Did Stalin TRUST Hitler Prior to the German Invasion of the Soviet Union?

One of the great ironies of 20th century according to many historians is that Josef Stalin, of all people, trusted Adolf Hitler, of all people. Historians regard Stalin as an ultra-paranoid and Hitler as a devious liar. So, why did Stalin, who didn’t trust his fellow communists, trust Hitler, a fascist leader who had compulsively lied and broken promises with other nations–big and small alike–to expand German power? Why this fatal blind spot?
　
But upon closer scrutiny, it may be truer to say that Stalin’s fatal flaw was not that he trusted Hitler–in fact, he didn’t–but he trusted himself. Stalin knew Hitler was and always would be a compulsive liar. Stalin knew that Hitler wasn’t trustworthy on any level. Stalin knew that Hitler was a man of bad faith. Of course, Stalin too was a liar and a cheat who operated in bad faith. For this reason, Stalin thought he UNDERSTOOD Hitler as a kindred soul–a partner in crime–even if he didn’t trust him. Stalin thought he could read Hitler’s mind at every turn. So, Stalin’s problem wasn’t trust in Hitler but trust in his own understanding of Hitler. So, it was not that Stalin ever took Hitler’s promises or assurances at face value. Rather, Stalin thought he could see the real Hitler behind the false promises and assurances.
　
Prior to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact–aka Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact–, Stalin was wary of Hitler’s every move. But, once the pact was made and Germany was at war with the West, Stalin felt confident in his own assessment that Hitler wouldn’t dare start a war with the Soviet Union. Stalin knew Hitler was a liar, a cheat, a thief, and a punk–and always would be. It wasn’t Hitler’s words or assurances that eased Stalin’s anxieties but Hitler’s situation vis-a-vis the West–especially UK, with which Germany was at war and with the US, with which it could potentially be at war. Stalin was confident that Hitler, though a liar and a cheat, would NOT expand the war on yet another front. Stalin understood that Hitler relied on the East for raw materials. Though Stalin always knew Hitler, he terribly underestimated Hitler the reckless gambler.
In a way, it could be said Stalin understood what was good for Hitler better than Hitler did. If Hitler had acted like the Hitler-as-Stalin-understood-him, then it’s possible that WWII would have wound down with Soviet Union controlling the East, Germany dominating all of Western and Central Europe–and parts of Eastern Europe. There was no way UK alone could have defeated Germany. And without the German invasion of USSR–and overwhelming predictions of German victory–, it’s unlikely that Japan would have felt emboldened to attack the US. Without the Japanese attack and German declaration of war, United States wouldn’t have entered WWII as the majority of Americans were opposed to intervention.
Too bad for the Germans that Hitler didn’t act like the Hitler-as-Stalin-envisioned-him.
　
Trust had nothing to do with it. Both men were overcome with hubris. Hitler’s hubris was militaristic. He thought Germany would trick and defeat everyone. Stalin’s hubris was about having X-ray eyes into Hitler’s soul. Trust requires a degree of humility. One trusts others because one is less sure of oneself. Stalin didn’t trust Hitler. He trusted his own assessment of Hitler. Stalin trusted himself so much that he couldn’t tolerate others who informed him otherwise. When Winston Churchill wired him about Hitler’s plan to invade the USSR, Stalin saw it as a dirty British ploy to drive Germany and USSR to war. To Stalin, Churchill just like the kid in the story of "Never Cry Wolf" who kept crying wolf when there wasn’t any. Of course, there was one at the end, but the kid who’d cried wolf got eaten by the wolf. As far as Stalin was concerned, the wolf named Hitler should eat the fat lying imperialist Churchill. When the German military buildup near the border areas of the Soviet Union became undeniable, Stalin either thought Germans were setting up reserve forces or trying to provoke a war with the USSR. As long as Stalin didn’t fall for the bait and increase tensions likewise, Stalin thought there would no war between Germany and the USSR. Again, Stalin didn’t trust Hitler; he trusted his OWN assessment of Hitler. He thought he could read Hitler’s mind like some kind of Rasputin.
　
Anyway, it just goes to show you that trusting yourself could be the biggest self-deception.

Adolf Hitler, not the Frankfurt School, Was the Real Cause of Downfall of the White Right.

