The controversy around von Manstein. War criminal? Jew?

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The controversy around von Manstein. War criminal? Jew?

#1

Post by HerrGeneral » 27 Nov 2004, 19:55

Early life

Manstein was born Fritz Erich von Lewinski in Berlin, the tenth child of a Prussian aristocrat, artillery general Eduard von Lewinski (1829-1906), and Helene von Sperling (1847-1910). Hedwig von Sperling (1852-1925), a younger sister of Erich's mother Helene, was married to Lieutenant General Georg von Manstein (1844-1913). The couple was not able to have their own children, so it was decided that the unborn child would be adopted by his childless uncle and aunt. When he was born, the Lewinskis wrote a telegram to the Mansteins which stated: "You got a healthy boy today. Mother and child well. Congratulations." (von Manstein, E.: Soldat im 20. Jahrhundert, 5th Ed., 2002, p. 10).

Not only were Erich von Manstein's "fathers" Prussian Generals, two of his grandfathers had also been Prussian Generals (one of them leading a corps in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71), and so was his mother's brother; he was also closely related to Paul von Hindenburg, the future Generalfeldmarschall and President of Germany. Thus his career in the Prussian army was assured from birth. He attended the lycée in Straßburg (1894-1899), which had become part of the German Empire after the war of 1870/71. He then spent six years in the cadet corps (1900-1906) in Plön and Groß-Lichterfelde. Manstein joined the Third Foot Guards Regiment (Garde zu Fuß) in March 1906 as an ensign. He was promoted to lieutenant in January 1907. In October 1913 he entered the War Academy.

Middle years

World War I

During World War I he served both on the German Western Front (Belgium/France 1916: Attack on Verdun, 1917/18: Champagne) and the Eastern Front (1915: North Poland, 1915/16: Serbia, 1917: Estonia). In Poland he was wounded severely in November 1914 and returned to duty in 1915, promoted to Captain and remained as staff officer until the end of the war in 1918. In 1918, he volunteered for the staff position in Frontier Defence Force in Breslau (Wroclaw) and served there until 1919.


Inter-war era

He married Jutta Sibylle von Loesch in 1920, the daughter of a Silesian landowner; the relationship would last until her death in 1966. They had three children: a daugther named Gisela, and two sons, Gero (b. December 31, 1922) and Rüdiger. Their older son Gero died on the battlefield in the northern sector of the eastern front on October 29, 1942.

He stayed in the military after the war, and in the 1920s, Manstein took part in the process of creating the Reichswehr, the 100,000 man German Army of the Weimar Republic imposed by the Versailles Treaty. He was promoted to Company commander in 1920, and Corps Commander in 1922. In 1927 he was promoted again to Major, and started serving with the General Staff, visiting other countries to learn about their military. In 1933 the Nazi party rose to power in Germany ending the Weimar era, one of their main political aims was denunciation of the Versailles Treaty with large scale rearmament and expansion of the military.

On July 1, 1935 he was made the Head of Operations Branch of the OKH (Army General Staff). During this tenure, he proposed the development of Sturmgeschütz, self-propelled assault guns that would provide heavy fire support to infantry, relieving the mobile tank forces of this mundane task. In World War II, the resulting StuG series would prove to be one of the most successful and cost-effective German weapons.

He was promoted on October 1, 1936, becoming the deputy to the Chief of the Army General Staff, General Ludwig Beck. Beck and Manstein fought against the encroaching political influence of Nazi party on the Army. They also advocated that the Army should have seniority over other services in the new Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) High Command (OKW), pitting them against Hermann Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe (Air Force).

Because of these conflicts and also in part because he wasn't a member of the Nazi party, Manstein was termed uncooperative by Hitler, and was sent away from the Army Command in Berlin to Liegnitz, Silesia to serve as the commander of the 18th Infantry Regiment.


