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Soviet Communist Gas Chambers

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It is untenable for anyone to be remotely associated with National Socialism (Nazism) largely because of the gas chambers employed by them when it became evident that the Third Reich was facing probable defeat during WW2. It is less widely recognised, however, that the Soviets, our allies, were liquidating people in gas trucks from 1936, prior to WW2, and certainly employed gas chambers themselves during WW2. So why are members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and elsewhere, treated any different to Nazis?

Several Members of Parliament have previously been members of the British Communist Party. Ex-cabinet minister Dennis Healey, for example. If, in his younger days, he had been a member of the British Union of Fascists, for example, would he have become an important member of a future Labour government? Somehow, I don't think so.

The Ukrainian historian Professor Dr. Michael S. Voslensky, born 1920, an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials and later for the Allied Control Council for Germany, reveals in a book published in Germany that before WW2 the Soviet Union experimented with gas chambers and gas-trucks to liquidate their enemies.

The inventor of the gas trucks, which went into service in 1936, wa a certain Berg, head of the Moscow economic division of Stalin's secret police the NKVD, forerunner of the KGB. Berg was himself liquidated in 1939 during a purge of NKVD officials alleged to be plotting against the state, in a thinly disguised display of Stalin's antisemitism.

Voslensky's most chilling revelation in his 544-page book, Das Geheime wird Offenbar. Moskauer Archive erzaehlen (Secrets Laid Bare. Moscow's Archives Speak Out), is that in the KGB's notorious Lefortovo prison there was an outsized meat grinder in which the bodies of victims were ground to a pulp and sluiced into the city's sewers.
 
I'm no history expert, but I know there's a huge difference between the theory of communism and the brand that was practiced in Stalin's Russia. Communism itself started as a noble ideal but Fascism has at it's roots the annihilation of civil liberties/democracy...I know that the Irish Communist party is not racist in nature but how many far-right organisations can say that?...Just my thoughts, I wasn't trying to flame you...
 
point?

Exo,
with all due respect, what is the point of this thread?
 
Homerjaymc said:
I'm no history expert, but I know there's a huge difference between the theory of communism and the brand that was practiced in Stalin's Russia. Communism itself started as a noble ideal but Fascism has at it's roots the annihilation of civil liberties/democracy...I know that the Irish Communist party is not racist in nature but how many far-right organisations can say that?...Just my thoughts, I wasn't trying to flame you...
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Yes, I agree. There are varieties of communism. The trouble is that facsists will also claim the same thing, eg Mosley's pre-war brand was nothing like Hitler's brand, etc. The point being that Nazism is possibly responsible for the deaths of six million Jews, while Communism is estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of over one hundred million people in the twentieth century. Yet there are no reparations, no history lessons in school, and no Victims of Communism Day. Why?

Millions died in the Bolshevik Gulags, but there are pro-Stalinist Communist groups both here and in Russia itself who attract little criticism or attention. Indeed, there still remains memorials to Stalin in the world. Just imagine if there were any of Hitler!

Isn't this gross hypocrisy of the first order?
 
Exo the difference between Nazis (NeoNazis) and Socialists/Communists is wherein the Nazis either deny the existance of the Gas Chambers or want a return to them (hmm... neonazis in gas chambers... Doh!) the Communists don't.

The Soviet Gas Chambers were a by product of Stalinism not Communism.

[edit]Exo, yes I agree :eek!!!!: Stalinism is as bad as Nazism and we should disparage NeoStalinists as much as we do NeoNazis, or any group that supports ethnic cleansing or killing people just because they are in the way.

This would include the perpetrators of such crimes as Kosovo, Albania, Rwanda, the Albigensian Crusade...[/edit]

Niles "Beware of becoming the thing you oppose" Calder
 
In brief I think many would argue the following.

Edit: Ok so Niles already has. Late Again :rolleyes:

During the reign of Stalin, the USSR was more of a dictatorship than communist. His tactics to modernize the country to a socialistic level, called Stalinism, strictly suppressed any sign of autonomy, which were his personal ideas and were in no way related to true communism.
 
I can hardly disagree that atrocities were carried out in the name of Communism, and it is surely a disgrace that Stalin is still thought of as anything but a monster, but that does not change the fact that when you consider Communism and Fascism from a theoretical point of view, Communism has, by far, the most redeeming features.
Anti-Semitism and racism in general can be dragged into the political mainstream in all forms of society, including so called civilised modern democracies. The fact that Stalin ordered purges against Jews, intellectuals and minorities ,etc... in the USSR, does not infer that such a philosophy is at the heart of Communism. Stalin's state was Fascist in nature behind it's facade of Communism. In fact the elements of Communism he utilised (eg, state ownership of land) only served to help him create a more truly Fascist state than Hitler did.
I'm rambling slightly here but I'm sure someone else with better knowledge on the subject could expand...
 
