicious Nazi occupation of Greece, 29 May 2012
This Will Podmore review is from: Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation.1941-44 (Yale Nota Bene) (Paperback)
This brilliant book details the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Greece.
Goering told all Reich Commissioners and Military Commanders of occupied territories, "I could not care less when you say that people under your administration are dying of hunger. Let them perish so long as no German starves."
In the first year of the occupation, April 1941-April 1942, 40,000 people starved to death. The British lifted their sea blockade of Greece only in August 1942 to allow Greece to get grain from outside Europe. Greece had first asked the British government to lift the blockade in April 1941. The Red Cross estimated that 250,000 Greeks died of famine in 1941-43.
Mazower sums up, "Everywhere the hunger intensified people's alienation from the state and radicalised large sections of the population, including many white-collar workers and middle-class professionals, former bastions of the old bourgeois order, who looked in vain to the established political world in Athens for guidance and leadership in their daily struggle for survival."
He points out that the government's "efforts to keep Greece on the gold standard pushed the economy into recession .." He cites an American oil executive working in Greece who said, "The Germans are looting for all they are worth, both openly and by forcing the Greeks to sell for worthless paper marks, issued locally."
In September 1943, EAM/ELAS [National Liberation Front/Greek People's Liberation Army] got the Grand Rabbi out of Athens, which `saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews'. Mazower writes, "Though the [Jewish] fugitives received support from many quarters, the outstanding role was played by EAM/ELAS, whose underground organisation was the most extensive in the country." Even so, the Nazis killed possibly 90 per cent of Greece's Jews.
In November 1943, a member of Britain's Military Mission, with the knowledge of the Middle East commander of Britain's Special Operations Executive, held secret talks with the head of the German Secret Police in Athens on possible joint action against the Soviet Union.
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Post by dodger on Oct 22, 2013 21:33:04 GMT
Fine study of the world wars' capitalist origins, 8 Feb 2010
This William Podmore review is from: A Low Dishonest Decade (Paperback)
In this detailed and challenging book, Paul Hehn, Professor Emeritus of the State University of New York at Brockport, examines the origins of World War Two. He also studies the origins of the earlier World War.
He shows that World War One had its root causes in capitalism. He cites the Daily Telegraph, which said on 19 August 1914, "This war provides our businessmen with such an opportunity as has never come their way before ... There is no reason why we should not permanently seize for this country a large proportion of Germany's export trade."
As for World War Two, he points out, "Neville Chamberlain undoubtedly wished the Germans to move east into the Soviet Union." "Undoubtedly British and French naïveté and appeasement of Hitler could be explained by the unspoken hope and expectation that he would ultimately turn east and attack the Soviet Union and destroy Communism."
Hehn writes of the "upper class hatred of the Soviet Union on the part of Chamberlain and his friends. This same hatred led them to place class survival over the interests of the country which in the end led to the debacle of World War II. Chamberlain and his friends in the government desired to give Hitler at Munich a `free hand in the east' - and probably before Munich - well into the opening months of 1939 and beyond, even after it became apparent that Hitler's aggressive policy and ambitions placed Great Britain and France in mortal danger." The Non-Aggression Pact thwarted this British state scheme - no wonder they hate the Pact so much!
Hehn sums up that capitalism was to blame for both World Wars: "If one considers that World War I also occurred as a quarrel within capitalism with the United States coming in later as in World War II, the first Great War having caused an estimated 35 million casualties and the Second World War about 55 million, totalling 90 million, then capitalism may be credited with generating one of the greatest slaughters in history. The 20th century was, in all probability, one of the bloodiest in history."
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Post by dodger on Nov 5, 2013 5:42:32 GMT
Fine study of Churchill's wars, 24 Sep 2009
This Will Podmore review is from: Warlord: Churchill at War: 1874-1945 (Hardcover)
Carlo D'Este is a renowned historian of World War Two. His previous books include Decision in Normandy, Bitter Victory: the battle for Sicily 1943, Fatal decision: Anzio and the battle for Rome, and a biography of General Patton.
Now in this extraordinary book, he studies Churchill's role in Britain's many wars from 1897 to 1945. Churchill wrote in 1897 from the war on India's North-West Frontier, "All who resist will be killed without quarter. The Mohmands need a lesson - and there is no doubt we are a very cruel people. ... with fire and sword in vengeance ... we proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. ... I wonder if people in England have any idea of the warfare that is being carried on here ... no quarter is ever asked or given. The tribesmen torture the wounded & mutilate the dead. The troops never spare a man who falls into their hands - whether he be wounded or not ... The picture is a terrible one ... I wish I could come to the conclusion that all this barbarity - all these losses - all this expenditure - had resulted in a permanent settlement being obtained, I do not think however that anything has been done - that will not have to be done again." Very prescient, given the current Anglo-American commitment to endless, futile war on Afghanistan.
Churchill participated in Britain's wars across Africa, from north to south. The Daily Mail's war correspondent wrote of Omdurman, "It was not a battle but an execution." Of the Boers, Churchill asked, "What sort of men are these we are fighting? They have a better cause - and cause is everything."
D'Este calls World War One `the most colossal folly in the history of mankind'. Even within this folly, Churchill's disastrous Gallipoli scheme stood out.
Early in World War Two, Churchill directed reinforcements from North Africa to Greece. This stopped General O'Connor from taking Tripoli, leaving it open for Rommel to seize. "This removal disastrously changed the course of the war by spawning disastrous setbacks in Greece and North Africa - and later in Crete." D'Este believes this was `the most serious strategic misjudgement of the war'.
Churchill argued that Allied operations in the Mediterranean would not delay the cross-Channel assault beyond 1943, but of course they did just that. The Italian campaign, as D'Este notes, `simply distracted the Allies from their real task: crossing the English Channel and opening the endlessly delayed second front."
He recounts the great 1944 controversy - should the Anglo-American air forces knock out the French railway system to prevent Hitler reinforcing his troops in Normandy, as Eisenhower, backed by de Gaulle, proposed? Or should they carry on bombing Germany, as air-force chiefs Harris and Spaatz, backed by Churchill, wanted?
Harris and Spaatz adhered to the Trenchard doctrine that strategic bombing alone could win wars, so they thought that the D-Day invasion was unnecessary. Eisenhower, rightly, overruled them all.
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Post by dodger on Nov 10, 2013 8:06:45 GMT
Why did Churchill say this about Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939?  "On the Soviet side it must be said that their vital need was to hold the deployment positions of the German armies as far to the west as possible, so as to give the Russians more time for assembling their forces from all parts of their immense empire. They had burnt in their minds the disasters which had come upon their armies in 1914, when they had hurled themselves forward to attack the Germans while still themselves only partly mobilized. But now their frontiers lay far to the east of those of the previous war. They must be in occupation of the Baltic States and a large part of Poland by force or fraud before they were attacked. If their policy was cold-blooded, it was also at the moment realistic in a high degree". |
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Post by dodger on Nov 19, 2013 16:04:39 GMT
Useful survey of the Second World War as experienced by the Baltic States, 19 Nov 2013
'.
This Will Podmore review is from: Between Giants: The Battle for The Baltics in World War II (General Military) (Hardcover)
The Nazis planned to deport to Siberia 85 per cent of Poles and Lithuanians, 75 per cent of Belorussians, 65 per cent of Ukrainians, and 50 per cent of Russians, Latvians and Estonians.
The Lithuanian Activist Front started an uprising against Soviet forces on the first day of the Nazi invasion. Estonian guerrillas also operated at once against the Red Army. The Estonian Legion in 1944 became part of the new 20th SS Waffen Grenadier Division (First Estonian). All too many Latvians joined the 19th SS Waffen Grenadier Division (2nd Latvian).
