I've just watched an excellent 1943 documentary by Oscar Award-winning director Frank Capra, and produced by the US government. It's a rare thing to behold: an accurate - in fact, a rather glowing - portrayal of Russia and its historical role as shock absorber to invading hordes. The film was recently uploaded to the YouTube channel of the US National Archives but, as far as I can make out, has been publicly available since 2011.
While the bulk of the film uses contemporary footage collected by US Army Intelligence during the war to capture the horror, scale and intensity of the Nazi invasion of Russia, and how the Russians ultimately defeated the Nazis through brilliant strategy and sheer force of will, the first part also goes into some historical context about previous invasions of Russia, as well as important geographical detail about the nature of 'Russia'.
I can't vouch for the film's complete historical accuracy. It is, after all, Pentagon propaganda! At one point, for example, the narrator mentions in passing that Russia was victim to Kaiser Wilhelm's 'tyrannical warmongering' in the early 20th century. I can tell you, with some certainty, having recently read Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, that Germany was not at fault for WW1 (in fact, it tried to prevent it).
Nevertheless, Hitler's Operation Barbarossa in 1941 does fit a pattern of Russia historically being on the receiving end of aggressive invasions. For just a brief sliver in time, it was apparently in the US government's interests to accurately represent the 'most epic battlefront in known history'. Not only that, it also suited US interests to accurately represent Russia as a large 'community of nations'. And that, essentially, is what defines her (both Imperial Russia and the USSR); Russia is a patchwork 'country of many countries', a vast territory comprising many ethnicities and nationalities.
Here's the film:
The incredible thing is that not two years after this film was made, Russia became the new 'enemy of freedom'. In fact, we now know that the Atom Bomb was dropped on Japan in 1945 specifically to 'send Russia a message'. The international financiers pulling the strings behind Hitler and the Western Allies could not allow a parallel 'United Nations' to exist on the vast Eurasian landmass while they set about creating one centered on New York City.
And thus began the policy of maligning, containing, and isolating Russia behind an 'iron curtain', until eventually peoples all along its periphery said 'enough!' and made a break for freedom and independent nationhood when the USSR fell... only to fall into the debt-trap set for them by the international banking elite. Recently, of course, 'Russia the nation-state' has itself emerged from the collapse of the USSR (and the subsequent 'economic shock therapy' applied by Wall Street) and regained a sense of its historical mission: to facilitate the inevitable integration of Eurasia and all its peoples, minus Western hegemony.
"You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Really? As I recall, right about then the US government dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, just to 'see what they would do' and send a warning to Russia, maybe. 250,000 civilians (mostly) killed in an instant. Up to 1 million subsequent deaths from cancer, leukemia etc. Sounds pretty blood-thirsty to me, and not sure Stalin can compete with that.
"The point is simple and self evident. The Soviet government at the time was the most blood thirsty regime in the history of mankind."
Oh, I see. Now your point is less cryptic. It's also wrong. 'Self-evidently', the most blood thirsty regime in the history of mankind was, and still is, the Anglo-American regime, which birthed both the Bolshevik regime and the Nazi regime.
I suppose the Stalin-era Gulag which killed around 2-3 million people doesn't count for much. And of course, we'll also need to forget the Great Purge which ended the lives of roughly a million people. And naturally, we can't blame Stalin/Russia for the great famine of the early 1930s which killed somewhere around 5 million people. In fact, 9 million lives ended by Stalin versus the 1.25 million (your figure) lives ended by American nuclear weapons does indeed lead to the logical conclusion that Stalin can't compare. Right?
This isn't about covering Stalin-era USSR in glory, although Russians are certainly entitled to large helpings of it. Russians defended themselves within the regime they had to work within. You can't relate to that because you don't even begin to grasp the horror of a war that culled 3% of the planet's population. It's about recognizing the set-up:
"Let's help the Russians when the Germans are winning and the Germans when the Russians are winning. So each may kill off as many as possible of the other." ~ Harry Truman in the U.S. Senate on June 5, 1941
You're listing Soviet crimes that were the result of crimes brought on by your forebears (via the Bolshevik Revolution and WW1), crimes which later gave your country its 'golden age' (post-WW2, America 'inherited' the Earth). Pointing to Soviet crimes in this context is like saying "Yes, but what about all the people Saddam killed?" and completely ignoring the decades-long Anglo-American set-up of Iraq.
If you must do the numbers game, consider this:
"The total figure of civilians deliberately killed under Stalinism [a period of 30 years], around six million, is of course horribly high. But it is far lower than the estimates of twenty million or more made before we had access to Soviet sources." [Link]
6 million Russians in 30 years (Stalinism) vs 20-25 million Russians in 4 years (Nazism).