How can you possibly compare two evils and decide which is "better"?

And, if you do, in terms of people killed in its name, Communism (not just Stalinism) comes off worse.
 
And, if you do, in terms of people killed in its name, Communism (not just Stalinism) comes off worse.
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... and what about those killed in the name of christianity? Presumably that is an Evil too?
 
As Edward and Niles have already said, there's a distinct difference between Communism and Stalinism. I never said that Communist regimes were better than Fascist regimes, which is what you believe I was implying. What I was trying to get across was the fact that Communist theory has at it's heart the redistribution of the fruits of labour to the whole population. The theory has nothing inherently sinister about it, but when put in practice things have gone awry, due to the megalomaniacal nature of certain people, be they Stalin or Mao, etc...
Fascism has at it's crux the subjugation of the will of the people to that of the state/dictator...
Just to finish off, I don't believe I gave you sufficient reason to believe I was saying anything so ridiculous as that one murderous police state is better than another. I don't know if your reason was to start a heated debate or other, but I don't appreciate having my integrity called into question by someone who twists my words to suit their own whims. All I was trying to do was give you a considered reply of my own views...Maybe I'm at fault here, but I'll be glad to clear up any misunderstanding with the moderators if it is so...
 
Homerjaymc said:
... that does not change the fact that when you consider Communism and Fascism from a theoretical point of view, Communism has, by far, the most redeeming features...
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I'm not sure it does, and, don't forget, that fascism differs from one country and nation to the next. How you describe it might be true of Nazi Germany, but less true of elsewhere, eg Italy in its earlier years.

By the by, not all neo-Nazis deny the Holocaust. There are those who criticise Hitler for not "finishing the job" by killing more Jews, who certainly don't deny that extermination took place, and those, like Oswald Mosley, who stated after WW2 that it would have been better if Hitler had never lived. In his interviews in the Sixties and Seventies Mosley did not deny the Holocaust and was totally opposed to the flouting of the Geneva Convention by Germany during the war.

See "My Life" by Oswald Mosley; "A Life of Contrasts" and also "Loved Ones" by Diana Mosley; plus the 1967 David Frost interview with Mosley (available on cassette).
 
Edward said:
... and what about those killed in the name of christianity? Presumably that is an Evil too?
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And let's not forget those who've been killed in the name of 'democracy' either.
 
Thank you, Zygon. You echoed my own thoughts.

Should Britain and America face a war crimes tribunal for waging aggressive war against a sovereign country? NATO action against Serbia was not defensive, but aggressive against a democratically elected government that it just happened to disapprove of. The British and the American people, plus the people of the remaining seventeen countries who participated in NATO's war on Serbia, were not once consulted. This action contravenes the United Nations Charter, International Law, the Geneva Convention and much else besides. Most of the despair arose out of the terrorist KLA waging guerilla warfare in that part of Serbia known as Kosovo. The consequence of NATO's bombing campaign was the death of many innocent civilians. Obscene cluster bombs were dropped on civilians. No matter how many times the NATO spokesman uttered the word "regret" as each atrocity occurred, it did not alter the fact that innocent men, women and children were dead or seriously maimed because our government (among others) decided to bomb them relentlessly.

The Allies, at the end of WW2, put many defeated Germans on trial for waging aggressive war and committing crimes against humanity. They were hanged by the neck. The American judge and president of one of the tribunals at Nuremberg, Justice Wenersturm, however, resigned and went home in disgust at the injustice and manipulation of it all. Another American judge, Edward L van Roden, had his findings reported in The Washington Daily News and the British Sunday Pictorial in January 1949.

He described the ways "confessions" were secured: "Posturing as priests to hear confessions and give absolutions; the torture with burning matches driven under the prisoner's finger nails; knocking out of teeth and breaking jaws; solitary confinement and near-starvation rations; ... The statements which were admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four, and five months. ... The investigators would put black hoods over the accused's head and then punch him in the face with brass knuckles; kick him and beat him with rubber hoses. ... All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was standard operating procedure with our American investigators. ... Strong men were reduced to broken wrecks ready to mumble aby admission demanded by their prosecutors."

These were the people sitting in judgement of others for their war crimes.

Yet nobody was formally charged with "crimes against humanity" when America dropped its atomic bombs on an already defeated Japan who was about to surrender. Or when Britain carpet-bombed Dresden and other major cities of no strategic importance other than they harboured thousands of already totally demoralised and defeated civilians. The fate of German civilians under Allied occupation between 1945-1950 has been dealt with admirably by James Bacque in his two books "Other Losses" and "Crimes and Mercies."

