The Bromberg Massacre

According to one source, Nikolay Nikolevitch Poliakov, Stalin purportedly created a special “Deportation Commission” to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps.[29][30][31] Poliakov, the purported secretary of the Commission, stated years later that, according to Stalin’s initial plan, the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953, but the monumental tasks of completing lists of Jews had not yet been completed.[29][31] “Pure blooded” Jews were to be deported first, followed by “half breeds” (polukrovki).[29] . . .

Four large camps were built shortly before Stalin’s death in 1953 in southern and western Russia, with rumors swirling that they were purportedly for Jews, but no directive exists that the camps were to be used for any such effort.[36]

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Stalin died in 1953. Whatever plans he may or may not have had for exterminating the Jews, or launching WWIII, remained unfinished. Stalin’s replacements proved to be more cautious men, and did not move forward with either of the two main prongs of Stalin’s apparent plans.

Rumour and unsourced ‘reports’ with no other aim than to confuse and  try and prove  Hitler was ‘right’ all along.
The Wiki article has the clear headline:
Speculation about a planned deportation of Jews

Pure speculation without any evidence at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors’_plot

@Gargantua:

I call BS Lazarus, but I’m looking into it.

You may ‘call’ it anything you like but just in case there is any doubt I repeat:
The article does not exist.
It is pure fabrication/a lie/invention or whatever you wish to call it.
The quote is a staple on revisionist sites but that does not change the  simple fact fact it does not exist

@Gargantua:

There is however no DOUBT that Rydz-Smigly did promise to “hack” the german army into pieces! Lol.

In much the same way the SS said they would ‘fight to the death’ and yet millions  ended up as POW’s……

In much the same way Hitler promised to  destroy the Soviet Union…
And of course post war Poland got a big chunk of Germany and still has it today.

@Lazarus:

Rumour and unsourced ‘reports’ with no other aim than to confuse and  try and prove  Hitler was ‘right’ all along.
The Wiki article has the clear headline:
Speculation about a planned deportation of Jews

Pure speculation without any evidence at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors’_plot

You are correct to assert that there is no proof that the four large concentration camps built shortly before Stalin’s death were intended for Jews. It’s quite possible they were intended for the extermination of some other group of victims instead. But your claim of “pure speculation without any evidence at all” is inaccurate, as will be seen. I’ll start with this

I handled hundreds of signals to all parts of the Soviet Union which were couched in the following form:
“To N.K.V.D., Frunze. You are charged with the task of exterminating 10,000 enemies of the people. Report results by signal.–Yezhov.”

And in due course the reply would come back:

“In reply to yours of such-and-such date, the following enemies of the Soviet people have been shot.”

----Former Soviet Spy-Chief Vladimir Petrov

As the quote from Professor Rummel’s website indicates, Stalin had adopted a system of extermination quotas. The above quote indicates the victims of these extermination quotas numbered in the millions: “hundreds of orders” times 10,000 “enemies of the people” per order = millions. Most of the victims of these exterminations were chosen at random, or based on whichever people happened to be closest to hand. But those who seemed different than the norm, who thought differently, or who really did oppose Soviet communism, were disproportionately likely to be labeled an “enemy of the people” and selected to fill the NKVD’s extermination quota. To Stalin, the elimination of these enemies of communism was the main purpose of the extermination quotas. The loss of millions of ordinary people was, to him, a reasonable price to pay to achieve this goal.

Another example of Stalin’s rationale for mass murders is the Holodomor, otherwise known as the Ukrainian Famine. Ukrainian farmers had resisted Soviet collectivization and the state confiscation of their lands. They regarded that as outright theft. Ukrainian nationalism increased. Stalin wanted to punish the Ukrainians for their resistance to his will, and he also wanted to eliminate millions of people who could not be relied upon to support the Soviet state. These were his two reasons for causing the Ukrainian famine: a government-induced famine which resulted in millions of deaths.

Another instance of Soviet mass murder was the Great Purge, which occurred in 1936 - 1938.

It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of “saboteurs”, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions.[1] . . .

Additional campaigns of repression were carried out against national minorities and social groups which were accused of acting against the Soviet state and the politics of the Communist Party. . . .

