The Pete Quiñones Show - Reading Solzhenitsyn's '200 Years Together' w/ Dr Matthew Raphael Johnson - Part 104

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

71 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 2022-2025Communist Misrule in Soviet Kazakhstan: The Ideological and Ethnic Nature of the Goloshchyokin Genocide (1930-1933)‘Crushing the Resistance’ – Joseph Stalin’s Ukrainian Genocide RevisitedStalin the Eternal Philosemite: Soviet-American Joint Support for Zionism in the 1940sDr 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.

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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 Solzhenison. This is episode number 104. Dr. Johnson.

How are you doing today? 104. I don't know. Hey, listen, I got to tell you guys. Having a diabetic dog is a lot more work than you would think. It's just, you know, he becomes obsessed with food. He's on a strict diet. It's just the weirdest thing.

I was never really a dog guy, but these are my one. But I love them, you know. And when he became a diabetic, probably through his own fault, because he ate an entire box of uncooked spaghetti. giddy and all of a sudden a few months later he's drinking and we he diagnosed a diabetes he's got to be a connection there he is a food maniac and um it's just you know taking things out of his mouth he's like a toddler it's it's brutal and we couldn't do it if we weren't here you know thank god i could do this mostly from from my home or else we'd he'd be in a lot of trouble

yeah when animals uh when you end up having to take care of them for illnesses it's always uh people don't realize when you get one that needs something like every day three or four times a day it's how much of uh i mean well anyone anyone who has anyone who's raised a kid is is laughing at me right now so i understand yeah well you know i mean i've raised three um um um um um um um um um um Well, two and a half. You know, they're kind of a, they're at toddler level, but catch, of course, are far more, far more independent. So, and Marcel, by the way, eating on his own, I'm not feeding him anymore through a hand-fed. He's doing great.

He's never been better. That's awesome. I don't know if it's just a phase or what, but I have to, I have to arrange it in a certain way, the wet food. but no he's there on his own it's uh he's he is actually improving i don't understand it i can't see in there you'll never let me look in there but uh yeah he is he's doing very well that's awesome that's awesome it is all right picking up where we left off last time then there were those populations that experienced the german invasion and occupation for instance the ukrainians Here is testimony published in March 1945 in the Bulletin of Jewish Agency for Palestine.

Quote, the Ukrainians meet returning Jews with hostility. In Kharkov, a few weeks after the liberation, Jews do not dare walk alone on the streets at night. There have been many cases of beating up Jews on the local markets. Upon returning to their homes, Jews often found only a portion of their property, but when they complained in courts, Ukrainians often perjured themselves again, them. The same thing happened everywhere, besides it was useless to complain in court anyway. Many of the returning non-Jewish evacuees found their old places looted as well. There are many testimonies about hostile attitude towards Jews and Ukraine after its liberation

from the Germans. As a result of the German occupation, anti-Semitism in all its forms, has significantly increased in all social strata of Ukraine, Moldova, and Lithuania. Well, despite their best efforts, the Germans still built a community there amongst Ukrainians and Romanians. You talked about the SS, ruining it, almost ruining it, or at least Eric Koch in Ukraine, who is worth a discussion. I haven't talked about him in a long time. but even with that it's much better than Stalin

and it's much better with the Jewish not so much the Jewish elite but the Jewish bureaucrats at the local level you know the Jewish agency for Palestine will have no clue as to why anti-Semitism would rise here

has nothing to do with their behavior of course and it's just we could go back to the first few episodes of the show of our of our um project here in the polish empire that's simply the that's how they that's how they it's what they do um usury debt everything else um that's what they did in eastern europe and and even mainstream writers believe it or not in major public publications fully admit that. You know, and that's, that's, that, they were doing that 20 years ago.

They were admitting that 20 years ago. It's really hard to defend. But the Jewish agency for Palestine, I don't think we'll fully understand why this is the case. Why would liberated areas with Jews returning be treated with hostility? There were a lot of people returning that weren't treated with hostility. indeed here in these territories Hitler's anti-Jewish propaganda did work well during the years of occupation, and yet the main point was the same, that under the Soviet regime, the Jews had merged with the ruling class. And so a secret German report from the occupied territories in October 1941 states that, quote,

the animosity of the Ukrainian population against Jews is enormous. They view the Jews as informants and agents of the NKVD, which organized the terror against the Ukrainian people, end quote. Yeah, that's extremely important. They didn't need propaganda. They didn't need anything. They just need to experience it. They did run the NKVD in these areas.

Ukraine, especially, heavily Judaic, especially in central, southern parts, very, very Jewish. They ran all of this. Of course, they don't want them back. And it's unfortunate that Germany wasn't able to harness that very well. Generally speaking, early in the war, the Germans' plan was to create an impression that it was not Germans, but the local population that began extermination of the Jews. As Schwartz believes that, unlike the reports of the German propaganda press, the German reports not. intended for publication are reliable. He profusely quotes a report by SS Stundon

Fuhr F. Schloch, Schloch, Schullacher, to Berlin on the activities of the SS units under his command, operating in the Baltic states by La Rocia and in some parts of the RSFSR for the period between the beginning of the war in the east and October 15, 1941. Quote, despite facing considerable difficulties, we were able to direct local anti-Semitic forces toward organization of anti-Jewish pogroms within several hours after arrival of German troops. It was necessary to show that it was a natural reaction to the years of oppression by Jews and communist terror. It was equally important to establish for future as an undisputed and provable fact that the local people have resorted to the most severe measures against Bolsheviks and Jews

on their own initiative without demonstrable evidence for any guidance from the German authorities. Well, you remember, the ancestors didn't come in until later. You know, they came in after the infantry moved in. I'm not talking about Waphafenes, I'm talking about just your political side. So, but there were plenty of outpourings for the Germans. that's an established fact and it's both against the Stalinist regime and it's also against the Jews who ran it

regardless. I mean that's the only thing that makes sense and you know, yeah, they wanted to make it look that way but they really didn't have to work very hard. The willingness of the local population for such initiatives varied greatly in different occupied regions, Quote, in the tense atmosphere of the Baltics, the hatred of Jews reached a boiling point at the very moment of Hitler's onslaught against Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941.

