• Have any of you seen this underground documentary made about WWII from the German viewpoint? I think it is worth watching - what do you think about it? It is in German but dubbed over in English.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mA0kk29DBA


  • wow… just wow. Its cool and eye opening to see the other side of the war


  • Very good video! :)

    There are a few points on which I disagree. I’m not sure that the defensive alliance France signed with the Soviet Union constituted a violation of the Locarno Treaty. Also, it’s not wholly accurate to say that Poland “attacked” the Soviet Union in 1919. Rather, border disputes occurred after the fall of the czar; and Poland was a participant in those border disputes. That participation then resulted in an outright war between Poland and the U.S.S.R. During that war, the Western democracies showed no interest in preventing Poland from becoming the newest Soviet Socialist Republic. (With the exception of a passing interest from France; which sent some military advisors.)

    Another quibble is that they over-simplified the reasons for the Ukrainian famine. It’s true that Stalin exported grain while millions of Ukrainians were starving; and that the money from those grain exports was used to finance his industrialization and militarization of the U.S.S.R. The documentary was also correct to point out that the long-term objective of Soviet policy was world conquest; and that the military conquest of Europe was seen as an important step along that road. However, all this was only one of several reasons for the Ukrainian famine. The Ukrainian famine was also intended to punish Ukrainians for resisting the Soviet government’s theft of their ancestral farmlands; and to punish them for embracing Ukrainian nationalism.

    A discarded pizza box is more noticeable in a pristine setting with marble and flowing fountains and greenery than it would be in a cluttered dorm room. By the same token, the above-described errors were more noticeable in a documentary like this (which was very close to perfect) than they would be in a more normal, less impressive WWII documentary.

    There is also room for a second documentary. It should begin by discussing the food blockade which Britain and France imposed against Germany in 1939; and which the British and Americans continued until the end of the war. As a result of this food blockade, Germany was unable to feed the people within its own borders. Also in 1939, Britain ended significant new Jewish immigration into Palestine. Neither Britain nor France opened any of their other colonies to large numbers of Jewish immigrants. Jews who wished to leave Germany had nowhere to go. Meanwhile, Hitler was left without the food necessary to feed everyone within his own borders. He had to decide which people would be fed and which would be starved or otherwise exterminated.

    After the British and American governments did everything they possibly could to maximize the probability of the Holocaust occurring, they cynically used that event as the centerpiece of their anti-Nazi propaganda efforts. They claimed to be friendly toward the Jewish people, even though their actions demonstrate the precise opposite. They even chose not to bomb the rail lines to the concentration camps; despite widespread bombing efforts against the rest of Germany’s rail system. They were far more interested in squeezing as much propaganda mileage as possible out of the Holocaust than in doing anything useful to save the Jewish people. After the war, the British government interdicted Jews attempting to immigrate to Palestine; and placed them in concentration camps located on islands in the Mediterranean. Stalin was a rabid anti-Semite; and evidence strongly indicates that shortly before his death he’d been planning large scale exterminations of Jews living in the Soviet Union.

    The hoped-for second documentary could also discuss the genocides in which the victorious Allies engaged from 1944 - '48. These acts of genocide include 1) the Red Army’s behavior upon entering Germany, 2) the Morgenthau Plan, 3) the genocide of German POWs, and 4) the genocide of European refugees who had fled westward into Germany (Operation Keelhaul).

    To sum it up: I was blown away by the video. Anyone who has not yet watched it will be richly rewarded for doing so.


  • I too was very impressed to hear the German side - it is the victors who usually get to write history and all I’ve ever been exposed to is the Allied side. As Churchill said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”


  • @Der:

    IMO the Western powers should have left Germany alone. Hitler did not want to fight England or the USA. His quarrel was with communism in the East and international jewry. But it was all about economics. England saw Germany as the “upstart kid” in Europe getting too successful and competing against their long established world trade empire.  Once England had a pretense to declare war, they were determined to destroy Germany and bring the USA in to help. Churchill rejected all of Hitler’s offers of peace. This is why the allies were still smashing German cities and starting firestorms long after it was thought necessary- they wanted to kill as many citizens as possible to eliminate their competition in the world market. In doing so Germany was completely crushed and communism was allowed to dominate much of Europe.

    I’m replying to your post in this thread, because I didn’t want the other thread to drift too far off topic.

    But it was all about economics.

    You may be right. On the other hand, there are explanations for the Western democracies’ behavior which do not assume either a) that they were driven by economics, or b) that they were acting in their own interests at all. According to Diana West’s excellently researched book American Betrayal, over 500 Soviet agents had penetrated FDR’s administration. One of those agents was Harry Hopkins, the so-called “co-president.” While the Soviets hadn’t achieved enough influence for America to be called a Soviet client state, things were definitely headed in that direction. If you start with the belief that FDR put the Soviet Union’s interests ahead of America’s, you will have a clear and consistent explanation for every major element of his foreign policy; including the murderous Morgenthau Plan.

    To the best of my knowledge, communists didn’t achieve nearly this same level of penetration in either Chamberlain’s or Churchill’s administrations. This makes British foreign policy more difficult to explain. For many decades, Britain had pursued one of two policies with respect to conflicts on the European mainland. 1) Neutrality. 2) Siding with the weaker party to prevent anyone from gaining hegemony over Europe. Both of these policies can easily be explained in terms of promoting British interests. So why did Britain abandon them in the late '30s? Why did Britain decide to defend Poland against German, but not Soviet, aggression, at a time when the Soviet Union was stronger than Germany in terms of population size, industrial capacity, military capacity, access to natural resources, and diplomatic position?

