The book review below, published in the English translation of the German-based Berliner Morgenzeitung, has only recently come to our attention. The National Journal website at http://globalfire.tv/nj/e2001/history/stalinswar.htm republished this review and adorned it with its own rather outspoken editorial, titled "Putin's Surprise Attack".
Today's ZGram incorporates some of this editorial.
The book reviewed reflects, rather timidly but nonetheless notably, the shifting sands of Germany's rekindled perception of what really caused World War II - and what role Hitler was forced to play by default.
This new perception did not happen in a vacuum.
Russian President Putin, who as intelligence officer stationed in East (Central) Germany, enjoyed the insights into what Germans really feel but cannot say under the current psychologically repressive system. Putin is fluent in the German language and, many feel, is acting to kindle and perhaps even legitimize these feelings in his new and very interesting "Realpolitik" towards the German nation by careful release of selected historical documents only available in hitherto top secret Kremlin archives.
As part of his courting the Germans, Putin recently released a few of the most securely concealed documents about Stalin's war of extermination. As a result, Jewish interests found themselves in a state of uncertainty and quickly produced a book in the name of Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky "Die große Täuschung. Hitler, Stalin und das Unternehmen Barbarossa" (The Great Deception. Hitler, Stalin and Barbarossa).
In this book Gorodetsky tries franticly to keep alive the old story that Hitler "waged a war of aggression against the peace-loving Soviet Union".
The recent documents, released by President Putin, are so sound that Michael Ploetz from the "Berliner Morgenpost" dared for the first time in the history of post-war Germany to denounce the claims of a Jewish historian regarding Adolf Hitler as false: "It shows that Gorodetsky's interpretation is completely unfounded. ... Doubts regarding the author's serious scientific intentions are more than justified."
Moreover, the review of Gorodetsky's book is turned into a revisionist counter attack and concludes that, "contrary to Gorodetsky's suggestions, Hitler wasn't the genius of evil as portrayed at all times by all sides!"
These statements, coming from a German journalist in a main-stream German newspaper was until recently inconceivable and marks the beginning of a new era. Please read the sensational revisionist passages of the Berliner Morgenpost, meant to be a review of Gorodetsky's anti-Hitler book:
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The former officer of the Soviet Military Intelligence service, Viktor Suvorov alias Vladimir Resunvo, who fled to Great Britain in 1978, supported the thesis that Stalin's long term foreign policy-plan aimed to unleash a war between the major capitalist powers in order to overrun war-tired Europe. Based on circumstantial evidence Suvo-rov also proved that the Red Army concentrated its striking power in 1941 at its western borders - not for the purpose of defence but to attack. ...
Suvorov's thesis are widely supported in Russia today. ... In the nineties of last century Red Army deployment plans of 1940/41 were found in Russian archives. These plans reveal that the Chief of Staff of the Soviet Army had worked out a strategy of a war of aggression against Germany.
In 1995, V. Neveshin, a historian from the Academy of Science, was able to prove with new archive material that the Soviet cultural elite had propagandistically prepared a war of aggression against Germany since the spring of 1941. Even the most controversial question, whether Stalin revealed his plans of a war of aggression against Germany on May 5, 1941 before the graduates of the Soviet Military Academy can, since the second half of the nineties of last century, conclusively be answered as "YES".
The revision of established history is not restricted alone to Stalin's tricks immediately before the German attack on the Soviet Union. Boris Sokolov, also from the Academy of Science, suspects that Stalin already prepared an attack on allied Germany in the west in the spring of 1940. The German "Blitz" over France forced Stalin to postpone his plans.
Sokolov refers to an operational plan of the Soviet navy of February 1940 in which Germany and its allies were named as the only possible enemies. Sokolov sees in the mass execution of Polish officers, which took place early May 1940 at Katyn, another piece of circumstantial evidence that proves Stalin's war plans. The liquidation of Poland's military elite was the prerequisite for the creation of a liberation army, lead by communists.
The recruitment of Polish POW's, who were ready to fight the Germans independently from their Polish exile government, had indeed become a reality by October 1940. ...
On the 7th of September 1939 Dimitroff noted the following statement of Stalin:
"The war is waged between two groups of capitalist states. We don't mind that that they weaken themselves by smashing each other. It would not be bad if Germany could rock the richest capitalist countries (especially England). Our non-aggression pact with Germany helps that purpose in a way. The next step will be to spur the other side. Communists in the capitalist countries must resolutely oppose their governments, they must appear as staunch anti-war protesters. The unified front from yesterday was meant to ease the situation of the slaves in capitalist regimes. Under the terms of the imperialistic war it has become the question of destroying slavery."
And on the 25th of October 1939 Stalin explained the essentials of communist propaganda:
"1. Not to dash forward. Not all slogans at one time. We must lead the masses slowly up to our revolutionary slogans.
2. For the time being it is most important that we use negative slogans. Down with the imperialistic war! To link the question of peace with the destruction of the capital means, helping Chamberlain and the arsonists of war. It means to isolate ourselves from the masses!" ...
Contrary to Gorodetsky's suggestions, the new Russian scientific findings do not morally exonerate Germany but show that Hitler wasn't the genius of evil as portrayed at all times by all sides!"
Berliner Morgenpost - Sunday, March 11, 2001
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For one more in-depth study of who really caused World War II, which further refutes Gorodetzky thesis, read the newly released and beautifully published "Stalin's War of Extermination, 1941 - 1945: Planning, Realization and Documentation" by Joachim Hoffman, Thesis and Dissertations Press.
Thought for the Day:
"A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."
(Joseph Stalin)