Nazi invasion of Soviet Union was ‘murderous barbarity’

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke at the German-Russian museum in Berlin-Karlhorst on Friday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II.

The museum is located in the same building where the German Wehrmacht signed the unconditional surrender to representatives of the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France on May 8, 1945.

“Nobody during this war mourned more victims than the people of the former Soviet Union,” Steinmeier said, adding that the German war against the Soviets was carried out with “murderous barbarism.”

“It weighs on us that our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers who waged this war, were involved in these crimes,” he added. 

Steinmeier’s remarks opened an exhibition at the museum called, “Dimensions of a Crime. Soviet Prisoners of War in World War II.” The Wehrmacht captured around 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war, of whom 3 million died in captivity.

On Monday, Steinmeier visited the Sandbostel camp in the northern state of Lower Saxony, a former prisoner of war camp that today is a memorial site. Steinmeier spoke with former prisoners and laid a wreath.

President Steinmeier lays a wreath at the Sandbostel memorial on Monday

On Tuesday, June 22, a wreath-laying ceremony is scheduled at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin-Pankow.

Representatives from 15 ex-Soviet states were invited to Friday’s exhibition. Ukrainian Ambassador Andrij Melnyk rejected the invitation, calling the museum venue “an affront” because of its “Russian” focus and because the wartime persecution of other countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states, was being “simply ignored.”

The German-Russian museum is the building where Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945

What was Operation Barbarossa?

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched its invasion of eastern Europe, which was codenamed Operation Barbarossa.

The attack involved 3.3 million troops along an 1,800-mile (2,900-kilometer) front, making it one of the largest invasion forces in history.

Adolf Hitler famously broke the non-aggression pact, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union weeks before the war began in  August 1939.

The German invasion less than two years later caught the Soviets by surprise, and their forces were initially overwhelmed and incurred heavy losses before consolidating to block the German offensive.

Eastern Europe’s WWII killing fields 

Operation Barbarossa opened the Eastern Front in Europe, the largest of the entire war, which witnessed some of its fiercest battles and worst atrocities until Nazi Germany’s capitulation in May 1945.

An estimated 30 million people were killed on the Eastern Front, far more than any other theater during World War II.

• Russia marks 75th anniversary of Stalingrad with parades and nostalgia

  One of Soviet Russia’s greatest World War II triumphs

  Russia celebrated the 75th anniversary of the defense of Stalingrad on Friday with somber memorials and patriotic military parades. Russian President Vladimir Putin was a highly visible presence throughout the day, laying wreaths, addressing veterans and attending military parades. He is seen here in front of 85-meter The Motherland Calls statue in what is now called Volgograd.

• Russia marks 75th anniversary of Stalingrad with parades and nostalgia

  Putin calls on Russians to measure up to their ancestors

  Putin told veterans the Soviet victory at Stalingrad was an inspiration. “The unified resistance and readiness for self-sacrifice were truly undefeatable, incomprehensible and frightening for the enemy,” Putin said. “Defenders of Stalingrad have passed a great heritage to us: love for the motherland, readiness to protect its interests and independence, to stand strong in the face of any test.”

• Russia marks 75th anniversary of Stalingrad with parades and nostalgia

  Military parade

  Official figures said 30,000 spectators watched a military parade through the streets of Volgograd despite sub-zero temperatures. The parade included about 1,500 troops, armored vehicles and jets flying ahead.

• Russia marks 75th anniversary of Stalingrad with parades and nostalgia

  Armored vehicles

  The parade featured 75 tanks — one for each year since the victory — as well as an Iskander ballistic missile system and an advanced S-400 surface-to-air missile system. Ground forces included T-90 tanks and armored Tigr infantry mobility vehicles.

• Russia marks 75th anniversary of Stalingrad with parades and nostalgia

  Red Army nostalgia

  The memorial parade included people (traffic controllers according to some sources) dressed up in Red Army winter uniforms and felt boots. The Soviet Union’s defeat of the Nazis forms a pillar of modern Russian identity and has been increasingly celebrated by Moscow to stoke patriotism. Putin will almost certainly be reelected in presidential elections in two months.

• Russia marks 75th anniversary of Stalingrad with parades and nostalgia

  Soviet style banners

  Other displays of communist nostalgia included members of the Yunarmiya (Young Army) military patriotic movement as well as soldiers parading with images of Soviet war heroes and Soviet-style banners.

• Russia marks 75th anniversary of Stalingrad with parades and nostalgia

  A crushing defeat

  The battle of Stalingrad started in July 1942 and lasted five months and was the bloodiest battle in history. About 2 million soldiers and civilians perished in the fighting there, many from starvation and exposure. The final group of Nazi troops under Marshal Friedrich Paulus finally surrendered on February 2, 1943, in the first surrender by the Nazis since the war began.

  Author: Alistair Walsh (with AFP, dpa, AP)

Soviet civilians in areas under Nazi occupation in Eastern Europe were subjected to brutal and arbitrary killings. Nazi racial ideology targeted both Jews and Slavs, millions of whom were executed or sent to concentration camps.  

“From the first day the German campaign was driven by hatred, by anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism, by racist madness against the Slavic and Asian peoples of the Soviet Union,” Steinmeier said. 

“Those who waged this war killed in every possible way, with unprecedented brutality and cruelty,” he added. “It was German barbarism, it cost millions of lives and devastated the continent.”

Learning from history

Steinmeier’s office said in a statement that the series of memorial events this week are intended to draw attention to the suffering of the Soviet Union, which incurred the highest number of casualties during World War II at 27 million, 14 million of whom were civilians.

“And yet these millions are not as deeply burned into our collective memory as their suffering and our responsibility require,”Steinmeier said

He added that after the war, many Germans did not want to hear about the wartime suffering of people in the Soviet Union, whose story had been obscured by the Cold War and the division of Europe behind the Iron Curtain.

“Only those who learn to read the traces of the past in the present will be able to contribute to a future that avoids wars, rejects tyranny and enables peaceful coexistence in freedom,” Steinmeier said Friday. 

Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/nazi-invasion-of-soviet-union-was-murderous-barbarity/a-57947672?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf