I did not know that
I don’t recall learning about WWII in school. We had little programs about the war on Remembrance Day…yes we went to school on Remembrance day way back then. I think that children should go to school on Remembrance Day. The day would be more meaningful if the kids are at school at 11am. Rather than sitting at home with a babysitter. Anyway, that’s sort of off-topic. My point was that fact that for some reason, the history of the first and second World Wars was not taught in my school. It may have been mentioned. Maybe we spent a day on it…maybe. We did learn about Ancient Egypt, The Mayans, China, Canada and Russia. I don’t remember much. It was all disjointed and there was certainly no clear timeline. We jumped around a lot and I must confess that my knowledge of history is quite poor. Which is why I bought this book…
Of course, I can’t find it now.
Anyway. Whatever.
So. For some reason, WWII and the Russians came up in conversation the other day and I said that the Russians had actually made a pact with Nazi Germany. The Russians only got into the war after the Nazis attacked them. Of course I was told that the Russians were allies during the Second World War and my information must be wrong. Okay. Because my knowledge of history IS rather poor, I backed down. But the intertubes are my friend. Guess what. It was called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
On August 23, 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a non-agression pact, called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty. Secret protocols of the treaty defined the territorial spheres of influence Germany and Russia would have after a successful invasion of Poland. Hitler had been creating justifications and laying plans for such an invasion since April. According to the agreement, Russia would have control over Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, while Germany would gain control over Lithuania and Danzig. Poland would be partitioned into three major areas. The Warthland area, bordering Germany would be annexed outright to the German Reich, and all non-German inhabitants expelled to the east. More than 77,000 square miles of eastern Polish lands, with a population of over thirteen million would become Russian territory. The central area would become a German protectorate, named the General Gouvernement, governed by a German civil authority.
Thank you Shlemazl
One of the things people don’t quite seem to know is that the Nazis used the Soviet Gulags as the model for their concentration camps. It was the Gulags that gave them the idea for it. Granted the gas chambers where their own personal touch but everything else is strait out of the Soviet Playbook. While there was some differences in economic ideology the Nazis and the Communist where very much alike.
I have a lot to learn.
Thanks crazybengal.
letterstoadyingdream:
1. “Gulag” stands for “Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerei” (The Main Department of Camps). As such it refers to the whole system and technically we shouldn’t be using the plural form (Gulags).
2. I don’t think I agree that Nazi concentration camp system was modelled after Gulag.
The Soviet system was that of slavery aimed at maximizing production at minimal cost. The costs were minimized to such a low level that millions died, however it was just a side-effect. You also had scientific laboratories within the Gulag system with manageable conditions. Russian space programme was borne from such camps.
The Nazi system was split into the labour camp and extermination camps. The latter were unique in that the whole and only purpose was murder.
Originally the Nazis only had the labor camps that where set up on the model of the gulag system. It was only later that the Nazis created the death camps. you can argue about plural or non-plural on the word Gulag but the fact is that the original Nazi concentration camps where the same thing as the Soviet labor camps or the Gulag.
And Nazi Medicine was born out of their camps. It’s the same thing the Soviets just did it first.
Hmmm… Do you have a reference to your claim? I recall that the term itself was taken from the Brits who used concentration camps during the war against South Africa.
Yeah read “The Gulag Archipelago” by Solzhenitsyn or “The Theory and practice of hell” by Eugene Kogan.
Have you seen this?
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/278650.php
I’ll have to pick that book up. It does sound like a plausible theory.
To reiterate what I said before Germany’s slave labor camps where modeled after the Soviet slave labor camps. However later the Nazi high command decided to turn some into death camps or just build new camps for such a purpose. The first victims of the gas chambers that became so well known later where originally tested out on people with mental or physical handicaps before being used to kill every one else the Nazis didn’t like.
Of course I’ve read Arhipelag Gulag. I have also heard several first-hand accounts.
I don’t recall Solzhenitzin claiming that “Germany’s slave labor camps where modeled after the Soviet slave labor camps.” Haven’t read Kogan, but I doubt he made a statement of this nature, did he?
You see, Gulag was largely kept secret from the outside world until 1950s, so I really don’t see how Nazis could have modelled anything on the basis of Gulag.
Solzhenitsyn did claim that the Soviets did it first and eluded to the fact that is where the Nazi’s got their idea for it from. I would have to look it up to see if he did flat out says that’s where they got the idea or if it was just hinted at though. I know the camps where kept secret but that doesn’t mean people outside of the Soviet Union especially in government didn’t know about them from defectors, spies and such.
Kogan doesn’t go into the connection with the Soviets but does give a very detailed description on how the camps in Germany where run and operated. The main differences between the two is that some of Nazi camps had gas chambers, the medical experiments and whore houses.
Look maybe I am wrong and misread the things I have read however it wouldn’t make sense that people in the German government didn’t know about this and some how just somehow created the same thing (with minor “improvements”). We know about North Korea’s camps and they are one of the most closed off countries in the world.