Soviet reaction to an unified nationalist Germany during Cold War

Eurofed

Banned
The plotters chosen Chief of Police Hans von Tresckow signed on 28th of June 1944 an order for kidnapping of Ukrainian and Polish children for Germanization and slave labour during Heu Aktion. 40.000 to 50.000 children between 10-14 years were to be taken.

A few weeks before the coup. Oh, that order had so many chances to be impelmented, if they succeeded. EA, are you aware that they were plotting to bring down a totalitarian state and deception to some serious degree was ncessary ? When you have statement in the plans they made for post-coup Germany to implement such mass kindnapping, then you have a point.

Do we want to count body count of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union taking into account years of their existance and number of people they murdered ? Although it would be unfair, since we know that Nazi Germany wanted to eliminate at least 50 milion Slavs alone, not counting Jews, Roma and other undesirables.

And Stalin plotted to unleash a new row of purges any bad as the 1930s ones, when he died, quite possibly spiced with his own anti-Semite persecution. If we go by hypotheticals, how we know that Hitler's successors would have implemented anti-Slav genocide in victorious Germany, when Adolf would have succumbed to Parkinson or Syphilis in mid-alte 1940s ? How we know a Nazi Kruscev would not have come around ? We don't. So, if we stick by OTL methods and body counts, Adolf and Iosef have really nothing to envy each other, as mass murdering goes. Only Mao can get close to them.
 
Eurofed-another apology.
It seems that Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg -member of the "democratic, christian and social" Kreisau circle(in fact one of the three main members)-was responsible for providing information used to crush partisan and civilian resistance in Belarus.
His earlier his work was handing out stolen Polish property to German colonists in annexed parts of Poland.
Another great guy I must say...
Why is that every time I research a 20th of July plotter I find something completely opposite to "christian social democrat" ?

A few weeks before the coup. Oh, that order had so many chances to be impelmented, if they succeeded.
His orders on Eastern Front were in 1943 though.

And Stalin plotted to unleash a new row of purges any bad as the 1930s ones, when he died, quite possibly spiced with his own anti-Semite persecution. If we go by hypotheticals, how we know that Hitler's successors would have implemented anti-Slav genocide in victorious Germany, when Adolf would have succumbed to Parkinson or Syphilis in mid-alte 1940s ? How we know a Nazi Kruscev would not have come around ?
Oh If you read into then Hitler wasn't actually the worst-Rosenberg had greater ideas.
But if you don't want to read on actually plans(who were already realised like Hunger Plan or Generalplan Ost) then why don't we just count the number of years versus number of dead ?
 
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Because Pol Pot beats them all. Three years, and he killed one-fourth of total potential victims.
But we are here talking about SU and Nazi Germany aren't we Eurofed ? So let's see the numbers of dead from Nazi Germany and from Soviet Union and divide them by number of their existance to see if SU murdered more or actually higher as you claimed.

Btw; you still haven't answered one question:
Why are you talking about violation of national self-determination if at the same time you accept violating the self-determination of non-Germans ? Is your stance to national self-determination limited to Germans ? Would appreciate the answer.
 

Eurofed

Banned
It seems that Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg -member of the "democratic, christian and social" Kreisau circle(in fact one of the three main members)-was responsible for providing information used to crush partisan and civilian resistance in Belarus.

Did he directly ordered atrocities ? Since counterinsurgency, per se, is not a war crime.

His earlier his work was handing out stolen Polish property to German colonists in annexed parts of Poland.

Hard to do any stuff less than that, if you are a significant goverment figure in Nazi Germany. Yet, if you aren't, you are not in a position to bring down the regime.
 
And Stalin plotted to unleash a new row of purges any bad as the 1930s ones, when he died, quite possibly spiced with his own anti-Semite persecution.

Without meaning to belittle the victims in the slightest, for murder is murder, the purges of the 30s did not approach the crimes of the Nazis, never mind what they aspired to. Murder, as I say, is murder, and no victim gets solace from being murdered by a less abominable regime, but murdering thousands of suspected dissidents isn't anything like murdering millions, enslaving or destroying whole peoples and planning a megalomaniac re-ordering of the world.