World War II

Poland

On August 18, 1939, in preparation for Operation Fall Weiss, the German invasion of Poland, he was appointed the Chief of Staff to Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group South. Here he worked along with Rundstedt’s Chief of Operations, Colonel Günther Blumentritt on developing the operational plan. Rundstedt accepted Manstein’s plan that called for the concentration of the majority of Army Group’s armored units into Walther von Reichenau’s 10th Army with the objective of a decisive breakthrough leading to the encirclement of Polish forces west of the River Vistula. In Manstein’s plan, two other armies comprising the Army Group South, Wilhelm List’s 14th Army and Johannes Blaskowitz’s 8th Army were to provide the support of the flanks to Reichenau’s main armored thrust towards Warsaw, the Polish capital. Privately, Manstein was lukewarm about the Polish Campaign, thinking that it was better to have Poland as a buffer between Germany and the Soviet Union; he was also worried about the Allied attack on the West Wall once the Polish Campaign started, thus drawing Germany into a two front war.

Launched on September 1, the invasion started successfully. In Army Group South’s area of responsibility, armored units of the 10th Army perused the retreating Poles, giving them no time to set up a defense, while the 8th army on its flanks, prevented the unconnected Polish troop concentrations in Lódz, Radom and Poznan from merging into a more coherent force. Digressing from the original plan that called for heading straight for Vistula and then proceeding to Warsaw, Manstein swayed Rundstedt into encircling the Polish units in the Radom area. The encirclement succeeded, clearing the bulk of Polish resistance from the southern approach to Warsaw.

France

In late 1939 Manstein worked with Blumentritt and von Tresckow to develop the plan to invade France. He suggested that the tank troops should decisively attack through the wooded hills of the Ardennes, where no one would expect them, seize bridges on the Meuse River and drive to the English Channel before redeploying and striking eastwards, thus outflanking the Maginot Line and cutting off strong French and Allied Armies in the Belgium and Flanders from the French mainland. The plan was nicknamed Sichelschnitt (sickle cut).

OKW originally rejected the proposal, but Hitler, looking for a innovative new methods of waging war, approved of a modified version, Fall Gelb, that later became known as the Manstein Plan. Manstein was then sent back to Silesia, he played a minor role during the operation serving under Günther von Kluge's 4th Army, however it was his corps which helped to achieve the first breakthrough, east of Amiens, and was first to reach and cross the River Seine. The invasion was an outstanding military success and Manstein was awarded the Knight's Cross for planning it and promoted to General.

Eastern Front

In February 1941, Manstein was appointed commander of the 56th Panzer Corps. He was involved in Operation Barbarossa where he served under General Erich Hoepner. Attacking on 22nd June 1941, Manstein advanced more than 100 miles in only two days and was able to seize two vital bridges over the Dvina River at Dvinsk. The following month he captured Demyansk and Torzhok. Manstein was appointed commander of 11th Army in September 1941, and was given the task of conquering the Crimea. The Red Army defended Sevastopol and this important Black Sea naval base was not taken until late June 1942.

Promoted to Field Marshal on July 1, Manstein was sent to the Leningrad front and assigned to lead Operation Northern Lights. Set to launch on September 15, Hitler was confident that with considerable amounts of artillery and the new Tiger tank this push would finally break the determined Soviet defense, but Manstein was more pessimistic about its outcome, arguing that for a victory, a simultaneous attack in the north by the Finns would be needed. However, on August 27, the Soviets launched a spoiling attack on Georg Lindemann’s 18th Army in the narrow German salient west of Lake Ladoga, Manstein was now forced to divert his forces in order to avoid catastrophe. What ensued was a series of bitter battles where Manstein's smaller forces managed to outmaneuver the larger Soviet forces, and the loss of over 60,000 men over the next few months.

