Auschwitz Commemoration: Why Wasn't Russia Invited?

Let's get it clear that the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and its commemoration in Poland (now a NATO puppet state) ought to have Vladimir Putin and the Russians front and center. It was the Soviet Army  that liberated that reprehensible Nazi concentration camp - not the U.S. (which was hundreds of miles to the west). Hence, by all standards of respect, civility and acknowledgement, the Russians ought to be there - and way, way before any appearance by Barack Obama (though I am glad he didn't go since Vladimir Putin isn't allowed).  Those who hammer Obama for not making an appearance really have no idea that he shouldn't be present in any case. The commemoration is mainly on behalf of the survivors and the nation state (Russia)  that actually liberated the damned camp. (Poland was a Nazi satellite state at the time)

The Russians also suffered far , far more than the U.S. and primarily in holding back the Nazi onslaught in Operation Barbarossa.  This "evil empire" (in Ronnie Reagan's Alzheimer's-  generated parlance)  saved the West's living ass as it turned back Hitler's troops in Barbarossa, at the cost of losing 20 million of their people. Think about that! How do you think America would have handled a vicious aggressor actually invading the nation and laying waste to major cities as the Hitlerites did to Russia? And losing 20 million?  (For some insight, google: "Battle of Stalingrad")

During Barbarossa, 5 to 6 million Red Army soldiers were taken captive by the Nazis, and of these more than three million died of disease (mainly typhus), forced labor and the brutal conditions to which they were subjected.  By contrast, the U.S. suffered 405,400 total  war deaths or barely 13.5 percent of the Russian losses - from deaths in captivity alone.

The Russians, having bravely decimated the Nazi war machine  to the point D-Day could succeed (without worrying about immense masses of troops and  thousands more Luftwaffe planes), then moved westward to meet up with the allies, on the way liberating concentration camps including Mauthausen, e.g.

Photograph of hundreds of the corpses Russian soldiers encountered at Mauthausen in May, 1945.

They then also went on to liberate Auschwitz, and were the first to see what the Nazi vermin had wrought (including from the horrific human experiments) and also caring for the hundreds of survivors - including many Jewish children, who had to be  treated following Josef Mengele's experiments gone awry.

In specific Auschwitz liberation film records, for example, the liberating Russians beheld a 12 year old boy who'd  been infected with Leprosy and the results after just 6 weeks. In another segment, one watches with heart break as the bandages are removed from a 10 year old girl's foot, showing blackened flesh - after she had been forced to stand ten hours in freezing temperatures. In yet another segment, a 9 year old boy is unable to exercise or move either of his arms - they had been amputated and replaced with the arms of a 9 month old infant.

Russian medical personnel also observed:

- Removed skin (treated with chemicals) from prisoners waiting to made into for chairs, and for use as art 'canvas':   In this case the selected bodies of certain gassed victims had their skin later removed and used to form the fabric for chairs - generally by the particular concentration camp Kommandant - and also for "art" canvas, with the art often pornographic.

- Bodies of fetuses (expelled by their mothers in the gas chambers) designated for autopsies.

Much of this is shown in vintage films finally accessible after the fall of the Soviet Union. I watched it in the 'Liberation of Auschwitz' part of the 5-pack collection, The Holocaust Testaments. Incredibly, the O.S.S. (forerunner of the CIA) was aware of many of the films but adamantly was opposed to any release or even exposure because they believed the materials to be Soviet propaganda. (The Auschwitz films are introduced by Simon Wiesenthal, of the Holocaust Museum, and I sincerely dispute he'd be introducing "propaganda"!)

I believe every American ought to see these films and see what part different allies had in liberating the Nazi death camps, especially the Russians who are given far too little credit and respect for their crucial role.

That the Russians, who liberated Auschwitz and actually treated survivors, are not present at the commemoration because of pique at certain recent Russian actions (in response to NATO incursions into Russia's sphere of influence, e.g. in the Ukraine) is absolutely abominable and unacceptable. For an occasion like this, political pique needs to be relegated to the sidelines to allow the proper recollection of the event - and acknowledgement of the Russian role. Poland and its NATO masters can return to their Russian -hating and subversive moves on her doorstep after the commemoration. See also:


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/putin-is-acting-rationally-col-lawrence.html

and:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-game-theory-perspective-on-ukraine.html

To learn more about the history of Auschwitz:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189

Obama Snubs Putin In Paris? Really?

As it happened, the G-7 Meeting (formerly the G-8) in Paris coincided with the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. That event marked the key turning point of the worst war ever seen - after which one participant noted: "The next major war will be the end of everything."  Anyway, this isn't about the next major war but a war of pique and adolescent style behavior unbecoming of world leaders.