There is a prevailing view among the antisemitic and some of the counter-Jewite Right that the decline and dissipation of the white race and Western culture are the invariable result of the influence of the Frankfurt School. Some even argue that the Frankfurt variation of Marxism ultimately did more damage than hardline Marxism ever did. If the main school of Marxism called for violent revolution and overthrow of the capitalist/conservative order–and thus could be countered and fought against as a dangerous enemy–, members of the Frankfurt School appeared on the scene as respectable, balanced, and judicious scholars. They rode inside the Trojan Horse of bourgeois respectability. For their heterodoxy, they were denounced and distrusted by dogmatic and statist leftists AND admired and respected by the educated/progressive capitalist class with intellectual aspirations. Had Frankfurters called for an outright assault on the Free West, they would have been identified and targeted as hardline radicals. But, they arrived on American shores as free-thinking intellectuals interested mainly in academic matters. Therefore, they were not met with the same suspicion as men like Lenin or Trotsky had been in pre-revolutionary Russia. Frankurters didn’t lead the masses to overthrow the government; indeed, they even admitted that possibility of violent revolution has either passed or was undesirable. Instead of playing the ardent warrior out to attack your body, the Frankfurt School played the doctor wanting to diagnose and cure you. For this reason, many members of the American intellectual elite were seduced by their observations, ideas, and proposals. White Americans failed to understand that the analysis and medicine being prescribed by the Frankfurters were really a form of poison. In this sense, the Frankfurters didn’t destroyl White America as an EXTERNAL enemy but as an INTERNAL agent. This isn’t to say that the Frankfurters consciously knew what they were doing. For all we know, they might have been sincere in their conviction in the progress and advancement of mankind. Even so, the Frankfurters couldn’t have failed to notice that they were working deceptively on some level.
The great deviousness of the Frankfurters’ achievement was that they didn’t need hard weapons to kill White America. No, they used the soft weapon of intellectualism to convince White America to either lay down its weapon or feel too paralyzed to use it. Thus, the Frankfurter School made white Americans PSYCHOLOGICALLY and MORALLY defenseless against the rising assault by blacks, illegal aliens, decadence, degeneration, and crime. White Americans had the material means to work and fight for their interests, but they became mentally and ‘spiritually’ unwilling to act lest such action be deemed ‘racist’ or ‘fascist’ or whatever. In Godfather II, Michael recounts what his father said: "Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer." Frankfurters, in the long run, accomplished more than hardline Marxists because their ‘respectability’, ‘academic intellectualism’, and ‘moderate’ radicalism disarmed white Americans who might have otherwise not trusted them.
In a way, one could argue that the Obama presidency is the ultimate product of the Frankfurt influence. Obama is a student of Alinsky-ism. Alinsky was a Marxist who argued that the only way radicalism had a chance of transforming society was by posing as a moderate and even patriotic middle class movement. Obama has been able to rise so high so fast because so many American institutions have become penetrated and dominated by Trojan Horse leftists and radicals.
Even so, it would be simple-minded to scapegoat the Frankfurters as the MAIN culprit of what went so wrong in white America and Western society. Frankfurters wouldn’t have had such an attentive and willing audience if it weren’t for what happened in WWII. Frankfurters and the Left in general earned tremendous moral capital and advantage over the Right because of the massive crimes of Nazism. Therefore, it must be understood that the main force that opened the gates to the Frankfurt Trojan Horse was none other than Adolf Hitler and his vile crimes against humanity. To be sure, even without the rise of Nazis or WWII, there would have been a powerful and influential radical Left as many leftists tended to be first rank intellectuals and were well-funded, especially by successful Jews and progressive WASP types. But, what really gave the Left an overwhelming ideological and moral advantage was WWII instigated by none other than Adolf Hitler. Why and how did this happen? Let us consider how Hitler unwittingly did the greatest favor to the Left.
　
By intimidating, bullying, conquering, humiliating, enslaving, and killing millions of white Europeans, Hitler undermined the appeal of the Right. This is all the more tragic considering that many European victims of Hitler were actually rightists or nationalists. Most of the Resistance in Poland belonged to the Polish Right–and were even accused of ‘antisemitism.’ When Mussolini stupidly attacked Greece, it was ruled by a right-wing regime sympathetic and admiring of National Socialist Germany. Tragically, Hitler was never for white or European power but only for "Aryan" power. Non-Aryan whites were seen as less noble, even less human. In time, even right-wing elements in nations under German rule came to hate the Germans. Northern Italy under German occupation was overwhelmingly anti-German. Even in fellow ‘Aryan nations’ under German occupation, people were none too happy as people generally don’t like to be ruled by a foreign power. Thus, Holland, Norway, and Denmark had little love for Nazi Germany. Finland was pro-German, but this had more to do with their troubles with the Soviet Union.
　
At any rate, the GREATEST Nazi crimes against whites took place in the USSR. Though many Soviet peoples initially greeted German invaders as liberators, it was soon apparent that Germans hadn’t come to free but to enslave and kill people even worse than the communists had. Communists had been arch-hypocrites in regions like the Ukraine, where they preached justice and equality but forcibly starved millions to death. Even so, there was nothing in the communist ideology that said entire peoples were less-than-human and should permanently turned into human cattle. But, this was precisely the ideology of Hitlerism where certain peoples were nto even to be treated as human–even if they were white or European. Though Hitler hated communism and hoped to wipe it off the map, it was for all the wrong reasons. It didn’t upset or sadden Hitler that communism has killed millions of Ukrainians or Russians. He couldn’t have cared less. The only communist mass-killings or deportation he really despaired over was the fate of Volga and Baltic Germans. Hitler hated communism because it meant Jewish power or an imperial power to rival that of Germany. He also saw communism as transforming Russia into a mighty industrial power, thus difficult to conquer at a future date for the sake of German lebensraum. Hitler had little MORAL justification for hating communism. WWII brought out the worst in the German people and their allies. They went into the Soviet Union and committed crimes so unspeakable and massive that whatever moral rationale for Nazism vanished–except to psychotic hardline Nazis and those getting all their info from German propaganda
