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History is Full of Surprises for Those Who Ignore It


by Michael Peirce

It was with a sense of wonder that I read English writer Daniel
Johnson's piece "Red Army troops raped even Russian women as they
freed them from camps."

What really knocked me out of my chair was this statement, "The Red
Army's orgy of rape in the dying days of Nazi Germany was conducted on
a much greater scale than previously suspected." I can only ask, "than
previously suspected by whom"? The answer must be that public school
graduates are as ill informed in the UK as they are here in never never
land (as in Never Read, Never Think). That, coupled with the fact the
in both countries the State-sponsored media conform to a leftist world
view that eschews truth as anathema, has been enough to teach several
generations of post modernist "deep thinkers" that all evil that exists
in this world is a result somehow of either Christians with their
annoying morality or political right wingers, real and alleged. Is not
"Nazi" the worst insult that light weights like Madeleine Albright can
pull out of their linguistic bag of tricks? Heard any commentator
mention the crimes of the left lately?

Unbelievable as it seems, there are in this world many who remain
convinced that the Soviet communists were really no worse than say, the
Republicans. It should be obvious that there is no comparison between
the two - the communists for all their sins were at least effective.
No one can accuse the Republicans of that. How long has stopping the
abortion holocaust been part of their alleged "platform"?

The Communist Party on the other hand dealt with the perceived problems
of Russia with methods right out of Genghis Khan's handbook. That
millions died is not debatable - the numbers tossed around are
between thirty and sixty million. That's not counting the millions
that died enjoying the dubious distinction of being "liberated" by the
Red Army. Complaining about the Soviet Army's predilection for rape
seems almost silly in a way - like complaining about the Allied
planes causing noise pollution flying over Hamburg or Dresden. Not
knowing about the Soviet Army's bad habits is on the other hand,
downright dangerous.

That our media of today is staffed by writers and announcers who are
essentially clueless is mortifying - one almost longs for the
government controlled media of the many conspiracy theories - at
least then there would be an excuse other than sheer ignorance.

Johnson's admission of ignorance comes in his review of a book on the
Battle of Stalingrad by one Anthony Beevor. Beevor apparently is either
as ill-educated as Johnson or simply a shill for the radical feminists.
Consider this quote, "I had to come to the conclusion that if there is
a lack of army discipline, most men with a weapon, dehumanized by
living through two or three years of war, do become potential
rapists..." Is that so? Most men?

One might reasonably ask why other armies don't turn into mobs of
licentious brutes, which is not to say that some don't but which is
to say that most don't. What is scary here, and particularly for
writers of the politically correct genre, is the fact that armies take
on the characteristics of the nations they are raised to defend. The
Russian Army was known as a pack of rapists since long before the
Napoleonic wars. The Prussians on the other hand are known for rather
an indifferent almost casual brutality. The French Army has always been
known for pillaging and plundering, the Polish for suicidal courage,
and the British Army (perish the thought!) has come down through
history with one of the worst of all reputations for drunkenness and
rapine. "The scum of the earth, enlisted for drink" is how the Duke of
Wellington put it.

And of course let's not forget the Americans. Our boys, with some
exceptions, like Sherman's brigands, have been well known for their
essential decency. Unless of course, you happen to be on the wrong map
square when some politician starts worrying about his legacy and sends
out the bombers and cruise missiles. Still, if you must be invaded, US
troops are the ones you want. Nobody has any sayings about them like
there are in Europe such as "May God deliver us from the Cossacks!"
Those guys aren't handing out chewing gum folks...

It might behoove us to consider history for a moment. Let's focus on
the Russian Army and strip away all the banal nonsense about "men as
rapists" and consider Russian men as rapists because generalities are
for the intellectually vapid - let's look at specifics and see how
facts intrude upon silly theories of the mythical "everyman".

In 1805 England seized upon the execution by Napoleon of the duc
d'Enghien as a Bourbon terrorist to launch yet another war against
the French. Chary as always of risking their own blood, the British
deemed it best to wage war with money and let others pay the
butcher's bill. They enticed the Austrians and Russians into forming
what came to be known as the Third Coalition. Once again, the armies
would march to stamp out the hated Corsican usurper.