This equivocation of the Nazis with the USSR is a late 20th century revision of history designed to prop up imploding Western liberal capitalism. "See, they're all as bad as each other. Isn't our lot just great?" No, it's not; it's horrific. How many children have starved to death under 70 years of IMF 'structural conditionalities'? And the 20-30 million killed by US wars, direct and proxy? [Link] And the 11-14 million figure British researcher Mark Curtis tabulated for UK foreign policy? What are we looking at there? 50 million? 100 million?
"And thus began the policy of maligning, containing, and isolating Russia behind an 'iron curtain'..."
Russia is a wonderful country. It possesses some of the finest culture in the whole world, all throughout history. Let's not commit the same crime of which America is guilty by forgetting Russia's dubious decisions throughout history. Playing sides and accusing conspirators is not becoming of a BA Political Scientist.
"Let's not commit the same crime of which America is guilty by forgetting Russia's dubious decisions throughout history."
Indeed, and the most dubious one has to be its alignment with the Triple Entente and eventual mobilization against Germany in 1914.
"Playing sides and accusing conspirators is not becoming of a BA Political Scientist."
Indeed, which is why my education didn't really begin until I left 'places of learning' (actually, indoctrination camps) behind forever. I accuse Alfred Milner, I accuse Nathaniel Rothschild, and I accuse Edward Grey, three key conspirators who planned and executed WW1 to advance a batshit crazy Anglo-American plot for world domination, the horrific ramifications of which we're still dealing with today.
It seems that Niall has replied since you were edging for a numbers game here with some revised numbers that should cause one to rethink our worlds madness. As for the "era" specific numbers you cited under the Russian purges, yes, the purges capped a very dark period (with some much needed "foreign" who, what, where, and why background). These numbers mentioned sit like the darkness in numbers of woman who were murdered under the churches Malleus Maleficarum witch-hunts.
Nevertheless, as for the film itself, to me anyway, it depicts the spirit of a desperate Russian people who did not initiate the attack and did not lay down to the invading hordes of fascists; kind of like in the Donbass today. Right?
But if you must underline the numbers game in era’s, in addition to what has already been replied to you above – which was staggering, lets not forget to score in the outright genocide and silent genocide against the North American Indians, the direct or proxy decimation of sovereign lands and people from Vietnam, Iraq to Libya - to name just a scant few, along with the displacement and starvation of millions more. And to add a period to this, lets not dismiss the thousands of tons of “stay behind” depleted uranium toxins that will kill these people for another thousand years ahead. Lets also not forget the greater than 2,000 subterranean, atmospheric or oceanic nuclear detonations [Link] that spewed billions of doses of plutonium to add to the fatal numbers of our past, present and future existence. To be fair though, it was at a US/Russian ratio of 1032/715 with other countries adding to the fray, yet then again, who started that madness? And just to go back in time to the 1930’s, lets not forget the American equivalency of approximately 7 million people who completely disappeared in the U.S.A during that manufactured depression.
To be sure, the underlining factor in all of these numbers anywhere, the real scourge in peace (well there has not been any) and war is none other than psychopaths in powers – who are most often interconnected; who fund, arm, murder, starve and play against all sides without getting their hands dirty - they in fact hate human beings, yet I’m sure you realize this.
The strength and tenacity of the Russians is beyond awe-inspiring. I am completely floored. Compare this will-power and force to the Dutch for instance who capitulated after what three hours (I am exaggerating a bit here) and whose queen fled the country after a few days and left the Dutch to fend for themselves. The difference couldn't be greater.
Perhaps you both failed to read my response in context. If you review my original response once again, you'll notice it was referencing a poster named Joe who said, "250,000 civilians (mostly) killed in an instant. Up to 1 million subsequent deaths from cancer, leukemia etc. Sounds pretty blood-thirsty to me, and not sure Stalin can compete with that."
I merely provided an educated response.
Niall, not only is your side-taking unbecoming, but your assumptions of my background, country of origin and allegiances are, too.
Dear Russia and Putin admirers
As Mr Bradley pointed out, this film is after all propaganda. It differs from most propaganda between rivals in the fact that it is designed to show the "bright side" of the Soviet Union. The underlying reason for this is that it was politically convenient at the time to view the USSR as a positive force. As in all propaganda cases the point is not to be objective but to promote a one sided view of things. So, quite a lot has been ommitted in this story.
The first ommission is the fact that Moscow was in fact defeated in 1612. By the Poles who occupied it for two years.
