Rewriting History - Europe 101

[Mil]

Mil: I guess Europe is going to its old ways. Thy God I don't live there anymore.


Neo-Nazis upstage Dresden memorial

5,000 people take part in a funeral march to the music of Wagner to mourn civilians killed by the allied bombing raids

Luke Harding in Dresden
Monday February 14, 2005
The Guardian

Waving black flags and banners, thousands of neo-Nazis marched through the heart of Dresden yesterday on the 60th anniversary of the city's destruction by British and American bombers.
In the largest neo-Nazi demonstration in Germany's postwar history, about 5,000 people took part in a "funeral march" to mourn the civilians killed by the allied attack.

The protest upstaged the official commemoration of the anniversary, during which the British ambassador laid a wreath at a cemetery where victims were buried. Meanwhile, thousands of local citizens gathered in the old square for a candlelight vigil.

Large numbers of riot police were drafted into Dresden as several hundred anti-fascists hurled abuse at the far-right marchers and shouted: "Nazis out!"

The neo-Nazis marched to the music of Wagner and Bach, blaring from loudspeakers. As they crossed the Elbe towards the old city, they encountered several hundred anti-fascists. The organisers merely turned up the volume and played the Ride of the Valkyries.

Several anti-fascists waved British, US and Israeli flags. Others chanted: "You lost the war" and "Stalingrad was wonderful". Confetti and pink paper aeroplanes with RAF markings were thrown.

"This is a terrible day for Dresden - I'm furious," said Ursula Hamann, 77, who lives in the city and survived the 1945 attack. "It's sad to see something like this happening in Germany again."

Edeltraud Krause said: "Look at them. You just have to look at their stupid faces. They do not represent us."

The political establishment appears to have been taken completely unawares by the far-right's recent renaissance and the rise of the neo-Nazi National Party of Germany (NPD), which won 9.2% of the vote in last September's elections in Saxony.

In an interview yesterday Mr Schröder hinted that he would try to ban the NPD, which, he said, portrayed Germany as a war victim by ignoring Nazi atrocities.

"We will use all means to counter these attempts to re-interpret history. We will not allow cause to be confused with effect," he told Welt am Sonntag.

He added: "This is our obligation to all the victims of the war and Nazi terror, especially, and also to the victims of Dresden." However, Mr Schröder now faces a tricky period in trying to reconcile Germany's traditional right of peaceful assembly with a neo-Nazi ascendancy.

Support for the NPD appears to be rising, especially in depressed areas of the former communist East Germany, where unemployment averages 20%.

"My husband and I are NPD voters," said Anni Lutzner, who attended yesterday's NPD-organised rally in Dresden. "We believe that the German state favours foreigners and the Jews."

She added: "There's no point in banning us - we'll simply find a new name."

Hundreds of young skinheads attended the neo-Nazi rally. But the marchers also included pensioners who were driven out, like vast numbers of German refugees, from East Prussia - now divided between Russia and Poland.

They carried black balloons with the slogan: "Allied bombing terror - never forgive, never forget." Addressing the rally, the NPD's leader in the Saxon parliament, Holger Apfel, launched an attack on what he called the "gangster politics of the British and Americans".

He said: "They have left a trail of blood from the past to the present, via Dresden, Korea, Vietnam, Baghdad and - tomorrow possibly - Tehran. Terror and war have a name. And that name is the United States of America."

Other speakers accused Winston Churchill of wanting "to roast" Germans.

They also accused the German authorities of deliberately under-estimating the number of civilians killed in Dresden during the raids on February 13 and 14 1945.

Most historians put the figure at 35,000.

"I have no sympathy with the neo-Nazis. We don't want to go through those terrible times again," said Gena Mothes, 85, who survived the raid. "The problem is that people don't learn anything from the past. There are always new wars going on."

Mrs Mothes, who watched the allied bombs fall, was one of many Dresdeners who laid flowers yesterday at the cemetery where civilian victims were buried.

Britain's ambassador, Sir Peter Torry, played down the threat posed by the NPD, which is contesting elections in Schleswig-Holstein this week and hopes to enter the federal parliament in next year's elections.

