Konrad 🇨🇿🇵🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺

I tried not to touch this topic for a long time, but enough is enough. Amid the wave of Russia’s Victory Day hysteria and the hatred cultivated by Putin’s regime toward Ukraine, World War II is increasingly being turned into a propaganda weapon. Moscow’s propagandists try to portray Russia as pure and innocent, as if it almost single-handedly won the war, while Ukrainians are painted almost entirely as “Banderites” who supposedly served Germany and killed defenseless Russians. So let’s talk facts. Long before Hitler came to power, the USSR helped Weimar Germany secretly rebuild its military industry and military science despite international restrictions. And here is something many people prefer not to remember: Stalin helped create the conditions that allowed Hitler to rise. The Nazi Party did not have enough support on its own. If the Communists and Social Democrats had united against Hitler, he likely would not have succeeded. But Stalin viewed the Social Democrats as his main enemy, and the split on the left opened the road for Hitler. Ironically, many German Communists later ended up destroyed by the same Nazi regime they helped enable. At first, relations between Berlin and Moscow were tense. But after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the USSR became one of Nazi Germany’s main suppliers of oil, grain, metals, and other raw materials — deliveries that continued right up until June 22, 1941. In other words, the Soviet Union helped feed the very Nazi war machine that it would later accuse everyone else of collaborating with. In exchange, Germany supplied the USSR with technology and industrial expertise. Britain even considered bombing the Baku oil fields because Soviet oil had become a key source fueling Germany’s military machine. At that moment, London viewed the USSR less as a future victim and more as Germany’s economic partner. And under this same cooperation, some German Communists who had fled to the USSR were deported back to Germany, where many disappeared into concentration camps. But it was not just about trade. The secret protocols of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact divided Europe into spheres of influence and allowed the USSR to invade Poland alongside Germany and later occupy Bessarabia. Then Stalin pushed even further toward the Baltics and Finland, alarming Berlin itself. Another uncomfortable fact: by June 22, 1941, the USSR had deployed around 4.5 million troops, more than 20,000 aircraft, and tens of thousands of tanks near its western borders. As a career military officer, I can say openly that even our instructors taught us that the deployment pattern, forward supply buildup, and dismantling of defensive lines suggested preparations for offensive — not defensive — operations. In the first months of the war alone, nearly two million Soviet soldiers were captured, while catastrophic losses devastated the western military districts. Now to the main point. Russian propagandists endlessly attack Ukrainians over the existence of the Ukrainian independence movement during WWII. I am not here to justify or condemn it. What interests me is the staggering hypocrisy and double standards. According to various estimates, between 1.5 and 1.7 million Soviet citizens and former subjects of the Russian Empire served in the Wehrmacht, SS, and auxiliary formations. And now pay attention: Ethnic Russians alone accounted for roughly 600,000 to 800,000 of them. Meanwhile, all other foreign volunteers in the Wehrmacht and SS combined — excluding citizens of the USSR and former Russian Empire — totaled less than 400,000. When I first studied these numbers myself, I was shocked. So before lecturing others about history, maybe Russia should first take an honest look at its own.

Skupina Kaputin opravila text na Pomníku padlým rudoarmějcům na Olšanských hřbitovech. “Obětem zločinných režimů, sovětského a nacistického, které v letech 1939-1941 společně dobývaly Evropu a v letech 1941-1945 bojovaly proti sobě.”