Another justification was to remove any possible “fifth column” in case of a war. . . . Stalin was convinced of the imminence of war with an explicitly hostile Nazi Germany and an expansionist Japan. This was reflected in the Soviet press, which also portrayed the country as threatened from within by Fascist spies.[11]

Stalin prepared for a possible war against Germany by liquidating those whom he feared might take the German side.

Had the Soviet Union gone to war against the United States in 1953, which group of Soviet citizens might, in Stalin’s mind, have been most likely to have taken the American side? In a Politburo session in late 1952, Stalin said, “Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service.” The construction of four large new concentration camps in 1953 make it clear Stalin was planning on exterminating someone–the only question is who? From a Pravda article written in early 1953:

The majority of the participants of the terrorist group… were bought by American intelligence. They were recruited by a branch-office of American intelligence — the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization called “Joint.” The filthy face of this Zionist spy organization, covering up their vicious actions under the mask of charity, is now completely revealed . . . The bigwigs of the USA and their English junior partners know that to achieve domination over other nations by peaceful means is impossible. Feverishly preparing for a new world war, they energetically send spies inside the USSR . . .

Those familiar with Soviet show trials believed that Soviet propagandists were methodically laying the groundwork for later “discovering” that the so-called “Doctors’ Plot” was not limited to Jewish doctors only, but reflected a wider anti-Soviet Zionist conspiracy. Certainly, the apparatus of the Soviet propaganda machine and Soviet show trials was moving in that direction. Conversely, I have yet to see evidence that some other, non-Jewish group was being considered for extermination in the four large concentration camps Stalin had had constructed. If others in this thread are aware of evidence that the Soviets, in early 1953, were creating the propagandistic justification for the extermination of non-Jewish Group X, I’d be happy to hear it. In the absence of such additional evidence, I will continue to view the Jews as being by far the most probable intended victims for Stalin’s newly built concentration camps.

‘Might’, ‘possibly’, ‘could have’ etc. We must not forget there are still many unreconstructed 'Cold War Warriors ’ out there who have a pathological hatred of the Soviets. A hatred made more intense by the fct the Soviets were the main players in the downfall of the insane Hitler and his evil system.
These people spend their lives trying to ‘prove’ Stalin was worse that Hitler.
Let them howl at the moon.

As for ‘Danzig’ and any other questions about the start of WW2 I only have to point out Hitler broke every promise/Treaty he made and anyone who for a second places any store  on the pledge of a lunatic is a fool.
War was the  aim of the game and by hook or by crook the madman Hitler was going to have one.

@Gargantua:

I call BS Lazarus, but I’m looking into it.  There is however no DOUBT that Rydz-Smigly did promise to “hack” the german army into pieces! Lol.

http://wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/wrsynopsis.html

THAT is an interesting (albeit dated) read!

Thanks for sharing this article. If its claims are accurate, Polish anti-German sentiment runs very deep, and has existed for a very long time. In addition, I found the following quote very interesting:

Jules Lukasiewicz, the Polish ambassador to Paris, for instance, who on March 29th, 1939 told his foreign minister in Warsaw:

| "It is childishly naive and also unfair to suggest to a nation in a position like Poland,
| to compromise its relations with such a strong neighbour as Germany and to expose
| the world to the catastrophe of war, for no other reason than to pander to the wishes
| of Chamberlain’s domestic policies. It would be even more naive to assume that the
| Polish government did not understand the true purpose of this manoeuver and its consequences."35

Obviously the French (and perhaps the British) governments had decided to use Poland as a cat’s paw with which to provoke a war with Germany. My previous impression had been that the Polish government had accepted French politicians’ promises of a general offensive against Germany at face value. But if Lukasiewicz’s impression is accurate, at least some members of the Polish government knew or suspected that France would ignore its promises, and would hang Poland out to dry. If that impression was accurate, it would seem to suggest that some members of the Polish government hated Germany more than they loved Poland. (The Anglo-French foreign policy of 1939 could have no possible outcome for Poland except long-term hostile foreign domination.) On the other hand, it’s worth noting that Lukasiewicz was probably representing the views of those with whom he strongly disagreed. People are often more accurate when describing their own views than they are when describing the views of their political opponents.