　
Stalin and the Russians, who had welcomed the prospect for a long and peaceful partnership with Germany, turned their entire energy and resources toward not only fighting back but utterly destroying Nazi Germany and the ideology of fascism. Prior to the German invasion of Russia, it was almost as if the Right had it all. Most European nations were either rightist, right-leaning, or neutral. Even the communist USSR had come aboard, diplomatically and economically if not ideologically. Also, most Americans prior to Pearl Harbor had no desire to enter the war on the side of UK. Prior to 1939, many people around the world–even on the left–admired what National Socialism had done for Germany in terms of economic recovery and national pride. Also, despite horrible crimes committed by Germans in Poland in 1939, Nazi mass murder in the USSR and the Holocaust had not happened. Also, because of the Nazi-Soviet pact, leftists around the world were pressured by Moscow to oppose ‘war-mongering’. Indeed, many progressives in the US toed the Moscow line and smeared FDR and Churchill as craven, capitalist-imperialist war-mongers hellbent on instigating a bloodbath in Europe. Had Hitler maintained the peace between Germany and the USSR, most of the world would have been either with him, neutral, or accommodating. In this political climate, how far could the Frankfurt School have gone with their influence? If Germany hadn’t invaded the USSR–and convinced the world that the fall of the USSR was imminent–, would Japan have attacked Pearl Harbor? Would Germany have declared war on the US? No and no. Japanese were emboldened by Germany’s lightening victories in Russia. Japanese were convinced that the Nazi Empire would stretch from Europe all the way across Siberia. Japan felt SAFE and SECURE as an ally of Germany. Japan thought that US would be intimidated if attacked by a close ally of Germany.
　
But, Hitler’s massive gamble didn’t pan out. Soon, Germans were sinking into a quagmire in summer and getting buried with snow in winter. Japan’s attack on US and the subsequent German declaration of war on the US finally turned majority opinion in the US for war and against fascism and rightism. Eventually, US and USSR became allies and won the war, and a GRAND NARRATIVE was developed in both countries of a noble war against total evil of the radical right. Russians called it THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR and Americans called it THE GOOD WAR. It was in this climate that the Frankfurters gained much ideological and moral capital. Not only did Germany lose but its massive crimes were exposed for all the world to see. Soviet Union and communism got a huge boost in Europe for having defeated the great evil of Nazism, and for awhile–especially in Western intellectual circles–, it was conveniently forgotten or ignored that communism too had been a massive criminal enterprise. As so many nations had been invaded or traumatized by the Germans, the era of Nazi Germany came to seen as the darkest chapter in human history. Of course, there were good many collaborators in Nazi occupied nations, and that too became a reason to bash everything associated with Germany, fascism or Nazism. The French, for example, had collaborated more than most, and therefore created the myth of the Resistance in the post-war era to assuage and even bury their guilt.
　
The fact that the horrible crimes of Nazism were predicated on racial ideology also gave the Left an easy opportunity to smear ALL ideas about race as ‘racist’ and evil. Since racism got equated with the Holocaust, it became impossible to discuss the reality of race or racial differences even in purely academic settings. And since Western Imperialism still dominated much of the world when WWII died, all European peoples became smeared with the sin of ‘racism’. The crimes of Nazism and their political/moral significance made it ever more difficult for whites to argue for maintaining their power and way of life around the world. Thus, Afrikaners in South Africa were accused of something akin to Nazism since Apartheid took race into account in politics and governance. Since racial ideology had been ‘discredited’ by Nazi crimes, everyone had to agree with the fiction that ‘all races are equal’. And, Europe and US were pressured to get rid of race-based immigration since that too was ‘racist’ and Nazi-like.
There would have been a Frankfurt school in exile even if Hitler had maintained peace with the USSR, but its influence couldn’t have gone very far. Jews earned tremendous moral capital because of the Holocaust. It was the Holocaust which turned every Jew into an automatic saint and immune to criticism. (The Holocaust also gave the Jews a special right among ‘Western nations’ to set up a nation-state based on racial ideology). It was the Holocaust which armed Jews and their allies with the ammo to shoot down any critic of Jewish power as an ‘antisemitic crypto-Nazi’. It was the Holocaust which made conservatives and rightists everywhere so slavish and sensitive to Jewish interests as though a conservative is morally suspect UNLESS he proves himself 100% free of any ‘antisemitic’ feelings.
　
Prior to the Holocaust, there was no great stigma attached to criticism of Jewish power, influence, or ideology. Indeed, it was as acceptable to criticize Jewish power back then as it’s acceptable for us today to criticize Arab, Muslim, Chinese, Hindu, Christian, Russian, Turkish, or French power, character, values, influence, etc. Without WWII and the Holocaust, we could all be freely and openly criticizing Jewish power without being threatened with blacklists and censorship.
　
It’s very possible that even without WWII and the Holocaust, Jewish power would have rose to great heights, especially in the US. After all, Jews are very smart and creative. But, we would have greater leeway to SPEAK TRUTH TO (Jewish)POWER than cowering before them with fear lest we be associated with Nazis and their crimes.
The Frankfurt School devised its own ideological concepts, BUT it was the radical right which served it with the MORAL advantage. Just as Soviet communist repression came to discredit the radical left in Eastern Bloc nations in the postwar era, Nazi crimes came to discredit the radical right around the world. Not only did the radical right in Germany invade and oppress people in Eastern Europe but it sided with Japan and encouraged it to attack the US.
　
Of course, Hitler had committed major crimes prior to the invasion of USSR and the Holocaust, but he had moral cover and international support for some of them. Also, the crimes had been balanced by real achievements. After all, Austrians had wanted to merge with Germany. As Sudetenland was majority German, there was a half-decent rationale for its annexation by Germany. Hitler’s taking of the Czech nation had no moral justification, but the major powers had grudgingly accepted it as fait accompli, thus serving as accomplices to the crime. There had been numerous vicious and despicable attacks on the Jewish, but prior to the Holocaust, it couldn’t be said that German treatment of Jews was markedly worse than how Americans treated blacks or Chinese or how the British or the French treated their subjects in their vast empires. The invasion of Poland was utterly evil, but as Hitler had brought in Stalin as a willing partner, the Left couldn’t squeeze any moral superiority out of that stone. Germans invaded France, but France had declared war on Germany, not the other way around. So, until the German invasion against the USSR, Hitler couldn’t be seen as particularly worse than other leaders around the world. And, the ‘crimes’ of Germans up to that time were no worse than the ‘crimes’ of others. Who were the Americans, who practiced legal racial discrimination, to preach to Germans about the evils of white supremacism? And prior to the German invasion of the USSR, the communists had killed many more people than the Germans had–and many commie Jews had been complicit in these mass murders. Across Europe, there was a vibrant and confident intellectual right to do battle with the intellectual left.
