Soviet POV of WW2 - hilarious schoolbook

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I got my hands on "The Russian version of the Second World War: The History of the War as Taught to Soviet Schoolchildren", edited by Graham Lyons and published in 1976. The author had taken two main Soviet text books from early 70's and translated and combined them into a single book.

It's quite interesting to see the Soviet point of view but the book is chock full of such blatant propaganda that it's hilarious.
Examples:

Or this:

There's literally nothing true in either example.

Basically, the book praises Red Army constantly, leading the authors into problems when they have explain why the disaster of 1941 happened and why it took until late spring of 1945 until V-Day. So they exaggerate the size of Wehrmacht, the amount of support USSR got from Western Allies and never fail to hype up the threat from spies, saboteurs and fifth columnists. Also, every partisan movement during WW2 was led by Communists.

I thought the Soviets stopped trying to pass the Mannerheim Line as an equal to the Maginot Line after Molotov.

Oh well, I guess it's progress that in this Soviet history version it wasn't explicitly built by German and Western experts as the most powerful fortified line evar.

It's funny how Stalin is almost completely missing from the book. There's exactly one line that references him. Oh how the mighty personality cult fell quickly!

Do they mention the officer purges? Also, how do they explain not conquering Finland on either of the occasions?

Purges aren't mentioned at all - Stalinist excesses, of course. And Finland naturally received unlimited amounts of war material and money from the imperialists and fascists. There's very little mention of the Continuation War. I was quite surprised that Winter War received a whole chapter.

lots of finnish butthurt ITT

also soviet school history books from the early 70's are full of hilarious propaganda, fucking news at 11.

Drink more, you aren't funny yet.

Got any more good bits about Winter War and the Great Patriotic War? Is Soviet attack on Poland mentioned at all?

Did WWII era bombers even have the range to get from Syria to Baku and back again? That would be one long fucking mission.

I enjoy butthurt over Red army who faced combined forces of EU (except England) under Hitler and won.


Next war will be even shorter, EU natives are replaced by faster reproducing migrants (arabs, turks, etc. muslims) and this are bad quality fighters in open wars.

Oh and about history:


1) Plan Totality was a nuclear plan established by U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower on the direction of President Harry S. Truman after the end of Potsdam Conference.

The plan envisioned a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union with 20 to 30 atomic bombs. It earmarked 20 Soviet cities for obliteration in a first strike: Moscow, Gorki, Kuybyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Molotov, Tbilisi, Stalinsk, Grozny, Irkutsk, and Yaroslavl.[1]

2) Operation Dropshot was the United States Department of Defense code-name for a contingency plan for a possible nuclear and conventional war with the Soviet Union and its allies in order to counter the anticipated Soviet takeover of Western Europe, the Near East and parts of Eastern Asia expected to start around 1957. The plan was prepared in 1949 during the early stages of the Cold War and declassified in 1977. Although the scenario did make use of nuclear weapons, they were not expected to play a decisive role.

3) Operation Unthinkable was a British plan to attack the Soviet Union. The creation of the plan was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff at the end of World War II in Europe.

Silly Vaarna, Glorious Motherland and the Paradise of the Proletariat does not invade smaller neighbours like the imperialist swine do. No, the USSR merely protected Russians and Ukrainians living in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, lands that had been taken through guile and force by the fascists Poles and Romanians. Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact didn't include any secret clauses, these are outrageous lies perpetrated by Western historians, who are falsifiers of history.

SMA, no they definitely didn't have such range. That doesn't matter, though. The more outlandish the enemy plan, the better it sells to the public, was apparently the logic of the Soviet writers.

Not sure. Tbh, i dont care about Poland (or Finland). Just another small EU country, one amoung dozens.

Probably Polish (as Finns) think all Russia do is dream about joining their territory, but in honestly noone gives a fuck about counties this small both in territory, global decision making and influence on world situations. They are not even mentioned in news here, except 1-2 time per whole year.
Some countries are too insignificant to care or discuss, be it Poland, Zimbabwe, Papua New Guinea,Finland or Uganda.

The Baku plans are not completly fabricated propaganda. They existed and were named operation Pike. In fact, between the Hitler-Soviet invasion of Poland and operation Barbarossa relations between Great Brittain and the Soviet Union reached such a low point that those plans of bombing the Baku oilfields were seriously considered in the war cabinet. The aim was to force Russia to stop selling nazi germany huge amounts of supplies. Previously Britain tried to negotiate a trade agreement with Soviet Russia that would guarantee this, but Stalin rejected any agreement that would prevent Russia from freely trading with the Nazis. Those plans were ditched eventually and operation Barbarossa did the rest, but they did definetely exist and were considered.

Of course, those Soviet history books blow those plans out of proportion in order to try to show these plans as a proof of evil allies trying to destroy the Soviet Union, while ignoring the fact that Hitler and the Soviets were hardcore-allies until operation Barbarossa.

Source incoming in a few minutes, the name of the damn book slipped from my mind.

update: Can't recall the title of the damn book if my life depended on it. So here's a wikipedia article on operation pike for now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pike

update 2: Found the damn book: Steven M. Miner, Between Churchill and Stalin: The Soviet Union, Great Britain and the origins of the Grand Alliance. It's a great book giving a detailed insight into British Soviet relations between 1939 and 1942, and the author really shows what a loyal ally to Hitler Stalin really was. In fact, even in the first weeks after operation Barbarrosa the Soviets still behaved like assholes towards the allies and hesitated to sign a strategic alliance without a guarantee that their territorial conquests from 1939 wouldn't be questioned.

Indeed, the primary concern for Stalin in the Teheran conference of 1943 was the opening of the second front and immediately behind it was Allied acknowledgement of Soviet 1939 borders.

Awesome, we have a genuine Russian retard showing up in the topic


Also GarfunkeL, does the book have hilarious "anecdotes" about how horrible life is outside of the Workers' Paradise?

Vaarna, as i say i usualy dont reply to people like you.


But i do have two questions:

1) It there freedom of speech in USA&EU history books and on TV?

Connected question

2) Do you know why Phil Donahue (amoung many others who did what he did) was fired from TV? For what reason. You can google it.

Nope but it does have exemplary tales of heroism from the Workers and Peasants Army. Let me dig up a few:

They are most likely just directly copied off from war time propaganda, as they read exactly alike to what pretty much every country published during the war.

Awww, I was hoping there'd be entries about the horrors of life under capitalist yoke, to root out sedition when a prole still young. Oh, now I got one: Do they uphold the obvious historical truth that no soldier of the Red Army was ever captured alive by the enemy? Have you checked for missing persons yet?


Also, solid gold with the standard "freedom of speech in the West is an illusion!" bullshit Whisper.

Undeniable proof that chrurchill was a psychotic pisshead and probably the worst PM we've ever had.

why does Hamster post as Whisper now? old account got locked?

He was the key for you not losing the war. Without him Britain would have slithered into a foul agreement with Germany.

The plan was unrealistic, but Churchill had at least realized that Britain hadn't won the war, because of the alliance with the Soviets. As it happened it took over 40 years to dig Europe from the dog dinner that followed from it.

Wasn't there also a plan to attack the Soviet Union during the Narvik Operation (1940), to help the Finns?

You probably know it already, but the Hitler-Mannerheim Conversation is incredibly revealing about the German-Soviet discord that lead to Op. Barbarossa, and Hitlers strategic intents.