World War II

[TsarSamuil]

Crazy video..

Germany: Night Wolves honour V-Day at Berlin's Soviet War Memorial.

Ruptly TV
May 9, 2017



Members of the Russian 'Night Wolves' motorcycle club laid flowers at Treptower Park's Soviet War Memorial in Berlin, Tuesday.

Some 60 bikers are participating in the motorcade and reached Berlin on the morning of May 9. The bikers took part in the annual Victory Day ceremony alongside representatives of the Russian embassy at the Soviet monument to commemorate the fallen soldiers and victims of the Great Patriotic War.

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Russische Rocker "Nachtwölfe" kommen zum sowjetischen Ehrenmal Berlin Treptow am 09.05.2017

Behemil
May 9, 2017

[TsarSamuil]

USSR’s role in WW2: Americans give RT their best guesses.

RT
May 9, 2017



Among the countries that fought Nazi Germany in WWII, the Soviet Union paid the highest price and was key to defeating Hitler. However, as RT’s Caleb Maupin found out, this is far from common knowledge in the West.

[TsarSamuil]

Night Witches: All-female bomber regiment that scared the Nazis.

RT
May 9, 2017



During World War II, every able-bodied man, woman, and sometimes even children, were mobilized across the USSR to defeat the enemy. In 1941, three women’s air force units were formed, which became a nightmare for the Nazis. They came to be known as the Night Witches for appearing in the dark skies seemingly out of nowhere.

The night-bomber regiments were made up of women, mostly under the age of 22.

Twenty-three of the girls were awarded with the honor ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’. Here’s a brief look at some of their stories.

[TsarSamuil]

Remembrance. Rewriting history: Red Army’s role in liberating Europe censored in the West.

RT Documentary
May 8, 2018



When the Red Army approached Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, the survivors met their liberators with shouts of “the Russians have come.” The first words of Major Anatoly Shapiro, who was in command of the unit that entered the death camp, were: “The Red Army came to set you free.”

Watch more films about World War II: rtd.rt.com/tags/ww2/?page=1

Surprisingly, nowadays, on a tour of the notorious extermination camp, you would never hear Polish guides mention that Russians liberated Auschwitz. Instead, you would be told that World War II was started by Stalin, jointly with Hitler.

Today, the whole story of how the Red Army saved Europe from the Nazis is being wiped from Western history books, with Russian soldiers increasingly being portrayed as oppressors and occupiers rather than saviours. Poland’s lower house of parliament even approved a bill to demolish Soviet-era statues, including monuments to Red Army soldiers. The law was proposed by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, whose professor has said: “I can say with confidence that here the Red Army is seen as invaders that occupied our lands.”

However, the people in the middle of the conflict were perfectly aware of the sacrifices the Red Army made to beat the Nazis. During August 1942, President Roosevelt wrote to Stalin “The United States understands that the Soviet Union is bearing the brunt of the war.”

Today’s generation is widely under the impression it was the US that won World War II, as that’s what their textbooks generally tell them. Very few Westerners know that, while United States military deaths in the European theatre amounted to some 300,000, the Soviet Union suffered well over 25 times that number. Moreover, the Red Army fighting in the east killed more than four times as many German soldiers as the US and its allies did on the Western Front. In fact, the famous D-Day invasion, which opened the second front in Europe, was only launched in June of 1944, after it was already clear the Red Army could achieve complete victory over the Nazis on its own.

However, not everyone has forgotten the heroism of the Red Army soldiers that stopped Hitler’s war machine in Stalingrad and then pushed it back to Berlin. Some Europeans and members of memorial societies still actively document and maintain the graves of Soviet soldiers and preserve monuments to them. Often, they are elderly survivors of the war or descendants of those who were shown kindness by the liberating Soviet soldiers. One such activist is Polish Army Reserve Colonel Tadeusz Kowalczyk, who said “in fifty years Polish kids will think that it wasn’t the Red Army that liberated Poland... but the American one. But we won’t allow it!”

For a closer look at the battle over World War II history, watch Remembrance on RTD Documentaries.

[TsarSamuil]

'We slept as there was nothing to eat': Stories of New Year celebrations during Siege of Leningrad.

RT.com
9 May, 2018 01:59

Ahead of the Victory Day – a very personal day for many in Russia and beyond – RT shares recollections of people who lived, struggled and had little joys in their childhood tragically taken away during the Siege of Leningrad.

