The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 102

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

67 MinutesPG-13Dr. Matthew Raphael Johnson is a researcher, writer, and former professor of history and political science, specializing in Russian history and political ideology.Pete and Dr. Johnson continue a project in which Pete reads Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together," and Dr' Johnson provides commentary.Borhy Splacheni Krovyu: The Foundations and Causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022-2025Dr Johnson's PatreonDr Johnson's CashApp - $Raphael71RusJournal.orgTHE ORTHODOX NATIONALISTDr. Johnson's Radio Albion PageDr. Johnson's Books on AmazonDr. Johnson's Pogroms ArticleThe Unmentionable Genocide: New Khazaria, the Russian Revolutions and Soviet Legality in the 1920s by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonWith Friends Like These. . . Patriarch St. Tikhon, General Anton Denikin and the Defeat of the White Armies, 1917-1922 by Dr. Matthew Raphael JohnsonThe Orthodox Nationalist: Karl Marx “On the Jewish Question” (1844)Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

If you want to get the show early and ad-free, head on over to the piquinonez Show.com. There, you can choose from where you wish to support me. Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me about this, even though I think on the last ad, I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed, you're going to have to subscribe through substack or through Patreon. You can also subscribe on my website, which is right there. Gumroad, and what's the other one?

Subscribe Star. And if you do that, you will get access to the audio file. So head on over to the Pekignonez Show.com. You'll see all the ways that you can support me there. And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the amount of material that I do. I can do what I'm doing with Dr. Johnson on 200 years together and everything else. the things that Thomas and I are doing together on continental philosophy.

It's all because of you. And, yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So thank you. The Pekingona Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to our reading of 200 years together by Alexander Solzheneson. This is episode number 102. Dr. Johnson, how are you doing today?

I think Rod Stewart's Maggie May should be banned from the air. I still think it caused the murders of those people up the street from me in New Jersey, what two weeks after I was born in 71. I've mentioned to this before. I think it should be banned. Also Neil Young. Anything New Young does is ridiculous since he can't sing. Making a career on not being able to hit the proper notes.

so other than that though and the fact that I've been wondering where mushrooms why anyone would have decided to eat a mushroom you know this disgusting thing at the base of a tree we know it's killed a few people before let's try as many as we can

maybe won't kill us this time how that ever became a food all these questions as soon as I woke up this morning but otherwise otherwise I'm doing very well the first person to milk a cow probably had a lot of personal issues you would think yeah all right picking up where we left off last time here we go however from the moment of the signing of the ribandrop molotov pact in august of nineteen thirty nine not only criticism of nazi policies but also any information about persecution of the jews and european countries under german control vanished from the Soviet press. A lot of messages were reaching the Soviet Union through various channels,

intelligence embassies, Soviet journalists, an important source of information, was Jewish refugees who managed to cross the Soviet border. However, the Soviet media, including the Jewish press, maintained silence. Well, that would make sense because they were technically allied. And it's what I said last week about, you know, communist parties in Western Europe having to just swallow this.

or just not be funded by the USSR anymore and become Trotskyite or whatever and of course you know that was this this was a big thing if they're going to be a lot however temporarily this is going to be

whatever there was was going to be repressed in the Soviet press which is you know again and that means that communists in the West under U.S. Soviet control had to say it wasn't happening either. When the Soviet German war started and the topic of Nazi anti-Semitism was raised again, many Jews considered it to be propaganda, argues a modern scholar, relying on the testimonies

of the catastrophe survivors gathered over half a century. Quote, many Jews relied on their own life experience rather than on radio, books, and newspapers. The image of Germans did not change in the minds of most. Jews since World War I, and back then the Jews considered the German regime to be one of the most tolerant to them. Many Jews remembered that during the German occupation in 1918, the Germans treated Jews better than they treated the rest of the local population, and so the Jews were reassured. As a result, in 1941, a significant number of Jews remained in the occupied territories voluntarily. And even in 1942, according to the stories of witnesses, the Jews

in Voronish, Rostov, Krasnodar, Krasnodar, and other cities waited for the front to roll through their city and hope to continue their work as doctors and teachers, tailors and cobblers, which they believed were also needed. The Jews could not or would not evacuate for purely material reasons as well. Yes, the only time I've heard that stated is in this book, that there was an artificial reason why they didn't retreat. and it's because they already had a great view of Germans and that they even treated Jews better than everyone else in the end of World War I. I don't know.

I suppose that there's some truth to it. I have never come across it anywhere else but this book. While the Soviet press and radio censored the information about the atrocities committed by the occupiers against the Jews, the Yiddish newspaper Ein Gaitkite, Unity, the official publication of the Jewish anti-factual. Cassist Committee, E.A.K. was allowed to write about it openly from the summer of 1942. Apparently, the first step in the establishment of E.A.K. was a radio meeting in August 1941 of representatives of the Jewish people, S. Michaels, P. Marcus, J. Orenberg, S. Marshock, S. Eisenstein, and other celebrities participated. For propaganda purposes, it was broadcast to the U.S. and other allied countries. Quote, the effect on the Western public surpassed the most optimistic expectations

of Moscow. In the allied countries, a Jewish organization sprang up to raise funds for the needs of the Red Army. Their success prompted the Kremlin to establish a permanent Jewish committee in the Soviet Union. Quote, thus began the seven-year-long cooperation of the Soviet authorities with global Zionism. In my paper on, which I still haven't sent you, I'm sorry. Or maybe I did it, I just forgot. On the Soviet sponsorship of Israel in 1948, this was the source of it. The connection between the USSR and Zionism was brief, and it came precisely from this. It did not last long at all for very obvious reasons.

