Why Germany Protects its Soviet Memorials 

It is a shame to see the current conflict being used as a means of erasing Soviet history, especially in regard to memorials to the Soviet role in WWII.

We should not forget, that Stalin went along with Hitler to swallow Poland, not to mention katyn.

@@m.r.3912 the MR pact was to to buy the Soviets time before the inevitable Nazi invasion. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of Soviet history knows this. Stalin was obsessed with building the productive forces of the USSR since the 1920s in order to defeat the future attack from the west that he accurately foresaw.

Many soviet soldiers where ukranians, so the memorials should be respected.

RedPen, this is the official declaration by which the Soviet Union explained this pact after the war. Accordingly, Stalin would have been a genius who foresaw everything exactly. However, the almost complete obliteration of the Soviet officers' chorus as part of the Stalinist purges does not fit in with this. The filling of officer posts with inexperienced newcomers already caused great chaos and high losses during the attempted Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939 and even more when the German invasion took place. Even today historians still argue about the real reasons for the pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. In any case, the USSR aggressively attempted to incorporate the countries promised to it as areas of influence in the secret additional protocol of the pact and also massively supported the German blitzkrieg with supplies of raw materials...until they were attacked themselves.

@@uschurch For the people who are grateful to the liberation of Europe from Nazism

Impressive how it stands as an arrogant self-aggrandizement by a marauding bunch of raping apes.

And ugly

Now you have Russians Holding pro Russian protests there. They need to leave their country to protest in the first place.

A memorial for rapists

Oh yes definitely keep all the Hitler statues standing too. You're so smart bro !!!!

@@affordablecareactof how can you compare memorials for the Red Army, to Hitler?

​@@powa6243 Because they're just as bad and collaborated on partitioning Poland before it became inconvenient to remain allies?

@@affordablecareactof Who mentioned the German dictator? Nobody here. Why write his name with a capital "h"? Are you a supporter?

@@SpaceMarine500 I know that they partitioned Poland with the Wehrmacht. I know that they committed brutal war crimes in certain places at certain times, and a million other things. I understand. but, you have to understand that the Western Allies had done the same kinds of things as well (we're talking bombing raids that caused significant civilian casualties, internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps in America, war crimes done as well especially in western Europe etc.). Not only that, but just because of these things happening, doesn't take away from the fact that the Red Army had played a very significant role in the eventual defeat of both the European Axis and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and bravely fought against them. Some even say that WW2 could've ended in an Axis victory if it wasn't for the very stupid decision of invading the USSR, which brought them into the war alongside the allies.

it was russian hegemony

Not a single Russian unit actually took part in the fight for Berlin. 2 Byelorussian units, 1 Ukrainian and 2 Polish units.

There were russians tho. After all, Russians died the most among all the people​@@Kpoole35

@@WeoXCY only 1 in 9 soldiers that went into Berlin were Russian. There was more Polish soldiers than Russians there. Berlin was taken by Ukrainians and Belarusians led by a Georgian.

@@Kpoole35 don't forget polish "polk", if you're so "smart"

Not as much as Soviets brought suffering to the world including their own Country and Ukraine....holodomor killed as many people as holocaust in a fraction of the time. All commie monuments need to be removed.

The National Anthem of Russia

@@lennardschneider6847 No it's the anthem of the USSR why would they play the anthem of russia in a video about the soviet union. Yeah, I get it they sound the same but just say the ussr not russia

The old Soviet Union anthem.

@@uschurch Cowardice?

Do you think the same about Confederate statues?

@@TeikonGom Yes

@@albertp3721 Quite the opposite. Acceptance of a relity greater then yourself. Be inspired to prevent it from repeating it.

The USSR cared nothing for its soldiers. The “memorials” were nothing more than propaganda for local communist village idiots.

In what sense should we acknowledge the bravery of Nazi soldiers who fought to invade all of Europe and the USSR?

@@redpen1917 Not Nazis, you are referring to them like they all thought the same. They were people, put there to fight and risk their life's. Some did because they had to, some did it because they wanted to serve. But seeing all of them as some kind of "monsters" is utterly ridiculous. Imagine you being sent on the front line, dying one year of service, and your homeland lost the War and everyone would start seeing you as the "bad dude", your own sacrifice would have been a waste. The Nazi regime should be the one hated on, not brave soldiers that did that both me and you would probably have to do in case of a world war 3.

@@InAeternumRomaMater There is no point in talking to western commies. They dont want to acknowledge how the World works.

Memorializing the people who defeated your nation is an act of humility. It is a reflection on the folly of your ancestors' pride. Yes German soldiers were brave and many of them died doing what they thought was right. It's not about them. The statues stand for the moral lessons modern people must learn from those wars.