I would also like to address the larger question of whether the communists or Nazis were worse. Based on the actual historical data, one would think this question was too obvious to require any discussion at all. Unfortunately, leftover wartime propaganda, reinforced by those with pro-communist views, has often served to confuse and obscure what should be a very simple question. The basic facts of the matter are these:

1. Most Bolshevik mass murders occurred during times of peace, when the Soviet Union had been exporting millions of tons of grain each year.

2. Nazi Germany did not engage in mass murder during times of peace. It did engage in mass murder in response to the British food blockade and the resultant catastrophic food situation. Despite its “fewer mouths to feed” policy, Germany still lacked the food with which to feed everyone it had wanted to. Millions of Soviet POWs starved to death, despite Hitler’s order that they be fed. (They had been put to work in German factories to produce weapons.) Say what you will about the unfairness of the victim selection process, but the number of victims was dictated by Germany’s catastrophic food situation.

3. The Nazi government had not drawn up plans for mass murders during the postwar era, except to whatever extent needed to cope with additional food shortages.

4. The communist ideology is based on a number of anti-scientific principles. Karl Marx believed that differences between people were caused by environmental factors, not inherited traits. That belief became part of communism, and was fully embraced by Stalin.

Lysenko did not apply actual science. He was a proponent of the ideas of Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, and practiced a form of Lamarckism, insisting on the change in species among plants through hybridization and grafting, as well as a variety of other non-genetic techniques. With this came, most importantly, the implication that acquired characteristics of an organism — for example, the state of being leafless as a result of having been plucked — could be inherited by that organism’s descendants. . . .

Stalin, however, wanted to believe that Lysenkoism did apply to human genetics. . . .

From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko’s admonitions and with Stalin’s approval, many geneticists were executed . . . or sent to labor camps. . . .

Genetics was stigmatized as a ‘bourgeois science’ or ‘fascist science’  . . .

In 1948, genetics was officially declared “a bourgeois pseudoscience”;[9] all geneticists were fired from their jobs (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. . . . The ban was only waived in the mid-1960s.

In contrast to the Soviets’ anti-scientific views about the subject, the Nazis believed in what would later become known as genetics. They also believed that the scientific principles of genetics applied not just to plants and animals, but also to humans. I have seen a Nazi propaganda poster which lamented the fact that intelligent people were having fewer children than their less intelligent counterparts, and that unintelligent criminals were having more children than their equally unintelligent law-abiding counterparts.

That kind of message would have been impossible in the Soviet Union, because its leaders had embraced Lamarckian pseudoscience. That message would also have been very difficult to convey in the postwar Western democracies, because it had become unfashionable to apply scientific principles like genetics to larger social questions. It was emotionally easier to act as if human differences were caused primarily or solely by environmental factors.

When doctors and hospitals practice medicine based on a 21st century understanding of medicine, their actions will tend to result in much less suffering, and much more healing, than medical practice based on a 17th century understanding of medicine. Similarly, a society based on an acceptance of scientific principles such as genetics will tend to be a much better place than a society firmly committed to pseudoscientific Lysenkoist/communist gobbledygook.

Yet another attempt to rehabilitate Hitler.
A pathetic  re-write of  history and make Hitler out to be a victim.
I guess the rabid right whingers will never forgive the Soviets for  bringing down the disgusting Hitler regime.
The British and French pledged  that Poland would be preserved as a nation state and it was. They even got a good chunk of the former Germany-they deserved it!

This is way off topic, but try not to lose sight of the facts.

Asking the Poles to simply surrender Danzig and the Corridor would have been continuing a policy of appeasement that had demonstrably failed.  How could the Allies appease a nation like Nazi Germany that had already demonstrated it considered compromise weakness?  The Allies gave into their demands at Munich, and a few months later the Germans simply took the rest of Czechoslovakia.  Sure, there may have been a legitimate democratic basis for Danzig to join Germany, but this could have been accomplished by petitioning the League of Nations.  It would have been silly for the West to give in to military posturing, especially when Hitler’s goals were clearly set out in Mein Kampf.

