anatomy-CNS-Development of the CNS &External Features of the Brain Stem

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I want to welcome everyone back to the Picanyuna show. Thomas is back and we're still taking a break from the Continental Philosophy series. We'll be getting back into that soon. But I asked Thomas to cover a topic that I've been wanting to cover for a while. And I saw the Mekin's egg as many episodes as he wants to cover this because I think this is real important for from the revisionist perspective when World War, according to World War II. And it's also from podcasts I've heard in the past talking about it. It's quite controversial. And maybe I'll ask you some questions about that at the end, Thomas. Even controversial amongst our guys. And I have a reason why I think it is. But why don't you tell us what we're going to talk about today? Well, in broad causal terms, we're going to talk about the role of the Soviet Union and the Second World War. That's nature that's mischaracterized. The main minority viewpoint is presented by Victor Suvorov's icebreaker. Victor Suvorov is a pseudonym for a Soviet defector who was deeply insinuated in the GRU, which was the military's, or the Red Army's counterpart to KGB. KGB was technically a branch of the Soviet military. But GRU was literally Army intelligence. It has it made Suvorov insisted, well, most people in addressing Suvorov, they've got a discrete and narrow focus. Essentially, they begin their analysis on the eve of Operation Barbarossa and they get bogged down in the minutia of what were Soviet deployments. How were they arrayed? Were they offensively arrayed? What were the comparative force levels and capabilities of the Vermacht and the Red Army? Now these things are relevant and I'll address those things. But that's not an adequate analysis. And Suvorov didn't begin his analysis there either. Suvorov's claim is that the Soviet Union literally started World War II. And I accept that. And it's not a strictly military analysis. Everything about the Second World War was in dialogue with Soviet power and the Soviet Union. The entire 20th century was in dialogue with the Soviet Union and its existence and the ideology that animated its structure, activity, decision making and every imperative related to power political activity they ran. So other people, there's a subset of people who just don't really understand the issues presented. And they essentially accept what court historians claim. But then they diverge or they think that the question is should there be a deeper analysis at this key juncture in the summer of 1941? They're looking at it the wrong way. Either out of ignorance or because they're powered by what they view as a political consensus among academia and they don't want to be available to a kind of punitive scrutiny. And I'll get into what I mean by that. If you accept the, if you accept super odds perspective, which was also shared by Yagum Hoffman, Yagum Hoffman was a military historian. He was, when he was alive, he died in middle age in the 1990s, really 2000s. But he wrote this exhaustive book called Stalin's War of Extermination and he was essentially a Bundeswehr archivist. And he wrote this exhaustive book about the origins of the Second World War. And about half of it is dedicated to the political conditions that gave rise to the conflict and about half of it deals with kind of hard and fast military subject matter. But I think that's the best book written on the topic. And he agreed very much with the super odds analysis. But also myself, especially being somebody who favors direct evidence and the testimony of parties to the events in question. You know, if you look at what Stalin said and if you examine the sort of ontological aspects, the putt of ontology of Marxist-Winningism, it, there should be something of a no-brainer. You know, this, this idea that the Soviet Union didn't have ambitions on, of an imperialistic nature that it had no interest in exporting its ideology to the rest of the developed world. But it wasn't possessive and expansionist sensibility that's laughable. I mean, it's laughable because the only thing that sustains a revolutionary political culture such as that that was a characteristic of the Soviet Union is this kind of dynamic revolutionary violence that's got to be exported once the revolution has been solidated within. But also, you know, the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1939, it conquered a landmass of, that was equivalent to the size of the German Reich in 1919, something like 400,000 square kilometers. This was a massively aggressive expansionist, burgundy superpower, you know, that's indisputable. And this idea that the world, what you're talking about, the United Kingdom, which had conquered 23% of this planet and loaded over 500 million people, you got the Soviet Union, which constitutes one-sixth of this planet. And it's animated by this revolutionary imperative that calls for the bolstization of the entire developed world. You have the United States, which is in control over 1939, a fully happening of this planet remaining resources, the idea that the world was terrified of this comparatively tiny country in Germany that's laughing, you know, I mean, that's ridiculous. I don't know how else to characterize it. And the fact that, you know, people suggest that is, you know, is insane. I say it's conical, but there's nothing funny about it because this kind of garbage-informed decision-making and it, you know, it's a cause who's a kind of mass delusion in the public mind. But, you know, first and foremost, it often makes this point really at the beginning of his study. You know, the imperialistic, I don't mean imperialist in the sense Lenin has talked about it, I mean, the Soviet Union was an empire in the ideological sense, made on a stick. And this sort of violent imperialistic, power-political sensibility, it was, it was, it was this kind of revolutionary practice, it was baked into every aspect of the Soviet political system, even the heraldic standard of the Soviet Union, which endured until the final days in 1991. With NoviBet, it's time to take a spin with the future of online casinos. And for Blockbuster Value, you can't be guaranteed rewards in our free-to-play game Gift Wheel, where you'll get a daily bonus just for playing. Nice one. So, download NoviBet today and play your way. NoviBet, more parody. Zero. Zero emissions from frankeen, ng smart electric and hybrid range. A seven-year warranty. Okay, it's definitely not zero, but still impressive. A three-year service plan from 99 euro. And when it comes to the extra cost of paying monthly for your new MG, we're back to zero. Nothing added, not a cent more. Nice one. It was literally the globe with overlayed on the planet Earth. Is this giant hammered sickle? You know, that was the Soviet code of arms. The symbolism is obvious. Communism will encircle the whole world. And the motto of the Soviet Union, similarly until the end, transdays to proletarians of all countries unite. It can't really be more on the nose than that. But again, intrinsic to the Marxist Lenin's ethos is a globalist perspective. That's one of the reasons why the 20th century belongs so much to the communists. Because it was uniquely, it was an ideology that was uniquely suited to the then present. And it was fundamentally forward-looking. That can't be denied. You know, it's it's obsolescence. Oh, do you know the fact that it became a state, the form of of organization. And it was it became an obsolescent psychological artifact. But at the scene of it, it was very much a stride. This is like a something can't be denied. And even it was animated by uniquely expansionist sensibility. But even had it not been everybody was was everybody who was, you know, participating in Velt Palateque at scale had a global perspective. I mean, that was the reality. The 20th century was decided what configuration globalism would take. Okay, so this idea of a kind of insular communism that was narrowly status that and it were looking. I mean, that's ridiculous. And beyond that, Stalin, Stalin himself came to characterize the ideological culture of Marxist-Leninism for an entire generation. It's not accidental, but you know, he reigned for over 30 years. And I believe he was the single most powerful man on earth. And that is incredible. For all kinds of reasons, but you know, he very much set the tenor of, you know, the revolutionary culture, characteristic of the socialist community and nations as it was called. And he uh, he was a confidante of Lenin. And Lenin said, um, repeatedly and often, but most notably, Lenin's famous December 6, 1920 speech, which was dedicated to communist praxis and the vision of a Velt Palateque, a Soviet Velt Palateque, he said that to incite the capitalist states against each other is the main strategy of communism. In his words, he said quote, of using the knives of scoundrels like the capitalist thieves against each other on grounds that when quote, when two thieves fall out and fight the honest man laughs as soon as we are strong enough to overthrow capitalism completely, we will grab them by the throat. Victory of the communist revolution in all countries is inevitable. And that encapsulates Marxist-Leninist Velt Palateque. And that defined it until the very end. This was, uh, this was still the ambition when even a mess, this strategic nuclear stalemate, you know, in the late 80s, they were still challenging in, in Latin America to try and rectify the strategic imbalance, owing to, you know, the advantage conferred the United States and their, uh, and its allies, you know, uh, by the inner German border, you know, um, again, this shouldn't be, um, this shouldn't be mysterious or controversial rather. Um, now, what I think of as literally the Stalin doctrine, this was presented and articulated during a speech, Stalin made the central committee of the all communist party in July 1925. And, uh, for, uh, the Soviets denied that this speech happened for decades. And it, it was authenticated that the speech was made. And I'll get into how this came about as we continue, but we're not there yet. But, uh, what Stalin declared at this speech was, quote, should the war begin, we will not stand by in actively, we will enter the war, but we will enter as the last belligerent, we will throw a weight on the scales that should be decisive. Um, the story, it named Alexander Neckridge, he's, he, uh, he, uh, he, uh, characterized this as the Stalin doctrine, you know, and he insisted that this was never abandoned. And that's true. And subsequent events and Stalin's decision making in the command role, as well as was in his role as general secretary bear that out. You know, Stalin's last power political act was giving Mao and Kim Il Sung a green light to assault on the Korean Peninsula. And this led to a crisis on order of the Cuba crisis, you know, less than a decade later. It's a tangent, but about every decade subsequent, 1950, 1962, 1973, 1983, there was a general crisis brought by the traversing of a conflict by Ed. And what was a peripheral theater, but that, you know, nonetheless, had the potential for escalation to the general nuclear war. And by my point being that, it's not as if, you know, Stalin literally at the end of his life was still making decisions pursuant to this sort of dark and air, you know, program. And it's, this became a fixation of Stalin's as the situation in Europe became characterized by the punctuated crises, you know, for the next decade and a half subsequent, culminating obviously in 1939. And throughout the 1930s, Stalin undertook a massive aromance program that was unprecedented. You know, and based on his rhetoric, not just to, you know, the poet, Burrow, and to the assembled Namakletra, the al-Khawinist party, but also these public speeches that he made for the consumption, not just of the Soviet people, but, you know, as a way of signaling to the rest of the world, it was clear that he was convinced that a general crisis had arrived, you know, and global capitalism was, was on its way out, you know. And it was in 1939, early 1939, the British ambassador to the Soviet Union, Sturstaffer Crips, and the American ambassador, Lawrence Steinhart, they both were adamant that Stalin intended to bring about a war, not only in Europe, but in East Asia, and that this was a grave threat facing the British Empire and the United States of America. And this is important, especially the fact of Stalin's attention to the developing situation in the far East. I'd argue that this was an essential aspect of what became his strategic vision. And we'll get into what I mean by that in a moment. When around between about 1990, 1995, a lot of documents briefly became available from the Soviet archives. That's how David Irving said that the microfilm of the Gerbos diaries, that wouldn't be possible any more obviously today. And now, even if the Russian government viewed you as basically friendly, your view is a dissident from the United States, they're not going to give you access to anything you have. I mean, even something of exclusive historical interest from the warriors that are not going to let anybody see that from without. But there was this brief period of openness in the 1990s. And during that period, a bunch of documents that have been corralled by the people's commissariat for foreign affairs, that in the form of internal memorandum, as well as literally directives from the desk of Stalin. Obviously, it's not indicated as such, but reading between the lines, these are obviously statements from the general secretary. Most notably, the people's commissariat delegation to Japan, the telegram from Moscow, that suggests that the Soviet diplomatic mission in Japan should agree to any treaty that tends to bring about hostility between Japan and the United States. You know, it's very undisguised. All of these communications are, you know, throughout the 1930s, that anything that brings about a Japanese American war should be cultivated. And this is imperative to Soviet ambitions. In a way, it was described by one of the archivists who was involved in this NGO, which I think still exists. There was this NGO that was corralled or incorporated rather in January 1989, you know, this month before the end of your own border fell, like, it was still isn't a year. That was dedicated