Operation Keelhaul: The Allies’ Final War Crime - WW2 Documentary Special

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  • Опубліковано 21 лис 2024

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  • @WorldWarTwo
    @WorldWarTwo  Місяць тому +416

    War Against Humanity will continue for some time, as there are still many difficult truths to face. Among the forthcoming episodes are the Nuremberg trials. The road ahead is long, but we must never forget.

    • @Hyronimus-Decimus-Gaius
      @Hyronimus-Decimus-Gaius Місяць тому +11

      @@user-mg3xr9tz7m That's you're opinion but its like ur blaming The WW2 channel for the Nuremberg trials lol, Hisotry should always be covered either u like it or not.

    • @yeedbottomtext7563
      @yeedbottomtext7563 Місяць тому +9

      @@user-mg3xr9tz7mdoes your incoherent rant have a point?

    • @ralphranzinger4197
      @ralphranzinger4197 Місяць тому +5

      THANK YOU! This is the Episode I have wanted for years to watch! Thank you for your works!

    • @RenaultFT
      @RenaultFT Місяць тому +2

      We can never forget

    • @michaelnewton5873
      @michaelnewton5873 Місяць тому +2

      I had a professor at Mo. State Univ. Dr. Meredith Adams, on whom be peace, who did Seminar class on Nuremberg, the Truman Library has the transcripts. I was American history so didn't take the class.

  • @b.chaline4394
    @b.chaline4394 Місяць тому +332

    My grandmother Maria Yablonskaya was one of the lucky Ostarbeiter :) taken from her native Belarus in the very early days of Barbarossa, aged only 16. First worked as a slave in a German factory, kept trying to escape "to look for food", as she always said, until the Germans had enough and sent her to a farm southside. There he met my grandfather René, a French POW. They were married by an US Army officer in 1945 and went back to France together. She never went back to the USSR/Belarus ever again.

    • @tkm238-d4r
      @tkm238-d4r Місяць тому +25

      Thanks for mentioning the historical background.
      Among young women who were made to work in German factories, after they were liberated by Soviet troops, the arrival of the NKVD was the start of another miserable experience.
      The NKVD believed these women survived because they slept with German troops.
      Many of these women were socially ostracized upon return.
      On the whole, it was not that bad compared to under the Germans but what the women really found objectionable was that such accusations came from their own comrades. 🙄🙄

    • @Justanotherconsumer
      @Justanotherconsumer Місяць тому +16

      Happy that there are still always glimmers of hope in the darkness of history.

    • @WorldWarTwo
      @WorldWarTwo  Місяць тому +38

      Thank you for sharing that, what a remarkable journey your grandmother went through.

    • @bassuverkropp1525
      @bassuverkropp1525 Місяць тому +12

      ​@@tkm238-d4rNearly 4000 Soviet women came to the Netherlands as war brides in 1945 with Dutchmen who had been forced labourers in Germany.

    • @natheriver8910
      @natheriver8910 Місяць тому +1

      Very interesting

  • @indianajones4321
    @indianajones4321 Місяць тому +592

    I believe this was part of the James Bond Film Goldeneye, where Alec Treveyln (Sean Bean) was the son of one of these Soviet citizens sent back to the USSR by the British and this is his motivation in becoming a Bond Villain.

    • @吳聲杰-f7u
      @吳聲杰-f7u Місяць тому +73

      Precisely,Alec is one of the “lienz cossack”
      Although he should be like 56 years old when goldeneye took place (1995)
      Sean bean was too young to play as him

    • @tkm238-d4r
      @tkm238-d4r Місяць тому +30

      @@吳聲杰-f7u Good day. Definitely agree with you.
      At the time of the movie screening, some movie reviewers wondered why the producers chose a somewhat obscure event, from the UK viewpoint, as part of the background storyline.
      Perhaps the original intention was to use betrayal by the Cambridge 5 or George Blake during the 1950s. However, back then, Philby had only been deceased for less than 10 years and Blake was still alive. Not very comfortable for the producers.

    • @AshlandMan
      @AshlandMan Місяць тому +36

      But you have to remember that time doesn't really matter in the original Bond continuity as every 007 from Connery to Bronson is supposed to be the same guy. So canonically Brosnan was a Royal Navy Commander in World War II before going on to fight Goldfinger​, went to space (Moonraker), and squared off against a Nazi science experiment KGB twink Christopher Walken (View to a Kill). Honestly they should go back to that sliding time scale with new actors. @@吳聲杰-f7u

    • @balrog262
      @balrog262 Місяць тому +36

      His parents killed themselves in transit, yes.
      "Better to die like a Soldier under the treads of a tank, than to to be hanged like a dog in a Gulag." Unknown Russian Liberation Army Soldier, who lay dying after he threw himself under a soviet tank to Captain Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, Prussia, 1945.

