Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG: Battle of Berlin - World War II: A History From Beginning to End (World War 2 Battles); by Hourly History.

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Battle of Berlin - World War II:

A History From Beginning to End

(World War 2 Battles)

Hourly History

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This particular volume of Hourly History is obviously written by a German who is a deluded nazi.

"Stalin also had another motive for speed. The Americans, who had benefited from the flight of German scientists to the United States, were working on a bomb that was reputed to have devastating powers. The Germans had their own bomb program, and Stalin wanted it. Stalin was determined to reach Berlin before Eisenhower got there. As the Americans had already crossed the Rhine River, Stalin sought to prevent them from making it to Berlin before his Russians."

Few German scientists had been part of 'flight of German scientists', except Einstein whose offices had been vandalized and others burnt promptly by nazi thugs. Those who were part of Manhattan Project included few if any and very minor ones at that, if at all. The top scientists were from not Germany but everywhere else - UK and Italy, Scandinavia and Low Countries, and of course, Jews.

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"For more than 1,400 days, Germany and the Soviet Union were pitted against each other in a battle for survival. The German invasion of the Soviet Union included plans to exterminate the Slavic peoples just as the Nazis had dedicated themselves to destroying the Jewish people in Europe. The Slavs, the Germans believed, were subhuman and were a tainted species. They planned to get rid of over 50 million Slavs. The rules of the Geneva Convention did not apply in this instance, the Germans believed, because the German soldiers would not be prosecuted for the deaths of civilians when those deaths were motivated by ideology."

And this horror wasn't mentioned in the introduction!

Not until chapter 5!

"As the Germans advanced, they applied their policies of extermination. In forests across eastern and southern Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states, the populations of villages and towns were escorted to places of execution, ordered to dig their own shallow graves, and then shot. But machine guns and gas vans were unable to kill the conquered Slavs at a rate that was fast enough to suit the Germans.

"The German invasion of the Soviet Union would see 27 million people dead, but that would not be the end of the story. The massive Russian Motherland had an endless supply of people to replace the ones who were lost, and when the tide turned and the Russians were pursuing the Germans, those soldiers brought a burning desire for revenge with their advance on Berlin.

"No one would argue that, after the carnage of Stalingrad, the Red Army had no reason to have vengeance on its mind as it entered Berlin. The Wehrmacht had been brutal during the invasion of the Soviet Union and, even though the invasion ultimately failed to achieve Hitler’s delusional dream of a subjugated region which would allow Germany to expand its borders while sending the despised Slavs into slave labor, the Russians suffered."

The single word 'suffered' is epitome of inadequacy in describing all the horrors written of by authors above, added to that of two million civilians - entire populations of whole villages across Belarus and of much of German occupied Russia - burnt alive.

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"But the vengeance that the Russians wrought was taken against German civilians who had had no direct part in the military’s cruelty on the Eastern Front. German women paid the price for the deeds of German soldiers, as Russian soldiers raped the female population with staggering abandon. Many women serving in the Russian Army as soldiers and medical staff saw nothing wrong with the rapes. Sometimes, the Soviet women watched and laughed as they witnessed their soldiers raping the German women. But not all Soviet women excused the action. Soviet war correspondent Natalya Gesse recalled, “The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty. It was an army of rapists.”"

Did any German object to German soldiers raping women from France to Russia, or killing them? Or killing of children, of babies, of old people? Did any German women object to extermination camps?

While indicting Russian soldiers for their conduct in Germany, why not weigh it, act by act and compared in numbers, against conduct of Germans in every other country, from France to Russia?

Did German women object to getting gifts from their men that were obviously from loot from those countries?

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"The Russians had not waited to rape until reaching Berlin. In the spring of 1945, they began their attack against the women of Germany in Dresden, a city already brought to its knees by Allied bombing. The soldiers went into houses, brought out the mattresses inside along with the women, and raped the women while the German men were forced to watch before they were shot. Women who tried to save their children were shot. Sometimes the raping was accompanied by torture and even death."

As horrible as that is, one still thinks - Khatyn!

"German women had been warned by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels that Russian atrocities would be vicious, but they did not believe that rape on such a scale could take place in a city like Berlin. They would soon find out that their worst nightmares were about to become true."

And they chose to forever make propaganda against US forces, telling visitors in Germany that German people were afraid of being raped by them.

Secret word not mentioned there, race!

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"Of the estimated two million women who were raped during the final six months of World War II, approximately 100,000 were in Berlin. As the city fell into lawlessness, the German women were without recourse. One woman hid in the loft of her apartment; in the apartment below, Soviet soldiers raped her best friend. The Russian soldiers would go from building to building looking for girls. To save themselves, sometimes the older women would give up the younger to be raped. A lawyer was killed trying to protect his wife, who was Jewish, from being raped by the soldiers. He died while the soldiers raped the wife he had somehow managed to save from Nazi persecution."

Khatyn. Two million civilians burnt alive.

"Not all of the Russians behaved this way in Germany. When Soviet officers went to a maternity clinic in Dahlem, they warned the mother superior that the troops following them were likely to behave violently—and they were correct. The mother superior, Sister Kunigunde, wrote that pregnant women, mothers who had recently given birth, and nuns of all ages were raped."

Do these authors disapprove of Pakistan, famous for the organised rape of half a million women in East Bengal in 1970-1971, apart from rape of nuns in Kashmir in 1947-1948, which stopped Pakistan from getting control of Srinagar, and saved it?

Or did the disapproval throughout this book was only about Russian soldiers raping German women?

Rapes matter only when perpetrated against women of superior race, German?

Or is it only important that Russian soldiers did it? That Pakistan raping East Bengal is as irrelevant as Germany burning alive two million civilians in Belarus and Russia?

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"The truth about the swath of rape that the Russians committed has only come recently to light. German women kept their bitter shame a secret for many of the post-war years. For the Russians who committed the rapes, refuge was found in the illusion that their assault was not by force. Years later, veterans, eager to protect the sanctified image of the Red Army as liberators, claimed that the German women were willing partners in the sexual acts. The leader of a tank company said, “They all lifted their skirts for us and lay on the bed.” A Soviet officer told a British journalist that the Soviet soldiers had been so deprived of sex in Stalinist Russia’s forbidding sexual climate that they went wild in Germany, raping women as old as eighty, “much to these grandmothers’ surprise, if not downright delight.”"

