Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, edited by Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin. 1997. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York

Communism Depreciated, Yet German Nazism and Soviet Communism Were Nearly-Identical Twins

Communism depreciated: For which reason this book is timely and relevant. To begin with, Communism is now spelled with a small “c”. This is subtle and Orwellian, effectively making Communism little more than a bad cold. Quite a bit has been said about the “fallacy” of double genocide. Central European nations, especially in recent years, are under attack for (horror of horrors) equating Communist crimes with that of the Nazis (against Jews that is). The IHRA, an influential stronghold of Holocaust supremacy, is particularly prominent in this regard. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/04/26/holocaust-peerless-polish-death-camp-lie-confronted-german-guilt-diffusion-rejected-and-then-endorsed-ihra/

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM BELITTLES COMMUNIST CRIMES

Lest there be any glimmer of doubt about what the soft peddling of Communism is all about, editors Kershaw and Lewin (p. 8) unfailingly bring up the “fact” that the Nazis singled out the Jews “for total physical annihilation”, while the Communists never singled out any group for total annihilation. Even were it true, this is purely a technicality. It is the Jewish-serving victim hierarchy yet again. Surely Stalin knew, during the Holodomor, that he was in no position to even seriously contemplate the extermination of all 50 million Ukrainians. In addition, it made no difference to the about-to-be-murdered Soviet Pole that his group was “only” to be partly annihilated.

Nor is it even true that the Nazis singled out the Jews “for total physical annihilation.” For instance, even at the height of the German-made Holocaust, the Nazis proved willing to release some Jews for money. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/07/12/jews-ransomed-all-jews-must-die-a-myth-actual-captive-jews-freed-by-the-nazis-dutch-and-german-jews-wasserstein/

COMMUNISM DEPRECIATED: A JEWISH-SERVING VICTIMHOOD HIERARCHY ON STEROIDS

The editors pile on the bull. They make these amazing statements, “Yet even kulaks and Crimean Tartars did not suffer oppression as murderously systematic as the Jews, gypsies, and the mentally and physically handicapped….” (p. 142). How do they presume even to know this? Or to moralize about who was a “more authentic victim” and who wasn’t? In what way is a more-organized mass murder more significant than a less-organized mass murder? How do we divide the dead? On what basis do we create a meritocracy of suffering? Could we not just as easily say that the kulaks, having to agonizingly starve to death over many weeks, “suffered more” than the Jews, who got to die within minutes in a gas chamber?

YES DOUBLE GENOCIDE. GERMAN NAZISM AND SOVIET COMMUNISM WERE EXTRAORDINARILY SIMILAR

Ian Kershaw gets to the gist of it, “There can be no principled objection to comparing the forms of dictatorship in Germany under Hitler and in the Soviet Union under Stalin and, however unedifying the subject matter, the nature and extent of their inhumanity.” (p. 88. Emphasis added). THAT is what should count the most!

Kershaw adds that, “The underlying assumption that both regimes made total claims upon society, based upon a monopolistic set of ideological imperatives, resulting in unprecedented levels of repression and of attempted indoctrination, manipulation, and mobilization–giving these regimes a dynamic missing from more conventional authoritarian regime–again seem largely uncontestable.” (pp. 88-89).

Author Michael Mann essentially concurs, “Their [Nazi and Soviet Communist] ruling parties were ideological and mobilized for mass action.” (p. 135).

TRIVIAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN NAZISM AND COMMUNISM

The differences claimed between the two systems are of a technical nature, and comparatively unimportant to the central issue of massive human-rights violations. For instance, Kershaw (p. 94) suggests that, whereas Communism survived Stalin, Nazism could not have survived Hitler. (p. 94, 97). Since Nazism was destroyed militarily, how can he possibly know this? Going back to the beginnings of the Third Reich, the attempted assassins of Hitler did not think, or necessarily think, that the death of Hitler meant that Nazism itself would fall apart. Nor was war at the very core of Nazism, as Kershaw says. (p. 97). He seems to forget that the Third Reich existed for 6 years before WWII.