But the "juciest" ommissions come later. It is a matter of Russian "historical policy", to view WW2 as their so called "Great Patriotic War" which, for them, started in 1941. For the rest of Europe WW2 started on 1st september of 1939 with Hitler's assault on Poland. But the Germans were not alone. On the 17th of september 1939 the Soviet/Russian army also crossed the border into Poland and by the end of the month met up with the German forces in Brest Litovsk. The two powers divided Poland between themselves. As the Polish army retreated from the garman attack it fell into Russian hands. This later resulted in the Katyn massacre which saw the death of over 20 thousand Polish citizens among which ten thousand were officers. This was the immediate result of the Ribbentrop - Molotov Pact. The eastern part of Poland that the Russians invaded is lost to this day. To me this means that the war was started by both - the Germans and the Russians. Russian propaganda prefers to view the Soviet Union as a victim obviously. To western powers at the time this was an issue to be swept under the rug for obvious reasons. But a "truth seeking" website should, by now, see through all that.
As for other uncomfortable facts it is worth noting that the "happy soviet nation" of Ukraine greeted the incoming German army with crowds of people and flowers in the streets. As liberators. Such was life under Russian rule in the thirties in the "breadbasket" where millions died of famine.
What about the brilliant Russian military strategy? No mention is made of the unarmed Russian soldiers sent to the front line with NKWD comissars who follwed them and shot anyone with second thoughts. No mention of dissarming minefields by sending a battalion of troops over them. No wonder they lost more men in the war than all the other participants. No mention is made of almost 300 000 German women raped and murdered during the advance to Berlin. Such gallantry.
One last note on the history of the "peace loving Soviet Union": no mention was made of their attack on Poland in 1920 when they came with an agenda of sovietizing not just Poland but hopefully the rest of Europe. They were repelled by the Poles so perhaps the rest of the world doesn't even know this happened.
But it is a propaganda film and nothing more. Certainly nothing to build a world view upon.
Yes, its author was a tank commander against Hitler.. . . and he had the faith and - ultimately, as he said - the stupididty to buy the PTB BS which LIES (pun intentional) identical to those behind the film's effective overture that either or ANY one of the combatants' controllers' had ANY moral right to have created the conditionitons that supposedly made WWII 'Just.'
As we now know, it was just as 'just' as the US attack on Iraq - ("Yeah, Saddam, we ,know that Kuwait is slant drilling into your prooperty - and we don't care if you go in there for it to get what is your due."
GWB's flunkies said that. He/she also likely said "after all, we supplied, your poison gases for the Kurds and Iranians"; you've got that on us - right? How can we prefent you using that? What? Kill you? Ha ha! More liquor for all!
So go to! invade Kuwait!
(our Flunktionarities)
is what LYING 'american'
supported intentionally per our role in ensuring the creation of this ALLEGEDLY 'MORAL' war.
My Ass. Just as 'moral' as Mei Lai.
Lie? There we are again.
I claim not Solzhenitsyn's right to say this. He saw how Stalin/Big Brother (and true brother of our 'controllers' to this day.) operated. Gulag is NOT about HIS experiences - but well over 90% if it focuses on those like him deemed teemed traitors "OF the motherland.". To understand that last phrase, PLEASE READ GULAG!
Read it and wonder if there was really any differences between us - the West and the Evil East of The Cold War. Then wonder how life in a FEMA Camp will differ; save our climates.
R.C.
P.s.,, a Quick glimpse shows that since I began this, another - Raptus - has made a comment about the pure defense of evil in action, a/k/a "propraganda;" to wit: that their ends justified their evil actions.
Thanks Niall for a most interesting film about the Battle of Russia. That between 21,8 - 28 million people from the Sovjetunion died, speaks about the sacrifice that the Russian paid for the victory over Nazism. A truly Herculean effort and one which every Western leader should honour with a show in Moscow. But we know that is not to be as history has been rewritten since the film was made.
Reader Comments
... of the excellent documentary! Thank you!
Propaganda? Indeed.
The point is simple and self evident. The Soviet government at the time was the most blood thirsty regime in the history of mankind.
Oh, I see. Now your point is less cryptic. It's also wrong. 'Self-evidently', the most blood thirsty regime in the history of mankind was, and still is, the Anglo-American regime, which birthed both the Bolshevik regime and the Nazi regime.
Seems you forgot to mention it in your article.
I suppose the Stalin-era Gulag which killed around 2-3 million people doesn't count for much. And of course, we'll also need to forget the Great Purge which ended the lives of roughly a million people. And naturally, we can't blame Stalin/Russia for the great famine of the early 1930s which killed somewhere around 5 million people. In fact, 9 million lives ended by Stalin versus the 1.25 million (your figure) lives ended by American nuclear weapons does indeed lead to the logical conclusion that Stalin can't compare. Right?
