Soviet POWS
This article reveals something - and explains Stalin's supposed "suspiciousness and paranoia" towards repatriated Russian POW's.
"The Road of Blood" As seen on TV, Erik Andersson, KPML(r) Proletaren www.kpmlr.o.se/
How can a TV2 program about Soviet war prisoners ignore the Western recruiting of Russian defectors and soldiers during the last year of the war and during the time shortly thereafter?
That is what one must ask oneself while watching the suggestive film, "The Road of Blood", shown at TV2 last Thursday. This film dealt with Russian war prisoners held in northern Norway where thousands died from starvation and shortages.
This film has all the usual characteristics of propaganda. The intent was to equate Communism and Nazism on the grounds that after repatriation of Soviet prisoners, many of them were sent to interrogation camps by Stalin. In order for this composition to succeed, a lot depends on impressive output that intends to impress, but which ignores most historical facts. First, it is important to point out that, on the contrary, the claims made by radioprogramme that was broadcasted by P1 on the same issue, the film and official Swedish side of history are not honest attempts to collect the data about the puzzles of history.
In this film, tears flow for the treatment of Soviet war prisoners in Northern Norway. But they are false tears, true crocodile tears. Never before have Russian war prisoners had any "meaning" in official dispatches in Sweden and Norway, not even a formalistic recognition, out of a sense of "responsibilety," In the government's version of history, the fate of the Soviet prisoners shines with it's absense, since it was Communists who first took the front against Nazism.
And it has been very similar in Norway, where, after the war, massive resistance came from the NATO-establishment to build any memorial monument for Russian and Yugoslavian war prisoners in Norway. During the cold war NATO-Norway felt that a memorial monument would provoce symphaties for Soviet people.
Now that the sacrifices of Russian prisoners are finally aknowledged, it is only because of one reason: to equate Communism with Nazism. Both sides were supposedly just as harsh towards Soviet POWs- or this is what propagandists would want us to believe.
The radio programme on the same theme broadcasted by P1 was more honest with what happened to Russian POWs after their repatriation and about political games in Norway, allthough misjudgements and biased stand was also present in it. "The Road Of Blood" deals, as noted before, with those 100,000 Russian and Yugoslavian prisoners in Nazi-occupied Norway who built roads and railroads in this ice-cold and harsh landscape. They had came through German- and Sweden-allied Finland.
Thousands of prisoners died of starvation and related diseases. German SS-soldiers were especially cruel. The programme does not even mention this. After the war those who were still alive got help from Red Cross. Later they were repratriated to Murmansk where they were placed in camps again- this time by Communists. The audience of this documentary had waited for more detailed description of the home-coming of these prisoners to Soviet Union, but the programme hurries towards the end, when there suddenly is not enough to find for these propagandists. P1:s radio programme, instead, clarifies that part of these Russian prisoners stayed in the interrogation camp for few months after repatriation- or, as the name of the radio programme goes: "In Stalin's USSR It Was Forbidden To Capitulate"
These words can truly frighten the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie; "In Stalin's USSR It Was Forbidden To Capitulate." That USSR did not capitulate in front of the Nazi army, must we today be extremely thankfull.
Only few weeks before Germany crossed Soviet border, the rest of Europe had already capitulated. Take a look at France, Begium and Denmark. It was not the soldiers who capitulated who won the war- it was those who stood up, sometimes untill the last man. If USSR had capitulated the way France did, Nazi Germany would had thriumphed.
But at the same time that the Soviet people did their greatest sacrifices in their struggle against fascism- there was always the difficult question: Fight until the last man or surrender to enemy imprisonment?
This is a question that is easy to answer for us who sit comfortably outside the historical context of these dramatic happenings and observe them from outside. But a gigantic struggle for life and death can be much more important.
Soviet Union paid a price of 20-28 million lives for their freedom. This war was a war between totally differend social systems. The question is: had all of them really stood? Did they all do their part in struggle?
Among those who became prisoners of war- how many gave up under pressure and became assistants of the enemy? Could they have been reliable in the new great war? These were relevant questions Soviet authorities had to ask and answer. Only by going back in history and looking at what position of western powers had can we understand what exactly made Soviet authorities suspicious. Given the following backround, of course also innocent people were mistakenly accused.
So, let us begin our historical review. Nazis planned to take over the Soviet Union within a few months, and the ruling classes in USA and England believed that USSR would give up after a few days. The whole bourgeois continental Europe did it's best to ignore the New Order in Europe. In fall of 1941 American UD wrote a report that argued that USSR would be "militarily liquidated in 1942".