Khatyn, Belarus, Russia, ... nuns in Kashmir, half a million women in East Bengal, ... why indict Russians alone?

Why not begin with nazi atrocities, described more specifically and in detail? At least compared with table giving numbers, of all acts?

Surely Russians didnt burn German civilians alive, a la nazis in Khatyn?

Begin with that.

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"Soon after, Russians became more selective as they shined their flashlights into the bunkers where women were gathered, choosing the victims. Before long, the vulnerable females found places to hide during the hours when the Russian soldiers were on the prowl in the evenings. Daughters were hidden in storage lofts, sometimes for days. Their mothers would go into the streets to get water early in the morning when the drunken soldiers were sleeping off their excesses. But when the Russians found their prey, the screams of the girls could be heard throughout the city; the windows of the houses had been blown out by the fighting and there was no escape from the noises."

Did anyone hear screams of people being burnt alive in Khatyn?

Or Auschwitz? Or Poland? Rotterdam? France? ....

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"“The German physicists knew at least so much about the manufacture and construction of atomic bombs that it was clear to them that the manufacture of bombs in Germany could not succeed during the war.”

"—Werner Heisenberg"

Fact is German physicists had been stymied, and cone to think that it was impossible. When informed by Allies of Hiroshima, they promptly assumed it was Allies propaganda just to intimidate them. They were all the more disbelieving, furthermore, due to the instilled belief in their own racial superiority - and to find that Manhattan Project had included Jewish scientists.

All later statements to the effect that Germany was on the verge of breakthrough are simply lies.

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"Just 67 days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, a law was passed which forced non-Aryan civil servants out of their jobs. A number of these non-Aryans were Jewish scientists who realized that with the spread of Nazism, their lives were in peril. By 1944, more than 133,000 German Jews had fled to the United States, among them Albert Einstein. The exodus of scientists from Germany would empower the United States to develop the most deadly weapon the world had ever known, a weapon which the Germans lacked.

"German scientists realized that this exodus of brilliance would ultimately cripple Germany’s desire for superiority in the scientific realm. Max Planck, the father of science’s quantum theory, even met with Adolf Hitler in 1933 to put forth his concerns that the loss of Jewish scientists would threaten the nation. But Hitler was unwilling to listen to Planck; eradicating the world of Jews was part of his master plan, and he didn’t realize that the Jewish scientists who left Germany would find other homes where their brilliance would be welcomed."

So later when Germans spoke of "German scientists helping US", they meant Jews, who would have been in murdered in extermination camps, had they not left?

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"“It’s cold in Berlin, but colder in Siberia.”

"—West Berlin saying during the Berlin Blockade"

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"The Cold War pitted the Soviet Union and the United States against one another as the world feared another war from the world’s two superpowers, each one equipped with a nuclear arsenal. This went on for several decades until the economic weakness of the Soviet Union began to unravel its might. As the Soviet Union loosened its grip, the people of East and West Germany perceived an opportunity. The world watched in awe on November 9, 1989, as people on both sides of the Berlin Wall brought hammers and chisels to dismantle the wall. The East German authorities made no effort to stop them as people who had been separated for decades met again, hugging, kissing, and celebrating.

"On October 3, 1990, Germany was a single nation again as West and East Germany reunified. Perhaps that date is truly the end of the Battle of Berlin, as the country and its capital were, once again, one nation and one city."

Any thoughts that this came at expense of women of Afghanistan, sacrificed to terrorism by taliban, as cheap fodder towards goal of dismantling a USSR?

In addition, China was coddled beyond recognition, into becoming a power that now threatens US successfully, over an island nation - while Tibet is forgotten by almost every power, except humans.

And Gods.

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"On May 2, 1945, the guns in Berlin ceased firing. One of the fiercest battles in all of human history had concluded. Berlin, once the proud capital of Hitler’s Germany, was where the Führer had convinced the German people that the Third Reich would last a thousand years. But now it was 1945, not 1939, and the Red Army was no longer defending the Eastern Front against the invading Wehrmacht. They were outside Berlin, intent on vengeance and victory after years of war that had seen Europe humbled into a landscape of bombed-out ruins."

In all fairness, when anyone mentions that "intent on vengeance and victory after years of war" in context of WWII eastern theatre and Red Army, it should be precedent by an account of just what was being avenged.

It wasn't only several years of devastation of their homelands that the Red Army soldiers were intent on revenge for, but the two million people massacred across Belarus and Russia, whole villages set on fire and every resident burnt alive - and anyone escaping shot dead, by the invading German forces - at orders from top, as per plans set in motion months before the Germanarmy was given final orders to invade Poland.

It was all part of creating space for Germany for more 'lebensraum', so Germans vould be brought over to settle the lands East of Germany and breed in high numbers, a policy set in motion by nazi government and followed through occupation of Poland. The lands were to be for Germans, and local populations for use as slave labour until successfully starved to death, as per plans.

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"From September 1, 1939 until September 2, 1945, an average of 27,000 people were killed daily as the Allied and Axis powers battled one another in a global war that would be the most destructive war in history. ... "

Why this attempt to veil truth of the matter, seemingly equating responsibility and blame equally to both sides? Germany had not only started WWII, but had planned it all, well ahead of German forces being ordered to march into Poland - which, including almost the exact date, had been not only planned ahead but the German military advised thereof in detail, by the German 'leader', in a high level conference with his generals that he had held with them for the purpose, several months ahead of the actual marching into Poland.

" ... World War II, which is regarded by some as merely a continuation after a 21-year intermission of World War I, spawned a ravenous hunger for death and destruction that began when Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, sought to redeem the humiliating defeat of World War I by building the German nation into a military superpower. ... "

Again, this is the German version, seeking to wipe out the responsibility for beginning both of the world wars. The said humiliation was of bring defeated in WWI, a war begun by Germany in the first place, wherein German forces had wreaked havoc in France, destroying not only homes and farms but forests, causing loss to France of not billions of dollars worth and of ecological nature, but of several millions of young men, a whole generation of men lost to war in France and UK. The women of a whole generation were left with no one to marry, and raising next generation was questionable at best.