"Let's help the Russians when the Germans are winning and the Germans when the Russians are winning. So each may kill off as many as possible of the other." ~ Harry Truman in the U.S. Senate on June 5, 1941
You're listing Soviet crimes that were the result of crimes brought on by your forebears (via the Bolshevik Revolution and WW1), crimes which later gave your country its 'golden age' (post-WW2, America 'inherited' the Earth). Pointing to Soviet crimes in this context is like saying "Yes, but what about all the people Saddam killed?" and completely ignoring the decades-long Anglo-American set-up of Iraq.
If you must do the numbers game, consider this:
"The total figure of civilians deliberately killed under Stalinism [a period of 30 years], around six million, is of course horribly high. But it is far lower than the estimates of twenty million or more made before we had access to Soviet sources." [Link]
6 million Russians in 30 years (Stalinism) vs 20-25 million Russians in 4 years (Nazism).
This equivocation of the Nazis with the USSR is a late 20th century revision of history designed to prop up imploding Western liberal capitalism. "See, they're all as bad as each other. Isn't our lot just great?" No, it's not; it's horrific. How many children have starved to death under 70 years of IMF 'structural conditionalities'? And the 20-30 million killed by US wars, direct and proxy? [Link] And the 11-14 million figure British researcher Mark Curtis tabulated for UK foreign policy? What are we looking at there? 50 million? 100 million?
The State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff need a screening of this film. It appears that they did not get the message of history, re: Russia.
Thanks, Niall.
There are other US documentaries on you tube about China and Japan. Oh, how the US liked China in those days.
Thanks for a great documentary Niall.
"And thus began the policy of maligning, containing, and isolating Russia behind an 'iron curtain'..."
Russia is a wonderful country. It possesses some of the finest culture in the whole world, all throughout history. Let's not commit the same crime of which America is guilty by forgetting Russia's dubious decisions throughout history. Playing sides and accusing conspirators is not becoming of a BA Political Scientist.
Indeed, and the most dubious one has to be its alignment with the Triple Entente and eventual mobilization against Germany in 1914.
"Playing sides and accusing conspirators is not becoming of a BA Political Scientist."
Indeed, which is why my education didn't really begin until I left 'places of learning' (actually, indoctrination camps) behind forever. I accuse Alfred Milner, I accuse Nathaniel Rothschild, and I accuse Edward Grey, three key conspirators who planned and executed WW1 to advance a batshit crazy Anglo-American plot for world domination, the horrific ramifications of which we're still dealing with today.
[Link]
Hopping one day every Human, could say; WW2 was Just a Banking system try to force Russia deeper into DEBT... Sound familiar?!..
Note: { “WW3 WILL BE THE Reptiles & Psychopath VS. Human” }
…And Civilization
will change face for Ever...
@ Importance
It seems that Niall has replied since you were edging for a numbers game here with some revised numbers that should cause one to rethink our worlds madness. As for the "era" specific numbers you cited under the Russian purges, yes, the purges capped a very dark period (with some much needed "foreign" who, what, where, and why background). These numbers mentioned sit like the darkness in numbers of woman who were murdered under the churches Malleus Maleficarum witch-hunts.
Nevertheless, as for the film itself, to me anyway, it depicts the spirit of a desperate Russian people who did not initiate the attack and did not lay down to the invading hordes of fascists; kind of like in the Donbass today. Right?
But if you must underline the numbers game in era’s, in addition to what has already been replied to you above – which was staggering, lets not forget to score in the outright genocide and silent genocide against the North American Indians, the direct or proxy decimation of sovereign lands and people from Vietnam, Iraq to Libya - to name just a scant few, along with the displacement and starvation of millions more. And to add a period to this, lets not dismiss the thousands of tons of “stay behind” depleted uranium toxins that will kill these people for another thousand years ahead. Lets also not forget the greater than 2,000 subterranean, atmospheric or oceanic nuclear detonations [Link] that spewed billions of doses of plutonium to add to the fatal numbers of our past, present and future existence. To be fair though, it was at a US/Russian ratio of 1032/715 with other countries adding to the fray, yet then again, who started that madness? And just to go back in time to the 1930’s, lets not forget the American equivalency of approximately 7 million people who completely disappeared in the U.S.A during that manufactured depression.
To be sure, the underlining factor in all of these numbers anywhere, the real scourge in peace (well there has not been any) and war is none other than psychopaths in powers – who are most often interconnected; who fund, arm, murder, starve and play against all sides without getting their hands dirty - they in fact hate human beings, yet I’m sure you realize this.