The horrific Siege of Leningrad was one of the most lethal in world history, and lasted for 872 days, from September 1941 to January 1944. The city's civilian population of almost three million refused to surrender or flee in panic, even though they were completely surrounded by advancing German forces.

Here, we tell you four stories of the time, the stories of people who had to endure enormous suffering as they were trapped in Leningrad – the country's second-largest city in which starvation and hunger were as deadly as German bombs and shells.

"It was June, we were at our dacha, and then my father appeared with a changed look on his face, and said: 'It's war,'" Valery Voskoboinikov, the 79-year-old siege survivor, told RT. He said he initially liked the word 'war', but his father gave him a little slap to stop the son joking around, then packed immediately and left.



The Germans quickly broke through Soviet defenses in the area and surrounded the populous city. Hitler's plans for Leningrad, set out in the Operation Barbarossa strategy, meant that all residents would gradually die out due to famine or succumb to illnesses or bomb injuries. By the first winter of 1942 there was no heating, no water supply, almost no electricity and very little food.

Nevertheless, despite all major supply lines – with the exception of the famous 'Road of Life' running across the ice of Lake Ladoga – having been cut by the Germans, some New Year celebrations were set up. These were to strengthen the people's morale and demonstrate that Leningraders were resilient enough to carry on.

"We had a New Year celebration at our kindergarten," the 79-year-old Voskoboinikov recalls. "They sat us on benches and gave each of us a mandarin – an amazing fruit I hadn't eaten before."

He recalls that the very fruit that he had eaten on that cold day in 1942 had a hole in it and he later learnt "it wasn't just a hole, but a hole from a Nazi bullet."

For other families, the New Year was all about sleeping – because food was unavailable. "Today is a New Year. What it has in store for us is a mystery," reads a note by 16-year-old Borya Kapranov. "This is the first time we have celebrated the New Year like this."

The boy adds that "instead of having fun around the Christmas tree, we were sleeping because there was nothing to eat."

Tonya Zhurina, 15, was given a ticket to the theater, but the play was interrupted several times because of bomb alerts. "The performance was stopped, and we went to the bomb shelter," she wrote. "After the play, the tables were set."



Everyone there was given a small cutlet with buckwheat – a pure luxury in the besieged city, where the only food available from the authorities was 125 grams of bread per day, a slice the size of a standard box of matches.

But for Galina Zimnitskaya, aged 14, the New Year was about a small wonder. "In a few hours, the New Year will be here. After a hot water with a slice of bread, everyone in our household went to their rooms," her note reads.

Lying in bed, the starving girl was remembering how the New Year was celebrated before the war with chocolate as tree decorations and toys. And then she remembered that some of chocolate was kept among Christmas decorations.

"And I realised that this treasure is lying in a box with some toys! Screaming 'Hooray!' I jumped out of bed, turned on the lamp, dragged the box from the cupboard and got the precious sweets! All fifteen of them!"

Any food was bringing joy to homes in Leningrad. "I had a good New Year," Vladimir Fokin, a factory worker, wrote. "Polina baked flat bread out of potato peelings. I brought wood glue, and we cooked jelly from it."

In the evening, he continues, they went to the theater, but it was uncomfortable. "It was just as cold inside as it was outside, and the audience was covered in frost. The temperature was minus 35 degrees."

Somehow, the city survived, and its heroic 872-day resistance ended in 1944, becoming the symbol of unparalleled resilience and determination. But the lifting of the blockade came too late for many, as it took the lives of at 1.5 million people.

"Hitler ordered [his troops] not to enter the city to avoid losses in street battles, where tanks were unable to take part. German troops, in fact, quite comfortably and easily, expected that the coming famine and cold would force the city to surrender," writer Daniil Granin told members of the German parliament back in 2014.

Despite colossal casualties and losses of territory, the Soviet troops were able to hold out against the German army. After the crushing defeat at Stalingrad in 1943 came a number of other victories, spurring the Soviet drive towards Berlin which finally fell in May 1945.

The number of Soviet deaths accounted for almost a half of all WWII casualties. The largest country on the planet lost about 27 million people, both soldiers and civilians. The memory of the war is particularly venerated in Russia where May 9 has become a national holiday – Victory Day. It is now commemorated in a grand military parade on Red Square in Moscow and in Russia's other major cities.

