Here comes Part V of the fascinating report of the Zundel visit to Russia in 1994, delivered in a banquet speech to an IHR audience at the 11th International Convention:
Hitler's Attack On Russia
Regarding Hitler's attack against the Soviet Union, I referred to Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?, the magnificent book by Russian historian Victor Suvorov [published in English in 1990]. Thank God for Suvorov and his work, I thought to myself. In Icebreaker, Suvorov [real name Vladimir Rezun] details how Stalin was preparing a massive military attack against Germany and the West, and how Hitler beat him to the punch by a mere two weeks in a preventive strike.
Well, was I in for a shock. In conversations and discussions, every one of my Russian partners rejected Suvorov and his thesis out of hand. I nearly fell off my chair. Here I played my trump card, and they rejected it flat. Why? Because Suvorov was a defector. Imagine that. (This senior Soviet military intelligence officer was granted political asylum in Britain.)
I responded:
This is irrational. Come on now. Let's reason this out together. You've told me that Communists were responsible for draining Slavic Russia's wealth and resources. You've said that the Gulag camp system, and so on, was their responsibility, and that all of you suffered one way or another at Soviet hands. And yet, you condemn the one Russian who had the nerve to leave his own country to bring to the world this news that Stalin was preparing in 1941 to attack, not just Germany, but all of western Europe.
At this point in the conversation an uneasy silence usually permeated the room. My Russian partners became even more silent when I played my second and third trump cards. I cited German or Austrian historians who had, before Suvorov, presented evidence in support of this same revisionist view. These include Erich Helmdach in his 1975 book, Ueberfall, Max Klüver in his 1986 book Präventiuschlag 1941, and Ernst Topitsch in Stalins Krieg (1985) [published in English in 1987 by St. Martin's Press as Stalin's War]. The Russians responded by saying, apparently quite candidly, "Gee I'd be quite interested in looking into that" (referring to these non-Russian works).
I also found that sometimes, after further discussion, they would concede, "Oh yeah, we know that there were massive [Soviet] troop movements [in 1941] toward the west." This was based on bits of information about the great military build up in 1941 they had heard from fathers, grandfathers, uncles and so forth.
So this is a great opportunity for revisionists. We can puncture the Allied (and especially Soviet) propaganda myth of insatiable, fire-spewing Nazis who attacked poor, innocent mother Russia. Even with our limited resources, we can detoxify the debate. We can remove this poison between the Germans and the Russians. In the process, we can liberate pent up energies that could change the world.
Building a New Russia
The Russians I met and spoke with closely share my own view of the kind of society we would like- a society based on pride in race, pride in nation, pride in culture. These Russians told me how fiercely they oppose the "New World Order." They want nothing to do with it. What they want is a white Russia, a Slavic federation similar to the old Tsarist empire.
If those nationalist Russians ever shake off the Communist monkey that's still clinging to their back, and clean out the Communist apparatchiks who still permeate the Russian system like termites, the one path they certainly will not take is toward American-style capitalism.
Patriotic Russians are totally against the Americanization of their country. They fiercely resent what Coca Cola and McDonald's hamburgers mean for Russia. Yet these very same Russians I spoke with wore blue jeans and Nike running shoes, carrying Adidas duffel bags, and so on. When I pointed this out, they were a little embarrassed. But I said, "Okay, look. I'm just pointing this out to you. Not everything coming from the west is bad. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Don't be like Germans - "extremists." We had a good laugh about that.
Russia today is like Weimar Republic Germany in the aftermath of the First World War - humiliated, weak and disorganized, but still a great and racially homogenous nation. The historical comparisons are frightening. If the people I met with have anything to say about it, Russia will not adopt an economic system with the dog-eat-dog-style capitalism of the United States. Russians are instead likely to choose as their model a system that worked eminently well in Europe during the 1930s, something like the National Socialist regime that was adopted by Germany at a time when she was in somewhat the same condition as Russia today.
Even though Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, and many Russian families lost sons and fathers and grandfathers to the Germans in that war, Russians instinctively understand all this. That's why so many of them now study the writings of such men as Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Hitler. In downtown Moscow I bought a Russian edition of Mein Kampf. It was a handsome copy, gold embossed with black linen cover. Any Russian can freely buy one. Just try that in Berlin, Vienna or even Toronto!
I believe that if we revisionists quickly get our act together, we can help free the Russians from some terrific misconceptions, and help them as they build a society that is compatible with their own traditions, and right for their own needs.
We have a wonderful opportunity here to heal old wounds. In the process, though, we will have to work together to overcome some of our own prejudices. Speaking for myself, I must deal with prejudices based on tales from my father about the very real wartime brutalities of the Bolsheviks and the Red Army across Europe, including mass rapes, looting, wanton cruelty, and so forth.
I'm telling you: watch Russia. We revisionists can have an influence on developments there, an impact far out of proportion to our numbers.
We can help those people in adopting a civilized form of self-government. Much more than the Chase Manhattan Bank, we revisionists can truly help free Russia.
(End of ZGram Series)