These bodies were not just anti-Soviet. They were anti-Semitic, and killed Jews in what Buttar rightly calls the Baltic Holocaust. Between 22 June and 1 December, 120,000 Lithuanian Jews were killed. Lithuanian police battalions killed 78,000 people, mostly Jews. The Latvian Arjas Kommando killed at least 26,000 Jews, gypsies and other `undesirables'.
In 1942 the Red Army raised the 16th Latvian Rifle Division, the 130th Lithuanian Rifle Corps and the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps, which all played their part in driving the Nazis out of the Baltics.
After the war, each country had to defeat a US-backed counter-revolutionary terrorist organisation. In 1947 the Armed Resistance League was formed in Estonia, and was active until 1951. The Latvian Central Council, founded in 1943, operated until 1948. In 1944, the Nazis created the `Lithuanian Defense Force', which was active until 1949.
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Post by dodger on Nov 30, 2013 5:39:43 GMT
Our ruling class has a track record of not protecting Britain’s national interest. One typical episode occurred at the end of the Second World War...
More than a loan – the Anglo-American Agreement of 1945WORKERS, DEC 2013 ISSUE Once the Second World War was won in 1945 by the allies and peace became the next prospect, the precarious position of Britain’s economy, distorted by six years of total war, was apparent. Britain was exporting only around a fifth of what it had before the war and non-military imports were five times higher than in 1938. There were still 1.4 million people in the armed forces by 1946.
The Blitz, London, 1941: a devastated Britain emerged from the war
in debt up to its eyeballs to the United States.
The British economy had been heavily geared towards war production at around 55 per cent of GDP, much greater than in the Soviet Union or America. To make matters worse, US President Truman abruptly ended in August the wartime Lend Lease arrangements that had run since 1941, by which war effort equipment had been donated. Suddenly, payment was expected for undelivered supplies, Britain found it did not have enough dollars, and bankruptcy loomed. As an emergency measure, the government sold gold and minerals, but this could not suffice for long.
Prime Minister Attlee dispatched John Maynard Keynes, the economist and government financial adviser, as Britain’s negotiator in Washington. Most of Britain expected a gift in recognition of the country's contribution to the war effort, which had predated that of the US, and Keynes believed he could wrest a multi-billion dollar grant-in-aid out of the USA rather than a loan. Despite three months of severe clashes and hard wrangling, Keynes returned with a loan and a heart-attack for his troubles. The Anglo American Agreement produced a business loan instead of a subsidy, with extra conditions stacked in America’s favour.
Unsurprisingly, the USA ignored sentiment and pressed its own imperial interests proving that a “Special Relationship” had never existed, except inside the confines of Churchill’s mind. Two determining factors were at work: our diminished productive base limited Britain’s ability to manoeuvre in a peacetime environment; and our rulers’ senseless wish to sustain the empire post-war (though it was clearly unaffordable) made them chase a costly external loan.
Although the granting of the loan did strain relations between the two countries, the agreement was never really threatened, despite some opposition in the House of Lords and the likening of America to Shylock by a Cabinet Minister. In December 1945, Attlee and the Labour Government succumbed, agreeing to not only a US loan of $4.34 billion (double the size of the then British economy) but also other onerous stipulations.
Contrary to the impression given by politicians in later decades, the loan was never used to finance the war itself, though outstanding Lend-Lease supplies still in transit when peace was declared were paid for within the overall loan. The loan (structured like a mortgage) was to be paid off in 50 annual repayments starting in 1950; payments were mostly interest in the early years and shifted toward capital later on.
Other stringent conditions were imposed on a submissive Labour government, namely acceptance of the convertibility of sterling and the liberalisation of trade. The convertibility of sterling directly caused the financial crisis of 1947, as Britain was forced to let holders of sterling convert their earnings into other currencies such as the dollar and allow these earnings to be spent outside of the sterling area. Convertibility meant the demise of British economic management at home and of economic control of the colonies. Gradually, America exploited liberalisation of trade to displace the position of British companies in former colonies.
