Soviet Storm. World War 2 in the East

[Russian Bear]

Germany attacks and conquers European countries:
German soldier:
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Soviet soldier:

https://cdnstatic.rg.ru/uploads/images/181/79/65/boec1.jpg

The USSR liberates all of Europe and takes Berlin in Germany:

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Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-45 A just, liberation war of the Soviet people for the freedom and independence of the socialist Motherland against fascist Germany and its allies (Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland, and in 1945 Japan). The war against the USSR was unleashed by German fascism - the dictatorship of the most reactionary and aggressive forces of imperialism, which sought to destroy the world's first socialist state. Was the most important and decisive component of the Second World War 1939-45

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Type: historical reenactment
Genre: docudrama
Year of production: 2011
Number of episodes: 18

Episode 1-18 with English voiceover, this story is removed to YouTube and banned from showing in many countries. Because now Russia is being erased from all history books and history books are being rewritten, distorting history: https://watchdocumentaries.com/soviet-storm-ww2-in-the-east/


When the whole world saw that the USSR would win the war on its own, the Allies decided to open the 2nd front in 1944. Of course, we are grateful to England and the USA for their help. But opening the 2nd front at least in 1941, the help would have been much better when we asked for it.

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American soldier:

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English soldier:

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https://cdn.fishki.net/upload/post/2020/07/20/3373974/bezymjannyj-kollazh-3.jpg

Soviet soldiers and allied soldiers in a friendly atmosphere. Ha-ha-ha, the photo of a Soviet soldier kissing an American soldier is not what you thought. They probably drank vodka, and when a Russian drinks, he is very kind and opens his soul. Russians have a tradition of kissing on the cheeks 3 times, on the right cheek, left, then again on the right. It is also a manifestation of friendship and joy.


The War That Took Millions: How Many Lives Did World War II Take by Country

The Great Patriotic War lasted 4 years - from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. During this time, more than 27 million Soviet citizens did not return home, including not only dead soldiers, but also civilians who died during the war or were taken to other territories.
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https://avatars.dzeninfra.ru/get-zen_doc/271828/pub_67c4f692ea30c909910e1b2e_67c4fadfb1ed290cbdab40be/scale_1200

World War II is the bloodiest catastrophe in human history. Over six years (1939–1945), the world lost between 70 and 85 million people. But these numbers hide the fates of entire nations, cities, and families. Let's go through the countries and remember how the war changed them forever.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/RIAN_archive_982_Ruins_of_a_house.jpg/1200px-RIAN_archive_982_Ruins_of_a_house.jpg

Soviet Union: More than 27 million dead

The USSR suffered the heaviest losses. Every fourth soldier and every seventh citizen of the country died. The siege of Leningrad, mass shootings, burned villages — about 13–15 million civilians died in the occupied territories. Stalingrad, the Kursk Bulge, the Battle of Berlin — each operation took hundreds of thousands of lives. These are not just numbers — these are empty houses, broken families, unlearned lessons for children.

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Germany: 6-7 million

The Third Reich, which started the war, lost up to 5.3 million soldiers and about 1.5 million civilians. Allied bombings razed Hamburg and Dresden to the ground, and millions of refugees died during the retreat. But even these losses pale in comparison to the crimes of Nazism: 6 million Jews fell victim to the Holocaust, and many of them were citizens of Poland, the USSR, and France.

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Poland: 6 million (including 3 million Jews)

During the years of occupation, 17% of the population died - more than in any other country. The Warsaw Ghetto, death camps (Auschwitz, Treblinka), executions of the intelligentsia - the war became a genocide for the Polish people.

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China: 15–20 million

The Japanese occupation (1937–45) turned China into a field of mass atrocities: the Nanjing Massacre, biological experiments, famine. The exact numbers are unknown — many died from disease and repression. The war lasted longer here, and its wounds have not yet healed.

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Japan: 2.5–3 million

After the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the war came to the Japanese islands. The firestorm in Tokyo (100,000 victims per night), the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (up to 250,000 dead) — the civilian population paid a terrible price for the government's militarism.

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USA and Great Britain: "lesser" losses against the backdrop of tragedy

- USA: 420,000 dead (military operations in Europe and the Pacific).

- Great Britain: 450,000 (bombing of London, fighting in Africa and Asia).

These countries were tested by the war, but their territories saw almost no ground combat, which explains the lower numbers.

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Other countries: whose losses are forgotten?

- Yugoslavia: 1–1.7 million (guerrilla warfare and ethnic cleansing).

- France: 600,000 (resistance, bombing, deportations).

- Italy: 450,000 (civil war after the overthrow of Mussolini).

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Why do the numbers differ?

Historians still argue about the exact data. For example:

- Should we count the deaths from the famine in Bengal (2-3 million), caused by British policy?

- How to count the victims of blockades and epidemics?

- How many people died in the Gulag camps or from repression in the occupied countries?

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Memory instead of statistics

Behind each number is a person with a name, dreams and fears. The war took children who did not become adults, scientists who did not make discoveries, lovers who did not start families. Today, looking at these numbers, it is important to remember: war does not resolve disputes - it erases the future.



1) Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Historical background/ 2) Soviet-Finnish War 1939-1940/ 3) What would the world be like if the Red Army had not liberated Europe from the Nazis
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129506-Soviet-Storm.-World-War-2-in-the-East&p=1663928&viewfull=1#post1663928

⚔ 9 May 2025 in Russia - Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War 🛡
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129506-Soviet-Storm.-World-War-2-in-the-East&p=1667216&viewfull=1#post1667216

1) On August 9, 1945, the USSR entered the war with Japan/ 2) How the USSR took the Kuril Islands from the Japanese
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129506-Soviet-Storm.-World-War-2-in-the-East&p=1667972&viewfull=1#post1667972

The organizer of World War II is known
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129506-Soviet-Storm.-World-War-2-in-the-East&p=1670600&viewfull=1#post1670600

The main thing you need to know about World War II
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129506-Soviet-Storm.-World-War-2-in-the-East&p=1670603&viewfull=1#post1670603

1) How significant were Lend-Lease deliveries for the USSR/ 2) Why Stalin decided to invade Poland in 1939
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129506-Soviet-Storm.-World-War-2-in-the-East&p=1670643&viewfull=1#post1670643

Who Shot Polish Officers in Katyn?
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129506-Soviet-Storm.-World-War-2-in-the-East&p=1670651&viewfull=1#post1670651


https://avatars.dzeninfra.ru/get-zen_doc/3986249/pub_60a5a1a1f448444f4d909617_60a5b126ce404e36f4e559ff/scale_1200


Why were the US and Great Britain in no hurry to open the Second Front?

It is widely known that back in 1941, Stalin wrote to Churchill about the need to create a full-fledged "Second Front" in Europe. And in November 1941, Joseph Vissarionovich publicly pointed out the absence of a Second Front in Europe as one of the factors in the difficult situation of the Soviet Union. Like, we are fighting here with all our might, and you are sitting overseas...

In our country, the opening of the Second Front is usually called the landing of Anglo-American troops in Normandy. This was June 1944. Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge had already happened, and the Battle of Berlin was less than a year away.

On the other hand, the Americans were solving their problems with the Japanese during this same period. The British were fighting in North Africa, at sea. Then there was Italy. Of course, the scale of the forces involved in these operations is difficult to compare with the scale of the "Eastern Front".

And there are several points of view on this situation with the delay in opening the "large land" Second Front, and all of them are quite justified. In short:

1. Fear of further strengthening of the USSR's position on the world stage, especially in regions "interesting" for the allies. The "spectre of communism" frightened many representatives of the Western elite, and will frighten them for a long time.

2. Quite logical state interests of the USA and Great Britain. For example. Winston Churchill had a very clear goal: preserving the colonial British Empire. Of course, the USSR can be supported, but not too much, so as not to overexert ourselves in the process. Here is a good quote:

"The fact that the Russians are suffering does not mean that we should suffer too. We must make our enemy suffer..." (c) V.M. Falin. The Second Front. The Anti-Hitler Coalition: Conflict of Interests.

That is why Churchill, throughout almost the entire Second World War, was a supporter of the gradual weakening of the Third Reich, with minimal losses for his Britain. And he was sharply against the immediate opening of the Second Front or even the strengthening of the "Soviet" front: they say, we will only waste our resources there in vain.

3. One more point can be deduced from point number two. It consists in the fact that the Anti-Hitler Coalition was a temporary and rather shaky alliance of very different states against a common enemy, its importance should not be overestimated. To be honest, I am sometimes surprised myself, how they did not "fight" in the process. I think that the leaders played an important role here - Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin.

4. But if the leaders of the great powers still somehow agreed among themselves, then part of the British and American elites could be less friendly. Therefore, many American companies continued to trade with Hitler "in a roundabout way" or talk about "isolationism".

The US and UK government systems assumed that the different interests of different influential groups should be taken into account. By 1943, the point of view that it was worth creating a bloc with the "new Germany" (in which the conspirators had overthrown Hitler) had become popular.

Then the USSR would not have received Eastern Europe in its sphere of influence. There was a plan that assumed landing troops without any resistance from German troops. To rake in the heat with someone else's hands? Why not?

"The British and the Americans, who were close to them in sentiment, believed that it would be enough if Russia emerged from the war not as a Soviet one and with limited opportunities to influence the political climate in Europe and Asia. There is no need to even talk about other continents..." (c) V.M. Falin. The Second Front. The Anti-Hitler Coalition: Conflict of Interests.

5. There was also a purely military reason, which also cannot be discounted, it is significant. The fact is that the British were constantly suffering defeats from the Germans (Norway, Dunkirk, Crete, Dieppe), and in general, their land army was small and inexperienced. A couple more high-profile defeats could have changed the political climate in Great Britain itself.

I can’t call the American army experienced either, it was strong, first of all, in industry, weapons and supplies. In addition, the Yankees spent a lot of resources on lend-lease and on the naval war with the Japanese. Although Roosevelt personally was much more supportive of the idea of ​​the Second Front than Churchill, he promoted this idea “slowly”. Why? Because he didn’t want to risk and set part of the “political and economic vertical” against himself. Plus, a large-scale operation required large-scale preparation.

6. And one more thing. As we know, for the USSR, this war with the Nazis was literally a war of extermination. And for the Americans, for the British? What did they lose in case of defeat? Part of the colonial empire and some spheres of influence? There was virtually no fighting on American soil. They also had to explain to their soldiers what they were fighting for in continental Europe.

Therefore, there is a whole complex of reasons that together led to such a late opening of the Second Front in France. Which of these reasons was decisive? I will not judge, because in this case the question moves from the historical to the political plane. Let everyone decide for themselves.

Source of the article: https://dzen.ru/a/YKWhofRIRE9NkJYX

[ExomatrixTV]

Current Russia is NOT the past Soviet Union, nor does it worship Communism!

Past & Current Communism (Lenin Bust to be seen WEF (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?118748-Top-10-Creepiest-Most-Dystopian-Things-Pushed-By-The-World-Economic-Forum) Founder Klaus Schwab (https://rumble.com/search/all?q=%22Klaus%20Schwab%22), Marxism & Neo-Marxism) & Past & Current Fascism are both Dystopian Tyrannical!


WW3? Ukraine/US vs. Donbass/Russia (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?114491-WW3-Ukraine-US-vs.-Donbass-Russia)
Russophobia: why do so many people in the west hate and fear Russia? (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?118563-Russophobia-why-do-so-many-people-in-the-west-hate-and-fear-Russia)
The Putin Thread (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?118635-The-Putin-Thread)
American Marxism (The Neo Communism - 'Extreme Alt-Left' (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?115763-American-Marxism)

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Schwab’s Admiration for Lenin (https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/wef/schwabs-admiration-for-lenin/)

cheers,
John 🦜🦋🌳

[Jaak]

Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-45 A just, liberation war of the Soviet people for the freedom and independence of the socialist Motherland against fascist Germany and its allies (Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland, and in 1945 Japan). The war against the USSR was unleashed by German fascism - the dictatorship of the most reactionary and aggressive forces of imperialism, which sought to destroy the world's first socialist state. Was the most important and decisive component of the Second World War 1939-45
Soviet union was allies with Germany when they attacked Finland . So i dont think they attacked finland because they were fascist or friendly with germany ... What was the reason then ?
more than 26 million Soviet citizens did not return home How many got killed by Lenin and Stalin in Gulag or through Red Terror ? 99% of the red army who reached Berlin got later thrown in gulag by Stalin ... And russians got to enjoy couple more decades of lies and poverty . If u call that ¨liberation¨ then ok , please dont liberate me ..

[Russian Bear]

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Historical background
The non-aggression treaty between the USSR and Germany, better known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939. According to some historians, this document largely contributed to the outbreak of World War II, while others believe that it helped to delay its outbreak. In addition, the pact largely determined the fate of Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, as well as Western Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Moldovans: as a result of the pact, these peoples, many of whom united for the first time in their history as part of a single state, almost completely merged into the Soviet Union. Despite the adjustments made to the fates of these peoples by the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact still determines many geopolitical realities in modern Europe.

According to the non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union and Germany pledged to "refrain from any violence, any aggressive action and any attack against each other, both individually and jointly with other powers." Moreover, both parties promised not to support coalitions of other countries whose actions could be against the parties to the agreement. Thus, the idea of ​​"collective security" in Europe was buried. It became impossible to restrain the actions of the aggressor (and Nazi Germany was preparing to become one) by joint efforts of peace-loving countries. The pact was signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union Vyacheslav Molotov and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany Joachim von Ribbentrop. A secret additional protocol was attached to the treaty, which determined the delimitation of the Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe in the event of "territorial reorganization." The treaty was ratified by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR a week after its signing, and the existence of the "secret additional protocol", which was never ratified, was hidden from the deputies. And the very next day after the ratification of the treaty, on September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland.

In full accordance with the secret protocol, the original of which was found in the archives of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee only in the mid-1990s, German troops in 1939 did not enter the eastern regions of Poland, populated mainly by Belarusians and Ukrainians, or the territory of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Soviet troops subsequently entered all of these territories. On September 17, 1939, Soviet troops entered the territory of the eastern regions of Poland. In 1939-1940, relying on the left-wing political forces in these countries, the Stalinist leadership established control over Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and as a result of the military conflict with Finland, also attributed to the sphere of interests of the USSR by the secret protocol, it tore away from this country part of Karelia and the territories adjacent to Leningrad (now the city of St. Petersburg).

As Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1940-1945), wrote in his memoirs, the fact that such an agreement between Berlin and Moscow was possible meant the failure of English and French diplomacy: they failed to direct Nazi aggression against the USSR, nor to make the Soviet Union their ally before the start of World War II. Nevertheless, the USSR cannot be called an unambiguous winner from the pact, although the country received an additional two years of peacetime and significant additional territories near its western borders.

As a result of the pact, Germany avoided a war on two fronts in 1939-1944, having successively defeated Poland, France and small European countries and having received an army with two years of combat experience for the attack on the USSR in 1941. Thus, according to many historians, Nazi Germany can be considered the main winner from the pact. ("Soviet Historiography", published by the Russian State University for the Humanities, 1992).

Political assessment of the pact
The main text of the non-aggression pact, although it signified a sharp turn in the ideology of the USSR, which had previously sharply condemned fascism, did not go beyond the framework of the international relations practice accepted before the Second World War. For example, Poland concluded a similar pact with Nazi Germany in 1934, and other countries also concluded or attempted to conclude such treaties. However, the secret protocol attached to the pact certainly ran counter to international law.

On August 28, 1939, an explanation was signed to the "secret additional protocol", which delimited spheres of influence "in the event of a territorial and political reorganization of the regions that are part of the Polish State". The USSR's zone of influence included the territory of Poland to the east of the line of the Pissa, Narew, Bug, Vistula, and San rivers. This line roughly corresponded to the so-called "Curzon Line", along which it was proposed to establish the eastern border of Poland after the First World War. In addition to Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, the Soviet negotiators also declared their interest in Bessarabia, lost in 1919, and received a satisfactory response from the German side, which declared its "complete political disinterest" in these areas. Subsequently, this territory became part of the Moldavian SSR within the USSR. (For more details, see the book "1939: Lessons of History", Institute of General History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1990, p. 452.)

Since the provisions of the secret protocol, developed by Stalin's leadership together with Hitler's confidants, were clearly illegal, both Stalin and Hitler preferred to hide this document from the international community and from their own peoples and authorities, with the exception of an extremely narrow circle of people. The existence of this protocol in the Soviet Union was hidden until 1989, when a special Commission for the Political and Legal Assessment of the Pact, formed by the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, presented the Congress with evidence of the existence of this document. Having received this evidence, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR condemned the secret protocol in a resolution of December 24, 1989, emphasizing that this protocol, along with other Soviet-German agreements, "lost force at the moment of Germany's attack on the USSR, that is, on June 22, 1941."