​@@appa609 It is humiliating in a sense but yeah, removing those statues would be bad optics in the international community and go against the reputation Germany wants as a state distanced from nazism as much as possible.

Burgerbrained moment

@@NulledSeriesYou are. Being a puppet of some other nation sucks.

​@@kindneybeanjoeTell that to any NATO countries people 😂

I was thinking the same thing. While I am against statues of Confederate soldiers here in the US being torn down, I am for tearing down Soviet statues in former occupied and satellite nations. Some might call me a hypocrite but the Confederate soldiers lost and were not conquerors, they were from that land. The Soviets however were foreigners who conquered Germany, I can not imagine having statues of your conquerors being good for national psyche, that gives your nation a defeatist attitude from go. I wouldn't be for tearing down Soviet statues in Russia proper, if all this makes sense.

“I don’t trust like that.”

Depends on the nature and social context of the monument. It is honouring colonialism/fascism or the fight against it? That’s the key question.

Their guilt is destroying them.

@@uschurch yes we get it, you're mad fascism got defeated. Destroying the statue won't change that reality

@@uschurch Oh, you mean if you were king.

@@pixel8397 Countries that were "liberated" by the Soviets just traded one dictator for another. Stop acting like the USSR didn't also commit genocides and human rights violations. They were just as bad as the Nazis.

@@StandTallTx the whole “Soviets and Nazis are the same” is quite literally fascist propaganda attempting to absolve and whitewash the Nazis of their crimes. How can they be the same when after 40 years of Soviet influence the people of Eastern Europe still remain? Had the Nazis won the Slavs, Balts, and other ethnic groups of Eastern Europe would’ve been either enslaved for the German war machine, massacred which was already what was occurring through fascist occupied territory, or forcibly germanized and made to lose their culture. What the Soviets did absolutely was liberation and I struggle to see how you’d disagree with that, why don’t you google generalplan ost if you don’t believe me

@@pixel8397 you say that like ussr was a caring and loving regime that totally didn't conduct genocide, ethnic cleansings, mass r@pe, and just overall oppression of poles, baltics, czechs, slovaks, ukrainians, etc.

Why? That would be a disgrace to fallen soldiers who fought against Nazism. Why should they take them down? And help Nazis rewrite history (which they are eager to do)?

@@redpen1917 The Soviet Union wasn’t any liberator, it was just another occupier and not in any way better than the nazi regime. Hundreds of thousands of German civilians were tortured, raped and killed. It took 40 years for the “liberated” countries in Eastern European to get their freedom and still today we can see how Russia behave against neighbouring countries. It’s war, threats and lies. The Germans can remember their history without honour criminals.

@@redpen1917you do know basic history, namely, that the Soviets and Nazis were allied for the first years of the war, they signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, to divide Europe among themselves. The Russians rewriting history and pretending to have won a war, that they themselves started by attacking Poland, is a disgrace to their victims.

In my opinion, the monuments that should be toppled are the ones that honor of the Russian empire

Not everyone feels the way you do. Lots of people reflect fondly on the defeating the Nazis alongside the Soviets and are proud of their antifascist heritage.

@@redpen1917 while you’re right that it is not everyone, it still is most of the population that feels this way, because the Soviets deported their family and/or friends and stole their lands, which was then allocated to colonizers imported from Russia to replace the local population. Thank god the empire of evil, which was the Soviet Union, doesn’t exist anymore.

No we are not. The disgusting russian rapists should not be honored!

​@@redpen1917they literally occupied baltic countries. Nobody in eastern Europe likes the soviets.

You're so ridiculous in your reasoning really, but that's your subjective viewpoint backed by a national idea, so I can't condemn it, really. Just in your place I would think much more objectively: 1930-40 years the big war is on the threshold and everybody understood it perfectly well, heads of Baltic states, your politicians established excellent connections with fascists had a lot of common agreements (Munters-Ribbentrop and Selter-Ribbentrop with secret agreements on reversal of formal neutrality against USSR - Latvia and Estonia go to alliance with Hitler. The "Fuhrer" of the "Third Reich" received the heads of Latvian and Estonian diplomacy). These pacts allowed much more conventions than the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which only gave temporary peace and respite for preparation for a big and bloody war. You don't really understand that in the context of such a war, the Baltic lands would in any case become a springboard for invasion of the USSR, and in the same case your nation would be an ally of the Fuhrer, as well as Hungarians, Bulgarians, Croats, Romanians and part of Ukrainians, who still hold a grudge against some of their neighbors. You would not be defenders of the nation, but enslavers and murderers of your neighbors simply because Big Uncle Fuhrer would threaten you with a bigger gun. But it seems to me that you are not even aware of the concept of The lesser of two evils.

Russia was the heart and political puppet master of the USSR and pretending otherwise is just being willfully ignorant.

You sound like a Nazi sympathizer.