    In 1935, France and the Soviet Union signed a defensive alliance. Also in 1935, Czechoslovakia and the U.S.S.R. became defensive allies. If Britain was to pursue its usual foreign policy of helping the weaker European nations against the stronger, it should have allied with Germany to counter this Franco-Soviet encirclement. For a while it seemed as though Chamberlain was willing to do exactly that. Or, at very least, was unwilling to work against Germany in its quest to redress some of the inequalities present in the Versailles Treaty.

    But then Chamberlain had been humiliated at the Munich negotiations. Perhaps he concluded that neither his own personal prestige, nor Britain’s prestige, could be restored without plunging Europe into war. In 1938 he was willing to let Germany reclaim the Sudetenland. By 1939 he’d completely changed course. France had promised the Polish a general offensive against Germany if Germany invaded Poland. That lie was a deliberate, successful attempt to provoke a European war by maneuvering Poland into a false diplomatic position. Why did Chamberlain go along with this French plan? Maybe he was trying to salvage his political career. Maybe he was trying to punish Hitler for having lied to him. This was a bit of a double standard, because Chamberlain obviously had no objection to lying to the Poles. Maybe there were those who worked behind the scenes to pressure Chamberlain into adopting a more warmongering stance. Whatever his reasons, he adopted the kind of anti-fascist/non-anti-communist foreign policy the Soviet Union wanted Western democracies to adopt.

    Churchill’s case is different. He’d developed strong anti-communist credentials back in the '20s. So why did he seem to take no interest in any sort of anti-communist foreign policy for Britain until after the Nazis had been eliminated? He was not acting the way one would expect an anti-communist to act. One possible explanation for Churchill’s behavior involves his own personal finances. At least according to one source, Churchill had initially been what he seemed: an anti-communist who lived a lavish, drunken lifestyle. Eventually his habits caught up with him, and he found himself on the verge of personal bankruptcy and financial disaster. Money was found to salvage Churchill’s finances, and to put him on a very solid financial footing. Those who provided this money did not wish for war between Britain and the Soviet Union, but did wish for war between Britain and Germany. I haven’t researched this enough to know whether this account is true. But at least it provides a possible, internally consistent explanation for why Churchill’s foreign policy bore no relationship to Britain’s best interests.


  • Well written, sir! I am currently reading a book called The Myth of German Villainy by Benton Bradberry. It is very interesting reading history from this perspective. I’d recommend it - especially to people who’ve grown up on nothing but the Allied version in movies, books, and other media.


  • @Der:

    Well written, sir! I am currently reading a book called The Myth of German Villainy by Benton Bradberry. It is very interesting reading history from this perspective. I’d recommend it - especially to people who’ve grown up on nothing but the Allied version in movies, books, and other media.

    Just purchased the Kindle edition of the book you recommended. Should be an interesting read.

    The more I learn about WWII, the more I come to regard it as a dispute in which both sides were willing to lie, distort, or use half truths to make themselves look good. As an example, the initial police report indicated 60,000 dead in Dresden, but Goebbels reported half a million dead. Granted, the city was packed with refugees, and the flames were hot enough to incinerate all physical evidence of many of the victims, including their bones. It would be difficult or impossible for someone to conclusively disprove the figure Goebbels gave. Nonetheless, his number seems pulled out of thin air.

    The above represents the most serious misstatement by the Axis of which I am aware. I have encountered far more serious deceptions by the Allies. For example, the claim that Hitler wanted to conquer the world. Or the claim that Hitler had described Nazism as a big lie. Or the implication that the only reason that tens of millions of deaths occurred in Germany was that the Nazis were feeling genocidal. (No mention of the Allied food blockade or its success in creating famine conditions inside Germany.)

    But just because I haven’t encountered any Axis statements more serious than the Dresden exaggerations doesn’t mean there aren’t any. And just because many of the Allies’ accusations against Germany proved to be deliberate lies doesn’t mean that all accusations against Germany are false. So where does one go to determine which accusations against Germany are real and which are Allied propaganda? Most history books are written from the Allied perspective. I found Shirer’s book to be especially deceptive. If ever a historian did what he could to whitewash the Allies’ war crimes, while misrepresenting the crimes of Nazi Germany, that historian was Shirer.

    I’m a little concerned that the book I just purchased may be doing the same thing, but from an Axis-friendly perspective. Which is why I don’t necessarily plan to believe everything I read, any more than I’d believe everything in a history book written from the Allied perspective. To a certain degree, a history book can be regarded as a series of claims: claims which can be investigated and (hopefully) proved or disproved.


  • Yes I’m also reading the book guardedly. Some of these materials I’ve been reading have basically moved me to your position - that the whole truth is somewhere in between everything we get exposed to. But I’m no longer a Churchill or Roosevelt fan boy who thinks the allies all wore the white hats and the Axis only the black hats.

    I tend to enjoy reading the memoirs of actual soldiers, whether they be on the Axis or Allied side, because they don’t seem to have any big political agenda - only to tell it like it was for them in their squad. In these you can actually read individual cases - from German soldiers on the East front who were kind to Russian civilians to Americans in Italy who raped and killed civilians.

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