The U.S. was in a much better position to finance them than the war-torn USSR was. But by 42, the war was going on. Now they had no reason. The pact was nullified. The development of the committee was a difficult process, heavily dependent on the attitudes of government. In September 1941, an influential former member of the Bund, Henrik Erlich, was released from the prison to lead that organization.

In 1917, Erlich had been a member of the notorious and then omnipotent executive committee of the Petro-Soviet. Later, he emigrated to Poland, where he was captured by the Soviets in 1939. He and his comrade, Atler, who also used to be a member of the Bund and was also a native of Poland, began preparing a project that aimed to mobilize international Jewish opinion with heavier participation of foreign rather than Soviet Jews. Quote, Polish Boon members were intoxicated by their freedom and increasingly acted audaciously, evacuated by Quibbachev, Samara, along with the metropolitan bureaucracy, they contacted Western diplomatic representatives who were relocated there as well, suggesting in particular to form a Jewish

legion in the USA to fight on the Soviet-German front. The things have gone so far that the members of the Polish Bund began planning a trip to the West on their own. In addition, both Bund activists. presumptuously assumed and did not hide it that they could literally reform the Soviet political system. In December, 1941, both overreaching leaders of the committee were arrested. Erlich was hanged, Erlick hanged himself in prison. Alters was shot. Erlick didn't kill himself.

I, at this point, when you, you have Jews raising money, there's a tremendous amount of cash there, you know that you're already in serious trouble. But the very fact that they could reform the Soviet system with Stalin and still in power between what 39 and 41, it's kind of a ridiculous thing. But don't forget, the Bolshevik Party came straight out of the Jewish Bund in, not just in Russia, but in the rest of Europe in late 19th century, even the early 20th century. So, and I could only assume this is the same bund, Jewish labor bun, whatever name it, it had at the time, that always remained there and always remained an entirely Jewish party. And it spawned the Bolsheviks.

So maybe they thought that they had a certain amount of authority. Maybe they thought that they were, you know, they were, they were. it wouldn't be a huge problem. I mean, they were Marxists. They were Bolsheviks in a way. At the top of my head, I don't know what their specific reform system was, what their agenda was, but whatever it was, Stalin was irritated by it. Yet during the spring of 1942, the project of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was revived, and a meeting of the representatives of Jewish people was called forth again. A committee was elected, although this time exclusively from Soviet Jews.

Solomon Mikuls became its chairman and Schachno Epstein. There he is. Stalin's eye in Jewish affairs and a former fanatical bundist and later a fanatical Czechist became its executive secretary. Among others, its members were authors David Bergelsen, Peretz Marquhart, Le Buitko, and Dernister. scientist Lena Stern and Frumpkin, a member of the academy. Poet Itzik Pfeffer became the vice president.

The latter was a former Trotskyite who was pardoned because he composed odes dedicated to Stalin. He was an important NKVD agent. And as a proven secret agent, he was trusted with a trip to the West. That's all you had to do. It's like penance. The task of this committee was the same to influence international public opinion and to appeal to the Jews all over the world, but in practice it appealed primarily to the American Jews, building up sympathy and raising financial aid for the Soviet Union. And it was the main

reason for Michols and Feffer's trip to the United States in summer in 1943, which coincided with the dissolution of the common turn. It was a roaring success, triggering rallies in 14 cities across the U.S. 50,000 people rallied in New York City alone. I wonder why. Mikuls and Feffer were received by former Zionist leader, Heim Weizmann, and by Albert Einstein. Yet behind the scenes, the committee was managed by Lozowski-Dridzo, the deputy head of the Soviet Information Bureau. The committee did not have offices in the Soviet Union and could not act independently. In fact, it was not so much a fundraising tool for the Red Army as an arm of pro-Sovieter. propaganda abroad. And it clearly worked, even at this early date. The German policy against

the Jews really didn't, you know, at least in the mainstream narrative, didn't reach fruition until really, really into the war. I remember, Albert Einstein was a Marxist. Not sure he was, he wasn't a Stalinist, though. But he certainly was a Marxist. He certainly was a Leninist in one way or another, at least in his mind, because politically he was an idiot, regardless of anything else. And of course, he's going to go to the U.S. is where the money is. You know, at this point, the Soviet Union had been at war for, what, two years, a year and a half, the U.S. was really the only place to go.

And I guess by this point, the isolationist, you know, there was substantially substantial national social support in the U.S. too in the early years of the war, even maybe just before the war started, that all was shut down. Keep in mind also that FDR tried to imprison his entire opposition. And I read that on Albert Fisher's book, who I had met just before his death in New York City, anybody including congressman he wanted to arrest them all you know and you know it wasn't even

wasn't even uh uh were even at war yet but it was pretty clear who who sided they were on um so

uh this raised a huge amount of money and it definitely influenced public opinion and maybe it was even worse than all the the German soldiers are beasts and World War I babies on bayonets kind of propaganda. It may have been even worse than that.

