Opinion Piece - Myths and Realities of the Great Patriotic War

[jonnymacbrown]

"I have to question just how well Russia would have fared if the US and UK hadn't kept the Russian population fed and their armies equipped."

This was one of the common myths aound the history that I was taught growing up in the USA. Actually the food was canned pork, the infamous Spam and it was just for the Red Army. The idea the the USA and UK fed the Russian population and equipped their armies is one of "our" patriotic myths."

"Or if Hitler had a sudden attack of sanity."

Hitler was a racist. He, and many people in that time, saw history in terms of a racial struggle for existence along Darwinian lines. The programs to exterminate Jews, Poles and Slavs, either by direct murder or through starvation, where in accordance with national plans centered about "biological" policies. The object was, as Hanna Arendt defined it, "a national state's attempt to direct and accelerate the forces of natural selction." The final result was to be the spontanious emegence of der Ubermensch, a racially pure new species that would literally have powers and abilities far beyond those of normal men, to borrow a phrase from 1950 science fiction, itself very often a product of the Nazi mythos. Hitler was insane, but his insanity was based on the some of the best and generally accepted scientific notions of his time and centered upon the creation of der Uermensch in his lifetime; and once you know this, Nazi racial policies, which always took precedence over military needs, even in the most dire situations, begin to make sense. von ege :whis: