Nord Stream - US/German consultations

[Tomasz + 1,608]

Does anyone has a subscription of German Handelsblatt?  Because an our ago they published probably a very interesting article

It starts like this so I would to read the whole arcticle

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Nord Stream 2: USA imposes conditions for sanctions waiver - especially on Germany

The new US administration is signaling readiness to talk about the Baltic Sea pipeline. The federal government is relieved to respond, but has so far not wanted to offer any specific concessions.

 Moritz Koch Klaus Stratmann February 1st, 2021 - 7:19 pm  9 times shared

Berlin The stalled dispute over Nord Stream 2 is moving: For the first time, the US is signaling that it is ready to hold talks about an end to the US sanctions against the controversial Baltic Sea pipeline from Russia to Germany. The Americans, however, expect the German side to move too and submit a proposal.

"The Germans have to put a package solution on the table," a US official involved in the talks told Handelsblatt. "Otherwise we will not be able to get the issue of Nord Stream 2 out of the way" - a clear sign that Washington wants to resolve the conflict over the gas pipeline. The US wants to prevent Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas from growing further and Ukraine from being decoupled from the European gas infrastructure.

 

https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/transatlantischer-konflikt-nord-stream-2-usa-stellen-bedingungen-fuer-sanktionserlass-besonders-an-deutschland/26872184.html

[Tomasz + 1,608]

More about US proposals from 1prime.ru - I would call them sensible so maybe thats time to come to some agreement between USA and Germany especially if Biden administration really wants to decrease gas and oil production on federal  land and bet on revenables and green energy.

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BERLIN, 2 Feb - PRIME The United States wants to agree on the possibility of temporarily shutting down Nord Stream 2 in case of limiting Russian gas supplies through Ukraine, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing a source in the American administration.

"A compromise may appear. According to Handelsblatt, the proposal to provide the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with a shutdown mechanism is of interest to the new US government.

Thus, gas supplies via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline may be interrupted if Moscow tries to put pressure on Ukraine by limiting gas supplies, "the newspaper said.

According to him, this proposal, from the point of view of the administration in Washington, should come from Germany. The US idea is to "deny the Kremlin an incentive to use Nord Stream 2 as a weapon against Kiev," writes Handelsblatt.

The US is also calling for a review of the agreement regulating the transit of Russian gas through the Ukrainian pipeline system in order to improve conditions for Kiev, the article says.

In addition, the authors continue, Washington would welcome an increase in the capacity of gas storage facilities, which could be used to supply Ukraine if necessary.

Another American proposal - Germany "should help Ukraine expand its gas infrastructure for transporting hydrogen", which would enable Kiev "to remain an important player in the energy market and at the same time reduce Europe's dependence on Russia," the newspaper notes.

"President Biden could only lift the sanctions if it is guaranteed that Russia will not be able to use energy dependencies as a weapon against Ukraine or other neighboring states," Washington said, "Handelsblatt was quoted as saying by his source.

In addition, the authors continue, Washington would welcome an increase in the capacity of gas storage facilities, which could be used to supply Ukraine if necessary.

Another American proposal - Germany "should help Ukraine expand its gas infrastructure for transporting hydrogen", which would enable Kiev "to remain an important player in the energy market and at the same time reduce Europe's dependence on Russia," the newspaper notes.

"President Biden could only lift the sanctions if it is guaranteed that Russia will not be able to use energy dependencies as a weapon against Ukraine or other neighboring states," Washington said, "Handelsblatt was quoted as saying by his source.

Nord Stream 2 envisages the construction of two strings of a gas pipeline with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from the Russian coast through the Baltic Sea to Germany. The project is actively opposed by the United States, which is promoting its liquefied natural gas to the EU, as well as Ukraine and a number of European countries.

In December 2019, the states imposed sanctions against the gas pipeline, as a result of which the Swiss Allseas was forced to stop laying.

It continued a year later - in December 2020, the Fortuna pipelayer laid 2.6 kilometers of pipes in German waters.

As a result, according to Nord Stream 2 AG (operator of the project), approximately 148 kilometers of the gas pipeline remained unfinished out of the total length of its two lines of 2,460 kilometers - 120 kilometers remained in Danish waters and about 28 kilometers in German waters.

The Danish authorities have agreed on the possibility of stowage with the help of "Fortuna" from 15 January, the German permit for this vessel is valid until the end of May.

The US has signaled for the first time its readiness to begin negotiations to end its sanctions against Nord Stream 2, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing an administration source in Washington. "In the stalled dispute over Nord Stream 2, a movement has emerged: for the first time, the United States is signaling its willingness to talk about ending US sanctions against the controversial Baltic pipeline from Russia to Germany. However, the Americans expect the German side to make an offer, too." writes the edition.

"The Germans must offer a package solution. Otherwise, we will not be able to remove the topic of Nord Stream 2 from the agenda," Handelsblatt quotes "one of the US officials who participated in the negotiations."

According to the newspaper, this US proposal is "a clear sign that Washington wants to resolve the conflict over the gas pipeline." However, the government of Germany, according to the publication, has not yet announced any proposals on this topic.

Nord Stream 2 envisages the construction of two strings of a gas pipeline with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from the Russian coast through the Baltic Sea to Germany. The project is actively opposed by the United States, which is promoting its liquefied natural gas to the EU, as well as Ukraine and a number of European countries.

 

Edited February 3, 2021 by Tomasz

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

For anyone who wants a Russian first-hand recollection of the way the Russian army soldiers treated the German women in the lands they over-ran, I invite you to review the linked YouTube video, it is about 6 minutes.  If you are not vomiting by the end of that then you are no longer human. And you want to buy gas from these guys?

 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

52 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

For anyone who wants a Russian first-hand recollection of the way the Russian army soldiers treated the German women in the lands they over-ran, I invite you to review the linked YouTube video, it is about 6 minutes.  If you are not vomiting by the end of that then you are no longer human. And you want to buy gas from these guys?

 

That's awful to hear.  I assume this was payback time after the Russians had lost some 20 million lives?  What a terrible ordeal for all involved.

I guess the Dems/Left aren't that bad.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Dan Warnick

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

4 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

That's awful to hear.  I assume this was payback time after the Russians had lost some 20 million lives?  What a terrible ordeal for all involved.

I think it reflects the reality of Russia  - a primitive, visceral society, steeped in alcohol and abuse of women, as well as saturated with crime at all levels.   When one newsman protested the rape of the children, as young as 10, and of old women of 80, the Russian retorted:  "Frau ist Frau."   [Woman is woman]   

Not to put too fine a point on it, but those Russian troops had not washed their external genitalia for perhaps two months before starting their orgy of raping.  So the Terror was acutely unpleasant.  In the case specifically of Berlin, after the Red Army took the city, the troops would get drunk and go out at night to take women and mass rape them.  The cries of the city's women echoed through the streets, but the Officers did not venture out from their bivouacs;  attempting to interfere with masses of drunken troops all armed with rifles, bayonets, and pistols was not a bright idea.  The typical Berlin housewife was raped 35 times during the initial city seizure.  

One woman of about 40 was taken outside, stripped, and tied spread-eagled to stakes driven into the ground.  That way anyone could climb on top and do his rape, no resistance, arms and legs all pre-spread and tied down. Part of the pleasure for the Russians was her terror in knowing what was going to happen, and being unable to do anything about it.  Stake her out and rape her, fellas! 

This is not to say that US troops did not rape; there were instances.  Statistics compiled by criminal investigators show that the vast majority of US troop rapes were done in England - not surprising, as the troops were bivouacked there for long periods and fraternized with the locals at the town pub.  But nothing even came close to the mass horrors inflicted by the barbarians from Russia. 

You cannot seriously think that one generation is going to create a massive shift in social attitudes.  Russians today are not different from their fathers and grandfathers.  Rape and murder is part of their thinking when it comes to conquered peoples.   Merkel does not grasp this: if you "do business" with Putin then you are paying him your cash for his waste products so that he can use that cash to build up arms, invade his neighbors, and his troops can go back to raping and slaughtering civilians.  That is the reality of Russia.  Don't do business with the barbarians; they will come back to rape your women. 

[NickW + 2,714]

7 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

That's awful to hear.  I assume this was payback time after the Russians had lost some 20 million lives?  What a terrible ordeal for all involved.

I guess the Dems/Left aren't that bad.

June 1941 to 1945 the German Army in Russia had done the thorough ground work which helped illicit this response. 

The Russian army that marched into East Prussia in 1914 was quite well behaved. 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

10 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

For anyone who wants a Russian first-hand recollection of the way the Russian army soldiers treated the German women in the lands they over-ran, I invite you to review the linked YouTube video, it is about 6 minutes.  If you are not vomiting by the end of that then you are no longer human. And you want to buy gas from these guys?

 

Well Germans killed only 27 milions citizens in USRR.  Have you ever heard about SS Einsatnzgruppen? I suggest to watch for example movie Come and see  from 1985 to get basic knowledge about how SS treated soviet citizens in Belarus for example. You should watch it as many times as you need to understand. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/ - 8.3/10 for 59.207 votes on imdb.

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Come and See is one of the rare films that I can remember being emotionally drained upon its conclusion. The expression on my face as I sat there watching the credits scroll by seemed as worn and broken as that of the protagonist, Florya.

The film follows Florya as he "joins" (i.e. obtains a gun) a partisan group resisting the German advancements in the forests of his native Byelorussia during World War II. What he witnesses at the ripe age of 12 changes a once open-eyed, smiling face into a weathered, traumatized one that has experienced the unimaginable.

And of course the unimaginable were the Nazi atrocities committed during the war. Come and See does not focus on what the German Army did to the Jewish population but rather what they did to the native Soviet population. The Nazis were not only concerned with the utter destruction of the Jews but of the Bolshevik Party as well. And to Hitler that meant any man, woman, or child living under communist rule. And this "cleansing" fell into the hands of the SS who, as depicted in the movie, literally destroyed every sign of life.

Florya is able to escape death, unlike the rest of his family, but serves as a witness to the destruction and in this sense "dies" as his innocence and youth is lost. Klimov does a masterful job and depicting this slow death by concentrating on the facial expressions of Florya versus that of the Germans and both of their transformations over time. Klimov's Hitler montage at the end is especially moving and puts an interesting spin on the whole "what if" question.

This is the most historically accurate war movie I have ever seen and would highly recommend it to any war/history enthusiast. But I would also recommend it to any film watcher that realizes the goal of the medium which is to evoke emotion in the audience, and Come and See does just that.

There is russian joke that european values were closest to Moscow in October 1941 with SS Einzatzgruppen as bonus pack.

So what did you expect?

Because even in the memories of many Germans one can find the reflection that they were treated much more gently than they expected from what they had done in the Soviet Union and Poland.

And please tell me how exacly this is connected with main topic and german-russian gaspipeline ?

If you really want to spread some antirussian propaganda even in topic about economic cooperation I think oilprice.com is  not best portal to do that.

For now, I propose to  read about German crimes against the Slavs, then maybe my friend you will find out where the desire for a rematch in 1944 and 1945 came from.

There is a saying in Polish who sows the wind then picks up the storm, and it fits perfectly to any claims by the Germans for treating them after World War II.

Even in Poland, with all Russophobia, there is also a saying that the Soviet soldier, with profit for the whole of Europe, taught German militarists from ancient Prussia pacifism after World War II.

And the majority of Poles, even now having good relations with Germany, say it with satisfaction, so in Central and Eastern Europe I would not count on the fact that such propaganda films would give my colleague applause because people even four generations after the war remember German crimes in World War II.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Tomasz

[Tomasz + 1,608]

 

In general, if anyone is to have a grudge against the murder of millions of citizens, it is definitely Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians against Germans, similarly to Poles or Yugoslavs, rather than the other way around.

There is no resentment in Russia itself and there has never been a will to murder Germans for what is even shown in the film Go and See, i.e. murdering some 25% of Belarusian citizens for just 3 years. However, there is no consent to turn the Germans into victims of the war. Perhaps you in Western Europe and the USA were not murdered by the Germans, the Slavs were murdered by millions, so give yourself a break from making the Germans victims of World War II because no one in Central and Eastern Europe will accept this.

 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

And ending this topic from german-russian  trade organization - author Leo Ensel

https://ostexperte.de/saubere-preussen-wilde-russen-deutschlandbilder-in-der-gus/
The underlined text is dedicated especially to a certain user, who in the subject of Nord Stream II wants to return to the topic of World War II because its the Slavs who eventually should forgive the Germans for their unheard of crimes, and not the other way around.

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New Ice Age and a World in Ruins - Part V

Our author has led cultural seminars in the countries of the former Soviet Union for decades. What he learned about the image of Germany and the self-perception of the CIS population, and why the Germans, contrary to the cliché, are not more diligent.

by Leo Ensel

In the fall of 1996, in the middle of the heyday of Yeltsin's predatory capitalism, I conducted my first intercultural training in the former Soviet Union. The Goethe-Institut Moscow had invited me to use the scenic play to explore the Germanist women’s images of Germany - here, as in the entire ex-USSR, the language sector is firmly in female hands - and their complementary Russian self-images. It was to be the first seminar in a long series that took me to almost the entire post-Soviet space over the next two decades.