End quote. The Jews were accused of collaboration with the NKVD in the deportation of Baltic citizens. The Israeli Encyclopedia quotes an entry from the diary of Lithuanian physician E.B. Kuturgin. Quote, all Lithuanians, with few exceptions, are unanimous in their hatred of Jews. yet the Standard Furer reports that, to our surprise, it was not an easy task to induce a pogrom there. This was achieved with the help of Lithuanian partisans who exterminated 1,500 Jews in Connus during the night of June 26th and 2,300 more in the next few days. They also burned the Jewish quarter in several synagogues. Mass execution of the Jews were conducted by the SS and Lithuanian police on October.

29th and November 25th, 1941. About 19,000 of 36,000 Jews of Khanas were shot in the 9th fort. Quote, in many Lithuanian cities and towns, all the Jewish population was exterminated by local Lithuanian police under German control in the autumn of 1941. Quote, it was much harder to induce the same self-cleaning operations and programs in Latvia reports of Stendert and Furor, because there, quote, the entire net. national leadership, especially in Riga, was destroyed or deported by the Bolsheviks, end quote. Still on July 4th, 1941, Latvian activist in Riga, quote, set fire to several synagogues in which the Jews were, had been hurted, about 2,000 died, end quote.

In the first days of occupation, locals assisted in executions by the Germans of several thousand Jews in the Bikerniki Forest near Riga, and in late October and in early November in the shootings of about 27,000 Jews at a nearby railway station in Rambala. In Estonia, with a small number of Jews in the country, it was not possible to induce pogroms, reports the officer. Estonian Jews were destroyed without pogroms. Quote, in Estonia, about 2,000 Jews remained. Almost all male Jews were executed in the first one. weeks of the occupation by the Germans and their Estonian collaborators. The rest were interned in the concentration camp, Harcuh, near Towlin.

And by the end of the 1941, all of them were killed. All right. Well, I have no reason to doubt any of this. The Baltics is sometimes not associated with, I mean, the Pellas settlement was very far from the Baltic state. it was they were independent states that were just taken a year earlier by Stalin and held by the NKVD so those governments those nationalist governments were dismantled and destroyed by a largely Jewish police force and to say something like again I assume this isn't for publication oh no what oh it is for the Israeli encyclopedia oh never mind

unanimous in their hatred of Jews. That has to be explained. You can't just say they're jealous or something stupid like that. Unanimous. Which means when they took the Baltics and they canceled their independence, which is in 1940, they had to have behaved terribly to cleanse it and make it a part of the USSR. So these are local attacks on Jews.

You know, the Baltics, of course, there was a grain trade through there, gold trade through there. But I don't think that was the issue. I think the issue was they were the heart of the invasion and then the elimination of the independence of the Baltic states. And that was well known in the public. And that has something to do with this. I mean, unanimous. You can't say that about anyone else. So that's, you know, and admitting that is it's something extraordinary.

So my opinion is that it has to do with the canceling of their independence just a year earlier. Yeah. I think that once people, once you understand. understand that every side in this war considered it to be a rossenkrieg you you just read this and you're like you can read this without emotion because everyone was doing this everyone was doing this to each other it's just that one group one group gets to turn it into propaganda and use it politically going forward. Yes, as Willis Carter used to say, they made it a part of their religion.

But, yes, and this was common in many places, but I don't think the intensity, the, you know, of course, we know what happened with the Serbs and the Rustasha, which will be one example, I think, of what you're talking about. and that was just as nasty as this, but unanimous. That's still, you know, that's a very powerful thing for the Israeli encyclopedia to say. So this seems to be a popular revolt against not just, you know, the dentist down the street, but the NKVD and their supporters and the Marxists in the area who welcomed the invasion of their country and their incorporation into the Gulag state of the Soviet Union.

But the German leadership was disappointed in Belarusia. Esch Schwartz, quote, the failure of the Germans to draw sympathy from the broad masses of locals to the cause of extermination of Jews is completely clear from secret German documents. The population invariably and consistently refrains from any independent action against the Jews, end quote. Still, according to eyewitnesses in Gorodok in the Vetebsk Oblast, when the ghetto was liquidated on October 14, 1941, the police say were worse than the Germans. And in Borosov, the Russian police, it follows in the report that they were actually imported from Berlin, destroyed within two days, 6,500 Jews. Importantly, the author of the report notes that the killing of Jews were not met with sympathy from the local population.

quote, who ordered that? How is it possible? Now they kill the Jews and one will be our turn. What have these poor Jews done? They were just workers. The really guilty ones are, of course, long gone. And quote. And here is a report by a German trustee, a native Belarusian from Latvia. In Belarusia, there is no Jewish question. For them, it is purely German business, not bilirassian. Everybody sympathizes with and pities the Jews and they look at Germans as barbarians and murderers of the Jews. A Jew, they say, is a human being just like a bilirossian, quote, end quote. In any case, Eschwartz writes that there were no national bilateralurisian squads affiliated with the German punitive units, though there were Latvian, Lithuanian, and mixed squads. The latter enlisted some

biliracians as well. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm not sure because they had a large Jewish population. But remember, at this point, much of that had been removed and sent to the interior or to Central Asia. It sounds like that when the Germans started it, the local police then got very excited and followed them easily. I'm not sure, you know, this seems to be purely anecdotal. How is it possible when it's going to be our turn, right? But it was a legitimate question. question. You know, to ask that, you know, what are they done? But this is, it's odd because this is very an anecdotal statement here. The report sent there just really a few months after the invasion. So, but again, I have no reason to doubt any of this.