While recognizing the immorality of the secret agreement between Stalin and Hitler, the pact and its protocols cannot be considered outside the context of the military-political situation that had developed in Europe at the time. According to Stalin's plans, the Soviet-German pact was to be a response to the policy of "appeasement" of Hitler that Great Britain and France had been pursuing for several years, which was aimed at causing a quarrel between the two totalitarian regimes and turning Hitler's aggression primarily against the USSR.

By 1939, Germany had reclaimed and militarized the Rhineland, completely rearmed its army in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, annexed Austria, and established control over Czechoslovakia. Following Hitler, Hungary and Poland made claims to Czechoslovakian territories, and they also received pieces of that country's territory.

In many ways, the policy of the Western powers also led to this sad result - on September 29, 1938, the heads of government of Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy signed an agreement in Munich on the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, which went down in Russian history as the "Munich Conspiracy".

On March 22, 1939, Wehrmacht troops occupied the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda (German name - Memel), and soon Hitler approved a plan to occupy Poland. Therefore, the often heard today assertions that the "trigger" of World War II was allegedly only the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, do not correspond to reality. Sooner or later, Hitler would have started a war against Poland even without the pact with the USSR, and most European countries at one time or another in the period 1933-1941 tried to come to an agreement with Nazi Germany, thereby only encouraging Hitler to new conquests. Up until August 23, 1939, all the great European powers - Great Britain, France, and the USSR - negotiated with Hitler and with each other. (For details on the negotiations in Moscow in the summer of 1939, see "1939: Lessons of History," pp. 298-308.)

By mid-August, the multilateral negotiations entered a decisive phase. Each side pursued its own goals. By August 19, the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations had reached a dead end. The Soviet government agreed to the visit of German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to Moscow on August 26-27. Hitler in a personal message to Stalin asked for consent for Ribbentrop to come to Moscow on August 22, or at the latest on August 23. Moscow responded with consent, and 14 hours after Ribbentrop's arrival, a non-aggression pact was signed between Germany and the Soviet Union.

Moral assessment of the pact
Immediately after its signing, the pact was criticized by many participants in the international communist movement and by representatives of other left-wing forces. Even without knowing about the existence of secret protocols, these people saw in the pact an inconceivable for adherents of leftist ideology collusion with the darkest imperialist reaction - Nazism. Many researchers even consider the pact to be the beginning of the crisis of the international communist movement, since it deepened Stalin's mistrust of foreign communist parties and contributed to the dissolution of the Communist International by Stalin in 1943. After the war, realizing that the pact was tarnishing his reputation as the main anti-fascist on the planet, Stalin made every effort to justify the pact in Soviet and world historiography. The task was complicated by the fact that German documents fell into the hands of the Americans, who occupied the western part of Germany, allowing one to assume the existence of secret protocols to the pact. Therefore, in 1948, with the participation of Stalin (as many researchers believe, by him personally), a "historical report" was prepared under the title "Falsifiers of History". The provisions of this report formed the basis of the official Soviet interpretation of the events of 1939-1941, which remained unchanged until the end of the eighties. The essence of the "reference" was that the pact was a "brilliant" move by the Soviet leadership, which allowed the use of "inter-imperialist contradictions" between the Western bourgeois democracies and Nazi Germany. Without the conclusion of the pact, the USSR would allegedly have inevitably become a victim of the "crusade" of the capitalist countries against the first socialist state. The provisions of the "historical report" in the Soviet Union could not be disputed even after Stalin's death, it's just that in school and university textbooks under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, his name was more often replaced by words like "the country's leadership" or "Soviet diplomacy". (Source: "Soviet Historiography", published by the Russian State University for the Humanities, 1992.) This continued until the Gorbachev reforms of the late 1980s, when the participants of the first Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR demanded that the circumstances of the conclusion of the pact, which in many ways contributed to the annexation of a number of its territories to the Soviet Union, be clarified.

On December 24, 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, at that time the highest authority in the Soviet Union, adopted a resolution "On the political and legal assessment of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact of 1939", officially condemning the secret protocols as "an act of personal power" that in no way reflected "the will of the Soviet people, who bear no responsibility for this conspiracy". It was emphasized that "negotiations with Germany on the secret protocols were conducted by Stalin and Molotov in secret from the Soviet people, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the entire party, the Supreme Soviet and the Government of the USSR".

The consequences of this "conspiracy" are felt to this day, poisoning relations between Russia and the peoples affected by the Stalin-Hitler protocol. In the Baltic states, these events are proclaimed as a prelude to the "annexation" of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. On this basis, far-reaching conclusions are drawn about relations with today's Russia and the status of ethnic Russians in these countries, who are presented as "occupiers" or "colonists". In Poland, memories of the secret protocols to the pact become a justification for equating Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR in moral terms, the resulting denigration of the memory of Soviet soldiers, or even for regretting the lack of a coalition between Poland and Nazi Germany for a joint attack on the USSR. The moral unacceptability of such an interpretation of the events of those years, according to Russian historians, follows at least from the fact that none of the approximately 600 thousand Soviet soldiers who died liberating Poland from the Nazis knew anything about the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

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Soviet-Finnish War 1939-1940
The Soviet–Finnish War of 1939–1940 (the Soviet–Finnish War, known in Finland as the Winter War) was an armed conflict between the USSR and Finland from November 30, 1939 to March 12, 1940.
The war was the result of the extreme aggravation of interstate relations, caused by the entire course of development of the European military-political situation, which resulted in the beginning of World War II.
The Finnish leadership, which considered the Soviet Union the only potential enemy posing a threat to the country's independence, tried to oppose it in every way. In addition, nationalist sentiments were strong in the country, which aimed to expand the state's borders to the east. It was believed that at least the Kola Peninsula and Karelia should be annexed to Finland.

For the USSR, Finland was a neighbor whose territory could be used to deploy troops of more serious opponents. In the late 1930s, the Soviet leadership saw Germany and Poland, with whom Finland had close contacts, as its main potential opponents.
In the face of the threat of German aggression, the Soviet Union sought to strengthen the security of the northwestern borders of the USSR and improve its military-strategic position. According to the Tartu Peace Treaty of October 14, 1920, concluded between the RSFSR and Finland, the Soviet-Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus ran 32 kilometers from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The northern shore of the Gulf of Finland opposite Kronstadt was Finnish territory, and the islands in the Gulf of Finland that belonged to Finland made it difficult for the Soviet fleet to enter the Baltic Sea. Thus, the border line gave rise to the problem of ensuring mutual security. In an attempt to achieve its goals peacefully, in 1939 the Soviet leadership asked Finland to lease the Hanko Peninsula and several islands in the Gulf of Finland in exchange for a larger Soviet territory in Karelia, with the subsequent conclusion of a mutual assistance treaty. Finland, where pro-German sentiments were strong in government and military circles, refused. It agreed only to slightly move the border north of Leningrad. The Finnish government believed that accepting the Soviet demands would weaken the country's strategic position, lead to Finland losing its neutrality and becoming subordinate to the USSR. The Soviet leadership, in turn, did not want to give up its demands, which, in its opinion, were necessary to ensure the security of Leningrad. After the breakdown of negotiations, the Finnish government avoided considering new Soviet proposals and put its troops on combat alert. The Finnish military group had more than 300 thousand people, 768 guns, 26 tanks, 114 aircraft and 14 warships. The Finnish command concentrated its main forces on the Karelian Isthmus, deploying the Isthmus Army there. The remaining troops covered separate directions from the Barents Sea to Lake Ladoga.

On the Karelian Isthmus, the Finns created a powerful, for that time, long-term defense line – the "Mannerheim Line", which ran from Lake Ladoga to the Gulf of Finland, 32 kilometers from Leningrad. Its total length was 135 kilometers, and its depth was up to 95 kilometers. It included a forward (obstacle zone), main, second and rear (Vyborg) defense lines, two intermediate lines and cut-off positions. It had several echeloned lines of obstacles (forest blockages, wire nets, granite obstacles, anti-tank ditches, minefields, etc.) and strong points with long-term (pillbox) and wood-and-earth (dzot) firing points, which covered the main roads and inter-lake defiles (passages). In total, there were 220 kilometers of barbed wire, 200 kilometers of forest blockages, and 80 kilometers of antitank obstacles. In addition, the "Mannerheim Line" was based on numerous natural obstacles (sharply rugged terrain, impassable forests, numerous lakes, channels, and swamps).
The Soviet leadership, realizing that it would not be possible to reach an agreement, decided to intensify preparations for a military operation. Like other states bordering the USSR, Finland was considered a potential enemy in Moscow, and the General Staff of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) prepared a plan for military operations against Finland and Estonia in the spring of 1939 in the context of the USSR's war with Germany and its ally Poland. The plan was to defeat the Finnish armed forces, followed by the establishment of a regime friendly to the USSR. By the end of November 1939, a Soviet group of 425,000 men, about 1,600 guns, 1,478 tanks, and almost 1,200 aircraft had been concentrated near the border with Finland. It was supported by about 500 aircraft and more than 200 ships from the Northern and Baltic fleets. 40% of the Soviet forces were deployed on the Karelian Isthmus.

The war was triggered by artillery shelling of Soviet troops near the border in the area of ​​the village of Mainila on November 26, 1939, for which the Soviet government blamed the Finnish side. It was reported that four Soviet soldiers were killed and nine wounded as a result of the shelling.
During the "perestroika" period, several versions of the Mainila incident became known. According to one of them, the shelling of the positions of Soviet soldiers was carried out by a secret NKVD unit. According to another, there was no shooting at all, and on November 26, no Soviet soldiers were killed or wounded. There were also other versions that did not receive documentary confirmation.
The exchange of notes with mutual demands for the withdrawal of troops from the border that began after the incident led to the Soviet side announcing the non-aggression pact on November 28. On November 29, the Finnish envoy to Moscow was handed a note about the severance of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Finland. On November 30, 1939, after a thirty-minute artillery barrage, Soviet troops crossed the border with Finland and began an offensive on the front from the Barents Sea to the Gulf of Finland. That same day, Finnish President Kyesti Kallio declared war on the USSR.
The fighting took place in a lake-forested area in harsh winter conditions (40-45°C below zero) and deep snow, which made it impossible to move off-road. The heaviest battles took place on the Karelian Isthmus. In 10-13 days, Soviet troops in certain areas overcame the operational barrier zone and reached the main strip of the "Mannerheim Line", but were unable to break through it.
By this time, the Baltic Fleet had successfully carried out landing operations to capture a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland and blockaded the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland. In the Barents Sea area, Soviet troops occupied Petsamo (now Pechenga), and then the Rybachy and Sredny peninsulas.
Further actions of the Red Army units in the area from the Barents Sea to Lake Ladoga were reduced mainly to unsuccessful attempts to resume the offensive and unblock the encircled forces.
At the end of December, the Soviet command decided to stop further offensive and begin preparing for a breakthrough. In early 1940, the troops were reinforced. On the Karelian Isthmus (the main direction), they were united into the Northwestern Front (Commander 1st Rank Semyon Timoshenko).
In total, the Soviet troops deployed against Finland had 1.3 million people, 3.5 thousand guns, 1.5 thousand tanks, and over 2.7 thousand aircraft. By this time, the Finnish side had 600 thousand people, 600 guns, and 350 aircraft. Finland received a significant portion of weapons and ammunition from Great Britain, Sweden and other countries. Up to 12 thousand foreign volunteers arrived to the Finnish army.

On February 11, 1940, hostilities resumed - the troops of the Northwestern Front, after a 2-3-hour artillery preparation, went on the offensive. They began to storm the fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus. Having broken through two lines of defense, Soviet troops reached the third line on the approaches to Vyborg on February 28. Developing the offensive, they surrounded the Vyborg group of Finnish troops from the northeast, captured most of Vyborg, forced the Vyborg Bay, bypassed the Vyborg fortified area from the northwest, and cut the highway to Helsinki. The fall of the Mannerheim Line and the defeat of the main group of Finnish troops put the enemy in a difficult position. Under these conditions, Finland, despite the opposition of Great Britain, the USA and France, turned to the Soviet government with a request for peace. The negotiations, which began in Moscow on March 7, 1940, ended on March 12 with the signing of a peace treaty, according to which hostilities ceased at 12:00 on March 13.
In accordance with the treaty, the border on the Karelian Isthmus was moved 120-130 kilometers away from Leningrad. The Soviet Union received the entire Karelian Isthmus with Vyborg, the Vyborg Bay with its islands, the western and northern shores of Lake Ladoga, a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, and part of the Rybachy and Sredny Peninsulas. The Hanko Peninsula and the sea territory around it were leased to the USSR for 30 years. This improved the position of the Baltic Fleet.
Soviet troops were withdrawn from the Petsamo (Pechenga) region, voluntarily ceded by Finland to the USSR, according to the 1920 peace treaty.
The Soviet Union and its citizens were granted the right of free transit through the Petsamo region to Norway and back. The Finnish government granted the USSR the right to transit goods between the USSR and Sweden.
Finland also pledged not to establish military ports on the northern coast and not to maintain military vessels in these waters, except for small units; not to enter into any alliances and not to participate in coalitions directed against one of the contracting parties.
The losses of the Soviet troops in the war were: irretrievable - about 130 thousand people, sanitary - about 265 thousand people. There were also large losses in military equipment, especially in tanks, armored vehicles and aircraft. Irretrievable losses of the Finnish troops amounted to about 23 thousand people, sanitary - over 43 thousand people.
As a result of the Soviet-Finnish War, the main strategic goal pursued by the Soviet leadership was achieved - to secure the northwestern border. However, the international position of the Soviet Union worsened: it was expelled from the League of Nations, relations with England and France worsened, an anti-Soviet campaign unfolded in the West. Finland's entry into the war against the USSR on the side of Nazi Germany in 1941 led to the termination of the 1940 treaty.
(Additional source: Military Encyclopedia. Voenizdat. Moscow. In 8 volumes. 2004)

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources



What would the world be like if the Red Army had not liberated Europe from the Nazis
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Liberation of Eastern Europe 1944-1945

After the complete liberation of the USSR from the Germans in 1944, the Red Army began its liberation mission in Europe.

We live in a time when many values ​​are being re-evaluated. I do not want to say that everything new is bad. But new problems arise, new events occur that prompt us to look into history and reconsider it. Liberals ask themselves: “Why did the Red Army go to Europe? It was aggression! It was necessary to liberate our Motherland and protect the borders. It was not worth interfering in the affairs of Europeans.” This is often said so convincingly that you want to believe it. My opinion: you should not believe it. Let's start from the plans hatched by the war criminal Adolf Hitler.


What fate awaited Europe
The basis of the Nazi foreign policy program in Germany was the plans to establish complete domination over the European continent. In his article "Europe in the Conquest Plans of German Fascism", Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor V.I. Dashichev says that in order to establish world power, the Germans had to assert their dominion over Europe. Gaushofer's theory stated that whoever controls Eastern Europe from the Elbe to the Volga controls the entire central continent. Whoever controls the continent also controls the continents of Europe, Africa and Asia and, ultimately, the entire world. In 1939, K. Schmitt expressed the idea of ​​the dominance of a superior race that would form an empire of "alien forces" from the USA and England. The Soviet Union was viewed as an enemy, from whose lands large parts should be torn off for the "great space" of the Germans. Ribbentrop put forward the doctrine of "Europe for the Germans", similar to the American Monroe Doctrine - "America for the Americans". Germany's power over Europe was to become undivided. V.I. Dashichev writes that the documents and statements of Nazi Germany outline the general plan of the Hitlerite expansion program. First, the countries of Western Europe were to be conquered, then a campaign against the USSR, its defeat and the seizure of its wealth. Second, the establishment of dominance over the USA and the assertion of world hegemony. According to the Nazis' plans, France and England were to be transformed into third-rate states with complete dependence on Germany. France was to be dismembered, Brittany and Burgundy were to be populated with South Tyroleans. England was to be brought to its knees, and its colonies were to be conquered by Germany. The introduction of German criminal law, concentration camps and executions were envisaged for the English. The population of Central and Eastern Europe was to be reduced to slavery, with subsequent gradual extermination and resettlement. The inhabitants of Norway, Holland, Sweden and Denmark were to be assimilated and subjected to Germanization, depriving them of their own culture and national characteristics. Hitler considered methods of depopulating nations, considering himself entitled to destroy millions of people of the "inferior race" without the slightest regret. The Slavs were planned to be exterminated by murder, deliberate famine, birth rate reduction, elimination of medical care and extermination of the intelligentsia. According to the general plan "Ost", the Nazis wanted to resettle 50% of the Czechs to Siberia, and Germanize the rest. The inhabitants of Poland were destined to become cheap slaves, and the state itself was to be destroyed - its territories would be included in the Reich. After the end of the war, Hitler planned to physically exterminate all Poles. The German authorities considered all these plans seriously, and if the Red Army had limited itself to liberating its own country, many of them - those that concerned the countries of Europe and the world - could well have been realized.