    • @Andreas021Possenig
      @Andreas021Possenig Місяць тому

      Yes, it was. In the english version they had i right, even the pronunciation of the cities name, "Lienz" by the late Robbie Coltrane was very good (ua-cam.com/video/r5KR-ew3iMA/v-deo.html). Sadly in the german dubbed version they changed that (at least it was pronounced like that) to Linz, which is the capital city of upper austria, about 300 km away from Lienz. Totally wrong, a painfull fuckup.
      Sparti did his homework and has named the correct city, but the pronunciation is a bit off. He did it like "Sieben" (German for seven), which may look right, both use this "ie", but in this case it is pronounced different. The "i" is spoken as usual, but the "e" sounds similar to the "a" in "amber" for example. For those of you who know IPA: ˈli:ɛnt͜s
      There is even a small museum in Lienz (kobro-kosakenmuseum-lienz.at/), a cemetery and a stone remembering Pannwitz in a near village. A local restaurant/hotel (www.goldener-fisch.at/) was headquarter for some time. There ist a bronze plate on the outside of it remembering this. The cossacks being in the SS is of minor concern, i guess even unknown to most of the locals.
      1 or 2 cossack families where hiding in a barn, near the farm a grew up on, which is in a village close to lienz. Back then it was owned by my grandparents. The cossack kids approached them begging for food and my grandmother helped them. My grandmother knew starvation from here childhood at the end of WW1 and was poor all here life, rearding money, but atleast in here adulthood she always had enough food.
      Those kids visited again for decades, not only the cemetery or the city, but my grandmother, i think trying to thank her.
      The last time i saw them they where old man by themselves and my grandmother was in her late eighties. Sadly there isn´t much more to tell, since there was a language barrier. If i remember correctly the by then old man spoke english (i guess they made it to the US or UK), which nobody understood or spoke in our family a this time.
      The men problaby forgot the little german they knew from back then, after the war.
      So there wasn´t to much conversation and i was to young, occupied with other things to understand what i could have known talking to this guys.
      Now this information is lost in time.

  • @Jz4p
    @Jz4p Місяць тому +246

    Whoof, that poem at the end was spectacular and chilling.

    • @penultimateh766
      @penultimateh766 Місяць тому

      Sadly, totally ignored by the US government as soon as busloads of migrants started arriving in Washington and New York.

  • @rramos117
    @rramos117 Місяць тому +342

    Alec Trevelyan: We're both orphans, James. But while your parents had the luxury of dying in a climbing accident, mine survived the British betrayal and Stalin's execution squads. My father couldn't let himself or my mother live with the shame. MI6 figured I was too young to remember. And in one of life's little ironies, the son went to work for the government whose betrayal caused the father to kill himself and his wife.
    James Bond: Hence Janus. The two-faced Roman god come to life.

    • @williestyle35
      @williestyle35 Місяць тому +8

      I am a gateway. An entry point to both sides of life - Janus talking at Mars Corridor

    • @mgway4661
      @mgway4661 Місяць тому +9

      This was from Goldeneye?

    • @TheBearInTheChair
      @TheBearInTheChair Місяць тому +31

      Alec: "It wasn't God that gave me this face, it was you. Setting the timers for three minutes instead of six."
      James: "Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?"
      Alec: "No. You're supposed to die for me. And by the way, I did think of asking you to join my little scheme, but, somehow I knew 007's loyalty was always to the mission, never his firend. Closing time, James! Last call."

    • @TheBearInTheChair
      @TheBearInTheChair Місяць тому +1

      Yes, ​@@mgway4661

    • @robertnett9793
      @robertnett9793 Місяць тому +16

      Goldeneye had quite a deep message, come to think about it. It's one of those where you really can question the ethicacy of Bonds (and the MI5s) actions.

  • @alexanderakh4955
    @alexanderakh4955 Місяць тому +46

    Some of these people sent by the British to the USSR were never Soviet citizens as they left Russia before 1922 or were born in Europe.

    • @bert8373
      @bert8373 Місяць тому +6

      The White emigres including Krasnov,Andrei Shkuro among others

  • @BubblewrapHighway
    @BubblewrapHighway Місяць тому +68

    The power of the poetry at the video's end could move mountains. What a work of art.

  • @NickRatnieks
    @NickRatnieks Місяць тому +55

    One of my friends who will be 97 in a few weeks time ended up in the UNRRA camp at Alt Garge near Bleckede by the Elbe, north Germany. He had been conscripted into the Luftwaffe at the age of 16 in August 1944 starting as a Flak Auxiliary but was offered pilot training which he deliberately flunked as he thought it horribly risky. At Alt Garge he met Vera Lynn and mentioned all manner of strange/funny stories which have been documented back in Latvia to record individual histories. He said one day some Red Army soldiers ( and the Soviets were just across the Elbe) came to talk to those in the camp to encourage their return. Before they could get out of their car, four burly Lithuanians turned the car upside down with the soldiers still inside. They took this to be a significant "No" vote!

  • @Tadicuslegion78
    @Tadicuslegion78 Місяць тому +151

    I remember first hearing about this as a kid watching GoldenEye and all of it going over my head because when you're 6 years old you have no idea what a cossack, Stalin, nazis or any of it means.

  • @kaieastwood3373
    @kaieastwood3373 Місяць тому +117

    For England James? -Alec Trevelyn.

    • @indianajones4321
      @indianajones4321 Місяць тому +18

      @@kaieastwood3373 No, for me -James Bond

    • @pnutz_2
      @pnutz_2 27 днів тому +3

      @@indianajones4321 RIP the dish in puerto rico

  • @pietjepuk9408
    @pietjepuk9408 Місяць тому +85

    That poem: mindbogging.

  • @angusmacdonald7187
    @angusmacdonald7187 Місяць тому +31

    When we read about wars in grade school and high school history books, they are all very neat. They begin here and end there. Oh, there may be horrible things that happen, but a neat little box has been placed around the war. This segment is a small and very necessary corrective to this vision.

  • @fritzs1207
    @fritzs1207 9 днів тому +4

    like Herman Goering Said to a journalist in Nuremberg : "We German might've had a heavy hand, but the British they always have a dark heart."

  • @klemenzagar6149
    @klemenzagar6149 Місяць тому +96

    My grandfather was in his early teens during the retreat of the German army north from Yugoslavia into Austria. He now of course feels sorry for the Cossacks, Slovenian whites, and German soldiers who were killed, but usually adds that they didn't do themselves any favours when they continued killing civilians, burning entire villages, and executing hostages all the way to the final days of the war. When you lose family members right at the end to the occupier's bullets, you rarely feel merciful when you get a chance at retribution.
    In my area we have many stories of columns of soldiers being marched into the mountain forests never to be seen again.
    A horrible end to a horrible war.