The usurper was quicker. His Grande Armee marched from the camps in
Boulougne facing England all the way to Austria almost before the
Austrians realized they were at war. "He makes war in a new way -with
our feet not our blood." Napoleon's army of 1805 was arguably the
best, or one of the best in the history of war. He and his Marshals
soon trounced the "unfortunate General Mack" at Ulm and chased the
Austrians right out of their capital city of Vienna!

The much overrated General Katusov force marched his Russian Army to a
juncture with that of the remaining Austrians. This force consisted of
thousands of serfs impressed into uniform and commanded by the spoiled
nobility of Czarist Russia. The "Little Father" of the Russians, Czar
Alexander, and his ally the Austrian Emperor Francis had rather a
chilly meeting. Francis was glad of the reinforcement but quietly
horrified and greatly angered by the stories coming in from the
countryside. It seems his allies, the Russians, had been looting,
raping and plundering their way across his kingdom with a barbarity
that shocked even the Austrian generals who had themselves seen some
horrors in the endless wars against the Turk on the military frontier.
What was worse, the Austrian citizenry were so terrified by the
Russians that they were welcoming the French invaders as liberators!

Alexander was unimpressed by the news that his serfs in arms had been
committing depredations. After all, they comported themselves in
exactly the same way back in the Rodina, Holy Mother Russia herself. It
was a long Russian tradition and harkened back to the Tatars and
Mongols who had themselves subjected Russia to a string of brutal
invasions. To this day the discerning eye can sense the cruelty of the
east in the Russian apparatus of war - look carefully at one of their
tanks and the spirit of the Mongol Horde can be discerned in the
design.

Borders matter you see, and must be defended to the death. Countries
who fail to do that will end up invaded and brutalized. Are you
listening Dubya?!

For even after repelling or assimilating the last of the invaders,
Russia remained always a land under the shadow of the brutal horseman
who had rampaged across the steppes. The plight of the Russian peasant
was always worse than that of their cousins in western Europe and
remained so under the Czars.

A Russian serf could be sold along with an estate. Their situation was
essentially slavery with no hope of manumission. Russian soldiers were
"requisitioned" from the nobility who not surprisingly, often sent the
dregs off to war, keeping the best to work the estates. Men who should
perhaps, have graced a gallows or a drunk tank, found themselves
marching through rich lands where they encountered women unlike any
they had ever seen back home; places where even the peasants seemed to
them to live like the nobility in rich homes boasting delicacies
unheard of in the east. Ivan helped himself to whatever he wanted, and
he wanted whatever he saw.

Napoleon saw off the Russians and Austrians at the Battle of
Austerlitz, a classic example of a modern army destroying a peasant
levy commanded by men whose only claim to command was blood. Blood was
indeed the price of such folly and the Russians who survived the
massacre on the ice marched sullenly back to their eastern lair, to the
vast relief of all who'd had the misfortune to be in their line of
march.

Fast forward to 1945. Meet the Red Army of kindly old US ally "Uncle
Joe," beloved of Roosevelt, the Western intellectuals and the spiritual
fathers of those liberals who today can be found in the teacher's
unions and the Democratic Party. The lot of the Russian peasant who
served in the ranks had not improved appreciably since the days of the
Czars. Conditions were if anything worse. The relentless German
invaders had turned much of Russia into a zone of desolation. Behind
the lines, in both directions, brutal secret political police tortured
and murdered at will.

A recent movie called "Enemy at the Gates" gave us a fairly accurate
and chilling glimpse of the beastly conditions of war on the Eastern
front. A war so horrific, that Germany was in fact defeated beyond any
hope of recovery before the first Western Allied soldiers set foot on
the shores of Europe. Six million German soldiers had become casualties
fighting in this most desperate of all wars and now the Red Army was
poised to strike at Berlin. Their tanks sported catchy slogans such as
"Forward to the lair of the fascist beast." Thousands of tanks and
Stalin Organs (multiple rocket launcher trucks) were waiting to blast
the husk of the Wehrmacht to pieces and end it.

The soldiers crouched behind the turrets of the huge T-34 tanks
clutching their submachine guns and trenching tools had cold eyes and
lived for revenge. For many of them, there was no home to go to; their
homes had been destroyed by the Germans or simply obliterated during
the huge battles of the early years of the war. They lived for the
moment and knew that life was short at the front. Even the commissars
had learned to walk softly around the steely eyed men of the Guards
Divisions.