@Niall and parallax
Perhaps you both failed to read my response in context. If you review my original response once again, you'll notice it was referencing a poster named Joe who said, "250,000 civilians (mostly) killed in an instant. Up to 1 million subsequent deaths from cancer, leukemia etc. Sounds pretty blood-thirsty to me, and not sure Stalin can compete with that."
I merely provided an educated response.
Niall, not only is your side-taking unbecoming, but your assumptions of my background, country of origin and allegiances are, too.
Dear Russia and Putin admirers
As Mr Bradley pointed out, this film is after all propaganda. It differs from most propaganda between rivals in the fact that it is designed to show the "bright side" of the Soviet Union. The underlying reason for this is that it was politically convenient at the time to view the USSR as a positive force. As in all propaganda cases the point is not to be objective but to promote a one sided view of things. So, quite a lot has been ommitted in this story.
The first ommission is the fact that Moscow was in fact defeated in 1612. By the Poles who occupied it for two years.
But the "juciest" ommissions come later. It is a matter of Russian "historical policy", to view WW2 as their so called "Great Patriotic War" which, for them, started in 1941. For the rest of Europe WW2 started on 1st september of 1939 with Hitler's assault on Poland. But the Germans were not alone. On the 17th of september 1939 the Soviet/Russian army also crossed the border into Poland and by the end of the month met up with the German forces in Brest Litovsk. The two powers divided Poland between themselves. As the Polish army retreated from the garman attack it fell into Russian hands. This later resulted in the Katyn massacre which saw the death of over 20 thousand Polish citizens among which ten thousand were officers. This was the immediate result of the Ribbentrop - Molotov Pact. The eastern part of Poland that the Russians invaded is lost to this day. To me this means that the war was started by both - the Germans and the Russians. Russian propaganda prefers to view the Soviet Union as a victim obviously. To western powers at the time this was an issue to be swept under the rug for obvious reasons. But a "truth seeking" website should, by now, see through all that.
As for other uncomfortable facts it is worth noting that the "happy soviet nation" of Ukraine greeted the incoming German army with crowds of people and flowers in the streets. As liberators. Such was life under Russian rule in the thirties in the "breadbasket" where millions died of famine.
What about the brilliant Russian military strategy? No mention is made of the unarmed Russian soldiers sent to the front line with NKWD comissars who follwed them and shot anyone with second thoughts. No mention of dissarming minefields by sending a battalion of troops over them. No wonder they lost more men in the war than all the other participants. No mention is made of almost 300 000 German women raped and murdered during the advance to Berlin. Such gallantry.
One last note on the history of the "peace loving Soviet Union": no mention was made of their attack on Poland in 1920 when they came with an agenda of sovietizing not just Poland but hopefully the rest of Europe. They were repelled by the Poles so perhaps the rest of the world doesn't even know this happened.
But it is a propaganda film and nothing more. Certainly nothing to build a world view upon.
Read Gulag Archiplelago
Yes, its author was a tank commander against Hitler.. . . and he had the faith and - ultimately, as he said - the stupididty to buy the PTB BS which LIES (pun intentional) identical to those behind the film's effective overture that either or ANY one of the combatants' controllers' had ANY moral right to have created the conditionitons that supposedly made WWII 'Just.'
As we now know, it was just as 'just' as the US attack on Iraq - ("Yeah, Saddam, we ,know that Kuwait is slant drilling into your prooperty - and we don't care if you go in there for it to get what is your due."
GWB's flunkies said that. He/she also likely said "after all, we supplied, your poison gases for the Kurds and Iranians"; you've got that on us - right? How can we prefent you using that? What? Kill you? Ha ha! More liquor for all!
So go to! invade Kuwait!
(our Flunktionarities)
is what LYING 'american'
supported intentionally per our role in ensuring the creation of this ALLEGEDLY 'MORAL' war.
My Ass. Just as 'moral' as Mei Lai.
Lie? There we are again.
I claim not Solzhenitsyn's right to say this. He saw how Stalin/Big Brother (and true brother of our 'controllers' to this day.) operated. Gulag is NOT about HIS experiences - but well over 90% if it focuses on those like him deemed teemed traitors "OF the motherland.". To understand that last phrase, PLEASE READ GULAG!
Read it and wonder if there was really any differences between us - the West and the Evil East of The Cold War. Then wonder how life in a FEMA Camp will differ; save our climates.
R.C.
P.s.,, a Quick glimpse shows that since I began this, another - Raptus - has made a comment about the pure defense of evil in action, a/k/a "propraganda;" to wit: that their ends justified their evil actions.
It's still and remains PROPRAGANDA!
RC