"I would take the phenomenon seriously, but not over-rate it. The neo-Nazis got into Saxony's parliament, but on a low turnout," he told one newspaper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/ar...html?gusrc=rss

[Zlatorog]

We've rewritten history here four times*, it still isn't much different from what I've known already (part of my family sent to Serbia and from there to France, almost executed near the Austrian border on their return), except that some new war crimes have been added and that the list of the victims and their property is now more complete. The last report will be out soon with the detailed description of 80.000 victims. Some Italians are still looking for their relatives.

*the diaspora protests throughout the 70's and 80's, the death of Tito and his secret police, the secession of Slovenia and it's EU integration and most importantly, the tragedy of the Foibe.

Good news: a lot of Jews have fought in Slovenia/Croatia/Italy who were nothing but heroes, because there's never been any doubt who the executioners were.

News: because of the tragedy of the Foibe the Italians now have a new national holiday, which is promoted to eventually become symbolic to everyone expelled after the WW2.

So... what's it about... This has nothing to do with the Jews, but anyway.

First, Brigata Osoppo said hi here, so hi back to them http://www.gladio.webdomini.com/htm/index1.htm

The Italian Tragedy

http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/i7366.html

Some angry Italian, not for the sensitive

http://www.democrazialegalita.it/foibe07febb05.htm

Report of the Slovene-Italian historical and cultural commission

http://www.kozina.com/premik/poreng_enastran.htm

A controversial movie

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/050207/3/3qit6.html

The conservative number of the executed is 4500, the historians on both sides have repeatedly confirmed that, but I guess they'll have to do it again

The Esuli

A clause on the right of return of Italian refugees to their homeland was not included in the peace treaty between Yugoslavia and Italy that was signed in Paris in 1947, when these regions were annexed to Yugoslavia after having been under Italian and Italian-German rule during the last years of the war. By comparison with the census of 1910, the number of Italians in 1948 (under Yugoslav rule) declined by 62 percent, and in 1981, slightly more than 15,000 people declared themselves Italians.

The majority of the Italians fled in the wake of the Paris agreement, which forced them to choose between Yugoslav and Italian citizenship. In the massive wave of emigration of 1948, between 120,000 and 150,000 Italians left western Yugoslavia, the minority for North America and Australia.

The independence of Slovenia and Croatia led to a considerable increase in the number of those who identified themselves as Italians, both because there was less fear of the authorities under the new conditions, and because of the hope that their property would be restored. In 1996, therefore, 33,000 people declared themselves Italians in Croatia, and 4,000 in Slovenia - a small number as compared with the situation in the last years of the war (Slovenia has already solved the real estate dispute).

The average living standard of the Italians in the region was higher than that of the other residents; many of the Italians lived in or near the coastal towns. There were also villages and small towns in more distant areas where there had been an Italian majority of farmers, but most of these were abandoned during the wave of emigration.

In the peace treaty and in later agreements, Italy undertook to pay Yugoslavia compensation for damages, but about two-thirds of the amount was held back to cover the refugees' property. Italy was supposed to pay compensation for this property directly to the refugees, but in practice, all the governments returned such small sums that some people refused to accept the payment in the hope of preserving their rights for the future. In 1983, an agreement was reached under which Yugoslavia would deposit $110 million to Italy in 13 installments via a bank account in Luxembourg as compensation for the Italian property. The debt was inherited in 1999 by Slovenia ($60 million) and Croatia ($50 million). The Slovenes deposited the entire amount but the Croats made only two payments. In any event, the Italian government has so far not touched the money so as not to create the mistaken impression that the affair has ended.

In 1996, the Zagreb parliament approved a law according to which Croatian citizens are entitled to receive property that had belonged to them but had been nationalized during the period of communist rule in Yugoslavia. However, it was not until three years later, in 1999, that the Supreme Court in Zagreb ruled that this law would apply also to the Italian refugees; the court recommended that parliament enact new legislation on this subject (the article's two years old, dunno what's been done in Croatia, till 2001 46,000 requests for compensation or return of property have been submitted, of which about 3,500 have been examined and 679 approved ?