Moscow had meanwhile advanced to become the second most expensive city in the world after Tokyo. The city was now brightly lit at night, the first traffic jams clogged the previously empty wide streets, Marlboro cowboys rode along Stalinist high-rise walls and the formerly largest department store in the Soviet Union, the GUM - once famous for the sarcastic joke “You want a kilo of meat? - There's just no bread in this queue! There's no meat in the line next door! ”- had mutated into a consumer temple for all western luxury goods. (In 1983 I had still seen with my own eyes how all visitors were drinking from the same glass at a water machine.) The ordinary Russian citizens, impoverished by mass inflation, bought their daily necessities at the countless kiosks, with which the market economy had found its way into Russia and which dominated the cityscape everywhere. Most people kept themselves afloat with a piece of land well outside the city where they grew vegetables in the summer to somehow get through the winter. Others moved in with their relatives and rented their empty apartments to foreigners. This meant that a lot more money could be made - and that meant almost everywhere in Russia at the time: dollars - than one could ever earn with regular work. Again and again I heard the bitter sentence: "In the past we had money and nothing to buy - today everything is available and we have no money!" to somehow get through the winter. Others moved in with their relatives and rented their empty apartments to foreigners. With that, a lot more money could be made - and that meant almost everywhere in Russia at the time: dollars - than one could ever earn with regular work. Again and again I heard the bitter sentence: "In the past we had money and nothing to buy - today everything is available and we have no money!" to somehow get through the winter. Others moved in with their relatives and rented their empty apartments to foreigners. With that, a lot more money could be made - and that meant almost everywhere in Russia at the time: dollars - than one could ever earn with regular work. Again and again I heard the bitter sentence: "In the past we had money and nothing to buy - today everything is available and we have no money!"

The first seminar with Russian Germanists

Before this seminar [1] - it took place in the building of the former embassy of the GDR on the kilometer-long Lenin Prospect in Moscow - I had been very nervous. I had never worked with Russian German teachers before. I expected that the participants in their associations with Germany would mainly present pictures from the time of the Second World War, of atrocities by the German occupiers or scenes from prisoner-of-war or forced labor camps. How would you treat me, the German?

To my greatest surprise, however, was the first spontaneous picture of Germany that the participants showed - the Munich Hofbräuhaus! Three Germans toasted each other exuberantly and armed with a liter of beer. An association with Germany that could just as easily have come from the Americans or the Japanese. The second spontaneous association with the Germans amazed me even more: It was - the waste separation! According to the Russian perception at the time, Germans are so tidy that they even sort their rubbish. When asked to develop an analog Russian counter-scene, my Moscow participants threw the rubbish wildly into the area. Comment: "It's already all dirty!" And there was one thing that the Russian Germanists couldn't be dissuaded at all:

I was speechless. I hadn't expected such harmless, even idealizing images of the Germans, especially in Russia! At the same time, however, some German quirks were lovingly made fun of: The Germans were not only seen as order-loving, environmentally conscious and liberal beer drinkers, but also as reserved, inflexible, somewhat boring and badly dressed. Growing up with the cliché of plump Soviet women who toiled in thick cotton jackets as deserved crane drivers or in road building for the construction of socialism, I couldn't believe my ears when a Moscow teacher said: “German women pay too little attention to their appearance, even though they pay more Have opportunities than the Russians. You don't dress as elegantly, but cheaper than us! “- Last but not least, the Germans were seen as frugal to stingy. The latter quality was brought to the point by the Russian German scholars in a scene that later appeared again and again in a modified form in other post-Soviet countries: While at the end of a boozy round of bars the Russians vie with each other as to who can now pay the bill for everyone - “The wide one Soul knows no thrift! ”- they see the Germans laboriously busy with their pocket calculator, calculating the precise amount for each individual. Ironic Russian comment: "Everyone pays for himself - everyone dies for himself!" which later reappeared again and again in a modified form in other post-Soviet countries: While at the end of a boozy round of bars, the Russians vie with each other to see who can now pay the bill for everyone - "The wide soul knows no thrift!" - the Germans see it with difficulty busy with the calculator to work out the precise amount for each individual. Ironic Russian comment: "Everyone pays for himself - everyone dies for himself!" which later reappeared again and again in a modified form in other post-Soviet countries: While at the end of a boozy round of bars the Russians vie with each other as to who can now pay the bill for everyone - "The wide soul knows no thrift!" - the Germans see it with difficulty busy with the calculator to work out the precise amount for each individual. Ironic Russian comment: "Everyone pays for himself - everyone dies for himself!"

Only after I had held analogue seminars in other Russian cities in the following years, but also in Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine (West and Donbass), Armenia and Moldova, did I realize that I had apparently come across very typical images of Determine the view of the people in the post-Soviet space on the Germans. [2] Above all, three - sometimes contradicting - clusters kept appearing.

The Germans: fanatics of order

On the one hand, the familiar image of the classic (Freudian) "anal" characteristics of the Germans, euphemistically also called "Prussian virtues", still dominates. According to this, the Germans still attach great importance to punctuality, they work hard, determined and concentrated, are thrifty to stingy, and they show a love of order and cleanliness that sometimes takes on rigid, cold-hearted and self-righteous features. Of course, these ascriptions also include compliance with the law and a certain distance.