It all went to pot when Hitler invaded the USSR with an agenda to wipe out tens of millions of Russians and reduce the rest to a permanent race of helots to serve German masters. Though Hitler and Himmler ultimately failed, millions of Russians and others got enough of a taste of Nazism to see it as an evil that it was. And, then there was the Holocaust, a truly monstrous form of genocide. Communists had killed millions but hadn’t devised a plan to wipe out an entire race in the most heinous ways. The Holocaust made racial policies and oppression in other parts of the world seem like a picnic by comparison. Finally, the Nazis lost, and thus all their crimes got to see the light of day.
　
So, the real culprit for the fall of the Right and the rise of the Jewish Left was none other than the radical rightism of Adolf Hitler. The habit on the white right is to feign amnesia and blame EVERYTHING on the Frankfurt School for the decline of white power in the US and Europe. This is disingenuous, cowardly, and pitiful. Such white rightists are no better than black power idiots who blame all problems in the black community on whites, Jews, Arabs, Asians, Mexicans, etc.
　
This isn’t in any way to let the Frankfurters off the hook. It is only a way to put their ideas in proper historical context and understand why the white right became so reluctant or afraid to boldly take on Jewish power. Criticism of Jewish power became associated with the vile crimes of the Nazis. Guilt-by-association may be unfair but has always been a powerful psychological reality.
If anyone should know this, it is the Christian West which maintained moral superiority over the Jews on the notion that the Jews killed the Son of God. Jewish association with the murder of Jesus filled the Christian West with the moral ammo to target Jews, distrust Jews, attack Jews, isolate Jews, etc. In the first half of the 20th century, the rise of Jewish power and Jewish role in communism gave the white right even more ‘moral’ justification to take on Jewish power. Prior to the ghastly Holocaust, Jews had no special moral privilege over the whites. Indeed, many Jews joined in the criticism of Jewish power on both the left and right. Though communism did get tagged with Jewishness, Karl Marx hated capitalist Jews and the power of finance. And, many secular Jews despised traditional and tribal religious Judaism. Not all Jews felt a compulsion to ‘stick together’, and one of their favorite sports was Jewish self-loathing. Sigmund Freud didn’t only diagnose the presumed psychological maladies of gentile society but of the Jewish society. Most Jews were not even interested in Zionism and sought to assimilate into Western society. True, there were many radical and vile elements among the Jews, and they had to be countered. But, they were being healthily countered prior to the rise of Nazism whose antisemitism was so excessive and deranged that it gave any opposition to Jewish power a bad name. (Similarly, the drunken, clownish, and bullying excesses of Joe McCarthy gave the noble cause of anti-communism as bad name.)
　
Today, Muslims are causing lots of problems in Europe, and there are many courageous critics of rising Muslim power and demands. Despite PC, why is it acceptable for Europeans and Americans to criticize Muslim power and peoples in the way they aren’t allowed to criticize Jewish power and people? Because the West never committed mass genocide against the Muslims. But, if whites were to kill 6 million Muslims in genocidal madness, they would lose the moral justification or rationale to criticize Muslims as well. It is the BURDEN OF GUILT in a free conscientious society. Collective guilt isn’t rational but it is politically powerful and is used by all peoples. Even today, we guilt-bait the Japanese for having attacked Pearl Harbor. If the deaths of 3000 US military men has become so symbolically, nationally, and morally important to us, then just consider the significance of a genocide where 4-6 million Jews were indiscriminately killed in a few years.
　
Of course, Jews are not without modern political sin. In the USSR, they committed comparable if not equivalent crimes during the Leninist-Stalinist era. It is a shame that no one talks about hunting for Jewish communist mass murderers. It’s a shame that most people don’t know about the special role played by Jews in the ‘Russian’ Revolution. It’s a shame that so many Jews in the Free West aided and abetted the brutal and murderous regime in the USSR. This is partly due to the intellectual and media domination by the Jews in the West, but there’s another reason. Again, it’s the crimes of Nazism–WWII and the Holocaust. Because the Holocaust has become such a worldwide religion, few people dare to even open their mouths about the Jewish role in communism. Indeed, the only respectable scholars who dare discuss aspects of Jewish role in communism are Jews themselves. Being Jews, they have cover for their historical inquiry.
　
But, there is another problem. On the white right, many who discuss the Jewish role in communism tend to be Holocaust Deniers or Holocaust Revisionists of the Whackjob School. History is nothing without revisionism, but a lot of Holocaust Revisionism smells like Holocaust Denial through the backdoor. There have been honorable and decent men like Robert Conquest who detailed the mass killings of communism in the name of telling the truth. Sadly, many on the white right discuss the evils of communism with ONLY ONE PURPOSE in mind: To make Jews look bad and Nazis look good. They have no real sympathy for the victims of communism; after all, they are apologists for the Nazi invasion of the USSR and mass crimes committed by the SS. Their moral outrage about communism is utterly bogus, like the Nazi expression of shock and disgust over what Stalin’s henchmen did at Katyn. Nazis were doing the same thing in Poland and made a big stink about Katyn ONLY to delegitimize the USSR than out of any sympathy to the Polish people.
Finally, there is one thing to learn from the Frankfurt School. They had the courage to admit to the failures of communism, criticized the failure and illusions of the left, and creatively sought to forge a new set of principles and ideas that would better understand society and its problems. We may disagree with their diagnosis and proposals, their method of critiquing and reformulating the left in order to take on the right offers lessons to everyone. Frankfurters salvaged, redeemed, and retooled Marxism than sticking to old dogma. We need a critical and creative right that doesn’t doggedly cling to Old School fascism but finds ways to revise and retool it for the future fight.

