Ahem, the Allies did not accept even the Soviet takeover in Russia. Remember their support of the White Army during the Russian civil war. Some Western nations sent also troops in Russia, and I wonder if the isolationist trends of the Soviet Union do not derive from that episode. After having fought a war which ended with an inglorious defeat, Russia was attacked and surrounded by enemies. You can say thta the purpose of the expeditionry corps was to "liberate" Russia, but try to explain that to Russians. In moment of crisis Russians tend to stick together, to forget internal divisions and to fight with all their forces against the invasors. Remember what happened to Napoleon and later to Hitler. Stalin was a monster, everybody knows that, but when Russian had to choose betwee the menace from outside (racial warfare and scientifically planned extermination) and their bloodthirsty Red Czar, they chose Stalin. Can you blame them for that? Umberto, With the terrible consequences (60 million dead) of the Soviet Lenin-Stalin regime I think many Russians would have preferred a white victory. It still amazes me that someone as intelligent knowledgeable as you attempts a comparis with Charles XII (I added that) of Sweden, Napoleon, and Hitler. And don't forget that over one million Soviet citizens fought in German uniform 1941 to 1945 agains Stalin. (At the beginning they didn't dislike the idea of a repetition of what had happened in 1914-1917, i.e. military defeat followed by the collapse of the Bolshevik government; they believed that the German army could rid them of Stalin, as id had set them free from the Czars--but Sonderkommandos, scientifically planned starvation and extermination camps made them change their mind.) Don't understand how we moved from the stopping of communist revolution in Germany 1918-1919 to WWII? Maybe, had the Reds, that is the Communists won in 1918, both the Russian and the German Bolshevik governments could hae been less violent and totalitarian. Who knows. Maybe, given some basic tenets of the Bolshevik ideology you had to build a totalitarian regime, maybe not. Lenin started the NEP, you know. And built the first Gulag camps. There's a lot of contradictions in what he did. While surely there's a deadly coherence in Stalin's actions--much like what you can find in Hitler's deeds. Stalin and Hitler are much of the same. Juenger wrote about that during his visit to the Eastern Front in 1942. There is an excellent quote on how the killing of the bourgeois class in Russia made the bourgeois class in Germany react mercilessly. In the end, after the counter-revolution in Germany and Stalin's "trials" in the USSR, what you have is two totalitarian, militarist, Wille-zur-Macht-oriented, ruthless machines, which will eventually fight each other. Do we have to be grateful to the Free Corps for this? Ok, thank you! We ought to be grateful for their work to save democracy in Germany, a democratic government from 1918 to 1933. What happened after 1933 in Germany is the work of the National Socialists. Will come back with the Juenger quote from the diaries from 1942. Are you content with the present Italian government of the left with former Communists (reformed?) in the lead. Best wishes Bertil Haggman
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