Some Jewish authors argue that from the late 1930s, there was a covert but persistent removal of Jews from the highest ranks of Soviet leadership in all spheres of administration. For instance, D. Shub writes that by 1943, not a single Jew remained among the top leadership of the NKVD, though there were still many Jews in the Commissariat of Trade, Industry, and Foods.

There were also quite a few Jews in the commissary to public education and in the foreign office. A modern researcher reaches a different conclusion based on the archival materials that became available in the 1990s. Quote, during the 1940s, the role of Jews and punitive organs remained highly visible, coming to the end only in the post-war years during the campaign against cosmopolitanism. This is a classic example of Johnson's law at work. It's never been contradicted. prior to the end of the USSR, and it took a while for those records to be gone through

because they tried to mess up. They tried to destroy some of them. I remember reading about that at the time. You could say this, you know, just prior to that or maybe just after that, and there's no one who could possibly contradict you. You don't know. But now these things come out, say, between 90 and 95.

and finally there's a way to show, no, that's not true. But you still have, you still have Jewish professors who believe that today, even though it's blatantly not true. No one wanted to believe. When those records, KGB, different departments came to light, no one wanted to believe it because it contradicted everything to the American left was saying, not just about the Jews, but about anything about anything about. the USSR.

It showed that, you know, McCarthy was right. That things were far worse than we had realized. The end of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe in many ways, but certainly when these records, when they were finally brought to order, I remember my Russian professor, Nebraska said that they were doing everything in their power

to not someone's destroy them, but to put them out of order so no one can resource him properly. So it took a little while. But it proved the right wing again correct about the USSR in almost every way. However, there are no differences of opinion regarding the relatively large number of Jews in the top command positions in the army. The Jewish world reported that in the Red Army now, during the war, there are over 100 Jewish generals, and it provided a small randomly picked list of such generals,

not including generals from the infantry. There were 17 names, ironically, Major General of Engineering Service, Frankl Neftia Aronovich of Gulag was also included. A quarter of a century later, another collection of documents confirmed that there were no less than 100 Jewish generals in the middle of the war and provided additional names. However, that volume unfortunately omitted the supergeneral Lev Meckles, the closest and most trusted of Stalin's henchmen from 1937 and 1940. From 1941, he was ahead of the political administration of the Red Army. Red Army.

Ten days after the start of the war, Meckles arrested a dozen of the highest generals of the Western Front. He is also infamous for his punitive measures during the Soviet Finnish War and then later at Kerch in the Crimea. So let's decode that. These weren't generals in the normal sense of the term, what a normal person thinks a military general officer is. These were, there were political generals. The very same people who we talked about before who had to shadow high-ranking officers. They weren't strategists. They were there to make sure no one retreated.

They were there to make sure that no orders contrary to Stalin were given. that killed a lot of people. And again, the Soviet-finished war, punitive measures. So many Red soldiers wanted to retreat and get out of the freezing. They were killed. A huge portion of the Soviet soldiers killed, both in that war and in World War II were killed by these political forces, these commissars attached to.

attached to the army. So they weren't generals in that sense of the term. Political administration of the Red Army, that's not military. Political administration is the force of the party over the army, which of course is connected to the state. And far more than a dozen ended up being arrested as time went on. So the... your political commissars were led by him. And we talked about them already. So these aren't military men. So, you know, you got to be careful.

It's a different reality there. You can't, they say, oh, there's all these Jewish generals. Well, no, sort of. They had that rank, but they were civilians. They were there as members of the party, making sure that high-ranking officers in the Red Army did what they were told. The short Jewish encyclopedia provides an additional list of 15 Jewish generals. Recently, an Israeli researcher had published a list of Jewish generals and admirals,

including those who obtained the rank during the war. Altogether, there were 270 generals and admirals. This is not only not a few. This is an immense number indeed. He also notes four wartime narcoms, in addition to Kaganovic, there were Boris Vanikov ammunition, Semyon Ginsburg construction, Isaac Zaltzman, tank industry, and several heads of main military administrations of the Red Army. The list also contains the names of four Jewish Army commanders, commanders of 23 corps,

72 divisions, and 103 brigades. So even there, you see that they're not at the front. you know, they're not normal military strategists. They're not doing what Zukov did. The tank industry, construction, overseeing ammunition. Remember, the entire thing was state-controlled. I mean, there was no private sector like in the Western world.

And so there were so-called civilian generals, like you had the old Russian Empire. After Peter, you had military ranks given to civilian. as they rose in the bureaucracy in St. Petersburg. It's the only thing that America has connected to that is the rank of colonel given to civilians in Kentucky. I think it's the only place. It's purely honorary. So there were generals, I guess, there were generals of a sort.

In no army of the Allies, not even in the U.S.As, did Jews occupy such high positions? as in the Soviet Army, Dr. I. Arid writes, no, the displacement of Jews from the top posts during the war did not happen, nor had any supplanting yet manifested itself in general aspects of Soviet life. In 1944 in the USA, a famous socialist Mark Vichanak stated that not even hardcore enemies of the USSR can say that its government cultivates anti-Semitism. Back then, it was undoubtedly true. Yeah, with back then being in italics, meaning that it will happen in the future, which is also iffy. The immediate immediate future anyway. What is I going to say here? Yeah, well, that's all I wanted to say.