If we go by hypotheticals, how we know that Hitler's successors would have implemented anti-Slav genocide in victorious Germany, when Adolf would have succumbed to Parkinson or Syphilis in mid-alte 1940s ?

A victorious Nazi Germany would immediately top Stalin and top him again. In what were the latter years of the war OTL, millions more victims would be within their grasp. Give them another three years and the destruction of European civilisation would be complete. The unlikely idea of some neat succesion for a "Nazi Krushchev" doesn't change this anyway. How we know a Nazi Kruscev would not have come around ? We don't

So, if we stick by OTL methods and body counts, Adolf and Iosef have really nothing to envy each other, as mass murdering goes. Only Mao can get close to them.

The Nazis not only killed more people by every account I've come across, the number that they would have killed quite simply doesn't bare thinking about, and we can only be thankful to heaven that they were beaten. Speaking as a person who likes Germany and the Germans, has family there, Nazi Germany had to be demolished, obliterated, and the wreckage burned without any compromise whatsoever, for the good of civilisation. Germany is a part of cvilisation too.
 
Did he directly ordered atrocities ? Since counterinsurgency, per se, is not a war crime.
Burning down villages and murdering civilians is counterinsurgency ?

Hard to do any stuff less than that, if you are a significant goverment figure in Nazi Germany. Yet, if you aren't, you are not in a position to bring down the regime.
Oh so all government figures in Nazi Germany took part in atrocities or racist persecution ? Or are you saying he engaged in racist persecution to gain power to topple the regime ?

Also Eurofed:
Why are you talking about violation of national self-determination if at the same time you accept violating the self-determination of non-Germans ? Is your stance to national self-determination limited to Germans ? Would appreciate the answer. Really would appreciate the answer.
 

Eurofed

Banned
Is your stance to national self-determination limited to Germans ?

No. As much as I deeply loathe nationalism as a political force, and root for continental (and later global) supra-national state(s), preferably to be established in historical periods where they may prevent bickering nations to arise in the first place (beloved Rome :D), fair is fair. If we use national self-determination criteria (and in 1945 is surely the choice that surely causes the least suffering and misery to all parties involved), it must stand for all. Sorry, the question had escaped my notice previously.
 
No. As much as I deeply loathe nationalism as a political force, and root for continental (and later global) supranational state(s), preferably to be established in historical periods where they may prevent bickering nations to arise in the first place (beloved Rome)
Blobs-how boring and non-creative.
Anyway you had nothing against Germany violating Polish right of self-determination so we cleared that up, and now know that Germany has no right to demand 1914 boders according to your view ?
 

Eurofed

Banned
Blobs-how boring and non-creative.

What has this to do with the rest ? "Blobs", as you put it, prevent bloody bickering Germany and Poland to arise in the first place, and this whole mess to happen, at least in this corner of Europe (and many others besides).

Anyway you had nothing against Germany violating Polish right of self-determination

I said a Polish minority in post-war democratic Germany the Valkyrie guys planned would not be enslaved. Kinda different. Being denied self-detemrination is not fair or just (with qualifications that have nothing to about our present discussion: thinking of the ACW) but it's not enslavement, per se, by any means. You are not going to catch me claiming that Sudetenland Germans were "enslaved" before 1938.

so we cleared that up, and now know that Germany has no right to demand 1914 boders according to your view ?

Yup. They had good right to claim Austria, Sudentenland, and Danzig, not Posen/Poznan or the unquestionably Polish-majority areas that made up most of the Corridor.

Speaking hypothetically about a pre-WWII peaceful settlement, it was possible that a land connection between Pomerania and East Prussia could have been drawn by respecting self-determination, since German population in the Corridor clustered in the southern area. Unfortunately, a district-by-district plebiscite for the area was never done, as in Upper Silesia and East Prussia. If such a connection could have been done while Germany wasa democratic, the claims by nationalist Germans for the 1914 borders would have been largely defused.
 

Eurofed

Banned
Certainly not big enough to become Chief of Police is it ?