Propagandists like Ilya Ehrenberg stirred up their blood lust with
chilling exhortations to revenge.

Attacks were fronted by penal troops - men grabbed by the NKVD or
police for crimes as trivial as laughing or talking during political
education and some for crimes as dreadful as murder. Many of them had
simply had the misfortune to be captured by the Germans early in the
war and had been arrested as "class traitors" upon being "freed" from
the German POW camps. Together with the Mongolian troops whom Marshal
Zhukov considered highly expendable, these men would fight their way
through the mine fields under the fire of the crazed German defenders
whose wives and families were often trekking westward just behind the
thin screen of desperate fighters, in long columns of refugees. These
columns were routinely strafed by the Red Air Force and on occasion,
simply rolled over by the long lines of Stalin tanks. It got really
ugly when the Russian foot soldiers caught up with these refugee
columns.

Picture if you will, how such men will treat the civilians of the
countries upon whom their dark shadow falls. Then remember their rich
heritage of rapine and plunder and ponder this: even these men
considered the rear area troops to be the truly dangerous fellows and
often warned their own victims to beware the second wave!

Marshal Zhukov actually told Eisenhower that yes, his men did indeed
rape grandmothers, in his words, "to their surprise and delight," and
that this was an old Russian practice and was considered good luck.
Really? I'm unaware of any other nation where this charming bit of
mythology holds sway! I wonder if those who maintain that all cultures
are morally equal would care to incorporate this practice into our less
exotic western mores?

Ivan is a paradox - kind to children and possessed of almost a child
like docility, he can turn into a monster with no warning. He treated
the "liberated" countries of Eastern Europe just as he treated the
Germans with whom he had at least a real grievance. He was brave beyond
belief and fought in a war that offered him nothing more than a chance
for survival under a brutal regime and an occasional issue of cheap
army vodka. See the writings of General von Mellenthin and Colonel von
Luck, both German panzer commanders who fought against the Red Army,
for a surprisingly sympathetic view of these men.

In the end though, it is difficult to maintain a sympathetic view of
them. It is interesting however, to note how the national
characteristics shine through, even when cloaked with a dark blanket of
ideology. The Prussians were their usual brutal selves in World War
Two, the Russians raped everyone in sight. The British got everybody
into the war that they could including the USA and supplied arms to
anyone who would fight. Napoleon would have been surprised only by the
scope of the conflict but not by the conduct of the warring nations.

What conclusions can we draw from all this? Let's try a few and see
what we find.

Nations exist because groups of people with similar characteristics
tend to stay together, and it is dangerous to draw conclusions about
all men based on the actions of some men! After years of domination by
the anti-nationalist communists, the Russians remain after all, just
Russians.
History is of scant interest to those who educate and to those who
shape the opinions of the masses. Everything is new to them, every day.

Communism is a brutal and murderous doctrine that has been largely
ignored and even elevated since the end of the Cold War to the status
of a mere political party by those in the media and academe. We should
be very worried about that because those who cover up mass murder while
pontificating routinely about "tolerance" and "hurtful conduct"
obviously have an agenda that bodes ill for you and me.
It is a real bad thing to be invaded by Russia, regardless of who is in
charge!
The one question that keeps coming back to me about this British writer
is in reference to yet another of those pesky historical incidents that
are considered best forgotten by post modern man. Will he be just as
surprised when he hears about this? Perhaps he will be even more
surprised, coming as he does from a country where all is pristine
socialist perfection and men live to glorify a happy, classless
diversity.

It is about a city that was literally torn to pieces in a three day
orgy of rape and violence during the Napoleonic Wars. There wasn't a
Russian for hundreds of miles in any direction yet the atrocities were
indeed committed by another supposedly friendly power against an ally.
The city was called Badejoz and the victims were Spanish. The violence
finally burned itself out only after the Duke of Wellington had a
gallows erected in the center of town as a warning to his troops to
desist.

Yes, it was done by British troops and they utterly trashed that
Spanish town while terrified French and Hessian prisoners looked on in
horror and British officers watched helplessly. Perhaps Misters Johnson
and Beevor owe the Russians an apology?

January 28, 2002


Mr. Peirce [send him mail] fought with the Rhodesian freedom fighters
(the Ian Smith side, of course).

http://www.lewrockwell.com/peirce/peirce52.html

History is Full of Surprises for Those Who Ignore It