Bacque provides irrefutable documentary evidence that more than nine million Germans died as a result of Allied starvation and expulsion policies in the first five years after WW2. That these deaths occurred at all is still being concealed and denied, especially by Western governments. But Bacque flew to Moscow to work in the newly opened KGB archives. He was the first English-speaking writer to gain access to these files. In them he found proof of the mass death of prisoners.

Moreover, under the Morgenthau Plan and its successors, Germans were prevented from growing sufficient food to feed themselves, goods were stolen from them at levels far beyond war reparations agreed between the Allies, and private charity was forbidden. In May 1945, US General Eisenhower, who had publicly promised to abide by the Geneva Convention, illegally forbade German civilians to take food to prisoners starving to death in American camps. He threatened the death penalty for anyone found feeding prisoners. One quarter of the country was annexed, and about fifteen million people expelled in the largest act of ethnic cleansing the world has ever known. Over two million of these people died either on the road or in concentration camps in Poland and elsewhere. Children were enslaved for years in these camps, and the majority of them also died.
 
Time to trot out the old adage:

The Soviet Union wasn't communist, it was state capitalist.

and;

nobody was accused of "crimes against humanity" when America dropped its atomic bombs on Japan. Or when we fire-bombed Dresden
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I accuse the US and UK governments of crimes against humanity for the above actions. There you go. Believe it or not, I actually mean it too.

I also accuse the British government of crimes against humanity for enitirely wiping out the Aboriginal people of Tasmania. As far as I am aware this was, so far, the only completely successful example of total ethnic cleansing.
 
But they won. You can't accuse the winners of naughtiness! Shocking suggestion there.
 
Precisely. And "winners" get to write the received version of history.
 
Exo, going back to your original post, are you saying that because one implementation of communism (i.e. that found in the old Soviet Union) was responsible for the slaughter of large numbers of people, then *all* forms of communism should be tarred with the same brush?

As Edward said, why doesn't that apply equally to Christianity and, for example, the Crusades and the Inquisition? I'm sure that you would claim that these phenomena were the fault of people who didn't hold firm to the true meaning of Christianity. You may be correct, but why, then can't that reasoning be applied to the former case?

As regards fascism, do you believe that your typical fascist wants a better world for *everyone*?

To be honest, I believe that communism is not a workable or plausible way to organise a society, but I also believe that there *are* people who are/were communists because they honestly believed that this would lead to a fairer and more equitable society for all. (Some others, on the other hand, are just people with a grudge against the society that they were brought up in.)
 
Are you suggesting that fascists are somehow less sincere in their conviction than communists? Of course they want a "better world for everyone" as they perceive it; just as do communists.

Incidentally, the slaughter of large numbers of people in the name of Communism is by no means restricted to the old Soviet Russian version.

What about China, particularly under Mao? What about the Polpot mass murder in Cambodia and Vietnam? What about certain Marxist African dictators who massacre in the name of Communism?

Why shouldn't communists be tarred in the same way as fascists?
 
Well, why shouldn't all ideologically-driven killers be tarred with the same brush? Killing for reasons of poltical or religious ideology are all terrible things. Communism, Fascism, Christianity, Islam, etc. have all had killings carried out in their name - I don't think there's any point singling out who is worse than the other, when they all have equally poor track records WRT their treatment of their fellow humans.
 
with communism i think it's just a case of who is in charge wanting to be rid of their enemies, hence the killing, see Mao and Stalin, it has nothing at all to do with the communist theories at all. In a perfect society Communism would work, it's just there are too many narrow minded greedy sods who get in charge. Equality for all? Power to the people? yes please, but it'll never work, and communism and fascism are two completely different things...
 
Putting your own house in order

Exo

Your point is what?

I suggest that before slinging mud at what seem to be random organisations, figures, faiths and movements you need make a closer inspection of the countless atrocities that testify to gods devine glory.

Some help below.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5195/victims.html[/URL]

As usual what could have been an interesting discussion has been tainted by your inability to grasp the simple realities of the situation.

Let he who is without sin...etc.

[EDIT] After reading the post by Eljubbo below and on reflection find some truth in the following.
yet again i see Edward haraunging Exo over points of debate, deliberately trying to flame. You're a TROLL Edward - get over yourself and go back to the threads that you started.
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Apologies to all for taking the debate 'off course'.
 
I've read this thread since its inception a couple of days ago and have been interested in which direction this discussion would take.

yet again i see Edward haraunging Exo over points of debate, deliberately trying to flame. You're a TROLL Edward - get over yourself and go back to the threads that you started.