Not for Britain
Despite assertions in subsequent decades, the purpose of the loan was not to rebuild Britain or aid domestic recovery but to meet expensive imperial commitments. As Keynes himself wrote in 1946, “...the American loan is primarily required to meet the political and military expenditure overseas.” Keynes estimated that Britain spent £2,000 million on policing and administering the Empire. This expenditure was largely responsible for the country’s post-war financial difficulties.
A telling comparison emerges if you look at the provision made available for essential sectors of the domestic economy on which working people’s livelihoods depended: between 1947 and 1949 only £320 million was invested in building manufacturing industry; £262 million in transport and communication, £160 million in energy industries and £85 million in agriculture and fisheries.
As there were six deferred instalments, this debt to the USA was only fully repaid by the British government in 2006. Although at the time Treasury Minister Ed Balls acclaimed it as “a sign that the UK repays its debts”, what is probably unusual is that the debt was repaid at all, as Britain has a patchy record on debt repayments. There are unpaid debts that predate the Napoleonic Wars, and debts still owed for the First World War. Moreover, at the height of the Great Depression in 1931, a moratorium on all war debts was agreed and no debt repayments were made or received after 1934.
It was complete stupidity to take on the burden of a huge loan when in 1946 Britain’s national debt stood at about 250 per cent of GDP and when the loan was not directed to the essential task of rebuilding our industrial capacity but squandered on a futile attempt to prop up a crumbling empire and support the obsolete role of world policeman.
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Post by dodger on Dec 21, 2013 13:29:55 GMT
Very useful study of the Red Army in WW2, 15 Dec 2011
This Will Podmore review is from: Stalin's Keys to Victory: The Rebirth of the Red Army in World War II (Stackpole Military History): The Rebirth of the Red Army in WW II (Paperback)
American historian Walter S. Dunn has written a fascinating study of the keys to the Red Army's victory in World War II. He explains how the Soviet Union replaced its manpower, produced its arms and formed new units. He refutes the common myth that its victory was achieved only by throwing thousands of disorganised, untrained men into battle.
He observes, 'The improved living conditions in the Soviet Union in the 1930s made dramatic improvements in the health of the population, specifically in the health of potential soldiers.' In World War I, 30 per cent of Russians called up were unfit for service; in World War II, just 5 per cent.
The author notes, 'The actual reason the Soviets were able to stop the Germans in late 1941 was an unbelievable mobilization of men and weapons beginning in September 1941, which created a new Red Army. The Soviet formed and sent into combat in a few months more new divisions than the United States formed in the entire war.'
By comparison, as he comments, 'the French and British had ample time to create additional armies between September 1939 and May 1940 but chose not to do so. Given the resources available to both countries in their colonies and in the British Commonwealth, the response to the invasion of Poland was feeble.'
Dunn also points out, 'Beginning in the summer of 1941, an incredible effort was made not only to form new divisions and other units to replace those destroyed by the Germans, but also to equip them with modern weapons capable of matching German weapons. The herculean effort culminated in the defeat of the German Army at the gates of Moscow, the first defeat inflicted on Germany during World War II.'
He gives the details: armoured vehicle production increased from 2,800 in 1940 to 29,000 in 1944, guns and mortars from 53,800 to 129,500, rifles and carbines from 1,460,000 in 1940 to 4,050,000 in 1942 and Maxim machine guns from 53,700 in 1941 to 458,500 in 1944. During the war the Soviet Union produced more than 5 million machine pistols and more than 500,000 guns and mortars. 'The Russian arms industry produced more than enough artillery despite German occupation of the most industrialised part of its country.'
As a result, as Dunn observes, 'Beginning in 1943, there was a sharp drop in the number of killed and wounded in major operations. ' The ratio of rifle divisions and tank corps demonstrates the growing power of the Soviet armed forces. The decline in the average loss per day during the offensives indicates a reduction of the level of dependence on infantry attacks.'