The project was more successful in Ukraine. From the beginning of the war, Hitler's propaganda and cited the Ukrainian nationalist, Bandera's fighters, to take revenge on the Jews for the murder of Petlura by Schwarzwart. The organization of Ukrainian nationalists of Bandera-Melnik, O.U.N. did not need to be persuaded, even before the Soviet-German War in April 1941, it adopted a resolution at its second Congress in Krakow, in which paragraph 17 states, quote, the Yids in the Soviet Union are the most loyal supporters of the ruling Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of Moscow imperialism in Ukraine. The organization of Ukrainian nationalist considers the Yids as the pillar of the Moscow-Bulshevik regime, while educating the masses that Moscow is the main enemy, end quote.

Initially, the Bandera fighters allied with the Germans against the Bolsheviks. During the whole of 1941 and the first half of 1940 and the first half of 1941, the OUN leadership was preparing for a possible war between Germany and the USSR. Quote, then the main base of the OUN was the general government, i.e. the Nazi occupied Poland. Ukrainian militias were being created there and lists of suspicious persons with Jews among them were compiled. Later, these lists were used by Ukrainian nationalists to exterminate Jews. Mobile units for the East Ukraine were created in battalions of Ukrainian nationalists, Roland and Naktagal, were formed in the German army. The OUN arrived in the east of Ukraine, together with the frontline German troops. During the summer of 1941, a wave of Jewish programs rolled over Western Ukraine with participation of both Melnix and of Bandaris troops. As a result of the programs around 28,000 Jews were killed. Among OUN documents, there was a declaration by Jay Stetsko, who in July 1941 was named the head of the Ukrainian government. Quote, the Jews helped Moscow to keep Ukraine in slavery, and therefore, I support

extermination of the Yids and the need to adopt in Ukraine the German methods of extermination of jewelry. In July, a meeting of Bandaris OUN leaders were held in Lavov, where, among other topics, policies towards Jews were discussed. There were various proposals to build the policy on the principles of the Nazi policy before 1939. There were proposals to isolate Jews in ghettos, but the most radical proposal was made by Stepan Lankovsky, who stated, concerning the Jews, we will adopt all the measures that will lead to their eradication. And until the relations between the OU.N. and the Germans deteriorated, because Germany did not recognized as self-proclaimed Ukrainian independence. There were many cases, especially in the

first year when Ukrainians directly assisted the Germans in the extermination of Jews. Ukrainian auxiliary police recruited by the Germans, mainly in Galicia and Volina, played a special role. In Uman, in September 1941, Ukrainian city police under command of the several officers and sergeants of the SS shot nearly 6,000 Jews. And in early November 6th, KM, outside, Ed Rovno, the SS and Ukrainian police slaughtered 21,000 Jews from the ghetto. However, Esch Schwartz writes, quote, It is impossible to figure out which part of the Ukrainian population shared an active anti-Semitism with a predisposition toward pogroms, possibly quite a large part, particularly the more

cultured strata, did not share these sentiments, end quote. As for the original part of the Soviet Ukraine, within the pre-September 1939 Soviet borders, no evidence for the spontaneous pogroms by Ukrainians could be found in the secret German reports from those areas. In addition, Tatar militia militia squads in the Crimea were exterminating Jews also. Yes, even the Tartars. You don't do something like that unless you are extremely pissed off. You know, there were many minorities living in Ukraine. you know there were Armenians

there were Greeks there were plenty of Serbs there were a whole there's a whole Serbian area there at the time Armenians did very well Greeks were excellent traders so both of those groups did better than the local population and historically speaking anyway

not sure about the tartars so all of the ingredients the claim that it was out of jealousy because we're doing better than you Now, there's plenty of minorities there that were doing better than your typical Ukrainian. They lived in the cities. Now, Ukrainians lived in the countryside. So these numbers I question because, you know, the majority of Jews have been removed at this point.

But the concept is still the same. And by the way, I know this is shameless. I have a book out on the topic, simply called Ukrainian nationalism, which came out in 2018. You can find it on Amazon, and it deals with some of this stuff. It deals with the OUN. It deals with the nationalist movement in Galicia Ville, and elsewhere. And I really would love for you to pick it up. But I have the feeling that these, they make it sound like they just put them up against Walt and shot them.

