Definition of "The Great Patriotic War"

This one comes from A. Anatoli.....

"The U.S.S.R's 'holy' war against Hitler was nothing more than a heart rending struggle by people who wanted to be imprisoned in their own concentration camp rather than in a foreign one, while still cherishing the hope of extending their own camp to cover the whole world."

Anatoli is Ukrainian. Quote from page 263 of his book, BABI YAR.

 

The Ukrainians consider themsleves seperate from Russians and many were willing helpers, especially agaisnt the Jews. If Germany had been willing to pretend the Ukrainians were seperate and used them, it could have been more difficult for the Soviets.

 

The opportunity of the campaign thrown away by Nazi racial arrogance. They were shot down by this from the beginning. The trouble was, in my view, they had nothing to attract the ordinary Russian, to really grab his imagination and convince millions of them at a time that the German regime was going to be any better than the Paradise of Workers and Peasants.

It left the people of the region with a stark choice. And in the words of another Russian..."We had a choice between two dictators. We preferred to support the one that spoke Russian."

 

Add to that the fact that NAZI ideology proposed to exterminate half the "Slavic Untermenschen" and to enslave the rest to the benefit of the Reich-and set about to beginning that process from the first days of the occupation-and you can easily see why Stalin was preferable to Hitler. In Sun Tzu's terms the entire Soviet Nation was placed on "death ground" and had no choice but to fight like lions or perish.
More From Sun TzuIn dispersed ground, do not do battle.In light ground, do not stop.In contested ground, do not attack.In connected ground, do not cross.In junction ground, join with allies.In heavy ground, plunder.In spread-out ground, move.In enclosed ground, strategize.In death ground, do battle.

 

the racial hatred is what drove hitlerin the first place, if hitler had been willing to adapt in the beginning.

 

Opposing Hitler and Stalin would both end in destruction anyway. The NKVD shot its own soldiers without mercy and civilians didn't count either. Hitler slaughtered the Slaves, Stalin slaughtered the Volga and Krim Germans. So they are both alike to me and I echo Anatoli's quote.

 

To define the term Great Patriotic War properly, we should abandon politics and focus just to the subject itself. The term Patriotic War has it’s historical roots. It refers to the Russian resistance to the French invasion of Russia under Napoleon I - the Patriotic War of 1812.

Similarly, the term Great Patriotic War is used in Russian history to denote the period between the beginning of Nazi invasion of the USSR and capitulation of Nazi Germany.

In my view, that is the best definition of events that took place in the Central and East Europe during the World War 2.

 

A victory by Napoleon in 1812 would probably have not made much of a difference in the day to day lives of most Russians. Contrast that with Hitler's plans on how to deal with the "Slavic Untermenschen"-and the horrendous beginnings of Herr Hitler's genocidal plans that were actually carried out during the occupation- and you can see why "The Great Patriotic War" was "Great". It became a matter of physical survival in 1941-1945. A whole nation placed on Sun Tzu's "death ground", with a stark choice to make. View attachment 17708
JeffinMNUSA

 

That’s entirely true. The conflict at the East cannot be viewed as a conflict among two tyrants or a conflict among two similar but opposing ideologies. That’s ordinary Nazi propaganda and that’s what Nazi apologists want to impose as the “truth”.


The truth is that Nazis wanted to exterminate everything non-German to create a land free of human beings and to provide space for future expansions of German nation. All non-Germans at the east were fighting just for survival. I don’t see any ideology here whatsoever. Just Nazis were blinded with their perverse beliefs.

 

I disagree. Too a large part that's what it was. I don't think any Nazi apologist I've seen by the way is content to state that the Nazis and the Soviets were equivalent.

That's not quite what the Nazis wanted though at least based on the surviving documents. The Soviet's weren't without similar faults although there's was based on an ideology that was less race conscious.

 

the ideologies were not that different. Both were based on "science", both were based on the idea that the state was the only thing that mattered and people were disposable, both were willing to kill or destroy anything that did not fit within their system and both ere led by men you thought they had a destiny to rule and no opposition was allowed.

 

Of course, both Bolsheviks and Nazis were overwhelmed by their ideologies but the essence of their conflict was elsewhere: hunger for land and hatred. We shouldn't seek for proofs of Nazi intentions in their documents but in their deeds. They attacked to exterminate. Is there any better explanation for such vast number of civil victims at the East?

 

That rather depends on what aspect you look at.

Arguably neither was. Both were based on flawed phylosophies but I don't think either qualify as science both did encorporate scienece and pseudo science to various degrees.

 

I put science in apostaphes to account fort he bogus science claims. Yes the Nazi state was not defined as strongly as in the Soviet theory, but Hitler stated that since the German people had failed him it did not deserve to survive. It may be better to say that both felt they were the key of the organization and all others existed to serve them. As far as opposition, HItler did allow arguments, but his was as was with Stalin the final word on what happened. Hitler allowed a far more chaotic system then Stalin did. Stalin also allowed debate on a subject until he made up his mind.