But USSR held itself together during 1941-1942, even though it went through terrible ordeals. Democracy, for Marxists, means first and foremost participationary regime. Countries which gave their citizens little or no chance to participate in governing, the ruling bourgeois class and social democrats fell immediately. The example of France, Belgium and Denmark speaks for itself.
But after three weeks in the Eastern front, Germans had had lost more soldiers than they had in the whole continental Western Europe. After the first great defeat before Mocow gates in fall/winter 1941, Nazis intensified their recruitation of anti-Communist elements of society to take care of administration in occupied areas and to strenghten German defence- especially against partisans. For this purpose, even ordinary anti-Communist groups were used, for example white-Russian exiles in France.
During the war Nazis mobilised about one million Russians, Ukrainians and Cosacks to fight on their front-line unit.
These defectors were involved in every German maneuvre, from weaponry transport to mass-slaugterings of civil population. Often they did the dirty work which Germans didn't want to do.
Germans took millions of war prisoners, who had two chances- either they served the Nazis or be slaughtered.
The great majority of Russian prisoners of war didn't give in to German extortation and two millions of them chose death rather than aid to the Nazis. But thousands of Russians capitulated and became recruited as carriers, cooks, concentration camp guards and informers in prison camps and many of them later became part of German armed front. Those quilty of this were condemned after the war for their assistance to Nazis. Among those was Leonid Khrustchev, Nikita Khrustchev's son, who was given death sentence for his organization of German concentration camps. (!) Stalin refused to intefere in favor of Khrustchev's son since he didn't have the will nor authority to give anyone any special priviledges.
We could point out here to Stalin's son Yakov's fate in German inprisonment. German's wanted to exchange him to general Von Paulus, who was their commander at Stalingrad. But Stalin believed that all Red Army soldiers were his sons and could not choose one before the others. Yakov died in German concentration camp. What Western propaganda calls "Cold War," begun in 1947-1948, but already in 1944 the Soviet authorities saw that Americans and Britts had started to recruit anti-Communists and defectors among the Russian war prisoners who took the side with the West. The target of the aggression of these paramilitary troops was nothing else but the Soviet Union.
The Western recruitation among the prisoners became a very relevant question only one year after the war ended. For USSR, this was a clear violation of the peace treaty signed only few months before. This started to take place at least three years before what the history books of our time call "Cold War." Even those prisoners dealt with in "The Road Of Blood" were offered service on the side of the West.
We can clearly see that the suspiciousness towards war prisoners from the side of the West was justified, even though even innocent men also were mistakenly condemned. Moreover, the bourgeois television pays fake homage to these prisoners only to use them as a weapon in what is obviously a "bash the Communist" campaign, while they are usually totally ignored. Not to mention that this documentary keeps silent about their heroic resistance to the Nazis even during the most difficult time of their imprisonment. Could it really be that no prisoner in Norway capitulated and worked for Germans, while the whole continental Europe did the same? These questions are not asked in this programme, but they are questions a critical viewer starts to ask. Russians were afraid of the new war and the people's patriotism was their touchstone.
The Western attempts to wreck the Red Army recruitment is important to know while watching this- it throws a new light on this historical period. This programme is not as much a documentary about factual happenings, but an example of how propaganda can lift phenomena out of their historical context and use pieces of the phenomena to fit into a paradigm they already have solidly constructed. We truly have more to expect in the future. Source: Christopher Simpsson, "America's Recruitment Of Nazis And The Effects Of The Cold War" Note from TL: Another way to say this would be to point out that any prisoner given the choice "join us, help us, or perish" would have to be suspected of some collusion with the enemy if he turned up alive after the war! "Join and help or die?" Well, if he's not dead, he must have joined or helped: logic alone demands this conclusion. The same logic is needed to explain why the American Government locked Japanese-American citizens (including those with sons fighting against Hitler in the US Army) in concentration camps. However one must admit that this clear logic fails when considering why the American government did NOT do the same expecially with German Americans and perhaps to a lesser degree, with Italian Americans. (Germany and Japan were real threats, Italy was not). During the war they treated their allies, the Russians (Soviets) as if they were enemies by NOT respecting the social system they made and came from.
© Copyright by Philip E. Panaggio P. O. Box 85, Lehigh Acres, FL 33970-0085, USA