Not for the ages, no. However, if he's the right guy to control the Police for the time it takes the stabilize the new regime, and accomplish the conditional surrender negotiations, afterwards his successor shall be a Yankee, why not ? Such things happen in regime transitions, ask Walesa and Jaruzelski. Even assuming an ASB political miracle does happen, and the Anglo-Americans do not claim occupation of Germany (or they do but they do not run background checks on election candidates), after the first democratic elections, the new Chief of Police shall be a SPD, FDP, or CDU guy, and the plotters were going to restore democracy nonetheless. I think only the most charismatic and popular are going to have a real chance and claim major political and maybe government places in democratic Germany. Rommel and Stauffenberg, perhaps, get to become CDU or FDP candidates. The mass parties shall run the show.
 
Not for the ages, no. However, if he's the right guy to control the Police for the time it takes the stabilize the new regime, and accomplish the conditional surrender negotiations, afterwards his successor shall be a Yankee, why not ?
If that would be the case. However it is rather clear that the plotters were just nationalists(with very few exceptions) hoping through their actions to save Germany as power and allow it to secure some conquests in the East.

I think only the most charismatic and popular are going to claim major political and maybe government places in democratic Germany. Rommel and Stauffenberg, perhaps.
Oh great, Hitler's beloved boy and propaganda doll, who used slaves and shot a French prisoner and stood on podium alongside der Fuhrer after Nazi first military conquest. Not to mention not a racist at all since he refused his daughters wedding with a boyfriedn untill he proves his Aryan. And actual nationalists with racist views(whip the half-breeds !) whose political outlook can be described as fascist. Of course that is if Rommel doesn't stand up to war crimes trial. Ooops forgot-the plotters didn't want any of Germans to be tried by non-Germans.
Yup Germany will be democratic and at peace with its neighbours all right.
 

Deleted member 1487

If that would be the case. However it is rather clear that the plotters were just nationalists(with very few exceptions) hoping through their actions to save Germany as power and allow it to secure some conquests in the East.

Oh great, Hitler's beloved boy and propaganda doll, who used slaves and shot a French prisoner and stood on podium alongside der Fuhrer after Nazi first military conquest. Not to mention not a racist at all since he refused his daughters wedding with a boyfriedn untill he proves his Aryan. And actual nationalists with racist views(whip the half-breeds !) whose political outlook can be described as fascist. Of course that is if Rommel doesn't stand up to war crimes trial. Ooops forgot-the plotters didn't want any of Germans to be tried by non-Germans.
Yup Germany will be democratic and at peace with its neighbours all right.


I don't know if you're referring to Rommel, as he had no daughter. I've also never heard of him shooting any prisoners either. He did keep the SS out of Africa and protected the Jews in the area under his command from Nazi actions. The man was a patriot and was proud to serve his country. He later admitted that he was smitten with Hitler, but the years of his rule had embittered and disillusioned Rommel toward the man and his party. Again, no saint, but I dare you to produce any from that time period on any side. Rommel was about as clean as they come, aside from some militaristic views and blind faith in his country, a common set of viewpoints from people of his generation.
 
I don't know if you're referring to Rommel, as he had no daughter.
I thought it is widely known today that he had a daughter from his other relationship with Walburga Stemmer. She comitted suicide in 1928. However their daughter Gertruda remained in touch with him. It's not a big secret-was revealed in 2000 after her death and is now accepted by historians, they are even a number of pictures with her and Rommel's family.

I've also never heard of him shooting any prisoners either.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6459/is_7-8_48/ai_n29105610/
It's true Rommel's name's not linked to any of the German army's major atrocities. Rommel did most of his fighting in the North African desert, and people to commit atrocities against were in short supply there.
In France in 1940, there were more chances for that sort of thing. There's a case in The Tank." Studies in the Development and Use of a Weapon, by Douglas Orgill (1970). Rommel's words are from The Rommel Papers, edited by Captain Basil Liddell Hart.
This was on May 17, near Arras. Rommel was a major-general then, in command of the 7th Panzer Division in the XV Panzer Corps. His troops had broken the French front on the Meuse, and they were pushing westward towards the Channel coast.
Rommel's staff vehicles were following the main road, past tangles of French transport and surrendering French troops. Rommel saw a French lieutenant-colonel stuck in a trapped car, watching the German tanks rumble past.
"I asked him for his rank and appointment," Rommel wrote. "His eyes glowed hate and impotent fury and he gave the impression of being a thoroughly fanatical type. There being every likelihood, with so much traffic on the road, that our column would get split up from time to time, I decided on second thoughts to take him with us ..."
What was the French officer thinking just then? Nobody ever found out. "He was fetched back to Colonel Rothenburg, who signed to him to get in his tank," Rommel wrote. "But he curtly refused to come with us, so after summoning him three times to get in, there was nothing for it but to shoot him ..."