Almost all of these properties are admired by the former Soviet citizens on the one hand, but they do not miss the fact that, if handled rigidly, they quickly become counterproductive. As a pedestrian in Germany, you can rely on the fact that the cars will actually stop when you are allowed to cross the street yourself, but the Germans, in their love of rules, even go to the behavior that Russians cannot understand, even at a pedestrian traffic light To wait for "green" when there is no car in sight.

German love of order and compliance with the law quickly turn into hard-heartedness towards those who are not so strict about it. In the corresponding scene, a foreigner who is found on the train without a ticket because she may not have any money cannot hope for sympathy or even mercy from the conductor or the other passengers. Anyone who throws paper on the street can be sure to be confronted immediately, and if the partying is too loud in the house in the evening, the police will be called straight away. The most famous German sentence still applies here: "Order must be!"

From the post-Soviet point of view, the waste separation carried out so devotedly by Germans is more likely to be ridiculed as a modern variant of German regulatory frenzy, while the ecologically motivated saving of water is assumed to be the general German propensity for frugality. And where the Russian or Ukrainian housewife quickly bakes a cake on the side, her German colleague is completely lost without a prescription, measuring cup and clock. All in all, the well-known German stereotype of the industrious, correct but also distant and somewhat rigid immobile German emerges from all these ascriptions.

Compared to the Prussian-anal Germans, the former Soviet citizens see themselves as spontaneous, impulsive, emotional, comfortable, hedonistic to anarchic, but also as generous, lavish and more solidary. In the corresponding self-images, for example, one is less precise about work. “We want to relax at work. We do work at home! ”Or“ Collectivity - cooperation and no responsibility ”are the typical self-attributions in this context.

Where the Germans behave law-abiding and correctly in the pictures, Russians and Kazakhs cheerfully drive across the street when they hear “red” and treat pedestrians almost like fair game. (“Red is not a ban, it's a recommendation!”) They turn their backs on Justitia - “Russians are clever!” - because their life experience tells them: “Our laws are bad. Whoever has power is right! ”This anarchic attitude also has a very lovable downside: If someone is in need, they take sides - if need be, against the guardians of public order.

In contrast to the Germans who are seen as rigid, the former Soviet citizens are proud of their talent for improvisation. "Every Russian woman can bake a cake from a glass of water, a little flour and an egg," is the self-confident Russian phrase. You don't have to make big appointments if you want to see each other, but visit each other spontaneously, without registering. (“Belarusians are open.”) You will always find something to entertain your guests! In general, one likes to see oneself as generous, lavish and hospitable, after all, "you only live once!" [3]

The Germans: Hedonists

However, the classic “Prussian-anal” image of Germany in the post-Soviet area is increasingly facing competition from another image that is diametrically opposed to it, especially among the younger generation. Above all, those under 30 describe the Germans in their pictures as relaxed, hedonistic and democratic. The Germans devote themselves extensively to drinking beer and swaying to Rhenish carnival music, they travel to all countries of the world as tourists, attach more importance to sporty, comfortable clothing and they don't work on weekends anyway. In addition, Germans are interested in politics, practice a relaxed, democratic teaching style at school, they have softened traditional gender roles a bit and are environmentally conscious out of conviction.

Compared to these hedonistic Germans, the former Soviet citizens describe themselves not only as more industrious in their private lives, but also as more traditional and conservative - not least in terms of gender. The women of the post-Soviet countries repeatedly complain that German men no longer know how to behave towards a woman. In the scenes presented, German men do not offer their help to the women when they get off the bus and the fact that the German man does not naturally invite the woman to eat in a restaurant is only acknowledged by women in the ex-USSR with a shake of the head .

The post-Soviet schools are also more conservative and strict. Here, the teachers often still practice traditional frontal teaching in front of their tightly seated students. They only talk when they are called and have to do a lot more homework than their German peers - even on weekends. In general, in private life, people in the countries of the former Soviet Union are much more hardworking than the hedonistic Germans. If you are less busy at work, it is not least because of the toil at home and in the obligatory fruit and vegetable gardens. This is particularly true for women: “Our women have no free time at all!” For the elderly in particular, instead of a leisurely evening in life, field and garden work is the trend.

The Germans: loners

Last but not least, Germans are seen as very individualized, isolated and distant. Germans are seen as self-centered loners who take little interest in the lives of others. “That is none of my business!” Is the sentence that is repeatedly ascribed here. Or in the words of a 22-year-old Russian saleswoman from the Black Earth region: “The most important person for a German is always only himself!” It goes without saying that the different generations in Germany have hardly any contact with each other. The fact that the majority of Germans live in small families or alone causes great astonishment or incomprehension, especially in rural Kazakhstan. There, however, the motto is: "The problems of others are also my problems!"