to documenting human rights abuses, as they called it, and other things during the Stalin era. And there's interesting data relating to the power of political situation, you know, in the years prior to 1939, that they corralled as well. And a particular significance, there was this transcribed memo from years subsequent by a man who served in the Chinese or Japanese diplomatic mission, Soviet diplomatic mission, in the 1930s, and he said, quote, "The Soviet Union forward's part was interested in distracting British and American attention from European problems, and in Japanese neutrality during the period of the destruction of Germany and the liberation of Europe from capitalism." And then, of course, it became clear that Japan was not going to remain neutral, or America was not going to allow it to strike a position in neutrality. It became imperative to do everything possible, to bring the United States and Japan into collision, which once it became clear what the new dealers' ambitions were, that sort of resolved itself from the Soviet perspective. Nevertheless, Japan was at the top of Stalin's mind, and we'll get into what I mean by that in a minute. Now, this is really what's critical to Subaru-Evile hypothesis, and my own as well as what Subaru-Evile posted, and again, I echo this sentiment. The Soviet Union started World War II in August 1939, when they launched a massive surprise attack at Calcoun Gold, and knocked out the Japanese imperial army. And that changed everything, and that also was literally the start of World War II. If you look at hostilities between '90s and '90s, 1939 and 1945 as a singular conflict, which I think in broad conceptual terms is useful, you know, especially because that's court history claims that war to began, you know, in September of 1939 and bizarrely they claim that, you know, Polish aborders were somehow inviolable and any traversing of them was an act of global war. But if we examine the ambitions and strategic orientations and objectives of why the Soviet Union assaulted Japan, it becomes clear that this was the start of the Second World War and what the reasons why they did that, what this said in motion, it was truly an aspect of a global campaign of revolutionary conquest. But in the days before that, and this is important too, because like the 1925 speech, the Soviet Union later claimed this never happened. And it's interesting how the allies dealt with it in subsequent years, but on August 19th, 1939 Stalin called a surprise secret meeting of the Central Committee of the Polet Bureau. During the meeting, Stalin announced that the time had now come to quote, "apply the torch of war to the European powder kid." Now, of course, this was also as the non-aggression pact was being negotiated with the German Reich, which Stalin said to the Assembled Central Committee, quote, "If we accept the German proposal if the conclusion of a non-aggression pact with them, they would naturally attack Poland and the intervention of France and England in this war would be inevitable. The resulting unrest in disorder will lead to the destabilization of Western Europe without us, us being the Soviet Union, being initially drawn into the conflict." And again, since 1925, this had been what the Soviet Union was waiting for, according to the Stalin doctrine, as a catalyst for exporting the revolution to Western Europe, Stalin continued saying, "We can hope for an advantageous entry into the war." In typical Stalin-Ufemistic language, he said, "A broad field of activity was now opening for the development of the world revolution." In other words, for the accomplishments, which had never been abandoned for the Sovietization of Europe and communist domination, he concluded this speech by saying comrades in the interest of the Soviet Union, the homeland of the workers, get busy and work so warmly breakout between the Reich and the capitalistic Anglo-French block. Now, this was the first stage of the plan for Bolshevik domination. And then the non-aggression pact, of course, was finalized four days subsequent. And it becomes clear, I don't want to take us down another tangent, but it was really garing, who pushed really hard for a firm alliance with the Japanese. I mean Hitler was already sort of disposed that way anyway. Garing respected the Japanese a lot, and garing was something of a terrible snob, and he thought that Japan was like a high culture, which is true. But beyond the aesthetical attraction, the understanding was that Japan was a great power in its own right, and they smashed the Imperial Russian Navy in 1905, and Japan was just the ideal hedge to have against the Soviet Union east. So when the Red Army launched this blitz assault of the Japanese army in the Far East and utterly annihilated them, this terrified people. And it also, it really meant that the Reich had no choice but sufer temporary peace with the Soviet Union, because then they had no hedge. And it was clear that any move westward, Hitler was confident that the war with France wouldn't be a quagmire, but just the same. He knew there weren't the forces in being to fight off a Soviet assault. Through Poland, as the Reich was fighting in France. So this was very much a conspiratorial master's trough of Stalin. I mean, not going to be wrong. Stalin wanted to conquer the Far East anyway, but that timing was a deal. And there was the forces in being arrayed such that it was sort of a perfect opportunity, not just to humiliate the Japanese imperial army, but to telegraph a message of the world about Soviet military might. You know, and it was highly effective in that regard. Now, the speech that Stalin made where he outlined his plan for the conquest of Europe in the midst of, you know, a Western European civil war, the French National News Agency, Havas, they obtained a copy of this by way of Geneva, presumably from, you know, their own spies are from a friendly intelligence service. And it was published in early 1939 throughout France. And Moscow claimed it was fake and it was a forgery. And right up to the present day, incredibly, you'll find these dummy court historians and their apologists claiming that this, this, this was somehow a forgery by the French Havas Agency and French intelligence by anti-communist, I mean, it's ridiculous. In the official party paper, probed the November 30th 1939, Stalin himself finally came out and officially denied that the speech was made and reiterated this preposterous claim that it was some forgery by amp-by-fascists. You know, this was demonstrated, it was confirmed to have been a real speech by Stalin's official biographer who died only around 1995. Even in 1993, he gave an interview where he confirmed for all time that this speech happened. The language of it was in fact transcribed perfectly in the, you know, a document that was rendered by French Havas and that should have settled it for all time, but like I said, um Regime historians will simply argue by a surgeon and repeat lies over and over and over again, and they'll simply deny the evidence in the rebuttal. But that's, this is important because this became a major, there's a major stumbling block for the new dealers obviously, as well as the war party in the UK. It was beyond an embarrassment. It stood to represent a real crisis with regards to their mandate. But it goes to show you what kind of bully pulpit had been devised and directed in the US and the UK. I mean, part of it was because it was a French news release, but even so, the ability to lock out and discredit conflicting information and facts that had a tendency to impeach official narratives is pretty remarkable. In the case of the focus in the UK and the New Deal in America, and Subaruov to his credit took up the issue of the August 19th speech, but it was a vocogun of, vocogun art was the biographer in question who attested at the end of his life to the veracity of the speech. It was on January 16th, 1993. And again, this was that period of approximately summer or fall, 1991 until probably very early 1996, where there was open access to Stalin era archives and data in the Soviet Union. Can we address something right there? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, a lot of people will say that like the, the Goebbels diaries are forgeries, so why is it all of this forgeries as well? Because it's a non-argument, it's like saying who forged the Goebbels diaries. So what the Soviets did was they went to Berlin, they forged a bunch of documents, they put it in a Berlin bank vault, they pretended to discover it, they took it back to the Soviet Union, the NKVD, later the KGB, they continued to pretend that Goebbels had written dreams of diary material for 50 years, they lied about this for no reason, then David Irving also lied about this that he could capture clouds, like what? There's this kind of stock entry of simpletons and idiots to just go around saying things are fake. You know, Hitler's second book is fake. General Patton's personal diaries are fake. The Goebbels diaries are fake, everything is fake. Okay, I mean, I, it's like me saying Donald Trump is actually a Jewish parentage. I can't prove that, there's no evidence to that, there's no reason to believe that, but I'm just going to keep saying that over and over again. See Donald Trump is Jewish. Oh, you don't think so, yeah, well, you don't know anything, he's Jewish, I say so. I mean, I can do that too, okay? You know, the honest is on the declarant. You know, and again, I, so the Soviets are in the business of just pretending that Goebbels wrote these diaries, I, you know, I don't accept that because it's stupid. But Lokkaganov, he was Stalin's official biographer. He confirmed in his vestia, which was an organ of that constellation of NGOs as I indicated a moment ago, dedicated to, you know, kind of truth and reconciliation, a lot of the Stalin era. He went public in Russian and European media and he was adamant that the minutes of the August 19, 1939 speech that had been published in France were legitimate, that speech happened, you know. And again, I'm sure, I'm sure these same defectors are going to claim, well, that's fake, okay, fine, everything is fake. I would adult and I'm a white person, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a white inward or elective element disabled, so I don't entertain that kind of stuff. But, you know, the, and there's a historian, this lady historian, Russian historian, T.S. Busweva. She undertook this broad scholarly evaluation of Suvorov's books, not just icebreaker, but kind of his entire body of work. And her account of his work product was mixed. She was somewhat critical and oppressive way, she praised other stuff, but she was adamant that the August 19, 1939 speech was legitimate and she claimed that copies of the speech were known to exist in the special archives of the Central Committee and the USSR and she made excerpts of it available in the public in December 1994. And there was this big deal, the publication was a big deal and it was unveiled at this conference of the quote memorial society. That's the umbrella name of that constellation of NGOs I was talking about. And this was on August 16, 1995, that was this kind of grand unveiling. You know, but they, they, and this, it might seem silly to make such a big deal about the release of historical documents, but if you know about the Soviet system, I mean, it's, it was, this is a special case, you know, it's, it wasn't an ordinary political system and this, this document changed everything or it should have in the public mind, you know, because it's essentially a standing rebuttal to the entire court narrative of the war and its origins. You know, so there's that too. So I mean, again, I, where, where is the evidence that all this is being fake? Like I guarantee you the Russian government wasn't happy about this, you know, I mean, I, I, and that they still aren't anybody who is fluent in Russian. I, they're, they're welcome to proper evidence that this is all lectured main and it's fake, but obviously that won't be forthcoming. You know, and thus getting to the kind of meat of the acid of hostilities, you know, again, the super-oves, the core of this theory, you know, again, it's not just a matter of a, a discrete revisionist analysis of Operation Barbarossa and which party combatants were you know, the aggressor, it's far more of a broad spectrum analysis in that. And Yaka Hoffman agreed with this perspective, and I agree with it too. Not only was Stalin the progenitor of World War II, but World War II began on August 19, 1939, because that's the date when Stalin ordered the assault on Calcongold. Japanese Sixth Army was deployed there. Stalin ordered a massive assault. The Japanese were soundly defeated and eroded. Marshall Zoukov stated on August 23, 1939, you know, in reference to the Calcongold assault, as well as the non-aggression pact with the Reich, which had just been, you know, signed Zoukov said, quote, "Stalin was convinced that the non-aggression pact would enable him to rap Hitler around his little finger." Quote, "We have "tritt Hitler for the moment" in quote, which Stalin's opinion, according to Nikita Krustjev. "Severals take, which should be obvious to those familiar with the historical record, the non-aggression pact on the heels of Japan being crouched on land in the far east, Hitler believed then that he had to attack Poland to protect the frontier of the German Reich. He would not have acted without a guarantee of non-aggression, because Germany wasn't in a position to go to war with the Soviet Union at that moment. People were terrified of the Soviet Union after it had just crushed the mighty Japanese army." So again, I mean, this is laughable, this idea that this is it Stalin who had just crushed the Japanese army who was sitting on the throne of a burgundy superpower that constituted 16th of this planet. The idea that Stalin was terrified of Hitler in comparatively tiny Germany. That's preposterous. You know, Molotov, obviously, was, you know, chief diplomat, his official title was "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars." Molotov spoke for the Supreme Soviet on October 31, 1939. He said, "A single blow against Poland, first by the Germans and then by the Red Army and nothing will remain of this Miss Begotten, a little child of the Versailles Treaty, which owed his existence to the repression