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Old May 9th, 2017 #1
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Default Russia Insider - Honor to the Heroes of WWII.

'The Greatness of the Russian Soul Is Incredible’: How the Red Army Defeated Nazi Germany

http://russia-insider.com/en/militar...ermany/ri19663

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What Russia achieved and sacrificed during WW2 is nothing short of astonishing, and is relentlessly diminished, distorted, hidden, discounted, and flat-out ignored by the globalist media and by Hollywood.

The biggest ground war in human history took place in Europe from September, 1939 to May, 1945. It has been over 70 years since the war ended. This paper quantifies the Weapons and Casualties during World War II in Europe. Books listed in the Appendix are by American military historians, British, German, America and Russian authors. A declassified U.S. Army document is the source of information about weapons that the Russians themselves produced. Authors Col.David Glantz and Walter Dunn provide data regarding Soviet military production.

There are TWO factors that need to be quantified:

WEAPONS
CASUALTIES

WEAPONS

Russia produced 97% of its own weapons. This is based on a declassified U.S. Army documents that I read at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina in 1956. The breakdown of weapons produced by the Russians is as follows:

100% of their own artillery (second to none and massive)
By mid 1943 the Red Army had a 5 to 1 advantage in artillery over the German Army, 10 to 1 by mid 1944 and 30 to 1 in 1945.
100% of their own small arms. The now famous AK-47 came out in 1947.
99% of their own tanks (their T-34 was the best tank in WW II)
Soviet tank production had risen to 29,000 tanks in 1944. The U.S. produced 17,500 tanks in 1944. German war production in 1944 was at its peak despite heavy American and British bombing.
93% of their own aircraft
82% of their own trucks

CASUALTIES

95% of the European axis forces that got killed in WW II were killed on the Russia Front. Killing 100,000 first rate troops at the beginning or middle of the war is more of a military accomplishment than capturing 1,000,000 beaten second rate troops in the closing months of a war. This percentage (95%) can be confirmed by doing a Time Line Analysis of WW II from September 1939 to May 1945.In the book “A Stranger to Myself," by German soldier Willy Reese, the British historian Sir Max Hastings in the introduction states that 95% of the Axis forces were killed on the Russian Front. German military losses were more than 4,000,000 killed. In the book written by Sir Max Hastings titled INFERNO The World at War 1939 -1945- Europe on page 316 are listed the casualties from the war. In addition the other Axis forces sustained heavy losses on the Russian Front. These numbers are presented with REMORSE for the 10’s of millions of Europeans that were killed in World War I and World War II. How much better and more secure the world be if these conflicts could/should have been avoided.

TIMELINE ANALYSIS

September 1939 to June 1941 — Germany invades Poland starting WW II. The British leave Europe in the spring of 1940. They return four years later in June of 1944 during the invasion of France as part of Second Front.

June 1941 — Germany invades the Soviet Union. In the first six months Germany lost 25% of its original strength. During the Battle of Moscow, November 1941 to January 1942, Germany suffers its first defeat. By March 1942 Germany sustains 1,100,000 casualties.

Nov. 1942 to Jan.1943 — The Battle of Stalingrad changed the world.

Nov.1942 — The Battle of Al Alamayn was the biggest battle in North Africa

July 1943 — Battle of Kursk took place.

June/July 1943 — Sicily was invaded.

June 1944 — Operation Bagration - Germany suffers a greater defeat than

Stalingrad.

June/July 1944 — The Second Front starts with the invasion of France.

April, 1945 — The Russians take Berlin and the war is over.

SEPTEMBER ,1939 to MAY,1940

Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. A few days later Britain and France declare war on Germany. Western historians describe the September 1939 to May,1940 period as the “Phoney War” since very little fighting took place.

FRANCE

When the Germans took Paris in the spring of 1940, they lost fewer troops then they did in attempting to take a building in Stalingrad defended by Sgt. Pavlov and his squad of a dozen Soviet soldiers. More French collaborated with the Germans then fought against them. The last German Iron Cross (equivalent of U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor) was awarded to a Frenchman in the Battle of Berlin . He was a member of the S.S. Charlemagne division which was annihilated by the Russians.