Lend-lease was helpful but not decisive. As Dunn points out, 'factories in the east, built from 1930 to 1932, produced the tanks that defeated the Germans in later years before lend-lease goods flowed in any great quantity. ' British and American lend-lease did not have a significant impact until 1942.' He summarises, 'Although lend-lease played a significant role in providing trucks, canned rations, boots, uniforms, radios, and other equipment, the Red Army fought with Russian-made weapons.'
Dunn sums up, 'Few nations could have survived such an onslaught. In World War I, Russia had succumbed under much less pressure. Somehow Stalin had convinced the many Soviet nationalities to fight for their country, which the czar had failed to do in 1917.' As he concludes, 'Soviet sacrifices to defend their homeland ended Hitler's threat to the world.'
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Post by dodger on Dec 21, 2013 13:47:07 GMT
Useful study of Chamberlain's treachery, 21 Nov 2011
This Will Podmore review is from: The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union (British Foreign & Colonial Policy) (Paperback)
Shaw's main claim is that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain allowed his anti-communist prejudice to override Britain's interest in achieving a Triple Alliance between Britain, France and the Soviet Union.
Chamberlain of course hated the Soviet Union and opposed a Triple Alliance. Shaw writes, "he was so consumed by his suspicion of the Soviet leadership and his hatred of communism. His repeated attacks upon the Soviet leadership in the letters to his sisters during this period are unparalleled in any other collection of private papers."
Shaw shows how Churchill and his allies struggled for a Triple Alliance. Robert Boothby, a Conservative MP and ally of Churchill, wrote in the Daily Telegraph (13 September 1938), "The Soviet government has on many occasions during the last ten years proved that it has no aggressive intentions of any kind. Russia has always been an exemplary member of the League of Nations, and there is no reason to believe that she would not have fulfilled both her obligations [to France and to Czechoslovakia.]" As Shaw writes, "the Soviet government was in fact fully intent on defending Czechoslovakia together with Britain and France."
Archibald Sinclair, the leader of the Liberals, said that the Soviet Union had been `true to all her international obligations', had been a `loyal member of the League' and had `actually befriended the victims of aggression' throughout the 1930s.
But was Chamberlain blinded by prejudice? Or was he pushing a different policy? Shaw claims, "Evidence shows that there was no conspiracy between the French and British to encourage Hitler to attack eastwards." But she completely ignores Chamberlain's efforts to help Hitler to seize the Ukraine to destroy the Soviet Union, just as he had helped him to use the Sudetenland to destroy Czechoslovakia. In November 1938, Chamberlain asked Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, "What the position would be if Russia were to ask France for assistance on the grounds that a separatist movement in the Ukraine was provoked by Germany. M. Bonnet explained that French obligations towards Russia only came into force if there was a direct attack by Germany on Russian territory. Mr. Chamberlain said that he considered M. Bonnet's reply entirely satisfactory." Shaw never even mentions the Ukraine.
With this established, Chamberlain next called for collaboration with Nazi Germany, supporting Bonnet's policy of `getting Russians and Germans to fight each other'. This was in fact a policy of encouraging Hitler to attack the Soviet Union, as everyone knew that the Soviet Union would not attack Germany.
Shaw also ignores the City of London's key role in funding Hitler's arms programme. The British government was still trading with and aiding Nazi Germany: as late as May 1939, it was negotiating a £1 billion loan to Hitler to bolster his regime.
As Alvin Finkel and Clement Leibovitz wrote of Chamberlain and his allies, "the ruling group before May 10, 1940 were bloody-minded protectors of privilege whose fixation with destroying communists and communism led them to make common cause with fascists. They were not honest idiotic patriots; they were liars and traitors who would sacrifice human lives in their defence of property and privilege." (The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, Merlin, 1997, page 8.)