Andrzej Wajda’s KATYN, a Polish Masterpiece.

Some people may regard Wajda’s Katyn as ‘too little, tool late’, and it’s not hard to understand why. The mass killing of Polish officers happened long ago, and the official line during the yrs under communism was that the Nazis were to blame and Soviets were the liberators. Even when the truth was confessed by Gorbachev in the late 80s, its impact outside Poland was limited. Liberal media around the world emphasized Gorbachev’s integrity over the details of Polish officers killed in cold blood. So, even as the Soviets finally admitted to the mass killings, the revelation was spun as proof of a new and humane kind of communism. This was to be expected from the Western media dominated by liberals, leftists, and Jews. Though the story of Katyn did make the pages of New York Times, it had no lasting impact on Western consciousness.
It also didn’t help that the American conservatives, being generally less interested in world affairs and other nations/cultures, didn’t pursue the crimes of communism abroad as passionately and thoroughly as Jews unearthed the crimes of Nazism. And, as the American conservative movement was taken over by Neoconservative Jews, most conservatives didn’t make too big a fuss over communism--as radical and even liberal Jews had been crucial to the movement. Hollywood certainly wasn’t going to make a movie or even TV movie about it. (The Jewish God said there shall be NO god other than himself. Modern Jews say there shall be no tragedy other than the Holocaust. A jealous god and a jealous people.) Finally, the far right in the West is still stupidly enamored of Nazism and Adolf Hitler, thus blind to the suffering of victims of WWII--other than Germans of course. The far right never had credibility on the few occasions when it condemned the massacre at Katyn since it has routinely apologized for or denied the equally vile or worse crimes committed by Nazis in Poland. So, Katyn never became the focal point of discussion around the world; it wasn’t useful nor comfortable to non-Poles. Besides, even democracies like the US and UK had adopted the ‘necessary lie’ in order to maintain the alliance with Stalin to defeat Hitler.