I've not read Exo holding Christianity over any of the sociological tenets of fascism, communism, or whatever on this MB.

I think that we're all agreed that Polpot, Hitler, Stalin et al decided on their course of action for one underlying purpose:

They were evil.

If you don't like that description, how about "amoral", having a total lack of empathy for the conventions and standards of what is considered a "civilised" society?

I'll credit them for unique drive, ambition, maybe even "vision", but these qualities cannot be admired in these individuals when their life's worth is taken as a whole.

I'll add something of direct pertinance to the discussion:

I was in Vilnius, Lithuania a couple of summers ago and visited the KGB headquarters, that has now been turned into a museum. Between 100 and 250,000 Lithuanians were executed by the soviets between the years the Von Ribbentrop pact was signed, and the year that the communist state finally fell apart in the Baltic.

Some, but by no means the majority of Lithuanians executed, were jews, some Gypsy, but most were normal people who had come to the attention of the security forces for one reason or another.

As an aside, it's not just Communism and socialism (of whatever flavour) that performs, and continues to perform these types of atrocity. Check out what the CIA have been doing in the continental americas for the last 50 years. Or the middle-east. Or asia.

Just one man's opinion...
 
eljubbo said:
As an aside, it's not just Communism and socialism (of whatever flavour) that performs, and continues to perform these types of atrocity. Check out what the CIA have been doing in the continental americas for the last 50 years. Or the middle-east. Or asia.

Just one man's opinion...
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i think we'll find it's not Communism, or any political theory, that's performing these acts, but the people in charge hiding behind certain political views, using Communism to enter into a dictatorship, using them for their own means until they see fit to show their true colours. Nowhere in any Communist writings does it say anything about commiting acts of genocide or any other murders, i think you'll find...
 
A very conciliatory thread today;)

I take Phill's point entirely about it being related back to the personality and not the ideology.

I've got a really good book -"The Mitrochin Archive" about USSR secret histories. I'll have a read over the weekend and then maybe come up with some useful facts and figures.
 
exo,whilst i in no way wish to defend the abhorrent activities carried out by various groups throughtout history i would like to point out that christians burnt witches.shows the danger of following a group philosophy without reference to the real world.............
 
Well this threads been covered pretty well, so on the day after the 63rd anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in direct violation of the non aggression pact signed between the two countries, I have this to say.

Soviet hammer and sickle emblems are possibly more offensive to me than a swastika, yet people have no qualms with wearing them as fashion accessories. As has been mentioned earlier, the victors write their own history and this has everything to do with the original point of this thread, why are soviet attrocities not condemned like nazi attrocites.

Americans like to think they won WW2 and sure they had a big hand in it but ultimatley it was the red army that won the war. However the fact that the war was won by an army even more brutal then the Nazis, is a rather unpalatable fact for the sensitivities of the west.

Therefore, Soviet attrocites are glossed over, after all, we don't want to upset Uncle Joe, now do we. This is why the Soviets could spend 50 years denying the attrocities ever happened, with the tacit support of western governments.

Here's a link for anyone who wants to know more.
 
chrome_halo said:
exo,whilst i in no way wish to defend the abhorrent activities carried out by various groups throughtout history i would like to point out that christians burnt witches.shows the danger of following a group philosophy without reference to the real world.............
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Well, they actually burnt people who they accused of being witches - that doesn't mean that they were witches in the first place.
 
At one stage when British prisons were overcrowded, ships in the harbour were used instead. At another time, lots of people were transported to Australia, now a fantastic country. Today, have you any thoughts about the value of asking long-term prisoners to volunteer for transportation to Mars or the Moon? The way some things are going, there could be quite a lot of mileage in that. What do you think?
 
erm...not much to do with Soviet Communist Gas Chambers, but an interesting thought...
 
Phill James said:
with communism i think it's just a case of who is in charge wanting to be rid of their enemies, hence the killing, see Mao and Stalin, it has nothing at all to do with the communist theories at all. In a perfect society Communism would work ... communism and fascism are two completely different things...
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Perfect societies do not and will not ever exist. Hence we will never know. Communism and Fascism are two different ideologies that sprang from the Age of Ideology (WW1 to the fall of the Berlin Wall). It could be argued that both Communism and Fascism would work under perfect conditions. However, many people died under each system, far and away the greatest number died and suffered under Communism, but who today would suggest either as a viable alternative to Democracy?

Yesterday two Communist candidates were nevertheless elected to the German parliament. Remember, Communism is the ideology which cost the greatest number of lives in the twentieth century. The final toll will never be known.

The notion of openly Fascist candidates being elected is abhorrent to the average person. So why isn't the notion of Communist candidates being elected, which they have, equally distasteful?
 
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