Victory or Bolshevism. 1943.

Available from The Barnes Review. You can read this book for free on Archive.org!

Book Length: 415 pages

Much of the mythology that palpably strangles the men of our age rests upon a certain set of beliefs which emerged triumphant in 1945. These beliefs are a blend of Marxist and Liberal doctrine, a blend well-symbolized by that famous image of the “Big Three”—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—who, after pausing for that photo shoot, returned to drawing out their plan for a new world order. Though this order faced several massive shocks over the intervening decades, it has survived quite intact to this very day. One can find the aforementioned beliefs encapsulated within the so-called “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, the Ten Commandments of the United Nations. The chief creations of this post-war order, both the document and the institution which promulgated it have been imposed on mankind and marketed as vital guarantees of an age of universal progress and peace which never came. Without the presentation of the Second World War as a dualistic battle between the forces of undeniable evil (the Axis) against the forces of undeniable good (the Allies), the foundation of this mythology is undermined, therefore depriving the criminal laws and institutions that rest upon it utterly devoid of justification.

Thus, lies the great value within Dr. Joachim Hoffmann’s book. To us, it is an incredible aid—to the powers of darkness, it presents a moral danger which, if left unopposed, will put them in the grave. My claim is proved when one reads through the preface, for within it, one discovers that that the “democratic” German government went through great lengths to censor this work of credible historical research during the process of its initial publication. Considering that this same government championed the cause of “free speech” in accordance with the aforementioned “Universal” Declaration, the irony in this situation is self-evident; but the hypocrisy, however, ought to be expected.

One only needs to read the first chapter to understand why this is the case. In a bold challenge to the anti-Hitler paradigm which shamefully still paralyzes the world, Dr. Hoffmann unveils a terribly inconvenient truth for the establishment—it was the USSR, under Stalin’s ambitious design of world conquest, that started the War. This was achieved not by firing the first shot, but rather through manipulating the increasingly tense political situation in Europe to bring about another major war, as the author records:

On August 19, 1939, there was a surprise secret meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee, which included the participation of the Russian members of the Communist International. During the meeting Stalin announced, in a programmatic speech, that the time had now come to apply the torch of war to the European powder keg. Stalin declared flatly that “if we accept the German proposal for the conclusion of a Non-Aggression pact with them,” it was to be assumed that “they would naturally attack Poland, and the intervention of France and England in this war would be inevitable.” The resulting “serious unrest and disorder” would, as he remarked, lead to a destabilization of Western Europe without “us,” i.e., without the Soviet Union, being initially drawn into the conflict. For his closest comrades, he drew the conclusion, already proclaimed in 1925, that, in this way, “we can hope for an advantageous entry into the war.” In Stalin’s vision, a “broad field of activity” now opened up for the development of the “world revolution.”

(27)

This meeting, as Dr. Hoffmann proves in the following pages of this same chapter, is confirmed by multiple sources of high credibility. As in the rest of this book, there is a wealth of source information provided in the footnotes which can be easily referenced by use of a lengthy appendix featured at the end of this work. In that section, one also finds a substantial number of documents scanned and translated from the Russian military archives for the reader’s edification, a detail which gives a great air of transparency to this fruit of what must have been a particularly strenuous period of research.

One of the things these findings have proved beyond a doubt are that the often touted Stalinist policy of “Socialism in one country”, the “renunciation” of the aim of world revolution by what was then the world’s only Communist state, was a complete fraud meant to lull the nations of the world into a false sense of security. This point is only further illustrated when one examines the immense scale of Russian armaments before the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa, the statistics of which are given by the author:

..[O]n June 22, 1941, the Red Army possessed no less than 24,000 tanks, including 1,861 type T-34 tanks (a medium tank, perhaps the most effective armored weapon of the entire war) and KV (Klim Voroshilov) tanks (a series of heavy tanks), which had no equal anywhere in the world; 358 units of these were manufactured in 1940, while 1,503 units were manufactured in the first six months of 1941. Since 1939, the Air Forces of the Red Army had received a total of 23,245 military aircraft, including 3,719 aircraft of the latest design. The Red Army also had 148,000 artillery pieces and mortars of all types and systems. The inventory of the Red Navy, in addition to a multiplicity of ships of other types, had 291 or, according to Soviet sources, at least 213 submarines—an expressly aggressive weapon.