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Post by dodger on Nov 12, 2014 12:12:49 GMT
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1S60W4KWFX1Y9/ref=cm_aya_bb_revExcellent, harrowing study of a genocidal massacre., 7 Nov 2014 This Will Podmore review is from: The Holocaust in Rovno: The Massacre at Sosenki Forest, November 1941 (Palgrave Pivot) (Hardcover) This book describes the massacre of some 23,500 Jewish men, women and children in Sosenski Forest, outside Rovno, in Volhynia, Ukraine, on 7-9 November 1941. The Nazis and their allies created “a popular hate culture of the Żydokomuna, the alleged ‘Jewish-Communist conspiracy’ that was used to justify genocide against Jews as part of the German-Ukrainian war of resistance against Soviet power.”
The Sosenski Forest massacre “was one of dozens of similar German-sponsored large-scale anti-Jewish killing operations perpetrated in Soviet zones that marked the first autumn and winter of World War II in the East.” There were 64 massacres, including the one at Babi Yar.
“In Ukraine alone, more than 441,414 Jews were killed in a four-month period, from September to December 1941 – largely shot by special German units supported by far more numerous units of local collaborationist police. Throughout the Soviet East, adding the Baltics, Russia and Rumania, the number of murdered Jews in large Aktionen rises to over 650,000, nearly one in four of all Jews killed in the Holocaust in the East.”
Burds notes, “the overwhelming majority were massacred at designated killing sites in or near their own homes by predominantly local ethnic nationalist militias who played the central role in their executions.”
In 1942, the SS employed in Ukraine 15,000 Germans and 238,000 Ukrainian police. As Alfred Reiber noted, “The destruction of the Jewish population of Ukraine, reduced from 870,000 to 17,000, could not have been accomplished without the aid of the local population, because the Germans lacked the manpower to reach all of the communities that were annihilated, especially in the remote villages.”
Similarly, as Hubert van Tuyll pointed out, “The holocaust in eastern Poland could not have been accomplished without the active participation of hundreds of thousands of locals recruited by the Nazis to control and then slaughter Jews in the field.” The same was true in Latvia, where in 1941 alone, 72,000 of Latvia’s 80,000 Jews were massacred.
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Post by dodger on Nov 13, 2014 19:45:13 GMT
Remarkable study of the Soviet counterinsurgency campaign in the 1940s, 15 July 2014
This Will Podmore review is from: The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands (Paperback)
Statiev notes that in 1917, “The Decree on Land ordered the nationalization of all arable land, its confiscation from landlords and the church, and its distribution among peasants in equal parcels per person as a free lease. This agrarian reform proffered immediate and substantial benefits to many at the expense of few. It secured the consent of most peasants and generated vigorous support among the poorest ones. … After the Bolshevik government gave land to the peasants, the Red Army was always larger than the forces of all its opponents taken together, which shows that even during War Communism, most politically active peasants sided with the Bolsheviks.”
He observes, “Since the early 1920s, OUN [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists] and its predecessor, the Ukrainian Military Organization, had been financed by the Abwehr, the German intelligence service …” The OUN proclaimed, “Our system will be horrible for its opponents: terror against the enemy – foreigners and their accomplices.” Iaroslav Stets’ko, the OUN’s second in command, urged “the Jews should be exterminated and the expediency of carrying out in Ukraine the German methods for exterminating the Jews.” 98 per cent of Western Ukraine’s Jews were killed.
Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UPA] Commander-in-Chief Roman Shukhevych ordered the killing of East Ukrainians “on shaky grounds or without any grounds, and contemplated their total extermination, including even OUN or UPA members.” Statiev notes, “In 2007, the government of Ukraine posthumously awarded Shukhevych the title ‘Hero of Ukraine’.”
146,610 Latvians, 8 per cent of Latvia’s population (the highest proportion among all the countries that supplied collaborators), fought for the Nazis, three times as many as fought for the Soviets. 50,000 died fighting for the Nazis, ten times the number of those who died fighting for the Soviets. 50-60,000 Estonians fought for the Nazis, five times more than joined the army of independent Estonia. 36,800 Lithuanians fought for the Nazis.
