World War II Lies of the West Part 1

World War II Lies of the West Part 1

Directed by Tatiana Borsh

Film Review

https://en.rtdoc.tv/films/2001-world-war-ii-lies-of-the-west-part-1

This is Part 1 of a two part series documenting efforts by the West to erase the crucial role of the Soviet Union in defeating Hitler’s Third Reich during World War II.

• Lie #1 – The Soviet refused to come to the aid of Czechoslovakia when Hitler was threatening to invade.

In reality, the Soviets were the only Allied country to oppose Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. Not only did France and England fail to come to Czechoslovakia’s defense, but they gave her an ultimatum not to resist the Nazi invasion.* With far more tanks than Hitler and the best weapons in Europe, the Czechs could easily have defeated the Germans. It was largely the acquisition of Czech tanks that allowed Hitler to roll over Europe in a matter of months.

The USSR (which had to traverse Poland to reach Czechoslovakia) sent troops to the Polish border but Poland refused to grant them safe passage. In fact Poland sought to dissolve Czechoslovakia and split the country between Germany, Poland and Hungary. Following Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, Poland invaded Silesia in northeastern Czechoslovakia, while Hungary invaded eastern Czechoslovakia.

• Lie #2 The USSR defeated Nazi Germany by sacrificing massive numbers of Soviet conscripts as canon fodder.

The West typical credits the Soviets with 27 million dead during World War II. However this number includes nearly 19 million civilian killed by Nazi atrocities. Only 44% of Soviet POWs returned from captivity (the majority were killed while interned).** This contrasts with 865 German, Hungarian and Croatian Nazis repatriated by the Soviets.

According to Russian figures, 7.8 million Nazi troops were killed from war wounds, disease and accidents, compared to 8.7 million Soviet troops.

• Lie #3 The Soviets played a secondary role to the other Allied powers in defeating Germany.

The Soviets fought Hitler and his European allies virtually by themselves from the Nazi invasion in ntil the US-UK landing in Normandy in June 1944. Meanwhile many major US companies continued to provide money and oil to the Nazi regime, as both the US and Britain refused to bomb their German subsidiaries. Every third soldier in the assault on the Soviet Union was non-German. Officially Italy, Slovakia, Hungary and Finland declared war on the USSR at the same time as Germany. Unofficially Norway, Denmark and Switzerland also participated in the attack on the USSR, while the Netherlands and Denmark participated in SS missions and Lithuania, Ukraine, Estonia, Czechoslovakia Vichy France (320,000 French joined the Nazi armed forces) and Poland supplied troops.

Despite an agreement the US and UK made to open a second front against the Germans in 1942, they waited until it became clear that the Soviets were 180 miles from Berlin (and about to defeat the Germans by themselves), eleven months before the official German defeat in May 1945.

• Lie #4 The Soviets killed and raped civilians

This was propaganda disseminated by Hitler’s minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels and mindlessly taken up by Western propagandists. On January 19, 1945, Stalin issued a special order that all Russians guilty of civilian violence or rape. According to Russian veterans interviewed in the film, this was rigorously enforced.

*In March 1939, the Bank of England transferred the Czech government’s gold to the Nazi Reichsbank. See The Bank of England Hands Over Czech Gold to the Nazis. Both the governor and the chairman of the BOE were part of a powerful coalition of British fascists (which included the future king Edward VII, Neville Chamberlain, Lloyd George and Churchill’s brother-in-law Oswald Moseley) who envisioned Britain and Germany as co-leaders of a fascist world government.

** Nazi authorities treated American, British and French POWs far better than Soviet POWs.