On November 21, 1942; during the Battle of Stalingrad, Adolf Hitler appointed Manstein the commander of the a newly created Army Group Don (Heeresgruppe Don), comprised of a hastily assembled group of tired men and machines, and ordered him to lead Operation Wintergewitter (Winter Storm), the rescue effort composed of Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army and auxiliary Romanian troops, to relieve the 6th Army of Friedrich Paulus that was encircled inside the city. Wintergewitter, launched on December 12, achieved some initial success and von Manstein got his three panzer divisions and supporting units of the 57th Panzer Corps to within 30 miles of the city by December 20. At this point Manstein pleaded that the 6th Army attempt a break out, but Paulus refused, since Hitler flatly refused to issue such an order, and instead ordered the 6th Army to stay in the besieged city.

Operation Saturn, a massive Red Army offensive in the most southern part of the front, aimed at capturing Rostov and thus cutting off the German Army Group A still withdrawing from the Caucasus, forced Manstein to divert his forces to help hard-pressed Army Group A in its retreat to the Ukraine, thus avoiding the complete collapse of the entire front.

Manstein regrouped and on February 21 launched a counteroffensive into the overextended Soviet flank. The assault proved a major success: von Manstein's troops advanced rapidly into the Soviet territory, isolating Soviet forward units and forcing the Red Army to halt most of its offensive operations; by March 2, tank spearheads from Hoth's 4th Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf meet, cutting off large portions of the Soviet Southwest Front, and by March 9 the Wehrmacht inflicted a heavy defeat on the Soviets at Krasnograd and Barvenkovo. An estimated 23,000 Soviet soldiers were killed and a further 9,000 were captured. Additionally, 615 Soviet tanks and 354 guns were also captured.

Manstein now went on and pushed onward, his effort spearheaded by Paul Hausser's 2nd SS Panzer Corps, recapturing Kharkov on March 14, after the bloody street-fighting of what is known the Third Battle of Kharkov; in recognition for this operation, von Manstein received the Oak Leaves for the Knight's Cross. The 2nd SS Panzer Corps then went on to capture Belgorod on March 21. Manstein then proposed a daring action for the summer nicknamed the "backhand blow", which was intended to outflank the Red Army into the Sea of Azov at Rostov, but Hitler instead chose to back the more conventional Operation Citadel aimed at crushing the Kursk salient.

During the Citadel Manstein led the southern pincer, and despite losses he managed to complete most of his initial goals, inflicting far more casualties on the Soviet defending force that his attacking force sustained. In his memoirs, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who led the Soviet defense at Kursk, praised Manstein by recalling that as the German Commander of the southern sector he displayed considerable talents in using his troops. But due to the almost complete failure of the northern sector's pincer led by Günther von Kluge and Walther Model, chronic lack of infantry support, as well as the Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Italy, Hitler decided to call off the offensive. Manstein protested, asserting that the victory was almost at hand. After the failure of Citadel the Soviets launched a massive counterattack on the exhausted German forces.

In September he withdrew to the west bank of the Dnieper River, while inflicting heavy casualties on the Red Army. From October to mid-January of 1944, von Manstein "stabilized" the situation but in late January was forced to retreat further westwards by the Soviet offensive. In mid-February of 1944, von Manstein disobeyed Hitler's order and ordered 11th and 42nd Corps (consisting of 56,000 men in six divisions) of Army Group South (Heeresgruppe Süd) to break out from the "Korsun Pocket", which occurred on February 16/17th. Eventually, Hitler accepted this action and ordered the breakout after it already took place.

Manstein continued to argue with Hitler about overall strategy on the Eastern Front. He advocated an elastic, mobile defense—he was quite ready to cede territory, attempting to make the Soviet forces either to stretch out too thinly or to make them advance too fast such that they could be attacked on the flanks with the goal of encircling them. Hitler instead insisted on static, attritional total war. As a result, in March 1944 Manstein was relieved of his command and on April 2, 1944 Walther Model replaced him as commander of Southern Army Group. Nevertheless Manstein received the Swords for his Knight's Cross, the highest German military honour.