[TsarSamuil]

Not just a toy: Children of war show ‘companions’ that helped survive Leningrad siege (VIDEO)

RT.com
9 May, 2018 11:29

The siege of Leningrad in World War II left many children looking for someone or something to help give them strength. RT takes a look at the only friends the kids had, toys they held dear through a brutal time of war.

Struggling to survive through the horrors of the war with their parents either killed, battling on the frontline or working to provide the army and the country with basic needs, children were often left alone. And toys were sometimes their only companions. Not everyone, however, could keep them for long as items were frequently exchanged for food.

This happened to Irina Malenkova’s dolls – which were traded for bread in the starving city. One cuddly toy, however, remained.

“The toys, they helped. Eventually we had no strength left to go to the bombshelter. We slept with mother in the corridor... And of course this monkey was with us,” the now-elderly Irina told RT.

The city of Leningrad, now known as St Petersburg, was almost completely surrounded by the German-led forces in 1941. For 872 days the city faced starvation and a lack of major supplies. The extreme famine and frequent shelling claimed the lives of around 1 million people – with some historians putting the numbers as high as 1.5 million.

[TsarSamuil]

Chessboard Central Europe: Partitions, Betrayals, and Collusion in Lead-Up to World War II.

Vesti News
Oct 4, 2018



Despite all efforts of the EU and the UN, the conflict between Belgrade and Pristina has been going on for more than ten years. This is one of the best examples of what redrawing borders leads to. Earlier today in Czechia, they have recalled the unlearned history lessons. 80 years ago, Polish troops occupied the Teshin region, a well-developed industrial center of Czechoslovakia.

[TsarSamuil]

[velika7slavia]

Oct 4, 2018 14:55:42 GMT -5 TsarSamuil said:

Chessboard Central Europe: Partitions, Betrayals, and Collusion in Lead-Up to World War II.

Vesti News
Oct 4, 2018



Despite all efforts of the EU and the UN, the conflict between Belgrade and Pristina has been going on for more than ten years. This is one of the best examples of what redrawing borders leads to. Earlier today in Czechia, they have recalled the unlearned history lessons. 80 years ago, Polish troops occupied the Teshin region, a well-developed industrial center of Czechoslovakia.

Poland was just using an opportunity to get land which they wanted . I don't see much wrong with that . Britain and France didn't invade Germany for humanitarian reasons , they did it for themselves . If they cared about human rights then they would never have backed the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century or Greece in the 20th century . What criticism do the allies get for working with the butcher Ioannis Metaxas . the answer is none

[TsarSamuil]

Russian MoD Declassifies War Materials Concerning Siege of Brest From Early Days of WWII!

Vesti News
Jun 24, 2019



This is the report prepared for June 22nd, the day when the Great Patriotic War began in 1941. Today, the Ministry of Defense declassified unique materials about what happened in the Brest Fortress in the first days of the war. Oddly enough, only today, we learn all of the details of that unprecedented feat.

[TsarSamuil]

Imperial Japan tested biological weapons & new poisons on Soviet prisoners, treasure trove of WWII declassified documents reveals.

RT.com
20 Aug, 2021 14:35

Thousands of Soviet citizens captured by Japanese forces in the Far East during WWII were subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment, and were used as test subjects for sick experiments with deadly biological and chemical weapons.

That’s according to a new tranche of documents declassified and published by Russia’s FSB security agency on Friday. The papers, which chronicle the treatment of Red Army soldiers, as well as civilians, at the hands of the Axis power, chronicle how those who could not be pressed into laboring to support Tokyo’s war effort were transferred to ‘detachment 731’ under the control of the Kwantung Army.

During their internment in the special brigade’s research unit, which was initially planned to hold 150 people, including Soviet pilots who had crash-landed in Manchuria, “new chemical poisonous substances and bacteriological agents” were tested on the prisoners, including anthrax and bubonic plague.

In a startling confession recorded by post-war Soviet investigators, the deputy director of the camp, Kenji Yamagishi, admitted to sending around 40 people to their deaths. The experiments, the trove of materials say, were in aid of the development of a supposed “bacteriological bomb,” which could be filled with plague-infested fleas and detonated over a populated area.

Torturous medical experimentation is remembered as one of the most egregious breaches of human rights during World War II, with both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan subjecting captives to the cruel trials. The most infamous perpetrator, Dr. Josef Mengele, would stand in line waiting for new arrivals at Auschwitz concentration camp to select subjects - often children or twins - for his brutal and frequently fatal studies.

[TsarSamuil]

t.me/rian_ru/129393

Japanese plan to invade USSR revealed.