The Nazis' Plunder of the Nation of Europe
As A.I. Utkin writes in his book "The Second World War", at the end of the war, in 1944, Nazism was already losing ground, but still continued to bleed other nations dry. In May 1944, Hitler instructed his Minister of Agriculture to exploit the fertile part of the still occupied Ukraine as efficiently as possible. At the same time, the Nazis continued to plunder European countries. The main wealth of this country - a thin layer of fertile soil - was taken from the Netherlands. Skilled workers were driven from France to Germany, and human resources representing cheap labor for Germany were sent from Eastern Europe. In total, in 1944, 4 million people driven from Eastern Europe were engaged in slave labor in the Nazi state. At that time, the Nazis feverishly resettled German citizens in the conquered territories. One million Germans were resettled in western Poland, while 700,000 Poles were expelled from their country. If the Red Army had not stopped the Germans, death would have awaited all of Europe. But the Soviet troops, having liberated their territory, began a liberation campaign in Eastern and Central Europe.


Concentration Camps and the Extermination of Jews in Europe
In the territory of European countries - Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Germany itself, a total of 1,188 death camps were created. The world first learned about everything that the Nazis did there after the liberation of Lublin, Poland, where the Majdanek concentration camp was located. More than 4 million people were exterminated in Auschwitz. The data is provided by candidate of historical sciences, associate professor V.B.Makovsky, leading researcher at the Research Institute of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in his article "The Liberation Mission of the Red Army in Europe." In total, over 12 years, the Germans drove 18 million people from 30 European countries into concentration camps, where 11 million were physically exterminated. Nazism pursued a policy of genocide against Jews and "inferior" races, which included Slavs, Gypsies and others. By 1942, 54 ghettos had been created in Poland, the largest of which, Warsaw, housed up to 500 thousand Jews, or a third of the city's entire population. After the uprising that broke out in the ghetto was suppressed, the Jews were killed or burned, the rest were sent to the Treblinka death camp.


The Liberation Mission of the Red Army
At the end of March 1944, the Red Army reached the borders of the USSR. Soldiers of the 2nd Ukrainian Front entered Romanian territory. In total, the Red Army liberated 11 European countries from Nazism, which were inhabited by 113 million people. If the Red Army, having driven the invaders out of the Soviet Union, had not crossed its borders and had not pursued and finished off the enemy, it would have ended disastrously for the European countries. Having gathered his forces and enlisted the support of the allies, Hitler would have continued to commit his crimes, enslaving and exterminating the population.

It is possible that some did not want to be released. In general, many were saved, and the plans of the criminal Hitler were not allowed to be realized.

[ExomatrixTV]

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Historical background
The non-aggression treaty between the USSR and Germany, better known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939. According to some historians, this document largely contributed to the outbreak of World War II, while others believe that it helped to delay its outbreak. In addition, the pact largely determined the fate of Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, as well as Western Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Moldovans: as a result of the pact, these peoples, many of whom united for the first time in their history as part of a single state, almost completely merged into the Soviet Union. Despite the adjustments made to the fates of these peoples by the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact still determines many geopolitical realities in modern Europe.

According to the non-aggression pact, the Soviet Union and Germany pledged to "refrain from any violence, any aggressive action and any attack against each other, both individually and jointly with other powers." Moreover, both parties promised not to support coalitions of other countries whose actions could be against the parties to the agreement. Thus, the idea of ​​"collective security" in Europe was buried. It became impossible to restrain the actions of the aggressor (and Nazi Germany was preparing to become one) by joint efforts of peace-loving countries. The pact was signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union Vyacheslav Molotov and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany Joachim von Ribbentrop. A secret additional protocol was attached to the treaty, which determined the delimitation of the Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe in the event of "territorial reorganization." The treaty was ratified by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR a week after its signing, and the existence of the "secret additional protocol", which was never ratified, was hidden from the deputies. And the very next day after the ratification of the treaty, on September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland.

In full accordance with the secret protocol, the original of which was found in the archives of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee only in the mid-1990s, German troops in 1939 did not enter the eastern regions of Poland, populated mainly by Belarusians and Ukrainians, or the territory of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Soviet troops subsequently entered all of these territories. On September 17, 1939, Soviet troops entered the territory of the eastern regions of Poland. In 1939-1940, relying on the left-wing political forces in these countries, the Stalinist leadership established control over Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and as a result of the military conflict with Finland, also attributed to the sphere of interests of the USSR by the secret protocol, it tore away from this country part of Karelia and the territories adjacent to Leningrad (now the city of St. Petersburg).

As Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1940-1945), wrote in his memoirs, the fact that such an agreement between Berlin and Moscow was possible meant the failure of English and French diplomacy: they failed to direct Nazi aggression against the USSR, nor to make the Soviet Union their ally before the start of World War II. Nevertheless, the USSR cannot be called an unambiguous winner from the pact, although the country received an additional two years of peacetime and significant additional territories near its western borders.

As a result of the pact, Germany avoided a war on two fronts in 1939-1944, having successively defeated Poland, France and small European countries and having received an army with two years of combat experience for the attack on the USSR in 1941. Thus, according to many historians, Nazi Germany can be considered the main winner from the pact. ("Soviet Historiography", published by the Russian State University for the Humanities, 1992).

Political assessment of the pact
The main text of the non-aggression pact, although it signified a sharp turn in the ideology of the USSR, which had previously sharply condemned fascism, did not go beyond the framework of the international relations practice accepted before the Second World War. For example, Poland concluded a similar pact with Nazi Germany in 1934, and other countries also concluded or attempted to conclude such treaties. However, the secret protocol attached to the pact certainly ran counter to international law.

On August 28, 1939, an explanation was signed to the "secret additional protocol", which delimited spheres of influence "in the event of a territorial and political reorganization of the regions that are part of the Polish State". The USSR's zone of influence included the territory of Poland to the east of the line of the Pissa, Narew, Bug, Vistula, and San rivers. This line roughly corresponded to the so-called "Curzon Line", along which it was proposed to establish the eastern border of Poland after the First World War. In addition to Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, the Soviet negotiators also declared their interest in Bessarabia, lost in 1919, and received a satisfactory response from the German side, which declared its "complete political disinterest" in these areas. Subsequently, this territory became part of the Moldavian SSR within the USSR. (For more details, see the book "1939: Lessons of History", Institute of General History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1990, p. 452.)

Since the provisions of the secret protocol, developed by Stalin's leadership together with Hitler's confidants, were clearly illegal, both Stalin and Hitler preferred to hide this document from the international community and from their own peoples and authorities, with the exception of an extremely narrow circle of people. The existence of this protocol in the Soviet Union was hidden until 1989, when a special Commission for the Political and Legal Assessment of the Pact, formed by the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, presented the Congress with evidence of the existence of this document. Having received this evidence, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR condemned the secret protocol in a resolution of December 24, 1989, emphasizing that this protocol, along with other Soviet-German agreements, "lost force at the moment of Germany's attack on the USSR, that is, on June 22, 1941."

While recognizing the immorality of the secret agreement between Stalin and Hitler, the pact and its protocols cannot be considered outside the context of the military-political situation that had developed in Europe at the time. According to Stalin's plans, the Soviet-German pact was to be a response to the policy of "appeasement" of Hitler that Great Britain and France had been pursuing for several years, which was aimed at causing a quarrel between the two totalitarian regimes and turning Hitler's aggression primarily against the USSR.

By 1939, Germany had reclaimed and militarized the Rhineland, completely rearmed its army in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, annexed Austria, and established control over Czechoslovakia. Following Hitler, Hungary and Poland made claims to Czechoslovakian territories, and they also received pieces of that country's territory.

In many ways, the policy of the Western powers also led to this sad result - on September 29, 1938, the heads of government of Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy signed an agreement in Munich on the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, which went down in Russian history as the "Munich Conspiracy".

On March 22, 1939, Wehrmacht troops occupied the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda (German name - Memel), and soon Hitler approved a plan to occupy Poland. Therefore, the often heard today assertions that the "trigger" of World War II was allegedly only the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, do not correspond to reality. Sooner or later, Hitler would have started a war against Poland even without the pact with the USSR, and most European countries at one time or another in the period 1933-1941 tried to come to an agreement with Nazi Germany, thereby only encouraging Hitler to new conquests. Up until August 23, 1939, all the great European powers - Great Britain, France, and the USSR - negotiated with Hitler and with each other. (For details on the negotiations in Moscow in the summer of 1939, see "1939: Lessons of History," pp. 298-308.)

By mid-August, the multilateral negotiations entered a decisive phase. Each side pursued its own goals. By August 19, the Anglo-French-Soviet negotiations had reached a dead end. The Soviet government agreed to the visit of German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop to Moscow on August 26-27. Hitler in a personal message to Stalin asked for consent for Ribbentrop to come to Moscow on August 22, or at the latest on August 23. Moscow responded with consent, and 14 hours after Ribbentrop's arrival, a non-aggression pact was signed between Germany and the Soviet Union.

Moral assessment of the pact
Immediately after its signing, the pact was criticized by many participants in the international communist movement and by representatives of other left-wing forces. Even without knowing about the existence of secret protocols, these people saw in the pact an inconceivable for adherents of leftist ideology collusion with the darkest imperialist reaction - Nazism. Many researchers even consider the pact to be the beginning of the crisis of the international communist movement, since it deepened Stalin's mistrust of foreign communist parties and contributed to the dissolution of the Communist International by Stalin in 1943. After the war, realizing that the pact was tarnishing his reputation as the main anti-fascist on the planet, Stalin made every effort to justify the pact in Soviet and world historiography. The task was complicated by the fact that German documents fell into the hands of the Americans, who occupied the western part of Germany, allowing one to assume the existence of secret protocols to the pact. Therefore, in 1948, with the participation of Stalin (as many researchers believe, by him personally), a "historical report" was prepared under the title "Falsifiers of History". The provisions of this report formed the basis of the official Soviet interpretation of the events of 1939-1941, which remained unchanged until the end of the eighties. The essence of the "reference" was that the pact was a "brilliant" move by the Soviet leadership, which allowed the use of "inter-imperialist contradictions" between the Western bourgeois democracies and Nazi Germany. Without the conclusion of the pact, the USSR would allegedly have inevitably become a victim of the "crusade" of the capitalist countries against the first socialist state. The provisions of the "historical report" in the Soviet Union could not be disputed even after Stalin's death, it's just that in school and university textbooks under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, his name was more often replaced by words like "the country's leadership" or "Soviet diplomacy". (Source: "Soviet Historiography", published by the Russian State University for the Humanities, 1992.) This continued until the Gorbachev reforms of the late 1980s, when the participants of the first Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR demanded that the circumstances of the conclusion of the pact, which in many ways contributed to the annexation of a number of its territories to the Soviet Union, be clarified.

On December 24, 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, at that time the highest authority in the Soviet Union, adopted a resolution "On the political and legal assessment of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact of 1939", officially condemning the secret protocols as "an act of personal power" that in no way reflected "the will of the Soviet people, who bear no responsibility for this conspiracy". It was emphasized that "negotiations with Germany on the secret protocols were conducted by Stalin and Molotov in secret from the Soviet people, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the entire party, the Supreme Soviet and the Government of the USSR".

The consequences of this "conspiracy" are felt to this day, poisoning relations between Russia and the peoples affected by the Stalin-Hitler protocol. In the Baltic states, these events are proclaimed as a prelude to the "annexation" of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. On this basis, far-reaching conclusions are drawn about relations with today's Russia and the status of ethnic Russians in these countries, who are presented as "occupiers" or "colonists". In Poland, memories of the secret protocols to the pact become a justification for equating Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR in moral terms, the resulting denigration of the memory of Soviet soldiers, or even for regretting the lack of a coalition between Poland and Nazi Germany for a joint attack on the USSR. The moral unacceptability of such an interpretation of the events of those years, according to Russian historians, follows at least from the fact that none of the approximately 600 thousand Soviet soldiers who died liberating Poland from the Nazis knew anything about the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Soviet-Finnish War 1939-1940
The Soviet–Finnish War of 1939–1940 (the Soviet–Finnish War, known in Finland as the Winter War) was an armed conflict between the USSR and Finland from November 30, 1939 to March 12, 1940.
The war was the result of the extreme aggravation of interstate relations, caused by the entire course of development of the European military-political situation, which resulted in the beginning of World War II.
The Finnish leadership, which considered the Soviet Union the only potential enemy posing a threat to the country's independence, tried to oppose it in every way. In addition, nationalist sentiments were strong in the country, which aimed to expand the state's borders to the east. It was believed that at least the Kola Peninsula and Karelia should be annexed to Finland.

For the USSR, Finland was a neighbor whose territory could be used to deploy troops of more serious opponents. In the late 1930s, the Soviet leadership saw Germany and Poland, with whom Finland had close contacts, as its main potential opponents.
In the face of the threat of German aggression, the Soviet Union sought to strengthen the security of the northwestern borders of the USSR and improve its military-strategic position. According to the Tartu Peace Treaty of October 14, 1920, concluded between the RSFSR and Finland, the Soviet-Finnish border on the Karelian Isthmus ran 32 kilometers from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The northern shore of the Gulf of Finland opposite Kronstadt was Finnish territory, and the islands in the Gulf of Finland that belonged to Finland made it difficult for the Soviet fleet to enter the Baltic Sea. Thus, the border line gave rise to the problem of ensuring mutual security. In an attempt to achieve its goals peacefully, in 1939 the Soviet leadership asked Finland to lease the Hanko Peninsula and several islands in the Gulf of Finland in exchange for a larger Soviet territory in Karelia, with the subsequent conclusion of a mutual assistance treaty. Finland, where pro-German sentiments were strong in government and military circles, refused. It agreed only to slightly move the border north of Leningrad. The Finnish government believed that accepting the Soviet demands would weaken the country's strategic position, lead to Finland losing its neutrality and becoming subordinate to the USSR. The Soviet leadership, in turn, did not want to give up its demands, which, in its opinion, were necessary to ensure the security of Leningrad. After the breakdown of negotiations, the Finnish government avoided considering new Soviet proposals and put its troops on combat alert. The Finnish military group had more than 300 thousand people, 768 guns, 26 tanks, 114 aircraft and 14 warships. The Finnish command concentrated its main forces on the Karelian Isthmus, deploying the Isthmus Army there. The remaining troops covered separate directions from the Barents Sea to Lake Ladoga.

On the Karelian Isthmus, the Finns created a powerful, for that time, long-term defense line – the "Mannerheim Line", which ran from Lake Ladoga to the Gulf of Finland, 32 kilometers from Leningrad. Its total length was 135 kilometers, and its depth was up to 95 kilometers. It included a forward (obstacle zone), main, second and rear (Vyborg) defense lines, two intermediate lines and cut-off positions. It had several echeloned lines of obstacles (forest blockages, wire nets, granite obstacles, anti-tank ditches, minefields, etc.) and strong points with long-term (pillbox) and wood-and-earth (dzot) firing points, which covered the main roads and inter-lake defiles (passages). In total, there were 220 kilometers of barbed wire, 200 kilometers of forest blockages, and 80 kilometers of antitank obstacles. In addition, the "Mannerheim Line" was based on numerous natural obstacles (sharply rugged terrain, impassable forests, numerous lakes, channels, and swamps).
The Soviet leadership, realizing that it would not be possible to reach an agreement, decided to intensify preparations for a military operation. Like other states bordering the USSR, Finland was considered a potential enemy in Moscow, and the General Staff of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) prepared a plan for military operations against Finland and Estonia in the spring of 1939 in the context of the USSR's war with Germany and its ally Poland. The plan was to defeat the Finnish armed forces, followed by the establishment of a regime friendly to the USSR. By the end of November 1939, a Soviet group of 425,000 men, about 1,600 guns, 1,478 tanks, and almost 1,200 aircraft had been concentrated near the border with Finland. It was supported by about 500 aircraft and more than 200 ships from the Northern and Baltic fleets. 40% of the Soviet forces were deployed on the Karelian Isthmus.

The war was triggered by artillery shelling of Soviet troops near the border in the area of ​​the village of Mainila on November 26, 1939, for which the Soviet government blamed the Finnish side. It was reported that four Soviet soldiers were killed and nine wounded as a result of the shelling.
During the "perestroika" period, several versions of the Mainila incident became known. According to one of them, the shelling of the positions of Soviet soldiers was carried out by a secret NKVD unit. According to another, there was no shooting at all, and on November 26, no Soviet soldiers were killed or wounded. There were also other versions that did not receive documentary confirmation.
The exchange of notes with mutual demands for the withdrawal of troops from the border that began after the incident led to the Soviet side announcing the non-aggression pact on November 28. On November 29, the Finnish envoy to Moscow was handed a note about the severance of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Finland. On November 30, 1939, after a thirty-minute artillery barrage, Soviet troops crossed the border with Finland and began an offensive on the front from the Barents Sea to the Gulf of Finland. That same day, Finnish President Kyesti Kallio declared war on the USSR.
The fighting took place in a lake-forested area in harsh winter conditions (40-45°C below zero) and deep snow, which made it impossible to move off-road. The heaviest battles took place on the Karelian Isthmus. In 10-13 days, Soviet troops in certain areas overcame the operational barrier zone and reached the main strip of the "Mannerheim Line", but were unable to break through it.
By this time, the Baltic Fleet had successfully carried out landing operations to capture a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland and blockaded the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland. In the Barents Sea area, Soviet troops occupied Petsamo (now Pechenga), and then the Rybachy and Sredny peninsulas.
Further actions of the Red Army units in the area from the Barents Sea to Lake Ladoga were reduced mainly to unsuccessful attempts to resume the offensive and unblock the encircled forces.
At the end of December, the Soviet command decided to stop further offensive and begin preparing for a breakthrough. In early 1940, the troops were reinforced. On the Karelian Isthmus (the main direction), they were united into the Northwestern Front (Commander 1st Rank Semyon Timoshenko).
In total, the Soviet troops deployed against Finland had 1.3 million people, 3.5 thousand guns, 1.5 thousand tanks, and over 2.7 thousand aircraft. By this time, the Finnish side had 600 thousand people, 600 guns, and 350 aircraft. Finland received a significant portion of weapons and ammunition from Great Britain, Sweden and other countries. Up to 12 thousand foreign volunteers arrived to the Finnish army.