What about the war?

One thing struck me again and again: The war, the “Great Patriotic War”, which killed almost 27 million people in the Soviet Union and which is still clearly visible in the public arena in most of the successor states, became so good at the seminars as never discussed. I was always the one bringing up this topic. And I always got the same answers: “We didn't fight against the Germans, we fought against the fascists!” A student in Kazakhstan put it even more drastically: “Fascism killed with the hands of the Germans.” (Not even from German fascists was the talk of the town!) And most of all the sentences were: “We have no hatred of the Germans. Another generation lives there today! "

I have always seen the former Soviet citizens' willingness to reconcile as a great advance in civilization. And I know that almost all German travelers to Russia have had similar experiences. And I would be very happy if two circumstances were just as present in the minds of the Germans as the genocide against the European Jews: The German crimes against the peoples of the Soviet Union and the unbelievable willingness to reconcile the people there!

In the past two decades I have traveled to most of the countries of the former Soviet Union [4], where I carried out intercultural training for the Goethe-Institut, the DAAD or other organizations. Everywhere I got to know very sympathetic, helpful people who guided me through the jungle of everyday post-Soviet life and made friends with them. For most of them, Germany and “Europe” (synonym for the European Union) were places of longing - for some they could be reached, for others it was still a long way off. If someone had asked me back then what I was actually doing in these countries, I would have answered: “Cleaning up after the end of the Cold War!” For me, every activity, every contact with the people there was always a celebration of the happy end of the Cold War.

Those were the blessed times when the Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians first came up with nothing but the Hofbräuhaus and waste separation! That there could be another Cold War; yes, that many of my new friends would fall bitterly a few years later - I couldn't have imagined that in my worst nightmares!

 (Sequel follows)

[1] I described this seminar in detail - as well as three others in Russia and Kazakhstan - in my book " Pictures of Germany in the CIS - scenic explorations in Russia and Kazakhstan", Oldenburg (BIS-Verlag) 2001. http: //oops.uni -oldenburg.de/618/13/ensdeu01.pdf

[2] At the same time, I conducted intercultural trainings in almost all other countries of the former Warsaw Pact, in Central and Eastern Europe and in the former Yugoslavia - with very similar results. (The pictures in the three Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - were somewhat different. They were more similar to the pictures presented by Finnish German scholars.)

[3] All these foreign and complementary self-attributions (as well as those in the following clusters) also apply to the other countries I examined in the post-Soviet space - excluding the Baltic region, where people consider themselves even more distant compared to the Germans.

[4] The countries I haven't been to are Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.

 

 

For all of you I would remind Sting's  song from 1985 

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Tomasz

[Tomasz + 1,608]

delete

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Tomasz

[NickW + 2,714]

10 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

For anyone who wants a Russian first-hand recollection of the way the Russian army soldiers treated the German women in the lands they over-ran, I invite you to review the linked YouTube video, it is about 6 minutes.  If you are not vomiting by the end of that then you are no longer human. And you want to buy gas from these guys?

 

Do you apply the same purchasing logic to German goods? 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

21 minutes ago, NickW said:

Do you apply the same purchasing logic to German goods? 

 

If following a similar logic, no one east of the Odra River should under any circumstances, buy any German goods or services. A typical propaganda post

After what these good Germans did during World War II in USRR , in my opinion, an honest man, although not a propagandist for historical honesty, would be ashamed in the context of Nord Stream II to raise such arguments, taking into account the incredible scale of German crimes in the Soviet Union.

Once again, whoever sows the wind picks up the storm.

Taking into account the scale of the german crimes, no one in modern Germany even dares to raise similar arguments because they will be ridiculed.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Tomasz

[NickW + 2,714]

1 minute ago, Tomasz said:

 

If following a similar logic, no one east of the Odra River should under any circumstances, buy any German goods or services. A typical propaganda post

I know. While I don't condone the behaviour of Soviet troops in Germany he seems to be completely oblivious to how the German Army, Waffen SS and German Authorities behaved in the USSR and how this may have influenced the response when the Soviet Armies overran Eastern Germany. 

Or does he actually think the German occupying forces behaved in Russia  like they did in occupied Holland? 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

 It looks like this - this is like German occupation looks like in Belarus. Watch full movie and take it under consideration.

The burning of the villages in this film is a historical fact - the Germans burned and murdered several dozen Belarusian villages and generally 25% of the Belarusian population, which took them less than 3 years before Operation Bagration started in June 1944.

I will  repeat it once more, nowhere east of the Oder, even among NATO members like Poland or the Czech Republic, similar arguments will not find recognition.

