The West refuses to give the Red Army credit for Germany's liberation from fascism - instead, it diligently stokes the Cold War with Russia. France and West Germany were liberated by the landing of the Western Allies in Normandy - but all of Eastern Europe must have shaken off the yoke of Nazism all by itself.
The Perpetrator-Victim Reversal
by Liane Kilinc
The West refuses to give the Red Army credit for Germany's liberation from fascism - instead, it diligently stokes the Cold War with Russia.
[This article published on May 11, 2021 is translated from the German on the Internet, Die Täter-Opfer-Umkehr | Rubikon.news.]
France and West Germany were liberated by the landing of the Western Allies in Normandy - but all of Eastern Europe must have apparently shaken off the yoke of Nazism all by itself. At any rate, one can get this impression by observing how difficult it is for German politicians to thank the soldiers of the Soviet Army for their act of liberation on official anniversaries. Those who belonged to the "wrong" ideology are apparently not considered worthy of such thanks. The millions of crimes committed by the Wehrmacht against the people of the Soviet Union are also gladly forgotten. In order to justify the new policy of tension against Putin's Russia, one probably shies away from a clear insight into who, historically speaking, was the perpetrator and who was the victim. A speech by the author on 08 and 09 May 2021 at an event of Friedensbrücke-Kriegsopferhilfe e.V.
We meet here, today, as every year, to thank the soldiers of the Red Army for our liberation from fascism.
We know that the Soviet Union was the engine of this liberation; that its troops crushed the Nazi military power; that its cities, its villages, its people paid the price for the peace made possible by the defeat of Hitler's fascism.
We know this, even if official Germany seeks ways to deny this simple truth.
Our gratitude comes from our hearts and is our obligation to watch over that peace.
But this year our commemoration is under a double shadow:
The first is the anniversary of the invasion of the Soviet Union, which will be eighty years ago next month. An invasion that is reluctantly remembered in Germany.
So unwillingly, in fact, that recently Bundestag President Schäuble refused to hold a memorial hour in parliament to mark the occasion. So unwillingly that the cruel war of extermination that was launched on that day against the peoples of the Soviet Union plays no role in school lessons; there is no mention of the siege of Leningrad, there is no mention of the Battle of Stalingrad, there is no mention of the battles for Sevastopol - but there is mention of the Normandy landings. June 22, 1941 and the insidious attack that began at a quarter past three in the morning should not be part of the historical commemoration.
The second shadow is our present. Not only in the form of the constant, aggressive rhetoric of the "Russian threat" that regularly trickles out of the printing presses or television speakers as "Russian disinformation," "Russian election manipulation," or as a "Russian cyber attack"; yes, even vaccines are said to be used by this imagined Russia only as weapons ...
No, the shadow has more concrete and tangible forms.
It travels eastward on railroad tracks in the shape of a tank; it follows the tanks in the uniforms of the NATO armies by the thousands; it circles around the Crimea or along the front lines of the Ukrainian civil war as a spy plane or drone; and it stretches toward the Russian border over and over again in each of the many maneuvers, Defender 2021 or one of the smaller ones. The black shadow that stood at the cradle of NATO, which was founded as an offensive pact against the Soviet Union and now thinks it can fulfill its destiny as an offensive pact against Russia. A NATO that put exactly that German at the head of its military planning who had already planned the "Operation Barbarossa", the Nazi General Adolf Heusinger.
At the time, a Democratic senator was still appalled by this appointment. He said:
"The State Department should really understand that I don't buy this argument that (...) it is necessary, in order to build up the military strength of West Germany, to elevate a Nazi general to a position of supreme command (...) where he has influence, authority and power to determine the common military policy of which the United States is a part. This Nazi general is without any doubt partly responsible for the death of thousands of American boys (...), what happened to our memory? Is it really so short?"
Yes, this NATO was not only helped to build by Nazi generals; this NATO also allies itself with those who were once allies of the Nazis. Like Bandera's supporters in Ukraine.
Before the beginning of the German invasion, the later Adenauer minister Theodor Oberländer had drilled for months those Ukrainian troops who then invaded Ukraine with the Wehrmacht as the "Battalion Nightingale" and distinguished themselves from Lviv to Babi Yar mainly with massacres of their Jewish neighbors. Today's Ukraine, so eager to join NATO, has declared Bandera a national hero and glorifies the war criminal Shushkevich, who commanded the Nachtigall battalion.