    • @jerseycitysteve
      @jerseycitysteve Місяць тому +16

      My father also wept no tears after VE Day in Czechoslovakia. His company received orders to "repatriate" Vlasov's troops. In his view, they brought this on themselves. The Germans burned my grandfather's village in Ukraine and killed all the men, women and children. He left Russia before the war.
      Please don't talk about allied war crimes to me.

    • @otfriedschellhas3581
      @otfriedschellhas3581 Місяць тому

      This was not about retribution by the locals fir war crimes. This was the betrayal of anti-Communists by the Anglo-Americsns or more precisely by the British under Churchill to please their "democratic " buddy Stalin. Similar to their useless guarantee of Poland, which never extended to the Soviets, neither in 1939 nor in 44. All they did was support Soviet Communist expansion and power. We'll done.

    • @tkm238-d4r
      @tkm238-d4r Місяць тому

      Good point that you made. Not a coincidence those who felt the Allies should had been nicer were usually the ones least affected by the Axis, especially those of US origin.
      This was 1 reason why I never believed PRC would be able to replace the US in East Asia and Southeast Asia. The USA beat the crap out of the Japs, something which even those who later became hostile to the US, still wanted to maintain good relations with the US.
      As an Australian ex-POW spoke in a 1995 interview, he felt Japan should not had been re-created after the war.
      Back to main topic. The British lack of empathy with the Cossacks could be linked not only with WW2 itself but also the failed appeasements and the trenches of the earlier war.
      The Cossacks historically were also linked to Tsarist enforcers, a pre-cursor to what later became the Cheka, OGPU and NKVD.
      Similar to what Valery Zhukovsky in The World is not Enough described it, different name, same old good service.
      As the German treatment of France suggested, the British had no illusions on what would had happened if Germany won the war.
      Kind of strange that revisionists tend to dislike the NKVD-KGB, but were quite happy with their Tsarist predecessors.
      Sometime in the future, perhaps there might be a revisionist movement to argue that Beria was a victim of political repression and the Khrushchev and Zhukov were the bad guys.

    • @joshuadaniel6121
      @joshuadaniel6121 29 днів тому +6

      ​@@jerseycitysteve its only a war crime if you lose the war.

    • @tkm238-d4r
      @tkm238-d4r 27 днів тому +5

      @@joshuadaniel6121 Agree. Both Germany and Japan applied the principle of victors setting the standards.
      This was why both Germany and Japan fought till the end because they knew what they did and they expected they would be treated harshly.
      Not a coincidence that moaning over victors' justice came only after they lost but also they were treated not that badly.
      They were definitely given lots of space to moan, something which they would never had granted the other side if they had been the winners.

  • @Mr.Overby
    @Mr.Overby Місяць тому +27

    Thank you for doing such an outstanding job on this program. You have done such a service to the men, women, and children who have suffered under the jackboot of tyranny. You definitely are inspiring the next generation of historians.

    • @spartacus-olsson
      @spartacus-olsson Місяць тому +5

      Thank you, you are too kind.

    • @Ryan_Winter
      @Ryan_Winter 18 днів тому

      @@spartacus-olsson All by the logic of "who is on our side is innocent, the rest is not".
      It can't be called "victor justice" either, because the Allies contributed very little to the defeat of the Bohemian Private.

    • @spartacus-olsson
      @spartacus-olsson 18 днів тому

      @@Ryan_Winter I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean.

  • @EmilioooYT
    @EmilioooYT Місяць тому +9

    Again, a great episode with another poignant ending.
    Congrats on a million subscribers a few weeks ago! I hope your contribution to historiography shall reach as many poeple as possible.
    Learning from the past will make a better world.

  • @frederickthegreatpodcast382
    @frederickthegreatpodcast382 Місяць тому +110

    My great-grandfather Alexis Avdakov was a Russian veteran of the Great War and the Russian Civil War and fought for the Whites. He fled to Yugoslavia after those wars where he built a life with my great-grandmother. They had my grandpa, Gregory Avdakov, four months before the Germans invaded Yugoslavia. My Great Grandfather then became a soldier in the German army and fought in the West. He was captured by the British in Belgium in 1944. If he was deported in this operation, I wouldn’t be alive. Luckily he stayed in Belgium after the war and saved enough money to bring his family over to the US on first class.

    • @penultimateh766
      @penultimateh766 Місяць тому

      Has he written an opera?

    • @Justanotherconsumer
      @Justanotherconsumer Місяць тому +2

      One of the lucky ones, then.
      It is good that history has some silver lining, it is bleak enough.

    • @ZS-rw4qq
      @ZS-rw4qq Місяць тому +5

      Wow he made all the wrong choices

    • @irachowdhury4847
      @irachowdhury4847 Місяць тому

      ​@@ZS-rw4qq!????

    • @jerseycitysteve
      @jerseycitysteve Місяць тому

      Nazi soldiers should never have been allowed into the US. Black American veterans were treated like trash upon their return while former Nazis got the red carpet.

  • @Kornilovite
    @Kornilovite Місяць тому +48

    I'm doing my masters' history degree on the topic of Cossack emigration and had the pleasure of visiting the New Kuban Museum in New Jersey this august.They had many artifacts and papers devoted to the illegal forced extraditions at the end of WW2. Of note is the painting "the betrayal of the Cossacks at Lienz" in which every person's face was apparently based off of a real person the artist remembered from their vivid memories

    • @JohnRNewAccountNumber3
      @JohnRNewAccountNumber3 29 днів тому +1

      Illegal in what sense?