BRITAIN

The British losses were light. In the spring of 1940, the Germans attacked and 300,000 British troops abandoned their weapons and returned to Britain. They returned to Europe in force in June, 1944 during the invasion of France and the start of the Second Front. The fighting in France was on a much bigger scale then the fighting on the Italian peninsula in 1943 or North Africa in 1942/1943.

LIBERATION of WESTERN UKRAINE & BYELORUSSIA

On September 17, 1939 the Russians entered Polish occupied Western Ukraine and Byelorussia and freed 6,000,000 Ukrainians, Russians, and Byelorussians from Polish rule. They greeted their Russian liberators with joy. The Curzon Line was established after WWI and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It accurately defined the boundaries between Poland and the Ukraine and Byelorussia. During the Russian Revolution and Civil War of 1917/1921 the Poles attacked and moved east of the Curzon Line by approximately 125 miles. For a period of 20 years they ruled over a population of 6,000,000 non Polish people. The present border approximates the Curzon Line established after WWI.

GERMANY INVADES the SOVIET UNION

On June 22, 1941 Germany and its allies invade the Soviet Union. German allies include Austria, Italy, Hungry, Finland and Romania with a combined population of 170,000,000. In addition Germany had collaborators from all the countries of Europe except Britain. The battle order of the German S.S. divisions in the last year and a half of the war had more non Germans then Germans. The population of the Soviet Union was 190,000,000. Popular impression was that Germany would win the war in 6 weeks against the Soviet Union, given that their victory was so easy in Western Europe.

BATTLE of MOSCOW

Germany suffered its first military defeat in the Battle of Moscow. The battle took place from November, 1941 to January, 1942 and insured that Germany could no longer win the war as initially anticipated. The Germans suffered 500,000 casualties in the battle. By March, 1942 the German casualties on the Eastern Front totaled 1,100,000. After 16 months in Russia, by November 1942 Germany sustained 2,000,000 casualties.

BATTLE of STALINGRAD

In August, 1942 the Germans amassed their best troops and approached Stalingrad with 1,250,000 men. Of this number only 30,000 ever got back home.

On November 19, 1942 the Russians encircled 330,000 German troops inside Stalingrad. Of this number, 94,000 survived and surrendered on January 31, 1943. Only 5,000 ever got home. During the battle the Russians set up a ticking clock reminding the Germans that every 7 seconds one of them is being killed. In the spring thaw of 1943 there were rivulets of blood flowing into the Volga River. This battle made it very clear that Germany would lose the war. The Battle of Stalingrad is referred to as the battle that changed the world. What if the Nazis had won?

BATTLE of AL ALAMAYN

The biggest battle in North Africa was fought by the British in November, 1942 at about the same that the German army was being encircled in Stalingrad. The German losses at Al Alamayn were 1,000 killed and 9,000 captured or wounded. During this time period, the Germans had 3 divisions in North Africa and 160 divisions against the Russians. The United States lost 7,000 men killed in North Africa.

THE BATTLE of KURSK

The Battle of Kursk which is located 350 miles south of Moscow took place in July 1943. In this 2 week battle the Germans lost 125,000 killed and 350,000 captured or wounded. The Kursk Front alone involved 2,500,000 Red Army and 1,000,000 German troops. By this time Russian intelligence penetrated the German high command and knew exactly their plan of attack weeks ahead of the battle. Marshall Zhukov ordered the Red Army a week ahead of time as to the day and hour and places they were to open fire on. Kursk was Germany’s last attempt at an offensive on the Eastern Front. It failed. At this point in the war, Russia had 5 times as much artillery as did the Germans.

INVASION of SICILY

In July/August of 1943 160,000 U.S. and British troops invaded Sicily and defeated 60,000 German troops.

