Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Ehrenburg was a Russian writer who wrote articles to inspire the Red Army to fight the Germans during World War II. Because most of these works were written early in the war when the Germans were deep inside the USSR, murdering, raping, and plundering, they are unsurprisingly full of hatred against the Germans, and read like the fire-and-brimstone passages from the Bible. In a passage from Kill, written 1942 during the battle for Stalingrad, Ehrenburg instructs Red Army soldiers to kill German soldiers and tells them that they have wasted the day if they allow a day to go by where they do not kill a German.[1] Anyone who has played Call of Duty:Finest Hour has heard it before in the opening scene. As this passage does not specify killing soldiers -because it doesn't need to- it is exploited by various Nazi groups.
[edit] Exploitation and fabrication by Nazis
During the end of World War II in 1945, Josef Goebbels created a completely fabricated incitement of rape against German women and attributed it to Ehrenburg in order to motivate Germans to fight harder. This line has been attributed to him by Western historians, and constantly replayed by Nazis.[2] Nazis also tend to blatantly ignore the historical context of Ehrenburg's legitimate writings, and try to make it seem as though his encouragement to fight the German army in 1942 was intended to incite the Red Army to kill German civilians in 1945. He even said himself that he did not expect Red Army soldiers to kill German civilians, and certainly not to rape women, as he expected their anger to be directed at the enemy soldiers.[3]
Metapedia claims that Ilya Ehrenburg was a genocide agitator against Germans. There happen to be no legitimate historians who claim that the Germans were "victims" of "genocide" during World War II. They are also an example of completely taking Kill out of context.[4]
David Duke also posted a video on YouTube trying to demonize the Red Army by separating quotes from Kill from their historical context, and reciting the old fabrication that Ehrenburg encouraged Red Army soldiers to take German women as their lawful booty.[5]
[edit] See also
- Two wrongs don't make a right: Even if Ehrenburg declared all German women the rightful property of Stalin, that doesn't make what the Nazis did okay, no matter what David Duke tells his slack-jawed cronies.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ehrenburg#World_War_II Translation of Kill available on Wikipedia
- ↑ Beevor, Antony. The Fall of Berlin 1945. http://books.google.com/books?id=JSi86mzy64EC&lpg=PP1&ots=aUJViyq98O&dq=the%20fall%20of%20berlin%201945&pg=PT51#v=onepage&q=attributed%20to%20him&f=false
- ↑ Beevor, Antony. The Fall of Berlin 1945. http://books.google.com/books?id=JSi86mzy64EC&lpg=PP1&ots=aUJViyq98O&dq=the%20fall%20of%20berlin%201945&pg=PT51#v=onepage&q=attributed%20to%20him&f=false
- ↑ Metapedia article Ilja Ehrenburg; not linking it.
- ↑ Video on YouTube by David Duke that recites the typical Nazi nonsense about Ilya Ehrenburg