I have the feeling that these were either members of the old government or were partisans. The partisans were very Judaic, the irregular forces fighting the Germans. And of course, the Germans had to respond in kind. and this is where something the O-U-N came in handy but this relationship didn't last long unfortunately again

you had so many other minorities and the Armenians aren't Orthodox so you can't even talk about the religious connection like you could with the Greeks or the Serbs Solomon Schwartz as much as he's entertaining you know

you could kind of roll your eyes at them. But this was the location of the heart of the Pala settlement. This wasn't prejudice. These were people who knew what the Jews were. And now, under Soviet control, they really knew. So this isn't done unless you really have a reason. reason to do it. It's a savagery that comes from years of oppression and silent. So, and again, an argument from Cicist here, the argument from silence, no evidence for

Spence, no, no fat, not found on the circuit, you report from the air. Well, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. And of course, the Tartyrs were doing it. The Tartyrs had a tendency to be a little bit poor in Crimea. They tend to be very strongly pro-Russian, pro-Russian monarchy, pro-Russian nationalists. And Crimea, as we all know, was going to be the center of, in northern Ukraine, the center of Nukazadea, but there was an attempt to do that, but it failed miserably. So Solomon Swartz is not really an authority, I would say. but in my book I go into detail about what the OUN really was,

the various Ukrainian nationalist groups, the relations with the Germans, and what their ideology was. Again, I disagree with Putin's, you know, they're all just neo-Nazis. It's not true, or Nazis, I should say, at the time, neo-Nazis now. It simply isn't true. I firmly believe that every ethnic,

group has a right to its own state if they want it so long as they're self-consciously aware of it, there's legitimate history behind it, and whenever that's crushed, especially for a long period of time, especially in the way that the Soviets did it, there is no other explanation except this kind of extreme violence of a heavily Jewish NKVD against the local population. Regarding indigenous Russian regions occupied by the Germans, the Germans could not exploit anti-Russian sentiments and the argument about Moscow's imperialism was unsustainable, and the argument for any Judeo-Bulshivism, devoid of support and local nationalism, largely lost its appeal. Among the local Russian population, only relatively few people actively supported the Germans

in their anti-Jewish policies of extermination. That's all quote. Yeah, it's all a quote. These are all reports, or at least they come from reports from the Germans. Sorry, yeah, from the Germans that were not meant to be published. And a lot of them are purely anecdotal. They're useful information, but they're not the last word on the subject. A researcher on the fate of Soviet Jewry concludes, the Germans in Lithuania and Latvia had a tendency to mask their programist activities, bringing to the four extermination squads made up of pogroma submerging under German patronage from the local population. But in Bailorussia, and to a considerable extent, even in Ukraine, and especially in the

occupied areas of the R-SFSR, the Germans did not succeed as the local population had mostly disappointed the hopes pinned on it, and there the Nazi exterminators had to proceed openly. Yeah, well, they're saying two different things here. Local Russian population wanted to work directly under the Germans. that makes some sense. I also want to point to my talk on La Cotte. I don't mention this before, the experimental national socialist community

in the forest of Brijansk, not too far away from what we're talking about here. And in studying that, you get to know how all of this worked. And from a non- anecdotal point of view, I did it. I did it years ago, And then I re-did it with some new information a few weeks ago in a lecture form on Radio Alvian. So this stuff has been interesting, interested in me since I was a kid.

But remember what Cholten Ethan said very early on. You know, Russians in the interior didn't have the... interaction with Jews as Ukrainians would, as, as a Poles would, as the Belarusians would. So, and many of those Jews anyway had been removed. I have the feeling that the worst of them, those who were guilty, as the other paragraph said, had been taken out anyway. And all was left was, you know, people who, you know, maybe old people, people, people who didn't want to leave. and so there was really no reason for it.

No, it was communist that they were worried about, not an ethnic group. Hitler's plan for the military campaign against the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, included special tasks to prepare the ground for political rule, with the character of these tasks stemming from the all-out struggle between the two opposing political systems. In May and June, 1941, the Supreme Command of the Vermacht issued more specific, directions ordering execution without trial a person suspected of hostile action against Germany and of all political commissars, partisan, saboteurs, and Jews in any case in the theater of Barbarossa.

Yes. I want to make clear that Stalin had repudiated the rules of war once this started. Germany invaded with every disadvantage. Political rule, I can't. There was no way they could. take it, I don't think, or hold it. They didn't have the resources. They didn't have the tanks. They didn't have

no long-range bombers at all. They lost control of the skies. But at least at this period, using probably a lot of captured weaponry, you know, they were simply giving back what Stalin was doing to Germans.

They didn't want to give Stalin an advantage. And this is true, what is written here. But it would have been a little different if Stalin hadn't repudiated the rules of war and his men absolutely follow along. To carry out special tasks in the territory of the USSR, four special groups, Einstein's Groupen, were established within the security service, SS and the secret police Gestapo that had operational. units, Einsenskommando, numerically equal to companies. The Einsetsgruppen advanced along the front units of the German army, but reported directly to the chief of security of the Third Reich, Reinhardt Heidrich. Einsensgroupen A, about 1,000 soldiers and SS officers under the command of SS Stantan

Fuhrer, Dr. F. Stoliker, sorry, of Army Groups, Group North operated in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Leningrad, and Skof Oblasts. Group B, 655 men under the command of Brigandin Fuhrer A. Nouveau was attached to Army Group Center, which was advancing through Bailorussia and the Smolensk Oblast toward Moscow. Group C, 600, Stendenfur, E. Rush, was attached to Army Group South and operated in the western and eastern Ukraine. Group D, 600 men under the command of SS Stantonfuer, Professor Ollendorf,

was attached to the 11th Army and operated in the southern Ukraine, the Crimea, and in the Krasnodar and Staphropold regions. So what were these groups? These groups were irregular forces. They knew that they were going to have to deal with partisans, not regular army, but guerrilla fighters.

These were counterinsurgency. That's what they did. And, you know, Soviet partisans were excellent in what they did. They were well-financed and heavily Jewish, far more so than the army. Here it was more institutionalized. I think it was institutionalized in the Soviet Union too. But, and you'll get the, look at the numbers here. There's not that many.

That's always the case with a guerrilla group. Guerrillas, you know, they do what they do because they can't get what they want under normal conditions. There's not that many of them. There's only a handful of these guys compared with what, you know, three million that invaded. they were there to protect supply lines, they were there to protect power, things that normally aren't defended, and partisans were there to destroy anything they could.

