"Russian Brutality: Massacres By Russian Soldiers..." Topic

… During WW2

"The eastern front was a hard place to be in. If the SS and gestapo did evil things in Russia, the Russian soldiers were no angels too. Here are some instances where German soldiers were massacred by the Russians. The Russians killed soldiers of other nations too. And we do not mention here the mass rapes in Berlin which started in April 1945…"
From main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

I am confident that the choir of "just soldiers doing their duty", "Everyone does bad things at wartime" and "A few bad apples" that inevitably come up whenever people discuss Nazi atrocities will be here any moment now.

Any moment.

Aaaaaaany moment.

Just gonna go put on a pot o' tea and wait for them.

Ummm, Weasel, I believe the article is focusing primarily on Soviet/Russian atrocities, which rarely get mentioned.

Reading comprehension is a wonderful thing.

Russia started killing on a large scale before WWII. There was plenty of evil and incompetence to see to that. WWII just allowed them to shift into high gear.

"Ummm, Weasel, I believe the article is focusing primarily on Soviet/Russian atrocities, which rarely get mentioned."

Rarely mentioned? Oh please we have been beaten like a baby seal by tales of Russian autrocities and brutality. Books by Paul Carell a n d David Irving and their like feast on the Noble germans fighting the good fight against russian barbarians. German state policy excused any autrocity or massacre against the Russian people who were not considered human. Not just the SS but the regular army took part with enthusiasm.

And the website this was taken from appears to be one of those SS worshippers sites. I love when they say yes Nazis were evil but the Russians were so much worse to excuse German actions.

No, you don't excuse German actions, you condemn both. Quite a big difference.

Mako – Pretty much whenever someone discusses the holocaust on this site, someone out there will pipe in to try and redirect the discussion to Soviet atrocities instead.

I don't know how on earth you believe Soviet crimes are "rarely discussed".

Did you miss the anniversary for the fall of the Berlin wall a few years ago? It was everywhere.

Garrison – You should.
I get very suspicious when people employ "WHAT ABOUT" as a rhetorical argument because it's always a redirection and often intended to diminish.
"Well, they can't have been that bad, because look at this guy".

If we're discussing a particular crime, there's no need to bring up that someone else in history was also a criminal.

You see it all the time too: Nazi apologists, Soviet apologists, Imperialism apologists, slavery apologists.
Heck, I'm sure someone out there right now is typing a furious post about why Attilla did nothing wrong :)

(smile)

Agree with you my friend!.

Amicalement
Armand

Communist get the Gold metal for killing people.

Nazis get the Silver.

Imperialist get the Bronze.

In some future age the Red Star will join the other symbols of hate in the dustbin.

Looking at Ukraine, China and colonial India, one could argue that economists get all the medals while old-fashioned dictators get the "aw, you participated too" award.

The death toll from "ideas about the economy" vastly exceeds those from simply lining people up and shooting them.

(In Stalin's case, it's something like 20 to 1, from most estimates)

Of course, it's hard to separate out, because economic terror is a weapon of oppression as much as direct, physical terror and arguably there's little need to.

Something that isn't talked about much either, because it doesn't fit the general way we think about history (and certainly doesn't fit the way much of it is framed for us).

You can learn a lot from hte way people talk about these things and the way they conceptualize them, often without even realizing it.
Likewise, we can learn a lot from exactly what gets counted and for whom, under what circumstances.

Grim stuff, though thankfully the arc of history bends towards justice, if ever so slow.

Sorry Weasel, it isn't/wasn't everywhere.

No mention of it ever, in any of my history classes, and have very rarely seen any mention of it on the news.

No mention of it? Really? I mentioned two authors. Their books are famous for distorting history. Go to amazon and check out books n the eastern front. Or you could go to the website of where this article came from. Lots of misunderstood germans and homages to the SS. The only stuff I can find on the Russia side is how uncivilized they were. Go to your local library and check out this book:
The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture

Economic and dictatorship – communist for the double win.

VC Carter i agree with you and have a similar hope that "In some future age the Red Star will join the other symbols of hate" but frankly i see this a still very distant future when i see

Weasel, how prescient. Do you also read palms, tea leaves, etc?

But no one is disputing the fact that Russians committed atrocities in WWII, correct?

Vtsaogames – Tea leaves of truth my friend. Tea leaves of truth.