NATO holds joint maneuvers with this Ukraine every year, sends trainers to its army and supplies it with the data of those eagerly circling aircraft.
This black shadow has the shape of the Ukrainian troops that are carted to the front in the Donbass; has the shape of the howitzers and rocket launchers that take fire at the villages in the Donbass. There, in the Donbass, the war that the Nazis started and the one that NATO's friends are waging there today touch like two superimposed images. There is a place there, Saur-Mogila, where a battle took place back in World War II, for which a large monument had been erected. This monument was shot into ruins in 2014, and under the big iron boot that remains of the statue lie the graves of those who had defended the hill in the new battles.
This war is told in our country as if it was conducted by Moscow. In fact, it was the government in Ukraine, which came to power illegally, that began to fire on its own citizens.
Those whose great idols are Bandera and Shushkevich. And who are only too willing to provide the occasion for a second Operation Barbarossa. This black shadow speaks from the mouths of NATO war ministers.
I would like to quote: "Today there are about 160 Russian divisions on our border. For weeks, continuous violations of this border have been taking place, not only in our country, but also in the far north, as in Romania. Russian airmen take pleasure in blithely overlooking these borders simply to prove to us, I suppose, that they already feel they are the masters of these territories."
Sound familiar? Russian divisions threatening because they are on their own territory? Complaints about Russian airmen? We've been hearing all this for years, with steadily increasing frequency. But the quote is not from today. It comes from the speech with which Hitler announced the beginning of the German invasion on the radio on June 22, 1941. In this speech we can find many motifs that are familiar to us from the media. No, in reality it is the other way around - today's media use motifs that were already part of the propaganda at that time.
Would you like another sample?
"The Jewish-Bolshevik rulers in Moscow have steadfastly undertaken to impose their rule on our and the other European peoples." Yes, the phrase "Jewish-Bolshevik" is out of date. But it is interesting that the little sleight of hand of replacing the word "government" by "rulers" was already familiar to Herr Hitler.
Let's listen to the sentence again, without the disturbing adjectives: "The rulers in Moscow have steadfastly undertaken to impose their rule on our and the other European peoples." This is already current NATO-speak.
We get even closer with this sentence: "The task of this front is therefore no longer to protect individual countries, but to secure Europe and thus save everyone."
As in today's NATO maneuvers, the invasion of the Soviet Union involved troops from many countries. Romanians who massacred the Jewish inhabitants of Odessa, Dutch, French, Italians, Finns ...
Most people here in our country do not recognize this black shadow. Because they do not talk about this attack. They also do not know this speech of Hitler, otherwise the propaganda would fall on deaf ears. In Russia, however, people still know this speech very well, and they recognize it when they hear it on the German stations. In Russia, this black shadow has never been forgotten. The enormous number of victims has already made sure of that.
The official Germany, this FRG with occupied appendix, sees itself - and in this at least it is honest - far more in the succession of the invaders than in the succession of the liberated.
It thinks that it can reproach the Red Army for having defeated the Nazi army not by throwing flowers, but with Katyushas and T34s.
It tries to blame the invaders instead of giving thanks for the fact that 70,000 German villages and over 1,100 German cities were not razed to the ground. Nobody in Germany drove the inhabitants of a village into a church and then set it on fire. No, the first Soviet city commander of Berlin, Nikolai Bersarin, not only immediately took care of the food supply for the population, he also opened cinemas and theaters to give people courage to live.
Incidentally, after the annexation of the GDR, all Soviet honorary citizens of Berlin were removed from the list, unlike the U.S. ones; Bersarin was the only one reinstated only in 2003 ...
The official Germany dares to reproach the Soviet Union for having locked up Nazis in camps. It never bothers to point out that Hitler's army had orders to immediately murder every member of the Communist Party. Not for a moment, never, should the thought arise on which field the Red Army won its greatest victory: in the preservation of humanity in the face of the greatest barbarism.
The great monument in Treptow stands for this victory. The little girl on the arm of the Soviet soldier is not only to commemorate an episode, a single heroic deed. It stands for the triumph of humanity over destruction and death, and it stands for the new life that was granted to at least part of our country for four decades afterwards.
Today, when we remember that victory and express our gratitude for it, we must not do it by halves; we must not forget the obligation that comes with it.
We must watch over that peace.
Original: The Perpetrator-Victim Reversal