78 years ago: 1943 – the year the tide turned in World War II

 

(May 8, 2018) – The peoples of Russia remember 1943 as the year that everything changed; a year of decisive battles that altered the course of the Great Patriotic War and World War II as a whole. It was the year of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of the Caucasus, the Battle of Kursk, and the Battle of the Dnieper. It began with the lifting of the siege of Leningrad and ended with the Red Army’s liberation of two thirds of the Soviet territory temporarily occupied by the Nazis – 38,000 localities, including 162 towns.

‘Operation Unthinkable’: Churchill’s planned invasion of the Soviet Union, July 1945

By YURI RUBTSOV*

In late May 1945, Josef Stalin ordered Marshall Georgy Zhukov to leave Germany and come to Moscow. He was concerned over the actions of British allies. Stalin said the Soviet forces disarmed Germans and sent them to prisoners’ camps while the British did not. Instead they cooperated with German troops and let them maintain combat capability. Stalin believed that there were plans to use them later. He emphasized that it was an outright violation of the inter-governmental agreements that said the forces surrendered were to be immediately disbanded. The Soviet intelligence got the text of a secret telegram sent by Winston Churchill to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, the commander of British forces. It instructed to collect the weapons and keep them in readiness to give back to Germans in case the Soviet offensive continued.

Falsification of history: Auschwitz and its liberation – Heroic deed of the Red Army

Auschwitz prisoners liberated by the Soviet Red Army.

By YURIY RUBTSOV

If you ask the prisoners of Auschwitz or at least those who have ever visited the memorial and museum about what they felt — they will tell you that the place where hundreds of thousands died is cursed. One gets the impression that the deathly silence of the cemetery is still broken by cries and moans of inmates pushed into gas chambers… piles of shoes of all sizes, tooth brushes, glasses… all these objects still appear to preserve the warmth of the hands of the people they belonged to.