OPERATION BAGRATION & SECOND FRONT in FRANCE

On June 22,1944 (3 years to the day after Germany invaded Russia ) the Russians ( Marshall Zhukov’s 1st Byelorussian Front) launched a massive attack in Byelorussia code named “Operation Bagration” against German Army Group Centre. During a single week against Army Group Centre German battle casualties were 480,000 men. On the Second Front in France during the 6 weeks after D-Day (June/July 1944) total German losses were 140,000 men. On a weekly basis this is a ratio of about 20 to 1. In Just 12 days, Army Group Centre lost 25 of its 43 divisions. In 5 weeks the Russian Army moved 200 miles west to the gates of Warsaw . For the Germans the destruction of Army Group Centre was a defeat greater than Stalingrad. In addition to Army Group Centre there were German Army Group North, German Army Group North Ukraine and German Army Group South Ukraine. They were defeated in short order. The Hungarian and Romanian armies were routed in similar fashion. Interesting, Hungry with a population of 10,000,000 lost as many soldiers on the Eastern Front (150,000) as did the U.S. and British in Europe and North Africa. Marshall Rokossovsky’s 2nd Byelorussian takes East Prussia and the Baltic countries, Marshall Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front takes Prague, Marshall Malinovsky’s 2nd Ukrainian Front takes Budapest and Vienna and Marshall Tolboukin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front takes Romania. Russia now had 10 times more artillery than the Germans.

BATTLE of BERLIN

In January/February, 1945 the Russians advanced from the Vistula river in Poland to the Oder river in Germany. The offensive was started earlier at a plea from Winston Churchill to counter the successful German offensive in the Ardennes ( the Battle of the Bulge in which 18,000 U.S. troops were killed and 60,000 wounded). The Ardennes battle took place in Belgium. The 3 Russian Marshalls, Zhukov, Rokossovsky and Konev had an army of 2,500,000 men versus a German army of 1,000,000. On April 16th, the Russian army under field commander Marshall Chuikov opened fire with 40,000 guns. This broke the last German resistance before Berlin with German losses of 50,000 men killed. During the course of the Berlin operation, the Germans lost 460,000 killed and 480,000 captured. In just 16 days the Russians took Berlin and the war was over. The victory made possible by the fact that the Soviet army materially and spiritually surpassed the enemy. In 1945 the Russians had 30 times more artillery as did the Germans. During this final assault on Berlin, the Russians had amassed over a dozen times as many men as the Western allies had in the D-Day invasion in June of 1944.

JAPAN

In the Pacific the Japanese got the message after a series of terrific naval defeats by the U.S. and their defeat assured by the atomic bomb. For good measure the Russians sent 1,600,000 troops into Manchuria. This terrified the Japanese officers to the point that they were killing their own children and wives for fear of capture. They remember the defeats the Russians inflected on them in 1938 & 1939 in Manchuria and Mongolia.

THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER

The best descriptions of the Russian soldier come from German soldiers, German generals, British generals and a Russian Jew who was a correspondent through out the war.

Vassili Grossman wrote:

I am deeply affected by the genuine spirit of sacrifice among the Russian soldiers. At war a Russian soldier puts on a white shirt and dies like a saint. At the front there is patience and a resignation to unthinkable hardships. This is the patience of a strong people. This is the patience of a great army. The greatness of the Russian soul is incredible.

A German soldier at Stalingrad wrote, "the Russians are not human but some kind of cast iron creatures."

In his book, Willy Reese writes about the mood among Germans after being on the Eastern Front. He noted that German veterans profess an admiration for the Russian soldier which was seldom conceded to his Western counterpart.

A German veteran aptly described the war in the West as “proper sport” while the war in the East was unmitigated disaster.

A distinguished German staff officer wrote after the war in which he describes Russian virtues: the greatest asset the Russian Army possessed was the Russian soldier. He is patient and enduring beyond imagination, incredibly brave and courageous. A feature of the Russian is his utter contempt for life or death—so incomprehensible to a Westerner.

The British General Giffard Martel had this to say about the Russian soldier—their bravery on the battlefield is beyond dispute but their most outstanding feature is their astonishing strength and toughness.

The last Hero of the Soviet Union medal was awarded to a Russian soldier in the final days of the Battle of Berlin. He heroically rescued a German woman and her 4 year old daughter and brought them to safety. During the rescue he was mortally wounded and died a few days later. When asked to whom they may report this heroic action, he replied—no one, my entire family was killed during the war. This is heroism at its greatest.

THE FIGHTING THE RUSSIANS DID SAVED MILLIONS OF AMERICAN LIVES.