    • @rudylutz2085
      @rudylutz2085 19 днів тому

      ​​@JohnRNewAccountNumber3
      Illegal in regards to the numerous White Imperial emigrés who NEVER were Soviet citizens, or others from elsewhere who were not Soviet citizens either. Try them and deal with them as appropriate if necessary, but do not send them to a country they never belonged to. Also immoral in regards to the women and children who were not combatants.
      The other immoral act at Lienz was that the British gave promises that repatriation would not happen.
      Please look up Nikolai Tolstoy's 1977 book "Victims of Yalta," and yes, he is a relative of the great Leo Tolstoy.

    • @joseraulmiguens6699
      @joseraulmiguens6699 15 днів тому +1

      it was not illegal to extradite soviet citizens who had joined the armies of Nazi Germany to fight the allies to their respective country.

  • @jeremyhooper790
    @jeremyhooper790 Місяць тому +7

    Thankyou Spartacus and Team for continuing to shed light on the best and worst of humanity in our shared history. I find these videos insightful and educational. The manner in which they are presented is appropriate for the heavy topics at hand. Such documentary material must be treasured as opposed to censored for it targets the one thing that matters most, the unfiltered truth.
    Well done Spartacus. Never Forget.

  • @PuncakeLena
    @PuncakeLena Місяць тому +32

    I love that poem at the end, so clever to make it display 2 completely contrasting pictures of what people thought at the time through the same sentences

  • @josephrielinger2637
    @josephrielinger2637 Місяць тому +11

    Another brilliant episode calling us to empathy and compassion for our fellow human beings. Thank you Spartacus.

  • @jonny46ba
    @jonny46ba Місяць тому +39

    that poem at the end.. the first reading shocked and appalled me.. the second reading broke my heart... brilliant, powerful and very clever. I have never come across a peom like that.. playing it in reverse making it just as powerful as the first reading but turning emotions updide down... maybe I need to read more poetry.
    never forget

  • @baloonaticsw
    @baloonaticsw Місяць тому +3

    That is one of the single best poems I have ever heard. Thank you for reading it here, Sparty.

  • @eeeandeee
    @eeeandeee Місяць тому +48

    I thought Stalin had Allied prisoners of war that his forces had 'liberated' as they moved west and Stalin was holding them and would only return them when the Allies returned 'his citizens'.

    • @kiankier7330
      @kiankier7330 Місяць тому +1

      Well, the thing was that the allies only return "some of them"

    • @JohnBrownsBody
      @JohnBrownsBody Місяць тому

      Yeah this did not happen

    • @bigcraig79
      @bigcraig79 20 днів тому +2

      Stalin DID hold allied prisoners and kept a bunch of them, but usa didn't feel like starting a new war over it

  • @artfasil
    @artfasil 13 днів тому +3

    Many war crimes the allies committed are unknown since the victors write history.

  • @alexamerling79
    @alexamerling79 Місяць тому +6

    Love that you are covering aspects of the war little discussed in the history books Sparty!

  • @OperationPhantom
    @OperationPhantom Місяць тому +6

    Genius poem at the end there! Really shows how different things can look from another perspective. It's so damn clever and moving.

  • @redhen2123
    @redhen2123 Місяць тому +7

    Glad to see this sad story finally talked about by Mark Felton and yourself. Perfidious Albion indeed.

    • @gumdeo
      @gumdeo Місяць тому

      One wonders why the Poles ever trusted them.

  • @ΙωάννηςΚήτος
    @ΙωάννηςΚήτος Місяць тому +10

    I almost shed a tear listening to what happened to those poor Cossacks, but then I remembered what they did in Yugoslavia during WW2 and decided instead to keep my tears for the actual victims of their atrocities...

  • @balrog262
    @balrog262 Місяць тому +129

    As a Pole, thanks for covering this, Spartacus.
    Too many people lick the underside of Stalin's shoes when he was as bad as Hitler. My homeland was sold out.
    Never Forget.

    • @WorldWarTwo
      @WorldWarTwo  Місяць тому +30

      Thank you for your comment. And I guess your picture is a strong indicator ;)
      -TimeGhost Ambassador

    • @leonardogregoratti386
      @leonardogregoratti386 Місяць тому +12

      yes but not forget that the whole war began because the British and French tried to help you.

    • @wasyl101010
      @wasyl101010 Місяць тому +19

      This is exactly what my dad (Wasyl Kotula) told me when I was young. He grew up near the Carpathian mountains in Poland, born into an ethnic Ukrainian family. He was 14 when the Russian invaded, stabbing Poland in the back in1939, was taken for slave labour by the Nazi's probably in 1942, was conscripted into a Ost Battalion after trying to escape from the Austria farm he was labouring in. He managed to surrender to Gurkha soldiers in Italy and ended up in Anders Army as a private in the 3rd Karpathian Mountain Regiment, driving a Bren Gun Carrier with a flamethrower attached. He arrived in England in 1946 aged 20, (along with 250,000 Poles and East Europeans) never to meet any of his family or seeing his homeland again before his death in 2001.

    • @johnnystulic42
      @johnnystulic42 Місяць тому +29

      Stalin was a horrible, murderous criminal. But please remember that, had Hitler won, there would be no Polish people left today to say Stalin was just as bad.

    • @balrog262
      @balrog262 Місяць тому

      @@wasyl101010 Damn, how'd he manage that? Also, what did he think of UPA? Not too positive if he chose us I assume. You guys Lemkos?

  • @alexandrekuritza5685
    @alexandrekuritza5685 Місяць тому +23

    Looking forward to the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials episodes

  • @radapatada
    @radapatada Місяць тому +74

    Say what you will about the allies. You did not have Western POWs fight desperately to stay in Soviet captivity.

    • @penultimateh766
      @penultimateh766 Місяць тому +10

      Except my grandfather. He was tired of being exploited by billionaires and stayed in the USSR to enjoy the universal basic income and free healthcare.