After his dismissal he entered an eye clinic in Breslau, recuperated near Dresden, and then retired. Although he did not take part in the attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944, he was aware of it. He had been contacted by Henning von Tresckow and others already in 1943, but had refused to join them, as he still considered himself bound by duty (he rejected the approaches with the statement "Preussische Feldmarschälle meutern nicht" — "Prussian Field Marshals do not mutiny") and also feared that a civil war would ensue. Though he didn't join them, he never betrayed the plotters either. In late January of 1945 he collected his family from their homes in Liegnitz and evacuated them to western Germany. He surrendered to British Field Marshal Montgomery and was arrested by the British troops on August 23, 1945.


Post War

Trial

During the Nuremberg trials in 1946, he was only called as a witness for the defense, testifying in the indictment against the General Staff of the Army and High Command of the German Armed Forces; both organizations were acquitted. Later, because of the Soviet pressure, who wanted him extradited to stand trial in the USSR, the British accepted their indictments and charged him of war crimes, putting him on trial before a Britsh Military Tribunal in Hamburg during the summer of 1949. In part because of the Soviet demands in the Cold War environment, and respect for his military exploits, many in the British military establishment, such as the Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and the renowned military strategist B. H. Liddell Hart, openly expressed sympathy for von Manstein's plight and along with the likes of Sir Winston Churchill donated money to help set up the defense. Churchill saw the trial as yet another effort of the then ruling Attlee government aimed at appeasing the Soviets.

In court, Manstein's defense, led by distinguished lawyer Reginald Thomas Paget, argued that he was unaware that genocide was taking place in territory under his control. During the trial it was argued that von Manstein didn't enforce the Commissar order, which called for the immediate execution of Red Army’s Communist Party commissars. According to his testimony at the Nuremberg trials, Volume 20, pp. 608-609 (August 10, 1946) [1] (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/08-10-46.htm), he received it, but refused to carry it out. He claimed that his superior at that time, Field Marshal von Leeb, tolerated and tacitly approved of his choice, and he also claimed that the order were not carried out in practice.

However, von Manstein did issue an order on November 20, 1941: his version of the infamous "Reichenau Order" [2] (http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/untermens ... enau.shtml), which equated "partisans" and "Jews" and called for draconic measures against them. Hitler and Field Marshal von Rundstedt recommended the "Reichenau Order" as being exemplary and encouraged other generals to issue similar orders. Not all did, in fact, it seems that only a minority did do so. Von Manstein was among those who voluntarily issued such an order. It stated that:

"This struggle is not being carried on against the Soviet Armed Forces alone in the established form laid down by European rules of warfare.
Behind the front too, the fighting continues. Partisan snipers dressed as civilians attack single soldiers and small units and try to disrupt our supplies by sabotage with mines and infernal machines. Bolshevists left behind keep the population freed from Bolshevism in a state of unrest by means of terror and attempt thereby to sabotage the political and economic pacification of the country. Harvests and factories are destroyed and the city population in particular is thereby ruthlessly delivered to starvation.
Jewry is the middleman between the enemy in the rear and the remains of the Red Army and the Red leadership still fighting. More strongly than in Europe they hold all key positions of political leadership and administration, of trade and crafts and constitutes a cell for all unrest and possible uprisings.
The Jewish Bolshevik system must be wiped out once and for all and should never again be allowed to invade our European living space.
The German soldier has therefore not only the task of crushing the military potential of this system. He comes also as the bearer of a racial concept and as the avenger of all the cruelties which have been perpetrated on him and on the German people."
...
"The soldier must appreciate the necessity for the harsh punishment of Jewry, the spiritual bearer of the Bolshevik terror. This is also necessary in order to nip in the bud all uprisings which are mostly plotted by Jews."
(Nuremberg trials proceedings, Vol. 20, pp. 639 - 645 [3] (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/08-10-46.htm))

The order also stated: "The food situation at home makes it essential that the troops should as far as possible be fed off the land and that furthermore the largest possible stocks should be placed at the disposal of the homeland. Particularly in enemy cities a large part of the population will have to go hungry."(ibid.) This also was one of the indictments against von Manstein in Hamburg; not only neglect of civilians, but also exploitation of invaded countries for the sole benefit of the "homeland", something considerd illegal by the then current laws of war.