If Stalin were so anti-Semitic, would he ever want this army of general, civilian nor otherwise, controlling the movement of major units? Absolutely not. How did they get past the so-called purge? You know, so he wasn't. He clearly wasn't. And there's every paragraph has more evidence as to how that was not true.

And yet, I still remember in the University of Nebraska Love Library seeing book after book on song's anti-Semitism. You know, it became a mantra, and it's simply not true, and it's still believed today. According to Enochite from February 24, 1945, almost at the end of the war, for courage and heroism in combat, 63,374 Jews were awarded orders and medals, and 59 Jews became the heroes of the Soviet Union. According to the Warsaw-Yiddish language newspaper Volkhtim, in 1963, the number of Jews awarded military declarations in World War II was 160,772, with 108 heroes of the Soviet Union among them.

In the early 1990s, an Israeli author provided a list of names with dates in confirmation, in which 135 Jews are listed as heroes of the Soviet Union, and 12 Jews are listed as the full Chevaliers of the Order of Glory. We find similar information in the three-volume essays on Jewish heroism. And finally, the latest archival research, 2001, provides the following figures, quote, Throughout the war, 123,822 Jews were awarded military declarations, end quote. Thus, among all nationalities of the Soviet Union, the Jews are in fifth place among the recipients of decorations, after Russians, Ukrainians, Ukraine,

bilobaricians and tartars. Well, I'm going to repeat myself, but we don't know how they defined heroism. There's specific standards in the U.S. for a Medal of Honor. I had the feeling that any political general, any political colonel, had a much broader. It's like now it's like the bronze star among the U.S. military today. It doesn't, I don't even know what it means anymore.

Everyone gets it, it seems. If you run the copier for, without a problem for a year, you get a non-valor bronze star. So it is, you know, I think I have the feeling this was simply stretched. I'm not saying that they weren't, they had good combatants. I'm sure they did. I'm sure they had a bunch of them. But I have the feeling that concept of heroism was the definition.

was very, very broad at the time. Arid states that anti-Semitism is an obstacle for Jews in their military careers in promotion to higher military ranks in insignia did not exist in the Soviet army during the war. Production on the home front for the needs of the war was also highly rewarded. A huge influx of Soviet Jews into science and technology during the 1930s had borne its fruit during the war. Many Jews worked on the design of new types of armaments and instrumentation in the manufacturing of warplanes, tanks, and ships, in scientific research, construction, and development of industrial enterprises, in power engineering, metallurgy, and transport.

For their work from 1941 to 1945 in support of the front, 180,000 Jews were awarded decorations. Among them were scientists, engineers, administrators, of various managerial levels and workers, including more than 200,000 who were awarded the Order of 200, I'm sorry, including more than 200 who were awarded the Order of Lenin. Nearly 300 Jews were awarded the Stalin Prize in Science and Technology. During the war, 12 Jews became heroes of socialist labor. Eight Jews became full members of the Academy of Science and Physics and Mathematics, Chemistry and Technology, and 13 became member correspondence of the Academy. the gulf in quality between Germany and the USSR was massive to begin with. I was raised to think that the Germans were far superior to the Soviet.

It simply wasn't true. The exact opposite was true. And not just in quality, but in quantity, as we've discussed already. Germany didn't really get the memo. and the production of Syria, you know, the heavy tank and a true heavy bomber, not what they called the long-distance bomber, only began in 1944.

It's almost like they forgot they were at war. And yet the Soviets were continually increasing their knowledge and putting out superior equipment to the point where the Germans, the German equipment simply it just wasn't working anymore we have to come to some version of the concept that it was a suicide mission and this is why Stalin was so shocked I mean they they knew the Soviets knew German military capacity very well

and the Soviets had far superior everything than the Germans did and I'm reading over and over again that it wasn't until 1944 that the Germans decided to start catching up. Yeah, the war was over by then, of course, as we all know, is, you know, it is a huge shock. But of course, a lot of this information came from the West. I probably all of it initially started from the West, and they just built on it. They just reverse engineered it, and they built on it. They built on it very well. Hitler, I mean, even in mind calm, Hitler says that there's no chance of any Russian invasion of the Soviet Union.

Even there, he says it. It's simply too large. It's too muddy. It's too cold. I mean, they cold, I mean, they were Germans. They didn't really bother them too much. It's a big myth to say that the cold defeated the Germans. Most of the Soviet victories were done in other seasons.

The mud, again, that affected the Soviets too. but, you know, they were building things where that simply didn't matter anymore by the end of the war in the U.S.S.S.R. And that's why the medals were given. So from purely a military technology standpoint, it was deserved, just purely from that standpoint. So, you know, it took a while. the only reason that Hitler was able to maintain any kind of forward momentum was because he was able to capture the Soviet invasion equipment very quickly in a very surprised attack. No one thought that he was going to invade anything. General Ogagorovic, of course, ended up in a mental asylum for claiming that, ended up being dumped in America, where he wrote a book where he said, yeah, that's exactly what happened.