    • @MattStanton1999
      @MattStanton1999 Місяць тому +21

      ​@@penultimateh766 such a small number of people that it is virtually irrelevant

    • @amogus948
      @amogus948 Місяць тому +18

      ​@@penultimateh766so basically to enjoy a worse standard of living than the average low-middle class worker of Western Europe but without as many freedoms
      What a deal

    • @ZS-rw4qq
      @ZS-rw4qq Місяць тому

      ​@@MattStanton1999You know there were Americans immigrating to USSR in peacetime? Defecting to North Korea and Vietnam? Western media doesn't like covering those stories unless they can find an angle to demonize them

    • @BangFarang1
      @BangFarang1 Місяць тому +10

      I listened to the interview of a French guy who was a teenager kept in custody by the local French Gestapo because he was caught sending food to some resistance guys hidden in the wood. He was free to wander within town in exchange of some domestic work. After Normandy D-day the Gestapists fled to Germany. The teenager, by then an adult, went with them because all the population seeing him working for the Gestapo viewed him as a collaborationist. In Germany they were enroled in the Waffen SS to fight on the eastern front. He was captured by the Soviets and the war was over. During his interrogation, he told them that he learned mechanic and they offered him to be director of a factory in the USSR, telling him that he would have a car, and could choose a wife amongst the beautiful Russian maiden. Meanwhile he learned that France gave amnesty to the former collaborationists and choose to be sent back to France.

  • @theinfestedterran777
    @theinfestedterran777 Місяць тому +5

    The poem at the end is probably one of the creative and creative (if discussion of humanitarian crisis can be called creative) poems I’ve heard read. Thank you for that. Honestly surprised that is somehow not read or at least reviewed in English classes.

  • @donaldhill3823
    @donaldhill3823 Місяць тому +18

    I could see returning those in uniform especially officers but I can’t see forcing Civilians to return. I also don’t understand why the Free Polish forces who fought under UK command were forced to return.

    • @christopherconard2831
      @christopherconard2831 Місяць тому

      Because Stalin promised a free Poland run by the Polish people. No one with more than three brain cells believed it. But it would make for some awkward conversations back home in England and America if politicians had to explain how they knew dear Uncle Joe was just as much a homicidal lunatic as the guy they'd just fought against.

    • @anaturn12
      @anaturn12 Місяць тому

      Because westerned didnt really cared for fate of the slavs under the communist regime. They wanted to appease stalin and people died because of it.
      Once you got corptured yo uwere forever "Dirty" to communists

  • @ivanpticar8007
    @ivanpticar8007 Місяць тому +1

    I've never heard of this poem....but it is powerfull and touches you to the core. Thank you Spartacus and the team for sharing it and these stories with all of us.

  • @Vegaswill714
    @Vegaswill714 Місяць тому +4

    I was quite impressed by Sparticus' ending of this video.

  • @tniiler
    @tniiler Місяць тому +6

    My family lived in a DP camp for Estonians in Germany for 5 years following the war. Our group was scheduled to be repatriated despite having fled the advancing Red Army. Fortunately, an American officer managed to help them, and many others, to escape to another camp and eventually make their ways westward.

  • @isakferm7686
    @isakferm7686 Місяць тому +5

    The poem in the end must have been the most important and memorable I have ever heard today 🥺

  • @kevinpascual
    @kevinpascual Місяць тому +6

    Thank you for covering this!

  • @shawnr771
    @shawnr771 Місяць тому +3

    Thank you for the lesson.
    The closing is one of your best yet.

  • @rickgaston7118
    @rickgaston7118 Місяць тому +7

    Such suffering , after a war meant to ‘free’ people

  • @chickenperson-ir3bn
    @chickenperson-ir3bn Місяць тому +47

    "Western allies" for ROA PoWs and other such Vlasovites is a bit of a stretch: they were Soviet traitors seeking refuge in the West after the time of the Axis was up. A more difficult case is that of White emigres, who were never Soviet citizens in the real sense but chose collaboration to bring about its downfall. Realistically, they knew what they were signing up for even if that decision was impressed upon them by weaponised starvation on the part of the germans. I can't imagine us being very pleased if the Soviets were to capture a western collaborationist unit and refuse to transfer it to us

    • @peteroneill5426
      @peteroneill5426 Місяць тому +3

      Principle of non-refoulment has to be examined in that context; it is undeniably wrong to put people into danger, especially returning them to a system where they would not receive a fair trial etc.

  • @balrog262
    @balrog262 Місяць тому +110

    "Better to die like a soldier under the treads of a tank, than to to be hanged like a dog in a Gulag." Unknown Russian Liberation Army Soldier, who lay dying after he threw himself under a soviet tank to Captain Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, Prussia, 1945.

    • @Justanotherconsumer
      @Justanotherconsumer Місяць тому

      Realistically a bit like some folks accused in Salem where they chose how they died because it would be better for their families.
      “Our son died defending the cause of Communism” sounds so much better than “our son was executed for collaboration.”

    • @ZS-rw4qq
      @ZS-rw4qq Місяць тому +17

      Fiction writer quoting collaborators

    • @balrog262
      @balrog262 Місяць тому +21

      @@ZS-rw4qq Found the Soviet war crime denier lol.

    • @ZS-rw4qq
      @ZS-rw4qq Місяць тому +4

      @@balrog262 Am I wrong in what I said?

    • @stellavinokur9377
      @stellavinokur9377 Місяць тому +8

      Solzhenitsyn was an artillery officer , CO of the counterbattery scouts squad. He had never drove a tank, let alone command one. Get your facts straight

  • @sirhenrymorgan1187
    @sirhenrymorgan1187 Місяць тому +36

    That final poem. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

  • @marlonwilliamson9392
    @marlonwilliamson9392 Місяць тому

    That poem at the end..then read in reverse by Sparty so eloquently was amazingly brilliant!!! 👏 👏 👏

  • @greggashgarian8360
    @greggashgarian8360 Місяць тому +7

    Brilliant! Much applause! Bravi bravi bravi!
    Thank you Spartacus and all of your team. This whole series should be required material for every student of History, Politcal Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Law, for every judge and legislator, for all members of police and armed services, and for everyone with a little power over others. We shall not forget.