Statiev wrote, “In the Baltic region, too, the police actively helped the Nazis to exterminate nearly all the Jews. At least 20 Lithuanian, 4 Estonian, and 4 Latvian police battalions participated directly in the Holocaust. … In 1941-1942, German collaborators, scores of whom later joined the anti-Communist resistance, killed many more people in every borderland region except Estonia than did the Soviets throughout the entire period of their struggle against nationalists from 1939 to the 1950s.”
“every nationalist resistance killed many more civilians than combatants.” “Each major nationalist group slaughtered or helped the Nazis slaughter far more members of ethnic minorities and local peasants than they killed Soviet soldiers.” Guerrillas in Ukraine inflicted 6,155 deaths in 1944, 6,788 deaths in 1945, and 3,129 deaths in 1946. Guerrillas in Lithuania inflicted 675 deaths in 1944, 3,244 deaths in 1945, and 3,004 deaths in 1946.
Statiev judges of the wartime deportations that “[T]he Soviet purpose was obvious: to cleans the frontier regions of a German ‘fifth column’ …” And as he notes, “A ‘fifth column’ did exist in the borderlands – in fact, a Lithuanian underground group formed in 1940 in Mažeikiai and connected with LAF [the Lithuanian Activist Front] named itself ‘The Fifth Column’. OUN started armed resistance long before the German invasion, whereas the Baltic opposition prepared for an insurrection coinciding with a German attack, and after 22 June, its members who had escaped the police net did rise against the Soviets. … Lithuanian historians found that the resistance network ‘was somewhat impaired by the mass deportations of 14 June 1941’, which ‘disrupted ties between leaders of the underground and even eliminated some key personalities.’ Nijole Gaškaite-Žemaitiene attributes the poor organization of the Lithuanian underground on the eve of the German evacuation to the Soviet repressions during the first occupation. Franz Stahlecker, commander of Einsatzgruppe A, complained that “it was much harder to stage pogroms in Latvia [than in Lithuania], mainly because the Soviets had deported the nationalist leaders.’”
Statiev sums up, “Soviet deportations from the western borderlands were less murderous than the ethnic cleansings conducted by Baltic nationalists in the summer of 1941 and by Ukrainian nationalists in 1943-1944. Having deported 58,852 Jewish refugees from Poland, the government unwittingly saved them from extermination by Nazis and nationalists. So too with Poles exiled in 1940-1941 from Western Ukraine: In 1943-1944, the UPA slaughtered almost 20 percent of the Polish population in Volhynia – a death rate higher than that of Polish deportees, which equalled about 5 per cent.”
He notes that the Soviet Union “put more effort into social reforms than have most other states conducting counterinsurgency.” “repressions against diasporas in the western borderlands were less brutal than was the ethnic cleansing conducted by nationalists.” And, “Soviet leaders showed more restraint in the face of greater menace and more precision in repressions in the borderlands than did the American and Canadian governments when they interned all their citizens of Japanese descent deported from the Pacific coast during World War II.”
He notes, “Earlier British deportations during the Boer War can hardly be qualified as a success: Although the internment of Boer civilians in concentration camps helped to suppress the insurgency, about 16 percent of the inmates died within one year, which was double the death rate of the worst Soviet deportations from the Caucasus in 1944. In order to deprive Boer guerrillas of supplies, the British laid waste their countryside. The Soviets never used this tactic in counterinsurgency, and the number of houses their soldiers burned selectively was a small fraction of the 30,000 farms destroyed by the British.”
By contrast, “The U.S.-sponsored campaign against Marxist guerrillas in Guatemala in the 1980s and 1990s cost 200,000 lives – many more than the number of deaths inflicted by the Soviet counterinsurgency during the entire campaign in the borderlands, an area twice as populous.”
And another comparison, “the Americans in Vietnam inflicted unintended civilian deaths far exceeding the victims of Soviet deliberate brutality.” “no Soviet war crime committed after the reoccupation of the borderlands was so grisly as that perpetrated by a U.S. company commanded by Lieutenant William Calley in My Lai on 16 March 1968, when its soldiers killed about 500 civilians, about two-thirds of them women and children.”
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