of non-polish nationalities." So again, to the Soviet non-clature and especially Stalin, they wanted to crush Poland. Among other things, the Polish movement was that we cleansing Russians. The Russians hated the Poles. Interestingly, again, this supposedly sacrosanct Polish democracy, it didn't bother the UK when the Soviets assaulted. That's interesting, isn't it? And then, of course, too, within months, the Soviet Union assaulted Finland. If Stalin was this isolationist, oh, and of course, meanwhile, you know, the Soviet Union was funding, equipping, arming, and facilitating the communist revolution in Spain, which obviously had profound US strategic significance. In the same period, the Soviet said, "Asalted in conquered Poland." They'd assaulted Finland and conquered Archangel. Through the waging of these aggressive wars against Poland and Finland, and then essentially, the extortionate annexation of the Baltic, you know, and threatening to assault Romania, all of which gained territorial concessions out of shopping fired because, again, the Soviet Union's neighbors were incapable of standing up to its might. You know, so by this time, by the eve of Barbarossa, the Soviet Union had expanded its territory by 426,000 square kilometers. That was equivalent to the service of the entire German Reich in 1919. And in so doing, as Yagahalfin points out, Stalin had ripped away any, you know, buffer states. I'm Germany's frontier. So I mean, Europe was defenseless, you know, in the east, you know, and obviously the time was nigh for an assault on Europe. And where Germany was, as of 1940, despite Germany's initial military successes, you know, there wasn't anything Germany had done that Moscow considered particularly impressive or critical. You know, that would have changed or altered Stalin's ambition. It's quite the contrary. There was no longer a chance at decisive victory against the UK because, you know, it's sea lion was a strategic ruse. The purpose of which was to deceive Stalin, by the way, not Churchill, which, I mean, that's interesting in its own right. But the, you know, and Stalin, who was already, by that time, had hundreds of spies on the Roosevelt administration. He knew exactly what America was thinking. And he knew that the United States was going to stand behind the UK. German forces were scattered, peace me all over Europe. The German army was still dependent on, you know, on horse drawn transportation. Germany wasn't even close to being able to realize a full mobilization on the order of, you know, 1914, 1915, even if there'd been a political will to do so. You know, the minute Germany was cut off from Romania, they, their army would stop in its tracks because that was, you know, their only source of vital petroleum. I mean, that what would, even a layman looking at all relevant criteria and variables as of, you know, 1940, 1941, sees Germany in a position of catastrophic vulnerability. So, I mean, the idea that, they did it, you know, again, the idea that Stalin was afraid of Germany and afraid of its armed forces. I mean, that's preposterous beyond belief, you know, and just for, just for comparative purposes, between November 1940 and the day of Barbarossa during 22nd, 1941, there'd been a massive arms buildup underway since 1925, but this year and a half, or this half a year, I mean, between, you know, the winter in 1940 and summer '41, this was an unprecedented military buildup in terms of scales go up and rapidity. On June 22nd, 1941, the Soviet army possessed 24,000 tanks, almost 2,000 of which were T-34s, which were technically clashes and medium tank, but they were probably the best of overall tank of the entire war. The Air Force of the Red Army since 1938 had acquired 23,000 the 245 military aircraft, including 3,700 that were of the most recent design. The Red Army had 148,000 artillery pieces and mortars. The inventory of the Royal Navy, in addition to its surface fleet, had 291 submarines, which were an exclusively offensive platform. This meant that the Soviet Union had more submarines than any other country on this planet. They had more than four times the number of submarines that the Royal Navy did, which was the world's leading maritime state. This is utterly insane. It's unprecedented. Nothing approaching this sort of scope, scale and character of mobilization had ever been contemplated, little on implemented. Again, Germany, which is over committed, overstretched, outnumbered, engaged in a quagmire, not mobilized for war. The idea that the Soviet Union, which again had just succeeded in stripping away Germany's buffer states in the east, and it successfully conquered Poland and the territory had coveted in the Arctic. After an unprovoked assault on Finland, this idea that the Soviet Union was afraid of Hitler, I mean, it's so stupid. It almost doesn't work robot-able because it's an exclusively bad faith argument. But what time we got? Yeah, I'm going to wrap up there because I was about to get into the some detachment, some of the commissars about the ideological culture of the Red Army itself. But yeah, I hope this was instructive to people. Sure, yeah, can't wait for part two. One thing that I would say is I think one of the reasons that the narrative on Spain had to be controlled after the war is because if the Republicans would have won Spain belongs to the Soviet Union. And you know, you can make the argument Germany should have never left after victory. But the Soviet Union in no way, shape or form, would have left. That would have been a Soviet satellite state and they would have had Gibraltar. Oh, yeah. Well, it's just like the it's just like when the ideological descendants of these of the traders who fought for the communist in Spain, it's like when they support Islamic, it's like when they support al-Qaeda in Syria, they're like, oh, that's not al-Qaeda, that's these other guys who don't actually exist or Democrats. It's like this infantile level of delusion. I don't even think they actually believe that. There's insulting the intelligence of everybody else. Like, you know, the, oh, those weren't the communists. There was these imaginary other guys in Spain. Who? Like, what are you talking about? There was this there was this unusual coalition of syndicalists, fascists, phalanches, carolists, you know, reactionary, mighter, just types. Kind of secular nationalist. You know, that was who are, you know, referred to as the nationalist side. I mean, in actors that may be, this is kind of the umbrella term that's favored. And there was the common turn and the Soviet Union and their proxies. Like, there wasn't this other element there that were like gay feminist liberals or like artist Hemingway's buddies who just love freedom or whatever delusion normies have. You know, it was a bunch, it was a bunch of communists like Eric Melkay, who were busy shooting priests and nuns in the face and torturing fascists to death. And, you know, preparing to categorically exterminate anybody who wasn't edgicable, just like they'd done in the Soviet Union. And just like, Bellacoon's brief tyranny did in Hungary. And just like the communist did everywhere that, you know, they were victorious in theater. All right. I'll do your plugs for you. Go to Thomas's substack. It's real Thomas777.com. Dot substack.com. Go to his website. That's Thomas. Thomas777.com. But the T is a seven, right? The first T is a seven. And yeah, you can, you can find them sometimes on X under under his government name. Yeah, you can link all that stuff from my, you can read all those links around my website. So, yeah. And I'll have the links in the in the show notes as well. So, um, thank you until part two. I really appreciate you doing this. This is, I think this is important. Yeah, likewise. Thanks for hosting me. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pikenyone show. This is going to be part two of Thomas talking about Victor Suvorov and Hickenoffman's work. So, Thomas, I hand it over to you. Yeah, thanks for hosting me. I think I remember where we left off, but forgive me if this is redundant. It's something that's fundamentally important. As of the date of Barbarossa's commencement, June 22nd, 1941, it's important to understand the strategic situatedness of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Key was the waging of aggressive war against Poland and Finland. Obviously, Stalin's plan, and this was confirmed by Khrushchev, was, you know, in the immediate aftermath of the assault on the Japanese at Kalkin goal, which in the opinion of Hickenoffman, and I agree with this, that's what started World War II. And Suvorov, uh, without saying it, abides that perspective. The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, which Stalin confided to the Polet Bureau, as well as the Khrushchev, was that that would embolden Hitler, um, to Suvorov with Poland, which he wouldn't have done, had to have been the risk of a two front war. Yet, Germany's position was precarious, overextended. Stalin didn't think that, um, you know, Germany could truly stand up to the UK and France. He grossly underestimated the Veramox offensive power, but even in the event of a German victory. His reasoning was that, you know, the French army would have its backbroken. Germany would be on this footing of permanent hostility, catch of the United Kingdom, and Europe would be the communist for the taking. You know, this was, in Stalin's words, to Khrushchev, Hitler was now wrapped around our little finger. Um, and one of the reasons for this confidence, or overconfidence, you know, um, as I think I mentioned before, um, as of Barbarossa, Stalin had increased, uh, expanded the territory of the Soviet Union by 426,000 square kilometers. That's a quote into the service area that German wrote because it stood in 1919. And especially a particular significance, the aggressive war, the Soviets waged against Poland and Finland, and would amount into the extortionate annexation of the Baltics, let you know, with waiting in Estonia, pressuring Romania into further territorial concessions. You know, the Soviet Union really, um, September 3rd 1939 it was in the strongest position out of all major powers and the Soviet Union became a cop baddened You know on September 17th when the Soviets also assaulted Poland and of course there was a deafening silence Eminent from emanating from London in the wake of that deployment which is telling in and of itself but You know This myth that Stalin was somehow afraid of Hitler is preposterous for the reasons just enumerated and It's essential to understand I Mean demonstrative of this is the posture the Soviet Union diplomatically and militarily towards the German Reich And secondly the pattern of military deployment and I'll get into that in a moment, but in terms of the former November 12th and 13th 1940 You know The view from Moscow was that the war was going very badly for Germany Italy was not performing well in In the relevant battle theaters Which was compromising Germany's position in the Mediterranean which Hitler accounted on as a hedge, you know against the British Empire There was no indication of a resolution of the war with the United Kingdom You know Germany's fear of influence was totally static You know operation C.I. and was a strategic ruse and Even were it not it would have been a bloodbath, you know So in November 12th and 13th Stalin directed Molotov and Berlin the transmit the Hitler Through ribbon drop a demand For the expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence Basically Stalin said that he demanded Freedom of the deploy in Bulgaria Romania Hungary Yugoslavia in Greece as well as Finland And he also said that you know the Soviet Union had a right to deploy on the Swedish frontier um This is incredibly belligerent Essentially all of southeastern Europe plus Finland and a piece of Scandinavia proper Stalin just declared that this is now in my sphere of influence and if you meet This challenge with the hostile deployment. It's war I mean, is that something like a man who's afraid of eat off Hitler and the German Reich? you know um In Stalin's mind there was absolutely no possibility of The very mocked assaulting the Soviet Union even in terms of parity let alone from a position of strategic superior or even Which is somewhat fascinating because this idea that oh the Germans underestimated the Soviet Union They didn't at all and still if we get into that howlers Report on the eve of barbarossa and howl they're actually written um He'd written an assessment in 1937 of Soviet forces and being in capabilities. It was remarkably accurate and Von Manstein and Gooddarian their assessments quite literally in the month before barbarossa They The Soviet forces in being were exactly what they estimated them to be In reality it was Stalin who was looking west and saying that You know Germany has no meaningful offensive capability and the mighty Soviet Union has nothing to fear and This is the key to why The Soviets took such horrific attrition during barbarossa Further Relevant to context here. I can't remember if I got into this or not There was a discreet mobilization phase Throughout the Soviet Union between November 1940 when this demand that I just Enumerated was issued to We're in trouble to deliver the Hitler by way of Molotov on order of Stalin Between November 1940 and the day of barbarossa a massive and unprecedented arms build up to place in the Soviet Union This included uh As of the onset of hostilities The rhetoric says no less than 24,000 tanks Including close to 2000 t-34s which were technically a medium tank, but they were the all around best Tank of the Second World War. I don't think that's arguable um You know the uh the air forces of the red army Had over 23,000 aircraft or a 3,700 of which were considered to be cutting edge Um fighters The red army had close to 150,000 artillery pieces The uh the red navy including a substantial fleet of surface ships of varying types They had close to 300 submarines and submarines are expressly offensive there are no defensive submarines And this man does Hoffman Rases in his book The Soviet's not only at a larger fleet of submarines than any other country in the world but They outnumbered the you the royal navy more than fourfold in terms of their number of subs I mean this this is the most powerful offensive military element the world has ever seen You know um