But Manstein did not allow the order to be passed on without adding a supplement which stated that "severe steps will be taken against arbitrary action and self-interest, against savagery and indiscipline, against any violation of the honor of the soldier" and that "respect for religious customs, particularly those of Muslim Tartars, must be demanded." (ibid.) The evidence for this order was first presented on August 10, 1946 in Nuremberg; von Manstein acknowledged that he had signed this order of November 20, 1941, but claimed that he didn't remember it. This order was a major piece of evidence for the prosecution at his Hamburg trial.

While Paget successfully acquitted Manstein of many of the seventeen charges, he was still found guilty of two charges and accountable on seven others, mainly for employing scorched earth tactics and for failing to protect civilian population, and thus was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. This caused a massive uproar among Manstein's supporters and the sentence was subsequently reduced to 12 years. However, he was released on May 6, 1953 for medical reasons.



Senior advisor

Called on by the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, he served as his senior defense advisor and chaired a military sub-committee appointed to advise the parliament on military organization and doctrine for the new German Army, the Bundeswehr and its incorporation into NATO. He later moved with his family to Bavaria. His war memoirs, Verlorene Siege (Lost Victories), were published in Germany in 1955, and translated into English in 1958. In them, he presented the thesis that if the generals had been in charge of strategy instead of Hitler, the war on the Eastern Front could have been won.

Never having been a member of the Nazi party, he had no trouble in West Germany, unlike some other of the Reich's Field Marshals. Because of his influence, for the first few years of the Bundeswehr he was seen as the unofficial chef of staff, and even later his birthday parties were regularly attended by official delegations of Bundeswehr and NATO top leaders, such as General Hans Speidel who was the Commander in Chief of the Allied ground forces in Central Europe from 1957 to 1963. This wasn't the case with the party card carrying pro-Nazi Field Marshals such as Milch, Schörner, von Küchler, List, and others who were disregarded and forgotten after the war.

Erich von Manstein died at Irschenhausen, Bavaria, in June 1973. He was buried with full military honors.

Quotes about von Manstein

* "He was not only the most brilliant strategist of all our generals, but he had a good political sense. A man of that quality was too difficult for Hitler to swallow for long. At conferences Manstein often differed from Hitler, in front of others, and would go so far as to declare that some of the ideas which Hitler put forward were nonsense." Günther Blumentritt
* "It is very clear that he had a superb sense of operational possibilities and and equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanized forces than any other commander who had not been trained in the tank arm. In sum, he had military genius." B. H. Liddell Hart
* "He is the best tactician and combat commander we have" Wolfram von Richthofen
* "Master of the Blitzkrieg" J.F.C. Fuller
* "He would mock Hitler, admit to his Jewish lineage, and would give a Nazi salute that parodied a dachshund’s trick of raising its paw." Anthony Beevor (Stalingrad, 1998, Penguin, p347)

Pat D
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Jewish Bolsheviks

#2

Post by Pat D » 29 Nov 2004, 06:36

Von Manstein's comments about the "Jewish bolsheviks" controlling Russia etc. are similiar to Hitler's and the standard Nazi doctrine. In reality was there a significant Jewish influence in the soviet Union?? I've never seen any discussion or facts on this and the Stalin regime hardly seems like it would have been aligned with or influenced by the Jewish faith let alone any religion.


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#3

Post by David Thompson » 29 Nov 2004, 20:35

IMT testimony of Erich von Manstein
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=56504

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Reader3000
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#4

Post by Reader3000 » 30 Nov 2004, 20:22

About the dog of Manstein:

It was trained to raise it's right foot on the command "How does the brown [here for Nazi] dog make?". These conditioning was made by Manstein's adjutant, Alexander Stahlberg.

see: "Die verdammte Pflicht" by Alexander Stahlberg.

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Peter H
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#5

Post by Peter H » 03 Jul 2005, 15:38

An off topic rant was removed.