. The man was a patriot and was proud to serve his country.
You consider a man that is patriot of Nazi Germany and proud to serve an abomination of a state that went on genocidal crusade against whole nations as worthy of respect or political position ?

Again, no saint, but I dare you to produce any from that time period on any side.
I can produce many saints from Allied side, people who risked lives for Jews, or died in the attempt.
They were good Germans too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Kolbe

Or the 20,000 or so German deserters from Wehrmacht.

But Rommel ? A vain nationalist without any spine(didn't protest like others against atrocities in 1939, refused to save his wife's catholic cousine in Poland), who was product of Goebbels propaganda in regards to his achievements. That some speak highly of him today shows how propaganda can be succesfull. In all certainly not a role model, not a hero, not a saind and somewhat repulsive.
 

Eurofed

Banned
If that would be the case. However it is rather clear that the plotters were just nationalists(with very few exceptions) hoping through their actions to save Germany as power and allow it to secure some conquests in the East.

Said by one that loathes nationalism, hoping to save your country as a power is no sin. It depends on how one accomplishes it.

Oh great, Hitler's beloved boy and propaganda doll, who used slaves

Rommel lived in Old South ? Ancient Greece or Rome ? I find your unrestrained use of the terms slave and enslavement more and more questionable. Rommel did order that French workers used to build the Atlantic Wall to be paid for theri labor.

and shot a French prisoner

Mainstream historical opinion is that he was always quite chivalrous with Allied PoWs.

and stood on podium alongside der Fuhrer after Nazi first military conquest.

And how is this supposed to be a war crime ? :eek::rolleyes::confused:

Not to mention not a racist at all since he refused his daughters wedding with a boyfriedn untill he proves his Aryan.

Ok, now I am really starting to assume that you are inventing or pulling your crap "sources" from God knows whatever garbage heaps in the net to justify your bias.

And actual nationalists with racist views(whip the half-breeds !) whose political outlook can be described as fascist.

Too bad that the actual Rommel, and not your Germanophobe caricature, repeatedly acted to shield Jews from persecution.

Of course that is if Rommel doesn't stand up to war crimes trial.

Too bad that by near-universal consensus in the West, Rommel was quite respected as a chivalrous German soldier unsullied with Nazi evil, and nobody would have seen any reason to indict him.

Ooops forgot-the plotters didn't want any of Germans to be tried by non-Germans.

Actually, they planned for mixed international tribunals. But it does not matter. Your last wild rant about Rommel has given me sufficient evidence that you simply get along quoting or spouting slander to justify your prejudices, and this lifts me from giving your arguments any intellectual respect. Goodbye and welcome to my ignore list.
 
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Said by one that loathes nationalism, hoping to save your country as a power is no sin. It depends on how one accomplishes it.
Saving Nazi Germany, German Empire or Germany ? It depends. Certainly the last option was not something they would like.
Rommel lived in Old South ? Ancient Rome ? I find your unrestrained use of the term slave and enslavement more and more questionable. Rommel did order that French workers used to build the Atlantic Wall to be paid for theri labor.
So they were not slaves because they were awarded some pay ? I am afraid this doesn't change the nature of slavery.

nd how this is supposed to be a war crime ? :eek::rolleyes::confused:
Who said about war crime ? It will be a symbol of peace, a new way of Germany, cutting with the past, pursuing good relations with neighbours. No doubt this picture will remind German neighbours that indeed VS Germany is something new and not nationalistic at all.
Ok, now I am really starting to assume that you are inventing or pulling your crap "sources" from God knows whatever garbage heaps in the net to justify your bias.
Fairly decent documentary on Rommel.
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/R/real_lives/rommel.html
Like most Germans, Rommel accepted Hitler's policies on racial purity. When his daughter Gertrud asked his permission to marry her Italian boyfriend, Rommel told her that he must prove his Aryan descent. Manfred Rommel remembers how his father looked the other way when anti-Jewish violence spilled on to the streets.
Then, on the 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. At the end of the year, one of Lucie's cousins, a Polish priest, was shot. Although her relatives were in danger, Rommel refused to help. During a victory parade in Warsaw, he joined Hitler on the podium, and, for the invasion of France, he was put in command of a Panzer tank division.