So Stalin was essentially fearless and viewed himself as the imminent master of this planet In due strategic terms as of Barbara Rose does well as an ideological one and we're gonna get into that too Is something essential to understand about the Soviet culture Stalin was keenly aware of what had been fallen The jig of an revolution He was also keenly aware of the changing dynamics of A videological cultures within great powers You know he realized that for example japan was on the ascendancy He realized that the germiner ike had intense energies that it was drawing from even though he viewed them as Geo strategically weak and compromised He understood that the unity kingdom was an undergoing a terrible existential crisis And that their empire a structure was essentially obsolescent and this is one of the reasons why There's been a series of revolts you know nascent as well as Well developed and Realized you know in in the years Before the great war and then in the inner warriors up to the then present You know and socialism in one country that there was something of a That there was something of a a propaganda cliché shdown involved the sort of a Give a branding to You know the the kind of punctuated disturbances of this mass and Megacitle restructuring of Russian society and the Soviet state which was becoming a superpower as well as do You know a swage The western powers which were very much doing is bidding at that moment Stalin was very much engaged with the common turn that had not changed and in the planning for what was to be the Assault on Europe and the aftermath of the icebreaker conflict Stalin uh he called back The Russian delegation to the common turn and he called the common turn's representatives To Moscow to advise them of what was imminently going to happen you know The Soviet Union needed to realize the world revolution to survive as well as to consolidate It's super power status which was Not just burgeoning but was being actively realized Also, and I realized I probably got a bias for testimonial evidence, especially, they're not exclusively in discerning the motives of men in command roles. But there's not direct testimonies is more reliable than circumstantial evidence, unless it contradicts the manifest weight of extrinsic material facts outside the parameters, those declarations, and what Stalin said is a biographer, Colonel General Lokoganov. He word for word by Lekhavs reproduced the speech that Stalin issued on May 5, 1941, and according to Lokoganov, the leader made it "unmustangably clear war is inevitable in the future. We must be ready for the unconditional destruction of German fascism. The world will be fought on enemy territory and victory will be achieved with few casualties. And as we got into last week, and as I think we raised before in discussion of World War II, it was a matter of formal doctrine that the Red Army was an offensive-purpose element. Its primary mission orientation was as the standard bearer of the revolution, and it never struck a defensive posture as a matter of doctrine by choice. And I've made the point before, I believe Stalin is probably the single most powerful man whoever lived. And the momentum that the communist international had at this moment was ex-Zenath. I'd argue. Stalin had to abide that rule, or he would have been replaced by a man who would have, you know, it was a convergence of ideological imperatives and geostrategic realities in a way that is very rare. That was sort of inextricably and splendidly bound up at this juncture. And I think we talked before about this secret. I realize I'm jumping around a bit, but I'm trying to corral the evidence in categorical capacities. The secret meeting with the Polic Bureau, and this is when the Common Turn delegation was also present in August 19, 1939, you know, in the, it's concomitant with the assault on the Japanese Imperial Army at Calcim Gold. This meeting that Stalin called the Polic Bureau, and the Russian section of the Common Turn, Stalin declared that the time had come to "apply the torch of war to the European powder keg." This is when Stalin declared, if we accept the German proposal for the non-aggression pact, you know, Hitler will naturally attack Poland, the intervention of France and England will be inevitable. The resulting, in Stalin's words, serious and arrested disorder would lead to a punctuated destabilization of Western Europe, yet without the Soviet Union being drawn into the conflicts until they permissively opted to. And Stalin referred to what he declared in 1925 with respect to the international strategy. You know, the moment is now that we can pursue the Bolshevization of Europe by way of an advantageous entry into the war through a broad spectrum field of activity, which had now, the potential which had now opened up for their realization of the world revolution. And of course, when minutes from this meeting and the speech were smuggled out and were obtained by the French news agency Havas, by way of Geneva, you know, it was published. And then the Moscow immediately wanted to damage control. And Stalin apologised and propaganda is particularly in London, but also in other states. You know, they started immediately claiming that this is fascist propaganda and this is a true, you know. So I mean, this is important also. Like when you read books by guys, Chris Bellamy comes to mind, but they're legion, these historians claim, oh, Stuvorov is a liar or there's no evidence for these things. They're redacting a huge amount of evidence or they're just not including it. And when question they say, oh, well, that's just propaganda. They're just not addressing it. And that's incredible. You know, I mean, to be like, like imagine somewhat more proximately, like what Stuvorov's writing in history of the American war in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, it'd be like if I was categorically redacting things that President Bush and Rumsfeld said in conversations they had and just declaring that, well, it's not important or that that's just something liberal say or a lie. I mean, people would laugh at me or they'd say that's ridiculous. But in the case of, you know, Barbara Rosa and you know, the icebreaker hypothesis, that's exactly what they do. You know, and you're just supposed to accept it. This is very abnormal. Even accounting for the fact that research standards and things are often compromised for ideological and political reasons. But this seems tangential, but it's essential to understanding Stuvorov's and Hoffman's case. We've got to ask why Barbara Rosa was so tactically successful for the Vermacht and what that means because this is sort of the key, in my opinion. The Soviets were planning an assault on Romania in the auto in 1941. And if you know how to interpret military deployments, this should be clear. But also, if you're going to assault Germany from then extant frontiers, you're going to do so from the Baltic and you're going to do so through Romania. And of course, Germany was totally dependent on Romanian petroleum. That's one of the reasons Hitler cultivated the friendship event in this school. So closely. Antonescu held the night's cross. There was very good offices between him and Germany anyway for cultural reasons, for ideological reasons, other things. But he and Hitler, despite the linguistic barrier, they were very close friends too. And Antonescu was Hitler's strongest ally, I believe. You know, in a close to a quarter million Romanians fought, you know, for the Axis cause in the east, which were a country that size Romania, that's remarkable. But Army Group South deployed from Romania. And this was a very delicate issue because Soviet intelligence, which was actually very good. This deployment to Romania, the way Hitler, the rules Hitler was able to pull off was that the unstable situation in Yugoslavia was what was drawing German forces at scale to be deployed there. But also obviously, through Legard Main and other things, OK, W was effectively able to hide the scale at which forces were being amassed there. You know, not only was it a staging ground for Barbarossa, but Hitler was react with anxiety that the Soviets were in assault Romania because they were. So these forces down there in a dual role. They were a purpose for an offensive mission, but they were also there as a bulwark against a rare army assault. You know, at least so that they, you know, there'd be enough time to reinforce and not just, you know, endure a collapse of a critical front, which atop the geo-strategic menace that also deprive Germany really of its only source of petroleum and requisite quantities to. Feel the war machine, but what this led to was there was massive Soviet deployments in the Baltic and in Ukraine through the Romanian frontier. So when the Veramok disalted, the road to Moscow was basically undefended. Okay, that's one of the reasons why Halder and Manstein, they were beside themselves because they were telling Hitler we need to move on Moscow. We can't wait for the weather to turn and we can't wait for the Soviets to reconstitute and affect a deployment in depth on the path to Moscow. And as the deployment schema in Ukraine, the Army Group South was exponentially outnumbered. But the so the Red Army elements there, they were deployed in an offensive pattern. And if you know anything about the way the Soviet Union fought and the way the armed forces of Russian Federation fights, and they were scaled down way to the obviously in with very different localized combined arms platforms, deep battle. It's dependent upon a fixed deployment schema for it to work. Okay, and the way the Red Army deployed offensively, and this is what they did when the tide turned and after Kursk, this is how they assaulted Berlin. The offensive deployment schema is by heavy use of shock armies. The Soviet shock army, they were loaded with firepower and totally front loaded. Okay, so when Army Group South engaged the Red Army through the Kiev corridor, they were engaging this forward element that was loaded down with firepower that was supposed to break through the main line of red. Break through the main line of resistance, but that had a limited operational capacity, often of only a few days. Then they were to be rapidly reinforced by fresh elements who would continually assault in ways. And then when that shock element was re-equipped and refitted, they would smash through again. But obviously, if the Veramarkt assaults with mass-darmored columns, when you're deployed offensively with your front loaded shock army as the Shferpunth, they're going to smash that shock army. And then they're going to cut through your reinforcement elements like butter, and as they break through wave after wave, that front loaded element is going to be fighting on reversed fronts. And they're going to get cut to pieces, which is exactly what happened. Okay, so the Soviet were taking catastrophic casualties in the North and in the South. Meanwhile, Army Group Center was racing to Moscow quite literally, and Hitler didn't know quite what to make of this. Because there were sort of two Hitler's, and Stothly makes this point. When Hitler felt confident politically, and when he had what he believed was a firm conceptual grasp of the battle space, Hitler was hyper-aggressive. When fog of war questions or political uncertainty clouded that perspective, Hitler developed a siege mentality. And that's exactly what happened. And Hitler viewed Stalin as incredibly dangerous as he should have. So, Hitler essentially halted Army Group Center, well Army Group South surrounded this massive element, plus the reserves that the Kremlin had ordered like rushed to the front immediately. And Hitler was afraid to push the attack for a decisive victory at Moscow until this element was neutralized, and it was neutralized. The only casualties the Soviets endured is utterly catastrophic and unprecedented. And the Germans took something like three quarters of a million prisoners alone. But by the time the fear ordered the attack to be pushed on Moscow was too late. Okay, that's what happened. People misunderstand that it says, "Oh, the Germans were plotting to attack all along because the Soviets were weak in some ways, but then Stalin got it together. And because the Germans underestimated Soviet capabilities, Hitler lost the war. That's not true at all. That doesn't make any sense." And if Stalin was like, "Look at it like this, okay?" The Germans were halted at Moscow, but they reached the gates of Moscow. They reached Lenin Red, I didn't wait for it to siege. They reached Stalin Red. The Germans, the very much reached all of its objectives in months. How long did it take the Red Army to march on Berlin? It took them almost four years. So why was there this plotting, grinding, bloodbath, if the Soviets were this grossly underestimated force? And the Germans didn't know what they were doing. But the Germans killed the Red Army. Obviously, the Russians still had enough the whole Moscow, and they did. And that was incredibly valiant, and the Russians are incredibly tough. And there's a simplicity to the way the Ivens fight, but it's a simplicity that works. That thing is most guided when people suggest otherwise. And especially today, because people are, you know, they've adopted prejudices and stuff in this regard. There's really, really stupid things that come out of the Pentagon in terms of their assessment of Russian keep-abilities and things. Incidentally, Eric Fein Manchnein's book, it's called "Lost Victories." I think it's fascinating, but it's kind of for military hounds only. It's, you know, not like light Sunday reading. But what that book was, the US War Department, back when there was a war department, there's not anymore. No matter what, like special needs, Higgseth says. But in the last months of the Department of War, they debriefed Manchnein on, basically on, you know, his experience over four years of fighting the Soviet Union and a general officer's role. And the war department, soon to be the defense department, they took this very seriously. An early NATO force structure wasn't a substantial, on the infantry side, ground on the military armorside. It was substantially based around what Van Manchnein had said. Okay, so this book was sometime in the '50s, the first edition. It was edited to make him more readable, and it's literally Manchnein's debriefing