Thank You Soviets
for Hitler's Defeat; Thank God You Didn't Win Alone (Die Tageszeitung, Germany)
"I'm
thankful Hitler lost the war and that I don't have to live in Naziland, but I'm also thankful that the Soviet Union
wasn't the sole winner of the war. With Stalin as the only winner Europe would
have been transformed into an immense prison camp. … The Soviet Union set us
free - it defeated Hitler. For this she is owed our eternal gratitude. … That
Germany is a free country today is largely due to the fact that the United
States and not the Soviet Union won the Cold War. If things had been the other
way around, in Berlin today there would still be military parades, flag
ceremonies and a dictator contradicted only at one's peril."
Of Hitler little has been left unsaid. In comparison his
spiritual brother, Stalin comes off looking surprisingly well. Based on some
estimates, Stalin killed between 9 and 22 million people, the majority of whom
were Soviet citizens. They don't even have their own day of remembrance. On
August 23, Europe honors the victims of Stalinism and National Socialism in beautifully
balanced, low-key fashion.
Just recently in the Russian city of Lipetsk, a new Stalin
bust was unveiled. That's quite a feat for a mass murderer. You kill millions
of people and even decades later - monuments in your honor are still being
erected. As you can see winning a war makes a difference. If, as a mass
murderer, you win your war, everything is OK.
British author Robert Harris wrote a novel called Fatherland with the premise that the
Nazis won the war. There are two superpowers in Harris' book - Germany and the
United States. The murder
of the Jews has been successfully covered up by the Nazis. It is no longer
discussed. The vision is a realistic one. Stalin exterminated his rural middle
class - 600,000 were murdered. In order to enforce
collectivization, the Communists deliberately caused 14.5 million people to
starve. Children were the first to die. Three and a half million Ukrainians
died miserable deaths. No culture of commemoration has developed in response to
this genocide.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Truman and Churchill No Better Than Stalin (Izvestia, Russia)
I'm thankful Hitler lost the war and that I don't have to
live in Naziland, but I'm also thankful that the
Soviet Union wasn't the sole winner of the war. With Stalin as the only winner Europe
would have been transformed into an immense prison camp. The Red Army brought
freedom to concentration camps survivors, after which new occupants populated
the camps, many of whom were innocent and died. Hitler's demise was indeed a liberation, after which a new system of oppression was
developed in Soviet-occupied Europe.
The Language Conventions of East Germany
Our commemoration rituals for May 8th, the day the war
ended, are strange. We've adopted the language conventions of the German
Democratic Republic [East Germany], which in turn originated with Stalin. The
Soviet Union set us free - it defeated Hitler. For this she is owed our eternal
gratitude. Historians tell us that only with the help of supplies from the United
States was the Red Army, weakened by Stalin's
murderous excesses, able to successfully wage war after 1942. That Germany is a
free country today is largely due to the fact that the United States and not
the Soviet Union won the Cold War. If things had been the other way around, in
Berlin today there would still be military parades, flag ceremonies and a
dictator contradicted only at one's peril.