RT.com
11 Nov, 2021 13:47

The Japanese Army planned to invade the USSR and seize vast swaths of Siberian territory during World War II, newly declassified information published by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) revealed on Thursday.

The release of the previously unknown information is timed to coincide with the 73rd anniversary of the completion of the Tokyo trial, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East held from 1946 to 1948, which determined the fate of the central Japanese war criminals.

According to the FSB, information about an attack on the USSR came from several interviews with captured Japanese officials and officers, including Kyoji Tominaga, the former Japanese deputy minister of war. Tominaga was a prisoner of war in Russia and was interrogated by SMERSH, the Soviet Union’s military counterintelligence agency.

Tominaga revealed to agents that Japanese troops were to attack Primorye, the part of Russia closest to the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’.

“After the occupation of the Vladivostok Plain by these troops, according to the plan developed by me, the Northern Front was to launch an offensive consisting of seven divisions, an artillery brigade, and other special units,” the prisoner of war said.

SMERSH also managed to arrest and interrogate a handful of other Japanese officials and servicemen, including a colonel named Saburo Asada. In Asada’s interrogation, he testified that Tokyo had planned “bacteriological sabotage” against the Red Army.

“[They] testified that the Japanese government had been preparing a war against the Soviet Union for many years,” Colonel-General Viktor Abakumov, the head of SMERSH, wrote in a memorandum to the Soviet government on February 13, 1946. “The Japanese General Staff developed its own plan of attack on the USSR, similar to ‘Barbarossa’, with the code name ‘Kantokuen.’”

The Soviet-Japanese war ended in September 1945, a few months after the surrender of Nazi Germany. It ended in a victory for the USSR and its ally Mongolia. As a result, the Soviet Union took control of the South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. It took another 11 years for the two countries to agree to formally end the conflict but, as of today, they have still not resolved the dispute over territories that are now in Russia’s possession.

[TsarSamuil]

Soviet plan to beat back Nazis declassified.

RT.com
3 Dec, 2021 15:54

A trove of newly declassified documents has revealed how the Red Army war machine turned the tide on Adolf Hitler’s fascist forces in a counteroffensive, even as the Nazi German Army closed in on Moscow in 1941.

On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense released a new archive on its website, entitled “the great turn at Moscow” and dedicated “to the immortal deeds of the defenders of the capital.” The release marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow, when, in the winter of 1941, the Soviet Army repelled the Third Reich’s attack, putting an end to the Axis’ hopes for a swift victory over the USSR.

Alongside the documents, the ministry wrote that “the Soviet forces’ victory in the Battle of Moscow shattered the myth that fascist Germany was invincible, strengthened the anti-Hitler coalition, and forced Turkey and Japan to refrain from entering the war. At Moscow, Hitler’s army lost more than 500,000 soldiers and officers to death or injury; around 1,300 tanks; 2,500 pieces of artillery; and over 15,000 vehicles and other instruments of war.”

Nazi forces had been approaching Moscow for months, but by early December, the Soviet defenses had stalled them dozens of kilometers from the city. It was the coldest European winter of the century. Using forces brought from Siberia and the Russian Far East, Soviet General Georgy Zhukov launched a counteroffensive beginning December 5, as a result of which the Germans were forced to retreat hundreds of kilometers further from the capital.

Although the Moscow front was not fully secured until 1943, Hitler’s forces never came as close to capturing the capital, and the defense of the city became a symbol of Soviet resistance to the Axis invasion.

The archive includes the operational map of the Red Army’s General Staff, published for the first time, with a plan for the counteroffensive. It also contains journals from the armies stationed on the front, and documents outlining engineering projects for defenses to forestall a German advance from the north.

The ministry noted that the documents’ publication was intended to “preserve and defend historical truth, and to counteract the falsification of history.”

In August, Russia’s FSB security agency published a separate tranche of historical communiques revealing the ordeals of Soviet citizens who had been captured and experimented on by the Japanese Army during World War II. The documents showed that prisoners who had refused to work for Imperial Japan were used as test subjects for poisons and bacteriological agents, including anthrax and bubonic plague.

[TsarSamuil]

Jewish journalist investigated for Holocaust tweet.

RT.com
8 Dec, 2021 14:25

A journalist and historian has been summoned for questioning in Poland after tweeting that Nazis didn’t want to exterminate Poles during World War II. The probe was launched under the law that bans the denial of Nazi crimes.