And then just outside of Moscow, General Holder said, we run out of everything. We can't go anymore. Everything is critical low levels. You know, there were no one, no one in Germany, no one in the universe ever thought that this is going to be a quick victory. No one. And yet so much of mainstream history, you know, your history buffs, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, um, warmer types in their dens they think that this was the case of snow destroyed the germans and everything it's just it's just none of it none of it is true um hitler had no chance and he was aware of it

and um the fact that has taken all these years to finally come to light and all the diaries of the german generals saying that we don't have a chance here even early on and that it, the Moscow wasn't taken, not because, you know, they simply couldn't move anymore. German tanks were so inferior. They couldn't go very long with a lot of repairs, a lot of spare parts. They were using some old Soviet equipment too. So now you had that problem.

They weren't used to it. So, you know, it was a mess. It was not a Blitzkrieg, as we talked about before. The Soviets were capable of the Blitzkrieg. We know that they did it. in Mongolia against the Japanese. And the Japanese were never defeated to that extent anywhere. Even in Finland, I know this is a little bit off topic, but in Finland, the Soviets weren't defeated there. I mean, they eventually won. But the Mannheim line was considered to be

impenetrable by every military strategist in the universe. And yet they breached it. So even there, anyone who knew anything realized that this was an army that no one can defeat and as they grew in numbers, five million, six million, and at the end of the war, even more than that, their production was extraordinary.

Germany didn't have the planes to bomb anything. They had no long range. Bombers really ever. So they were able to produce right up and out in the open. A huge number of new tanks and everything. simply there was simply no chance it was it was in one way or another it was a suicide mission many authors including s schwartz note that the role of Jews in the war was systematically concealed along with the deliberate policy of silence about the role of Jews in the war he cites as

proof the work of prominent Soviet writers such as k simonov days and nights and v grossman the people is immortal where amongst a vast number of surnames of soldiers officers, political officers, and others, there is not a single Jewish name. Of course, this was due to censoring restrictions, especially in the case of Grossman. Later, military personnel with Jewish names reappeared in Grossman's essays. Another author notes that postcards depicting a distinguished submarine commander, Israel Fassanovich, were sold widely throughout the Soviet Union. Later, such publications were extended and an Israeli researcher lists another 12 Jews heroes of the Soviet Union whose portraits were mass reproduced on postal envelopes.

You know, if you've read enough Solomon Swartz as I have, you realize that he's just, he's hysterical. Even though he provides some useful information, he just, he just is dedicated to the idea that everyone in the universe hated the Jews. And he was going to make sure that was that was the case. But at this point, anything he said in that regard was simply not true. Even though I'm a veteran of that war, I have not researched it through books much, nor was I collecting materials or have written anything about it. But I saw Jews on the front.

I knew brave men among them. For instance, I especially want to mention two fearless anti-tank fighters. One of them was my university friend, Lieutenant Emmanuel Mason. and another was young ex-student soldier Boria Gamorov, both were wounded in action. In my battery among 60 people, two were Jews, Sergeant Ilya Solomon, who fought very well through the whole war and private Pugach, who soon slipped away to the political department. Uh-oh. Another 20 officers of our, among 20 officers of our division, one was a Jew, Major Arzon, the head

of the supply department. Poet Boris Slutsky was a real soldier. He used to say, I'm full of bullet holes. Major Lev Kupolev, even though he served in the political department of the army, responsible for counter-propagin aimed at enemy troops, he fearlessly threw himself in every possible fighting melee. A former Semyon Freela, a brave officer, remembers the war began, so I was off to the draft board and joined the army, without graduating from the university. as we felt to shame not to share the hardships of millions. Or take Lazare, Lazarev, later a well-known literary critic, who as a young man fought at the front for two years until both his hands were mauled.

It was our duty and we would have been ashamed to evade it. It was life, the only possible one under the circumstances, the only decent one for the people of my age and education. Boris Izraevich Fenerman. wrote in 1989 in response to an article in book review that as a 17-year-old, he volunteered in July 1941 for an infantry regiment. In October, his both legs were wounded, and he was taken prisoner of war. He escaped and walked out of the enemy's encirclement on crutches. Then, of course, he was imprisoned for treason. But in 1943, he managed to get out of the camp by joining a penal

platoon. He fought there and later became a machine gunner of the assault infantry unit in a tank regiment and was wounded two more times. Well, German military hospitals took care of everybody. That's your classic Red Cross. You know, that's the rules of war. Stalin refused and rejected the rules of war. I don't deny anything he's saying here. He saw it. I wasn't there. You weren't there. None of us were there pretty much. That generation is gone pretty much, almost, almost entirely. Then same thing for Shultzan Eastern. Any contact with the Germans, you were automatically imprisoned for treason or contamination or something like that. And that's where it began for Shultzhenits

and many other people. But of course, you had, and they had motivation, despite the censorship over what was happening in the Third Reich. It didn't matter. They knew, I mean, Jews are very well organized and are connected, especially through the Yiddish language, Germany and Western Europe and the U.S. They knew what was going on,

at least what they were being told. And so they had every reason to join. But I'm intrigued by this. He managed to get out of the camp by joining a penal platoon it sounds like they gave him a choice that this was like a this was like a certain kind of punishment