 

IMO it is imposible to compare rule of Hitler and Stalin for the soviet nations. It's not war of dictators or the matter of choosing the tyrant who spoke russian as some individuals argue. I do not want to exculpate Stalin or to offend millions he killed or mistreated, for I belive him to be one of the world's greatest villans. Yet weather one likes it or not ,evarage person in USSR didn't feel political opression, this was reserved for rulling class. The closer one was to the top (Stalin), more danger one was in. Ordinery people could feel lack of consumer goods and particularly hunguer, espetially during industrialization, but this was not an evil plan aimed to damage the people but routhless attempt to make USSR a world power and to prepare it to wage total war. I can totaly understand millions of people(maybe tens of millions), their relatives and friends who regarded soviet regime as ultimate evil because of political prosecution, colectivisation, and imposed starvation. Still average people( of more than 200 million inhabitants of USSR) did not die of hunger, did not end up in GULAG for political reasons or suffer greatly in other manner in inter war period. Average people complained about shortage of food and consumer goods, but were proud of great industrial acomplishments and were pleased when food became more ample and consumer goods appeared in late 30's .
On the other hand Hitler planed nothing less than extermination (mostly by hunger) of 75% of soviet population and using the rest as iliterrate slaves of the new ruling class - warrior landowners that would colonise the east, imitating the warlords of old.(like teutonic knights) Moscow was to be raises to the ground and great accumulation lake was to be built in it's place, while Leningrad was to be blown up siytematicly and this 'barren, black ground was to be given to the Finns'. Cruel and genocidal Nazi aproach to soviet 'sub humans', prescribed in formal, written, legal form ( a unique phenomen in human history, given it's formal expression, and unseen in practise since the time of the Mongols) made even the enemies of soviet regime take up arms against barbaric conquerors, even if they fought against Soviets parallrelly. Maybe in the west people can compare dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin on purely geopolitical or undemocratic aspects, but to us Slavs even if we didn't belive in communist ideals (or it's implementation), fight against Nazism wasn't just matter of moral conviction, but fight for the rigt to exist end to defeat the most sinister ideology ever to be conceived.
All this made the war agains the Nazis the most sacred war in russian (soviet) history, the war against pure evil and total annihilation of their nation/race. Great majority of russian (ex soviet) people consider victory over Nazism their greatest historical achivement, and mythical, sacred status assured for this war for generations since and yet to come.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEKUtus5LlQ

 

I also see a big difference between Stalin an Hitler from a citizen of the USSR perspective, one was a ruthless politician who believed in a flawed world view but ultimately wanted what he believed was best for the USSR (that he had a very peculiar idea of "best" is important but not critical), and to people barely out of serfdom that was still partly in place under the Tzar he may actually have looked like an improvement.

The other quite simply wanted to either kill or enslave them, the choice is obvious. We must also remember that Germany did defeat Russia in WW1 so for they had no reason of not believing they could not do it again, the weakneasses of the Nazi war machine became really apparent only during post war analisys so it was basically win or die.

This makes the "great patriotic war" something a bit apart from the rest of WW2 that was more about supremacy or even "just" border disputes not anithilation for the other combattants. That the western allies at one point partly embraced the Soviet view with the bombing campaign is one of the biggest tragedies of WW2.

 

Well percepted. I would only partialy disagree regarding bombing campaign. The west was also from military point of wiev conducting a total war, even if this didn't mean genocidal plans for civilian population after victory( completly true for the allies and partly for the Germans-examples beeing extermination of jews, raising towns to the ground in repreisal actions, starvation of population in Netherlands during winter 44/45 etc). It did mean though for the citizens of the west the life under cruel opression, and lack of any liberty. But prior to victory this war was definetly a total war, as was also wwI. Back than people and leaders belived that it's justified to break enemy's morale and capabilities to continue the war by means of mass bombing. Today it seems much more cruel and we know the campaign proved preatty unefficient( moral remaining high up to the very end and war production deminished for just 25% in 1944).

 

On visiting the Soviet Union in 1982, I found that the term "Great Patriotic War" was never used without the suffix "1941-45". This was clearly to distinguish it from the Second World War (1939-45), and to obscure the years 1939-41, in which the USSR was by treaty a partner of Nazi Germany and shared in the division and occupation of Poland.

To emphasise the importance of the term, "The Great Patriotic War 1941-45" was an element of the welcoming speech repeated by rote at every institution my party visited in Moscow, Leningrad and Uzbekistan

 

Yes. Fortunately Hitler didn't follow that theme: he could have had the Ukrainians, Balts and more that would have supported him.