By Nicolas Bonnal
I didn't wait a long time to make up my mind about 9.11 attacks. I barely needed two hours and the counsel of my Russian-born friend Serge de Beketch, a researcher who knew a big deal about invisible planes, explosives, Bin Laden's origins and neocons' intentions (constructive chaos, preventive wars...). Yet I still have not made up my mind about legendary Operation Barbarossa. And recently my unwillingness went further given that I watched some maps. I invite you to do so.
Since seventy years we have been told such an amount of things:
- The first is that Russia is an enormous, such a large country that it couldn't be split by Napoleonic or German brutality or by American attempts during Yeltsin's era (give us oilfields, and keep the slums). It cannot be conquered too since Moscow is too far. How many kilometres? Ask Napoleon troops!
- The second is that Russian winter is invincible. And that the poor Germans, who were so unprepared that they had to spoil three million POW form their garments, had no tanks, weapons or vehicles to face the freezing cold of 1941. And the Russians? Don't they freeze too? And the historians? Don't they watch calendars? Can we mention them that winter starts in December and the infamous invasion-extermination of Russia started in June? Yes, I know, the fuehrer wasted time with the Serbians in Yugoslavia... but it was in April; who can invade Russia in April?
All this junk is the propaganda delivered by Nazis which serves of introduction to any western account on this bigger than life operation. But I repeat: watch a map. And if you have some seconds available, ask Google some distances: for instance the distance between Moscow and Warsaw, occupied by the Germans since 1939, or between Warsaw and Minsk. There is hardly more than 700 miles in the first case, not even 300 in the second. Ask then the distance between Kiev and Bucharest, given that Romania, like other countries of central Europe (Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary), was a German ally, and you will hardly find more than 500 miles!
Let's get to the first conclusion: the distances are not that immense. We have been told lies about this. European Russia is not Siberia, even if we consider Russians as tartars! There are no more kilometres between Moscow and Warsaw than there are between Berlin and Paris. Yet France was quickly invaded ("French army just asked to scram", quipped Celine) and Russia not. Why?
Wow, I know, the Russian winter! Did it start the 21st of June? Yet it is so cold! Motors are kaput, guns are frozen, and we have not predicted such an assault, from our bunkers! The Russian winter didn't stop an offensive which already was stopped. Yet it may have slowed a Russian counteroffensive, the one which came in winter.
We have been told since three quarters of a century, which is a big deal of time, that the Russians were unprepared, unequipped, that they had been persecuted by Stalin, that the purges had eliminated all the best generals and officers, and that finally the Germans had just to drive their tanks, like in a circuit, to overthrow communism in Russia. Yet it was not the case. Operation Barbarossa turned soon to be a very bad trip, even Guderian acknowledged it.
There was a big red army. There were many reserves; there was military resistance, even a counter-attack in July. The Germans had many mechanical and logistical problems, even with their wonderful technology. Despite their overvalued military genius, they committed like in 1914 many mistakes, the dictator letting his generals fight with each other, and lose some good occasions, especially in Leningrad with ridiculous marshal von Leeb. And for Moscow, the defences were excellent -see memories of the marshal Zhukov - and even the lunatic conqueror knew it.
The second conclusion is that: the Germans were not vanquished by the winter, but by some very visible forces before. And I come back to my point: where is the blitzkrieg? USSR is betrayed and attacked by surprise by a formal ally, whom she still delivered to oil and raw materials! The distances are not enormous yet Kiev is taken only three months after the beginning of the war?!? One thousand kilometres in three months, and you call that blitzkrieg? Of course later little sad autumn begins, with its fallen leaves and its yellow verses, and then terrible general Winter comes, but for the Russian soldiers too (it has been calculated that half a million of Russians died during Napoleonic invasion, mainly of cold...), but what did you do suddenly last summer?
The main objective of this crazy war as we know was extermination. Instead of stealing or occupying empty colonial empires of France and England, the fuehrer prefers to exterminate 200 millions Europeans. Anti-whites militants should praise Hitler for that exploit. Extermination began immediately, in June. Infamous SS einsatzgruppen machine-gunned entire villages, any resistant was tortured and murdered and his mir too, and the Germans soldiers were prepared to replace an entire nation. 5.5 million People had been exterminated before the fall. Not bad for the summer: were they wasting their time or preparing a future? The lebensraum or living space was rather an operation of creating a space of death with a depopulation agenda more important than the war agenda.
I have finished by thinking one thing: that to implement this program Hitler had starved his nation before, as he had impoverished it. In his remarkable book on the matter, Germany in the darkness, Stoddard writes that there were meagre rations for every one, even before Barbarossa: a few eggs per month, almost no butter, and of course potatoes which remained frozen underground one winter! This was is the so weird and monstrous Nazi objective, driving mad a modern people, like unleashing and starved dogs against some one in the street.
Yet I repeat that the Germans, despite their insane motivation, preparation and equipment, needed three months to get to Kiev, the closer city. And they didn't get Moscow later in the fall.
I think that in the west we shall need a new story of this war. And watch a map if you go to Moscow. For it is not that far...
Nicolas Bonnal