Come and see 1985 full movie with english subtitles - I suggest to translate comments.

8.3/10 for nearly 60,000 votes on imdb just for that if you have time. One of best soviet movies from 1985.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Tomasz

[NickW + 2,714]

4 minutes ago, Tomasz said:

 It looks like this - this is like German occupation looks like in Belarus. Watch full movie and take it under consideration.The burning of the villages in this film is a historical fact - the Germans burned and murdered several dozen Belarusian villages and generally 25% of the Belarusian population, which took them less than 3 years before Operation Bagration started in Juny 1944.

i will  repeat it once more, nowhere east of the Oder, even among NATO members like Poland or the Czech Republic, similar arguments will not find recognition.

Come and see 1985 full movie with english subtitles - I suggest to translate comments

I have watched come and see some time back. Pretty horrific. 

The US Mini series Holocaust (late 70's) showed pretty grim scenes of genocide in Poland and Russia / Ukraine

Later on the US mini Series (late 80's) War and remembrance showed scenes including the Babi Yar massacre and cover up of mass killings in Bearussia. Also implied that Rusian POWs were first batch of prisoners to be gassed at Auschwitz. 

[Tomasz + 1,608]

So once more - german historian memories from 1996-2016  cited before on german-russian trade organisation site. 

if this is really the attitude of the people of the former soviet union to Second World War- I personally do not know, but this historian lectured in the former soviet union several times for 20 years, so he probably knows the subject much better than me.

Personally, being an ordinary German, I would be rather glad, like this historian, that this is the approach to the subject in the former Soviet Union. In any case, I would be glad that nobody seems to hold a grudge against today's Germans. and this state of affairs would satisfy me enough to consider the topic closed and focus not on brooding on World War II, but on the fact that there would be no World War III.

I will say even more, there is a joke among my friends that contemporary Poland should declare war on Germany and immediately announce capitulation, and then the most developed country of the European Union would take care of all the problems of Poles.

Considering that the Germans murdered 3 million Poles, if I were the Germans, I would really take this joke as a good sign of the attitude of Poles to Germans.

In my opinion, Nord Stream II calms down rather than exacerbates the situation in Europe because it creates further economic ties between Russia and Europe

 Ukraine should remain a buffer state between Russia and the West. So much for this - I do not wish Ukraine bad, but that the buffer must exist and it should be Ukraine and Belarus. However, it cannot be denied that gas transport through Ukraine costs 2-3 times more than via Nord Stream - you cannot demand Russia to finance an anti-Russian regime in Ukraine that persecutes ethnic Russians.

If anything, let the West give money after the Maidan if it really wants Ukraine in the Western sphere of influence.

 

Quote

 

What about the war?

One thing struck me again and again: The war, the “Great Patriotic War”, which killed almost 27 million people in the Soviet Union and which is still clearly visible in the public arena in most of the successor states, became so good at the seminars as never discussed. I was always the one bringing up this topic. And I always got the same answers: “We didn't fight against the Germans, we fought against the fascists!” A student in Kazakhstan put it even more drastically: “Fascism killed with the hands of the Germans.” (Not even from German fascists was the talk of the town!) And most of all the sentences were: “We have no hatred of the Germans. Another generation lives there today! "

I have always seen the former Soviet citizens' willingness to reconcile as a great advance in civilization. And I know that almost all German travelers to Russia have had similar experiences. And I would be very happy if two circumstances were just as present in the minds of the Germans as the genocide against the European Jews: The German crimes against the peoples of the Soviet Union and the unbelievable willingness to reconcile the people there!

In the past two decades I have traveled to most of the countries of the former Soviet Union [4], where I carried out intercultural training for the Goethe-Institut, the DAAD or other organizations. Everywhere I got to know very sympathetic, helpful people who guided me through the jungle of everyday post-Soviet life and made friends with them. For most of them, Germany and “Europe” (synonym for the European Union) were places of longing - for some they could be reached, for others it was still a long way off. If someone had asked me back then what I was actually doing in these countries, I would have answered: “Cleaning up after the end of the Cold War!” For me, every activity, every contact with the people there was always a celebration of the happy end of the Cold War.

Those were the blessed times when the Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians first came up with nothing but the Hofbräuhaus and waste separation! That there could be another Cold War; yes, that many of my new friends would fall bitterly a few years later - I couldn't have imagined that in my worst nightmares!

 

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Tomasz

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

2 hours ago, Tomasz said:

 

In general, if anyone is to have a grudge against the murder of millions of citizens, it is definitely Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians against Germans, similarly to Poles or Yugoslavs, rather than the other way around.

