Oliver Stone: Holocaust Blown Way Out of Proportion by Jewish Dominated Media

[Brenus]

“The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a betrayal” Who Stalin did betray? Poland who had the same agreement with Hitler few years before? The French and the English who refuse any Alliance, as they were “officially” anti-communist?

The post war anti-communism was as well a factor in ignoring the Red Army victory and the real suffering of the Russian.
The political gain in doing this was as well for the western Allies to take credit of the victory, and somehow, to clean German Eastern Allies of their involvement within the nazi War Machine.
So, naturally, the extermination of the Jews became a central point of our history, as we hadn’t much to say in the Western Front.

I know it is a bit over simplify and should be developed, but I have to go to work…

[Tellos Athenaios]

Got more on that? They understood oxygen then.

They did, but they also understood very well that the primary danger in those shafts (apart from collapsing support beams and the like) was that you got in so far from the exit point that there was too little oxygen. Thus something as simple as a torch could lead to lethal amounts of carbon monoxide.

Anyway a specific, targeted attack with sulphur for you here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura-Europos Now, I have inferred that this would be the “usual” approach from the fact that sulphur and sulphur compounds are readily available (heck, even setting fire to rotting animals would do the trick: perhaps not lethal but quite nasty all the same). Similarly to that among the things you could do would be to burn various plants (e.g. taxus) to get other unhealthy fumes.

In January 2009, researchers claimed they had found evidence that the Persian Empire used poisonous gases on Dura against the Roman defenders during the siege. Excavations at Dura have discovered the remains of 20 Roman soldiers at the base of the city walls. An archaeologist at the University of Leicester suggested that bitumen and sulphur crystals were ignited to create poisonous gas, which was then funnelled through the tunnel with the use of underground chimneys and bellows.[16] The Roman soldiers had been constructing a countermine, and Sassanian forces are believed to have released the gas when their mine was breached by the Roman countermine. A lone Sassanian soldier was also discovered among the bodies and is believed to be the individual responsible for releasing the gas before the fumes overcame him as well.

[Skullheadhq]

Molotov-Ribbentrop pact a betrayel, who was betrayed?

[lars573]

Stalin. He really though the Germans would stick to it.

[PanzerJaeger]

Don makes a salient point. Until Barbarossa, the USSR was all too happy to split Eastern Europe with the Nazis and engage in its own expansionary binge at the expense of its smaller neighbors. Not only did Russia annex Eastern Poland, but also Lithuania, Estonia, Bessarabia, and Latvia - not to mention grabbing as much of Finland as possible. Those facts put the "suffering of the Russian people" on the same psychological level as the suffering of the respective German and Japanese populaces, i.e. not particularly important to the masses; and could certainly influence how they have been portrayed in the media (although I believe they've gotten off easy).

[Brenus]

Irrelevant. USSR did annexe and had it expansion plan.

But to claim that USSR betrayed France and England is showing at least a lack of knowledge about the Political Game between the 2 World Wars.
Poland had a treaty with Nazi Germany against USSR few years before, and France and England were hoping to channel Hitler aggression to the East.

And no, Stalin had no trust left for Hitler, but he knew his armies were not much for the Germans (as showed by the simulations, twice the Germans played by Zukov won) and was hoping to buy time.
He needed 2 years more to rebuild an Army he destroyed with his paranoia and apparently acknowledge the fact the Red Army was in bad shape. The disaster of the 1st Finish war was kind of agreement of this assessment.
Now, I am not sure his really acknowledge is responsibility in this but this is another story…

The suffering of the Germans and Japanese population was more took in account in our movies than the Russian one.
Take books and you will see chapter treating the destruction and the suffering of these population, including the massive rape campaign in Berlin, ignoring most of the time that the Russian raped their own female soldiers as well (all right, the second fact was hidden by the Russians themselves).
Enola Gay was even a song…
When did we saw a movie about the Russian Civilians suffering? Defiance. 1 year ago?

[Fragony]

It are jews in Defiance, the Russians aren't exactly are portrayed in the most favourable way. Good movie by the way.

[PanzerJaeger]

Irrelevant. USSR did annexe and had it expansion plan.

I think you're getting too wrapped up in his language and missing the broader point. He seemed to be saying that the Russians were not innocent victims of the Nazis like the Jews were, which is wholly correct.

[Brenus]

Oh!!! Right... If he see it this way, yeah, of course

[Don Corleone]

In the interest of full disclosure, both are true. I was indeed trying to say that the Russians weren't innocent, blameless victims in the whole mess, and therefore hadn't risen to that rarefied air of unfettered sympathy.

But I was also laboring under an erroneous belief that at some level, there were coordinated efforts among the members of the League of Nations to deal with Germany, and that the Soviet Union was party to those. The US itself was in a dramatically isolationist phase and wasn't engaged on the international stage very strongly, but I thought the former Allied Powers were trying to work towards a unified solution for dealing with Hilter, and I believed the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement to be a backroom deal that betrayed those efforts.

This view is rather limited and probably inaccurate. The Soviet Union had declared itself to be an island in an ocean of capitalism, and had made no bones about using any means of espionage and subterfuge to hamper Western capitalist nations available to it, including funding British workers strikes and launching coups in Britain and France in the 30's.

An expectation that the Stalin would set all that aside and could be counted on as a partner to counter Nazi aggression in 1938 & 1939 would be extremely naive, and therefore I'd like to retract the use of the term "betrayal" and instead substitute "manipulation and self-interested calculation".

[Skullheadhq]

An expectation that the Stalin would set all that aside and could be counted on as a partner to counter Nazi aggression in 1938 & 1939 would be extremely naive, and therefore I'd like to retract the use of the term "betrayal" and instead substitute "manipulation and self-interested calculation".

And France and Britain didn't do that, when they tried to pitch Germany and the Soviet Union against eachother?

PS: Historical discussions go in the monastery.