But, this wasn’t the case in Poland where every Pole knew but could only whisper the truth. Over time, the memory of Katyn became a kind of potent unifying symbol, all the more so because it was an invisible symbol. Its gruesome nature exposed the essence of Stalinism, and the enforced silence was proof of the repressiveness of communism. There are times when silence is more eloquent than sound.

So, the movie Katyn must be seen essentially as a Polish than a world event. Though nominated for Foreign Film Oscar, it failed to win nor garner much attention. There was no special promotion of this film in the US media nor by American film critics, most of whom are leftist and/or Jewish. It wasn’t attacked nor denounced neither but only respectably acknowledged, allowed limited release, and left to die a silent death at the box office. (It’s dispiriting that the sizable Polish community in the US did so little to promote this film to the wider public. But then, most Poles, unlike Jews, are not a very intellectual or cultural people.)

But, this is not a necessarily bad thing for Katyn is genuine in the way that Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is not. Katyn is a Polish masterpiece made by a Polish master for the Polish people. Schindler’s List, though powerful and masterfully executed, is a movie made by a Jew to morally impress and guilt-bludgeon gentiles all over the world. Schindler’s List was an attempt to turn the Holocaust into a mainstream religion and Disneyland epic. As horrifying and grim as it was, it didn’t lack the fairytale elements in other Spielberg films. Wonderful and darling Jews convert the cynical gentile Oscar Schindler into a do-gooder and redeem his wicked soul. In the end, it warms our hearts like E. T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was made with superb artistry and directorial ingenuity, but it was really a simple-minded and manipulative Jewish version of the Christmas Carol, with a gentile Scrooge saving his soul by loving Jews. It is thus essentially a hug-a-Jew movie. The violent scenes work terrifyingly well in conveying the brutality of the Nazis. But, the dramatic parts are embarrassing and hackneyed--Sound of Music in artsy b/w. No wonder then that Atom Egoyan felt a need to make an anti-Schindler’s List in the form of Ararat, a film that not only asks us to remember the Armenian genocide but ponder the means of representation, manipulation, distortion, etc. Katyn isn’t exactly an anti-Schindler’s List but more like a counter-Schindler’s List. Wajda has never been an avant-gardist in the manner of Egoyan, but he is a critical artist than a grand entertainer like Spielberg. Katyn is similar to Schindler’s List in using in the power of cinema to make history live again, but it is also contemplative on the subject of history: history is not only what happened but what is remembered, narrated, recorded, denied, exaggerated, reclaimed.

Katyn was likely disappointing to many viewers, not least or especially among Poles. Many people probably expected an emotionally wrenching or physically overwhelming experience--a grandstanding expose of the bloody and monstrous face of communism/Soviet Union. They wanted to cry their eyes out, be moved to patriotic fervor, or feel self-righteous as victims of communism, Russia, and history. They wanted the sensations viewers got from Schindler’s List, The Killing Fields, Passion of the Christ, Saving Private Ryan, or Platoon.
The movie’s opening scene hints at such film, with Poles fleeing from Russians coming face to face with Poles fleeing from Germans. One might well expect the entire movie to be about hapless and noble Poles mowed down by Germans and Russians. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with such a film, but Wajda probably feels we are well aware of what war and mayhem look like in movies. Besides, Wajda already gave us blood-drenched war movies long ago. Kanal is surely one of the most harrowing war films. Wajda is now an old man and naturally wanted to reflect on and understand history than use it for sensational effect.

From the outset Wajda mutes the violence as if a purely visceral approach might distract the audience from the larger theme of history and the more intimate realm of personal lives. It’s as if Wajda forwent the middle shot in favor of the close-up and the long-shot. His main focus is on the things that are generally not visible. We can all easily imagine soldiers, tanks, airplanes, bomb exploding, and people getting shot. It’s harder to imagine how the dots connect in history or how the inner heart trembles in times of crisis.
Indeed, much of the story takes place AFTER the mass executions in the Katyn forest, whose grisly details are not revealed until the final scene. This may be frustrating to the viewer, but it is fitting as the truth of the Katyn tragedy was fitted together piece by piece and unveiled after considerable passage of time. Though the world now knows, without a doubt, that Polish officers were killed by the Soviets, the truth had emerged only in fragments. There is a Buddhist koan: what is the sound of a tree falling in a forest? No matter how grand or horrible an event, it might as well as never happened if no one witnessed, recorded, or remembered it. As such, Katyn isn’t just a movie about an historical event but a metaphor of rediscovery or reclamation of something lost, forgotten, and buried. This is as true of the history of the planet as of the relatively recent history of a nation. Only through archaeology have we learned of innumerable holocausts that befell this planet--when humanity hadn’t yet arrived on the scene to bear witness--, at times nearly wiping out entire species.
Had Nazis won the war and hid their genocide of the Jews while exposing the mass killings by communists, the Jewish holocaust could have been a ‘Katyn’--a horrible truth hidden by official mythmaking--while communist killings might have been remembered as The Holocaust.
So, Katyn in the movie is partly used as a metaphor. It represents history shaped and manipulated by the powers-that-be for their own ideological justification and confirmation. There was Katyn and there is ‘Katyn’. When the Nazis invaded Eastern Poland and dug up the mass graves, they used the Katyn massacre for their own purposes. The Nazis were correct in claiming that the Soviets carried out the brutal deed, but they were using the Katyn massacre to hide their own ‘Katyns’. Though the Nazis also invaded a neutral country, wiped out the native elite, and set up death camps, they sought to legitimize their occupation of Poland as a struggle against murderous communism. So, even as the Nazis were correct about who did what at Katyn, they were using this truth to hide a larger truth--that the Nazis were killing even more than the Soviets. When the Soviets later retook Poland and set up a communist regime, they devised a lie, blaming it on the Germans. If it weren’t for the horrible nature of the crime, all of this would almost be funny, like a game of ‘he said, she said’. We are even shown snippets of Nazi and Soviet documentaries, and they are eerily and amusingly near-identical.