And that's what their purpose was. They were an irregular force, a guerrilla force, that was to match Stalin's partisans. Exterminations of Jews, extermination of Jews and commissars, carriers of the Judeo-Bolshevik ideology by the Germans began from the first days of the June 1941 invasion, though they did so somewhat chaotically and with an extremely broad scope. In other German-occupied countries, elimination of the Jewish population proceeded gradually and

thoroughly. It usually started with legal restrictions, continued with the creation of ghettos and introduction of forced labor, and culminated in deportation and mass extermination. In Soviet Russia, all these elements were strangely intermingled in time and place. In each region, sometimes even within one city, various methods of harassment were used. There was no uniform or standardized system. Shooting in Jewish prisoners of war could happen sometimes right upon capture and sometimes later in the concentration camps. Civilian Jews were sometimes first confined in ghettos, sometimes in forced labor camps, and in other places they were shot outright on the spot. and still in other places the gas vans were used.

As a rule, the place of execution was an anti-tank ditch or just a pit. I'm very happy that he realizes that the whole gas van idea, well, I'm assuming that these gas vans are German. The gas vans use diesel, not the gasoline that the Soviets used. Soviets had pioneered the gas fans. diesel fumes are not are not as nearly as deadly as gasoline. So but so that's that's that's that's one thing to note. The commissars partisans, these are ideologically motivated Jews. Isn't just some, you know, like your dentist here, my accountant, my next door neighbor.

It's not what we're talking about These are ideologically motivated Jews Connected with the USSR Ordered to We're ultimately ordered to destroy Any nationalist resistance Solon killed prisoners of war every day of his life Oh, but you know by order

Or it was simply sent to the gulag You know we know a few general what's his name who was Paulus when he was captured he turned a traitor but so and there was no overwhelming

there's no overwhelming it's not institutionalized here it was simply done as a matter of course for the survival of the German army so he's throwing out a lot of things here the commissars who were Jewish remember this is a political side of the army we talked about a few times before they were just eliminated

because they were told to eliminate Germans at the first moment they came across them and of course no one had respect for the men who stood behind the Soviet lines so we talked about harassment

and again there's nothing lots of ethnic groups in Russia were harassed right now there's nothing special about the Jewish side this had more to do with the support of Stalin than it had to do with them being of a specific DNA. The numbers of those exterminated in the cities of the Western USSR by the winter of 1941, the first period of extermination, are striking.

According to the documents, in Vilnius, out of 57,000 Jews who had lived there, about 40,000 were killed, and Riga out of 33,000, 27,000. in Minsk out of 100,000 strong ghetto, in Minsk out of 100,000 strong ghetto, 24,000 were killed. There, the extermination continued until the end of occupation. In Rofno, out of 27,000 Jews, 21,000 were killed. In Mogulov, about 10,000 Jews were shot in Vitebsk, up to 20,000, and near Kislevich village,

nearly 20,000 Jews from Brobosk were killed. in Berdovich, 15,000. I'm not going to say anymore. I got to be in my best behavior. I promised you. Yeah. Yeah. By late September, the Nazis staged a mass extermination of Jews in Kiev. On September 26th, they distributed announcements around the city requiring all Jews

under the pendency of debt to report to various assembly points. And Jews having no other option, but to submit gathered obediently, if not trustingly, all together about 34,000, and on September 29th and 30th, they were metatically shot at Babayar, putting layer upon layer of corpses in a large ravine, hence there was no need to dig any graves, a giant hecatom. According to the official German announcement, not questioned later, 33,771 Jews were shot over the course of two days during the next two years of the Kiev occupation. the Germans continued shootings in their favorite and so convenient ravine.

It is believed that the number of executed not only had reached perhaps 100,000. Don't say anything. Don't say anything. All right. I'm a good boy. It's all right. The executions at Babi-R have become a symbol in world history. People shrug at the cold-blooded calculation, the business-like organization.

I'm holding back, too. So it's tough. I know. It's difficult. It's difficult. So typical for the 20th century that crowns humanistic civilization during the savage middle ages, people killed each other en masse only in a fit of rage or in the heat of battle. It should be recalled that within a few kilometers from Babiard, in the enormous Darnitsky camp, tens of thousands Soviet prisoners of war, soldiers, and officers died during the same months. yet we do not commemorate it properly, and many are not even aware of it. The same is true about the more than two million Soviet prisoners of war who perished during the first years of the war. The catastrophe persistently raked its victims from all this occupied Soviet.

Yeah, good. The Germans didn't have the supplies for them. They were incapable of, you know, their ammunition was so low. Their fuel was so low. You know, people talk about the baton death. March. Yeah, the Japanese guards were starving too. You know, they simply didn't have this, this wasn't done out of, out of, you know, savagery. This was done because they simply couldn't maintain them. What were they supposed to do? I mean, you know, this was normal for,

for Stalin. But people think that, that Germany was this, you know, incredibly powerful nation in 1941 with all the huge production of ammunition and tanks. And it wasn't. And it wasn't. And, And ammunition was strictly rationed. And so, you know, that's all I have to say. The catastrophe persistently raked its victims from all the occupied Soviet territories. In Odessa, on October 17, 1941, on the second day of occupation by German and Romanian troops, several thousand Jewish males were killed. And later, after the bombing of the Romanian military office, the total terror was unleashed.