Sources, please. Mainstream historical opinion is that he was always quite chivalrous with Allied PoWs.
Source given in above post.

Too bad that the actual Rommel, and not your Germanophobe caricature,
THe half-breed whipping boy is Stauffenberg.
repeatedly acted to shield Jews from persecution.
Unlike other commanders made no protest about atrocities in 1939.
And how about refusing to save his wife's Polish catholic cousin ?
Too bad that by near-universal consensus in the West, Rommel was quite respected as a chivalrous German soldier unsullied with Nazi evil, and nobody would have seen any reason to indict him.
Thankfully the Germanofile Western officers would not be the only ones judging German militarists patriotic of their genocidal Nazi Germany.

Actually, they planned for mixed international tribunals
Actually Stauffenberg clearly wrote in demands that nations should judge their own criminals.

Your last wild rant about Rommel has given me sufficient evidence that you simply get along quoting slander to justify your prejudices, and this lifts me from giving your arguments any intellectual respect. Goodbye and welcome to my ignore list.
Can't endure how every one of your VS Germany "democratic" heroes that you so far named is described in scholary books and history texts as committing theft, racism, mass murder,using slaves, kidnapping of children ? Oh well, don't let facts get into the way of your fantasies.
 

Deleted member 1487

I thought it is widely known today that he had a daughter from his other relationship with Walburga Stemmer. She comitted suicide in 1928. However their daughter Gertruda remained in touch with him. It's not a big secret-was revealed in 2000 after her death and is now accepted by historians, they are even a number of pictures with her and Rommel's family.

Well, I did find some sourcing on the daughter part, but not the marriage thing. Care to talk about Patton and his views on Jews and Blacks? It was an ugly byproduct of the era, one that was repeated everywhere in the west, as I guarantee that you would get the same reaction by Americans with their daughters, especially if the fiance was black or an "ethnic". But you will have to provide sourcing on that, as I have not seen anything to prove it true.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6459/is_7-8_48/ai_n29105610/
It's true Rommel's name's not linked to any of the German army's major atrocities. Rommel did most of his fighting in the North African desert, and people to commit atrocities against were in short supply there.
In France in 1940, there were more chances for that sort of thing. There's a case in The Tank." Studies in the Development and Use of a Weapon, by Douglas Orgill (1970). Rommel's words are from The Rommel Papers, edited by Captain Basil Liddell Hart.
This was on May 17, near Arras. Rommel was a major-general then, in command of the 7th Panzer Division in the XV Panzer Corps. His troops had broken the French front on the Meuse, and they were pushing westward towards the Channel coast.
Rommel's staff vehicles were following the main road, past tangles of French transport and surrendering French troops. Rommel saw a French lieutenant-colonel stuck in a trapped car, watching the German tanks rumble past.
"I asked him for his rank and appointment," Rommel wrote. "His eyes glowed hate and impotent fury and he gave the impression of being a thoroughly fanatical type. There being every likelihood, with so much traffic on the road, that our column would get split up from time to time, I decided on second thoughts to take him with us ..."
What was the French officer thinking just then? Nobody ever found out. "He was fetched back to Colonel Rothenburg, who signed to him to get in his tank," Rommel wrote. "But he curtly refused to come with us, so after summoning him three times to get in, there was nothing for it but to shoot him ..."

