Communists and Nazis and bears! Oh my!

Over 300,000 Greeks starved to death during World War II.

I had no idea.

I also read in today’s Herald Sun that the Nazis shot many Greeks for helping Australian soldiers (by giving them food, for example) during World War II.

This has lowered my view of the Nazis, were that possible.

It says something about the scale of carnage that occurred during World War II, that I hadn’t heard anything about the starvation of 300,000 people in one nation despite reading a number of books about that war (not to mention TV documentaries and other sources). Makes me wonder what else I haven’t heard about.

RSS readers click here to watch the videos.

Walt Disney made this cartoon, “What Makes A Nazi?”:

On a less serious note, “The Ducktators” from Warner Brothers:

I recently had a discussion with a work colleague that went something like the following:

Him: “The Government is planning on reducing childhood obesity by giving schoolkids free fruit on Fridays. What they really need is exercise, though.”

Me: “Didn’t the Hitler Youth do that?”

“What, give kids free fruit?”

“No, make them exercise.”

I had managed to tie in childhood obesity prevention programs with Hitler. A proud moment for me, if I do say so myself.

Is it possible to tie any topic of conversation with Hitler? Godwin’s Rule Of Nazi Analogies would suggest so. But there are some topics which would be difficult for this, if not impossible. See if you can connect Hitler to one of these conversation topics:

1. The upcoming Australian federal election
2. Global warming
3. The upcoming presidential primaries in the States
4. Britney Spears shaving her head
5. Pet Fashion Week held in New York

This remarkably similar post may provide inspiration.

I recently left a comment about Chamberlain at CultureWatch. The following is the expanded edition.

Chamberlain has been harshly judged by history. Time after time, his appeasement policy is derided as foolish. Had war on Hitler been declared earlier, so the reasoning goes, the war would have been over much quicker, with fewer casualties and no Holocaust. But such are the benefits of hindsight. Was an earlier declaration of war feasible, and would it have achieved these results?

The normal reason given for Chamberlain’s appeasement policy is a desire to avoid a repeat of the Great War. It is true that Britain was very much keen to avoid war because of the carnage of the First World War. But there were other reasons for their inaction.

One is the harshness of the Versailles treaty. The punitive measures outlined in that treaty were seen as overly unfair and harsh, as indeed they were. Germany had its territory greatly reduced and had to pay crippling reparations. The first aggressive actions of Nazi Germany, namely rearmament, the sending of troops into the Rhineland and the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, were thus seen by many as righting the wrongs of the Versailles treaty, and no good cause for a war. In the case of Austria, it was widely known that most Austrians supported the unification of Austria and Germany.

It was only after Germany broke the terms of the Munich agreement by swallowing Czechoslovakia that popular opinion in Britain turned against them. Before that point, the public did not perceive any just cause for a war. They did not see much wrong with Germany was doing.

Also, Britain simply didn’t have the economic capacity to wage war. During Hitler’s rise Britain and France were still in the midst of the Great Depression. Thus their economic ability to wage war was greatly diminished. It is no wonder they were reluctant to wage war under those conditions. Indeed, the British government almost went bankrupt under the economic strains of the war, and certainly would have if not for the United States.

Britain never had the capacity to fight alone. In a war against Germany, France would have to supply the bulk of the manpower and equipment, while undertaking most of the risk. The assistance of the United States was also required. Were these nations willing to wage war? On the contrary, both were far more reluctant to wage war than Britain was.

Under such circumstances, starting a war would have been foolhardy in the extreme, but preparing for war was very necessary. Public perception seems to be that Britain did very little in this regard. Far from doing nothing, Britain invested a lot in rearming during the ’30s. This included the development of radar, which proved so crucial in the Battle of Britain.

Communism.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see that word?

If your answer was “A fun-filled day for the whole family”, than Lithuania has the theme park for you! Called Grūtas Park, it was opened in 2001 by mushroom and berry magnate Viliumas Malinauskas.

It features statues, sculptures and paintings from the Soviet era, including 65 statues of Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev and others, with other examples of Communist propaganda. You can view Soviet Youth posters and see the cattle trucks that once transported prisoners to Siberia.

There is also a zoo, for some reason.

The theme park is surrounded by barbed wire and guard posts in a replica of a Siberian slave labour camp. “It combines the charms of a Disneyland with the worst of the Soviet gulag”, Malinauskas reportedly said at the park’s official opening.

From Totalitaria:

A few hundred yards from his office window, for instance, stands a large, green, Soviet locomotive. Malinauskas’s original plan was to renovate a railway track which would have led all the way to Vilnius. There, visitors would have been herded by uniformed KGB men into replicas of the cattle trucks used to take Lithuanians to the Gulags. This ambitious scheme has had to be scaled down in the face of widespread outrage, though he still hopes that “they will be deported right into our information centre”.

Also in Lithuania, you can view the former KGB prison in Vilnius, the capital city.