Germany, asked to compensate the financial value of the destruction thry had wreaked, cried foul, claimed inability, and welcomed after signing the treaty, but didn't pay, siting starvation of babies in Germany.

But Germany did have money, not only to arm nazis Doon after, with churches and monasteries supplying them arms and ammunition, but much more.

Anyone willing to play havoc with economy of France immediately after end of WWI were supplied with gold marks in plenty by agents of Germany sent to France explicitly for the purpose, all the while crying to the world about babies starving in Germany.

" ... At first, the Germans ran roughshod over the continent of Europe, unchallenged by the military forces of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries, until the swastika flew over the occupied nations. But Great Britain still stood, undefeated and alone. Hitler intended to invade the British Isles, but then he decided that it was time to ignore the non-aggression pact that foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov had signed. On June 22, 1941, he invaded the Soviet Union."

That, too, had been planned, and well ahead so, of September 1939.

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"The Red Army and the Soviet people were tested severely for a time, but in the end, it was the Germans who were forced to retreat as the Red Army swept through Czechoslovakia and Austria."

"The Red Army and the Soviet people were tested severely for a time"???? The assault for no reason against a poorer nation, the invasion, the burning of whole villages with two million people thus burnt alive and anyone escaping shot dead by German forces, apart from years of starvation caused by the war, is all merely summed "severely for a time"?

As obvious a bias as it gets, here.

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"The Germans received their answer. To punish the German citizens for the brutality of the scorched-earth war policy fought by the Wehrmacht, the Red Army embarked on a punishing invasion. It’s common to refer to the atrocities committed by an occupying army as the rape of a nation; in the case of the Red Army, the rape of Berlin was more than verbal hyperbole. Hundreds of thousands of German women were raped during the Allied occupation. The Soviets wanted vengeance for their suffering at the hands of the German soldiers in what the Russians called the Great Patriotic War when they defended the Soviet Union against invasion."

Notice the refraining from mention of specifics of the

"vengeance for their suffering at the hands of the German soldiers", avoiding mentioning how villages had been completely burnt with residents killed this way by millions, women raped by millions, babies and children killed deliberately by German forces which included pilots of military planes stooping low in flight over refugees fleeing invasion for aiming better to shoot at mothers and children and babies fleeing them!

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"Even after Germany surrendered on May 2, 1945, the citizens lived in terror. Soldiers beat up the elderly, raped women in front of their parents or children, destroyed furniture and belongings. Because the Russians preferred women who appeared to be plump and healthy, the wives of the Nazi Party members, no longer the elite of society, were desirable as rape victims because they had been better fed during the war while the average Berlin citizen endured deprivation."

Whereas German forces had raped women of East European lands regardless of their state of starvation, subsequently killing them and piling the dead bodies in trucks for transport to mass graves, as witnessed by survivors and recorded in memoirs published in later decades of the millennium.

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"The war was so terrible that avoiding a repeat became a mission not only for Germany but for Europe as well. Even though the Cold War, which picked up where World War II left off, was a bitter proxy battle between the superpowers who emerged on opposite ideological sides after 1945, leaving Berlin a divided city and Germany a divided country, the continent, for the first time in European history, was at peace.

"In the end, the Battle of Berlin, although it was the close of the European phase of World War II, proved to be the beginning of what would become modern Europe. Berlin itself would be divided into Allied zones that would eventually see the eastern part of the city confined behind a wall and the eastern section of the country turned into a Soviet satellite. There would be a new Europe and, eventually, in 1990, a new Germany. German militarism would over time give way to German democracy; the warring nations of Europe would evolve into the European Union.

"But the price of peace was extravagantly high."

Paid for the most part by every other nation - Russia, France, Jews of Europe, even India where millions were starved to death due to England stealing harvest and simply letting Indians die - except Germany, with millions of deaths for fault of not theirs but of German leader's plan to establish Germany and its people as the race enslaving all other lands and people.

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"“The biggest mistake made by German commanders was to have underestimated ‘Ivan,’ the ordinary Red Army soldier. They quickly found that surrounded or outnumbered Soviet soldiers went on fighting when their counterparts from western armies would have surrendered.”

"—Antony Beevor"

What alternatives did they have!

Tolstoy has said something regarding Russian bear fighting in unexpected ways, leaving Napoleon and his French army flummoxed.

Funnily enough, Hitler tried to copy Russians when Germany was defeated, ordering Germany to be destroyed - all industries, farms, and more - but his orders were countered successfully at local levels by Speer and others, who convinced the small nazi apparatchik to refraining from obeying this order.

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"The first phase of World War II, the so-called Phoney War, lasted from September 1, 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, until April 1940, when Germany invaded the Scandinavian countries Denmark and Norway. Belgium, the Netherlands, and France soon followed, leaving Great Britain to face the onslaught of the Nazi aerial attack."

No comments or epithets regarding sufferings of those millions?

"The Soviet Union and Germany had signed a pact so that their two nations would not make war upon each other for the next ten years. But wily Joseph Stalin knew that it was only a matter of time before Adolf Hitler violated the terms of the non-aggression pact which Germany and the Soviet Union had signed in August 1939. Nonetheless, Stalin was startled when he received word that German troops were massing on the Soviet Union’s eastern border; Stalin had doubted that Hitler would open a second front to the global war while he was still fighting the British, who had not surrendered despite the daily bombings."

Surprised or in disbelief, yes; but 'startled '?

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"But the Russians were not without their own unique defenses. Stalin had plenty of reserve troops to replace those killed in the fighting, and he had no qualms about the carnage inflicted on the Russian soldiers and civilians. Despite the difficulty of life in the Soviet Union under the despotic Stalin, the Russian people were fiercely patriotic and protective of their homeland. They would not surrender.

"Twenty miles away from the Kremlin in Moscow, the German offensive could not advance any further. The Soviet armaments industry was transported to the east, away from the fighting, so that it could continue to provide weapons. Ultimately, however, the Russian secret weapon was the weather. When winter arrived early in 1941, the German soldiers, who did not have winter coats because of Hitler’s confidence that Germany would be victorious before the weather changed, were vulnerable against the Soviet counteroffensive that got underway in December.

