From the time my childhood in the USA, I've noticed a tendency to focus on Nazi war crimes to the exclusion of every other war crime. We willingly ignore Soviet actions against their own citizens in WWII. The Red Army burned food stores so the Nazis could not sieze them, but Russian and Ukranian citizens starved. Soviet citizens collaborated with the German occupational authority enmass. How else could a mid-sized country like Germany occupy so much Soviet land? When Nazi Germany was on its knees in 1944, they managed to build two divisions plus many smaller units made up of citizens of the nation they were fighting (Soviet Union). NKVD agents were allowed by the allies to forcebly repatriate "Russian slave workers" in Germany who for some reason didn't want to go back home.
I first heard about these phenomena from talking to s survivors (granma's Russian friends) I met in New York as a child. It's clear that the Soviet government was an organization with a goal of its own survival. Not the survival of its citizens. Leftists like to ignore this.
Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.
Other reader comments on this article
Comment
By
Date
This was formally before the start of WWII but part of the same story. Poles tend to forget to mention... [MORE]
vic
Sep 15, 2007 06:41
Poland did not invade Czechoslovakia. When Hitler invaded Czecholovakia Poland took back the small area of Teschen Czechoslovakia grabbed from... [MORE]
Stef
Oct 6, 2007 19:52
Vic fails to mention that Czechoslovakia invaded Poland in 1919 with 15,000 troops, some in non Czech uniforms. After Austro-Hungary... [MORE]
Stef
Oct 12, 2007 11:20
I borrow that heading from Stephen Jay Gould's gloss on the rise of mammals through the contingent annihilation of dinosaurs... [MORE]
Brian Johnson
Sep 12, 2007 08:01
I read his history of Europe, and there too he takes swipes at Zionism even though it had no connection... [MORE]
Read his books
Sep 12, 2007 01:18
Emotions are easily manipulated and one would be naïve to think that such an emotionally charged issue as the Holocaust... [MORE]
Stef
Oct 6, 2007 23:35
Many people, including American military and political leaders at the time, focus most of their attention on the European war... [MORE]
Blain
Sep 12, 2007 00:19
1. Historian Norman Davies excludes origins, viz. "who started it," i.e. excludes from the explanation of later events the 1939... [MORE]
Don Phillipson
Sep 11, 2007 18:22
The involvement of the US and Great Britian against Germany was necessary for victory. If Great Britian had surrendered, all... [MORE]
charles
Sep 11, 2007 11:59
From the time my childhood in the USA, I've noticed a tendency to focus on Nazi war crimes to the...
Aram
Sep 11, 2007 04:32
John's suggestion there was "no need to continue lend lease after 1944" is quaint. Unless the Soviet Union continued to... [MORE]
Norman Hanscombe
Sep 10, 2007 23:20
Hindsight is not always 20-20. The British and Americansconducted a very costly bombing campaign on German cities,costly both in men... [MORE]
Muggins
Sep 10, 2007 23:07
In "No Simple War," his treatment of the Holocaust is generally straightforward and unobjectionable. Yet he evidently still feels bruised... [MORE]
Omri Schwarz
Sep 10, 2007 22:10
He's a product of his times. Maybe he is an anti-Semite. or maybe he feels stung by the Zionist need... [MORE]
ds
Sep 12, 2007 12:42
I wish a less subjective reviewer had written this piece. Mr. Kirsch frets throughout that Davies' alleged lack of objectivity... [MORE]
jeepgypsy
Sep 10, 2007 15:05
Keep in mind, as even Churchill noted after the war, that the USSR did the bulk of the fighting against... [MORE]
We were fortunate
Sep 10, 2007 09:39
Dear RTK -- don't try to pull the age thing on Tom. It's like arguing that you only can understand... [MORE]
John
Sep 10, 2007 00:26
Granted John, it's not impossible to understand things you have no experience of, but that being said, comprehending the international... [MORE]
Avi
Sep 10, 2007 11:37
I have always been amused by people who buy our wartime propaganda that we were fighting for freedom and democracy... [MORE]
tom
Sep 5, 2007 03:43
My guess is that "tom" who so smugly wrote "snicker, snicker" is under the age of 70, and knows only... [MORE]