Bill – Nope.
The Soviets (Russian is incorrect) acted with considerable brutality both in how it conducted the war and in occupied territories, not to mention the elimination of Polish intelligentsia and officers.

You can throw in the treatment of POW's as an extra bonus, if you like.

See? It's easy to do and I didn't have to bring up anybody else to do so.

Go on. You guys try it. You can start with Attila the Hun if that makes you more comfortable, to ease into the process.

Introductory classes are communist dictators and pre-20th century evils, Midterms is fascist dictators and we'll end up with colonialism, imperialism and Microsoft for the advanced placement class.

Normally, I'd charge for teaching this class, but since I am a believer that knowledge should be free, I'll make exceptions here :-)

This may shed some light:
PDF link
Rod Robertson.

The whole "side A was not so bad because side B also committed crimes" makes zero sense from a logical perspective. How does the existence of a crime committed by someone else lessen one's guilt? That would be like my talking about Jack the Ripper and someone coming along and saying, "You know, the Ripper was not so bad because Ted Bundy killed more women." Again, it makes no sense.

Yes, the Soviets commited a variety of awful crimes and have as much or more blood on their hands as do the Germans of that era. They were not nice folks. No one rational disputes that. But that in no way mitigates or excuses the crimes of the Nazi state.

Dragging this back toward wargaming….what it DOES do is make WW2 Ostfront games more enjoyable because you're happy to see both sides wiped out! It's one of those conflicts that boil down to "bad guys killing other bad guys.". There are a number of other conflicts that fall into that genre. The Spanish Civil War (a collection of extreme leftist factions fighting Fascists), The South African Border War (Cuban backed communists and Apartheid era South Africa) and the Iran-Iraq War (a nutty theocracy vs a good old fashioned thugocracy) spring to mind.

Any other "I won't shed a tear about either side" conflicts you all can think of?

I think that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia with his legacy of Comunism after WW2 have many things in common above all if we consider crimes VS innocent people…but we are going a little of topic now…not a justification for supposed or proved crimes but i think that the Red Army deserve some respect, also considering his supposed crimes during and after/before battle .it's a proven fact that it was above all THE RED Army that effectivly defeated German Army and their will to endure fight ..the same RA conquered the hearth of the Reich and ended the menace of the Nazism in free world..in fact they can be sided , without any doubts, among the right cause ..

Martin
"Dragging this back toward wargaming….what it DOES do is make WW2 Ostfront games more enjoyable because you're happy to see both sides wiped out! It's one of those conflicts that boil down to "bad guys killing other bad guys.". There are a number of other conflicts that fall into that genre. The Spanish Civil War (a collection of extreme leftist factions fighting Fascists), The South African Border War (Cuban backed communists and Apartheid era South Africa)"
i imagine that few wargamers ..not only because they have to buy and piant their troops..are face by those dilemmas…usually we choose army by simpathy and appeal..like 90% of our life choices…so i'll probably not fight Ardennes because i've no appeal for Germans and scant interest for US Army to which i have few sources to consult and moderate appeal because of his too much modern , according to my tastes, array of technology…while i certainly will choose to field a French Foreign Legion Army in the Desert..thanks to great simpathy for this corps and really don't care a bit about Imperialism concerns….every body does his games with real concern and choice of side..so for the many who play SCW and Border Wars the choice of side is important to activate his interest in his painted toys..

Martin H Wolverton:
Many of those who died at the hands of Soviet forces were not soldiers but civilians. The forced migrations of ethnic German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Ukraine and even the USSR uprooted 14-16 million souls and resulted in the deaths of 2-3 million innocent German civilians. Starvation and malnutrition coupled with exposure killed almost a million more in Germany. So, I at least will shed a tear or two for the innocents massacred during and after the war. And lest we forget that these events were our own doing, remember that FDR/Truman and Churchill fully supported this programme at Yalta and later Potsdam. Western powers are not blameless in this. The kind of demonization which leads one to shed no tears for one or both sides in a past conflict is the fertile soil which shall nurture the next atrocities in our bloody garden of war. Nazi, German, Bolshevik, Soviet, Russian, Arab, Persian, Afghan, Iraqi, or American are all humans and we must never lose sight of that truth or we shall be prone to new atrocities.
Rod Robertson.