HOW DID THE RUSSIANS WIN?

They had better soldiers
They had better weapons — and more of them
They had better generals
The German generals came from aristocracy
The British generals came from gentry
The Russian generals came from peasantry

DEEP OPERATION

In the 1930’s the Red Army demonstrated tactics and operational originality that showed up in WWII that consisted of vast tank armies, artillery, infantry and aircraft. The Soviet concept of DEEP OPERATION represented the most advanced ideas attained in the history of military concepts. Refer to Deep Battle published by Brassey’s Defense Publishers. The concept was a major factor in the defeat of the German army. The main elements being:

Holding Force
Main Maneuvering Force
Element of Reserve

The main maneuvering element consisted of the means of creating the shock effect.

Breaking or assaulting effect- aimed at bisecting the defensive front.

Echelon for developing the breakthrough- designed to break up the defenders lay out and to building up a maneuvering mass beyond the defenders center of gravity.

After advancing in the defenders depth, neutralizing his remaining forces.

SUMMARY

The Americans and Russians need to review their common history.

Americans have been at war with about 10 different countries. NEVER against the Russians. Their contribution to winning WWII needs to be remembered and honored.
 
Old May 9th, 2017 #2
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Today Russian people celebrated our great holiday of victory over nazis.
Across the whole country we remembered those who died to save our nation:





Look in white and proud people:



Hitler on the roof)))

 
Old May 9th, 2017 #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roman1 TITAN View Post
Today Russian people celebrated our great holiday of victory over nazis.
Across the whole country we remembered those who died to save our nation:





Look in white and proud people:



Hitler on the roof)))

Yes Russia Insider if one rare honest media houses that is exposing the lies of CNN/BBC/FOX NEWS , etc........

The junta heavily relies on media to spread lies , truth wins in the end.
 
Old May 10th, 2017 #4
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If you want to honor your dead relatives who fought Hitler in Ukraine your insurance premiums will go up.

Post-Maidan Ukraine of course no longer celebrates Victory Over Nazism on May 9th. It instead marks "Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation" (reconciliation with whom?) on May 8th.

Many people however still mark the occasion. They are brave people.

Across Ukraine V-Day marchers have been attacked and harassed. They have been pelted with rocks, bottles, smoke bombs, and eggs. Another tactic has been to spoil their marches by having thugs carrying the red-black flag of the genocidal, ultra-nationalist UPA walk in their midst.
From RI :









 
Old May 10th, 2017 #5
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When Russians and West were good with each other.

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There was good reason for optimism.

On that very day, Wednesday, April 25,1945, no less than 50 nations convened in San Francisco to begin the careful task of drafting the United Nations Charter, led by Vyacheslav Molotov of the Soviet Union and Harry S Truman of the United States.



- American and US soldier.

Though Im sure that the US under our newest neocon, Donald Trump, would have only vicious, ignorant things to say about the role of the Soviet Union in these historic Proceedings, the truth is that no nation more wanted a lasting peace than the Soviet Unionwith its 10 million dead service men and women and its 17 million slaughtered civilians.

The Death Camp at Leningrad

Just look at what Hitler did to Leningrad (now again St. Petersburg)Vladimir (Volodya) Putins hometown.

According to General Zhukov (generally regarded as the single best authority on the subject), of the 1.8 million residents of Leningrad who either could not or would not evacuate the city over the Road of Life (aka Road of Death) across Lake Ladoga (which was under constant Nazi shelling and machine-gun fire), no less than 1.5 million of those remaining residents died of starvation-related causes, between Sept 8, 1941 and January 27, 1944, when the siege was finally lifted by the conquering Red Army. .

Yes, 1.5 million dead. Thats more people than died at Auschwitz. Thats more people than died at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Nanking, Dresden, Hamburg, or Berlin.

Indeed the Holocaust at Leningrad constitutes the greatest urban catastrophe the world has ever known.

It is hard to conceive of death and suffering on such a horrific scale.