Again, haven't heard this one before, and haven't seen it in the Rommel Papers. Maybe I need to have a look to confirm it. But that being said, it is kind of standard procedure. If there is a threat that the man was going to organize resistance and refused to listen to commands as a prisoner should, most soldiers would do the same. I've heard a number of these stories from the allies side and still even to this day in Iraq and Afgahnistan this stuff goes on. I've talked to vets from those conflicts that tell me stories about shooting civilians that don't listen to commands like stopping for road blocks. Are these men evil war criminals too? Or are they just trying to protect themselves so they aren't blown up or shot in the back? Self preservation is first, and if the man that Rommel had shot was representing a danger, as it seems he was, then the most practical thing was done. Its not nice or good, but when survival is on the line, just about anyone would do the same. Read about the American soldiers shooting German soldiers trying to surrender in France. It happens, its ugly, but its war.


You consider a man that is patriot of Nazi Germany and proud to serve an abomination of a state that went on genocidal crusade against whole nations as worthy of respect or political position ?

He was a patriot to Germany, not the Nazis. There is a difference. Someone fighting the Russians to prevent them from overrunning his village is not a Nazi. Rommel was not fighting for the Nazi objects, such as killing Jewish people. Hell he stepped in to prevent it. Sure, he was fighting on the wrong side. But he did not look at it as fighting for the Nazis, just for the future of his nation. We now know about what that future was going to be and it was hideous. But at the time, perception is not what it is now, and the full facts of what Nazi Germany was up to are available to us, which was not the case to the Germans. Hitler did not announce the Holocaust, though many soldiers were aware that bad things were happening. These things did not stop American soldiers fighting for a bad cause in Vietnam, so are they not worthy of respect for fighting for their country regardless of its objectives or means (note, I am not comparing the two nations as equivalent, but am just stating that despite the atrocities of both nations in their respective wars, both of which they were wrong to have fought, the soldiers that fought it were mostly not political and were simply fighting as their nation asked them to).

I can produce many saints from Allied side, people who risked lives for Jews, or died in the attempt.
They were good Germans too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Kolbe

Or the 20,000 or so German deserters from Wehrmacht.

But Rommel ? A vain nationalist without any spine(didn't protest like others against atrocities in 1939, refused to save his wife's catholic cousine in Poland), who was product of Goebbels propaganda in regards to his achievements. That some speak highly of him today shows how propaganda can be succesfull. In all certainly not a role model, not a hero, not a saind and somewhat repulsive.

Again, you have to cite the source on his wife's cousin; never heard of that one.
 
Regarding the "morality" of the July plotters and their fellow travelers, it only stands to reason that military and government figures in a high enough position in Nazi Germany to mount a successful coup would NOT be anyone identified with truly democratic leanings. German military leaders would have been heirs to the non-democratic and fairly brutal traditions of Prussian and Imperial military leadership, which included aggressive anti-partisan measures such as taking hostages, executing civilians, and a less than fully sympathetic view toward the taking of unwilling POWs like the french officer mentioned in a previous post. Actually, I suspect that story would be fairly common in most armies. To have gotten where they were they would have also had to have been at least silently tolerent of the nazi racial policies. It's hard to imagine any successful anti-Nazi coup would not be full of people with these types of skeletons in their closets. Also, when picking a new chancellor and governing leadership after the coup, who comes to mind? People with a long record of service and the appropriate experience or a Lutheran pastor?

But so what? History shows that most successful coups are largely initiated and perpertrated by people who "turn coat" at some point, not those who have always been opposed to the prior regime. One cannot really predict what sort of government the July plotters would have instituted, but they must have known that to have any chance of success in dealing with the Anglo-Americans, they would have had to undertake sweeping anti-Nazi purges, eliminate the Nazi concentration camps, be prepared to restore all or most pre 1939 borders (as well as Czechoslovakia and Austria), and institute superficially democratic reforms. They would also know that the Wallies would demand an occupation of Germany and that they themselves might be held accountable for their previous Nazi sympathies and war crimes. Thus, it really doesn't matter what sort of Germany they actually wanted, they would have had to give the US and the UK the one they wanted. I think many of them knew that.

All of this misses the point that the western allies had made the conscious or unconscious decision to dismiss any anti-Nazi resistance in Germany as hardly better than the Nazis themselves. The wallies' war was not with the Nazis, it was with the Germans, who were seen as all equally to blame and who deserved whatever happened to them. It served allied propaganda to make no distinction between "good germans" and "bad germans".
 
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