  • @djjohn2126
    @djjohn2126 18 днів тому

    The poem is the best part of today's episode. Thank you sparty.

  • @leftnoname
    @leftnoname Місяць тому +2

    A genius piece of poetry to give hope after a difficult to watch episode.

  • @theoldar
    @theoldar Місяць тому +63

    My professor Sergei Utechin always described Churchill as a war criminal because of the re-patriation. He managed to get to the UK and was not sent back.

    • @joe4171
      @joe4171 Місяць тому +25

      Why should they allow citizens of another nation, who fought for their enemy stay in their country?

    • @user-mg3xr9tz7m
      @user-mg3xr9tz7m Місяць тому +1

      @@joe4171yes thats why he repaid the indians that were mostly forced to fight for the empire with the Bengal famine that killed around 3 million Indians and rejoicing with that like he noted on the executive orders “Indians are a bestial people"
      He was responsible directly and indirectly since the end of the 19th century till his last mandates for more deaths and misery than Hitler and Staline combined

    • @Uselesshandlw
      @Uselesshandlw Місяць тому +1

      @@joe4171because for everything that happened it would be deeply unhonorable to basically violate the Geneva convention and send these men who surrendered to you in hopes of providing service and avoid getting turned over to the vile and dangerous Soviet government that would kill or disappear anyone they saw fit it would have been better to leave them in Austria as they already set up communities there anyway Cossacks are nomadic by tradition as for the ROA fighters it was straight up a death sentence and they knew that and did it anyway which is a war crime

    • @mgway4661
      @mgway4661 Місяць тому +26

      @@joe4171because it’s wrong to allow mass murder to happen

    • @MaFo82
      @MaFo82 Місяць тому +29

      He was a war crimnal long before the repatriation, the Bengal Famine was not created by Churchill but his racism towards indians made it far worse then it had to be.

  • @tomomiko202
    @tomomiko202 14 днів тому

    Difficult to watch this video, but so well done and so important. Especially the recitation at the very end. Thank you!

    • @WorldWarTwo
      @WorldWarTwo  14 днів тому

      Thank you for your comment.
      -Timeghost Ambassador

  • @janhaanstra2245
    @janhaanstra2245 Місяць тому +2

    Wow! What a brilliant poem, in form, langage and message. Never forget!

  • @henrik3291
    @henrik3291 Місяць тому +5

    War crimes remain war crimes, independent of perpetrator or victim.

  • @kantemirovskaya1lightninga30
    @kantemirovskaya1lightninga30 Місяць тому +5

    Thank you Sparty and team, as always, you and the TIMEGHOST team have outdone yourselves.

  • @Cencrd
    @Cencrd Місяць тому +11

    I heard the poem at the end, then heard you read it in reverse...that's amazing poetry.
    Powerful.

  • @Johann_Gambolputty_of_Ulm
    @Johann_Gambolputty_of_Ulm Місяць тому +16

    I am Polish myself and a bit of history afficionado; yet I never knew that Anders himself had fought to prevent the deportation of SS Galizien troops. Many of which would surely be brainwashed to hate Poles in the past years. It shows how scary was the perspective of the "big brother from the East" for any Slavs under its yoke. Thanks WW2 for educating me yet once again!

    • @darked89
      @darked89 Місяць тому +4

      Same here. Anders most likely assumed that the fate of these people will resemble that of Polish POWs in Katyń.

    • @tkm238-d4r
      @tkm238-d4r Місяць тому +1

      Not an expert on Anders but on this issue, perhaps Anders' sympathy was based on the enemy of my enemy as my friend.
      When it came to hating Poland among the people that we later called Western Ukrainians, much of the hating was already there back in the 17th Century.
      Despite hatred of Tsarist rule, the Western Ukrainians did not necessarily feel a sense of belonging to Poland. Stepan Bandera did not exist in a vacuum.
      Not blaming Anders in any way. In such a situation, quite hard for him to push for the most ideal decision.🙄🙄

  • @bigtoe333333
    @bigtoe333333 Місяць тому +1

    This channel is amazing, please keep it going guys, we always need to be reminded how our more negative attitudes can lead to evil and inhumanity

  • @yeedbottomtext7563
    @yeedbottomtext7563 Місяць тому +39

    RIP to all abused POWs on all sides.

    • @_ArsNova
      @_ArsNova Місяць тому +11

      If this were a Reddit comment, it'd be downvoted en masse.

    • @spartacus-olsson
      @spartacus-olsson Місяць тому +4

      @@_ArsNovawell, it’s good that we’re not on Reddit here then, because it’s a good and decent thought.

    • @penultimateh766
      @penultimateh766 Місяць тому

      While no side is pure as snow, surely you are not drawing moral equivalency between Russian POW being "encamped" by being herded into a meadow, surrounded with wire, and thrown a dog for breakfast (or shot), with any prisoners of the UN?

    • @spartacus-olsson
      @spartacus-olsson Місяць тому +3

      @@penultimateh766 not my place to say what the OP is thinking… but in my view the key word here is _abused_ not _all._

    • @_ArsNova
      @_ArsNova Місяць тому +4

      @@penultimateh766 So are people not allowed to use the phrase "all/both sides" whatsoever, regardless of context, lest they be accused of "moral equivalency" by denizens of the internet? Are we literally not even allowed to say: "Rest in peace abused POWs"??

  • @nortonyeung5818
    @nortonyeung5818 Місяць тому

    What an ending. Truly inspiring... I really feel that was the best special episode from Timeghost... So far!