and then he graduated from that and went back to the army again but remember throughout all this the party was watching through their commissars and that's why and they had a tendency to exaggerate make themselves

more valuable, despite the fact that many things that they said caused a lot of men to be killed. So, but I deny nothing that he says here. There's no way to. We can find many examples of combat sacrifice in the biographical volumes of the most recent Russian Jewish encyclopedia. Shik Kordonski, a commander of mine and torpedo regiment, smashed his burning plane into the enemy cargo ship. He was posthumously made a hero of the Soviet Union. Wolf Korsunsky navigator of the Air Regiment became a hero of the Soviet Union too. Victor Hassan, a hero of the Soviet Union squadron commander, participated in 257 air skirmishes,

personally shot down a number of the enemy's airplane, destroyed another tent on the ground. He was shot down over the enemy occupied territory and spent several days reaching and crossing the front lines. He died in a hospital from his wounds. one cannot express it better. The encyclopedia contains several dozen names of Jews who died in combat. Yeah, I don't think anyone denies this. You know, they certainly had motivation. Germany had air superiority for maybe five minutes in the war.

The Soviet fighters, the axon down, were superior to what the Germans had. Their best pilots were gone in 1940. And remember, as this is all going on, Britain is bombing Berlin. You know, it's, it's, you know, but as far as Jews in the front, there's no question. There's no question. And, you know, we have no reason to doubt any of this.

Yet, despite these examples of unquestioned courage, a Jewish scholar bitterly notes, quote, the widespread belief in the army and in the rear that Jews avoided the combat units. This is a noxious and painful spot. But if you wish to ignore the painful spots, do not attempt to write a book about ordeals that were endured together. You know, he's making a distinction between combat units on the one hand

and political units on the other hand. It's not so much they avoided the Army, they avoided the military, they avoided the war. There is a sense that, of course, there were plenty in combat units, but overwhelmingly they were in the political units that pretty much everyone hated. And the people who lined up behind them, to keep them from retreating, they were not considered combat units too. So there's a little bit of truth to that. In history, mutual national perceptions do count.

During the last war, anti-Semitism and Russia increased significantly. Jews were unjustly accused of evasion of military service, and in particular, of evasion a frontline service. That's quoting. It was another quote, it was often said about Jews that instead of fighting, they stormed the cities of Almaata and Taj, end quote here's a testimony of a Polish Jew who fought in the Red Army quote in the army young

and old had been trying to convince me that there was not a single Jew on the front we've got to fight for them I was told in a friendly manner you're crazy all your people are safely sitting at home how come you were here on the front arid writes quote expressions such as we are at the front and the Jews are in Tashkent one never sees a Jew at the front line could be heard of among soldiers and civilians alike. Solzheniesin speaking. I testify, yes. One could hear this among the soldiers on the front.

And right after the war, who has not experienced that? A painful feeling remained among our Slavs and our Jews could have acted in that war in a more self-sacrificing manner. That among the lower ranks on the fronts, the Jews could have been more represented. Yeah. These feelings are easy to blame, and they are blamed indeed on unwarranted Russian anti-Semitism.

However, many sources blame that on the German propaganda digested by our public. What a people. They are good only to absorb propaganda, be it Stalin's or Hitler's, and they're good for nothing else. Now that it has half a century passed since then, isn't it time to unscramble the issue? Yeah, we haven't even touched on the partisans. where they were almost, you know, they were at least majority Jewish, but there were irregular. The Germans had certain irregulars as well. They had no choice.

You had units that were dedicated, as we know their name, to dealing with the irregulars, the partisans. And they caused a lot of trouble. Now, the Slavs, and there were many of them who joined the... German cause, one of their main roles was to be used against the partisans. They knew the area and the language for more. And if you go back in my lecture on Lakot, the German experimental, national social experimental community, where they actually are providing soldiers for that, get into this in more detail. We haven't even touched the partisans, but technically they were members of the army.

There's no official data available on the ethnic composition of the Soviet Army during the Second World War. Therefore, most studies on Jewish participation in the war provide only estimates, often without citation of sources or explanation of the methods of calculation. However, we can say that the 500,000 figure has been firmly established in the 1990s. The Jewish, quote, the Jewish people supplied the Red Army with nearly 500,000. thousand soldiers. During World War II, 550,000 Jews served in the Red Army. The short Jewish Encyclopedia notes that only in the field force of the Soviet army alone were there over 500,000 Jews, and that these figures do not include Jewish partisans who fought against

Nazi Germany. The same figures are cited in the essays on Jewish heroism in Abramovich's book in the deciding war and in other sources. This is about maybe the 15th time since we started this, that I make a comment and that precise comment is mentioned again in the next paragraph. I haven't read ahead here. I don't know what to make of that, but it happens a lot. But the partisans, yeah, they were Jewish units. you know, again, as motivated as anyone else.

It wasn't like fighting for the Israeli, even though now they don't want to fight for Israel, but you had given what they knew about Hitler. They had motivation to fight, unlike in previous wars with the Tsar, they had no motivation to fight for Zor Nicholas or anyone else. we came across only one author who attempted to justify his assessment by providing readers with details of his reasoning. It was an Israeli searcher, I. Arad, in his the above-sighted book on the catastrophe. Arad concludes that the total number of Jews who fought in the ranks of the Soviet army against the German Nazis was no less than 420 to 430,000. He includes in this number the thousands of Jewish partisans who fought against the German Nazis.