On February 11, 1940, hostilities resumed - the troops of the Northwestern Front, after a 2-3-hour artillery preparation, went on the offensive. They began to storm the fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus. Having broken through two lines of defense, Soviet troops reached the third line on the approaches to Vyborg on February 28. Developing the offensive, they surrounded the Vyborg group of Finnish troops from the northeast, captured most of Vyborg, forced the Vyborg Bay, bypassed the Vyborg fortified area from the northwest, and cut the highway to Helsinki. The fall of the Mannerheim Line and the defeat of the main group of Finnish troops put the enemy in a difficult position. Under these conditions, Finland, despite the opposition of Great Britain, the USA and France, turned to the Soviet government with a request for peace. The negotiations, which began in Moscow on March 7, 1940, ended on March 12 with the signing of a peace treaty, according to which hostilities ceased at 12:00 on March 13.
In accordance with the treaty, the border on the Karelian Isthmus was moved 120-130 kilometers away from Leningrad. The Soviet Union received the entire Karelian Isthmus with Vyborg, the Vyborg Bay with its islands, the western and northern shores of Lake Ladoga, a number of islands in the Gulf of Finland, and part of the Rybachy and Sredny Peninsulas. The Hanko Peninsula and the sea territory around it were leased to the USSR for 30 years. This improved the position of the Baltic Fleet.
Soviet troops were withdrawn from the Petsamo (Pechenga) region, voluntarily ceded by Finland to the USSR, according to the 1920 peace treaty.
The Soviet Union and its citizens were granted the right of free transit through the Petsamo region to Norway and back. The Finnish government granted the USSR the right to transit goods between the USSR and Sweden.
Finland also pledged not to establish military ports on the northern coast and not to maintain military vessels in these waters, except for small units; not to enter into any alliances and not to participate in coalitions directed against one of the contracting parties.
The losses of the Soviet troops in the war were: irretrievable - about 130 thousand people, sanitary - about 265 thousand people. There were also large losses in military equipment, especially in tanks, armored vehicles and aircraft. Irretrievable losses of the Finnish troops amounted to about 23 thousand people, sanitary - over 43 thousand people.
As a result of the Soviet-Finnish War, the main strategic goal pursued by the Soviet leadership was achieved - to secure the northwestern border. However, the international position of the Soviet Union worsened: it was expelled from the League of Nations, relations with England and France worsened, an anti-Soviet campaign unfolded in the West. Finland's entry into the war against the USSR on the side of Nazi Germany in 1941 led to the termination of the 1940 treaty.
(Additional source: Military Encyclopedia. Voenizdat. Moscow. In 8 volumes. 2004)

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

What would have happened if the Red Army had not liberated Europe

In March 1944, the Red Army, having dealt with the enemy at home, went to liberate Europe.

We live in a time when many values ​​are being re-evaluated. I don’t want to say that everything new is wrong. But new challenges arise, new events occur that motivate us to look into history and reconsider it.

Liberals ask themselves: “Why did the Red Army go to Europe? It was aggression! It was necessary to liberate our Motherland and protect the borders. It was not worth interfering in the affairs of Europeans.”

Often this is said so convincingly that you want to believe it. My opinion: you shouldn’t believe it.

Yes, the French easily allowed the Germans to occupy their country, and it seems that nothing terrible happened in their state. The Germans treated the French directly rather softly. At least, they made it clear that everything would be fine.

There were many supporters of Hitler in other European countries. Hungary, Romania, Italy, Finland even declared war on the USSR. That is, no one asked to liberate these countries.

But let's start from the plans hatched by the war criminal Adolf Hitler.

Fates of Nations
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor V.I. Dashichev noted that Europe was the foundation, the base for establishing world order for the Germans. America was still strong across the ocean, but in the 40s of the last century, as now, the idea was relevant: whoever owns Europe, owns the world.

Now, by the way, the opinion is expressed that America "owns" Europe. We can agree with this in the sense that the States dictate conditions to their NATO partners.

Gaushofer's theory stated that the one who controls the lands from the Elbe to the Volga owns the world. Asia, Africa - all this is secondary. All this can be easily conquered, having power in Europe.

We also need to remember the criminal thinkers:

· K. Schmitt, who believed that the USSR was the main enemy, a number of lands should be torn away from the Union and transferred to the Germans;

· I. von Ribbentrop, who was a supporter of the concept of "Europe for the Germans".

Everything is obvious: the Nazis really needed power in Europe. And they were ready to take it. And almost took it, by the way.

And how would the fates of different peoples have turned out:

1. Gypsies and Jews. Everything is clear here. Concentration camps were built for them. People of the indicated nationalities were methodically exterminated. By the way, as for concentration camps, the candidate of historical sciences, associate professor V.B. Makovsky pointed out in his work “The Liberation Mission of the Red Army in Europe” that over 12 years the Germans sent 18 million people from 30 European countries to concentration camps, from where 11 million did not return. Terrible figures.
2. The Germans planned to divide France into two parts and resettle the South Tyroleans there. In general, as I have indicated, they planned to treat the French more or less humanely, as much as a superior race can treat an inferior one. In particular, they planned to actively use French qualified specialists in industry.

3. The English were to be brought to their knees. In general, they would not be in any serious danger either - in general terms. But the nation would have to live in the status of an inferior one and live by German laws.

4. The Nazis planned to treat the Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, and Swedes relatively humanely. The Germans considered these peoples close to themselves, although also inferior. All of those listed were awaiting purges and assimilation.

5. They planned to Germanize the Czechs, but only partially. Some of the Slavs would go to work in Siberia.

6. The Poles would have become slaves.

Let's also remember the Russians. In the East, the Germans were only interested in resources. Only slaves would have lived there. And their numbers were planned to be greatly reduced. Exhausting labor, poor nutrition, lack of medicine, a decrease in the birth rate - there would have been very, very few Russians left.

The Red Army saved Europe from Nazism, liberating 11 European countries and 113 million people.

It is possible that someone did not want liberation. In general, many were saved, the plans of the criminal Hitler were not allowed to be realized.
Did you use A.I. for that? If yes which one? ... Grok 3.0? ChatGPT-4? DeepSeek V3? (I see no mentioning of citations sources).


I have used it too but the new P.A. Forum Polcicy is not to rely too much on them here!

cheers,
John 🦜🦋🌳

[Russian Bear]

Sorry, I forgot to mention the resources. I translated historical references from Russian to English. Many people have a distorted understanding of history, so I did it:
1) https://ria.ru/20200312/1568375172.html
2) https://ria.ru/20090823/181846299.html

[Russian Bear]

⚔ 9 May 2025 in Russia - Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War 🛡

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Every year on 9 May, Russia celebrates one of the most important holidays - Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War.

This date is sacredly honoured not only in Russia, but also in other countries of the former USSR, as well as all over the world. On Victory Day, it is customary to remember the feats of Soviet soldiers who liberated their land and the whole of Europe from the Nazi invaders.

History of the holiday

The Great Patriotic War lasted 4 years - from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. During this time, more than 26 million Soviet citizens did not return home, including not only dead soldiers, but also civilians who died during the war or were taken to other territories. DwKPFT-RioU

In January 1945, an active Soviet offensive began, which ended with the heroic capture of Berlin. In the battle for this city, the USSR army lost more than 325 thousand soldiers and officers. For every street and every house in Berlin fascist soldiers fought to the last, in the city were even used tanks. And here at 00:43 on the 9th of May the act of capitulation of Germany was finally signed. Because of the time difference, the day of the end of World War II is celebrated in Russia on 9 May, and in Europe - on 8 May.

Already at 6 a.m. on 9 May 1945, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR appointing 9 May as a public holiday - Victory Day - was read out over all loudspeakers in the Soviet Union. In the evening a solemn salute consisting of 30 salvos from a thousand guns took place.

The first military parade in honour of Victory Day was held on Red Square in Moscow on 24 June 1945. However, May 9 was a day off for a short time, in 1948 the Soviet authorities decided to concentrate on rebuilding the country and cancelled the lavish celebration.

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What is celebrated on Victory Day

There is not a single family in the former USSR that was not affected by the Great Patriotic War. Everyone has ancestors who helped save the Earth from fascism. It is their feat that we remember on this day and never cease to be proud of. Even in the hard 90s people did not forget this bright and at the same time sad holiday, celebrating it at least with their family members.

Not only soldiers and officers had a hard time during the war. Those who for health reasons or due to age could not go to the front, worked in the defence industry. Teenagers and women took the place of workers at the production facilities. Therefore, the victory over the Nazi invaders is the pride of the entire Soviet people, whose descendants live, including in modern Russia.

(Below are pictures of the parade in the USSR)

https://yandex-images.clstorage.net/1X0W0E315/f25471FckIl/ezeLOI2UesE9o5nd1iI0CnjG-6wMzuw7cvJEhaUquuq0Om7I5Wd_lYdBuWpBJfxRERClkS4dwr-417WThffW9e7mn2jaBbrAeLFbTtChMA8rwatqiFjvNvwtWA3_dGP06-QwmzHl_hQAUz07j3_6Dd_c-ZxrygGv58K4kBNrRCt6cwX1hEr9Afo-GxSX5TmC5ci8rx6K8rMw4VWLe33kMmNo91-9b3OfhMo98gb54kHU1TTdbAgHKW7BP50WYU8refJI-kGBvQ37cp_RnitxxWMN_iHdjPk1Mi-dQPx6J72vJDPc-Sh5HsXN8_yBNOZGWtq8mSjPReogB7uU1WHDJTE7CbXHD3CA8L0dHVbicwUqDTfi30C6Ob8s2gx-NSU0Juj_Xbtv_1ePSbj1yvapTBCbepSoAg-mbE762tIrT6B1Pon4zAG3Cjx-FpDf6fgIpQaxpJbOfrU15ptBdb0lOiMk-Jb75_ZbBUn3PQU7YMHdWvvXrgbPKGUB_9TaZUviMzLLNYNJs0G7850e0Wr5TmlMu2PaSDD1_amQhT7xonqv7XIU8Oy9GQaL8_VAN KiC0BAx0uVHyiSsgDOQ0mTAbDZ2SLDHQ3FAejBbnFvrcQGgCDAqGgZ19fFh0sw8_uZ3o6S_3_UmOR_DBvL_i7rhQFPQdVgnikojZ ov4WdNgBG33foU2Bcd_ijj0EpveKT7AIwhw6tyOMDF7b1iPMfnrt2FoMVh1Ir7fTQ06fII5oY9V0j1b5AmLriuJctMc7Eskv3SCN o9LO4N3MNUW06F3gWqHOeWVzPk4s2ySjP6-bfegqHkYPyxymwwO8vJAfaBIm9Cw12wOCyZrCLAUFO_AKr04R7ALzrND_fLWl5VieULqQLirVc0_vTYpnk7zfqc4KyV2Hrgj95NH g_r0Q_EhztSR_NMvww8g6YS83Jesg6n_94kwRwX7SfUzXVRfJvfG4QA-6JqFNn13KJNEcc

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Holiday traditions

One of the main traditions on Victory Day is the display of the red flag. The tradition has been observed since 1965, when the flag that Soviet soldiers hung over the Reichstag in 1945 was brought out. Later the banner was placed in the Armed Forces Museum, and a full copy of the flag is brought out for the parade.
ZRSRHMhBUyU

Traditionally, on the morning of 9 May there is a Victory Parade on Red Square in Moscow. In St. Petersburg, a parade is held with the participation of the fleet. Events are also held in heroic cities and cities of military glory. In the evening - necessarily solemn salute with volleys from guns and fireworks.

On Victory Day, Russians go to local monuments and memorials, lay flowers and wreaths to them. In parks and squares various concerts are held with the participation of famous artists and amateur groups. Actions, rallies and marches take place in cities.

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("Liberator Warrior" is a monument to Soviet soldiers fallen in the battles for Berlin at the war memorial in Treptow Park in Berlin.)

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Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park, Berlin):
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In recent years, one of the attributes of the holiday has been the St George's Ribbon, which Russians and citizens of other countries have been wearing since 2005 as a symbol of heroism, courage and bravery. Since the beginning of May, volunteers have been distributing ribbons free of charge in public transport, educational institutions and other public places. Children and adults alike walk around with the ribbon on public holidays, paying tribute to those who sacrificed their lives for the Victory.

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The ribbon of Saint George is a Russian military symbol consisting of a black and orange bicolour pattern, with three black and two orange stripes. It appears as a component of many high military decorations awarded by the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the current Russian Federation.

In the early 21st century, the ribbon of Saint George has come to be used as an awareness ribbon for commemorating the veterans of the Eastern Front of the Second World War (known in Russia and some post-Soviet countries as the Great Patriotic War). It is the primary symbol used in association with Victory Day. It enjoys wide popularity in Russia as a patriotic symbol.

Another tradition related to Victory Day has also recently emerged - the civil and patriotic action "Immortal Regiment". Initially, the idea was as follows: the participants of the action march in a column along the central streets of cities, carrying in their hands plates with photos of their great ancestors who passed the war. In this way, the procession "meets" veterans of the army and navy, partisans, siege survivors, war children and all those who gave us peace on earth.

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In addition, the war stories of their families can be recorded in the People's Chronicle on the website of the "Immortal Regiment" movement. The campaign is now taking place in 80 countries and territories.

The main purpose of the Victory Day celebrations is not fun festivities, but to remind current generations of the price that heroes paid for peace and freedom.

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Victory Parade 9 MAY (1945) in colour in good quality: 7Xm5U2KHUaE

A parade of the Soviet era 1984:
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Parade in honour of the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory in Russia:
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One of the main traditions on Victory Day is the display of the red flag. The tradition has been observed since 1965, when the flag that Soviet soldiers hung over the Reichstag in 1945 was brought out. Later the banner was placed in the Armed Forces Museum, and a full copy of the flag is brought out for the parade.

55103

In the Soviet era, victory parades on 9 May were held only from 1941 to 1945; subsequent parades were dedicated to the Great October Revolution. Only in modern Russia have parades changed their meaning and significance towards celebrating the victory in the Great Patriotic War on 9 May.

October Revolution Day (officially Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Russian: День Великой Октябрьской социалистической революции) was a public holiday in the Soviet Union and other Soviet-aligned states, officially observed on November 7 from 1927 to 1990, commemorating the 1917 October Revolution.

For Soviet families, it was a holiday tradition to partake in a shared morning meal, and to watch the October Revolution Parade broadcast on Soviet Central Television.

A holiday canon was established during the Stalinist period, and included a workers' demonstration, the appearance of leaders on the podium of the Mausoleum, and, finally, the military parade on Red Square, which was held unfailingly every year (bar the years 1942-45), and most famously in 1941, as the Axis forces were advancing on Moscow.

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Military vehicles pass to the evening rehearsal of the Victory Parade. May 3, 2025. (4K, HQ sound)
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"The Sacred War" is a patriotic song from the Great Patriotic War that became the anthem of the defense of the Fatherland. The music of the song combines the menacing tread of a march and a broad melodic chant:
Instrumental "The Sacred War": D7Doa9D9zX0
It was written during the Great Patriotic War.
Choir "The Sacred War": 3cbbVPtFCZk
More Soviet songs that can be heard in Russia on May 9 can be heard here: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129594-Russian-Soviet-War-songs-from-Russian-Bear&p=1667497&viewfull=1#post1667497

[Russian Bear]

May 9, 2025. Moscow. Red Square. Live broadcast of the Victory Parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet people's victory over the Nazi invaders in the Great Patriotic War.

On Red Square, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro are taking part in the annual Victory Parade in the Great Patriotic War.

In addition, the heads of Cuba, Brazil, Mongolia, the Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Indonesia, Serbia, as well as leaders of other countries and their delegations are expected to attend the ceremonial part.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War.

tVEiz-floKY

IxAHLXHhyds

[Zem]

Finland had allied with Germany during World War I, or rather, Finland had a civil war at the time. Russia/Soviet Union has always considered Germany (or France) as potential enemies, because they are large countries and geographically almost the only countries where it is possible to attack with ground forces.