Katarzyna Markusz, who writes for the Jewish Telegraph Agency and runs the news and culture website Jewish.pl, is due to appear for questioning next week at the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a Polish state research body that investigates crimes against the Polish nation committed between 1917 and 1990.

According to the notice, cited by Polish media, the IPN initiated the investigation under a law that bans the public denial of crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. If found guilty, Markusz could face up to three years in jail.

In a now-deleted tweet from June, Markusz wrote: “There have never been mass extermination camps for Poles. During the war, they could walk the streets, work, live. Nobody killed them for being Polish.”

According to the OKO.press website, the complaint against Markusz was filed by a blogger, who founded the entity called ‘Center for Prevention of Anti-Polonism’.

Markusz told OKO.press that the investigation is ongoing, and she has not been charged with a crime yet. The IPN did not comment on the matter.

Markusz was previously investigated over a tweet in which she said that “Polish participation in the Holocaust is a historical fact.” The charges that she had “insulted the Polish nation” were dropped in February.

Responding to the new probe, Markusz again insisted that she was stating “a historical fact.”

“We are again wasting time and taxpayers’ money on an obviously political investigation,” she told Tok FM radio. “History can’t be changed by the orders from prosecutors or politicians.”

[TsarSamuil]

Russian court bans Memorial.

RT.com
28 Dec, 2021 11:06

A court in Moscow has ordered the liquidation of a prominent NGO dedicated to preserving the memory of those who died under communist rule, after prosecutors said the group was seeking to rewrite the history of the Soviet Union.

In a ruling issued on Tuesday, a judge decreed that Memorial, already registered as a ‘foreign agent’ over its links to overseas funding, would no longer be able to operate in Russia after authorities said that it had repeatedly broken the law.

During the hearing, a representative of the Prosecutor General said that Memorial “was created as an organization to perpetuate historical memory, but now it is almost completely focused on distorting historical memory, primarily about the Great Patriotic War,” as WWII is known in Russia. According to the official, the group “creates a false image of the USSR as a terrorist state” and “attempts to whitewash and rehabilitate Nazi war criminals who have the blood of Soviet citizens on their hands… probably because someone is paying for this.”

Russia’s Ministry of Justice and its media regulator Roskomnadzor have both backed the claims from prosecutors, with a spokeswoman for the communications watchdog saying that “brazen and repeated violations of the law” had been “convincingly proven beyond question” ahead of the court ruling.

Memorial, which describes its mission as educating the public about repression during the Soviet period, was designated as a foreign agent in 2016 after authorities said that it had accepted funds from abroad to engage in domestic political activity. However, the group was handed a series of fines after judges said it had failed to follow requirements to display the label prominently. Citing “repeated and gross breaches” of the rules, prosecutors filed a request with the Russian Supreme Court for the organization to be dissolved in November.

The group has branded the move a political decision and insisted that it would fight the charges. The Council of Europe has also hit out at the legal case, with Secretary General Marija Pejčinović Burić saying that “the liquidation of International Memorial would deal a further devastating blow to civil society, which is an essential pillar of any democracy.”

In a statement following the decision, the Director of the Polish-based Auschwitz Memorial Museum, Piotr Cywiński cautioned that "a power that is afraid of memory will never be able to achieve democratic maturity."

In October, Memorial’s staff were reportedly locked inside their Moscow offices for several hours by police, after a screening of a film about Ukraine’s Soviet-era famine was disrupted by masked protesters. The assailants reportedly shouted that those in attendance were fascists and demanded that the showing of ‘Mr. Jones’ by Polish Director Agnieszka Holland be halted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said that the country’s ‘foreign agent’ status helps ensure that the public know that NGOs and news outlets receive funds from outside the country to influence domestic politics. The law “exists simply to protect Russia from external meddling in its politics,” he said, adding that groups could register and keep working.

However, the rules have come under fire from some groups, who claim they have imposed an excessive burden on their operations. In August, an open letter signed by ten separate outlets asked the Kremlin to investigate the use of the ‘foreign agent’ legislation as part of “the persecution of independent journalism in the country.”

Earlier this month, Putin hit out at restrictions facing individuals designated as ‘foreign agents’ after he was asked about a case in which one journalist was required to append the label to photographs she’d taken of herself decorating a Christmas tree with her child and posted on social media. “Of course, the examples you brought are comical, a completely excessive response,” the Russian president said, calling for a review of the measures.