with some added stuff, you know. And that that was one of his core premises is that fighting the Russians and Russian territory, they're, they're, they're, they're unbelievable, we're insamably tough, you know, and that that's a force multiplier and also makes up for some of their shortcomings. And the Russians also, they, they know what they know the limits of their capabilities. You know, and on the one hand and, and super off his book inside the Red Army, which is very much worth reading to, especially if you got an incidentally cold war stuff, because It's very much a breakdown of the version of era Soviet Army. He makes the point, and Harold Coil made this point too, that doctrine in the Soviet army was almost like regulation. There were no missionary and tactics, and the whole ethos of the Soviet armies, general staff, was to eliminate uncertainty wherever and whenever, however possible, so they didn't tolerate deviation from the battle plan as emergent from superior orders. But nevertheless, the Soviets and the Russians do very well with what they're good at. The deep battle was what they were good at. Heavy reliance on combined arms and a shock element capacity went on the offensive. That tended towards a kind of inflexibility, which I think they later remedied somewhat during the Cold War, but the ability to rapidly shift from an offensive posture to defending, the Vermacht was very, very good at that. The British were pretty good at that too. The Soviets were catastrophically bad at it, and the French were bad at it. Part of it too though, was that Stalin had every reason to believe that the Vermacht wasn't capable of what it was capable of as of June 1941. That was a blind spot, but at the same time, the Germans tend to surprise people on the manor of military affairs. But that's key because it's not as internet guys and armchair goofballs who claim, well, "Soverod was an idiot who's a liar." Look at how bad the Soviets got involved. That's the whole point. That makes his point. That's the opposite. That's key. I'm not just dwelling on minutiae to play kick. The military homes among us are something. It was also the point too that I think a lot of laypeople don't understand these days. Modern war resolves rapidly. You don't plan for quagmires because then you're planning to lose a war. But then ideally in about 10 weeks, in the outer temporal limits, six months, Moscow had to fall to the Vermacht. Stalin was overconfident, absolutely, but it stands to reason it's kind of poor view of the Vermacht, not in terms of its quality of men or firepower, but the geosatetic situation and what he viewed as its overestimated commitments and things. He reasoned that even in the very unlikely event of an assault, we can hold him in bay long enough to reinforce and by then victory conditions will no longer be realizable. This all falls into place as a totality of circumstances. You've got to look at this so ideological culture. You've got to take Stalin's own statement. You've got to look at the statements of his underlings, including Khrushchev. You've got to look at the pattern of deployment. If you know what to look for, but even it's even more persuasive or a more obvious rather, but taken in totality, it's clear that Souverov was telling the truth. It's not clear what the alternative was. This unprecedented military buildup coupled with the globally transformative aspects of the Bolshevik revolution, the heart and lungs of which proverbially were in the Soviet Union. What's the alternative? Stalin was, he ordered this buildup for purely defensive purposes, which would inevitably at some point provoke the West into attacking him. That doesn't make any sense. When you're talking about conditions of approximate parity with conventional combined arms at scale, when you're talking about near-peer strategic planning, you don't wait to be attacked. You always push the assault. That's very basic stuff. It doesn't make sense to say Stalin was this interested in this social national version of socialism that would emerge out of the Bolsheviks. When you send troops and you send advisers and you send tanks to Spain. You don't care about Spain. You don't care what's happening in Spain if this is supposed to be for Russia only. Well, that's also the Soviet Union. It's all going to be wrong. I really find common ground with in terms of political theory as an historical subject matter is Kerry Bolton. He's just great. I don't know the guy, unfortunately. He doesn't leave New Zealand much these days because he's elderly. I think most people know of him because he wrote this really great exhaustive biography of Francis Yaki. He wrote a book on Stalin called Stalin the Enduring Legacy. People haven't read the book. They painted it some sort of, oh, he's some Eurasianist. That's not what he's saying at all. He thinks Stalin's legacy was complicated. He basically abides the same viewpoint that Paul Gottfried does, although for some of different reasons, about a substantial aspect of the Cold War deriving from the Stalin versus Trotsky paradigm. That doesn't mean that Stalin was somehow not an internationalist. The Soviet Union can need dozens of ethnicities. A huge Muslim population, a huge eziatic population, a huge number of Near Eastern people. It's spanned 1/6 of this planet. The Soviet Union was the ultimate international superpower. The only way the Soviet Union survives is one of the reasons why the later Cold War was so dangerous as human, you know, for technological reasons and historical ones and the sidelining human decision makers and misjudicisions of strategic nuclear parrion things. But the reason why I drop off who was a fascinating guy, and like I've said, I believe I'm not a Sovietologist and I'm not a Russian expert at all. But I do know something and it's clear to me that post-Crucetjef there was a shadow trifecta of a and drop of Ustanov and Gramego with a real Soviet executive. The Brezhnev was a frontman which made sense because before he became kind of elderly and compromised, people liked Brezhnev and he resonated with the people. Even today he's fondly remembered. Like a man who was like a great steward of other Russian people and the nationalities. And drop of, I mean Brezhnev was very much a Stalinist, you know, and as was a drop of, but a drop of seminal speech right in '82, right after he became a general secretary. You know, he, this is when Project Rion, which a lot of people attribute as contributing substantially to the war scare of '83 in the Ablaarcher era, I think people still misunderstand that aspect of it, but be as it may. The reason why the subject of the speech to the the prosidium he said we're going to lose the Cold War if we don't take drastic measures to counter measures against Rima, you know, the revolution military affairs. He was speaking specifically of computing power and command and control aspects which was true. There's something there's something in Sam. There's only like 5,000 computers in the entire Soviet Union in 1982. It was something, it was something insanely primitive state of affairs with regards high tech. You know, and you know, it was all point was basically the risk of war based on the strategic paradigm as it's evolving as well as these command and control aspects and the sideline and human decision makers that the risk of war is is probably greater than it's ever been since you know the 40s but also we're going to lose that war if we don't find a way to develop meaningful counter measures that you know our our our technologies of parity or unless we find a way out of the Cold War. You know, and that was Gorbachev's old notion because Gorbachev was an end drop off producer. He wasn't some big liberal. Shemek Narze I think was subverting things but point being you know Gorbachev was very much the anti-Yeltsin quite literally and Yeltsin was the Neokon's guy you know Gorbachev's notion was you know to reform the command economy with certain qualifications you know and and and basically joy with God's plan and favor something else that could abide innovation in the high tech sector and and bring about peace with the United States by surrendering to the United States or dismantling the Soviet Union that was not at all within the cards and one of the reasons why Gorbachev was had rapport with Bush and Baker Bush and Baker assured him we're not gonna try and dismantle the Soviet Union and they weren't for a very specific reason Bush said where you know until there's full nuclear disarmament we're not even gonna talk about you know a post-Soviet future you know and obviously the Neokon perspective and their shoe-harning of Yeltsin was you know break the Soviet Union to pieces now their notion was and what one of the reasons for the why this crusading is Moscow is proceeding from Ukraine their notion was to break the Soviet Union into essentially three discrete like client regimes you know like the former Soviet Far East and in those days especially too because the Pentagon was still looking at China as essentially friendly and obviously like you know seed some of that territory to the to pick King but you know based they'll be like a Ukraine like Commissariat they'll be like you know the Moscow kind of central commissariat and then they'll be this like for like Russian Far East that can you know just that's just kind of like this sort of like hyper exploited you know hinterland for the United States and and adjacent finance capital and stuff and you know Bush and Baker realized like no we're not we're not gonna grind these people's faces into the concrete and we're not gonna destabilize whole region and you know we're certainly not gonna do anything until there's full nuclear disarmament you know that that was a tangential discussion give me that but Baker was a great man and I got him a lot of respect for him and post 41 it was not a really likeable guy we would have that but he had a very serious and sophisticated view of geopolitics and political affairs so that administration looks better and better in my opinion and I mean I felt that way at the time as a teenager I realized this country I realized something really really really bad was underway when when when Clinton was elected I mean it would have been one thing if it was like a 2020 steel but the body politics excited about this pig and that was insane you know and it's not just because he was crushing our people I mean I knew guys who got indicted and what the prison under Clinton Reno for when they hadn't done anything you know I'm not just speaking I mean as a matter of law as well as a matter of fact or ethics or whatever but he isn't me the to bring it back a bit you know there's a brief moment really from about 92 to 96 and that's when that's one of these these historians for some other David Irving you know he got access to the FSB archives and there was all this incredible stuff that came to life that you know the old Soviet system it's suppressed and kept from prying eyes but then I mean very quickly things became even more opaque than in so much than they had during the Soviet era because the regime I'll never tell the truth I was going on with Russia I mean over the year but this is an issue of peculiar sensitivity for reasons that I don't think it need to be elaborately explicated but I realize I talked more about Hoffman as well as the New Hampshire Barbarossa and I did specifically Subaru if you want to part three I'll remedy that and I'll speak specifically to Subaru and I'll include some aspects of inside the Red Army I've got a paperback on that I'm gonna take it on the road with me that sounds good to me getting into the yeah think about reading Suvoroff is it's just this fire hose of just this date that what was dismantled on this date what was put in this place on this date it's just like just running down this whole list of things just chapter after chapter where it's it's mind-boggling the the mountain of circumstantial evidence he is able to provide for his for his thesis which they took he took like a lot of Russians particularly guys who were in intelligence roles or military roles he was a prolific documentary and he wrote down a huge amount of things but also you know obviously English wasn't his first language and it's written kind of like a debriefing but with like added extrinsic cognitive which makes sense I mean he was a defector and he he spent literally years being debriefed by American and NATO military people you know I mean I get it that's not that it's not a fun life like the factor actually sucks what's your take on defectors I interviewed one once and he was a defector from Soviet Union like in early 1989 and I mean I just caught him not exactly lying just I caught him in not being willing to have certain conversations that would just seem like you know it's like oh you know well tell me what Karl Marx got right this one of the things I asked him I said tell me what Karl Marx got right he's like nothing absolutely nothing and and I'm like you I see these defectors come out of like North Korea and like immediately they get debriefed by the State Department and then they get boob jobs and they're driving brand new cars and they're in frigging condos and I'm like I think defectors were a lot different back then than they are well you know they have to say okay some guy some some DVR guy or some Soviet Union like GRU officer who defected in like May 1989 totally different than a guy who defected in 1979 or 1969 night and day because the former is just like some dickhead like looking to get paid and like looking for a way out of his life and failing system guys like Super off first of all I'm taking a huge risk you know and secondly for regular people man like it's it peak cold war you know life wasn't that different than the Soviet Union or America it really wasn't so I mean it's not like you're some GRU big shot it's not like you're gonna get great stuff in America you can't back home I mean yeah you can you know I feel like blue jeans for your mistress and like good scotch but there's not some like There wasn't something like huge difference in quality of life or something. Guys like Subrabe defected because they had ethical reasons for it, and they developed a moral consent for the system. I really like the book The Hunt for Red October. It's just like an awesome book, and I reread it lately. Because I forgot how good it