Thank You Soviets for Hitler's Defeat; Thank God You Didn't Win Alone (Die Tageszeitung, Germany)

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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."

By Harald Martenstein

Translated By Stephanie Martin

May 13, 2015

Germany - Die Tageszeitung - Original Article (German)

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)

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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.

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