The problem are those refugees who left before the signing of the Paris agreement, or did not renounce their Yugoslav citizenship.

[Illuminatus]

....implies that EUtopians have changed to "new ways".

Fact is, there's never been a change.

All the more reason to accelerate the withdrawal of the 6th Fleet from the Mediterranean and all US troops from the world's greatest killing fields.
http://www.cato.org/new/08-04/08-16-04r.html

[Mil]

Posted by Zlatarog:


We've rewritten history here four times*, it still isn't much different from what I've known already (part of my family sent to Serbia and from there to France, almost executed near the Austrian border on their return), except that some new war crimes have been added and that the list of the victims and their property is now more complete. The last report will be out soon with the detailed description of 80.000 victims. Some Italians are still looking for their relatives.

*the diaspora protests throughout the 70's and 80's, the death of Tito and his secret police, the secession of Slovenia and it's EU integration and most importantly, the tragedy of the Foibe.

Good news: a lot of Jews have fought in Slovenia/Croatia/Italy who were nothing but heroes, because there's never been any doubt who the executioners were.

News: because of the tragedy of the Foibe the Italians now have a new national holiday, which is promoted to eventually become symbolic to everyone expelled after the WW2.

So... what's it about... This has nothing to do with the Jews, but anyway.


Fun, fun, fun..... You know presently it's in fashion to rewrite history these days. In Russia there is a historian Alexander Suvorov, aka Alexander Rezun, a run-away Soviet era spy who currently lives in England. This geneous of a man put out a masterpiece that apparently Stalin was planning to attack Germany exactly two weeks after June, 22nd. He brings in very "interesting" facts by basically rewording official Soviet documents and giving them a populist feeling; the many Russians are ecstatic "We knew we were strong but that strong!!!!!!"

At the end of the day you either take a role of a victim or victor - whichever is more in style with the times.

[KettleWhistle]

Fun, fun, fun..... You it's in fashion to rewrite history these days. In Russia there is a historian Alexander Suvorov, aka Alexander Rezun, a run-away Soviet era spy who currently lives in England. This geneous of a man put out a masterpiece that apparently Stalin was planning to attack Germany exactly two weeks after June, 22nd. He brings in very "interesting" facts by basically rewording official Soviet documents and giving them a populist feeling; the many Russians are ecstatic "We knew we were strong but that strong!!!!!!"

LOL. Were they going to attack the Germans with marshal Budeniy's horse-riding squadrons?

[Mil]

Posted by KettleWhistle:


LOL. Were they going to attack the Germans with marshal Budeniy's horse-riding squadrons?

In all seriousness, according to Suvorov, with flying T-34s and hordes of Pe-2s with Katusha rockets.

[KettleWhistle]

Funny. T-34 certainly won the war, but for the large part due to American engineers' contributions to the design, and they didn't really get those into battle until 1942. This web site has pretty good info on this tank: http://www.battlefield.ru/t34_76_2.html

[Zlatorog]

It's not that we've rewritten history, it's just that we have more testimonies of "the revolution", like who were the executioners; the heads of the secret police close to Tito, some of whom have spent a short time at the Dzherzhinsky NKVD Academy in Moscow, and we've had our own confusing KGB agent somewhere... It's difficult to please everyone when dealing with war crimes.

[Mil]

Posted by KettleWhistle:


Funny. T-34 certainly won the war, but for the large part due to American engineers' contributions to the design, and they didn't really get those into battle until 1942.

Actually No. T-34 and the original Christie design were two different things. T34 was a truely designed Soviet tank. Actually the Soviets had T-34s since the very beginning of the war. On June 22nd, the Soviets had over 1000 T34.

This web site has pretty good info on this tank: http://www.battlefield.ru/t34_76_2.html

Valera got a pretty good site...

[KettleWhistle]

Actually No. T-34 and the original Christie design were two different things. T34 was a truely designed Soviet tank. Actually the Soviets had T-34s since the very beginning of the war. On June 22nd, the Soviets had over 1000 T34.

But how many of these could go more than five miles without overheating, tracks breaking down, or some other mechanical problems? Not to mention the lousy aiming mechanisms.