(33)

In brief, let us compare these astounding figures to those provided by Dr. Hoffmann for the forces of the Germans:

According to Soviet sources, 3,550 German tanks and assault guns…faced 14,000-15,000 Soviet tanks—and estimate that, out of a total inventory of 24,000 tanks, is, however, too low…1,700 of the German tanks, moreover, consisted of the quite insufficient PzKpfw I and PzKpfw II types (both tanks had light armor and armament) as well as the light Czech-built P 38 tank. As a result, only 1,850 of these 3,550 German tanks and assault guns were capable f fighting it out with their Soviet adversaries.

2,500 combat-ready German aircraft—2,121 according to other sources—faced a total of allegedly “only” 10,000 to 15,000 Soviet aircraft of the existing 23,245 machines, which, even though of “older” designs, made their appearance in critical situations, giving the German Air Force no end of trouble, as Reichminister Dr. Goebbels himself complained in his diaries. 7,146 German artillery pieces faced 37,000 Soviet artillery pieces—out of a total of 148,000 cannons and mortars that the Soviet armaments industry had already produced for the Red Army, according to Soviet data.

(34-35)¹

Why would an allegedly peaceful and non-interventionist nation, even one the size of Russia, need a stockpile of the most up to date tanks, airplanes, and submarines which outnumbered that of their nearest conceivable enemy to a ridiculous degree? Logically, this does not follow.² As Stalin admitted in his August 1939 speech, world revolution—merely world conquest by another name—was the endgame of the USSR, not mere self-preservation.³

Do not worry, dear reader, as this book has far more to it than military statistics. As one progresses through this book, one gets an overview of the true and horrifying story of the Soviet war effort, not the sanitized version presented in the West. Dr. Hoffmann holds nothing back in exposing the regime for its rampant and systemic brutality, whether directed at civilians, prisoners of war, or even its very own soldiers. Among these great evils, the propaganda apparatus of the Soviet Union in directing the war effort and justifying the barbarism is thoroughly explored in a way that one is unlikely to find in other books on this subject. The ringleader of that particular subset of the regime was Ilya Ehrenburg, a man whose life and work Dr. Hoffmann rightly dedicates significant space in this book to castigating. Of that wretched and shameless propagandist, he writes:

Criminal or psychopathic tendencies in no way exclude literary and journalistic talent. These gifts, linked with a deficient love of truth and a lack of all moral scruples, in any event, permitted him to become the most important instrument of anti-German hate propaganda.

(155)

Ehrenburg’s impact should not be underestimated, for as the author relates:

The Soviet troops, often before attacks, to enhance their spirit were not given liquor right away, but “Ehrenburg’s articles were read to them before the start of battle.” These articles repeated the same basic theme in innumerable variants, i.e., the Germans were not human beings and needed to be pitilessly exterminated.

(158-159)

It should not be too surprising, therefore, that such a man wrote of himself “I am a Jew and am proud of it”(156) and that he “…particularly despised the Catholic Church, the Pope, and the Holy See, whom he referred to as ‘the founders of the Inquisition, the protectors of the Jesuits, cunning souls who traveled the long road from Torquemada to Himmler, from Loyola to Il Duce’” (226). For a bootlicker of Joseph Stalin to label anyone, let alone Pope Pius XII and his contemporaries in the Vatican as “cunning souls” should invite only the refutation of laughter. Much of our mainstream historiography of the War owes its perceptions to the prolific rantings of this conniving liar, such as the myth of the “brutal” occupation of France:

German troops in France, as is well-known, were subject to the strictest discipline, as André Malraux admitted by his own accord. Malraux, a member of the French Communist Party until 1939, later a member of the Résistance, writer, and Minister under de Gaulle, stated that he had had “only good experiences with the German army, and only bad experiences with the Gestapo.” Ehrenburg, nevertheless, wrote on July 14, 1941: “The Nazi murderers and gangsters marched on the boulevards” to plunder and rob the nation of France, murdering children and starving the population to death with only fifty grams (two ounces) of bread per day. Soviet revenge was threatened for a trivial instance of property damage: “For the four spoiled jackets, you will exterminate 4,000 Germans who have trampled France.”

