The Cold War "baby boomers" probably do not know what Operation Barbarrosa was and that it occurred on June 22, 1941. We do remember D-Day, the 6th of June 1944 very well. That is because our former grand ally of WW II became the "evil empire" immediately after VE Day, which by the way was on May 8, 1945. Let me give you a little of the lost history that since 1945 has brought us to the depths of despair as we found out that it was not Russia but our government that terrorized us during the 50s and 60s as the military industrial complex took over the nation. The game is still the same, only the enemy has changed.
Operation Barbarossa (German: ''Unternehmen Barbarossa'') was the codename for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that commenced on June 22, 1941.[5]The operation was named after the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, a leader of the Crusades in the 12th century. It is not to be confused with the war on the Eastern Front in its entirety.The original German goal was the rapid conquest of the European part of the Soviet Union, west of a line connecting the cities of Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, often referred to as the A-A line (see the translation of Hitler's directive for details). The failure of Operation Barbarossa resulted in the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany, and was a turning point for the fortunes of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Operation Barbarossa opened up the Eastern Front, which ultimately became one of the biggest theatres of war in human history alongside the Second Sino-Japanese War, with some of the largest and most brutal battles, deadliest atrocities, terrible loss of life and miserable conditions for the Soviets and Germans alike.
Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") makes clear his intention of an invasion of the Soviet Union. In his book, he made clear his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum ("living space", i.e. land and raw materials), and that it should be found in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic peoples. This policy was called the New Order. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa)."
Hitler's pre-war intentions toward the U.S.S.R. were fully known by England, France., and the U.S. That is why the industrialists from the so-called western democracies did everything they could to appease Hitler so that he would ultimately attack Russia and end the Bolshevik Revolution. The same right wingers who pretend to support the Jews and Israel were the biggest supporters of fascism, Hitler, and the genocide of the Jews that followed. The conspiracy by the western powers to destroy Russia came back to bite them in 1940 as Hitler defeated Poland and France and England stood alone until Russia entered the war 66 years ago today.
By the time that the D-Day operation had begun in 1944, the European theatre was already a foregone conclusion and Germany's defeat was imminent. Britain and the U.S. had spent 2 years fighting the Nazis in Africa and Italy taking minor casualties as the Russians had lost 10s of millions of soldiers and citizens. The casualty figures for the U.S. and Britain combined in WW II were less that 1 million. The Soviets lost approximately 25 million including 2.5 million Jews. Had the Allies not landed in Normandy, the post war continent would have been completely controlled by the Soviets. More importantly, Hitler would have defeated England and the U.S. but for the massive contribution by the Red Army.
As my father had told me, before the guns of war became cold, the vultures of the western democracies turned their sites against an ally, Russia, who had saved the world from Nazi and Japanese domination. Somehow, the pre-war fascist right wing regimes in Poland, Rumania, and other eastern block countries were fine. After WW II, the U.S. decided that it wanted to install Jeffersonian democracies in eastern Europe as we adopted the anything but "red" foreign policy. And the excuse then was that Stalin was a ruthless dictator. Sound familiar? Stephen Ambrose and other great historians know that Stalin was trying to build a security buffer in eastern Europe to prevent another German attack. Losing 25 million people and having their country virtually destroyed by Germany was good cause for their need for security. And their only guaranty of that buffer was to have friendly governments neighboring them. Perhaps we would have felt the same had we been in their shoes.
The excuse used to start the Cold War was that Stalin was a tyrannical dictator that had killed 10 million of his own people and that he was interested in world domination. Stalin was a tyrannical dictator who killed a lot of his own people. However, by the end of the War, he was only interested in consolidating his position and the rebuilding of his own country. The U.S. tried to compare him to Hitler and used the same argument against him and the Soviet government. This was at a time when the U.S. had the atomic bomb all by itself. Compare that argument with the excuse used to attack Iraq in 2003. "Saddam was a dictator who killed lots of his own people" was again the argument used against a former ally.
It seems apparent to me that the institutions within and without government that manufactured the Cold War still think that Americans can be fooled again. The fact is that the dumbing down of America that started in the 50s with the "duck and cover" mentality is coming to an end. The exploitation of our own people that has bankrupted our country by these war mongering predatory capatalists is going to end soon. We can no longer wage war and take care of our own citizens. It is my hope that we all learn something from history. Unfortunately, because of the Cold War, we do not even know true history.
So today I honor Russia and the other Soviet Republics that fought and sacrificed so heroically to save us from Nazism between 1941 and 1945. It is about time that America understand and appreciate what our gallant allies did for us during that crucial period. Go to http://novamradio.com/index.php?pid=17&SS=35 for further comments.