was, but. The Captain of the Red October, the whole deal. In part, it's a brilliant meditation on a late Cold War strategic nuclear platforms and the deep parodies they're in. But it's another character study, like the Soviet naval officer. He's this Lithuanian guy who doesn't really relate to the Russian culture. His wife needed an operation, and the doctor who operated on her was drunk when he put in the surgery. He botched it and she died. But the doctor was the son of some Policarrow big shot. They're like, "You can't stop demanding vengeance against this man." So this naval officer, he's just like, "What the hell am I doing?" And also to it, he's like deeply religious. He's like, "So, there's like this atheist show of anistic Russian government that killed my wife and I'm supposed to kill 50 million people in a war like on behalf of it." No, I'm not doing that. There's a deeper moral quay, my retugues, the Red October. It's a typhoon class sub, but it's got what's called a caterpillar drive. So it's invisible to sewsus and passive sonar. So basically, it's a splendid first strike weapon. He realizes the Soviet Union can all do the strategic balance and basically bring America to terms through the threat of nuclear assault. He used that as morally fucked also. If we're going to win, let's win the Cold War clean. We're not doing it basically by holding America hostage with the nuclear trigger. I mean, that's kind of more realistic, but at the same time, I mean, I don't know, man. Like, it's no being the captain of a typhoon class sub, that there was a counter-value, like, mega-death machine. It's a role as a assault counter-value target and kill millions of people. If you don't believe in the system, you serve, that's a pretty horrible role to be in. You've got to be a true believer to do that job. It's not like any other job in the military and it's not like any other role in any other era. You know, commanding a first strike platform that can kill millions of people. So obviously, that's a fictional example, but what Clancy was drawing upon was the real ethos of defectors in the Cold War. On the other side, you guys really came, which, five, I think we're pretty disturbed guys. They were true believers. That's totally different than these days. I think Snowden is a sincere guy, whatever problems he might have. He's basically, you know, he could never leave Russia now. Like, it's not a happy life. I think, I mean, Snowden, I don't want to get into a deep meditation on the ethics of what Snowden did, but my point is, whatever his motives, I don't know. I don't think we could say he did that for cloud, but you know, these people who come the other way, like some of these Chinese or North Koreans, they're just looking to get paid. It's obvious, but they think they're not being respected like they should be in, you know, whatever role they're in. But the Cold War is a different world. I mean, literally, you know. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll pick this up on episode three when you get back from the travels of Thomas on the road and everything. Yeah. I remind everybody, we're about 36 hours ago. Yeah. I remind everybody where they can find your work. Yeah. You should check out my sub-stack. It's real time. It's 777-substack.com. Alternatively, go to the website. It's number 7-h-l-me-s-777.com. But that's definitely showing us so people can find it easy. But my website is a good one-stop. And my sub-stack is where the podcast and other good stuff is at. I've just got off the road from DC. Then we head to Halloween, all the things they say, "Summatory walk." I'm trying to make progress. I got to make substantial progress on this May, I've scripted by December. Things have been very hectic. So in good ways. And then I injured myself like a fucking idiot. And it's the Mind Faser pod. It's going to be another couple of weeks before a fresh episode drops. So forgive me for that. But Jay Burden and I will continue to drop fresh stuff on his plate forms and on Rio of Rishik Kogo. So just bear with me. I promise we'll be back to regular uploads when I get back from the road. All right. Until episode three. Thank you Thomas. Yeah. Thank you, man. I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Yana Show. We had a little bit of a hiatus because you know, did a little traveling and everything. But Thomas is back and we're going to finish up the series on who started World War 2, who's responsible. And yeah, so take it away, Thomas. Yeah. Thanks for hosting me again. There's two issues here and if memory serves in the first episode of this little series, we address the issue of one exactly the second World War started, which seems pedantic, but it's not. It's this is a real matter of contention for anybody who's seriously engaged with the subject matter. There's a reason why court historians claim the onset of hostilities was September 3rd, 1939 because that represents a discreetly ideologically coded perspective. And obviously the intention is to present the global strategic and geopolitical situation as being one of relative peace until the German Reich violated that peace through make it aggression against the Polish state. Okay. There's a problematic perspective for all kinds of reasons. You know, some which are political, some of which are purely historical in nature. It's factual. But what I think is irrebuttable, even if one accepts, you know, the mainstream view of the onset of hostilities between the German Reich and Poland and the subsequent war declaration on the German Reich by France and the United Kingdom. The fact of the matter is that weeks prior, the Soviet Union assaulted the Japanese Imperial Army of Kalkin Gold. This was a massive engagement. This was a massive clash of forces. You know, and obviously it represented the onset of a state of general hostilities between two great powers, the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan. So I don't really see how anybody looks like to be taken seriously. It can claim that this was some sort of insignificant event or somehow not related to the broader nexus of causation that, you know, also precipitated the end of hostilities in Europe. You know, either the Soviet Union going to war with Japan in a scale capacity represented the onset of general hostilities at planetary scale or it didn't. So there's that related to that, but more discreetly political in terms of the significance of the subject matter, the vis-a-vis court history narratives and the way that official authorities in the United States and the United Kingdom and the Buddhist Republic. continue to present, you know, and characterize the Second World War is the issue of Soviet intentions and what exactly the state of power political relations was between Moscow and Berlin as of June 22, 1941 and it's pretty clear to me you know and I draw a lot in substantial measure on the late Yakum Hoffman's exhaustive study of Barbarossa it's pretty clear to me that the Soviet Union was imminently going to assault Europe and the German Reich not just the Führer but okay W as well as you know various command elements within the the party apparatus the military and the secular state apparatus recognize this reality as did myriad heads of state who found themselves allied with the German Reich for various reasons you know this included Croatia Slovakia Italy on you know France you know again there was no Vichy France there was the government of France and it it was absolutely on the side of the axis powers you know there were volunteers from Norway Sweden Denmark Iceland throughout the Central Asian Islamic countries you know Romania contributed a quarter million men which is a massive contribution for a country the size of Romania you know Hungary Bulgaria the Netherlands you know Belgium Luxembourg you know the list goes on you know in obviously the Spaniards at the wedding red fought incredibly valiant wheat but you know there's this this wasn't a matter of the Zeitgeist there some sort of mass hysteria or some sort of desire to sacrifice one's life or some sort of a femoral glory the Soviet Union had a time the fact that it was animated by a revolutionary ideology that was truly global in character it the Soviet Union had built a military juggernaut the likes of which the world had never seen it was almost unfathomable and it was only growing larger and more powerful you know and the like I said to me this is obvious Hoffman and Victor Suvorov and a few other military historians are just Stoffley is another one they brought unique insight to the table and Hoffman in particular his data points were and are exhaustive and Hoffman too he not that I'm obviously I don't need prejudice against independent scholars I am one but such that people are prone to dismissing historians who don't have what they view as adequate credential to affiliation with reputable institutions well Hoffman when he was alive he was the employee of the official historical records division of the Bundeswehr you know and he was considered to be probably the seminal German historian on Barbarossa in terms of the military aspects okay you can't say if he was a crank or that he was some agree the guy who was outside of the establishment of the Bundeswehr public he was very much insinuated into it okay not that that's a make a difference but such that it does you know I I don't see all people can impeach his credibility you know and one of the issues that Hoffman takes up because again Hoffman was very focused on the quantitative military aspects of Barbarossa one of the things that he addressed was a lot of lay people as well as historians and military analysts who know better but for cynical reasons bandwagon on this argument they claim that well if the Soviet Union was so deeply mobilized and had a raid such a massively scaled war machine why did they absorb catastrophic casualties well that's exactly why they did because they were deployed offensively and when you're talking about combined arms even to this day I mean drones and localized autonomous firepower are definitely changing things most strategically and tactically and noir is that more on display than in though than in various aspects of of tactical deployment and depth but even to this day this remains constant if we're talking about combined arms modern warfare we're not you can't just call it a proverbial audible and the mist of hostilities if your forces are arrayed to assault and and switch to a defensive paradigm so coming under assault when not prepared to defend in depth can lead to catastrophe particularly when one's opponents is the verimax and we're going to get into how exactly that plays out but not only again does the attrition rate and specifically the the skewed nature that attrition rate not only does that not tend to rebut the claim before us it actually tends to substantiate it now I'll get into some of these data points so that you know the clarify what we're talking about here I can't remember if I got into this or not in the first episode and please tell me if I'm repeating myself in order to get the correct me I'm not gonna be offended quite the contrary I'll be quite gracious between November 1940 and literally the eve of Barbarossa in June of 1941 the Soviets undertook a massive arms buildup it now don't get me wrong by the autumn of 1940 the Soviets enjoyed numeric and arguably technological superiority pretty much across the entire spectrum of combined arms but this punctuated buildup of November 1940 to June 1941 can really only be interpreted as mobilization and anticipation of offensive operations on the outbreak of hostilities June 22, 1941 the Soviet Union had deployed no less than 24,000 tanks close to 2000, which were T-34s, which in those days there weren't main battle tanks, there was a light medium and heavy tanks, then are we super heavy tanks? But the T-34 was, I think of it as kind of like the zero of armored forces. It was probably the most effective armored platform of the entire war in all around terms. Obviously, the Tiger was a superior machine, but that's not what we're talking about. And the ability of T-34s to be rolled off the assembly line rapidly, almost like Model T-4s or something, that itself was a forest multiplier. Between 9/38 and June 22, 1941, the red air force had acquired over 23,000 military aircraft. Around 37, 100 at which could be considered cutting edge. Probably about half of those had night fighting capability. The Red Army had close to 150,000 field artillery pieces and heavy mortars. The Red Navy had over 200 submarines, which a camera, if I mentioned or not. But obviously, submarines are expressly offensive. There aren't defensive submarines. You know, and to be clear, this alone, I mean, the Soviet Union wasn't known as any kind of maritime power. I mean, if anything, you know, the Tsar's Navy had been sank by the Japanese in 1905, and that it further compromised the prestige, actual potential of, you know, the Russian Navy is a real force. But by June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union by far had the largest submarine fleet in the world. More than four times that of the Royal Navy, you know, in the UK, it was viewed as the foremost naval power on this planet. You know, I mean, these data points speak for themselves. You know, and on the political side, I know I've gotten into this in previous series that we've done. I put a lot of emphasis on direct testimony. Oh, and I'm sure in part to the fact that my background in part is at least as that of a lawyer. You know, but also, if we're talking about intent, particularly of wartime executives, there's a tendency to be able to rely upon the statements of a wartime executive or an executive who's preparing for war. There's a, there's incentivization to telling the truth when the chief executive so situated is talking to his cabinet. Or as general staff officers. Okay, because what incentive would there be to lie? Number one, and there's there's active disincentives to lie because that compromises the ability of subordinate command elements to effectively execute orders and wage war towards victory conditions. You know, and so I put a lot of stock in which Stalin said and a lot of this testimony from Stalin himself, you know, that which isn't independently documented by, you know, the minutes of his speeches or by audio recording. You know, a lot of Stalin's intimates