"Mere days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into the war, the German advance was brought to a halt. The Germans had expected to vanquish the Russians; their contempt of the Slavs had assured them that the Soviet Union would fall to German superiority with ease. But after December 5, the Germans were put in the unfamiliar position of having to fight a defensive war. The Russians, however disadvantaged they may have been in terms of weapons and military might, were guarding their country against a hated invader. Suffering was not new to them."

'Suffering' is redefined for every country, every culture.

For West Germans, East Germans 'suffer' because they cannot have bananas. Which is ridiculous. Germans - and confederate southerners - suffer at the very notion that those they consider 'inferior', as per their own racist doctrines, can be educated and intelligent.

Russians on the other hand live in a land of harsh weather and get going when German panzer tanks, deep in mud, couldn't move - fuel being frozen.

School children of tender years are taken from school to bathe in the frozen river in middle of the winter in Moscow - and, presumably, throughout the Russian lands. That's considered vigorous pleasure.

Germans, observing Indians bathe every morning, go on to boast explicitly - and unasked - of not only not bathing that often, but also of not changing clothes, including underclothes, not more often than once a month, at most, because "Germany is not dirty".

Which reminds one of description of Chinese bathing annually - and remarking that it's a bad habit that one shouldn't get used to - by Han Suyin.

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"The Germans managed to hold their ground as they waited for summer and in May 1942, they launched the next offensive, making their way to Stalingrad. The German artillery strikes were deadly. By the time summer came, Friedrich Paulus’ Sixth Army was deep into Soviet territory, mighty in victory. But they had not reckoned on the Russian instinct for survival. Even as the Red Army retreated, they poured gasoline on the grain and poisoned the wells, leaving the Germans without sources of water and vulnerable to typhus and dysentery.

"As the Germans advanced during the summer, dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Stalingrad, as many as 40,000 people were killed in the first week of the bombardment. A Soviet veteran of the war recalled that he was standing in a bread line when he heard a humming sound in the sky. He looked up to see an armada of planes. The Germans made their way into the city. The Russians had fought furiously, withdrawing to the east bank of the Volga River, determined to keep the Wehrmacht from crossing. The commander of the army in Stalingrad had his soldiers dig trenches a mere 30 yards (27 meters) from German positions in order to defend the city."

So well depicted in "Enemy At The Gates"!

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"During the five months of bombing and fighting that took place from house-to-house, more than one million soldiers died. The Germans had begun the battle with superior force, but the Soviet resistance wore Germany down. Using a pincer movement, the Soviets were able to encircle the German Sixth Army west of Stalingrad so that General Friedrich Paulus had no choice but to admit defeat on February 2, 1943."

Repeatedly, the German military superiors had requested permission to withdraw, retreat and regroup; the request had been rejected outright, by Hitler, who'd ordered them to fight to the last man. When they surrendered, they were considered to have not only been disgraceful but have disgraced Germany.

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"Five months later, the Germans’ attempt to restore their momentum at Kursk failed after two months of fighting, by which time the Red Army had gained the momentum. To be sure, the Germans fought hard and well, and the Nazis still ruled over Europe. But their days were numbered. On June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy, establishing a beachhead in western Europe that would eventually bring them to Germany. From the east, the Russians were advancing with a series of counteroffensives that pushed the Germans back. During the winter of 1944, the Russians forced the Germans across Poland. By January 1945, the Russians were in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

"The Russians, British, French, and Americans were allies, but the Russians did not trust the other countries to let the Soviets have their share of the territory they occupied. That was why Stalin pushed his armies forward swiftly so that they would advance west as far and as fast as they possibly could with the ultimate goal to capture the German capital of Berlin. Stalin knew that if the Russians did not have Berlin, they could not claim a Soviet zone of territory after the war."

"That was why"???

Do armies take it easy, normally, with saunas and general frolicks, if they "trust the other countries" who are Allies? Who were Germans unable to trust when they did the blitzkrieg bit, devastating West Europe?

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This particular volume of Hourly History is obviously written by a German who is a deluded nazi.

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"The Russians viewed themselves as the liberators of Europe who were ridding the continent of fascism. As Soviet General Georgy Zhukov put it, “The greatness of heroic victory over Fascist Germany is in the fact that the Soviet Union did not defend the socialist state alone, but that it selflessly fought to defend the internationalist proletarian goal—defeat the bulk of the Nazi armed forces and deliver the peoples of Europe from occupation.”"

Which is true.

Imagine the horror - if Russians had stopped at border of Russia, allowing nazi control of East European countries!

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"World War II would be known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War. To the Russian people, their soldiers were heroes. But some of the soldiers who reached Berlin did not have heroism on their minds. They wanted revenge. It did not matter that, by this time, Berlin was defended not by its battle-hardened Wehrmacht, but by old men and members of the Hitler Youth or that the women of Berlin were defenseless. Berlin would pay in the same brutal currency that the citizens of Stalingrad had paid."

Whoever wrote this imagines that nazis in particular and German gorges in general had spared the women and children of other countries, whether German forces invaded, occupied, or merely bombed.

That thinking is delusional, bordering on clinically certifiable, since history not only says otherwise but is written also by survivors of the holocaust.

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"“We all want to get home. We want to get this thing over with. But the quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards. The quicker they’re whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin.”

"—General George S. Patton"

He was held back, often enough to let Montgomery be the Prima Donna, but about getting to Berlin, to allow Russians get there first.

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"So confident had Hitler been of the supremacy of his military that he had not bothered to devise a plan for the defense of Berlin. By the time he finally realized that the Russians were on their way, the city was forced to improvise a way to defend itself. The result would be confusion which, exacerbated by the shortage of resources both in terms of material needs and human capacity, would prove to be a disaster for the citizens of Berlin."

This was no more true of Berlin than of Germany, and as for his being there, plans for his shifting to Eagle's Nest, his headquarters at Berchtesgaden in mountains in Bavarian Alps, were on until the last. He delayed it too much.

As for other citizens of Berlin or of Germany, who said he cared? He in fact wanted to have Stalingrad fought to the last German and invading Allies see only ashes throughout Germany. He'd ordered so, specifically.