Finnish military leader (and future president) Mannerheim would have wanted to negotiate Karelia with the Soviet Union before the war. But public opinion and the members of parliament did not want it. Mannerheim resigned, but later rejoined the army.

From wikipedia:

”Another American historian Stephen Kotkin also shares the position that the Soviet Union did not aim for annexation.

He points out the different treatment Finland was given, compared to the Baltics: unlike the pacts of mutual assistance that the Baltics were pressured into, resulting in their total Sovietization, the Soviets demanded limited territorial concessions from Finland, and even offered land in return, which would not have made sense if full Sovietization was intended.[107]

And according to Kotkin, Stalin seemed to be genuinely interested in reaching an agreement during the negotiations: he had personally attended six of the seven meetings with the Finns, and had multiple times reduced his demands.[108] However, mutual mistrust and misunderstandings would mar the negotiations, producing an impasse.[83]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

[Russian Bear]

On August 9, 1945, the USSR entered the war with Japan
https://avatars.mds.yandex.net/i?id=bab206679c1be6d3f704f6c1e700b625_l-2898583-images-thumbs&n=13

Follow the link: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129686-How-the-Soviets-Blitzed-Japan-in-WW2&p=1667793&viewfull=1#post1667793

How the USSR took the Kuril Islands from the Japanese
https://cstor.nn2.ru/forum/data/forum/images/2023-09/261903598-photo_2023-09-03_20-16-40.jpg

Follow the link: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129686-How-the-Soviets-Blitzed-Japan-in-WW2&p=1667806&viewfull=1#post1667806

[Russian Bear]

The organizer of World War II is known. Hello, comrads. I have created a new article using open Russian sources and translated it using Google Translate. The information I am publishing will not be told by any foreign website or documentary film, including history books and school programs abroad. Enjoy reading.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZKhazQQ6aEo/maxresdefault.jpg

Attacking the Soviet Union was far from a spontaneous decision by Adolf Hitler. One might even say, it was not his decision at all. The fact is that a chain of events had been building for more than 20 years, which led to June 22, 1941. It was then that fascism began its most insidious mission to physically exterminate Russians, in the broad sense of the word. No one had ever set such a task before. But the fascists, the Nazis, were quite successful in this.
More than 26 million of our citizens died in a terrible struggle. The Nazis declared our ancestors inferior, who must be exterminated. But they got a punch in the teeth from our ancestors. And as I recently came across some funny information, Hitler, unable to withstand Stalin's repressions, shot himself. So, even in the USSR they were afraid to talk about who the true organizer of World War II was, now this misunderstanding needs to be corrected. At the Nuremberg Trials, only the insidious executors were punished, but those who ordered it quietly retired.
Today, in the midst of insane Russophobia, we will talk about the true creators of the most terrible war in the history of mankind. There are many reliable facts. I will refer to them.
In 1919, a peace treaty was signed at Versailles, which officially ended World War I. As a result, the Germans were simply robbed under the guise of an international document. Germany lost 73 thousand square kilometers of its territory. - this is more than 13% of the country's area, where more than 6 million people lived - this is 10% of the population. The country assigned reparations in the amount of 269 billion gold marks - this is 100 thousand tons of gold, or 4 trillion dollars by our standards. Artillery and weapons were destroyed, the fleet was sunk, the army was supposed to be no more than 100 thousand people. Chaos and economic collapse set in in Germany. Inflation was fantastic, 578 thousand percent per year. In the fall of 1923, a chicken egg cost as much as 30 million eggs in 1913.

For a dollar, you had to give 4 trillion German marks. That is, the defeated Germans were humiliated and burdened with reparations, which they had to pay until 1988. And as the French Marshal Ferdinand Foch rightly noted, this is not peace, this is a truce for 20 years. That is, the West created such conditions for Germany that it was forced to begin to fight against the humiliating peace. And at the same time, Hitler's stormtroopers were getting money from somewhere, sewing new uniforms for themselves and receiving salaries. It was stability and a guarantee of a decent life in poor Germany, which so attracted people to the NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, Hitler's party. In 1933, Hitler gained power in the country, and by 1939 he had rearmed and increased the army by 42 times, which was forbidden in Germany. And what is very important is that Europe did not stop Hitler at the moment of his formation, although they were supposed to do so according to their own agreements.
And in Germany, unemployment disappeared, paid holidays were introduced, free housing was built. And hence the main question. Where did a defeated, humiliated country, burdened with unbearable reparations, get money not only for restoration, but also for the armed forces? And in the West, they answer this question unequivocally, saying that Hitler was financed by German industrialists, the same Krupp. Of course, this happened, but the amounts there were meager, 2-3 million marks, and only the costs of propaganda of stormtroopers and elections amounted to 70 million marks.
And plus, it is unlikely that German industrialists gave the Fuhrer a penny in the 20s. Firstly, they themselves had no money, and secondly, everyone knew about Hitler's program, according to which he demanded the nationalization of industry, wanted to take everything there and divide it up. He was even going to confiscate the land for free. A certain Ernst Gamstengel played a huge role in Hitler's development. He taught him oratory, brought out the light, explained the psychology of the masses and financed him. This man is called an American spy. He was a classmate of the American President Franklin Roosevelt. And after helping Hitler achieve success, he safely returned to the United States of America. He called himself the author of the political project "Our Adolf". Many things indicate that Gamstengel was a kind of link between Hitler and those forces that were ready to finance the world war that Hitler wanted to start.

Historian and researcher of the source of Hitler's financing Joham Fest wrote that in the autumn of 1923, Hitler went to Zurich and returned from there with a chest full of Swiss francs and dollar bills. Among other things, these funds were sent to Hitler by a certain Henry Deterging, who was also the head of the Anglo-Dutch Shell concern. Since 1920, the richest man on the planet at that time, the American Henry Ford, generously fed Hitler. For this, the Fuhrer even awarded him the Great Cross of the German Eagle. This is the highest award of the Reich for foreigners. Even during the war, the American continued to give Hitler 50 thousand marks for his birthday. The Morgan and Rockefeller clans promoted shares of German chemical plants on Wall Street through their banks, and later they came under the control of Rockefeller's Standard Oil. These are the very plants that produced gas for mass murder in concentration camps.
And these are the so-called "masters of money". Well, here, in fact, we can point out the reasons for the Second World War. The Americans were generally kicked out of this world war on foreign soil. They realized this after the First World War. While Europe was fighting, they were getting rich and strengthening their main asset - the dollar. In fact, they did not care who was fighting whom, the main thing was that the war was in Europe. Here we can cite the real statement of the future US President Harry Truman after Germany attacked the USSR.
Just think about what he said. And if we see that Germany is winning, then we should help Russia. And if Russia is winning, then we should help Germany. And in this way, let them kill as many as possible. Friends, in today's issue we are talking about objective events that will inevitably happen. If the Americans didn't care who was fighting whom, then Great Britain, the main empire of the world at that time, vitally needed to weaken its main European rivals, that is, to involve Germany and the USSR. Hitler himself was eager to fight. Back in 1925, in his book "My Struggle" Meikamf wrote "We stop the eternal German drive to the south and west of Europe, and turn our gaze to the lands in the east. When we talk today about new lands and territories in Europe, first of all we can only think of Russia and the border states conquered by it. That is, Hitler already in 1925 in his book outlined military and political plans - to fight with Russia.

Well, how could you not give money to such a promising guy? Everyone invested in Hitler. Both the British and the Americans. Well, for different purposes. About five thousand American companies maintained relations with the Third Reich. The election campaign was financed by General Electric. The propaganda film commissioned by Hitler was shot by 20th Century Fox. At the same time, the sponsors knew the Nazi program very well. Moreover, when the laws against the Jews were already passed in 1936, Germany held two Olympics at once. Both the summer and the winter. Thus, by holding the Olympics in Germany, whoever organized it, additional investments were sent to Germany. That is, Germany was specially introduced to the elite clubs. According to various estimates, Germany had invested up to 30 billion dollars by 1930. And the head of the Bank of England and the US Secretary of the Treasury actively collaborated with the chief banker of the Third Reich, Hjalmar Schacht. Schacht openly admitted that he had collected 12 billion marks for arming the army.
Well, after the West gave Austria to Hitler, he got all the gold of the Austrian National Bank. And after the Munich Agreement, the Bank of England voluntarily transferred 6 million pounds, the entire gold reserve of Czechoslovakia, to the Reichsbank. That is, the West raised Hitler like a dog, feeding him more and more loot. By 1932, Germany was effectively freed from reparations. Why? Because Hitler was supposed to become chancellor, who was to perform an economic miracle.
As a result, spending on weapons from 1933 to 1939 increased 10-fold. Think about how this looks as a percentage of the budget. From 24% to 58%. For comparison, the USSR spent 9% of its budget on military needs since 1934. France - 8%. England, which, as always, was going to fight with someone else's hands - 3%. And there is still much we do not know.
In April 1945, the chief treasurer of the NSDAP, Franz Schwarz, burned most of the party's financial documents, that is, the first to be destroyed were not orders for executions and deportations, but papers that could compromise the United States and Britain. And in 1947, on the day of liberation from the camp, Schwarz suddenly died of stomach problems, in order to increase the army tenfold, it was impossible to do without universal military service. In fact, the only thing that needed to be done at that moment was to prevent the Nazis from conducting it.
Churchill himself wrote that before 1934, the rearmament of Germany could have been prevented without sacrificing a single human life. One collective West gave Germany, once again defeated, a chance to become what it became. And all this time, the totalitarian Soviet Union was trying to create an anti-Hitler alliance and nip the aggressor in the bud. But this was actively resisted by Poland and, accordingly, by its patrons from London.

What I am saying now is simply documented facts. All the documents have been declassified and are in the public domain. The same negotiations with England, with Poland, telegrams, letters, everything is there. In the West, they like to remember the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany. They demonize it and consider it to be almost the main reason for the start of the Second World War. But they don’t like to remember everything else. The Germans concluded agreements one after another throughout the 1930s. For example, the war could have started with a joint attack by Germany and England on the USSR. This is evidenced by the reports to the Deputy People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs Mikhail Tukhachevsky in 1933. Hitler offered to help the British fight the global Bolshevik threat and was ready to provide 2 million people. In Munich in 1938, Hitler was not just given Czechoslovakia and its entire powerful military-industrial complex. Just for a second, the Skoda military factories in the Czech Republic alone produced as much weapons in a year as the entire UK.
In essence, England, Germany, France and Italy created an anti-Soviet bloc, a prototype of NATO. The West deliberately surrendered territory to the Third Reich in order to bring it to the borders of the Soviet Union. First they gave up independent Austria, which they were supposed to protect according to the treaty, then Czechoslovakia, Poland, although Poland was initially supposed to attack the Soviet Union together with Hitler and generally help the frenzied Fuhrer in every possible way.
And this is not fiction, this is stated in the secret protocol to the non-aggression pact between Poland and Germany in 1934. But at a certain point, Hitler disobeyed the collective West and attacked Poland, which is why they declared war on him. But if Hitler had attacked the Soviet Union together with Poland, then, naturally, no one would have noticed. England's plans were disrupted by the Soviet-German treaty of August 1939. This date tells the main story. The USSR was the last to negotiate with Hitler. After the Europeans turned away from the proposals to collectively stop Hitler and made deals with him. Stalin was obliged to sign the treaty to divert aggression from his country. Hitler did not go to the USSR, but moved his hordes to the West. Stalin defeated European diplomacy before the war began, but, unfortunately, not for long. The strange war that began with Hitler's attack on Poland on September 1, 1939 is also indicative.

England and France were obliged to provide assistance to Poland, but instead their troops were bored, drinking, playing cards, the French were even bought 10 thousand footballs. They were forbidden to shell enemy positions, the powerful British fleet, which could have supported the Polish troops on the coast, was inactive. The air force, instead of destroying German industry, bombed, in quotes, Germany with leaflets. In September, they dropped 18 million multi-colored pieces of paper. German generals admitted that England and France would have easily ended the war in 1939 if they had started advancing deep into Germany. The Allies had a clear advantage - 4 times more soldiers and 5 times more guns. The Germans had neither tanks nor air support in the West, everything was in Poland. But that's not why they invested billions in Hitler. If you take and destroy the fascist machine, it means throwing money down the drain. And the West's task was to force Hitler to turn in the direction for which he was being nurtured.
How did this happen? In May 1941, Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess flew alone from Germany to England. This event is one of the main mysteries of World War II. The documents about this flight are still classified by London, but historians agree that Hess wanted to convince the British to make peace with Germany before attacking the USSR. And, apparently, he succeeded. Otherwise, why would Hitler commit suicide and open a second front against the USSR, with which he had concluded a non-aggression pact?
He was completely sure that the British would not attack him. And why keep the documents secret if, say, the deal did not take place? But the fact remains. After Hess's visit, German air raids on England ceased at once. In Nuremberg, Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment, but his death is no less interesting. After they decided to release him at 93, while under guard, the old man managed to hang himself. Twice, as evidenced by the wounds on his neck. And the guards tried so hard to save him that they broke his ribcage. As a result, not only Germany, but also its European accomplices attacked the USSR in June 1941. 22 national SS divisions fought on Hitler's side. This is 522 thousand volunteers from different European countries. It is also significant that when the USSR stormed Berlin, it was defended by two SS battalions - French and Latvian. France, which later managed to sneak in among the winners, gave Germany 180 thousand fighters. This is more than fought in the ranks of resistance to Hitler. And the Americans even took this France for a commemorative coin in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Victory. On this coin, France is shown in the ranks of the allies together with the USA and Great Britain, but the USSR is absent. What is interesting is that in 1940, Hitler defeated the French in 44 days. In a month and a half, the German army did what it could not do in four years during the First World War.

The thing is that in World War I, Germany was essentially defeated by Russia, but it left the war at the final stage due to the revolution that had occurred and was not among the victors. So, in fact, the USSR fought against the resources of all of Europe. France supplied the Wehrmacht with 200 thousand cars, Renault tanks came from its factories, small arms came from Belgium, and the Czech Republic produced German tanks and boots for the Nazis.
And what about the allies who were not satisfied with Hitler and were forced to side with the USSR? They showed solidarity in every possible way and dragged out time. And the first aid came only in November 1941, just after Hitler's failure of the Barbarossa plan. As for the famous "Lend-Lease", real documents show that before 1943 the amount of supplies was minimal - 4% of the total weapons production. The main flow of aid began only after Stalingrad, when the war turned. The key victories near Moscow - the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk - all this was achieved with our weapons and equipment practically without the help of the so-called allies. It is no coincidence that Soviet military leaders called American stew "the second front", saying that this was all that the Americans were capable of. After the war, the countries of Europe and the United States were forgiven for Lend-Lease, but the USSR was required to return it, and only in 2006 did Russia pay its debt. The main question is for the allies. Why did they delay opening a second front in Europe? Stalin was promised to do this as soon as possible, but in the end the West entered the war against Hitler only in June 1944. At that time, when it became clear that the Red Army would reach the English Channel without their help. And then they landed in France to control the territory, and not because they and Hitler wanted to fight so much. All in order to register as victors and occupy Europe. That is why the Americans opened a second front. As for peace after the war, it was in question until Potsdam on July 1, 1945.
Then, according to the plan, the unthinkable, the forces of the USA and Great Britain together with 10 divisions of the Wehrmacht were to start a war against the USSR. Think about it. But they were sobered by the regrouping of the Red Army forces, which showed that the Soviet command knew the plan. The element of surprise was lost, and plus they were very afraid of the Soviet soldiers. After that, nuclear blackmail was used against the USSR, connected with the successful testing of the atomic bomb by the USA. The Potsdam Conference actually began with this blackmail.
In this war, the Americans achieved their goal. In fact, they captured Europe, made the dollar the main world currency, and only the Soviet Union stood in the way, to which they declared a cold war. And imagine how hypocritical the West is. Considering all this, the United States attributes the victory to itself. Although, to understand who really fought, it is enough to look at the losses. The USSR lost over 26 million people, including 14 million civilians.
The US lost 417,000 soldiers, half of them in the war with Japan. Britain's total losses over 6 years of war were 380,000 people. But these figures do not prevent them from not only downplaying the significance of our victory, but also from blaming us for the conflict. All this is being done to destroy the foundation that unites people of different generations and nationalities in the vast expanses of the former Soviet Union, to achieve the collapse of the Russian Federation, to cross out the results of World War II and finally break the system of global security and international law.

[Russian Bear]

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The main thing you need to know about World War II. Donald Trump said the following. We won two world wars, but we never took credit for it, like all the other countries do. All over the world, the Allies celebrate our victory in World War II. The only country they celebrate is the United States of America. The victory was won only thanks to us. Remember this statement and listen to what will be said next.