About 5,000 people, most of them Jews and thousands of others were herded into a suburban village and executed there. In November, there was a mass deportation of people into the Domenevsky district where about 55,000 Jews were shot in December and January of 1942. In the first months of occupation by the end of 1941, 22,464 Jews were killed in Kersan and Nikolaev. 11,000 in Dinnett, I could never pronounce that one, 8,000 in Maripal and almost as many in Kremlin, about 15,000 in Karkov's, Drubskiy, Yarr, and more than 20,000 in Simferopol and Western Crimea. By the end of 1941, the German high command had realized that the Blitz had failed

and that a long war loomed ahead. The needs of the war economy demanded a different organization of the home front. In some places, the German administration slowed down the extermination Jews in order to exploit their manpower and skills. As a result, ghettos survived in large cities like Riga, Vilnius, Konas, Baranovich, Minsk, and in other smaller ones, where many Jews worked for the needs of the German economy. Yet the demand for labor that prolonged the existence of these large ghettos did not prevent resumption of mass killings in other places in the spring of 1942, in western Belarusia, Western Ukraine, Southern Russia, the Crimea, 30,000 Jews were deported from the Grodnau,

region to Treblinka and Auschwitz, Jews of Polesia, Pinsk, Brettzlovsk, and Smolensk were eradicated during the 1942 summer offensive. The Germans killed local Jews immediately upon arrival. The Jews of Kislovsk, I can't pronounce. Yeah, we know, just go ahead. We're killed in anti-tank ditches near minerali body, thus died evacuees to Ascentuki from Leningrad and Kishinev. Jews of Kirch and Stavropole were

exterminated as well, and Rostovandandar, recaptured by the Germans in late 1940, July 1942. All the remaining Jewish population was eradicated by August 11th. Are we to assume that these are civilians? I mean, that's the implication. But, you know, there were so many levels. of bureaucracy in the Soviet military in the Soviet system. It just says Jews, not what they did or who they were. But, you know, Hitler knew, as did all of its high command, that there was no chance of victory if the first push didn't win.

And the first push wasn't going to win. The point was to blunt the force of the USSR, so it couldn't invade and take most of Europe. That was the entire point of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. That was the entire point. Germany was in no position to do it. We talked about the tank deficit. We talked about the planes deficit, the fuel deficit, the ammunition deficit.

They only started making a truly heavy tank in 1944. How are they going to hold these areas? you know, their communication system or their supply system, you know, was so difficult. The railways were always so packed and with nothing but chaos. You know, it was very difficult. Everything had to be done by air. So, you know, those are just things to keep in mind here when you're reading this. In 1943, after the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, the outcome.

of the war became clear. During the retreat, the Germans decided to exterminate all remaining Jews. On June 21st, 1943, Himmler ordered the liquidation of the remaining ghettos. In June 1943, the ghettos of Lavov, Turnipal, and Jehovahubish were liquidated. After the liberation of Eastern Galicia in 1944, only 10,000 to 12,000 Jews were still alive, which constituted about 2% of all Jews who had remained under occupation. Abel-bodied Jews from ghettos in Minsk, Lita and Vilnius were transferred to concentration camps in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, while the rest were shot. Later during the summer, 1944, retreat from the Baltic, some of the Jews in these camps

were shot, and some were moved to camps in Germany. Well, when it comes to Himmler, you know, you got to believe it, because he really was that way. He was a tremendous organizer, but he would order this, even at the expense of his own war effort. So that's something I got to give it to. I got to say, okay, that's probably true. Destined for extermination, Jews fought for survival. Underground groups sprang up in many ghettos to organize escapes. Yet after a successful breakout, a lot dependent on the local residents, that they not betrayed the Jews, provide them with non-Jewish papers, shelter, and food. In the occupied areas,

Germans sentenced those helping Jews to death. But everywhere in all occupied territories, there were people who helped the Jews, yet there were few of them. They risked their lives and the lives of their families. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of such people, but the majority of local populations just watched from a distance. What else could they do? They were trying to survive on their own. In Valerosa and the occupied territories of the RSFSR,

where local populations were not hostile to the remaining Jews and where no pogroms ever occurred, the local population provided still less assistance to Jews, than in Europe and even in Poland, the country of widespread traditional folk anti-Semitism. Summaries of many similar testimonials can be found in books by S. Schwartz and I. Arad. They plausibly attribute this not only to the fear of execution, but also to the habit of obedience to authorities developed over the years of Soviet rule and to not meddling in the affairs of others. Yes, we have been so down. untrodden, so many millions have been torn away from our midst in previous decades at any attempt

at resistance to government power was foredoomed, so now Jews as well could not get the support of the population. Belarus lost half of its population. Slavic, whatever. The Soviet Union's population plummeted. That's what I'm going to say. But even well-organized Soviet underground and gorillas directed from Moscow did little to save the doomed Jews. Relations with the Soviet guerrillas were especially acute problem for the Jews in the occupied territories. Going into the woods, i.e., joining up with a partisan unit, was a better lot for Jewish men than waiting to be exterminated by the Germans. Yet hostility to the Jews was widespread and often acute among partisans, and there were some Russian detachments that did not accept Jews on principle.

They alleged that Jews cannot and do not want to fight. Right to form. former Jewish partisan Moisha Kaganovich. A non-Jewish guerrilla recruit was supplied with weapons, but a Jew was required to provide his own, and sometimes it was traded down. Quote, there is pervasive enmity to Jews among partisans. In some detachments, anti-Semitism was so strong that the Jews felt compelled to flee from such units.

Could that have anything to do with the fact that everyone knew that Jews were the overwhelming among the Bolsheviks and basically among the Soviets? No, no, it had nothing to do with it. We know that. That's what I figured. I'm a professional historian.