On the left, an older boy ignores the hunger within him and the horror around him by reading, while a younger boy lies dead beside him. In the center, a heap of corpses awaits burial in a mass grave. On the right, in 1960 (16 years after the end of the siege), little Volodya Putin, now age 8 (born 1952), sits staring at the camera ("ferociously" staring, paid-Putin-hater and Pussy-Riot-defender, Masha Gessen, would have us believe), between his lost-in-thought paternal grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich1 Putin (former chef to Rasputin, Lenin, and Stalin), and his war-hero father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putinseen warmly embracing his son, despite the incessant, excruciating pain from all the inoperable shrapnel in both legs, received during the decimating defense of Leningrad.

It tells us somethingtells Americans somethingabout the Russian people that so many voluntarily remained in Leningrad to sew clothes for the troops and care for the starving and dying when these very caregivers were starving and dying themselves out of compassion and love.

Putins Forgiving Mother

Such was the case with Putins own mother, Maria Ivanovna2 Putin, according to her best friend and Putins second mother (as well as primary school teacher), Vera Gurevich, during that first terrible winter of the siege in 1941-42, when temperatures plunged to -30o C for days and nights on end. And Maria became too weak to hunt for food or kindling for the stove with which to warm herself and their baby son, Viktor,3 while her husband was away at the front and then in the hospital without her knowing. So she and her baby just lay there wrapped up in her coat and froze. Till 2 women, saying they were sanitation workers, came and took Viktor away to an unnamed hospitalonly to return and say he had died.4

A few days later, Putins mother fell into a stupor from starvation; was discovered in the Putins one-room apartment by authentic sanitation workers, who carried her downstairs and threw her onto a heap of corpses in front of the building for internment in a mass grave, thinking she was deadwhen someone heard her groan; and so she was saved.

Yet, according to Putin's own account, as well as Veras in her biography of Putin, neither of his parents ever showed the least hatred towards those Nazi soldiers who enforced the siege against them and their loved ones. As Volodyas mother explained to him as a child within the moral framework of communism (keeping her own Christianity hidden from him until well after the fall of communism in 1993 when he was 41):

"What hatred can we have towards these soldiers? They were simple people and perished in the war too.... What could they do? They were just ordinary workers, the same as we. They were forced to go to the war fronts.

As simple as that. So sincerely said. Im sure that Putin is right about the depth of his mothers forgiveness. And her friend, Vera Gurevich, says the exact same thing. Maria Ivanovna was a very forgiving woman by nature.

But was this just her nature? Or was this part of her Russian nature? That is, are Russians naturally forgiving by nature?

Im sure Ill be called an old fool for saying so. But Im too old to care.

And so I will say that compared with, say, us Americans, I think that Russians really are more forgiving by nature than we are.

Russian Forgiveness

But what does that mean exactly?

For openers, it does not mean anything stupid like all Russians are forgiving and no Americans are. Or that all Russians are good-hearted and no Americans are.

Rather, I am speaking (statistically) about the whole Russian population, on the one hand, and the whole American population, on the other, as 2 normally-distributed bell-shaped curves, in which a small percent of people in both populations are extremely forgiving (like Maria Ivanovna) and another small percent in both populations are not forgiving at allwhile most people in both populations are somewhere in-between.

With that in mind, I will sayfor what it may be worthbased on my personal and professional experiences over a fairly long life (starting with my Russian friends and their families in Kansas City during the 1940s and 50s; Indeed there were folks in Strawberry Hill who only spoke Russian) that Russians do tend to be more forgiving as a whole than Americans as a wholeat least from what I've observed.

Whether that is a valid observation or not (I just put it out there for debate), it certainly is the case that forgiveness is conducive to healing. Witness the great success of South Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission meetings between victims and victimizers, following the end of Apartheid.

Domestically, of course, Stalin pursued the opposite courseto the point of inventing literally millions of enemies where they did not exist, beginning with The Reign of Terror in the 1930s. But that was one mans paranoid delusions, enacted on a national scale.

Internationallyas paranoid as he wasStalin seemed willing to reconcile with anyone, even Hitler, if it seemed to him to serve the pragmatic goal of building socialism in one country.

And the same was even truer after the Warwith much of the Soviet Union in ruins.

While Stalin was ruthless in acquiring a buffer zone of Eastern European countries to protect Mother Russia from an attack by the West, there is no factual evidence that he ever planned to invade the Westlet alone engage in world conquest, as Truman was to claim. Witness Stalin's early withdrawal from Austria, Manchuria, and Iran.

