Comment by inkyoto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by inkyoto | Hacker News Reader

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> But if you happened to be in East Europe, WW2 was primarily a war between nazism and communism.

WWII in Eastern Europe was a war for the survival of the Slavic peoples whom the Nazis declared to be the Untermensch[0] (Belorussians, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians – all of them) and were determined to fully exterminate them all following the extermination of the Jews and the Roma people.

The scale of extermination of the Slavs went far beyond the mass murdering of them in concentration camps, and included rounding up villages and burning them along with the villagers down with the use of flamethrowers, with no remorse because the Nazis considered the Slavs sub-humans[1][2][3][4].

Neither Czechoslovakia, nor Poland, nor the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had communism of any shape or flavour.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michni%C3%B3w_massacre

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Centre_Lipa_Remembers...

How do Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland fit in that picture?

WW2 was a complex war. The big picture for the European part was that the two main powers divided Europe in their spheres of influence, fully intending to fight each other for overall supremacy after a while. Some countries joined their designated side voluntarily, some joined under a threat of invasion, and most of the rest were invaded. The ones I listed were the ones where the USSR was the initial aggressor.

Instead of shifting the goalposts, please do yourself a favour and read up on the Untermenschen and the convoluted hierarchy of the sub-humans in the Nazi racial ideology. As an example, since the Nazis harboured particular hatred towards the Poles, the Poles were at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and only complete obliteration of the Polish ethnicity was deemed acceptable.

One joins an alliance of convenience, sometimes in very unfavourable circumstances, to avoid the worst – the demise of one's own people and to guarantee their survival. Making a deal with the devil is a well-known adage that aptly describes such an unfortunate event.

Nazis considered the Finns (and the Estonians by extension) to be racially pure, with Latvians and Lithuanians being somewhere in between either redeemable or tolerable (frankly, I can't recall the exact details).

> WW2 was a complex war.

WWII was no more complex than the WWI, and it had a single, overarching objective – the repartitioning of the world. The main difference between the two was that the WWII was infused with a vile racial ideology, used to justify the pursuit of Lebensraum and the total annihilation of peoples whom the Nazi Party targeted with hatred, based on their crackpot so-called racial studies.

A clear view of WW II in all its complexity is important. The current tense geopolitical context makes that even more so. Have you noticed how the current head war criminal in Moscow is glorifying his WW II predecessor?

> war for the survival of the Slavic peoples

That simplifies the situation a bit too much. When Soviet Union conquered half of Poland, which side were the Slavs, and which side were the Slavs?

The relevant film here is "Come and See" (USSR, 1985).

Moreover, Germans decided that Slavs are untermensch because of Holodomor henocide of Ukrainians ([Little] Russians) by Russians (Great Russians). The confusion between [Little] Russians (now Ukrainians) and Great Russians (now Russians) caused Germans to think that Russians performed genocide of their own nation, killed millions of their own mothers and children, which is biggest sin in Germany (and many other nations).

This is Nazi talk.

That was the actual Nazi plan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan

The differentiation between Ukraine and Russia is interesting.

Ukrainian nationalists had also joined the Nazis.

> Ukrainian nationalists had also joined the Nazis.

This occurred in all occupied territories didn’t it? France, Holland, Belgium etc.

It also occurred in some that weren’t occupied. Spain for example, and don’t look too hard at the British Royal Family (for this reason and various others).

Also in North America, eg: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-ame...

As with Ukraine a few Nazi's didn't represent the country nor even come close to a majority.

Few Ukrainians joined Nazi, few Jews joined Nazi, whole 3 million Russian Army joined Nazi. :-/

This is a hornet nest.

I once read this from Alain Badiou:

"This separatism at certain moments reached extremes that no one could forget, particularly not the Russian people, knowing that the vast mass of the Nazi-armed and organised armies coming from Russian territory were Ukrainian. The Vlasov army was a Ukrainian army. Today we can even read the history of Ukrainians turning entire villages to blood and fire, including French ones. A good part of the repression of the maquis in central France was carried out by Ukrainians. "

Wikimedia presents Vaslov's army as Russian:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army

But Wikipedia about Vlasov (SS Division here):

"He (Himmler) oversaw the creation of the SS-Volunteer Division "Galicia" in October 1943 from Ukrainian volunteers, but that same month he said that Vlasov made him "genuinely anxious."

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/1569-a-present-default... https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/1569-a-present-default...

--- Badiou is a strange guy but I trust him.

In general, I have the impression that the historiography of the Nazi collobaration in Central Europe has been politically influenced in recent years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Vlasov

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