There is very important, in fact, the main information related to World War II, which was not disclosed even in the Soviet Union, which, by the way, is very, very strange. But it radically changes the idea of ​​​​the largest humanity, and now I will explain everything clearly in simple language with facts. So, if very briefly, then the generally accepted version on planet Earth about World War II says this. So, World War II began with Germany's attack on Poland, when France and Great Britain decided to teach a lesson to the exploded Nazi Germany.
After almost two years of war, Hitler, a crazy guy, attacks the Soviet Union. Then, six months later, the United States also expressed a desire to punish Hitler. And so we, supposedly all allies of the USSR, the United States, Great Britain and France, began to fight against Nazi Germany and its satellites. Well, and who later said that they did not help him, but were simply occupied and were forced to fight for him, for Hitler.
And this is the official version that sits in the minds of, well, probably billions of people around the world. In fact, this is all untrue. Now I will tell you the real story that happened, and it is pointless to argue with it. Now see for yourself.
So, on May 9, 1945, a crushing victory was won against Nazi Germany.
Everyone knows this, and this is indisputable. But now I will tell you obvious things that lie on the surface, and which will make you look at World War II from completely different angles. I have already published similar material, but this is more relevant than ever, so we will repeat it. In 1918, the First World War ended, with France and Great Britain emerging victorious. So you understand, Great Britain and France were the strongest countries in the world at that time. Look, this is Great Britain of those times, the largest power of the Hegemons of the time, such as, for example, the United States today. Now pay attention. Just 22 years later, these victors, essentially the masters of the world, capitulate to the same Germany, which they had not only defeated before, but also imposed huge reparations on and banned from developing the army. That is, in a relatively short period of time, by historical standards, almost immediately, the defeated country gives a crushing revenge to the victors. But this is somehow unrealistic.

For better understanding, imagine that in 1967 the Soviet Union had capitulated to Germany, which it had defeated. And the United States, also humiliated by Germany, would have expressed dissatisfaction, been bombed and could do nothing. In general, it's fantastic. But in 1939, defeated Germany simply changed places with the victors. Why is that? Why did the victors of World War I allow the defeated country to humiliate them? After all, they could have easily broken the back of Germany back when it showed its first aggression. When, for example, it began to build up its military power, which it was generally forbidden to do following the results of World War I. When inhuman laws began to be passed, the West could legally, without straining itself at the beginning, break Hitler. Yes, they were obliged to do this according to the Treaty of Versailles. If France and Great Britain emerged victorious over several empires in 1918, then it was a piece of cake for them to pacify the defeated Weimar Republic.
So, it turns out that, in fact, Hitler was a certain project that could not be touched, but on the contrary, his aggression was encouraged and helped in every possible way. A little more information and facts. After Hitler came to power, Germany's economic growth was not some kind of miracle. The fact is that the defeated Germany was helped by the entire Anglo-Saxon world and a lot of the world's largest bankers.
There are various materials in the form of books, documentaries, and articles about the fact that Hitler was raised by bankers and the same England and the United States. These materials explain why the victors in the First World War caved in under the vanquished. As an example, one of the authoritative books about the formation of Hitler, which is referred to by historians, is the book by the Italian researcher, scientist Guide Preparata, Hitler Incorporated.
Further, among other things, I will refer to his work. So, it turns out that a person like Ernst Gunnsteingel played a huge role in the development of Hitler. He is called an American spy, and for good reason. And what is important is that it was Ernst Gunnsteingel who initially financed Hitler, was his friend, brought him into high society, instilled the necessary ideas, and even saved Hitler from suicide when he wanted to commit suicide. In 1933-1937, Gunnsteingel held the position of press secretary of Hitler's party, for relations with the foreign press.
Later, when Hitler became an influential figure, Gunnsteingel returned to the United States. There, it turns out, he had a good friend, a classmate from Harvard, the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And during the Second World War, one of the creators of Hitler and his party, Gunnsteingel, will work with the adviser to President Roosevelt. Well, and so, a word, another interesting piece of information, if suddenly someone doesn’t know. And here is Adolf Hosinger, a German military leader, a general.

During World War II, he was the Chief of Operations of the General Staff of the Third Reich's ground forces. And after the war, he was the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. A telling moment is how the Americans treated the Nazis after World War II. So, about Guida Preparata. He studied the connections of the Nazis with the elites of London and Washington for about 20 years. That is, for years he dug into archives and studied that the economic and financial aspects of the relations between Hitler and the world's largest oligarchs were important. And in the end, he named those who brought the Nazis to power. Again, according to the official version, the Nazis financed themselves, collecting money at rallies. Think about it and realize. After World War I, Germany was burdened with unbearable reparations, they owed about 269 gold marks, which was equal to 100 thousand tons of gold, 100 thousand, and Germany's entire gold reserve was about 1 ton. And in this country, Hitler allegedly managed to find money to restore the economy in a short time and create the most powerful army.
Well, somehow it doesn't add up. Guida Preparata convincingly proves that the majority of the Nazi party's funds were of foreign origin. One example of how this happened. The Zakian financial clans of Morgan and Rockefeller through the Chase bank, in fact, this bank is today the largest bank in America, and this bank promoted the shares of AG Farben Industries and a number of other German factories on Wall Street, which were already directly financed by Hitler.
The American oligarchs themselves actively invested in these factories. By 1933, when it became absolutely clear that the A.G. company was financing Hitler, Preparata wrote, 30% of the shares belonged to its American partner General Electric.
Thus, the historian believes, for 15 years from 1919 to 1933, the Anglo-Saxon elite actively interfered in German politics, intending to create an obscurantist movement that could later be used as a pawn in a large geopolitical intrigue. Among Hitler's sponsors was, naturally, the head of Farben Industry, Max Warburg, the brother of the director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Paul Warburg, also one of the founders of the Federal Reserve System of the United States. Karl Bosch, who headed the German division of the Ford Company, also helped Hitler. By the beginning of World War II, the total investments of American corporations in German branches and representative offices amounted to about 800 million dollars. Ford's investment was estimated at 17 million dollars. Standard Oil, now Exxon, at 120 million dollars. General Motors at 35 million dollars. Well, naturally, taking into account inflation, at that time this was a lot of money. The famous Henry Ford. Hitler even had a portrait of this man in his office.
Ford was awarded the highest award of Nazi Germany. 90% of Hitler's armored trucks by 1939 were provided by Ford and General Motors. American companies even built bombers for Hitler. And the famous American company ABM, today it is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hardware and software suppliers, as well as IT services and consulting services. In the 1930s, this company made counting machines for Hitler that counted Jews for extermination.
Thus, the American company counted 11 million people. For this, the head of ABM, Thomas Watson, also received the highest award from Nazi Germany. In January 1932, Hitler met with the British financier Norman Montagu. He headed the Bank of England, the oldest central bank in the world. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Academician of the Academy of Military Sciences Yuri Rubtsov believes that a secret agreement was concluded there on financing the NSDP, Hitler’s party.

At this meeting, writes Rubtsov, American politicians, the Dallas brothers, were also present. One of the brothers, the future head of American intelligence, Allen Dulles. And as some historians claim, it was Dulles who personally controlled all American cash flows flowing into the Reich, starting with Hitler's election campaign of 1930. Of course, to list all the moments of Hitler's financing from outside, a lot of time is needed. Well, people devote entire books to this. And even this, most likely, is only a small part, since there was the case of the treasurer of the NSDP Franz Schwarz in April 1945, he burned all the documents that could compromise the representatives of the victorious countries, that is, the United States and England, that they were supposedly helping Germany. Thus, we still know very little. But there were a lot of documents there, and the assumption that they, these documents, contained is today called a conspiracy theory. Well, okay, there are other interesting facts. For example, when Russia was already in full swing in Germany, oppressing all races except those with German blood, that is, laws that turned Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, essentially, into animals. So, at that time, the Olympic Games were held in Germany, both summer and winter. By the way, the Soviet Union was not at those games. Everything was done for Hitler. They gave him Austria, Czechoslovakia. Moreover, the gold of Czechoslovakia, which was stored in Great Britain, was given to Hitler after the capture of this Slavic country. And again, think about it, for some reason he could touch Czechoslovakia, but not Poland. Now I will explain why. Just think about it, the Second World War began with Hitler's attack on Poland, but before that he had attacked other countries, and in this he was helped by the British themselves, ironically, and Poland. Also, many European countries signed a treaty of cooperation and peace with Hitler, showing, like, do what you want, Adolf, we will not interfere with you.
At this time, Stalin tried to reason with the Europeans and create an anti-Hitler alliance, but the Europeans refused, including Poland. It refused to let Soviet troops through if necessary, so that they could fight Germany. And only after that, Stalin also signed a non-aggression pact. In general, the plans of the collective West were broken, Hitler disobeyed them. He promised the West, at least in his book he directly wrote that he would go to war with Russia, and then, on the contrary, he signed a peace treaty with it.
Then he decided to take Poland into his hands, and that is why World War II began. Because Hitler disobeyed his sponsors and, in fact, his masters, who invested in him as a weapon against Russia. More precisely, Hitler had to weaken both Germany and Russia, so that there would be no strong states on earth in Europe. But the USSR also carried a destructive ideology for the West, a very dangerous one. And it was after Stalin had driven Trotsky out of the Soviet Union and started building a strong superpower that the West began to cultivate Hitler. Hitler, so to speak, had screwed them over by signing a non-aggression pact with Stalin and had also decided to seize Poland. England and France decided to teach the exploded Nazi, whom they had created, a lesson, but he was already strong enough. Hitler himself also did not want to fight his sponsors, so for almost two years no one fought anyone.

Then, in 1941, Hitler's right hand man Rudolf Hess flew to Great Britain. No one knows the official real reason for this, but it was after this that Germany attacked the Soviet Union. And most likely, London explained to Hitler through Hess that if he attacked the Soviet Union, they would start being friends with him again. Hitler believed it. Otherwise, why take such a suicidal step? Fighting on one front, with the most powerful countries in the world, in fact, and then opening a second one, also the strongest country at that time. Why?
It's simple, the British promised him not to interfere and deceived him. Probably, punishing Hitler was more important to them than breaking the Soviet Union at that time. Apparently, they wanted to show that no one should listen to them, and therefore England began to support the Soviet Union. Then, the United States, in the form of Stalin's success, intervened in the conflict, well, to be among the victors. And that's how we got allies in World War II. Their contribution to the victory over Nazism was insignificant. And if we take into account that it was they who created Hitler, then these same allies should have been sitting in the dock together with the top of the Third Reich. So, let's sum it up. Who created Hitler? In general, these are the elites and bankers of the United States and Great Britain. Let me remind you that in 1913 the Federal Reserve System was created by the largest bankers, and the following year the First World War began, but it did not solve all their problems, so Hitler was created, and the Second World War began, which made the dollar the main currency of the world, well, this is if we talk about the financial part.
And from all this, let's make an important conclusion, if financial structures, companies and intelligence services of other countries stood behind Hitler, and they still exist and are the main beneficiaries of world wars, then it is more correct to say that the Soviet Union defeated only one of the vassals, the force that is the true aggressor. That is, in 1945 we did not really defeat those who started the largest war of our civilization. We won the battle, so to speak, we only broke the stick with which they wanted to kill us then, but the hand that held it remained safe and sound, and even recorded itself as a winner. And then this same hand finished its job in 1991, the Soviet Union was liquidated, but unfortunately for these forces and fortunately for us, Russia remained, which miraculously preserved nuclear weapons and is trying to return to its former power, it is important to realize this. Yes, May 9 is a great and even the main holiday for our country, but there is also the great defeat of 1991, which for some reason is forbidden to talk about at the official level, and therefore, in tribute to the memory of our ancestors, we are simply obliged to return independence and prosperity to our country, well, and in principle, tell the whole world this truth. And here is the situation, comrades.

[Jaak]

So, World War II began with Germany's attack on Poland
Soviets also attacked Poland , why you leave that part out ? Nazis and soviets even had military parades together in Poland.
Katyn massacre , what are your thoughts ? Why not mention that ? Doesnt fit the narrative ?
You talk a lot about wall street etc aid to hitler but what about Stalin and soviets ? They didnt get any aid from wall street ? Stalin would have surrendered rather quickly without the aid from the west.

Ford was awarded the highest award of Nazi Germany. 90% of Hitler's armored trucks by 1939 were provided by Ford and General Motors.
Ford was also building cars and trucks and tractors to soviets , why you leave that part out ? https://www.americanheritage.com/how-america-helped-build-soviet-machine

It should be pointed out here that the United States continued to aid Moscow up to and during the Finnish Winter War, in spite of Roosevelt's promise that Stalin would receive no support for the attack on Finland (there was officially an embargo against the Soviet Union). Three hundred firms in fifteen states sent their goods to the Pacific from where it was sent on to Vladivostok.
The Soviet Union, meanwhile, supplied Germany with grain, oil and other raw materials, which were needed for the war operations against Western Europe in the spring and summer of 1940. Within 17 months Germany received 865 million tons of oil, 14 000 tons of copper, 1 million tons of timber, 11 000 tons of flax, 15 000 tons of asbestos, 184 000 tons of phosphates, 2736 kilograms of platinum, 1462 million tons of grain, and more, from Moscow. In November of 1939 alone, the Soviet Union
had bought 22 000 tons of copper from the United States and sold it at a profit to Germany.
The Finns allied themselves with the Germans in the summer of 1941 and took back the areas the Soviet Union had occupied. Stalin asked Great Britain for help.
And indeed - Great Britain declared war on Finland in Novemember 1941.
They immediately sent 500 fighter planes, 280 armoured vehicles and 3000 lorries to Arkhangelsk. The sensible Finnish commander-in-chief, Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, broke away from the German forces and continued operating on his own. He wanted to recapture all the areas Finland had lost during the Winter War of 1939-40.
Not even Peter the Great could defeat the Swedish King Charles XII without secret aid from England.
The United States of America did not want to declare war on Finland directly, but in the summer of 1942 the Americans closed their consulates in Finland and demanded that Helsinki also close its consulates in the United States. The Soviet Union attacked once more on the 9th of June 1944, this time with American weapons, but Finland managed to resist.
Washington was infuriated. The United States broke off their diplomatic relations with Finland on June 30th, 1944 to force the little country to steer a more Soviet-friendly course. Finland continued to defend itself.
Moscow had the impudence to demand 300 million dollars "damages" from Finland when the Continuation War finished in September 1944.
The French historian Raymond Cartier has made an interesting study, comparing Hitler's armaments to the equipment, which the United States sent to Stalin. Germany, in its attack against the Soviet Union, used 1280 aeroplanes, 3330 armoured vehicles and 600 000 cars. In comparison, the United States sent the following to the Soviet Union during the nine month period from the 1st of October 1941 to June 1942: 1285 aeroplanes, 2249 armoured vehicles, 81 289 automatic weapons, 30 million kilograms of explosives, 36 825 cars, 56 445 field telephones and other equipment.
During the entire war, the United States sent a total of 376 000 vehicles
(including 45 000 "Willis" jeeps and 29 000 motorcycles), 29 000 locomotives,
12 536 tanks, 17 834 aeroplanes, 130 500 automatic weapons, 240 000 tons of explosives and ammunition, 13 200 revolvers, 2.5 million tons of petrol and other war materials.
Here I can mention that American cars made up two thirds of the Red Army's total supply, and that another 43 494 cars were sent from Great Britain. The Red Army received a total of 419 494 cars and other vehicles.
Only 120 000 cars were produced in the Soviet Union between 1942 and 1944 - thus over three times less than they received from the West.
Neither did they have any trouble with uniforms, because the United States had 34 million uniforms, including the tsarist army shirts, sewn with Singer sewing machines. America also delivered 50 million metres of woollen cloth. The tank drivers wore American overalls. This information comes from Keesen's "Archiv der Gegenwart" (Part XV, 1945, p. 76) among other sources.

The Communists received a total of 17.8 million tons of goods worth
10.8 billion dollars from America. Of course, Moscow was unable to repay more than a tiny part of this. In January 1951 the U.S.A. wanted 84 war-ships worth 800 million dollars returned but Stalin refused categorically.
It is obvious that Moscow would never have survived Hitler's attack without American aid. As proof of this claim I will point to the fact that the Soviet Union lacked heavy bombers. Only 79 of the Pe-8, the Soviet Union's only four-engine aeroplane, were ever produced. 50 000 similar aeroplanes were produced in Great Britain and the United States during the same period. The Soviet bomber 11-4 was considered an inferior aeroplane.