Stalin’s humility is well known to readers of this blog. Despite this humility, his subjects would routinely compose fawning poems about him. Stalin found this embarrassing. What’s a dictator to do?

Have them published in the official Party newspaper, of course.

I recently found the following hymns to Stalin, originally published in Pravda during Stalin’s long reign, in Richard Wurmbrand’s book Marx And Satan. Wurmbrand was not a Communist; the book title probably gives that away, I suppose; but since he was extensively tortured by the Communists we can forgive him for that.

The following first appeared in Pravda in 1935:

He commands the sun of the enemies to set.
He spoke, and the East for friends became a great glow.
Should he say that coal turns white,
It will be as Stalin wills …
The master of the entire world – remember – is now Stalin.

This next one appeared a number of years later:

I would have compared him to a white mountain – but the mountain has a summit.
I would have compared him to the depths of the sea – but the sea has a bottom.
I would have compared him to the shining moon – but the moon shines at midnight, not at noon.
I would have compared him to the brilliant sun – but the sun radiates at noon, not at midnight.

And lastly, my personal favourite, from August 1936:

O great Stalin, O leader of the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth,
Thou who purifiest the earth,
Thou who restoreth the centuries,
Thou who makes bloom the Spring,
Thou who makes vibrate the musical chords.
Thou, splendour of my Spring, O Thou
Sun reflected from millions of hearts.

Gotta love the King James language there. I wonder how that translates into Russian?

Turkmenistan once had a dictator who banned beards and renamed the month of April after his mother.

Inspirational, is it not?

In that spirit I propose to ban the following:

1. Referring to Paris as Paris, France

As though it could be anywhere else. There is no Paris in Germany for us to get it confused with. Everyone knows that Paris is in France. Anyone who doesn’t is beyond help anyway.

2. Right-handed scissors

Us lefties have had it with your right-handed appliances. From now on, I say let them all be left-handed. We’ll soon see how you like it.

3. Knee-jerk reactions

Anyone who does not pause to think of the consequences of spouting nonsense before opening their mouths ought to be shot – and will be, one day, if I have anything to do with it.

4. Issuing new legislation just for the sake of it

Each new law passed increases the burden on the citizens, who have to figure out how the new laws apply to them. For this reason, no new laws will be considered unless they have some practical benefit. Laws that were instituted for some nice-sounding reason even though they are completely ineffective shall be skewered (my new favourite word).

5. Pedestrian crossings that are on one side of the road only

If I want to cross the road, why should I have to cross more sides of it than I have to, just to keep drivers happy? Sheesh.

I was in Newtown recently when I visited the Gould’s bookshop on King St, a truly enormous store filled with cassettes, CDs, books and LPs, all second-hand. This was my second trip to the store and to Newtown. (Read about the first trip if you like.)

There were a few things I was looking for, all Communism related, for this store has a huge range of books covering all aspects of Communism. There are books on Marx and Engels, the Russian Revolution, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao and all the isms associated with them. There are books that Stalin and Lenin had written (or ghostwritten). If you are looking for the Soviet Union Criminal Code (1971 edition) or a copy of the speech Stalin made to the 14th Party Congress, Gould’s is the store for you!

Unfortunately, I didn’t find what I was looking for, namely The Great Terror by Robert Conquest, The Gulag Archipelago Volumes 2 & 3 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU(B)), also known as the Short Course, which was the official history of the Party.

Now, there were several editions of the Short Course up for sale, but the edition I was looking for was not among them. I needed an edition that covered the Second World War but was published while Stalin was still in power, since later editions were revised to be more critical of him. Why? I was looking for the edition with Stalinist propaganda in it, to verify a quote that had previously appeared on this blog.

Never mind.

I did, however, manage to find a copy of “Triumph Of The Will”, the masterful and notorious Nazi propaganda film by Leni Riefenstahl, on sale in a discount shop bargain bin for just $2.

If any of you are interested, the discount shop is located right next to Westfield Miranda on Kiora Rd. There are probably a few copies left. Happy hunting, or should I say, Sieg Heil!

In 1934, Herman Goering had raccoons introduced into German forests from North America to “enrich the local fauna” and give hunters something new to shoot at. However, they quickly became a pest. With no natural predators in their new home, and with pest control not being seen as a priority during World War II (who would have thought?) they started spreading rapidly.

The result? Nazi raccoons, not content with the forests of the German Fatherland, have invaded all their neighbours looking for their Lebensraum. They have been spotted as far away as Chechnya and are expected to launch an invasion of Britain soon.

History repeats, I guess.

(Hat-tip to politburo diktat 2.0)

Yes it’s true. All those attempts to paint Stalin as the very definition of ruthlessness might have to be re-thought, due to startling new evidence. What is that, you ask? The memoirs of Stalin’s mother have been found.

Long-term readers of this blog should have no reason to doubt this. And here is some more proof for the skeptics; in this photo, Stalin shows his, soft nurturing side: