Let's not forget to condemn those who fought on behalf of or collaborated with the Nazis during Operation Barbarossa -- including Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and others -- because they became war criminals themselves just like their Nazi masters.
Let's make sure that the type of false racial superiority, real religious hatred, ethnic bigotry and butcherous ethnic cleansing espoused by Nazis and their allies -- and the unchecked militarism and ultra-nationalism that made it all happen -- never happen again either in Europe or anywhere else in this world.
Hitler and his Nazis blamed Jews, communists, Stalin & his Bolsheviks and sub-human Slavic peoples for Germany's ills and for preventing "true" Germans from reaching their Divine Aryan Destiny.
Who could the next 21st century Hitler, Nazis and their Axis with Weapons of Mass Destruction (Nuclear or Biological) blame?
In alphabetical order:
Americans?
Arabs?
Chinese?
Indians?
Koreans?
Pakistanis?
Persians?
Russians?
Ukrainians?
Atheists?
Buddhists?
Christians?
Hindus?
Jews?
Muslims -- Sunnis or Shii'tes?
Pagans and other Idolaters?
Anarchists & Anti-Globalists?
Capitalists & Globalists?
Communists or Socialists?
The guessing game can go on and on.
Regardless, let's try to do everything in our power to make sure that we won't allow the next Hitler or Nazi party to mesmerize any nation like they hypnotized Germans during the 1930s -- by learning how to recognize how such war-mongering hate begins to take over countries, install its domestic police state and build its war machine for foreign attack.
Most wars have been started over land and the political regime that will control it -- especially when the states involved and/or the people in the land did not want to or were afraid of the land being controlled (and them being ruled) by their ethnic, racial, religious, political or economic adversaries.
Starting a war was justified by perceived or invented threats (pre-emptive strikes), attacks (defensive strikes), ethnic discrimination & cleansings (occupations to protect a persecuted group) and etc.
Alleged human rights violations have been used to justify external interference in a country's internal affairs, a country's right to sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Being a perceived external threat (such as a being sponsor of or a haven for terrorists) has also been used to justify foreign invasion.
The potential of allying with a hostile foreign power has also been used to ignore a people's right to self-determination and justify brutal domestic campaigns to eradicate the opposition or a movement seeking local autonomy.
History shows that the most brutal wars fought by mankind in known history have been conflicts where larger states and military powers trampled a people's right to self-determination in the pursuit of territory, resources, political, ethnic and religious power.
So perhaps the best way to prevent future Operation Barbarossas is by
- avoiding like the plague any domestic or foreign policy (economic or political and, especially, military) that's based on even a thread of ethnic, cultural, racial, religious or political superiority,
- making sure that such ethnic, religious and cultural elitism -- along with militarism, authoritarianism or totalitarianism and the accompanying police state -- does not take hold on ANY continent and grow by blaming, fearing or hating of another group of people,
- respecting a people's right to self-determination (both locally and nationally) on political, religious and economic issues,
- foregoing foreign policy that actively and destructively interferes in other countries and people's affairs, and
- instead of using military force, committing to using political tools (referendums, elections, negotiations and compromise) to resolve local conflicts abroad.
- Using international organizations (global like the UN and regional organizations like the EU, OAS and etc.) to condemn -- consistently and without double standards -- militarism, authoritarianism, human rights violations and foreign hegemony.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa) was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which began on 22 June 1941. Over the course of the operation, about four million soldiers of the Axis powers invaded Soviet Russia along a 2,900 kilometer front, the largest invasion force in the history of warfare.
The failure of Operation Barbarossa was a turning point in the fortunes of the Third Reich. Most importantly, the operation opened up the Eastern Front, to which more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in world history. The Eastern Front became the site of some of the largest battles, most horrific atrocities, and highest casualties for Soviets and Germans alike, all of which influenced the course of both World War II and the subsequent history of the 20th century. The German forces captured millions of Soviet prisoners who were not granted protections stipulated in the Geneva Conventions. Most of them never returned alive. Germany deliberately starved the prisoners to death as part of a "Hunger Plan" that aimed to reduce the population of Eastern Europe and then re-populate it with ethnic Germans.
As early as 1925, Adolf Hitler declared in his political manifesto and autobiography Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") that he would invade the Soviet Union, asserting that the German people needed to secure Lebensraum ("living space") to ensure the survival of Germany for generations to come.[15] Nazism viewed the Soviet Union (and all of Eastern Europe) as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen ("sub-humans"), ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik conspirators".[15] Mein Kampf said Germany's destiny was to "turn to the East" as it did "six hundred years ago".[16] Accordingly, it was stated Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land with Germanic peoples.[15] The Germans' belief in their ethnic superiority is discernible in official German records and by pseudoscientific articles in German periodicals at the time, which covered topics such as "how to deal with alien populations".[17]
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The Nazi leadership aimed to conquer Eastern European territories, subjugate and exterminate the native populations and finally replace them with ethnic German settlers.
Before and during the invasion of the Soviet Union, German troops were heavily indoctrinated with anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic ideology via movies, radio, lectures, books and leaflets.[18] Following the invasion, Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans", the "Mongol hordes", the "Asiatic flood" and the "Red beast".[19] Nazi propaganda portrayed the war against the Soviet Union as both an ideological war between German National Socialism and Jewish Bolshevism and a racial war between the Germans and the Jewish, Gypsies and Slavic Untermenschen.[20] German army commanders cast the Jews as the major cause behind the "partisan struggle".[21] The main guideline policy for German troops was "Where there's a partisan, there's a Jew, and where there's a Jew, there's a partisan."[22] Many German troops did view the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemy as sub-human.[23]
The Soviet Union had not participated in the Geneva Conventions and therefore their troops could not rely on the protection the Conventions guaranteed soldiers during times of war.[141] Hitler called for the battle against Russia to be a "struggle for existence" and accordingly authorized crimes against Soviet prisoners of war. A Nazi memorandum from 16 July 1941 recorded by Martin Bormann quotes Hitler saying, "The giant area must naturally be pacified as quickly as possible; this will happen at best if anyone who just looks funny should be shot".[142]
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Hitler issued the notorious Commissar Order, which called for all Soviet political commissars taken prisoner at the front to be shot immediately without trial.[141] German soldiers both willingly and unwillingly participated in these mass killings.[141] An estimated two million Soviet POWs died of starvation during Barbarossa alone; nothing was done for their survival.[141] The famished POWs were hardly able to walk by themselves.[143] By the end of the war, 58 percent of all Soviet POWs died in German captivity.[144][145]
Organized crimes against civilians, including women and children, were also carried out on a huge scale by the Germans and local supporters.[141] Under the command of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt ("Reich Security Head Office"), the Einsatzgruppen killing squads conducted large-scale massacres of Jews and communists in conquered Soviet territories. Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg puts the number of Jews murdered by "mobile killing operations" at 1,400,000.[146] The original instructions to kill "Jews in party and state positions" was broadened to include "all male Jews of military age" and was expanded once more to "all male Jews regardless of age." By the end of July, the Germans were regularly killing women and children.[143]
Burning houses suspected of being partisan meeting places and poisoning water wells became common practice for soldiers of the German 9th Army.[75] At Kharkov, the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, the Germans were instructed to only give food to the small number of people who worked for them, with the rest designated to slowly starve.[75] Thousands of Soviets were shipped to Germany to be used as slave labor.[141]
The citizens of Leningrad were subjected to heavy bombardment and a siege that would last 872 days and starve more than a million people to death, of whom approximately 400,000 were children below the age of 14.[147]