Thus its my impression of Stalin that as psychotic as he could be domestically at times, internationally he was always sane enough to seek peace with the West for purely pragmatic reasons. Like most paranoids, his focus was inward, not outward. He was the opposite of Western-import, Trotsky (whom many have called The Founding Father of Neoconservatism) in that regard.

In short, I dont believe that Harry Truman had to atom-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to keep Stalin from invading France, as Hitler had. Even under Stalin, the Russians were never Germans.

Why Truman thought the Russians wereor at least acted as though they wereI will discuss in the second half of this essay, to be published separately under the title, Betraying the Better Angels of Our Nature, after our could-have-been, should-have-been best buddies forever!the Russiansare forced to celebrate Victory Day without us on May 9.



Why We Dont Celebrate Victory Day Together

Its not because the Russian people dont want us to join them.

And its not because the American people dont want to join with them in Victory and live with them in Perpetual Peace.

Thats what the surprise election of the deceiving Donald Trump was all about. Despite the constant demonization of Russia, in general, and Putin, in particular, the American people still elected Trump, in part, because he claimed to favor dtentejust like Obama and even Bush Jr. before him in their first Presidential campaigns.

Ordinary people of all nations always want peaceunless their rulers can fool them. Not just because it is we the people of every country who do the fighting and the dying, as well as paying for all the weapons and all the wars.

But it is also because it is the ordinary people of all nations who believe in a God of Love and a God of Peace Who wants them to repudiate those ruling elites who would impose the sorrows and sufferings of war upon them that in the words of Isaiah 2:4:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall they learn war any more.

Thats certainly what those jubilant young Russian and American soldiers in the lead-in photo of this essay must have hoped for that bright April day.

But then

April is the cruelest month.

As T.S. Eliot says in The Wasteland. For April not only saw the hopeful meeting of the Russian and American Armies at the Elbe and the meeting of 50 nations in San Francisco to begin drafting the Charter of the United Nations, but also the death of this great manthe President of my birthFranklin Delano Roosevelt (shown here happily behind the wheel of his custom-made convertible which he could drive with hand-controls for the brakes and the gas as his legs were paralyzed from polio by then).

What made Roosevelt great in the opinion of ordinary people around the world was that hean American nobleman if noble men of spirit we havetruly, deeply, empathically cared for themthe ordinary people of this worldout of a well of compassion created by his own constant sufferingwhich rather than wither his heart, served to expand it to include all people everywhere. As expressed in his concept of The Four Freedoms which he believed all people should enjoy. Namely: (1) Freedom of Speech: (2) Freedom of Worship; (3) Freedom from Want; and (4) Freedom from Fear. And the vision of a United Nations that would lead the world in seeing that all peoples and nations achieved, preserved, and protected these Four Freedoms was FDRs also.

With the keeping of the peace given to the Four Great Powers: namely, Britain, China, the USA and, yes! The USSR. He called them The Four Policemen. Imagine such a thing. Roosevelt really believed that Stalin could actually be trusted to help keep the peace of the worldbecause that would be in the Soviet Unions own interest. Was the cripple (as the contemptible George W. Bush contemptuously called FDR) smoking dope or what?

In my experience, even paranoid personalities can be guided to make rational decisions involving themselves and others if they are sane enough to understand the Judo moral/martial-arts concept of Jita Kyoei (or mutual benefit)which is one of the pillars of Putin's foreign policy. And Jita Kyoei sets a low bar for sanity indeed. Even an acutely psychotic paranoid in a locked prison ward with a sharpened screwdriver in his hand can often get why it would be of Jita Kyoei for him to put that shank down. (Though I wouldnt use Japanese with an American locked-ward paranoid.)

And Stalin was considerably higher functioning than your garden-variety locked-ward paranoid.

Though it took a good deal of effort, Roosevelt also convinced Stalin to include Freedom of Worship as one of the Four Freedoms the Soviet Union as a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council would guarantee to uphold with all nations and peoples.

And I would not be surprised if FDR did not have a hand in persuading Stalin to halt his persecution of Orthodox Christianity and other religions within the USSR during the Great Patriotic War.