​@@redpen1917Holodomor, Killing Fields, Nazino Island, Great Leap Forward, Chernobyl Disaster, North Korean Manmade Famine, Pol Pot's Vietnamese Genocide, Soviet R@pe of Berlin, German Deportation/Massacre, Soviet Deportation of Poles to the Gulags, Massacre at Hue, Ceausescu's Orphanages. Just to name a miniscule number of Commie Genocides and Massacres and death caused by gross incompetence because " Muh State Security!

​@@redpen1917So tell me, why should we idolize crooks?

@redpen1917 God forbid I say building statues while people starve is a bad thing, Rapist apologist.

The Soviets came seeking vengeance for good reason. Soviet soldiers were brutal occupiers, but were restrained and humane when compared to the German forces in the USSR. The German people reaped what sowed.

Kazakhstan is larger

That is currently what exists… the Soviet Union was a multi-national entity. Many Russian and Ukrainian soldiers died side by side fighting the Nazis.

@@redpen1917 The soviet union was multi-national entity in the same way the british empire was.

@@regularguy2807 Compare their constitutions and see for yourself.

Yeah what an absolute joke. Stalin the comedian …

Tell that to the ukranians which grandfathers fought against Nazis

@@sandrocosta479 Do you understand english?? Thats what i wrote!!!

@@uschurch oh sod off

Can you imagine having a memorial for an army, that purged your people from a fourth of its former territory, committed countless atrocities against your people and occupied a quarter of what is left of your country for almost half a century, in your capital? I consider this memorial to be a great national insult and if it was up to me it would be demolished tomorrow.

@@mikeisteinmongozwei5434 I wonder who invaded who first and who killed millions of souls in the east first .... also almost all german land lost was given to poland and it was deserved. wWhat do you think they should have keep these diverse ethnic regions after comiting the holocaust and sending death squads in the USSR? Your take is incredebly dumb., go outside and touch grass.

@@mikeisteinmongozwei5434 you're forgetting why this happened. Had the Germans not invaded the Soviet Union and plundered, raped, and massacred it's population that wouldn't have happened to Germany

@@mikeisteinmongozwei5434 and you guys killed 19 million civilians, sent them to labor camps, sold off women and children in brothels, etc etc. You wanted a war of annihilation and you got it.

@Visidox There should be a lot more memorials for German Soldiers in Germany.

Not only a part, but the second biggest part of it

What a joke, the Holodomor happened less than a quarter decade before the war. Ukraine was dragged along into WW2 as a meat shield. It is the ghost of the USSR that is the cause of the current war and there is nothing you can do to change this fact.

they used it under the name of Nationalism and called that all Ukranian who died for USSR is a traitor. Same goes for Poland and so on. Most notice example is Konstantin Rokossovsky.

@@potomskazhu second lmost populous, i think kazakhstan was bigger land wise

Even disrespecting the Russian soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin is wrong. They have nothing to do with today's war.

german monument are still in Stalingrad

“Stalin was no better than Hitler” - yikes.

@@redpen1917 i mean yeah, stalin was an asshole, if hitler won he would have been infinetly worse but stalin is on par with a hitler who lost.

@@redpen1917 he executed or sent to gulags 20million people where a significant fraction died. He Took great pleasure in having wives of those closest to him sent to gulags. Any more facts…. Pls read

@@Wolf-hh4rv Yikes if you think the Holocaust genocide was at all similar to Soviet Gulags or famines. That’s a whole other level of mental gymnastics, but unfortunately your opinion is all too common in the revisionist west. Hell, most Americans think they liberated Auschwits.

@@Wolf-hh4rv many people really did die under Stalin. 27 million Soviets killed by Nazis. That is real. The notion that Stalin killed that many people is bourgeois propaganda, and historical revisionism of the highest degree.

Sorry but no thank you. Sovuet Union mass murdered 100+ million innocent: And they are lying about the geerman mass murdering.

Can you name one country wich get their freedom after they were "liberated" by the Soviet Unionen? I see no diffrence beteween a nazi dictator or a communist dictator.

also eternal suffering for their crimes against humanity

@@simpsbelongtothegulags3702”we have liberated Europe from fascism, but they will never forgive us for it” -Georgy Zhukov

@@seductive_fishstick8961 you know that ussr did it's fair share of murders, cleansings, imperialism, and just overall oppression to the poles, ukrainians, czechs, finns, baltics, etc. right?

Some of these aren't even war cemeteries though, they're monuments that exist solely to humiliate Germany and it's people.

Because they were nothing but disgusting rapists and monsters. Thats why!

That army is also responsible for what might just be the biggest mass r@pe event in history and the oppression of estonians, Lithuanians, latvians, finns, poles, ukrainians, georgians, caucasians, czechs, etc. I mean are you aware that they did their own fair share of ethnic cleansings right?