It was decided in San Diego in May 1941 that Hitler would attack Stalin and not vice-versa. This would be more beneficial to the interests of the financial elite. Admiral James O. Richardson's analysis had reached the conclusion that it would be more beneficial to the U.S.A. if Hitler attacked Stalin first (Bunich, "The Party's Gold", St. Petersburg, 1992, p. 133).
Therefore, the terrorist Bolshevik regime once more came into grave danger in the summer of 1941, when Stalin had planned an attack against Hitler (operation Thunder), although he had personally deprived the Red Army of its best commanders. The attack was to have taken place on the 6th of July 1941. This information comes from the defected GPU agent Viktor Suvorov's (Vladimir Rezun's) books "The Ice-Breaker" (Moscow, 1992) and "M Day" (Moscow, 1994). Hitler's spies had warned Berlin about this and a counterattack plan, Barbarossa, was worked out. The plan was put into action, after certain delays, on the 22nd of June 1941, thus
anticipating Stalin's planned attack by only two weeks. Stalin was surprised, in spite of the reports of his own spies. He could not understand Hitler's foolhardiness in maintaining two fronts simultaneously. He had not expected this — he even had difficulty believing the announcement of war. He saw it as a provocation. Neither had he believed the stories of a coming attack from German deserters on the previous day. It was only later in the evening that he gave the order to resist.
Stalin had declared before the Central Committee already in 1925: "If a great war breaks out in Europe, we shall not just watch. We shall take part,
but among the last - to decide the fate of the war. And naturally, therefore, to pick the fruits of the war..."
In 1941, no one wanted to believe Adolf Hitler's explanations that he wished to anticipate Stalin's planned attack. Suvorov has managed to prove, with documents from German archives and open Soviet sources, that Hitler's information was correct.
The High Command of the Red Army had already, on the 21st of June (the day before Hitler's attack), received orders to attack Romania on the 6th of July 1941. The commander of this operation was to have been Marshal Semyon Timoshenko. He was supposed to have travelled to Minsk on the 22nd of June to prepare the attack, in which 4.4 million men were to have been used. But the Germans attacked first. The so-called Black Divisions were formed from Russian camp prisoners, who were trained very thoroughly in Sochi and sent to fight the Germans in July- August 1941. Stalin had more paratroops for attack purposes than any other nation. Stalin had promised by Lenin's bier that he would expand the borders of the Soviet Union {Pravda, 30th of January 1924). He also had special A-tanks (Avtostradnye tanki) which could travel on German motorways.
Stalin had a total of 15 000 tanks, three times more than Hitler. Suvorov quotes Marshals Georgi Zhukov, Alexander Vasilevsky, Vasily Sokolovsky, Nikolai Vatutin, Ivan Bagramyan and others, who all confirmed that Stalin was preparing an attack and not defence as was later claimed.
This was the reason why Moscow's losses became so enormous - 600 000 men in the first three weeks, 7615 tanks, 6233 fighter planes (of which 1200 were lost on the first day) and 4423 artillery pieces.

The Jewish senator and high-ranking freemason Harry S. Truman, who became vice-president and later president of the United States explained the situation after Hitler's attack in the following way: "If we see that Germany is about to win, we should help Russia, and if we see that Russia is winning, we should help Germany, because in this way we shall be able to let them kill as many as possible." But no one was allowed to risk Stalin's life, since his death would be a "real catastrophe". (Noam Chomsky, "Man kan inte morda historien" / "You Cannot Murder
History", Gothenburg, 1995, pp. 503-504.)
Did Truman fear that no other Red bandit chieftain would be able to murder Russians as efficiently? Truman could sate his lust for murder in August 1945 when he had atom bombs dropped on two cultural centres of Japan. Gore Vidal reveals, in his introduction to Professor Israel Shahak's book "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years" (London, 1994), that Truman received two million dollars "support" from a Zionist when he came to run for president in 1948.
A large number of Russian soldiers let themselves be taken prisoner. By the end of the first year, 3.8 million had gone over to the Germans. The Red Army simply refused to fight for the cause of Communism. Most of the remaining 1.2 million was killed in action. Joseph Stalin became frightened. On the 24th of August 1941, Radio Moscow encouraged international Jewry to help the Soviet Union wholeheartedly in its moment of need. It is therefore understandable that the financiers of Wall Street
were seized with panic and began sending all kinds of equipment to the Sovict Union as quickly as they could. In August 1941 the United States began to confer with Moscow about how Hitler's troops could most effectively be repulsed.
The United States meanwhile continued to give the Nazis military and economic aid, but on a smaller scale.
Equipment immediately began to be sent to the Soviet Union.
The United States also demanded that Stalin temporarily "forget" Communist
slogans and anti-Russian propaganda. He had to open the churches, release priests and even allow a certain amount of religious freedom (the corresponding demand from president Roosevelt was relayed to Stalin by Father Brown, the Catholic priest at the American Embassy in Moscow).
Washington also wanted the Soviet Union to begin using the old tsarist army uniforms. Stalin had to comply with this. The new uniforms were sewn in the United States in 1941-43. The Soviet army wore the tsarist army soldier-shirts until 1970. A patriotic Russian song, "The Holy War" - which had rallied the Tsar's soldiers in the First World War, was also exploited.
The Soviet Union, the United States of America and Great Britain signed the preliminary protocol concerning military aid in Moscow on the 1st of October 1941, following which 400 aeroplanes, 500 tanks, artillery pieces and other munitions were immediately sent to the Soviet Union.
One of those involved in this deal was Henry Ford. Stalin asked for barbed wire on the 1st of October 1941 and 4 000 tons of barbed wire were sent to the Soviet Union on the 10th of October.
The Soviet Union's war production increased 25 times over during the four years of the war. A significant part of the American aid came in the form of food.
4 291 012 tons of preserves, sugar, salt, nuts, tea, fruit and other foodstuffs, including vitamins were sent to the Soviet Union between the 1st of October 1941 and the 31st of May 1945. A total of 782 973 tons of tinned meat were sent to Moscow. In 1945 the shops stocked 46 times more canned meat than they did in 1940.
Stalin became frightened when he saw how rapidly the Germans were advancing (they had already reached Minsk by the sixth day of the war).
He fled from Moscow in the autumn of 1941. Two and a half million Jews were moved, by order of Stalin, from the invaded areas towards the central regions of the Soviet Union where they immediately began dealing on the black market. (Isaac Deutscher, "The Un-Jewish Jew", Stockholm, 1969, pp. 96-97.)
Stalin was prepared to make peace with Hitler in October 1941. He wanted to give the Germans the Baltic states, Byelorussia, Moldavia (Bessarabia), a part of the Ukraine (Bukovina) and the Karelian Isthmus. General Nikolai Pavlenkov revealed this in the spring of 1989 in the newspaper Moskovskyie Novosti. The people's commissary for interior affairs, Lavrenti Beria, was given the task of beginning peace negotiations with Hitler, through his agent Stamenov, who was the Bulgarian ambassador. Hitler refused to negotiate with Moscow. All this is proved by documents, which Dmitri Volkogonov presented in Izvestiya on the 9th of May 1993.
President Truman wanted to justify his aid to the Communist Party, so he turned to his Jewish friend Jack Warner in Hollywood and ordered a propaganda film, "Mission to Moscow", which praised Stalinism. The film was completed in 1943. The Soviet propaganda later claimed that all the advances in the war against the Nazis were due to the heroism of the Soviet people.
Fortunes of the war turned, thanks to American aid, and things began to look brighter to Stalin, who used this opportunity to proclaim a holy war of Communism. In Yalta he was given free hands to occupy new areas and countries in Eastern Europe. The Soviet-Estonian Encyclopaedia admits:
"It was decided that Konigsberg and its surrounding area should be handed over to the Soviet Union."
The former intelligence agent Douglas Bazata admitted in the autumn of 1979 in Washington that his chief, Donovan, had paid him 800 dollars extra to stop General Patton's advance in France in 1943. Bazata did this in August 1944, when Patton and his troops were close to Dijon. Patton had been far too successful and would have ended the war far too early.
Despite the fact that the American General George Patton later managed to liberate large parts of Czechoslovakia, he was given a sharp order by the Commander-in-Chief Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969), a high-ranking freemason, to leave Czechoslovakia to the Red Army. Patton unwillingly complied and with a heavy heart withdrew his troops from Czechoslovakia. When Patton's Third Army was prepared to enter Berlin, all the petrol was suddenly withdrawn - the intention was to stop him
from reaching Berlin before the Russians. After this he was given orders to attack - many American soldiers died in vain. Patton could have ended
the war nine months earlier.
In this way, the Russians were given the opportunity to take Berlin, Prague and Vienna first. The Soviet Union took the chance to also occupy Rumania, despite their separate peace with this country. After this, General Patton proclaimed all the more eagerly that the real enemy of the USA was in Moscow and that the Americans should continue their battle against the East instead, in order to free the enslaved peoples of the Soviet Union. Patton became too difficult for the high-ranking freemasons. He also wanted to use German troops to crush the Communists in Moscow.
For this reason, it became necessary to dispose of Patton in 1945.
Bazata was paid to kill Patton. But he warned the general instead. Another agent was then used to be on the safe side. He made several attempts which all failed. In the autumn of 1945, General Patton was the victim of a mysterious car accident (a lorry ran into his car) in Germany (Bavaria). In connection with this accident, the agent attempted to shoot Patton with a metal projectile from a specially produced weapon. Patton was wounded. Despite the fact that the general was paralysed, he began to recover in hospital. At that point he was poisoned with a new kind of
potassium cyanide. Patton died on 21 December 1945 after a long spell in
hospital. The White House is considered to be behind all these crimes.
The murderer himself has related this to Bazata. Bazata was tested with a lie detector. He was considered to be telling the truth. {The Spotlight, 22 October 1979.)
The Western powers also handed more than two million war refugees over to Stalin. It was well known what fate awaited them. No mistakes were made. Some of those who had managed to escape from Soviet Russia in the 1920s and had already become Western citizens were also handed over. The 76-year-old general of the reserve, Piotr Krasnov, who was a German citizen, was sent back to the Soviet Union. He was executed in Moscow on the 17th of January 1947, according to the Soviet-Estonian Encyclopaedia. The case of Krasnov is the most infamous example of
America's betrayal of the anti-Communists. The British extradited the legendary White General Andrei Shkuro to Stalin. He had received the Order of Bath from King George V for his services to Britain.
The freemason Harold Macmillan also sent back 70 000 Cossacks who had found their way to the West. All information about them was classified. Many documents disappeared without trace. The historian Nikolai Tolstoy in England revealed this.
The BBC was not allowed to mention his book "The Minister and the Massacres", which deals with this dirty business. The Cossacks resisted but the British used gross assault to deliver them in May of 1945. Most of them were killed with their families .
It was later revealed that the initiative had come from the freemason
Anthony Eden. (Nikolai Tolstoy, "Victims of Yalta".)
The Yugoslavian dictator Josip Tito (actually Broz), whose closest aides were the Jew Moses Pijade and Aleksander Rankovic (Rankau, who
led the red terror as minister of the interior) also had his deserters returned
to him.
Many events become significantly clearer when viewed from a historical perspective. British agents helped to topple the Yugoslavian government on the 27th of March 1941.
A new leadership, with the freemason General and the freemason Richard D. Simovic at the head, immediately began to co-operate with Stalin, signing a pact of friendship on the 5th of April. London funded Tito intensively during the entire Second World War and later helped him to power. After the war, Tito received massive support from the West to build up Communism. Without that support his
regime would have collapsed immediately. His crimes were concealed at
the same time. The United States alone sent Tito 35 billion dollars in
secret aid between 1948 and 1965. An expert on international law, Smilja
Avramov, revealed this to a Serbian newspaper, Politika Ekspres, in an
interview, published January 16, 1989. That support for Tito covered 60% of the expenses of the Communist regime.
Smilja Avramov stressed: "Our regime would never have survived without that economic aid." The American aid to Yugoslavia is an important state secret, which
the American Embassy in Belgrade refused to comment upon. The
contributions of Western private banks became an even better kept secret.
The West delivered lists of all captured soldiers who had demanded
political asylum. They were executed immediately upon their return to the
Soviet Union. Other Soviet soldiers who had been prisoners of war were
sent to special prison camps. President Boris Yeltsin's military adviser,
General Dmitri Volkogonov, discovered Stalin's instructions to build a
large number of prison camps with a capacity of ten thousand prisoners
each. This was where these poor soldiers were sent.

[Russian Bear]

How significant were Lend-Lease deliveries for the USSR
Shortly before his execution in the "Leningrad affair", the chairman of the State Planning Committee Nikolai Voznesensky claimed that the share of products delivered under Lend-Lease was insignificant.

"If we compare the size of the Allied deliveries of industrial goods to the Soviet Union with the size of industrial production at socialist enterprises during the same period, it turns out that the share of these deliveries in relation to domestic production during the war economy period will be only about 4%," said Voznesensky's book "The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War", published in 1948.

Subsequently, these figures have been repeatedly questioned. For example, according to Rosrezerv, during the entire war, Lend-Lease supplied 77.1% of copper from the volume of its domestic production, aluminum - 106.4%, tin - 223.1%, cobalt - 138.2%, high-octane aviation gasoline - 23.1%, automobile tires - 73.4%, wool - 102.1%, sugar - 66.1%, canned meat - 480.2%, animal fats - 106.5%.

In the USA, Joseph Stalin is credited with saying the following words in 1943 at a gala dinner in honor of Winston Churchill's 69th birthday: "I want to tell you what, from the Soviet point of view, the President and the United States did to win the war. The most important things in this war are machines. The United States has proven that it can produce 8,000 to 10,000 airplanes a month. Russia can produce, at most, 3,000 airplanes a month. England produces 3,000 to 3,500 a month, mostly heavy bombers. So the United States is a country of machines. Without these machines, supplied by Lend-Lease, we would have lost this war."

There are also earlier statements by the Soviet leader regarding the importance of support for the Soviets from the allies. In 1958, a two-volume work, “Correspondence of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR with the Presidents of the USA and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945,” was published. It cites Stalin’s telegram to Churchill from September 1941, which talks about how to solve the problem of the weakening of the Soviet Union’s defense capability in the face of a German invasion.

“How can we get out of this more than unfavorable situation? I think there is only one way out of this situation: to create a second front this year somewhere in the Balkans or France, capable of drawing 30-40 German divisions from the Eastern Front and simultaneously providing the Soviet Union with 30,000 tons of aluminum by the beginning of October of this year and a monthly minimum aid of 400 aircraft and 500 tanks (small or medium). Without these two types of aid, the Soviet Union would either be defeated or weakened to the point that it would lose the ability to help its allies with its active actions on the front against Hitlerism for a long time,” Stalin wrote to Churchill.

How much did Lend-Lease help the USSR
According to military historian Boris Yulin, Lend-Lease supplies helped the USSR quite well in a number of areas. At the same time, they were a bit late, the researcher believes.

“For example, we were able to redirect locomotive-building capacities to tank production and increase it, because the USSR was supplied with locomotives by the USA. We were supplied with airplanes, tanks, aluminum, high-quality gasoline, gunpowder — all of this was quite important, and without supplies from the USSR it would have been more difficult to fight. But this aid began to play the greatest role in 1944, when the Germans were already suffering defeat,” Yulin told NEWS.ru.

He recalled that World War II was a coalition war: the US, Great Britain and smaller countries fought together with the USSR against Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan and their small satellites. In these conditions, the historian believes, it would have been much better for the Soviet side if what the allies supplied under Lend-Lease had been brought to Europe with their fighters and they had entered the war earlier.

"If they had opened a second front against the Axis, as they promised, in 1942 or at least in early to mid-1943, then we simply would not have needed the supplies, and it would have been much easier for us to fight," says Boris Yulin.

In an interview with NEWS.ru, historian Konstantin Zalessky expressed the opinion that "without Lend-Lease, the Soviet Union would most likely have won [World War II]," but stressed that in this case the losses would have been more serious.


How much do they owe for Lend-Lease?
The negotiations between the USSR and the USA regarding the Lend-Lease debt took place in several rounds. The Americans set the debt at $2.7 billion. During the negotiations in 1948, the Soviet representatives agreed to pay an insignificant amount. Naturally, this caused the Americans to refuse. In 1949, the negotiations also led to nothing. In 1951, the American government twice reduced the debt to $800 million, but the USSR agreed to pay only $300 million.

Only by 1972 did the USA and the USSR reach an agreement regarding debt repayment. According to the document, the USSR was obliged to pay $722 million by 2001, including interest. In 1973, the USSR made payments in the amount of $48 million, but the debt repayment was suspended due to unfavorable trade measures for the USSR (the Jackson-Vanik Amendment). Only in 1990 did the parties return to discussing the debt. They set a new Lend-Lease repayment date of 2030 and the final amount of 674 million dollars.

After the collapse of the USSR, the Lend-Lease debt was re-registered to Boris Yeltsin. Thus, out of the total volume of deliveries of 11 billion dollars, the USSR (later the Russian Federation) was obliged to pay 722 million dollars, that is, 7% of the delivery of 11 billion dollars.

How much was paid?
By 1973, 3 payments had been made for 48 million dollars. Three mandatory payments were stipulated: 12 million dollars on October 18, 1972, 24 million dollars on July 1, 1973, 12 million dollars on July 1, 1975. According to the agreement with the USA, the remainder - 674 million - was to be paid by 2001. In 1990, under a new agreement, the Soviet side was obliged to pay 674 million dollars by 2030 – taking inflation into account, only 100 million dollars in 1946.