There is no resentment in Russia itself and there has never been a will to murder Germans for what is even shown in the film Go and See, i.e. murdering some 25% of Belarusian citizens for just 3 years. However, there is no consent to turn the Germans into victims of the war. Perhaps you in Western Europe and the USA were not murdered by the Germans, the Slavs were murdered by millions, so give yourself a break from making the Germans victims of World War II because no one in Central and Eastern Europe will accept this.

 

Easy @Tomasz.  It was just one man's take.  I don't think you will find many Americans that would think for a second that Germans were victims.  Quite the opposite, actually.  But I get why the comments bothered you deeply, and your take is one I am also interested in seeing and hearing.  Both you and Jan have brought to light some perspectives that I had not seen before.  Enlightening, if not downright appalling on all sides, which is the norm it seems when talking about and reflecting on the World Wars.  Hopefully never again.

[Tomasz + 1,608]

https://www.filmweb.pl/serial/Nasze+matki%2C+nasi+ojcowie-2013-625585

Calm down, I don't want to murder anyone.

However, if anyone is interested in the attitude of Poles to making Germans victims of WW2 I recommend the link. The largest forum about movies in Poland and the topic of a well-known German serial trying to make Germans victims of World War II.

If anyone has enough time and possibilities, lets use the google translator from Polish to English and read most of the comments.

I think that at least 90% of comments are very critical to such vision of history.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

13 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

That's awful to hear.  I assume this was payback time after the Russians had lost some 20 million lives?  What a terrible ordeal for all involved.

I guess the Dems/Left aren't that bad.

Stalin killed about that many AFTER the war. Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher.^[4][5][6] After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),^[7] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,^[8][9] some 390,000^[10] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,^[11] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.^[12] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million^[13] persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, but not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.^[2][14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin

https://www.specterofcommunism.org/

Edited February 5, 2021 by ronwagn
add

[Wombat + 1,028]

15 hours ago, Tomasz said:

 

In general, if anyone is to have a grudge against the murder of millions of citizens, it is definitely Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians against Germans, similarly to Poles or Yugoslavs, rather than the other way around.

There is no resentment in Russia itself and there has never been a will to murder Germans for what is even shown in the film Go and See, i.e. murdering some 25% of Belarusian citizens for just 3 years. However, there is no consent to turn the Germans into victims of the war. Perhaps you in Western Europe and the USA were not murdered by the Germans, the Slavs were murdered by millions, so give yourself a break from making the Germans victims of World War II because no one in Central and Eastern Europe will accept this.

 

Not to mention what happened to 6 million Jews in the Holocaust? But then again, Stalin was just as bad as Hitler? I don't think much of Putin, but he is a big improvement IMHO. Just needs to stop building so many nukes else he cops one of ours up the butt.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

21 hours ago, NickW said:

Do you apply the same purchasing logic to German goods? 

of course I do

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

21 hours ago, NickW said:

Or does he actually think the German occupying forces behaved in Russia  like they did in occupied Holland? 

Nice to see that I am now relegated to the impersonal "he."  

In my little home town, after the Occupation and the surrender of the Dutch Government (and the Queen and ministers fleeing to England, then to Canada), some locals decided to form a "Resistance" and proceeded to shoot some sentry at night.  In response, the German occupation commander had his men round up ten Dutch (male) teenagers, scooping them off the street.  These were just kids, perhaps 16 years old.  the Germans stripped them naked, hung them up by their heels from a scaffold beam in the town square, then shot them, leaving the boys to bleed out while hanging upside down.  The idea was to send a stark warning to the Resisters: attack a German soldier, and ten of your kids will die the next day. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

20 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

Hopefully never again

Unfortunately, the brutality of WWII has been exceeded many times since.  I point to what happened between the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda.  The tool of choice was the machete, used to hack off limbs and split open heads, neighbor against neighbor.  And that is still on-going just over the Border inside the Congo. 

[NickW + 2,714]

1 hour ago, Jan van Eck said:

of course I do

Fair play - at least you are balanced in your approach. 

I always avoid buying German - mainly to support UK economy

Cars on drive - UK built Toyotas

Oven - UK made (Irish firm)

Washing machine - Uk Made and owned (Ebac) 

etc

 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

In other news:

Water is wet...

Nordstream 2 will flow gas especially fulfilling requirements in pursuit of eliminating coal as wind/solar cannot possibly cope anytime in the next half century at the earliest and nuclear power is a dirty word in the EU... So, what will they do for all those products made from coal... hrmm...  Get them from CHINA  of course!

The Russians/Germans got everything they deserved in WWII. 

Don't worry, when the USA falls into barbarity as they lose all moral foundation as Russia/Germany/China/Japan etc did previously in history, we can but hope someone will come save us as my ancestors saved them.  What goes around, comes around.