"Finally recognizing the threat that the swift Russian advance indicated, Adolf Hitler had replaced Heinrich Himmler with General Gotthard Heinrici as commander-in-chief of Army Group Vistula. When Hitler met with his leaders, they promised troops to help with the defense of the Oder river: Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Göring had 100,000 Luftwaffe men; Admiral Karl Dönitz could provide 12,000 sailors.

"Heinrici didn’t see any advantage in an influx of inexperienced troops and realized that they would not only be useless for his needs, but they would be slaughtered. Göring, who like Hitler believed in the superiority of the Aryan race, said that the men of the Luftwaffe were übermenschen or superhuman, and Hitler had no doubt that these reserves would arrive in time as needed. Heinrici kept his private doubts to himself. It was not wise to dispute the opinions of the Führer. Heinrici realized that if the Oder front collapsed, as he suspected was inevitable, the war would end soon after. His goal was to preserve the lives of as many German soldiers as he possibly could by keeping them safe from the Russians and shifting them to where the Western Allies were prevalent. His concern was also for the people and property of Berlin."

Henrico cared more, but that was true of anyone who'd not ordered schoolboys and old men into conscripted army at the end. Hitler had ordered them.

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"After the East Prussian city of Königsberg finally surrendered to the Russians on April 9, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky’s 2nd Belorussian Front was able to move to the east bank of the Oder river. Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front meanwhile moved into position in front of the so-called “Gates of Berlin”—the Seelow Heights, about 56 miles (90 km) east of Berlin.

"Heinrici had already guessed where the Red Army was headed. He was an expert tactician who postulated that the main Soviet thrust would be over the Oder river, east of Berlin. As the Red Army advanced and the German Army retreated, the Oder and the Neisse, its tributary, had become the front line between the Russian and German forces. In response, Heinrici sent engineers to fortify the Seelow Heights overlooking the Oder river. The river’s floodplain was already saturated, and under Heinrici’s direction, the water from an upstream reservoir was released, turning the floodplain into a swamp.

"Behind the plain, three defensive lines consisting of anti-tank ditches and emplacements and extensive bunkers and trenches were constructed that extended toward the outskirts of Berlin. The last line, the Wotan line, was less than 15 miles behind the front defense. Although the Red Army was able to break through the German lines, defenses, the effort allowed Hitler more time to organize the final defense of Berlin."

Valiant defense by gallant Henrici, did he know it'd be of no use, except perhaps enfuriating Russians more, if that were possible?

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"In all, the Soviet front positioned more than 2.5 million men, 95,000 motor vehicles, 41,000 artillery pieces and mortars, 6,000 tanks, 7,500 aircraft, and 3,000 Katyusha rocket launchers mounted on trucks. In response to the massive Soviet build-up, Germany could only assemble 750,000 troops. The troops, warned by Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda that the Soviets would fight without mercy, were determined to withstand the attacks they knew were coming. They were aware that the Red Army was intent on avenging the deaths of 23 million soldiers and civilians who had died following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazis capitalized on this fear, making sure their citizens knew what the Russians would do to them if they captured Berlin."

That 'if' wasn't in question, but what they'd do to the top nazis, was.

Why did they never think of surrendering their own selves, to save Germany?

"Hitler ordered the LVI Panzer Corps, which had been fighting at the Gates of Berlin, to enter Berlin, by which time the Red Army had already managed to penetrate at several places. By April 23, Berlin was sufficiently alarmed by its peril and began to increase its resistance to the invading forces. The depleted German divisions were supported by boys from the Hitler Youth, civilian soldiers from the Volkssturm, and the police force."

These authors make it seem a volunteer coros, which it wasn't. They had not merely been trained for years, but ordered conscripted at the end.

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"However, it soon became apparent that defeat was imminent. First Hitler and then Goebbels forbade any thoughts of surrender, although Goebbels reportedly tried to offer to surrender to the Russians as long as they would be willing to recognize a new German government in which he would play a leading role. If the offer was made, it was not accepted and Goebbels realized, as Hitler already had, that death would be the only way to avoid Russian vengeance."

Goebbels family did commit suicide, but according to recent research, shown on television infochannels (Discovery?), Hitler escaped across South Atlantic via Canaries, in a submarine, living out his life in a fortified bunker in remote forest, but appearingonce in a while amongst select people of his own.

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"“The Soviet soldier deserves that grateful humanity should erect him a monument to stand in the ages to come. Brilliant examples were set by officers of all ranks—from junior lieutenants to marshals—ardent patriots of their country, experienced and fearless organizers of the multi-million strong armed forces in military actions.”

"—Marshal Georgy Zhukov"

Indeed! What if they'd been like Ukrainians, who were, according to every holocaust survivor memoir which, if it mentions them, says they were worse than nazis, whom they'd accepted as their bosses?

Same memoirs often credit Russian forces for saving their lives!

................................................................................................

"The Russians had suffered greatly at Stalingrad and the memory of that suffering traveled with them. As they approached Berlin, Hitler’s city, the center of the Nazi regime, the Red Army was intent on making the Germans pay for what they had done to Russia."

Were they supposed to show the other cheek? What, another 23 million Russian citizens offered to Germans from a country not exactly overpopulated?

"The citizens of Berlin learned from the radio that the Führer would be coming out of his bunker to speak to the teenage boys who would be accepted into the SS to fight for Berlin. The message said that the youths had volunteered, but they had not been given a choice. If the SS found the boys hiding, they were hanged as traitors; when the SS ran out of trees for the hangings, they used lamp posts.

"But Hitler’s 56th birthday on April 20 would still be recognized. In honor of the occasion, the residents of Berlin stood in long lines to receive an extra ration allowance of sugar, coffee, jam, and meat. Hitler himself emerged from his Führerbunker to award young soldiers from the Hitler Youth with Iron Crosses, the youngest recipient being only 12 years old."

Was that supposed to be Walpurgisnacht, or something?

................................................................................................

"For the Germans, their hope was that the Western Allies would reach them before the Russians did, but those hopes were doomed. On April 21, 1945, the Russians entered the outskirts of Berlin, the prelude to what would become a vicious battle in the streets of the city. Hitler appointed General Helmuth Weidling to command the defense of Berlin on April 23; one day later, the Russian Army had completely encircled the city. All the Germans could do at this point was try to delay the fall of the city.