Katyn, in this sense, is more than an historical event. It concerns the uses of history. Of course, Poles are not innocent of this game either. Some Poles are likely to exaggerate the number of officers killed at Katyn. They are likely to paint the victims as noble patriot saints. Worse, some Poles are likely to use Katyn to morally bully others: collective pride or nobility is as dubious as collective guilt. For many decades, Poles were notorious in denying the special Jewish nature of the Holocaust and preferred the myth that Poles and Jews had been indistinguishably targeted by the Nazis. But, Jews are no less guilty in Katyn-izing history. Jews ignore the victims of World War II other than Jews. Worse, Jews have been notorious in discounting or neglecting the mass killings carried out by communists or treating it a dry manner while giving the Holocaust a whole hog tear-jerker treatment in books, tv, and movies. Anne Applebaum, an odious neoconservative Jewess has written a book about the Soviet gulag but has whitewashed the Jewish role in communism. The damn disgusting bitch even voted for Barack Obama though he’s a stealth radical because she thought he would be better for the Jews and Jewish interests. This goes to show that some neocons cannot be trusted as their main purpose is to use conservatism for Jewish end. (However, it must be said not all neoconservatives are of her lowly rat-like ilk.)

Though Jews are correct about the special Jewish nature of the Holocaust, the Jewish-controlled media have pretty much suppressed the fact that 3 million Poles died during World War II. Many Poles died bravely, fighting both the Nazis and communists, but they’ve been smeared and dismissed by many historians--either liberal Jews or puppets of leftist Jews--because the Polish patriots generally happened to be right-wing and ‘antisemitic’. Though there has long been a nasty tradition of Polish anti-Jewishness, Jews never seem to ask why they’ve been hated so. The fact is Jews were never a likable people. Worse, many Jews joined communism and collaborated with the Soviet invaders in 1939 when USSR took the eastern half. And after WWII, the leading rulers of communist Poland were mostly Jews. If the Vichy regime in France has long been despised for having collaborated with Germans during WWII, it’s not hard to understand why Poles have long distrusted and disliked Jews. Too many Jews collaborated with the communists.
At any rate, all groups have their own take on history, their own way of twisting facts or spinning arguments to make themselves good and noble. Of course, this game has become essentially taboo for Western Europeans--especially Germans--and white North Americans as the new liberal Political Correct order has brainwashed white boys and girls to hate their own history, race, heritage, and achievements and ONLY dwell on what had been nasty, wicked, and cruel about white power, rule, and domination. It’s as if there can never be any pride in victory--except for Allied Victory in WWII because Nazis were evil beyond evil--, only in victimhood. In this sense, even Katyn falls into this paradigm for it ennobles Poles as victim-losers than as proud victors.