It’s idiotic to suggest the French were using Poland to start a war with Germany when in reality the Allies were doing everything they could to appease Hitler.  If France really wanted a war with Germany, then they would/should have stuck with the alliance with the Soviet Union.  They would/should have unilaterally invaded Germany (like they did previously in the Rhineland).  But they didn’t, because France was a civilized country with plenty of pacifist sentiment.  Of course, no doubt the policy of appeasement and sympathy for the Germans in Great Britian also played a large role, since France didn’t want to risk war without unequivocal British support.

It’s not controversial that the invasion of Poland was planned and preceded by a massive propaganda campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Himmler

This topic is actually very interesting stuff–how to you mobilize the masses when the population (in this case the Germans) is vocally against war?  The answer appears to be the “Big Lie”, and the revisionist scholars Gargantua links to are simply repeating these lies.  Surely there were some atrocities against ethnic Germans, but it’s hard to tell what was real and what was staged.

As for whether the Poles should have fought, hindsight is 20/20.  In hindsight, the Poles probably shouldn’t have resisted, since millions died.  On the other hand, who knows, they may have been treated just as badly.  Consider the nations of Eastern Europe under Soviet rule that were initially supportive of the Germans but soon discovered the Nazis were driven by an insane racial ideology and intended to enslave the so-called “slavic” races.

Kurt I won’t defend how science was corrupted under communism but surely Nazi racial eugenics does not constitute a rational or progressive social philosophy.  It’s pseudoscience, just like communist Lamarkism.  It may be certain aspects of the science of genetics are benign, but a Social Darwinist pseudoscience eugenics combined with an insane militarism leads to a tyranny that is beyond defense (unless one is a racist caveman).  It’s not as if Nazism was any more friendly towards legit science than Communism–they both masqueraded as a scientific ideology, and they both sought to twist and distort science towards ideological ends, and finally both tyrannies drove many of their best scientists into exile.

@Lazarus:

Yet another attempt to rehabilitate Hitler.
A pathetic  re-write of  history and make Hitler out to be a victim.
I guess the rabid right whingers will never forgive the Soviets for  bringing down the disgusting Hitler regime.
The British and French pledged  that Poland would be preserved as a nation state and it was. They even got a good chunk of the former Germany-they deserved it!

Your post contains a number of accusatory statements, and seems to have been written from a pro-Soviet perspective. But I see no need to sidetrack this discussion with interpersonal drama, so I will do my best to respond calmly and logically to the claims you have made.

You wrote, “I guess the rabid right whingers [sic] will never forgive the Soviets for  bringing down the disgusting Hitler regime.” While I cannot speak for all rabid right wingers, I know that I personally would have had no objection to the replacement of the Nazi regime by some other government that had all the Nazis’ virtues and none of their vices. Whether such a change would have been worth a world war and the deaths of millions is dependent on how good the hypothetical replacement regime would have been. It would also be worth knowing whether the Nazis would have resorted to mass murder had the food blockade not created famine conditions within Germany.

Most of the land Germany had controlled during 1942 fell under Soviet occupation during the postwar era. The Soviets had all the Nazis’ vices, up to and including a willingness to exterminate the Jews under just the right circumstances. They were also far more bloodthirsty than the Nazis, and far more willing to kill for the sake of killing. Equally importantly, they did not have a single one of the Nazis’ virtues; except for the willingness to endure physical hardships. The Soviets had zero interest in improving the human gene pool, and a high interest in exterminating anyone who advocated that gene pool be improved.

In the past, there had been a considerable level of virtue associated with the culture of Western democracies. That virtue is declining, and is being replaced by two intertwined threads of narcissism. One of those threads is the narcissism of the ruling elites; the other is the narcissism of the culture those elites promote. Lady Gaga does not necessarily promote the values and virtues one associates with American pioneer women of the past.