were the sources of these statements, including a Colonel Vokuganov, who was a Stalin's official biographer. You know, and Stalin gave a series of speeches in this, in the year preceding Barbarossa, but particularly the, the six to eight months, immediately proceeding on some of hostilities, which approximately reflects the final phase of mobilization that we talked about just now from November 1940 to June 1941. And Vokuganov mixed the point that Stalin was very taciturn, but he became quite candid and quite open within the cloister of, you know, these command element corridors in his discussion of, you know, what was to be military doctrine in the next war, which he increasingly discussed as if it was an imminent possibility. And Vokuganov's own words in describing the speech Stalin made on May 5, 1941, he says, quote, "The leader made an unmistakably clear war is inevitable in the future. One must be ready for the quote unconditional destruction of German fascism. The world will be fought on enemy territory and victory will be achieved with few casualties." And again, this wasn't something that Stalin merely devised as a polemical device to embolden forces under his command or to overcome any potential or actual crises of confidence is among a general staff by appeal to a revolutionary fervor. Lenin made clear in identifying the core doctrinal elements of the Red Army, you know, back in 1920-1921-1922 that the Red Army was an instrumentality of revolutionary imperatives. It wasn't a defensive element, you know, and it was to be deployed offensively at all times. You know, because the only rational for its existence within the paradigm of Marxist historiography and Leninist revolutionary doctrine was to facilitate the advance of history and the victory and the proletariat against the class enemy. So there's really no there's really no way to interpret Soviet battle doctrine as anything other than discreetly ideologically coded and axiomatically offensive. You know, and this is this is going on or this is relying upon the strictures of Marxist Leninist ontology and the distinct Marxist view of military power and its utility and its ethical functions. And the Marxist Leninism was in fact a total philosophical and political system. Impoverished as it may have been intellectually in various capacities and to be fair, what's sophisticated in others. What's irrebutable or indisputable is that It was a total theory of clinical and social and there's historical ontology. So the idea that the party state, which to be clear by 1941, had categorically annihilated millions of people within the Soviet Union, owing to what was identified as their inage capability. You know, the idea that Stalin, for the prosidium, or the Politburo standing committee, or these surviving command elements in the Red Army, the idea that they would somehow hesitate to see through these doctrinal imperatives is somewhat laughable. And we're not in the court of law, so it shouldn't be a problem to invoke subsequent, as well as prior precedent to demonstrate persuasively what the doctrinal character was of Marxist Leninist revolutionary military elements. I invoke the case of Cambodia a lot, you know, from 1975 to 1979. And I know of a fact, because I get to hate me with some fact of things. People suspect I only do that for the sake of political expediency, but that's not why. Paul Pot was not some simple-minded brute. He was actually a very sophisticated political soldier. He had a very deep understanding of Marxist Leninism far more than Mao. And Democratic Kempichia, as Paul Pot, and his cadre, branded the country during their brief tenure, was a very pure Marxist Leninist state in some ways. And there was nothing-- there was nothing heterodox in ideological terms about the way they implemented class warfare, adjusting for the discrete conditions on the ground in Southeast Asia. As in 1975. So what I'm getting at, and I'll move on here in a moment, I don't quite understand the same people who acknowledged that the Soviet Union was this outlier country. And that was unusual in every conceivable sense. In terms of praxis and policy and theoretical foundations and everything else, yet they insist that this didn't somehow impact military decision-making, or that revolutionary ontology somehow stopped at the point of executive decisionism when it came to the decision to spread the revolutionary cause to Europe, and specifically to annihilate the dialectical enemy in the German Reich. But Stalin had spoken again and again as well to the central committee, most notably on January 8, 1941. And there was two high-ranking Air Force officers in attendance and Stalin apparently spoke directly of the ratio and algorithm that was necessary to defeat the German Reich according to the general staff, as well as his own calculations, as had been explicated to him by authorities that he trusted. He spoke on this particular day to quote, "twofold superiority." He said that as had been explained to him, twofold superiority is a law of military science, meaning it's due to one ratio, contrary to the enemy, in offensive operations, whether you're talking about rod numbers or force multipliers and variables attending to act as force multipliers that magnify the effectiveness of offensive elements. And Stalin stated openly that quote, "this is not a game. The time is approaching for military operations. Twofold superiority is essential, but greater superiority is even better." He spoke specifically of the difficulty of traversing the Carpathians and the need to designate at least 5,000 attack aircraft in order to neutralize defensive positions that inventory and armor aren't going to be able to readily traverse or into the terrain. Now, this is hugely important for reasons I'm going to get into in a moment. OK. But from January of '41, specifically January 8th, until May, only weeks before Barbarossa, Stalin talks again and again about waging military operations in the Balkans specifically across the Romanian frontier and discrete exigencies that are presented by waging war in that theater. In a lecture given in the spring, I believe March of '41, but it's only neglected to design an exact date. He addressed the Soviet Plano-Battentiary Representative in Belgrade, which at that time was under the rule briefly of a Chetnik Huntup, which in turn led to the German intervention and ultimately the bifurcation of the kingdom of Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes. But in addressing the Plano-Battentiary Representative in Belgrade and select members of the Polet Baroque, he said, quote, "The US Assar will only react at the proper time. The powers of scattering their forces more and more. The US Assar is therefore waiting to act unexpectedly against Germany. In doing so, the US Assar will cross the Carpathias, which will act as a signal for the revolution in Hungary. Soviet troops will penetrate Yugoslavia from Hungary, advance the Adriatic Sea, and cut Germany off from the Balkans in the Middle East." OK, so what does this mean in both immediate tactical terms and how this impacted the battlefield situation in Operation Barbarossa, as well as in broader strategic terms? Well, of course, the US Assar is a very important Let's take a further question first, the latter aspect first. The Soviet Union planned to assault Europe through Romania. By capturing Romania, it could deprive Germany of essential access to petroleum reserves. And also, let's commensurate with Soviet deep battle doctrine, which presuming forces and being ratios that Stalin described as being at least a two-fold advantage and preferably double or triple that. Stalin basically was planning a deep battle like Pinser flanking maneuver across the entirety of the continent and the north through Sweden and then down to the south. The main spare punks would be through Romania and they'll get into in a moment. This is why the Army Group's Salvatore, Army Group's Salvatore face savage resistance and barbarosa, Army Group's center was moving so fast. It was basically like faced with no more than token opposition on the road to Moscow, which doesn't make any sense unless you understand the deployment schema of the Red Army, which was totally offensive and concentrated in the south in a way that wouldn't be rationably in a defensive oriented schema. It's most significant, every time I'm jumping around a bit, but please stop me if I'm not being clear. Most significant, the Subaru of hypothesis in terms of Stalin's declared intentions was probably what's kind of be known as the secret meeting with the Poled Barrow and the Soviet representatives of the Comintern who had been called back to be availed to this speech. August 19, 1939, which obviously coincided with the assault in the Japanese, a kelken gold, but this was a surprise secret meeting and was unprecedented for the Russian delegation of the Comintern to be called back. Another thing Stalin didn't have a lot of respect for the Comintern, I mean in part because he is a rigid command doctrine. He wasn't crunchable with an ideologically coded cadre structure whereby independent of Moscow, just doing an effect of distance and remoteness. He didn't want some cadre making decisions even superficially on behalf of the Soviet Union without his direct oversight. But nonetheless, the Comintern still had tremendous cloud in 1939 and especially coming off of the defeat in Spain. There was a real danger of a fracturing of the broad international front, red front. So this is highly significant. I guess what I'm getting at is that Stalin wouldn't have called the Russian delegation back, just for, you know, this thing of putting on airs or to stand on ceremony or something. And this is when, I think I briefly addressed this last episode. It was in this secret meeting or secret speech that Stalin declared that getting the right foreign ministry to agree to a non-aggression pact, that would embolden them to act against Poland because there before the Berlin and specifically Hitler felt that his hands were tied in resolving the Polish issue because in a sult on Poland, even in the wake of a gross provocation or violation of Germany's territorial integrity on the frontier, you know, would lead to a Soviet counter strike that would be devastating. So Stalin's reasoning was, you know, we will, we'll allow Germany with this non-aggression pact, which, you know, absolutely guarantees that they will sult Poland, which will then, you know, lead to a war declaration by the UK and France. Germany will probably be victorious on the western front, but only at pure cost, you know, and then, you know, and this, thus, this is the icebreaker that will soften what would be Europe's defensive cordon and allow the Red Army to, you know, just bowl over and annihilate resistance in the West. Then, you know, thus reverse the, reverse the defeat handed to them in Iberia and, you know, conquer the continent in a rapid and devastating operation. And I mean, Stalin, this is probably consistent as far back as 1925, you know, when he was less than three years into his formal ascendancy as General Secretary, he spoke openly about the need to act militarily against Europe as soon as possible, but not until the political climate and the, you know, the, the myriad, and ever sort of changing a lion's structure in the West was such that what Stalin called a broad field of activity would be realizable in order to, you know, pursue the imperative of a world revolution. And to be clear, you know, not only was Europe, along with America and Japan, you know, the kind of productive core of this planet, but, you know, the understanding was that Europe was still the, in conceptual terms, you know, the political center of human affairs, you know, conceptually, you know, every, every, every ideological schema, you know, came from Europe and even, even things like the anti-colonial movement were fully locked into dialectical, engagement, you know, with, with European thought. So, Stalin's notion was that, you know, first, last and always, Europe needs to be overrun and annihilated and the revolution has to, has to be implemented there, you know, it's a waste of time and it's self-defeating to pursue such a comparison of periphery. Let me know a state, you know, wherever revolutionary activity jumped off, that had historical momentum and forces in being, Stalin absolutely was in favor of supporting that and seeing that through, but the, but the, but the, but the core mission orientation of the Soviet Union had to be, you know, the, you know, the, implementing the world revolution in Europe, you know, first and foremost. And that's also why the Spanish war was so important. You know, it wasn't just, I've read some court historians claim that Stalin somehow, like reluctantly forced into the Spanish war, for the sake of appeasing the common turn. I mean, that's this laughable. We're all kinds of reasons, but it also, you know, Stalin wasn't as heterodox of a, of a Marxist ledanist as he's often portrayed. I mean, Stalin was complicated. You know, like I said, I, it's a lean, volume, but it's a great book, Carrie Bolton's book, Stalin, the Enduring Legacy, you know, Stalin's a complicated figure. And there were heterodox aspects to his, um, worldview and his own velta politic, but it wasn't a radical divergence or something, you know, and, um, that's important, especially because these days, even, even some fairly heterodox political theorists and, um, even some revisionists seem to abide that, um, affection. Um, but yeah, the, you can't, in other words, this, you can't, you can't extricate the ambition of the Sovietization a year up from the, uh, existence of the Soviet Union itself. You know, these, these, these ambitions were synonymous. And that's, that's also why the Cold War developed the way that it did in, in, in, in, in Rodgel's strategic terms. But, um, you know, and I think I can't remember if I mentioned or not, this speech and question, you know, the August 19th, 1939 speech, it was obtained by, uh, the French news agency of us. And, uh, the French were, uh, kind of notorious for getting a hold of these kinds of, uh, documents and records. You know, um, and when, uh, when the Havass Agency, um, by way of, uh, Geneva, when, when, when they went public with it, it was published, uh, in, uh, some international journal. And then in many of the major French language