The elliptical approach in Katyn should be familiar with those who know something about Andrej Wajda. His landmark film Man of Marble(and the somewhat lesser Man of Iron) also presented and explored history as a labyrinth where the truth becomes simultaneously more powerful and elusive as one meanders through the maze and nears the exit.
In Man of Marble a female filmmaker searches for the ‘true story’ behind the rise and fall of a brick layer, a man once transfigured into the Immortal Proletarian Hero for propaganda purposes, only to fall from grace and disappear under the radar. Both Katyn and Man of Marble present history and politics as a maze. Journalistic inquiry in a place like communist Poland must have been both frustrating and enthralling because it was neither totally repressive nor totally free. For most of its history, communist Poland was neither a Stalinist hell hole nor a liberal democracy. It was a nation of considerable cultural freedom as long as one didn’t push the envelope. Man of Marble takes place in the late 1970s when things were relatively liberal, at least for a communist nation. Much of Katyn takes place in a period soon after the end of World War II when Soviet presence was ominous and censorship was repressive.
Nevertheless, we get a similar sense from both movies: On the one hand, history is that which is recorded, interpreted, uncovered, hidden; those who hold the clay mold it. On the other hand, there IS indeed something called historical fact. It is for the latter reason that the ending of Katyn is so important and powerful.
Throughout the movie Wajda intelligently and philosophically laid out the mechanism of history in relations to evidence, powers-that-be, political expediency, faultiness of memory, etc. Katyn was, for a long time, what those in power said it was, with the real truth lurking in the shadows. But, all said and done, history cannot be whatever we say it is. When the evidence is overwhelming and obvious, we must accept and face the truth than cling to the warp of politics or ideology. Wajda is not blind to the concept of ‘Katyn’ but he finally shows us the real Katyn. Soviets killed those Polish officers at Katyn, and that must be acknowledged as a fact. We must not give into the temptation of fashionable postmodern theory which posits that history is PURELY a matter of interpretation in the service of power. Wajda shows how that has often been true but reminds us that surrendering to the idea that such MUST ALWAYS be true is to go beyond skepticism and embrace a kind of cynical nihilism which is no better than Nazism and communism. If indeed history is nothing more than text shaped or altered by various forces in order to legitimize their power, we might as well blame the Armenians for Katyn and Palestinians for the Holocaust. If it’s all a matter of interpretation, we might as well believe the mafia, KGB, or space aliens killed Kennedy. There is indeed much in history open to debate as evidence is inconclusive, but some facts are well-established and beyond refute. Wajda tells us that, at the very least, we should face the facts of history. Nazis may have committed other ‘Katyns’ but Katyn was committed by the Soviets. Unless we accept the facts of history, history is a form of propagandistic anarchy where anything goes, where myth becomes reality and vice versa. (Granted, even acceptance of facts doesn’t necessarily
guarantee a change of perspective or ideological outlook. There are neo-Nazis who accept the Holocaust happened but then apologize for why it was necessary. There are Russians who accept the fact that Stalin invaded Poland along with the Nazis but then argue it had been NECESSARY for national defense. Most blacks knew that OJ Simpson killed Nicole but sided with OJ anyway since being black is about sticking together.)

What is remarkable about this film is not only the mastery of Wajda’s technique but his deep understanding as an artist and human being. Though, or precisely because, it is a Polish film for the Polish audience, it is a film we non-Poles can enter with a certain awe and gratitude. Wajda isn’t trying to prove something, not to himself, the Poles, or to us. He’s asking Poles to remember not only Katyn but the tormented twists and turns of modern Polish history. It’s not a chest-thumping feel-good nationalist movie, the kind about saintly Poles fighting or being trampled by monstrous beasts. It is an intimate and thoughtful portrait of a nation not only trampled by forces of destruction but cocooned alive by a web of deception.
It is also a movie about the comprised nature of Poland. We see the heroism but can’t help but notice also the all too understandable fear and cowardice.

We tend to think of military men as heroes or martyrs, but they are sheep churned into sausages in the actual machinery of war. Poles have every right to remember the Polish officers who died at Katyn as heroes or martyrs, but the ending of the movie surmises--rather correctly, I think--that they died as human animals--frightened, panic-stricken, pitiful.

Katyn is so unmistakably a Polish movie that it’s like entering another world for non-Polish viewers. For those lacking basic knowledge of Poland during WWII, a good deal will seem puzzling but therein lies the richness of this film. It doesn’t explain nor simplify everything for the universal audience. If there are universal truths to be found--and what great art is without them--, we find them through navigating through what was uniquely a Polish experience. Wajda doesn’t pander nor cater to us. We must make the effort to understand and empathize with a people generally unknown to us. Wajda’s door of Polish history is open to all, but we must be willing to enter ourselves and find our own way through the maze.

Schindler’s List, on the other hand, is not a movie you need to enter. It spills out of the screen and washes all over you. Nazis are evil, Jews are lovable, and Oscar is a good guy because he loves Jews. You don’t have to know anything about history. Just see what Spielberg shows and accept it as HISTORICAL FACT and feel the warm glow of the emotions he shines on you. It is a crowd-pleaser. Though Schinder’s List ends at the cemetery of Oscar Schindler, we feel we know everything we need to know about him--and about the Jews, Nazis, and WWII as well. It’s no wonder that so many Americans blindly side with Zionists and hate Palestinians. According to a movie like Schindler’s List, Jews are all good and since Israel is Jewish, it must be 100% good too, whereas those who oppose Zionism must all be a bunch of neo-Nazis.

Katyn too has a scene with a cemetery where a woman tries to replace a tombstone with false date with one with the right date. Indeed, much of the movie is like walking through a cemetery, trying to access what has passed and been buried. A sense of mystery pervades the entire movie, one that is not only reflective but humble, as if no artist can claim full truth to what did and didn’t happen. This is all the more reason why the final scene depicting the cold-blooded killing of Polish officers is at once powerful and jarring. For we are woken out of the smokescreen of historiography and ambiguity. Yes, some things remain mysteries or controversies, but some things are beyond doubt. Katyn is now one of them. Those who continue to deny it--mostly in Russia--are either fools or lunatics, hardly better than those who continue to deny the mass killings of Jews by the Nazis.

Notes on Patrick J. Buchanan's CHURCHILL, HITLER, AND THE UNNECESSARY WAR

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