If evil is a tapestry, that tapestry is woven with two different colors of thread: decadence and brutality. On the surface, it may seem tempting to associate Western democracies with the former, and the Soviet Union with the latter. However, there have been multiple occasions when Western democratic leaders have embraced brutality. When the Irish Potato Famine occurred, Britain made no real effort to feed the Irish, even though it very clearly had the resources to do so. Instead, the famine was seen as an opportunity: a chance to greatly reduce the number of Irish in Ireland, either through starvation or emigration. This absence of morality was also seen in the Boer War. Britain had used concentration camps to imprison the (primarily Dutch) Boer civilians. Many civilians starved to death as a result. (Also click here for a picture of a victim.) It had invaded the Boers’ nation in the first place due to its own expansionism and desire for South African gold. This willingness to starve civilian populations was also seen in WWI (the Anglo-French food blockade of Germany and Austria) and WWII (the Anglo-American food blockade of Germany).

For all the Nazi leaders’ flaws–and there were many–my sense is that most of them legitimately cared about the German people. Compare that to the Soviet occupation.

Civilians were run over by tanks, shot, or otherwise murdered. Women and young girls were raped and left to die (as is explored firsthand in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Prussian Nights).[51][52][53] In addition, fighter bombers of the Soviet air force penetrated far behind the front lines and often attacked columns of evacuees.[51][52] . . .

Although mass executions of civilians by the Red Army were seldom publicly reported, there is a known incident in Treuenbrietzen, where at least 88 male inhabitants were rounded up and shot on May 1, 1945. The incident took place after a victory celebration at which numerous girls from Treuenbrietzen were raped and a Red Army lieutenant-colonel was shot by an unknown assailant. . . .

Soviet troops raped German women and girls as young as eight years old.

The fact that the Soviet victory over Germany is celebrated is twisted, evil, sick, and disgusting.

You also wrote, “The British and French pledged  that Poland would be preserved as a nation state and it was.” Poland was turned into a Soviet satellite state. During the postwar era, those who had believed in, and fought for, an independent and free Poland were generally executed by the Soviets’ killing apparatus. In the postwar era, Britain’s pro-Soviet Labour government did not even allow the Poles who had fought alongside the British to participate in the WWII victory parade. They had fought on the side of the Polish government in exile, not the postwar communist Polish puppet government.

You also wrote “[Poland] even got a good chunk of the former Germany-they deserved it!” While this evidently makes you happy on a personal level, it’s also worth looking at the number of people who died as a result of the forced expulsions.

Estimates of total deaths of German civilians [resulting from the Soviets’ expulsions of Germans] have ranged from 500,000 to a maximum of 3.0 million persons.[161][162][163] Although the German government’s official estimate of deaths due to the flight and expulsions has stood at 2.2 million for several decades, recent analysis has led some historians to the conclusion that the actual number was much lower - in the range of 500,000 to 600,000. . . . While earlier estimates were calculated by balancing pre- and post-expulsion populations, the more recent ones are based on researches accounting the number of verified deaths.

Of the land area Germany had had in the '20s and early '30s, a large portion was added to Poland after WWII. (Including West Prussia, Silesia, and Pomerania.) The territory was ethnically cleansed of Germans and resettled by Poles. Poland required this territory because, after WWII, the Soviet Union had decided to ethnically cleanse the eastern half of prewar Poland of Poles, and add it to the USSR. No aspect of either of these ethnic cleansings is worth celebrating.

I see  my  play on the word ‘wingers’ (made into ‘whingers’ because they are always whining) went right over your head.
I can almost see the tears in your eyes as you wargame  scenarios where fleets of Nazi Jet fighters join hordes of Maus tanks to batter down the walls of Moscow.
The eternal cry of the  whiners-if only the war had lasted a few months longer we would have won-complaining they  wuz (deliberate spelling, no need for you to be ‘sic’) robbed and it wasn’t a fair fight.

You are just a bad loser who has never gotten over the fact the sub-human Reds  bested the SS and wiped the floor with them.
You lost, get over it.

Yikes talk about a strawman.

Revisionist Nazi apologists wanted us believe (and would have us believe today) that the only options for Western civilization are Communism or Nazism.  Ironically this is exactly the same thought process as that of a militant communist, who divides the world into the “fascists” and the “working class”.  Two sides of the same coin, mutually reinforcing the other.

This thread is closed. Population you.