But then came April 1945. And just as the War against Germany was drawing to a close, FDR died. Just as in April 1865, just as the Civil War was drawing to a close, Abraham Lincoln died. And April was the month when Martin Luther King died too.




Roosevelt died in Warm Springs Georgia. And all along the tracks from Warm Springs to Washington, black folks and white folk lined up to watch his funeral train go by and cry. Such a man! Such a President! He had seen them through the Great Depression. He had seen them through the worst of a 2-front World War. And now he was gone.

To be succeeded by my fathers former haberdasher, Harry Truman. (Harry Truman operated a haberdashery store from 1920 to 1922. And as luck or fate or Providence Divine would have it, my father bought a hat there in 1922 at the age of 22.) Thats cold-blooded Harry on the right there, grinning from ear to ear as he was about to go on air to announce the incineration of Hiroshimaa monstrous crime against humanity to intimidate Stalin (Good luck with that one!) that cost him not a wink of sleep his whole life, he boasted towards the end.

Trumans Presidency marked an evil turn in American history. But more on that in my next essay.

Instead, Id like to close by talking about

Russias Two Great Victories Over the Nazis

Yes, two.

The One Great Victory over the Nazis that everyone knows is the Great External Victory over the Nazis, symbolized by the raising of the Soviet flag over the Reichstag.



But then there is a Second Great Victory over the Nazis I never hear talked about and may not even be recognized as far as I know and that is the Great Internal Victory over the Nazis in terms of the Russian Peoples Rejection of Their Own Internal Nazificationa pathogenic process to which the American ruling elites, as well as many ordinary Americans, have largelysuccumbed.

Its striking when I think about it as a psychologistgiven the horrific trauma to which the Russian people were exposed. Words cannot express it. Only photos can begin to convey.

And yet the Russian people and their leaders did not turn into a bunch of hate-filled Nazislaughing at the news of a mutilation murder as Hillary did on TV. Or bragging about getting really good at killing people as Obama did with his aides.

If we look, for example, at Leningrad children of Putins generationthe generation born right after the War and the liberation of that once lovely city turned terrifying death camp, we do not see ferocious feral children of the sort that Masha Gessen describes. She claims to be Russian. But its her public Americanization that shes profitably projecting.

What we see in these children, instead, is overflowing love. Love of books. Love of brothers. Love of babushkas for their grandsons. Love of caps and coats and uniforms of soldiers living and gone as fanciful guardian animals look on.

It is all about love in mourning and love in memory and love in going onthe living lovingly connected with lost loved ones even in what they wear.

I was born during the War. I was kid when these kids were. But in Kansas City I didnt know one kid whose dad or brother or uncle got killed in action. Because America lost so few. Only 400,000 American service men and women got killed on both fronts in the whole War. So there were no uniforms for kids in loving memory to wear.

But if our losses had been greater, would we be more like the Russians? More like the Germans? Or just like we are?

The late insightful writer, Gore Vidal, wittily entitled one of his works, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia.

Thats us, alright. As a nationas a peoplewe dont know how to remember or what to remember. We are even losing the ability to remember. And our schools, our media, wont teach us what or how. Thats part of our Nazification. We are supposed to look only forwardnever back. Like robots. Not humans.

Its a crying shame. I mean that literally. Even our Great Generation will soon be forgotten. Whereas Russias Immortal Regiment will live on and on. Because the Russians know that it is the connectedness of all with all in loving acts of memory that keeps us loving humans.

Dr. William Wedin is a licensed clinical psychologist and long-time human rights activist who lives and practices in New York City.



1 The suffix, -ovich means son of in Russian.

2 The suffix, -ovna, means daughter of in Russian.

3 Viktor Putin is officially listed as being buried in the Piskaryovskoye Mass Cemetery in St. Petersburg, though the body was never found.

4 I will deal with suspicions regarding Viktors disappearance in a later article.
 
Old May 13th, 2017 #6
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In Russia the last days were the true triumph of the National spirit, what we never see in Western states. Don't pay attention to the outlook, the nature only matters - that's what I get.









Whilst we see only children gay pride parades in Western countries
 
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