I agree with Christer Bergström's 'Operation Barbarossa: 9 popular myths busted' article

My Patron, Björn Nord, asked if I could read an article ("Operation Barbarossa: 9 popular myths busted") written by Swedish Historian Christer Bergström and comment upon it. Here's the link to the article -

Points discussed -
1. Stalin’s collapse
2. Mass surrenders by Soviet soldiers
3. Master spy Sorge contributed to the alleged relocation of the Soviet Far East armies that are supposed to have saved Moscow
4. The wearing down of the Wehrmacht through relentless Soviet counter-attacks
5. The vast numerical superiority enjoyed by the Soviets
6. It was the Arctic cold that halted the German offensive
7. The vast differences in troop casualties between the two sides on the Eastern Front
8. The Soviet partisans
9. The unknown wave of mass rape on the Eastern Front

Let the wehraboo tears flow!

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ABOUT TIK

History isn’t as boring as some people think, and my goal is to get people talking about it. I also want to dispel the myths and distortions that ruin our perception of the past by asking a simple question - “But is this really the case?”. I have a 2:1 Degree in History and a passion for early 20th Century conflicts (mainly WW2). I’m therefore approaching this like I would an academic essay. Lots of sources, quotes, references and so on. Only the truth will do.

This video is discussing events or concepts that are academic, educational and historical in nature. This video is for informational purposes and was created so we may better understand the past and learn from the mistakes others have made.

[garthflint]

I was a tanker in an M-1 for 5 years in the '90s. I have operated in sub-zero F. I have also been an infantryman in sub-zero temps. Given a choice I would rather be an infantryman in that weather. The M-1 had a heater. It usually did not work. Touch anything in the tank with your bare hands and risk frost bite. Drive down the road with your head out the top without goggles and risk loosing your eyes. When it is that cold everything on that tank breaks or simply does not work. The engine has to run all the time. The Germans had a fuel shortage so they could not idle the engines. Winter is tanker hell. Summer is not much better. I have measured 140 inside a tank in the summer. I hated being a tanker. So glad when I got back in the infantry. Ask any US Army vet tanker who was stationed in Germany about German winters. I feel for both the German and Russian tankers. Winter has a huge effect on readiness and effectiveness.

[gnosticbrian]

The crew of the German battleship Bismarck were told that their anti-aircraft gunners had shot down 27 of HMS Victorious's Swordfish torpedo bombers. A remarkeable achievement I'm sure that we can all agree; all the more remarkable when one learns that Victorious only launched 9 Swordfish and that all 9 returned safely to the carrier.

[martinguandjienchan]

The importance of the Siberian troops was a) that they were very well equipped, including winter gear and b) that they were experienced veterans who had fought many border clashes with Japanese and Manchukuoan troops. Most of them were sent to the Staingrad region in 1942. Among these units was the one of Kim Il-sung, who later became the leader of North Korea. These former Korean and Chinese partisan units were especially valuable, as they had more than a decade experience in fighting the Japanese army. They were highly motivated elite units and, although not so large in numbers, played a crucial role in late 1942 and 1942.

[locosiap]

The first 3 points are like ''WW2 oversimlified debunked''

[tickticktickBOOOOM]

There's a psychological phenomenon when soldiers think they've won a battle and that the fighting is over. They relax to an extent that leaves them vulnerable to a counterattack that they would normally beat back easily, and often fall into rout. It's turned many battles throughout history.

[UCUCUC]

"22hours and 52 minutes" stalin needs to unionise and demand better work conditions^^

[allanfifield]

In college, I knew a family in Ventura (CA) whose parents had survived WW II. I remember the family name as Walati. The father was an Ossetian who had served in the Red Army and the mother was a German military nurse. He was in officer training for the Red Army when the German invasion started. He was part of that mob of Red army men you see in grainy film grimly marched through Red Square directly to the front in November. 1941. He told me, "I couldn't wait to get to the front!" "Ah, to fight the Germans!", I replied. "No, No! To surrender to the Germans. I hated the party and Stalin." I had the sense that he ended up in the SS or Vaslov Russian Liberation Army movement, but I never asked that question. He certainly didn't spend the war in a German prisoner of war camp. He married a German nurse somewhere in 1943-44 and they escaped to the West at the end of the war. There was a trade-off in my mind between the results of Stalin's extreme brutal collectivization and forced industrialization and the morale of the Red Army soldiers in 1941-42. The Soviet Union would have fared much better in 1941-42 with somewhat fewer tanks and airplanes and a lot more men willing to fight to the death for the regime with the equipment at hand.

[ywkwqvx]

We must take into account that great number of POW were male civilians of conscription age counted by Nazi as POW. This is most notable in the case of Kiev encirclement when numbers of POW captured by the Germans greatly exceeded the number off Red Army soldiers "missed in action". Germans were capturing most highly populated areas of Soviet Union where mobilization was not finished or even haven't started. German logic was based upon the fact that from the first days of the war a lot of Red Army soldiers tried to escape encirclement with the support of civilians in civilian clothing.
In his famous Order No. 227 "Not a step back!" Joseph Stalin proclaimed that further retreat is unacceptable since the main mobilization territories of the Soviet Union are already captured by the enemy, and Germany could win the war of attrition simply because of higher mobilization resource. This was also true for food-producing territories. The mobilization resource of the USSR radically increased only with the liberation of territories left to the enemy in summer 1941.
P.S. I'm just in love with TIK video about order No. 227 "Not a step back!"

[konstantinriumin]

Just a note - despite official Soviet disapproval of popular partisan movement in the first year of war, there were plenty of partisans operating outside of NKVD saboteurs - mostly groups of red army soldiers from encircled units who managed to avoide being taken as POWs. These men often formed gangs of various ideology. Regardless, most of them were just trying to survive.

[markstrang]

"The unknown wave of mass socialization"
It is silly what youtube forces people to say.

[rubenmelchor]

How can u keep up with the channel, doing these types of videos and at the same time doing the Stalingrad documentary?
Keep it up man

[QuizmasterLaw]

Soviet combatant losses are around 2:1 to German losses. That ratio falls when you include other axis allies. That figure skyrockets when you include civilians. Welcome to the war of extermination. Now you know where the 10 or 20 to 1 myth comes from, it's counting civilians (where do partisans come from?) among combatants...

[artiomzh]

The soviet partisans fought mostly against the hiwis and the police battalions formed of the locals, which collaborated with the nazis in 1941-43.

[mortarriding]

"I stood beside a bed in hospital. On it lay a girl, unconscious, her long, black hair in wild tumult on the pillow. A doctor and two nurses were working to revive her. An hour before she had been raped by twenty soldiers. We found her where they had left her, on a piece of waste land. The hospital was in Hiroshima. The girl was Japanese. The soldiers were Australians. The moaning and wailing had ceased and she was quiet now. The tortured tension on her face had slipped away, and the soft brown skin was smooth and unwrinkled, stained with tears like the face of a child that has cried herself to sleep."

"Socialisation" is understudied among Western troops too, and the people who attempted to investigate it were sidelined and their findings largely repressed.

[MaFo]

The temperature myth is interesting since there exists a simmillar discussion when talking about the Finnish Winter War. Although early 1940 was exceptionally cold late 1939 was unusually mild, something that greatly aided the finnish defenders who lacked winter equipment compared to their Red Army opponents. The mild weather also meant that lakes and rivers didn't freeze and thus could be used as natural barriers by the finns. When the temperature plummeted the finns suffered severe cases of frostbite and since the lakes and rivers froze they could be used by the Soviets as a way to bypass the finnish static strongpoints with ices in some cases being thick enough to even support tanks.

[qalette]

Concerning the comparison in losses, it is important to point out that roughly one third of the fallen Soviet soldiers didn't die in battle, but were murdered as unarmed POWs. I therefore consider them to be closer to civilians. The POW discounted ratio of 1.9 to 1 or 2.4 to 1 would fall even more, if we count these deaths as non-military. Not to mention that the ratio has to compare Soviet forces with *ALL axis forces, * not only with German forces. Seven states attacked the USSR in 1941, plus thousands of OUN partisans in the hinterland.

A little side note though: Your notion that "individual initiative was not socialist" (34:04) was true for a later period, but not for the period we are talking about. Khrushchev ranted a lot against "individualism", it was him who put everything under state control. I don't want to elaborate further on the partisan situation, as it is quite specific and too extensive to counter your (and Bergström's) interpretation. Sorry.

But: Let me do a little myth busting : )

Up until the late 1950's the *private sector in the Soviet Union* was huge! About 40% of all furniture and 70% of all household items made of metal _(which were not yet electric at the time!)_ were produced by craftsmen or light industry cooperatives, the so called "Artels".

Unfortunately there is no English wiki on this, so, try the Russian one:
*ru. wikipedia. (interrupted to avoid active link)

Khrushchev liquidated this entire sector! He even wanted to liquidate the cooperatives in agriculture and turn kolkhozes into sovkhozes, but that he didn't manage, it would have affected too many people and thus provoke quite a lot of resistance. They tried indirectly, but that produced unintended side effects...

Basically, Khrushchev (and the CPSU left wing) wanted to eliminate economy and replace it with "scientific planning". That was the idea. Another element in achieving this was abandoning the piece rate system and making wages more equal. Which in the long run and combined with other factors of course eliminated all incentives to do a good job... This was just crazy! Here the situation prior to Khrushchev's wage reform:

_"In 1956, approximately 75 percent of Soviet workers were paid under a piece-rate system, so the majority of Soviet workers could significantly boost their earnings by increasing their output."_

I'd say this is very individualistic. And it indeed was. Khrushchev criticized the wage system and the Artel and Kolkhoz structures as being "individualistic". It was him, who put everything under the control of the communist party, not Stalin. On the contrary. Stalin used to cite Lenin's famous quote: *"Communism is Soviet power plus electrification"* which meant: Communism is not the rule of communists, and it's not the realization of some utopia. It's a *democracy based on councils with a high technological standard.*

Turns out, communists are the biggest obstacle to communism...! 🤣

[_Abjuranax_]

The socialization of women is very well documented, and many women committed suicide afterwards out of shame. There was originally a policy of no fraternization for the Allied troops, but it was never made official because the Allied High Command knew there was no way such a policy could be enforced. That, and other atrocities committed by both sides on the Easter Front during the war, all but guaranteed that German troops preferred to surrender to Western Forces.

[konstantinatanassov]

The drowning of German divisions in seas of soviet riflemen is truly an severe exaggeration - skills and organization within the Soviet army played a larger role in the later stages of the war.


They have learnt to organize themselves, tactically and strategically. German officers noted this in their war time reports, that "the Soviet Forces's way of fighting is more and more becoming to look like our own does."; i.e. Soviets learnt Combined-Arms warfare and mobile tactics.

[Yora]

In Germany, I've never really come across claims that Soviet War crimes were worse than German war crimes. If anything, Soviet war crimes are glossed over to not create the appearance that German war crimes are in any way being excused.
In more educated circles, opinion seems to be that the German soldiers behaved just as savagely as the Soviet soldiers, but the Soviets never came anywhere near the Germans when it come to organized genocide that had its own infrastructure build.

[DD-lmgv]

Thank you TIK. Keep fighting for objective truth or at least the ability to debate history with facts, reason and an open mind.