Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht was unstoppable. Their operational and tactical levels in war were resilient- “the finest army in the world” (Freeze, 276) at the time. The Soviet Union was going to be easy to take, right? Wrong. Joseph Stalin was able to mobilize his people in a remarkable way. The centralization under Stalin’s dictatorship unified the […]
Category: 5th Weekly Edition
The Katyn Forest Massacre
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The Katyn Forest Massacre was one of many great atrocities carried out during World War II. Shortly after Poland had be divided between the Soviets and the Nazi’s, in 1939, the mass executions of over 4,000 Polish officers was carried out in 1940. This massacre was carried out in the Katyn Forest, hence the name, … Continue reading The Katyn Forest Massacre
The Veterans are Back in Town!!
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We did it! After all these years we finally prevailed! It wasn’t easy and it caught us off guard but we were able to overcome the hardships on the front-line. We are all war heroes and are going to be treated as such when we finally are able to return home….. I imagine that is … Continue reading “The Veterans are Back in Town!!”
The Girl with the Tokarev SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle.
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From a western perspective, female roles during wartime are kept nearly exclusively to the home front. Women are placed in temporary industry jobs in order to advance the war effort, which is where iconic personas such as Rosie the Riveter emerge. However, this concept of females roles vary on the eastern front. During World War … Continue reading The Girl with the Tokarev SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle. →
Innocence Lost: The Great Fatherland War in “Ivan’s Childhood”
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Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1962 debut film, Ivan’s Childhood (available on Kanopy), follows a 12 year old boy serving as a scout in the Soviet military during World War II. Although it was made a couple decades after the war, this film not only portrays the mental and physical destruction wrought by the war, but also raises fascinating…
They Did Nazi That Coming…
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On May 8, 1945, the European theater, which had faced one of the longest and bloodiest wars the world has ever know, finally went quiet. Occurring about a week after Adolf Hitler had committed suicide, the remaining leaders of the German High Command offered unconditional surrender to representatives of the Allied Powers. This event signified the … Continue reading They Did Nazi That Coming…
Germany’s Mistake is a Soviet Success
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Soviet Union success during The Great Patriotic War can easily be associated with modifications within the military and political world: the improvement of military strategies and the extreme centralization which allowed the state to better mobilize its people and resources. While keeping in mind the improvements and corrections made by the Soviet Union one must […]
Smells Like A Cover Up
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During the height of the Soviet Union there were so many things that were covered up or down right erased by the Soviet regime. But the nature of the Katyn Forest Massacre is another matter altogether. Of all the mass graves discovered, the one found in the forest of Katyn near Smolensk that was comprised … Continue reading Smells Like A Cover Up →
5th Stop: Yantarny
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https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124466615 This week I wanted to focused on something serious; the Holocaust. Many people assume and are taught in High School that the Germans were the only ones to participate in the mass killing of Jews and that simply is not true. The Soviet Union and France were two other nations that highly participated in […]
Twentieth Century Russia 2018-03-23 16:48:05
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One of the most horrific events of the Second World War, as well as history itself, was the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the enactment of Hitler’s campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe. However, the majority of Jews that fell victim to the Holocaust were from Eastern Europe, which would for the majority of the …