German invaders in the woods. They were later incorporated into the regular army in 1944 after the liberation of Western Bailurisia and Western Ukraine. At the same time, Arad believes that during the war, approximately 25,000 to 30,000 Jewish partisans operated in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union. The Israeli encyclopedia in the article anti-Nazi resistance provides a lower estimate. In the Soviet Union, more than 15,000 Jews fought against the Nazis and the underground organizations and partisan units. In his calculations, Arad assumes that the proportion of mobilized Jews was the same as the average percentage of mobilized for the entire population of the USSR during the war, i.e. 13 to 13.5%.

This would yield 390,000 to 405,000 Eastern Jews out of the total of slightly more than 3 million, save for the fact that in certain areas of Ukraine and Belarusia, the percentage of Jewish population was very high. These people were not mobilized because the region was quickly captured by the Germans. However, the author assumes that in general the mobilization's shortfall of the Eastern Jews was small, and that before the Germans came, the majority of males in military age were still mobilized. And thus he settles on the number of 370,000 to 380,000 Eastern Jews, who served in the army. Regarding Western Jews, Arid reminds us that in 1940 in Western Bailorussia and Western Ukraine, during the mobilization of conscripts whose year of birth fell between 1919 and

22, approximately 30,000 Jewish youths were enlisted, but the Soviet government considered the soldiers from the newly annexed Western regions as unreliable. Therefore, almost all of them were transferred to the Labor Army after the war began. By the end of 1943, the process of remobilization of those who were previously transferred into the labor army began, and there were Jews among them. The author mentions that 6,000 to 7,000 Western Jewish refugees fought in the National Baltic Divisions. By adding the Jewish partisans incorporated into the army in 1944, the author concludes, we can establish at least 50,000 Jews from the territories annexed to the USSR, including those mobilized before the war, serving the Red Army. Army. Thus, I. Arid comes to the overall number of 420, it's of 430,000 Jews in military service between 1941 and 1944.

And I'm assuming that he's counting political commissars. What's the name? What's the name for them? Those who forbade retreat? My memory is always so bad. Yolkim Hoffman talks about them quite often. whether that counts as combat service, I don't know. But being a member of the Army and being a fighter are two different things. Again, they had motivation. But again, infantry was needed, even though I think by 1943, you're talking about maybe 9 million underarms in the USSR,

and they had more if they needed it. Germany had no chance here. They needed them out of the labor. And Stalin had such a strict conception. These Western Jews weren't in the USSR very long. And he had a strict conception of who was reliable and who wasn't. But when he needed them, they were mobilized. And Hitler really didn't get

the most out of the huge number of slowns who wanted to fight for him or wanted to fight against Stalin, I should say. He didn't use them properly. I always said that that lost them in the war, but they had no chance to begin with. It was just very poor decision-making. And it wasn't so much the military.

Military loved them. Your typical, you know, the infantry. But the SS higher ranks, you know, these groups saw them as as a problem and that's this is why you know you know the the um the the uh germans didn't get as much out of the slavs who wanted to fight for them as they could have i don't know if that would have just extended the war a little bit on the eastern front but um but this was you know mobilization he had so much to work with and he the equipment was off the assembly lines you know you know 30,000 tanks by this point and with so much

more coming and all as we mentioned before these these technological improvements there was no doubt and once they were able to push the Germans out and take Romania well there's their fuel source and you know I think things would have been indifferent if Mussolini, whose antics, I call them antics, led to Germans having to rescue them at least twice and taking certain losses, potentially in armor in North Africa and in Greece, which was a, you know, I've always told people that when, when, you know, I told my, you know, I told my students. I said when Fassist Italy fell

in 1943, that was a victory for Germany, not for the Allies. According to Ared, the number of 500,000 soldiers commonly used in the sources would imply a general base. 500,000 conscripts

taken out of the entire Jewish population of 3.7 to 3.85 million people. According to the above-mentioned sources, the maximum estimate for the total number of Eastern and Western Jews who escaped the German occupation was 2,226,000. And even if we were to add to this base, all 1,080,000 Eastern Jews remained under the occupation, as though they had time to supply the army with all the people of military age right before the arrival of Germans, which was not the case, the base would still lack a half a million people. It would have also meant that

the success of the evacuation discussed above was strongly underestimated. There is no such contradiction in Arad's assessment, and though its individual components may require correction overall, it surprisingly well matches with the hitherto unpublished data of the Institute of the Military History derived from the sources of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense. According to that data, the numbers of mobilized personnel during the Great Patriotic War were as follows. Russians, 19,650,000. Ukrainians, 5,320,000.

Byloricians, 964,000. Tartars, 511,000 Jews, 434,000. Cazaks, 341,000. Uzbeks, 330,000. Others, 2.5 million. 19 million. Did Hitler not know the population of the USSR? Was he unaware of what they were capable?

I mean, there was no way. You know, it's better than an invasion of central Europe, I guess. And certainly an invasion of Romania, which would have cut off Hitler's fuel oil supply. But my lord, I mean, he must, you know, but 19 million, it was just, it's shocking. Plus, with far superior equipment and the Germans lost air superiority right away. it's just that the war was over by the end of 41 as far as I'm concerned. This was just a meat grinder for both sides too. But don't forget, a lot of the Soviet casualties came from within.