NOT COMMUNISM DEPRECIATED: MASS MURDER WAS JUST AS NATURAL TO COMMUNISTS AS IT WAS TO NAZIS

Michael Mann comments, “Thus, the Holocaust emerged erratically rather than by concerted executive action–a not uncommon political process. But the Holocaust was no accident. It was the highly probable outcome if the Nazis under Hitler remained on top–just as Russian mass killings were highly probable if the Bolsheviks under Stalin remained on top.” (p. 150).

NAZISM WAS A REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT, EVEN MORE SO THAN COMMUNISM!

Today’s leftists sometimes make a virtue of “revolution”. Not quite. Author Michael Mann makes this pithy remarks, “Nazi goals were ‘revolutionary’–provided this term is denuded of all positive value-judgements. A revolution is a sudden overturning of the power structure of society. The Nazis sought new racial nation-statist principles of stratification, overturning Europe’s geopolitical order and subjugating and ‘eliminating’ ‘inferior races.’ [Not only the Jews!]. This was far more revolutionary than Stalinist geopolitical goals.” (p. 142).

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LEND-LEASE AID: NO VALID EXCUSES FOR YALTA

We sometimes hear the argument that the Soviet Union “alone won WWII.” This is nonsense. Notwithstanding the massive capabilities of Soviet industry, Lend Lease aid was crucial for the success of Soviet military actions even on Soviet territory, as elaborated below.

We often hear the exculpation that the West “had to” do Yalta because, after all, “there was nothing that they could do” about the fact that the Red Army was in Poland, and because a war with the Soviet Union, over Poland, was inconceivable. These exculpations completely ignore earlier developments. It is obvious, from the facts presented below, that the western Allies had leverage over the Soviets, and could have withheld Lend-Lease aid and, at minimum, required a joint British-American-Soviet liberation of Poland, thus guaranteeing Soviet noninterference in liberated Poland’s internal affairs.

COMMUNISM DEPRECIATED LEGITIMATELY. LEND-LEASE AID WAS CRUCIAL TO THE SOVIET WAR EFFORT

Jacques Sapir writes, “To begin with, we should consider the issue of the mobility of the Red Army relative to its prospective Western opponents. In deep operations battles the attacker must maintain an advantage in mobility for the duration of the campaign, and the logistical nightmare of supplying the spearhead formations during such a campaign confounds the difficulty. It was not sensible for Soviet generals in the 1920s and 1930s to presume either that the Red Army could soon surpass a developed Western nation’s army in mobility of that they would soon develop the requisite resupply capabilities. It should have been clear from the outset, in the early 1930s, that the Red Army could not count on the rail network during offensive breakthrough operations and would need a huge fleet of trucks for resupplying spearheads. But nothing was done to prepare for this. Deep penetrations became possible only in 1944, thanks to the availability of US-made trucks.” (p. 223. Emphasis added).

Sapir adds that, “Aid from the USA and Great Britain made itself felt not so much at the front lines, in the form of tanks, guns, and aeroplanes, as in the rear, where it helped to shore up the gaps in Soviet production. The USA provided over 360,000 trucks, 43,000 jeeps, 2,000 locomotives, and 11,000 railroad cars, as well as supplementary electronic and communication equipment. Lend Lease brought in critical raw materials, industrial equipment, and foodstuff. It is very probable that without Lend Lease, average food consumption for the civilian population would have declined by a third. With Lend Lease curing many of the imbalances produced by the past as well as those arising out of the circumstances of war, Soviet planners were able to focus on arms production without having to fear a possible breakdown of the industrial apparatus.” (p. 233).

MONSTROUS SOVIET LOSSES

Despite Lend Lease aid, the imbalance in casualties was staggering. Berndt Bonwetsch cites the calculations of Boris Sokolov. The kill ratio, of Germans soldiers over Soviet soldiers, averaged 3.7 for the war. Even in the last year of the war, the kill ratio favoring the Germans fell to only 2:1. The USSR lost 8.7 million soldiers during 1941-1945, not counting partisans. (pp. 206-207). Here we cannot have Communism depreciated. However, if the tsar or his successors were still in power, let alone a democratic Russia, would things have been better?