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#6

Post by Panzermahn » 05 Jul 2005, 04:34

Von Manstein, admitted having Jewish antecedents in his bloodline to his close aides. In fact, I remembered there was a discussion on von Manstein's Polish blood (nee Lewinski)

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Dieter Zinke
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#7

Post by Dieter Zinke » 05 Jul 2005, 08:28

I have to recommend the excellent following links (of the historian Michael Schröders) for further knowledges

http://www.historisches-centrum.de/foru ... s04-2.html
http://www.nfhdata.de/cgi-local/frame/i ... d=96&page=

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nny
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#8

Post by nny » 06 Jul 2005, 07:24

I hope this isn't too far off topic, but I am reading a biography on Patton by Hirshson and I was interested in something Liddell Hart mentioned about Patton, which a search engine on this site picked up in your post :

In part because of the Soviet demands in the Cold War environment, and respect for his military exploits, many in the British military establishment, such as the Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and the renowned military strategist B. H. Liddell Hart, openly expressed sympathy for von Manstein's plight and along with the likes of Sir Winston Churchill donated money to help set up the defense.

Apparently Hart was trying to get Alexander Clifford to testify in defense of (Not stated in the book, maybe someone can help me, I'm assuming Manstein was one of them) a few German generals on trial for similar offenses that Pattons troops committed in Sicily. Clifford denied on the grounds that "The main reason is that I promised General Patton I never would make use of the incident in public.", regarding his witnessing of the Comiso shootings of 120 some odd POWs. Harts reply was such:

I am sorry to hear what you say about the difficulty of citing you in substantiation of what you told me about the Comiso shootings. When you told me about them you didn't mention that there was any objection to speaking about them. While I can well understand Patton's natural desire not to have the episode published, and the difficulty in which that placed you at the time, I do not quite see why such a check on historical truth should apply after the war, especially as Patton is dead, and i can have no detrimental effect on his position. If such conditions about keeping matters confidential were to be observed in perpetuity after the men concerned are dead, there would be no chance of ever getting at the truth of history.
Moreover, the very fact that other generals are now on trial for their lives because their troops did similar things to what happened at Comiso might well be regarded by Patton himself, if he were still alive, as justifying release from such a promise as you gave him. It is notable that a number of the other American military and naval chiefs have given evidence of what they did themselves as an aid to the defense in other trials...It would weigh with any fair-minded court if it can be shown that similar things were done on the Allied side. There have been several cases, to my knowledge, where sentences have been cancelled by British Review Boards in the light of such evidence on behalf of the defense.


Sorry for any typos I was typing quick while copying from the book.

I'm not sure of what examples of defense he may have been citing, possibly where Donitz was spared the Death penalty over the Laconia order because Nimitz stated American submarine commanders followed the same protocol without having to be ordered, other than that I'm not sure.

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Re: Jewish Bolsheviks

#9

Post by nny » 06 Jul 2005, 08:11

Pat D wrote:Von Manstein's comments about the "Jewish bolsheviks" controlling Russia etc. are similiar to Hitler's and the standard Nazi doctrine. In reality was there a significant Jewish influence in the soviet Union?? I've never seen any discussion or facts on this and the Stalin regime hardly seems like it would have been aligned with or influenced by the Jewish faith let alone any religion.
Churchill wrote an article about the Jewish influence in Bolshevism (Churchill said "With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews"), that is why I was curious about his support of Manstein, I wonder if anyone has any information as to what Churchill thought of Mansteins actions to carry out the execution of Jews as Bolshevicks in the Soviet Union? I've heard that Trotsky requested in 1919 that Jews be allowed into the red army because they were over represented in the bureaucracy and the Cheka (later the NKVD) and he feared the population may become overly antisemetic due to this fact. I think a further interesting topic, which probably is already available on this forum, is why did so many people, including Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler (Arguable 2 of the most important people of the early 20th century) believe that the Jewish people were so intimately connected with Bolshevism? I was browsing through a WWII (Complete history) book in B&N the other day and came across a picture where German soldiers were boarding a train that had painted on the sides "Going to Russia to Thrash the Jews" (May have been Poland, sorry :/ ) This is obviously a result of the propoganda that they were fed, but where did this connection come from? I understand that Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature for exposing the horrors of the Russian Gulag system, written in the 70s (Gulag Archipelago I believe), also wrote a book in which he describes the Jewish component to the Russian Revolution :

But it is impossible to find the answer to the eternal question: who is to be blamed, who led us to our death? To explain the actions of the Kiev cheka [secret police - forerunners of the KGB] only by the fact that two thirds were Jews, is certainly incorrect."