  • @6896franksanc
    @6896franksanc Місяць тому +4

    Don’t remember this ever being discussed in history class.

  • @The762nato
    @The762nato Місяць тому +4

    A good friend in the US Army , 1945 , was on patrol with other solders when some Russians came to them to surrender . The patrol called up the HQ and were told they could not accept their surrender . The next day while on patrol they found the Russians executed in the ditch where they were at the day before . This was after the war was over !

  • @pathutchison7688
    @pathutchison7688 Місяць тому +8

    Always good to hear your voice and see your glorious mustache, Spartacus.

  • @samoilenko3887
    @samoilenko3887 Місяць тому +9

    That’s so interesting! My grandgrandparents actually were from cossack settlement in Kuban. But the last cossack from my family died back during the communist revolution and during world warII, my grandmother’s mother was fighting on the soviet side.
    Generally speaking, the cossacks from Kuban’ were from Poltavska oblast’ of Ukraine, relocated to so called „Raspberry Ukraine” in 18th century. My grandmother although lived for all her life in Soviet Union talks ukrainian from childhood, same as other cossack descendants in Kuban

  • @posterestantejames
    @posterestantejames Місяць тому +4

    Whoa. Bilston's poem took my breath away. The whole thing, the entire presentation, was necessary difficult difficult to watch

  • @RubberToeYT
    @RubberToeYT Місяць тому +5

    Very interesting video on a very overlooked subject

  • @Petrowsky14
    @Petrowsky14 Місяць тому +13

    My mother and aunt were born in DP camps in Germany...forever grateful to an unknown American Ukrainian soldier who help make sure our family weren't sent back to Ukraine.

  • @fullovstars9447
    @fullovstars9447 28 днів тому +1

    So hard to watch - but glad you are getting the truth out there into the world.

  • @macleunin
    @macleunin Місяць тому +16

    Just goes to show how easy it is for “good” soldiers to commit horrific things. Just like the Germans, they were “just following orders”.

    • @storm___
      @storm___ Місяць тому +3

      Yeah but only one got charged and put behind bars or murdered. Mostly the second.

    • @gumdeo
      @gumdeo Місяць тому +3

      @@storm___ The only real war crime is losing.

    • @DruiceBox
      @DruiceBox Місяць тому

      @@gumdeosmooth brain take

    • @steppedtuba50
      @steppedtuba50 Місяць тому +1

      @@DruiceBoxhow so- history is written in pencil

  • @danielcreamer9669
    @danielcreamer9669 Місяць тому +2

    I live in Aurora Colorado suddenly political for thin reasons, thank you for ending on that poem.

  • @naveenraj2008eee
    @naveenraj2008eee Місяць тому

    Hi Sparty
    Poor people,they caught between this war and revenge after the war.
    And the poem is beautiful.
    Never forget.

  • @abepotter9302
    @abepotter9302 Місяць тому

    That poem at the end was wonderful.

  • @littlekong7685
    @littlekong7685 Місяць тому +3

    My grandmother was a Ukrainian war slave for Germany. Under occupation German soldiers came to her family's door in the night, and told them they were "volunteering" a child for the Reich, if they didn't they would "volunteer" all their children as be arrested for treason. She worked in a German hotel during the day as an assistant (she has memories of "being allowed to lick the flour from her fingers as a reward, but no more", and she had to pick snails from the sewers for the hotel to serve to officers so they had some kind of meat), and as a house servant in the evenings. Her memories of the war were.... grim, even after being heavily sanitized by time.
    Post war she was processed by the allies, shipped to a red cross camp and hid from Soviet enforcers seeking Ukrainian, Polish, Cossack, etc citizens who had been captured. Apparently many of the women and children would be shot there in the red cross camp, or hauled away in chains and shot behind the hill within earshot of the camp, some nationalities had blanket death marks on them and the soviets weren't shy in letting camps know this. She was a DP for months before she found a sponsor in Canada where she eventually moved provinces and finally met my grandfather, a Canadian Army signaller who had served on a navy base signalling for the air force hunting subs. In the early 70's the red cross finally contacted her family in Ukraine and got her father on the towns only phone where he fainted after hearing her (they had considered her dead the second the German car left their farm), and she visited in them as a Canadian citizen in the late 70's where she smuggled in denim as a giant dress so the family could sew jeans to sell on the market, so they could eat under Stalin's forced displacements. She also smuggled in English to Ukrainian dictionaries (as a "tourist that couldn't speak Ukrainian" it was allowed) for the local schools, since all Ukrainian books had been burned and local teachers shot by the Russians, she left with mailing addresses, phone numbers, and names to pass letters through for minimum theft and bribery needs.

    • @veeli1106
      @veeli1106 Місяць тому

      Where in Canada did she settle in?

    • @littlekong7685
      @littlekong7685 Місяць тому

      @@veeli1106 Alberta, she was taken in by a local Jewish community before finding a local man who was also Ukrainian.

    • @tkm238-d4r
      @tkm238-d4r Місяць тому

      Good day, not expecting you to have all the answers. Will appreciate if you are able to at least answer some of these questions. Thanks.
      1)Which part of Ukraine SSR was she from? Was her town part of the Poland before 1939?
      2)When were the forced displacements? 1930s or after 1945?
      3)If the Ukraine language was allegedly destroyed, how did that explain that according to the 1959 census, the USSR still had 37m people listed as ethnic Ukrainians? Was it because these anti-Ukrainian measures were reversed under Khrushchev?
      4)If there were significant anti-Ukrainian measures in place under Stalin, why was Khrushchev able to transfer Crimea from RSFSR to Ukraine SSR in 1954, a mere 1 year after Stalin's death? Khrushchev did not denounce Stalin until 1956.
      5)Why was Ukraine SSR permitted to have its own UN seat from 1945 onwards?