"Coming to Berlin from the north, east, and southeast, the Russian advance was far more influential than the warning posted by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who said that any German who raised the white flag in surrender or showed cowardice or attempted sabotage would be regarded as an outlaw. Berlin, he said, would be defended to the end."

End of others' lives, he meant?

................................................................................................

"The street-by-street fighting brought the Russians nearer and nearer to the center of the city. The frightened people of Berlin could hear the sounds of the battle as shells exploded in their gardens and their windows were shattered by gunfire. Many hid in their cellars, watching from the windows. A 29-year-old German woman, Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel, was hiding with her young daughter and neighbors in their apartment building, watching as the terror of the Red Army, its tanks and troops, passed by. She was particularly horrified by the sight of the armed female soldiers and their screaming. Many of the troops were wearing rags on their feet; others who were luckier had stolen boots from SS officers. Once in control of the city, the troops went from house to house to arrest anyone wearing a uniform. Firefighters and railway workers were included in this punishment."

Did this author expect that soldiers from another nation, another country, and homes a few thousand miles away, would know the difference?

Or wait to be educated, or lied to, before beginning to punish Germany for nazi atrocities perpetrated against civilians in Russia and generally everyone not German?

................................................................................................

"Later on May 2, Russian loudspeakers announced the surrender and copies were distributed throughout the city. Berlin had fallen. After the announcement that Berlin had surrendered to the Red Army, the city fell silent. Berlin, all 300 square miles of it, was entirely under Soviet control.

"As the Red Army penetrated further and further into the city, patrolling the area that they now occupied, they realized how much damage had been done. Transportation routes in and out of the city were no longer operable. More than a million people were homeless. The sewers, which had been bombed, brought contamination into Berlin’s water supply. People were starving. Soviet authorities endeavored to restore essential services, assigning Berlin residents to take responsibility for the cleaning of the city. They set up soup kitchens to provide food for the German civilians and soldiers in accordance with orders issued by Colonel-General Nikolai Berzarin. However, even a month after the city formally surrendered, the people of Berlin would be surviving on rations of only 1,240 calories a day.

"The city knew that they would pay dearly for peace."

................................................................................................

"“Everyone has lied to me, everyone has deceived me, no one has told me the truth. The armed forces have lied to me and now the SS have left me in the lurch. The German people has not fought heroically, it deserves to perish. It is not I who have lost the war, but the German people.”

"—Adolf Hitler"

Speak of selfish!

Someone who never had deserved to be a leader.

................................................................................................

"Joseph Goebbels, who had served as the propaganda minister for the Nazis, took over as the German leader after Hitler’s death, but the situation was by then too chaotic, and any attempts Goebbels made to offer leadership were disregarded. Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, but not before Mrs. Goebbels poisoned their six children so that they, too, would perish rather than face the downfall of Germany and the retribution of the Russians. The nurse, Erna Flegel, stated that the remaining Nazi leaders committed suicide with their pistols or attempted to flee. Flegel, who had stayed in the bunker instead of fleeing so that she could attend to those who were wounded, realized that the existence of Hitler’s Third Reich was reduced to minutes.

"On May 1, the German people heard the music from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. The broadcast informed the people that Adolf Hitler had “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany.”"

Another whopper from the liar!

................................................................................................

And this horror wasn't mentioned in the introduction!

Not until chapter 5!

................................................................................................

Did any German object to German soldiers raping women from France to Russia, or killing them? Or killing of children, of babies, of old people? Did any German women object to extermination camps?

While indicting Russian soldiers for their conduct in Germany, why not weigh it, act by act and compared in numbers, against conduct of Germans in every other country, from France to Russia?

Did German women object to getting gifts from their men that were obviously from loot from those countries?

................................................................................................

As horrible as that is, one still thinks - Khatyn!

And they chose to forever make propaganda against US forces, telling visitors in Germany that German people were afraid of being raped by them.

Secret word not mentioned there, race!

................................................................................................

Khatyn. Two million civilians burnt alive.

Or did the disapproval throughout this book was only about Russian soldiers raping German women?

Rapes matter only when perpetrated against women of superior race, German?

Or is it only important that Russian soldiers did it? That Pakistan raping East Bengal is as irrelevant as Germany burning alive two million civilians in Belarus and Russia?

................................................................................................

Khatyn, Belarus, Russia, ... nuns in Kashmir, half a million women in East Bengal, ... why indict Russians alone?

Why not begin with nazi atrocities, described more specifically and in detail? At least compared with table giving numbers, of all acts?

Surely Russians didnt burn German civilians alive, a la nazis in Khatyn? Begin with that.

................................................................................................

Did anyone hear screams of people being burnt alive in Khatyn?

Or Auschwitz? Or Poland? Rotterdam? France? ....

................................................................................................

"Berlin hospital records for the women who sought medical treatment show a range of 95,000 to 130,000 victims of rape, with an estimated 10,000 dying, generally from suicide. But of the 1.4 million victims who were estimated to have suffered rape in East Prussia, Silesia, and Pomerania, the death rate is believed to have been much higher. In all, an estimated two million German women were raped during the Allied occupation, of these, at least 100,000 women were reportedly victimized by Western Allied soldiers—Americans, British, and French.

"Women who wanted to be safe opted to choose a soldier so that they would be exclusively his rather than common property. Berlin was in dire straits and women, choosing pragmatism over death, sometimes preferred to have a single protector rather than daily raping.

"But after the battle was over, starvation was the next obstacle and that was when women, seeking food or cigarettes, which served as a second currency, would offer themselves to soldiers in exchange for these things. In some cases, soldiers had “occupation wives” among the German women. When it was time to go back to Russia, some soldiers deserted from the army rather than leave their German women behind.

................................................................................................

"Much later, the Russian government passed a law threatening fines and as many as five years in prison for anyone who cast aspersions on the role that Soviet Union played in the Second World War. Records remained classified by the Russian military tribunals. When a Moscow student at the University of Humanities went to Berlin to research the subject, she found that publishing her material would not be easy. Vera Dubina realized that most Russians would rather bask in the glory of the Great Patriotic War rather than face the unpleasant truths uncovered by research.