For instance, in 1942, some 200 Jewish boys and girls fled into the woods from the ghetto in the Steddle of Mir in Grodnau Oblast, and there they encountered anti-Semitism among Soviet guerrillas, which led to the death of many who fled, only some of them were able to join guerrilla squads. Or in other case, a guerrilla squad under the command of Gunzenko operated near Minsk.

It was replenished, mainly with fugitives from the Minsk ghetto, but the growing number of Jews in the unit triggered anti-Semitic clashes, and then the Jewish part of the detachment broke away. Such actions on the part of the guerrillas were apparently spontaneous, not directed from the center. According to Moysha Kaganovich from the end of 1943, the influence of more disciplined personnel arriving from the Soviet Union had increased, and the general situation for the Jews had somewhat improved.

However, he complains that when a territory was liberated by the advocating, the advancing regular Soviet troops and the partisans were sent to the front, which is true when everybody was sent indiscriminately, it was primarily Jews who were sent, and that is incredible. You know what this reminds me of? When I was in college, even a little bit in grad school, you have a professor who's pontificating on something, and you know so much is wrong. But especially if you're new, you know, you can't constantly be contradicting them. You don't want to be that guy. That's how I got through,

actually, because I was a nice guy. Later on, they knew. That's the key, by the way. But, you know, as a young student, you had to kind of just sit and listen. I'd ask an occasional question, you know, a pointed question. That's about it. But the same feeling in the pity your stomach that I had listening to these characters is the same I have right now. However, Kaganovich writes that the Jews were sometimes directly assisted by the partisans. There were even partisan attacks on small towns in order to save Jews from ghettos and camps,

and that Russian partisan movement helped fleeing Jews to cross the front lines. And in this way, they smuggled across the front line many thousands of Jews who were hiding in the forest of Western Belarusia, escaping the carnage. A partisan force in the Shernigov region accepted more than 500 children from Jewish families in the woods, protected them and took care of them. After the Red Army liberated Sarni on Boland, several squads broke the front and sent Jewish children to Moscow. Esch Schwartz believes that these reports are greatly exaggerated, but they are based on real facts and merit attention. Yeah, Schwartz just wants everyone to think that everyone hates Jews for no reason, including the Soviets, no matter how many Jews are in the system. He just is losing it. I don't know where he was at this point.

If he was in the West, I think he probably was. but that was his that was his whole thing that you know even the soviets hate us you know and i've come across him way too much solomon swartz is i come across him way too much and he just was i'm sure he was as a very unpleasant person in general um but again i'll just simply note that supplies for german forces were at at a minimum at this point um And, of course, the Soviets, thanks to only their own system, which was untouched, because Germans had no long-range bombers. Their faculties and factories and Urals were totally untouched, plus the Americans and everyone else sending supplies up through Persia. They had more than they could ever need.

This is, you know, one of the, it is an old myth. The history buffs, you know, likes to talk about, boomer, history buffs like to talk about this. You know, like stupid things like the snow broke the German army, which of course is false. But the Germans were never in a position to invade the U.S.

The war. They were barely in a position to invade Poland. And it's not just Joachim Hoffman. Of course, an icebreaker says this. And of course, Suvado says it in great detail, using every word is cited in the main culprit. The ammunition was, you had to be extremely careful. Any squad, your squad leader was in control of where the ammo went. And you could not shoot unless there was a military target to shoot at at this point, and probably even earlier.

Remember, the Soviets, I mean, sorry, the Germans stopped close to Moscow, not because they were beaten back or anything. It was because they ran out of gas. They ran out of ammo. They ran out of supplies. Germany was not prepared for an invasion of this type. This was a tank war, and the Soviets, as I said before, had more amphibious tanks, and the Germans had tanks in total. what did we say something like the 30,000 Soviet tanks versus 4,500 German tanks fighting each other? And that wasn't changed until late in the war.

And many of the German tanks were not prepared, were not armed for the far more advanced Soviet tanks. And once you get that in mind, a lot of this starts sounding a little, okay, you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm going to, there's a break coming up that I'm probably just going to read straight through before. It's on the next page. So you tell me you shut up? Well, I mean, there's not much to talk about here. Jewish family camps originated among the Jewish masses fleeing into the woods and there were many. I mean, he's just basically parroting legend at this point.

Yeah. Okay, well, we don't even have to. Jewish family camps originated among the Jewish masses fleeing into the woods and there were many thousands of such fugitives. Purely Jewish armed squads were formed specifically for the protection of these camps. Weapons were purchased through third parties from German soldiers or policemen, yet how to feed them all. The only way was to take food as well as shoes and clothing, both male and female by force from the peasants of surrounding villages. The peasant was placed between the hammer and the anvil if he did not carry out his assigned production minimum. The Germans burned his household and killed him as a partisan.

On the other hand, guerrillas took from him by force all they needed. And this naturally caused spite among the peasants. They are robbed by the Germans and robbed by the guerrillas. And now, in addition, even the Jews robbed them. And the Jews even take away clothes from their women. In the spring of 1943, partisan Baruch Levin came to one such family camp, hoping to get medicines for his sick comrades. He remembers Tuvia Belski seemed like a legendary hero to me. Coming from the people, he managed to organize a 1,200 strong unit in the woods.