After the collapse of the USSR, the Russian Federation signed bilateral agreements with the former republics on the "zero option", according to which the Russian Federation takes on all the debts of the USSR. In exchange for this, the former republics of the Soviet Union refused to share in the assets of the USSR. Thus, on April 2, 1993, the Russian Federation took on the debts of the USSR, including the obligations under Lend-Lease. The debts were divided into government debts (Paris Club) and debts to banks (London Club). The US debt under Lend-Lease was finally paid and closed as part of the settlement with the Paris Club on August 21, 2006.


Why Stalin decided to invade Poland in 1939

It was August 1939. The Third Reich was gaining combat power and it was obvious to everyone that they would soon be unable to avoid a campaign not only in the USSR, but also in Europe. There had already been examples of this. A year earlier, German troops, under the pretext of returning only one region to Germany, ended up completely occupying Czechoslovakia. But what about the USSR, you ask, since we were allies? Yes, that's right, our troops sent some troops to save Czechoslovakia, but Poland, in fact, did not let us through its territory. Poland had hopes for peace with Germany and a joint campaign in Russia to beat the "Russian Ivans". Few people know about this event, but in fact, the war almost started then, back in 1938.

What does Stalin and Poland have to do with it? Let me tell you in order. After Czechoslovakia was completely occupied, in August 1938, representatives of the British and French arrived in the USSR for negotiations. On the same day, the USSR concluded an agreement with Germany on economic cooperation. The Soviet-British-French negotiations consisted of the Europeans allegedly promising to protect Poland in the event of any threat from Germany in order to secure the borders of the USSR. But, as it turned out, Poland was not ready for such cooperation, and was not eager to do so. There was neither a specific plan of action nor the number of troops that the allies would deploy. In fact, there was nothing, only promises. Without thinking much, Voroshilov suggested attacking Germany themselves. And this is also one of the moments that, unfortunately, modern historians keep silent about. Since Poland did not want to be friends with us and let our troops through, ours offered to go to the borders of Germany through Galicia. But the allies did not support this proposal either. As it turned out years later, they were afraid that after Germany, the USSR would attack them. It became obvious to the USSR that the Allies were simply trying to drag us into the war, ultimately weakening both us and Germany. And war was unavoidable, and everyone understood that.

War was almost on the doorstep, the Germans would definitely attack us, the borders needed to be secured, and the Allies did not want to help. What to do? This is where the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact and its annex, which spoke of the division of Poland, came into being. In fact, "Katyn scholars" are promoting this document as the main reason for the outbreak of the war. In fact, everything was much deeper and more complicated. But why bother with the details if it is easier to blame Stalin for everything?

Why did we need Poland? This is also a point that historians of the modern generation are silent about. The fact is that Poland then occupied part of the Baltics and half of modern Belarus, and we only wanted to get our lands back. Accordingly, the border of the USSR was moved west by another hundred kilometers. Without half of Belarus and the Baltics being returned in 1939, there would have been no heroic defense of the Brest Fortress, and the Germans would have most likely captured Leningrad in the first couple of weeks. The border was pushed back, new lines of defense were built, time was gained. That's what Stalin was, a "short-sighted tyrant." So, friends, turn on your brain and learn history. Have a nice day, everyone.

Some reasons why the USSR sent troops to Poland in 1939:
The desire to strengthen the country's security. As a result of the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920, the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus became part of Poland. The USSR sought to establish control over these lands in order to make the border more secure.

Protection of the population. The Soviet leadership motivated the introduction of troops by the need to "protect the lives and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus."

A secret agreement with Germany. On August 23, 1939, a non-aggression pact was concluded between the USSR and Germany, which defined spheres of interest in Europe. One of the conditions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the transfer of eastern Poland (western Ukraine and Belarus) to the USSR's sphere of interest.

The desire to restore the balance of power. In the late 1930s, many contradictions accumulated in relations between the USSR and Poland, which led to an imbalance of power in the region.

In a note from the Soviet government, handed to the Polish ambassador to the USSR on September 17, 1939, the reasons for the start of the operation were stated to be that the Polish state and its government had effectively ceased to exist.

[Russian Bear]

Who Shot Polish Officers in Katyn?
The investigation into all the circumstances of the mass murder of Polish servicemen, which went down in history as the "Katyn massacre", still causes heated debates in both Russia and Poland. According to the "official" modern version, the murder of Polish officers was the work of the NKVD of the USSR. However, back in 1943-1944, a special commission headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army N. Burdenko came to the conclusion that the Polish servicemen were killed by the Nazis. Despite the fact that the current Russian leadership agreed with the "Soviet trace" version, there are indeed many contradictions and ambiguities in the case of the mass murder of Polish officers. To understand who could have shot the Polish servicemen, it is necessary to take a closer look at the investigation process of the Katyn massacre.

In March 1942, residents of the village of Kozyi Gory in the Smolensk region informed the occupation authorities about the site of a mass burial of Polish servicemen. The Poles working in the construction platoon excavated several burial sites and reported this to the German command, but they initially treated the news with complete indifference. The situation changed in 1943, when the front had already reached a turning point and Germany was interested in strengthening anti-Soviet propaganda. On February 18, 1943, the German field police began excavations in the Katyn forest. A special commission was formed, headed by Gerhardt Butz, a professor at the University of Breslau, a "luminary" of forensic examination, who served as the head of the forensic laboratory of Army Group Center with the rank of captain during the war. As early as April 13, 1943, German radio reported on the discovery of a burial site for 10,000 Polish officers. In fact, the number of Poles buried in the Katyn forest was “calculated” by German investigators very simply: they took the total number of officers in the Polish army before the war, from which they subtracted the “living” ones — the servicemen of Anders’ army. All other Polish officers, according to the German side, were shot by the NKVD in the Katyn forest. Naturally, the Nazis’ inherent anti-Semitism was not absent — the German media immediately reported that Jews had participated in the executions.

On April 16, 1943, the Soviet Union officially denied the “slanderous attacks” of Nazi Germany. On April 17, the Polish government in exile asked the Soviet government for clarification. Interestingly, the Polish leadership did not try to blame the Soviet Union for everything, but focused on the crimes of Nazi Germany against the Polish people. Nevertheless, the USSR broke off relations with the Polish government in exile.

Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's "propagandist number one", managed to achieve an even greater effect than he initially expected. The Katyn massacre was presented by German propaganda as a classic example of "Bolshevik atrocities". It is obvious that the Nazis, accusing the Soviet side of killing Polish prisoners of war, sought to discredit the Soviet Union in the eyes of Western countries. The brutal execution of Polish prisoners of war, allegedly carried out by Soviet security officers, was supposed to, in the opinion of the Nazis, discourage the United States, Great Britain and the Polish government in exile from cooperating with Moscow. Goebbels succeeded in the latter - in Poland, many accepted the version about the execution of Polish officers by the Soviet NKVD. The fact is that correspondence with Polish prisoners of war located on the territory of the Soviet Union had ceased back in 1940. Nothing more was known about the fate of the Polish officers. At the same time, representatives of the USA and Great Britain tried to "hush up" the Polish topic, since they did not want to irritate Stalin at such a crucial period, when the Soviet troops were able to turn the tide at the front.

To ensure a larger propaganda effect, the Nazis even involved the Polish Red Cross (PKK) in the investigation, whose representatives were connected with the anti-fascist resistance. On the Polish side, the commission was headed by Marian Wodzinski, a doctor from the University of Krakow, an authoritative person who participated in the activities of the Polish anti-fascist resistance. The Nazis even went so far as to allow representatives of the PKK to the site of the alleged execution, where graves were being excavated. The commission's conclusions were disappointing - the PKK confirmed the German version that the Polish officers were shot in April-May 1940, that is, even before the start of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union.

On April 28-30, 1943, an international commission arrived in Katyn. Of course, this was a very loud name - in fact, the commission was formed from representatives of the states occupied by Nazi Germany or maintaining allied relations with it. As expected, the commission sided with Berlin and also confirmed that the Polish officers were killed in the spring of 1940 by Soviet Chekists. Further investigative actions by the German side, however, were stopped - in September 1943, the Red Army liberated Smolensk. Almost immediately after the liberation of Smolensk, the Soviet leadership decided on the need to conduct its own investigation - to expose Hitler's slander about the involvement of the Soviet Union in the mass murder of Polish officers. On October 5, 1943, a special commission of the NKVD and NKGB was created under the leadership of People's Commissar of State Security Vsevolod Merkulov and Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Sergei Kruglov. Unlike the German commission, the Soviet commission approached the matter more thoroughly, including organizing the interrogation of witnesses. 95 people were questioned. As a result, interesting details emerged. Even before the war began, three camps for Polish prisoners of war were set up west of Smolensk. They housed officers and generals of the Polish Army, gendarmes, policemen, and officials captured on Polish territory. Most of the prisoners of war were used for road work of varying severity. When the war began, the Soviet authorities did not have time to evacuate the Polish prisoners of war from the camps. So the Polish officers ended up in German captivity, and the Germans continued to use the labor of prisoners of war for road and construction work. In August-September 1941, the German command decided to shoot all Polish prisoners of war held in the Smolensk camps. The actual execution of Polish officers was carried out by the headquarters of the 537th Construction Battalion under the command of Oberleutnant Arnes, Oberleutnant Rext and Lieutenant Hott. The headquarters of this battalion was located in the village of Kozy Gory. In the spring of 1943, when a provocation against the Soviet Union was already being prepared, the Nazis herded Soviet prisoners of war to excavate graves and, after the excavations, removed from the graves all documents dated after the spring of 1940. In this way, the date of the supposed execution of Polish prisoners of war was "adjusted". The Germans shot the Soviet prisoners of war who were carrying out the excavations, and forced local residents to give testimony favorable to the Germans.

On January 12, 1944, a Special Commission was formed to establish and investigate the circumstances of the execution of Polish officer prisoners of war by the Nazi invaders in the Katyn Forest (near Smolensk). This commission was headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army, Lieutenant General of the Medical Service Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, and included a number of prominent Soviet scientists. Interestingly, the commission included the writer Alexei Tolstoy and the Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia Nikolai (Yarushevich). Although public opinion in the West was already quite biased by this time, the episode with the execution of Polish officers in Katyn was included in the indictment of the Nuremberg Tribunal. That is, the responsibility of Nazi Germany for committing this crime was actually recognized.

For many decades, the Katyn massacre was forgotten, however, when the systematic "destabilization" of the Soviet state began in the late 1980s, the history of the Katyn massacre was again "refreshed" by human rights activists and journalists, and then by the Polish leadership. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev actually recognized the responsibility of the Soviet Union for the Katyn massacre. Since then, and for almost thirty years now, the version that the Polish officers were shot by the NKVD of the USSR has become the dominant version. Even the “patriotic turn” of the Russian state in the 2000s did not affect the change in the situation. Russia continues to “repent” for the crime committed by the Nazis, and Poland is putting forward increasingly stringent demands for recognition of the shooting in Katyn as genocide.

Meanwhile, many Russian historians and experts express their point of view on the Katyn tragedy. Thus, Elena Prudnikova and Ivan Chigirin in their book "Katyn. A Lie That Became History" draw attention to very interesting nuances. For example, all the corpses found in the Katyn burials were dressed in the uniform of the Polish army with insignia. But until 1941, in Soviet prisoner of war camps, insignia were not allowed. All prisoners were equal in status and could not wear cockades and shoulder straps. It turns out that Polish officers simply could not have had insignia at the time of death, if they had really been shot in 1940. Since the Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention for a long time, keeping prisoners of war with insignia in Soviet camps was not allowed. Apparently, the Nazis did not think through this interesting point and contributed to the exposure of their lies themselves - Polish prisoners of war were shot after 1941, but then the Smolensk region was occupied by the Nazis. Anatoly Wasserman also points to this circumstance in one of his publications, referring to the work of Prudnikova and Chigirin. Private detective Ernest Aslanyan draws attention to a very interesting detail - Polish prisoners of war were killed with firearms produced in Germany. The NKVD of the USSR did not use such weapons. Even if the Soviet security officers had copies of German weapons at their disposal, they were not in the same quantity as was used in Katyn. However, for some reason, this circumstance is not considered by supporters of the version that the Polish officers were killed by the Soviet side. More precisely, this question was certainly raised in the media, but the answers were somewhat unclear, Aslanyan notes.

The version about using German weapons in 1940 to “blame” the bodies of Polish officers on the Nazis really seems very strange. The Soviet leadership hardly expected that Germany would not only start a war, but would also be able to reach Smolensk. Accordingly, there were no grounds to “frame” the Germans by shooting Polish prisoners of war with German weapons. Another version seems more plausible - the executions of Polish officers in the camps of the Smolensk region were indeed carried out, but not at all on the scale that Hitler's propaganda spoke of. There were many camps in the Soviet Union where Polish prisoners of war were held, but mass executions were not carried out anywhere else. What could have made the Soviet command execute 12,000 Polish prisoners of war in Smolensk? It is impossible to answer this question. Meanwhile, the Nazis themselves could have easily exterminated the Polish prisoners of war - they did not feel any piety towards the Poles, were not distinguished by humanism towards prisoners of war, especially towards the Slavs. For the Nazi executioners, exterminating several thousand Poles was no problem at all.

However, the version about the murder of Polish officers by Soviet security officers is very convenient in the current situation. For the West, the Goebbels propaganda technique is a wonderful way to once again "prick" Russia, to blame Moscow for war crimes. For Poland and the Baltic countries, this version is another tool of anti-Russian propaganda and a way to obtain more generous funding from the US and the EU. As for the Russian leadership, its agreement with the version about the execution of Poles by order of the Soviet government is explained, apparently, by purely opportunistic considerations. As "our answer to Warsaw", we could raise the issue of the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Poland, of whom there were more than 40 thousand people in 1920. However, no one is dealing with this issue.

A genuine, objective investigation of all the circumstances of the Katyn massacre is still waiting in the wings. It remains to be hoped that it will allow us to fully expose the monstrous slander against the Soviet country and confirm that the real executioners of Polish prisoners of war were the Nazis.

[Jaak]

A document exists with Stalins order that proves Katyn massacre was made by soviets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_Order_No._00485
¨ 14th of October 1992 a copy of the decision signed by Stalin and passed by Molotov, Kaganovich, Kalinin and others, was handed over to the Polish President Lech Walesa by the Russian government.¨
¨According to official Soviet state documents, the anti-Polish operation of the NKVD affected 139,815 people, 111,071 of whom were condemned to death without trial and executed immediately afterwards.¨

The mass murders began in April 1940. The Polish officers, wearing winter uniforms, were brought in small groups - 30-40 at a time - to the execution site. They were then shot in the neck, one at a time, whilst standing by the edge of the mass grave.
The NKVD continued working every day for nearly six weeks. A total of 4143 officer's bodies were found. 4421 people were killed in the Katyn forest, according to the documents. All the identified bodies proved to be former prisoners from Kozielsk. The prisoners who had been incarcerated in the Starobielsk (near Kharkov) and Ostashkov (near Kalinin) camps were murdered elsewhere. The latter amounted to 10 131 (3820 + 6311) people. Another 7305 Polish citizens were murdered in Byelorussia and the Ukraine.

¨ Polish prisoners of war were killed with firearms produced in Germany. The NKVD of the USSR did not use such weapons.¨
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin it seems Blokhin´s favorite weapon to execute people was German Walther Model 2 .25 ACP pistol .
Or is the story of Vasily Blokhin also untrue ? He didnt execute thousands of people ?

a special commission headed by the chief surgeon of the Red Army N. Burdenko came to the conclusion that the Polish servicemen were killed by the Nazis.
¨In 1993, a commission of experts under the Russia's Chief Military Prosecutor's Office disapproved the Burdenko commission's report as "false" and "not meeting science requirements"¨
¨In 1950, Boris Olshansky, a defector to the United States and a former Soviet Army officer who claimed to be a former associated professor at the Voronezh State University and Burdenko's friend, published an article and in 1952 — testified in court that in April 1946 Burdenko had revealed to him that he knew about the execution been carried out by the NKVD, recognizing it as a "mistake" of the agency, and stating that for him as a medical man "it was quite clear" that the corpses dated back to 1940.¨

It is amazing how far from reality are your views about WW2. Please post more

[Russian Bear]

History is being distorted abroad now, in Russia Wikipedia is not trusted and is not used as an authoritative source, it contains many mistakes and inaccuracies, and sometimes even outright lies and propaganda (this is the opinion of the majority of Russians). As you can see, this information is quite slippery and complex, there are many gaps and inconsistencies. I don’t know what to add to your answer. I told you the Russian view on this topic. Thank you for raising these questions, it’s interesting. This situation reminds me of Bakhmut. When the Ukrainian side falsely falsified the shooting of civilians that it had committed itself, and blamed all its crimes on Russia. If you go to Wikipedia, there are a lot of lies on this topic.

As for your topic, I can't say with certainty what happened. Maybe I'll approach this topic in more detail and continue it.

[Russian Bear]

I edited the article https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?129506-Soviet-Storm.-World-War-2-in-the-East&p=1663735&viewfull=1#post1663735 Photos, article and video have been added