newspapers. But Moscow's propaganda is immediately wanting to over drive, you know, claiming, you know, this is a, this is a forgery. You know, this, this is, this is confedulated by the, the enemies of Russia and the Soviet Union, you know, it's fascist propaganda. And, uh, it did not make as nearly as big of an impact as one might think, you know, um, which is really interesting because it goes to show you two how, you know, and a lot of that too had to do with, uh, this kind of deafening silence, um, from American news agencies, you know, another then all the major papers in America, I mean, other than those brands held by McCormick, were basically, uh, mouthpieces for the New Deal regime, you know, but it's still, I mean, obviously too. I mean, this, there was a kind of nascent low tech globalism emerging, at least between America and, um, year up by way of, you know, the UK. But even, you know, I mean, it's just, it's, it's still an intermarkable that there is basically no impact in, in terms of the global opinion. And, uh, I've looked to to see if, uh, this pops up in any America first literature. And I haven't found anything, this positive on that question. But that again goes to show you two that agreed to which the psychological environment was being actively manipulated, you know, long before the onset of formal hostility, which might seem like an obvious point to you or myself. But people are inundated in this country with this idea that, you know, somehow the New Dealers had no interest in these goings on and, and the European war and, uh, the interest from the Soviet Union, the German Reich, you know, until Pearl Harbor, when America was attacked, then they changed everything. I mean, that, they could not be more false from, uh, the first, uh, months of the New Deal regime, which again coincided almost precisely with, uh, the National Socialist Revolution, which was a totally legal revolution again. You know, and, um, Roosevelt from the first days of administration was pursuing an, uh, an absolutely radical, anti-fascist imperative as the core mandate of, uh, in ambition of his administration. You know, and they can't, uh, they can't be denied. You know, and the, I don't want to spin this off too, um, tangentially. And I know that a lot of people criticize me for my sources. Well, we, if they have, yet to directly bought, rebut any of these data points that I've derived from these sources, namely Robert Conquest and, um, Ernst Nolte, and, as well as the black book of communism, which is a great resource, I mean, I had, but, uh, it's indisputable at the Soviet Union exterminated millions of people between 1917 and 1941. And there was a massive series of death camps, actual death camps, that, uh, were employed towards this incredibly gruesome task. And the degree to which there was an information blackout about this reality can't be overstated. You know, um, and people who raised this issue, you know, not just, not just America firsters, but, um, Joseph Schumpeter's wife, interestingly, she spoke Japanese and, and she was a big advocate for Japanese people. She was kind of a human rights type, but of a genuine sort, not like the 21st century sort. And, uh, she raised the issue of Soviet annihilation therapy, as Nolte called it. And she was, uh, she instrumented her hassle by the FBI, both for, you know, sympathies for the access, these are via her, you know, uh, dealings with, with, with Japanese people and stuff. And particularly Japanese people who are being persecuted by the New Dealers, but also, uh, you know, propagandizing against the Soviet Union in their view was this big, um, subversive act, you know, which seems kind of an incredible, I, I imagine the people today, but they don't, I mean, but it, I mean, it only seems incredible if one doesn't accept the, the true nature of, uh, of that regime, but that aside is remarkable, uh, that agree to which these things could, in fact, be, um, could, in fact, be hidden, you know, um, But there's also obliquely and conversely. It also begs the question, if there was this mass murder conspiracy hatched in the German Reich, in 1942, why wasn't anybody publicizing that? That one would think that would be a guy sent to the New Dealers and a perfect way to portray the Germans as these horrific villains. Especially because of 1944, the US Army was quite literally near mutiny, which we've talked about. That was the real catalyst for the execution of poor Eddie Slavic. It's the Walter Winshill and the Office of War Information and all these myriad anglophone news agencies. They just decided not to report on the fact that the German Reich only existed to exterminate Jewish people because they didn't think it was important. They didn't think it was a useful way to code propaganda. It was like a bit tangential, but moving on real quick, so we're running out of time. I mentioned a moment ago, something that's often raised is why was Barbarossa so tactically successful? Why was the attrition rate so algorithmically skewed against the Soviet Union if in fact the Soviet Union was mobilized for war and planned to attack? That's exactly why these things did develop that way. The Soviets were planning to assault Romania by autumn of '41. That's exactly why, like I said, Army Group South encountered comparatively savage resistance. That's also why there was powerful reserve elements in Ukraine because essentially they were there rapidly reinforced the shock element that was going to assault the Balkans. There was this awkwardly unbalanced deployment schema of Soviet fuel learnings where Soviet forces blocking the corridor to the Moscow-Littengrad deployment space. They were exponentially weaker than those deployed to Ukraine, which doesn't make any sense unless you account for the fact that they were deployed in an offensive posture, the which fair point of which was in the south to assault Romania, through the Carpathians. Now don't be wrong. The Soviets were sensitive to the fact that Moscow was being left relatively undefended. It doesn't track any other way, other than to accept what it is to acknowledge. It's also, again, this idea that's endlessly bandied to this day that Stalin was afraid of Hitler or that the Soviet Union was afraid of the Veremont. It's like, well, I mean, okay, that's preposterous anyway. So Stalin was so afraid of the Veremont that he, their base, he was a token deployment. On the path to Moscow, I mean, how is that work? The interpretation is a, it can only result in a conclusion that the Soviet repose for exclusive, we offensive operations. Unless he can, it's a torture panel logic. I mean, I guess he could claim that the Soviet is one of the Germans in and funnel the main line of the funnel into the main line of resistance at the gates of Moscow and stop them to track. But that, I mean, Moscow practically felt, you know, that doesn't make any sense. I've read people who try to make some variation of that argument, but it's so preposterous. I don't really think it warrants the kind of blow-by-blow rebuttal. But that's really, you know, an example of extant conditions speaking of itself. And the resistance that our group center did encounter to be clear, they weren't defensively deployed either. There wasn't any depth to their deployment schema, and they in fact were forward deployed with a heavily armed shock element in the lead, you know, which is one reason why our group center, essentially they didn't counter resistance. They got hit with a lot of firepower that was immediately exhausted. And then when counter-attacking, the very amount immediately broke Soviet lines because there were, again, there wasn't any depth to the deployment. You know, if you know anything, I'm not at all like a military type person, but I do know something about the internal logic of modern warfare, you know, and abstract deployment sense, I mean. And if you know anything about this, it's just not even really deep diving into the numerical data points and stuff, but it's literally looking at the map of the deployment schema. They should jump right out at you. It's almost like, you know, it's like allusion pictures. They used to see them a lot like beer companies. It's like you look at some picture and it looks like a bunch of little pictures of spudgy McKenzie or something, but then you see it and it's like a sexy girl or something. And then once you see that, like you can't unsee it, it's like that, okay. I mean, you look at, you look at the deployment map of the Moscow wedding grid, Gorky, um, battle space. I'm June 22, 1941 and you realize like what it is and then you can't unsee it. You know, so the fact anybody who makes an argument with the contrary, I gotta assume they're just being dishonest or they're just profoundly ignorant of the subject matter. Yeah, looks like we've gone a little over an hour. I hope that wasn't too scatter shot, man. Let me, um, let me hit you up one question before we go and this is, this is a little bit off topic, but it's a question I wanted to ask since we were talking about Stalin so much. Yeah. Did Stalin take half of Europe at the end of the war? Does he give in half of Europe at the end of the war? I mean, both. That's what was decided at Yalta. If, uh, if, if, if Stalin's going to be precluded from taking Germany, that meant that Eisenhower and Montgomery would have had to assault Berlin and had they done that, what would have happened was even accounting for the punitive and, uh, purely, a lot, purely ideological, we'd motivate the additional surrender demand. The very mocked and often SS elements would have basically welcomed them in because that would have prevented the literal rape of a destruction of, uh, the German Reich. And once it was clear that Anglo-American forces intended to take Berlin, Stalin of immediately. shifted to a footing of hostility contrary to the United States and the UK and Even before that happened it's conceivable that These elements that were driving for Berlin on the Soviet side like First Ukrainian shock army Which I think was under Rockets. I think though. I think first Ukrainian shocker was in a Timoshenko But whoever whatever formation cone of And Robotsovsky respectively were commanding It's very conceivable that They would have ordered Down to company level commanders to treat the US and the UK as entities Who are literally trying to race to Berlin as a to act as a blocking element and the Soviet view you know for the Germans So America to follow itself at war with the Soviet Union You know That's the only alternative but I mean that's what that anyway like I said the thing was decided at Yalta It's I mean I don't You can On the one hand Yeah, it was the new it was the new dealers who kept the Soviet Union in the war but Like Van Manstein I highly recommend Van Manstein's It's marketed as his memoirs. It's called lost victories, but in reality was his debriefing by the war department Which obviously was very very interested And learning as much as they could about Fighting the Soviet Union With combined conventional combined arms with an emphasis on an armored columns obviously Van Manstein who really was like a kind of Prussian Martinette and a very prejudice guy He stipulated that the the Soviet army was unbelievably tough they could absorb catastrophic attrition and not fall apart and Much is in the Western world is we might view their doctrinal orientation on the battlefield as exhibiting a kind of callous disregard for human life it was and is highly effective and Those things are all true you can't really take away from the game this and just the the rot toughness of The red army, you know, so I'm not gonna sit here and say that oh Stalin was just handed a gift by You know the new dealers and and General Eisenhower, you know because The Soviet Union fought for every single inch of ground That's they won back and The the attrition the endured is almost unfathomable Yet by the time they reached Berlin their morale was great. They were acting like they were at a party I'm not being flippant. They were doing utterly horrible horrible things by my point being The rather man that arrived in Berlin wasn't some broken a rag tag for us. It was a very game very aggressive Very high morale element, which is one reason why they were so dangerous Like it's realistic and through intergang we're try to young You know She's trying to pass through Soviet lines and then like the kid runs up and grabs her hand, you know, so It's a really point in seeing but There's these Soviet infantry men and they're like Gosling vodka and like dancing like you're at a party You know these guys have just been in action for The you know these guys probably were the last they were probably like the last element drafted They're probably guys who turned 18 you know in in The in January in 1945, you know and then took you know like 80% casualties You know and they're like the surviving element and they're acting like they're at a party. You know they most most people would have fallen apart You know even when they had the kind of moment that kind of momentum in in broad strategic terms just because it was so It was so brutal and so catastrophic so yeah, I'm not I'm not getting away from the Ivens in terms of their toughness and game this but it You know I a race to Berlin between Montgomery and Eisenhower and and The Soviets would have meant war So that's the best answer I can give Awesome All right, well, I will encourage people to go over to Thomas's sub stack. That's real Thomas 777.substack.com and you can connect to him from From there to anywhere that he's at and check him out on Twitter and make sure to subscribe to a substack so you can Get the episodes and hear him so yeah, that's it Thomas. This was a this was a great series. I thought this was a series that needed to get out there especially after reading after reading suver off and Getting a little of the way through Hoffman and and having to finish Hoffman. It's just vital information that people You're not going to hear Even if you you exit court history This is stuff that's hidden and there's a reason why both of those books if you want original copies of both of those books you're paying two three hundred dollars Yeah, yeah, no, I agree on accounts and yeah, thanks. Thanks for including me man or rather for Inviting me to participate and and with somebody else. That's just great Thank you Thomas take care of