In the worst days when a Jew could not even feed himself, he cared for the sick, elderly, and for the babies born in the woods. Levin told Tuviy about Jewish partisans. We, the few survivors, no longer value life. Now the only meaning of our lives is revenge. It is our duty to fight the Germans, wipe out all of them. to the last one. I talked for a long time offered to teach Belski's people how to work with explosives and all other things I have myself learned, but my words, of course, could not change Tuvia's mindset. Baruch, I would like you to understand one thing. It is precisely because there are so few

of us left, it is so important for me that the Jews survive. And I see this is my purpose. It is the most important thing to me. And the very same Mojcha Kaganovich as late as in 1956, wrote in a book published in Buenos Aires in peacetime years after the devastating defeat of Nazism shows, shows, according to Solomon Schwartz, a really bloodthirsty attitude toward the Germans, an attitude that seems to be influenced by the Hitler plague. He glorifies putting German prisoners to Jewish death by Jewish partisans, according to the horrible Nazi examples,

or excitedly recalls the speech by a commander of a Jewish guerrilla unit given before the villagers of a Lithuanian village who were gathered and forced to kneel by partisans in the square, after a punitive raid against a village whose population had actively assisted the Germans in the extermination of Jews, several dozen villagers were executed during that raid. Solomon Schwartz writes about this with a restrained but clear condemnation. Yes, a lot of things happen. Predatory killings call for revenge, but each act of revenge tragically plants the seeds of new retribution in the future. Are we done?

We're done. look, to some extent, I don't think Social Needs doesn't understand the fact that by going through all of this, remember, he was a Soviet artilleryman. He was fighting the German invasion and was captured and apparently was treated fine, which is why he was set in prison. but by adding these things, it's not going to remove the effect that the other things that he talks about had on the Jewish reader. It's not going to matter.

I don't know if that's his motivation here or not, or maybe he doesn't care. If you've been to the gulag with cancer, you're not scared of anything. Nothing's going to, nothing could be worse than that. So you're not really scared of anything. but whatever his motivation is here. And don't forget, for a long time, he was peppered with, you know, Soviet propaganda.

It was a tremendous loss of life. It maybe wasn't clear to him about the Soviet invasion plans because that was, that obviously wasn't talked about. You know, we've got to give it to him. I mean, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he has been. We have to give it to him, though. From the Russian point of view, this stuff looks bad. The massive, massive population loss, especially in the West.

This is one reason why you have Russian nationalists still supporting Stalin, which is an awful thing, terrible thing to do. Stalin was not a nationalist. Stalin was not Orthodox. He was nothing of the kind. And yet he's treated that way. In 1944, he created this new church. church, the Moscow Patriarchate, from people who would listen to them. And again, I don't blame

those bishops. You know, what would happen to them if they said no? I don't blame them. We probably don't do the same thing if we were in their position. And if you read, as I've said before, the journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, it's awful how they praise and worship Stalin as a victor, as a Voivod, is their favorite word. So, you know, a lot of this gets, it gets very complicated and mashed up. But it ultimately comes down to the fact that it really was only General Griggenko. Peter Griggenko, who publicly said that you were planning an invasion of Central Europe. That's why the Germans did this.

And he was sent to the Far East command and then to a mental institution where he was damaged very badly and then sent to the U.S. Yeah, they weren't going to kill him. He was two. He had four stars on his, you know, and he was in this war. So that wouldn't have been a good idea. So they had everything else to him, though. You had plenty of Soviet officers who knew and said something. But it doesn't surprise me that someone, you know, like Solzny's didn't really realize

the massive supplies that were being piled up on the border of Central Europe. after their invasion of Poland. And now they had a border with Germany. And the other thing to keep in mind with all of this is the German supply problems. It came to a point where even German planes weren't coming in sending things anymore. That's all they had. They didn't have the railroads anymore. German soldier and DeGreel talks about this was suffering like I can't even imagine.

one retreat after another, knowing full well that this isn't going to go well until he gets back to Germany, even then. And it's unfortunate that FDR, of course, that Stalin's insistence, said, you know, there's not going to be a conditional surrender. It's going to be an unconditional surrender, which means we have to destroy you completely and then we'll allow you to surrender. And that was something, I think, was unknown at the time. I don't know if there's been such a thing as an unconditional surrender before 1945. could be wrong. But they knew Gregorenko was right. And being a general, a high-ranking, a high general officer who knew, who was part of it,

to come out and say, this is why, this is why the incompetence so early on, it wasn't really incompetence. It was a you're on a typical offensive footing. You provoked this. which took a lot of balls to say. Now, of course, this is much later. This is years later. And the books out there now, it's, it's, I can't imagine any honest person will reject the thesis of Icebreaker at this point.

You know, academics will, because they have no choice. But, you know, the overwhelming evidence that is brought out by Suvadov and Hoffman and now, you know, a hundred others, is such that you have to believe it now. That's exactly what was going on. And Stalin, more than anyone else on the planet, except maybe a few German generals, knew the severe supply problems in the German army.

They were out of fuel after a few weeks in the invasion of Poland. You know, again, with the tanks, everything else, they had fuel coming from one source. And a lot of this is Mussolini's fault. never been a fan of his he forced the Germans to intervene in Greece to save him after a stupid invasion

that he lost forced to intervene again in North Africa trying to create his his new Roman Empire where he lost there too fighting now on what three fronts I'm telling you

one of the big takeaways from World War II and I'll keep saying this I don't care how many times when Mussolini fell, that was a victory for the axis, not for the Allies. That's all I have to say. All right, everybody go over to the show notes and go over to the description in the videos and donate to Dr. Johnson's work by his new book on this Russia-Ukraine, quote-unquote, conflict.

It will be like no other one that you are going to read on the subject. And that's one of the many ways that you can support the, work he's doing. So please go do that. And as always, thank you, Dr. Johnson. Thank you. I always have a great time doing these. Despite the fit my stomach. So see you next time. Take care. All right, man. Bye-bye. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Me too. Bye. Go through the turf.