(164)

Such screed ought to be held in scorn, but Ehrenburg’s tone in this passage fits the presentation of that occupation in the highly renowned yet insultingly sententious film Casablanca. In comparison to this imagined repression, the very real repression carried out by Stalin in Russia was among the main reasons why the Germans came close to victory against the seemingly impossible odds, for men do not die willingly for tyrants. It was, as Dr. Hoffman relates, the apparent collapse of the Soviet Army in the beginning of the war in the East, the army which hitherto Stalin had convinced himself would fight to the death for him, that caused the tyrant so much shock—not some sentimental nonsense about his feeling “betrayed” by Hitler. However, he was able to save himself through opportunely taking advantage of setbacks faced by the Axis forces, while simultaneously ordering a fanatical campaign of propaganda and terror which brought either compliance or death (though mostly death) to those within the grasp of the Red Army.

If one can bear it, one finds in the later chapters of this book the horrific culmination of this campaign as that Army—red as the devils who commanded it—plundered and ravaged Germany to such a degree that even the British Field Marshal Montgomery wrote in his memoirs, as quoted by Dr. Hoffmann, pertaining to the Russians that:

Their behavior disgusted us, especially in regard to women. In some areas of the Russian [occupation] zone, there were practically no Germans left. They fled before the assault of the barbarians.

(281)

See here the fruit of Ehrenburg’s journalism! There is far more that can be cited in support of this, and of the copious examples which could have been drawn from the text, I have selected only the most tame. I invite you, dear reader, to investigate the evidence for yourself.

This is a book which is invaluable to understanding the true history of the Second World War, and not only this, as a careful reading will enable one to better grasp what the Blessed Virgin meant at Fatima when she spoke of Russia spreading her errors throughout the world, persecuting the Church, and destroying nations. Much of her prophecy has been fulfilled, though it has not been fulfilled in its entirety. The Consecration of Russia remains to be done as the Virgin requested it, and the faithful must persevere in their sacrifices and their prayers. Though I do not know exactly what is to come, especially in these eventful days, reading through Dr. Hoffmann’s work (though he was not a believer) has made me only further recognize the importance of the Fatima message and the workings of Providence in history. In like manner, I firmly believe that if this book finds a more widespread readership among Catholics, it will only benefit our understanding of our confused modern world and, moreover, inspire us to do what we can to work for the Restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

1. “Even assuming the admitted order of magnitude, the Red Army, on June 22, 1941, possessed a five to six-fold superiority in tanks, a five to six-fold superiority in aircraft, and a five to ten-fold, and perhaps even greater, superiority in artillery pieces. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the mass production of modern weapons was just really gearing up. A huge increase in production figures was not only scheduled, but was actually achieved during the last six months of 1941, despite huge losses in industrial capacity as a result of the German conquest of Soviet territory.” (35)

2. For a further elaboration on this point from a primary source, listen to this private 1942 conversation between Hitler and Mannerheim. “The Hitler and Mannerheim Recording in Finland, June 4, 1942 (Subtitles)”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oET1WaG5sFk&pp=ygUraGl0bGVyIHByaXZhdGUgY29udmVyc2F0aW9uIHdpdGggbWFubmVyaGVpbQ%3D%3D. This recording is also available on Archive.org.

   For additional context of the recording, I recommend the below mentioned article:

   Haldin, Kim. “Hitler’s secretly recorded conversation in Finland.” Yleisradio Oy, 4 June 2018. yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2018/06/04/hitlers-secretly-recorded-conversation-in-finland.

3. In connection with this point, it is important to note the numerous military campaigns and wars instigated by the Soviet Union before that nation was attacked in 1941, such as the invasion of Eastern Poland in 1939, the “Winter War” with Finland in 1940, and the invasion of the Baltic states that same year. All these, and some other conflicts not listed here, are given at least some coverage in Dr. Hoffmann’s work.