"Vladimir Gelfand was a Russian soldier who kept a diary which recorded the unsavory episodes of his nation’s actions in the war. Years later, when his son was interviewed on Russian radio, he detailed some of the events that his father had written of. The reaction was hostile; some accused his father’s diary of being a fake. Today, Gelfand has hopes that his father’s diary, which has been translated into Swedish and German, will be published in Russia. The truth, Gelfand believes, should not and cannot be hidden from the Russian people. Just as the German people had to face what they had done during World War II, so, he asserts, should the Russians acknowledge what their soldiers did to the women of Berlin."

Russian people are far more likely to face it than Germany has so far, despite being forced to include nazi history in school curriculum.

Teachers manage to postpone teaching that chapter until it's examination time, and tell students to read it.

................................................................................................

"—Werner Heisenberg"

All later statements to the effect that Germany was on the verge of breakthrough are simply lies.

................................................................................................

So later when Germans spoke of "German scientists helping US", they meant Jews, who would have been in murdered in extermination camps, had they not left?

................................................................................................

"In 1943, British intelligence found out that the Nazis had a plant in Norway, which was under German occupation, where they were making heavy water (deuterium oxide), one of the ingredients for a nuclear bomb. The British knew that victory in the war would be jeopardized if the Germans were able to refine such a weapon and they began planning to sabotage the project. But the means would not be easy. The plant was in a valley where bombing would be a challenge. An assault by air failed. The plant was under heavy guard, and the Germans were confident that it could only be reached by a narrow suspension bridge which was protected by two sets of guards all day and night. The plant was also surrounded by minefields.

"A team of Norwegians, under the leadership of 23-year-old Joachim Ronneberg, was assembled. The Norwegians decided that in order to reach the plant they would have to climb the side of a cliff. The Germans had not considered this possibility because of the unlikelihood of anyone attempted a climb up a 500-foot cliff in the depths of night, in the middle of winter. If the Norwegians failed in their mission, their only recourse would be to swallow the cyanide pills that they brought with them."

"Where Eagles Dare"?

"But the Norwegians pulled it off, planting explosives, damaging the plant, and making their escape—some by skiing to neutral Sweden, 250 miles (400 km) away, others by staying in Norway to continue their resistance work. In his book, The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission To Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb , author Neal Bascomb revealed that Ronneberg had no idea what he and his team had accomplished until two years later when he learned of the atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan.

................................................................................................

"The Soviets were not so ill-informed. They knew that, in 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann had conducted experiments on fission in Berlin and were in the process of determining what conditions would make it possible to create a nuclear chain reaction. The Soviets had to abandon their own work on such a bomb after the German invasion in 1941, as Russian scientists and engineers were assigned to projects directly related to the war effort, like radar. But even with the pressing needs of the war, some of the country’s physicists continued to explore ways in which nuclear energy could be used against Germany.

"When the Soviet government learned that not only Germany but also the United States were both engaged in attempts to develop an atomic bomb, they feared what would happen if they were left behind. Although the United States and the Soviet Union were allies against Germany, they were each aware that when World War II ended, there would be a fight for supremacy. The nation that possessed a weapon as devastating as an atomic bomb would be feared by all other nations. In February 1943, the Soviets began their own nuclear program in earnest; as an indication that this was not merely a scientific effort but also a political one, feared Soviet security chief Lavrentiy Beria was also involved in the program.

................................................................................................

"It was actually Beria who had suggested to Stalin in March 1945 that the Soviets ought to send special teams to Germany to search for atomic technology. In addition to the technology, the Soviets also drew up plans to bring back German scientists who were working on atomic bomb research.

"The main Soviet search team arrived in Berlin on May 3, 1945, the day after the city fell. The Soviets were eager to investigate Berlin and its suburbs to find out what secrets might be hidden there. They wanted to search the University of Berlin, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, and the Technische Hochschule Berlin. However, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics had been moved in 1943 to what would become part of the French sector to keep it safe from Allied bombing. This would prove to be useful for the Americans, who were able to take a number of German scientists working on nuclear research into custody. The Americans knew that, in addition to the Soviet urgency to reach Berlin to find the German secrets on the bomb, they also needed uranium. The director of the American Manhattan Project knew of this need and was able to have 1,200 tons of uranium ore removed from a salt mine which was destined to become part of the Soviet sector of control. The uranium ore in this location was actually the Germans’ main supply.

................................................................................................

"Why the Germans failed in the creation of the devasting bomb when they had been the ones to pioneer the research was a mystery. Theories said that they were too absorbed in the war effort to focus on anything else; others believed that they lacked the heavy water and the uranium that they needed in order to conduct the necessary experiments.

"But according to Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production, the project to develop a nuclear bomb was abandoned in the fall of 1942 because Germany would have been forced to focus all of its production resources on the project and still would not have had a bomb until 1947. Even so, the Germans were an estimated two years ahead of the work that the French, British, and Americans were doing to build the terrible weapon."

No, German scientists had gone wrong, and concluded that it wasn't possible.

"With Germany on its knees and Berlin surrendered, the war in Europe was effectively over. But a new war was dawning, a war in which former allies would become bitter enemies. They would not fight directly on battlefields, although they would have proxy wars with their adherents. The Cold War would be a very different kind of war. Each side was determined to win. Neither side could afford to be without the atomic bomb.

"The Soviets did not intend to remain behind for long. Later, in 1946, the Soviet team rounded up the German scientists and technicians in the eastern zone, taking them and their families to the Soviet Union to work on the Russian armaments."

They got it through agents who were ideologically committed, whether to equality or to peace.

................................................................................................

"“It’s cold in Berlin, but colder in Siberia.”

"—West Berlin saying during the Berlin Blockade"

................................................................................................

"Victory in Europe or V-E Day was celebrated on May 8, 1945—the date when the Allies accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender and the war in Europe officially ended.

"At this point, the country of Germany was divided into four zones, as was the capital of Berlin. The Allies had reached this decision when they met in Yalta and Potsdam as the war was ending. The Soviet Union would have the eastern part of Germany; the remaining Allies would divide up the western part. The Russians had a longstanding distrust of Germany and were determined to keep their section of the country powerless so that it could never again attack the Soviet Union. They plundered their section of Berlin and Germany for Russian use. The Soviet Union had a great deal of rebuilding to do, and Stalin had no qualms about using the conquered German territory to benefit his own country at the expense of Germany’s future."