 

My gripe is that given the historical background (and I believe the commemoration of the Normandy invasion trumps the Neoliberal,  G-7  self-congratulation pretensions),  it was appalling to learn that Obama reportedly refused to dine with Vladimir Putin, who was being hosted by France’s president Francois Hollande as part of the D-Day commemoration. Why? What's the big deal? After all , there was no way you were going to avoid him anyway at Normandy. (Media snippets showed the two in conversation for about 15 minutes - and the neoliberal media take explained that Obama was "lecturing" Putin on getting out of Crimea and behaving in the Ukraine. Give me a break! What is Putin, a toddler?)

So poor Francois Hollande, who is on a  stringent diet after being called a “little fat man” - by former Neoliberal president Nicholas Sarkozy (the same scum ball who once accused Barbados of being a haven for tax evaders via offshore accounts)- had to gorge himself while being  forced to host two back-to-back dinners, the first for Obama and the second, delicately described in French as a “souper,” or smaller supper, for Vladimir Putin, who's not a gourmandizer anyway. Never mind, Hollande still had to ingest an extra 2,000 calories just to appease Obama's pique.

Blogger Eric Margolis' take on this was perhaps most perspicacious:

"How remarkably childish and silly all this was. Obama and America’s European allies are cold-shouldering Putin for re-absorbing Crimea into Russia, to which it had belonged for 300 years, and for stirring the pot in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, US military forces are in action or based in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Djibouti, the Philippines, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, Central African Republic, Colombia, Kenya, Europe, South Korea, Japan – in fact, around the globe.

In Paris, the leading European NATO members met separately with President Putin while Washington continued its big snub. The EU’s economy is too involved with Russia to indulge in political theatrics.

Canada, run by a far-right evangelical government, played to its large ethnic Ukrainian population by huffing and puffing at Russia. Ukraine must be free, thundered the lackeys  What makes this schoolyard tiff in Paris even more churlish, D-Day, hailed by westerners as the decisive battle that defeated National Socialist Germany, would never have succeeded were it not for Stalin’s Soviet Red Army."

Margolis is spot-on correct, and the Neoliberal Western allies still owe the Russkies big time for taking most of Hitler's heat for them. Had not Stalin's armies fought to the last man literally (12  million dead) we'd likely be living the alternate history described by Philip K. Dick in his science fiction masterpiece, The Man in the High Castle - which portrays a world in which the Nazis and Japanese prevailed in WWII.

 

Having just watched again a documentary on the Battle of Stalingrad, there's no doubt in my mind, none whatsoever, that Normandy invasion or not, the Allies (without the Russians having already decimated the Wehrmacht) would not have succeeded with 'Operation Overlord'  as they did.  For reference, some 75% of the once mighty German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were destroyed by the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front: 607 German and Axis divisions, 48,000 German tanks, 77,000 German warplanes.

 

Former Wehrmacht soldier Hans Borchers, who I met in 1985 while in Dissen, Germany, laid it out straight: The diminished Wehrmacht that faced  the Allies at Normandy was reduced to 40% of effective strength because of  the Russians'  merciless war of attrition - responding to Operation Barbarossa.  This reduction was further exacerbated by virtue of being immobilized by lack of fuel.  Because of the Luftwaffe losses, there was little or no air cover to protect them from 24-hour Allied carpet bombing and strafing.

 

As Hans put it: "Schrecklich!"

 

Hans mused that it was  nothing short of amazing that the Germans could fight at all, or so hard. Had the Allied landing met the Germans of 1940, they would have been pushed into the Channel. Had Hitler not mounted Operation Barbarossa, squandering most of the Reich's military strength, it would have been much the same outcome - because all those forces demolished fighting at Stalingrad or other places would have been there to meet them - as well as thousands of Luftwaffe planes.

The point of this recollection? Only that major thanks are still owed to the Russians/Soviets who, however brutal and murderous, really won the war in Europe and went on to destroy 450,000 Japanese troops. At least 12 million Soviet soldiers died and 8 million Russian civilians, thereby  likely sparing the lives of millions of Allied soldiers .

 

Obama's snub of Putin, especially coinciding with D-Day commemorations, was therefore undignified and uncalled for. It showed not only poor statesmanship but poor recollection of history and how that history affected the U.S.

 

To quote Eric Margolis:

"Intelligent grownups talk to their rivals and enemies. For example, if the US and Britain had agreed to talk peace terms with the German generals in 1944, or at least backed their coup again Hitler, the war might well have ended a year earlier."

 

Maybe the next occasion for a Putin meeting will not be dismissed with such disdain, given what might well be at stake, in Iran or Syria.