It came from executions. It came from the political commissars. It came from anyone trying to retreat, considered a coward. If you read Yoakim Hoffman's book, Salon's War of Extermination, which I highly, highly, highly recommend. Willis Cardo actually gave that to me as a gift. So years ago, you'll see exactly these numbers. He doesn't differ that much from these.

But it was well aware of the fact that there was no chance of victory. There couldn't have been. Not with these numbers. What do you think was going to happen? And not just defeat them. He did that early on, but to keep it. He said it many times. General Holder said it many times.

And that alone shows me that there was another motive. And that other motive was that Stalin was planning an invasion of Europe. And I think at this point, it's irrefutable. It's only the boomers who reject it because it's absolutely irrefutable. All of the everything that we know about Stalin's. policies, destroying all of his defensive things, the Stalin line and putting everything up front in a Soviet military doctrine as such has no defensive conception. It doesn't exist. It's entirely offensive. So whenever they are, you know, you have, you know, three, six million men

on someone's border. They're there for offense. And they don't have permanent barracks. you have massive fuel and ammunition depots there. It was only one reason for it. Because there was no conception of defense in Soviet military doctrine, it was all offense. You know, that's what they were going to do. And that caused Operation Bavarosa. One more paragraph, and we're done here, this little paragraph. Thus contrary to the popular relief, the number of Jews and the Red Army and War

War II was proportional to the size of mobilization base of the Jewish population. The fraction of Jews that participated in the war in general matches their proportion in the population. Well, I have no reason to deny it. We know that that would never have been the case under the monarchy. I honestly don't know how that worked. I mean, there's so few Jews left in Russia today that like 0.03% of the population is really irrelevant. But, you know, I have no reason to deny this list. And I remember as a kid,

and my father, remember the time life books, you send a series. He got the whole series of World War II. The whole series of World War II. They're great, actually. They're, they're pretty well balanced as far as the reporting on a lot of them. I must have been, what, 20 volumes. I have like six or seven, yeah. My dad had the whole thing. I must have been in third or fourth grade, and I absolutely devoured them.

I devoured them. And so I was always, you know, destined to do this, I guess. But I read these, you know, for pleasure. This was something that I really wanted to learn about. And because I wasn't doing my schoolwork, I got into a certain amount of trouble but I was doing something else

I don't remember you know and but a lot of that stuff you know this is what the early 80s now a lot of the things that are mentioned and there was an entire volume on Blitzkrieg which I think now is out of date

certain facts that simply aren't true if for no other reason then if they are they were pretty good I do agree with you they were pretty good. So many pictures, you get to see all the horses. I can't even envision 750,000 horses.

But all the different uniforms, all the different units for someone in third grade, fourth grade, you know, it's extraordinary. It was very exciting. And far better than the war movies that were like the big red one was being put out at the time. but still you know some of it is simply now it's simply not true

because that was prior to the fall of the USSR that was prior to these documents being made available but again I have no reason to deny this breakdown in terms of numbers but look at this look at the numbers against Hitler's forces

that were already exhausted this is it's extraordinary. And of course, Hitler was well aware of all of this. So it's, you know,

but yet what choice did he have under the circumstances? Couldn't simply allow it to happen. You know, he was put in such a difficult position almost from day one. And now he's in the worst possible position. You know,

regardless of the pact, which he knew wasn't real. I mean, he knew the pact wasn't going to last. It wasn't real. It wasn't going to last long. Salon did it just, so the Western forces would fight, Western countries would fight,

and plus he had total knowledge of German military capabilities. Regardless of that, you know, I mean, this is why Stalin refused to believe for a long time that they've invaded the country. And there's a good reason for that. It had nothing to do with he didn't go into shock or all the other stupid propaganda. And he just said, are you kidding me? How? With what? How many horses do they have? You know, so, but this breakdown is extraordinary. It's absolutely extraordinary. All right. We'll be back for episode 103 in a few days. Go to the show notes and please go to the

description on the videos, donate to Dr. Johnson's work, links to his Patreon on there, links to, I think he even got his cash app there, but his new book is linked there. You can support him by buying that too. And, yeah, I finally got my, I finally got my, I finally got my author's copy of my new book. And I'm telling you, I'm this, this is the best thing I've ever done. Everything from content to how it's laid out, how it's arranged. It was all, it was worth all the suffering that I went through to make it happen. I took a long time to get these

but so it's it's you know obviously it's not just about the war we have to talk about general European politics and how this even came about

in the first place what the U.S. was doing what they were thinking so it's far broader than that I think it's probably the longest book I ever wrote too I think and I'm extremely proud of it this is one thing and Patreon too.

I just put up a lengthy article on Maduro, all kinds of new information on there. And, you know, there's so much. I have, what, on Patreon right now, if you sign up, I have maybe 10 books worth of information there. In fact, I have a book that I published on there, one section on the Korean War,

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And I really ask you to please sign up for that. I appreciate it if you do, at least consider it. All right, Zaza Johnson. Talks here in a couple days. Thank you. All right, my friend. Bye-bye.