Did German people have any qualms, looting and butchering people who were guilty only of not being German? None that are known of. Not between 1914-1945, at any rate.

Even as late as a decade or two ago, German teachers appointed for foreign visitors claimed virtue for Germany by asserting they never had had any colonies.

Which was an outright lie.

................................................................................................

"Berlin was located in the eastern or Soviet section, 110 miles inside the East German border, but it, too, would be divided. Beginning in June 1945, East Berlin was under Soviet control and the Allies had West Berlin. However, because West Berlin was located in the Soviet zone, the food and fuel that the people needed had to be brought in by train. The roads and trains into Berlin were controlled by the Soviet Union.

"Stalin disapproved of the plan to create an independent West Germany out of the combined zones, with its own currency. He was uneasy at the division of the city which enabled the people of East Berlin to witness how West Berlin was recovering from the war while they continued to suffer. The only solution that Stalin could envision was to get the Allies out of Berlin so that the Soviet Union had control over the entire city. Because the Allies, when drawing up what was known as the “London Program” for a West German nation consisting of the zones formerly occupied by Great Britain, France, and the United States, neglected to include free access to their part of Berlin, Stalin was able to deny access to Berlin. By June 1948, traffic by rail, train, and canal into Berlin was blocked.

"No-one wanted another war, and no-one wanted to run the risk of a war in which nuclear weapons would be employed again. But the Soviet action could not be ignored. President Harry Truman’s response was the Berlin Airlift. Twenty-four hours a day, cargo planes bearing food, gasoline, and coal delivered the needed goods to the people of West Berlin. Life was not easy in a city which depended upon outside sources for the supplies and food. There was rationing of electricity and fuel. The black market flourished. But it was better, they reasoned, than living in East Berlin under Soviet domination.

................................................................................................

"From 1949 to 1961, an estimated 2.7 million East Germans had escaped the grim living of their shackled country to find opportunity in West Germany, where the economy was growing. Stalin died in 1953, but it was Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, who had the Berlin Wall constructed in efforts to stop refugees from East Berlin fleeing to freedom.

"On August 13, 1961, the Berlin Wall, one of the most visible symbols of the Cold War and the division between the communist bloc nations and the West, began construction. At midnight, East Germany began the closing of the border between East and West Berlin. The streets that ran alongside the border were pulled up so that they would be impassable. Barbed wire fences were installed. For Germans, August 13 would become known as Barbed Wire Sunday. As the wall became a construction of blocks and concrete, armed soldiers stood in front, ready to shoot anyone who tried to defect. A large area was cleared so that soldiers could fire upon anyone who tried to flee. Along the border between the countries of East Germany and West Germany, chain fences and walls, along with minefields, were put in place.

................................................................................................

Any thoughts that this came at expense of women of Afghanistan, sacrificed to terrorism by taliban, as cheap fodder towards goal of dismantling a USSR?

In addition, China was coddled beyond recognition, into becoming a power that now threatens US successfully, over an island nation - while Tibet is forgotten by almost every power, except humans.

And Gods.

................................................................................................

Table of Contents

................................................................................................

Introduction

From Stalingrad to Berlin

The Battle of the Oder-Neisse

The Russians Enter Berlin

The Last Days of Adolf Hitler

The Rape of Berlin

The Race for the Bomb

A Germany Divided

................................................................................................

REVIEW

................................................................................................

Introduction

................................................................................................

But Germany did have money, not only to arm nazis Doon after, with churches and monasteries supplying them arms and ammunition, but much more.

That, too, had been planned, and well ahead so, of September 1939.

................................................................................................

"The Red Army and the Soviet people were tested severely for a time, but in the end, it was the Germans who were forced to retreat as the Red Army swept through Czechoslovakia and Austria."

As obvious a bias as it gets, here.

................................................................................................

"By springtime, the Red Army was advancing on Germany, its sights clearly set on Berlin.

"April of 1945 boded ill for the German Reich. With the Soviet Red Army advancing rapidly less than four years after the Germans launched their futile attack against the Russians, the Nazis knew that the defense of the Fatherland was a battle to the death. Berlin had been under attack by Allied planes for several years, with millions of shells firing down into a city that was low on resources. But frightening as the aerial bombardment was, it did not match the fear with which the German people faced the thought of the Soviets occupying their city. The Soviets had suffered greatly at the hands of the Germans, and they would be the first among the Allies to enter Berlin. What vengeance would they seek? How would they retaliate?"

Well justified, after what German forces had wreaked in lands East, which included rapes and murders of young, including murders of babies, and untold other atrocities.

................................................................................................

Notice the refraining from mention of specifics of the

................................................................................................

"But the price of peace was extravagantly high."

................................................................................................

......................................................

September 18, 2022 - September 18, 2022.

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................................................................................................

Chapter One: From Stalingrad to Berlin

................................................................................................

"—Antony Beevor"

What alternatives did they have!

Tolstoy has said something regarding Russian bear fighting in unexpected ways, leaving Napoleon and his French army flummoxed.

................................................................................................

No comments or epithets regarding sufferings of those millions?

Surprised or in disbelief, yes; but 'startled '?

................................................................................................

'Suffering' is redefined for every country, every culture.

Russians on the other hand live in a land of harsh weather and get going when German panzer tanks, deep in mud, couldn't move - fuel being frozen.

Which reminds one of description of Chinese bathing annually - and remarking that it's a bad habit that one shouldn't get used to - by Han Suyin.

................................................................................................

So well depicted in "Enemy At The Gates"!

................................................................................................

"That was why"???

................................................................................................

This particular volume of Hourly History is obviously written by a German who is a deluded nazi.

................................................................................................

Which is true.

Imagine the horror - if Russians had stopped at border of Russia, allowing nazi control of East European countries!

................................................................................................

Whoever wrote this imagines that nazis in particular and German gorges in general had spared the women and children of other countries, whether German forces invaded, occupied, or merely bombed.

That thinking is delusional, bordering on clinically certifiable, since history not only says otherwise but is written also by survivors of the holocaust.

................................................................................................

......................................................

September 18, 2022 - September 18, 2022.

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................................................................................................

Chapter Two: The Battle of the Oder-Neisse