[Mil]

Posted by Zlotorog:


It's not that we've rewritten history, it's just that we have more testimonies of "the revolution", like who were the executioners; the heads of the secret police close to Tito, some of whom have spent a short time at the Dzherzhinsky NKVD Academy in Moscow, and we've had our own confusing KGB agent somewhere... It's difficult to please everyone when dealing with war crimes


I personally find the most excepted history to be the most genuine. I think there was more truth out there before the likes of Solzenitsyn and other conspiracy makers came to be. The book markets are flooded with conspiracy titles such as "Secrets of KGB", "KGB and Sex", "NKVD and Stalin's women".... There are only a few sources that one can trust which actually do have something in common with reality.

This Dresden thing is a pure example. If it wasn't for Irving nobody would give a damn. Hamburg, Potsdam, Berlin were all bombed on a much larger scale but apparently it's Dresden where the conspiracy starts. In a 100 year time Tito would turn into Al Capone's "lost" brother-in-law and Glavnacha would merge into NKVD/FBI controlled by the ever-watchful eye of John Edgar Hoover himself. Wait and see.

[Mil]

Posted by KettleWhistle:


But how many of these could go more than five miles without overheating, tracks breaking down, or some other mechanical problems?

Availability and maintainability are two different things. T-34 was a brand new tank with first production model released in September of 1940. With the possibility of up-coming war a decision was made to rush new tanks into full production. After a few modifications to the original proto-type the production started around December of 1940.

It's true by June 22nd T-34 was a completely untested tank and more importantly not yet integrated into the general Soviet order of battle according to its capabilities. To add more the Soviets were very un-impressed with the performance of Christie suspension on the T-34 which they found to be very balky, expensive, maintanence intensive and not very dependable (there was a reason why Americans never adopted Christie design in the first place). Sometime in the winter of 1941 a decision was made to replace Christie with a regular torsion bar mechanism and a prototype was built to be called T34M.

Valera's page: http://www.battlefield.ru/t34m.html

However, war has stopped any further major development on T-34M and Soviets made a decision to stick with what they already had. During the war itself T-34 was upgraded more then 6 times. After the war the Soviets were very quick to get rid of the huge stockpiles of T34 replacing it with much better designs of the next generation equipment - the T44/54 family (all designed, put in production during the war!!! but never sent to the front).


Not to mention the lousy aiming mechanisms.

Germans didn't have much better aiming mechanisms in 1941 and in all reality in 1941 T-34 was a machine still in its infancy upgraded over the entire period of the war.

[Mediocrates]

Well I did notice that Juan Cole, everyone's favorite antisemitic raving nutcase is now CNN's "Shiite Muslim Expert" prattling on about Iraq or something or other. I thought Dr. Cole is Muslim or B'Hai but I didn't know he was a Shiia. Maybe it doesn't matter, as long as you can find some noisy fool to get up and blather on about something 99% of your audience can't or won't check it doesn't matter. What's clear though is that the normal gang of fools who've made a career of professionally hating Israel may be ready to move on to greener pastures like Iraq or Lebanon. Of course maybe it plays into his paranoid theories that pretty much everything in the world takes place so that Jews can secretly rule the world. In either case we're past the phase of history called revisionism since that would take some time and reflection to pass. We're up to the point where we are just making this sh** up on the fly.

[Mil]

Posted by Med:


be ready to move on to greener pastures like Iraq or Lebanon.

I wish they would!!!! It's all good for all these arm-chair experts to rumble about stuff that they barely understand; sort of like all those left-wing-nuts who proclaimed USSR to be paradise on Earth. Few hours standing in line for toilet paper (most people used Pravda) and some very "friendly" neighbors in a communal apartment would clear the enthusiast's brain really fast.

Many don't really know what they are talking about especially when it concerns ideological purity.

[Zlatorog]

A conspiracy... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Foiba. At least the director of this movie's Jewish http://www.ilcuorenelpozzo.rai.it

A story of a stolen treasure http://www.istrianet.org/istria/hist...ocnik-gold.htm

As fa as I'm concerned we've dealt with our ghosts here.