Re: SV: SV: Saving Germany and liberating Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Lithuan<

["Umberto Rossi" <urossi@programatic.it>]

> Do not let your anti-Communist blind you,
> please!

Ahem, Bertil, 

maybe this is too strong.  I wrote it rather late at night yesterday after revising 50 
pages of a translation I have to finish before next monday.  I do not really think 
your anti-Communism is blinding you, nor I think it's only me who sees the light 
(after all, many blind people do not see black but white).

What I think is that one should be balanced.  I do not want to defend Stalin nor 
some foolish, criminal policies of the Leninist period.  Both (fascism and leninism) 
belong to the age of Titans.  See what wonderful results they led to...

But what does not persuade me is the praise to the Freikorps.  Probably, like many 
historical phenomena, it has its lights and shadows, their percentage being maybe 
difficult to calculate exactly.

But if your point is that the Freikops should be thanked because they saved 
Germany and other countries form the communist menace (totalitarian government 
and loss of individual rights), then Communism (leninist variety) should be thanked 
because it saved Russia (and other countries) from Nazi racial extermination, which 
is something worse.

If you respected the rules of the Communist regime you could at least save your life-
-gentile of Jew.  If you were a Jew (or a cultured Slav, or a gipsy, or a homosexual) 
there was no way to be spared by Nazi butchers.  That makes a difference, I think, 
and we should be able to tell it.  Especially at a time when racial warfare is raging in 
so many places of the world.  Sure, issues of race and religion may be just a 
camouflage for other reasons (sheer fight for power, economical drives, etc.)  But 
the issue of race should always be questioned.

As for the 60 millions victims of Communism, I suspect that number is not that 
accurate.  Again, this is not to justify what Stalin did.  But reasons of historical 
honesty should prevent us from adding the 20,000,000 WWII casualties to the heap 
of the victims of communism.  If I fight a defensive war, I may be right to say that 
my dead fellow countrymen (and women) were slaughtered by the enemy.

For instance, Italians who died in WWII 1940-43 cannot be said to be victims of 
the allies only.  Nobody asked us to enter the war (unless the story of the French 
request turns out to be true), and to attack Greece.  They were also victims of 
Mussolini's and the King's cynicism and wrong political decisions.  But all the 
Maltese which were killed by Italian bombings were our victims, no doubt.

Umberto Rossi

"...io vedea la virtute esser spenta, e i vizi sollevati"
                                      Gerolamo Savonarola