Right?

Yep, the Americans should keep up those statues of people that fought for slavery and wanted to keep slaves. 🤣

@@May-ve6sr Yeah simpleton. 86% of the Confederate Soldiers were conscripted (Drafted) against their will to fight for the Confederacy. Most working white males did not want Slavery in the south for one simple fact. Hard to make a living wage when a slave did the labor for free. These are facts no longer taught in school/college anymore. Just bull stuff gas lighting. READ A BOOK!!!!

Enlighten us

@@bjolie78 From the Reich Chancellery.

It was actually the Germans that invaded the USSR.

I highly doubt in 1945 the locals were too happy to be under occupation ...

​@redpen1917 who invaded poland from the east?

Precisely.

They were forced to fight with the Red Army.The Ukraine saw Germans as their heroes and liberators. No National Socialist ever tried to starve millions of their countrymen to death, as the Red Terror did.

holodomer

No actually, we shouldn’t.

@@redpen1917 we shouldnt glorify rapists

@@kittycatwithinternetaccess2356 I can guarantee you that the nation that believed in racial hierarchy did more of that.

Interesting

the reda were rapists

No shit Sherlock

@@andrejt8160 So then you agree that shoving monuments in people's faces is idiotic? Fantastic!

@@StandTallTx no it is not idiotic, IT is supposed to be a grim reminder of the past. IT is supposed to be in your face. The monuments have nothing to do with the current war. They honor the fallen soviets ( Russian Ukrainian Belorussian Khazack estonian Yakutian Dagastani Georgian) not only would it bee disrespectful to the dead. it would be just petty and serves no purpose to destroy it.

@@StandTallTx i can’t remember anything i learnt from reading books. However i can list 7 historical events based on memorials in my town

@@FrenchToastQc You can achieve even more by opening a book and reading about the conflict. A monument doesn't go into detail or explain the nuances of WW2 - it's literally a laymans version of what actually happened and disrespects the fallen because you're too lazy to read. You're making the same dumb argument when people talk about Confederate memorials. News flash! This stuff is deeply personal to many people still and they should be able to choose when they want to remember a dark period of history. The same thing applies to Eastern European countries that don't want to be reminded when they were forced to adopt Communist puppet governments or when they had protests squashed because the people wanted to vote for democracy. Especially from a shit hole state like the USSR that's well-known for human rights violations, backwards policies, and rampant corruption.

You man big L

The disgusting rapists should not be honored!

its not really that simple. Soviets in ww2 are fighting for conquering, looting and rping. Germans today are indoctrinated to hate their past and eastern europe who lived under communism knows its terror

So based Polish people still exist)))

there were anti soviet insurgencies in the baltics

there are certainly more than 2 "true" communists who didn't degenerate into dictators, such as trotsky and rosa luxembourg, but I get your point

Let that one nation rather be the British who took to war crimes like Möhnedam destruction, bombing of Dresden while full of refugees, and sinking ships full of refugees. The Brits gave us hell in military sense. If the Ruzzkies didn't have had such harsh winters, Wehrmacht would have walked on Red Plain in Moscow. All the Red Army did was behave like the mindless butchers they are still today.

the ussr was evil

reds were savages and rapists

@@kittycatwithinternetaccess2356 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht

cry

Cry

Keeping up monuments is not protecting History.

@@moritzm.3671 how so? they are a reminder of one's history, as grim as it can be. without a reminder of a dark history, we are doomed to repeat it.

Because honoring rapists is wrong!

Not Russia. It was soviet union. Many soldiers werent russians. Many were ukranians, poles, etc.

Yes but don't forget that the Soviet Union also: - agreed on sharing Poland with Hitler - attacked Poland and Finland Without military help (equipment) from the British and the US the SU might not have stand until it got enough of its own tanks

Yes, but don’t forget that Russia gave Berlin back to Germany and didn’t really have to. My point is that there were also gestures worth highlighting and even to be grateful for.

If it wasn't for USA and the UK there would be no Russia. USA and UK supplied Russia with vital supplies during WW2,both tanks, aeroplanes, wool clothes, and raw materials. . They also supplied Russia with vital military intelligence from Ultra in the UK. Without all this help Russia would have been crushed by Germany earlier in the war at the time when Germans almost stood at the gates of Moscow.

They didnt gave Berlin back. They kept their Berlin occupation zone and intergrated it in a a puppet state. Do you think all the east Germabs fleeing into the west were happy with their new freedom? Also the Soviet Union started with Hitler the war. Before they fought esch other the Soviet helped attacking Poland, attecjt the Baltic states and attacked Finnland. So they were aggressors. If they could they would destroy Europe themselfes

No lol

@Yulis Wow sounds just like Britian, USA, Germany, Japan, China and many more