He also complains that :

"If I would care to generalize, and to say that the life of the Jews in the camps was especially hard, I could, and would not face reproach for an unjust national generalisation. But in the camps where I was kept, it was different. The Jews whose experience I saw - their life was softer than that of others."

I believe that there have been books written by Jewish survivors of the gulag system, including Rabbis which would contradict what Solzhenitsyn has written.

I believe there are posts on this server that show a Jewish investigators horror that "33 out of 33 names on a NKVD plaque commemorating the sacrafices of Soviets to the Great Patriotic War were all Jewish".

D Thomas wrote http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=79590

Operational Situation Report USSR No. 14; July 6, 1941

Location: Tarnopol

In Tarnopol 5,000 Ukrainians were taken away, and 2,000 murdered [by the Soviets]. In retaliation, arrest of Jewish intelligentsia has begun, since they are responsible for the murders and have also acted as informers for the NKVD. The number is estimated at 1,000. On July 5, about 70 Jews were assembled by the Ukrainians and finished off with concentrated fire [machine gunned]. 20 more Jews slain in the streets by Ukrainians and soldiers as retaliation for the murder of 3 soldiers who were found in prison, tied, their tongues sliced and eyes gouged out. The German Army demonstrates a gratifyingly good attitude towards Jews. Zlochev was searched for agents and archives.


There has been much said about the Ukrainian contribution towards what we now know as the holocaust (60 Minutes in the US stated that Ukranians were "genetically anti-semetic"), but not everything can simply be explained away by 'they were anti-semetic'. Ukrainians, victims of Bolshevick violence seemed to jump at the chance to lash out at Jews, why is this? Why did Hitler and Churchill both seem to equate Bolshevism with Judaism? It may be an uncomfortable topic (whether it is a result of antisemetic people, misguided information or lies), but it is part of history, and is something that, in explaining, will lead to a fuller understanding of the events of WWII.

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Peter H
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#10

Post by Peter H » 06 Jul 2005, 11:52

Let's keep this topic on Manstein and forgo any further discusions on the supposed Jewish influence on Bolshevism,Hollywood,Wall Street,the Bush Adminstration,the comedy industry,et al.
Thank you, Peter, for your kind assistance

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#11

Post by Unterfeldwebeljosef » 12 Jul 2005, 04:43

I thought I posted a topic on here, if it got deleted for reasons of offensive content then I apologize that wasn't my intention.If not though, then what gives....hmm. :?
The racist and antisemistic content was not to accept.
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#12

Post by Unterfeldwebeljosef » 12 Jul 2005, 20:17

Unterfeldwebeljosef wrote:I thought I posted a topic on here, if it got deleted for reasons of offensive content then I apologize that wasn't my intention.If not though, then what gives....hmm. :?
The racist and antisemistic content was not to accept.
Dieter Zinke moderator
...if you say so. :|
I didn't mean it as racist or antisemitic I just was saying that in the same way somebody would look chinese if they were from China he looked somewhat semitic. I didn't say anything bad about the semites nor did I imply anything of the sort, but you are the moderator and I'll respect your judgement. I did see a similar comment to mine in one of the threads about Emil Maurice and nobody took offense so I thought this would be appropriate. sorry.

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Dieter Zinke
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#13

Post by Dieter Zinke » 12 Jul 2005, 23:19

he looked somewhat semitic
Nonsense and not to accept.
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DZ

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