  • @dgrossiter8610
    @dgrossiter8610 Місяць тому

    Poem by Brian Bilston... genius... and delivered as only Spartacus can. Now to attend to the practical details.

  • @tgapmax4051
    @tgapmax4051 Місяць тому +1

    I'm not into poetry. That has me crying. Amazingly powerful. Perfect ending w/ Never Forget thank you

  • @mariusmarcu4892
    @mariusmarcu4892 Місяць тому

    Super! Chapeau! I am the grandson of a survivor who was not deported back "home"!!!

  • @NigelDeForrest-Pearce-cv6ek
    @NigelDeForrest-Pearce-cv6ek Місяць тому

    A Heartbreaking Outrage!!!
    Brilliant, Especially the Poem at the End!!!!

  • @tombriggman2875
    @tombriggman2875 Місяць тому +1

    Bravo Sparty for such a factual and very compassionate at one of the west's greatest mistakes.

  • @tonimickiewicz8453
    @tonimickiewicz8453 Місяць тому

    One of your best @Spartacus brought a tear to my eye (my great aunt was an NKVD rape victim who was gotten rid of in 1945 and sent to Khazakhstan by her tormentor... similiar fates befell a third of my extended family during those years.) Great reeportage, thank you

    • @tkm238-d4r
      @tkm238-d4r Місяць тому

      Sad to hear about this. 😐😐
      At the same time, since the late 1990s, historical revisionism would have us believed that only Soviets and some Western Allied troops behaved badly. Meanwhile, German and Japanese troops were supposed to be on their best behavior throughout the time. Only a few Nazis misbehaved.
      Regrettably, the end of the Cold War could and should have provided a space for examining the less prominent but nevertheless important parts of history.
      Instead the revisionism got so ridiculous that experiences of your extended family would probably be dismissed as CIA-NED fake news.
      This was because some claims of what the Soviets did became so exaggerated that verifiable plausible events were viewed with skepticism. 🙄🙄

  • @davidrussell8689
    @davidrussell8689 Місяць тому +3

    Excellent video .

    • @davidrussell8689
      @davidrussell8689 Місяць тому

      I would highly recommend “ Savage Continent “ by Kieth Lowe .

  • @youngimperialistmkii
    @youngimperialistmkii Місяць тому +3

    That poem at the end was brilliant. There are so many people in my country.(U.S) Who should feel admonished by those words. Never forget.

    • @Justanotherconsumer
      @Justanotherconsumer Місяць тому

      Even questioning the righteousness of the war will get you labeled as a (insert here) sympathizer.
      Or a communist, because those making the accusations aren’t very good at history.

  • @camg6400
    @camg6400 Місяць тому +13

    Never forget

  • @El_Presidente_5337
    @El_Presidente_5337 День тому

    Charels Keightly nearly got me confused with Wilhelm Keitel.

  • @StrangerOman
    @StrangerOman 9 днів тому

    Never forget.
    The delivery of Refugees poem was... extremely strong.

  • @residentgeardo
    @residentgeardo Місяць тому +1

    Man that poem at the end hit hard.
    So many lives were touched and destroyed by this f*cking war so many stories turned upside down. Yet I probably would not exist without all off this as it was the war that brought both my maternal and paternal grandparents together. What a weird world. 😢

  • @Storgaaard
    @Storgaaard Місяць тому +3

    This makes me so angry. In my opinion this is one of the worst crimes of the allies in the war.

  • @jeffmcarthur5617
    @jeffmcarthur5617 8 днів тому

    That final poem was amazing.

  • @kennethkorri7775
    @kennethkorri7775 Місяць тому +1

    Great way to end it Sparty. Good work to the whole team on this and all the war against humanity eps.

  • @konst80hum
    @konst80hum Місяць тому +1

    This is a truly depressing story but one that deserves remembrance. Never forget.

    • @WorldWarTwo
      @WorldWarTwo  Місяць тому +1

      Thank you for watching, never forget!

  • @V-V1875-h
    @V-V1875-h 25 днів тому

    That is a really good poem at the end

  • @rx7carl
    @rx7carl Місяць тому

    Wow, very powerful and important to share this part of the story. And that poem at the end

  • @salty4496
    @salty4496 Місяць тому +5

    Comment to show my support for the channel, and the UA-cam algorithm

  • @derektegjeu8022
    @derektegjeu8022 Місяць тому +1

    Beautiful ending to the narrative. God bless ❤❤❤

  • @gumdeo
    @gumdeo Місяць тому

    Excellent deep dive into Keelhaul.

  • @raybarron316
    @raybarron316 Місяць тому +1

    The poem choked me up. 😢

  • @BigMakBattleBlog
    @BigMakBattleBlog 22 дні тому +1

    Im serving in Ukraine. I had heard the Brits handed over "paritsans" to the Reds. I had no Idea... That explains a lot

  • @DinJaevel
    @DinJaevel Місяць тому +6

    And yet
    Society is in a hurry
    To forget

  • @daimpi
    @daimpi Місяць тому +1

    Thanks for this impressive documentary with such a powerful ending!

    • @WorldWarTwo
      @WorldWarTwo  Місяць тому

      Thank you very much for the superchat!

  •  Місяць тому

    That poem at the end has great relevance even today

  • @prazcuray1388
    @prazcuray1388 Місяць тому +15

    That poem was awesome. My motherland is split between two countries and two races, I’ve never seen my family from the south as any different and deserve every right to move freely where I’m at, we were here before the border.

  • @chrictonj9503
    @chrictonj9503 Місяць тому +1

    👍 on reading the poem both ways. I had never heard it before.

    • @WorldWarTwo
      @WorldWarTwo  Місяць тому

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

  • @shrose68
    @shrose68 Місяць тому

    great video! though i would be very surprise if Joseph Grew pronounced his name as "Yoseph" like you did at 6:15 lol