‘They were under the command General Hube. Inside the ring there were ten divisions, including a tank division, plus the Belgium SS Wallonia Brigade. Degrelle, the Belgian top Nazi, was among them but, along with several German generals, he escaped by plane. Pity, it would have been interesting to “interview” him. The Belgian SS were all underworld thugs and adventurers of the worst kind.’
Alexander Werth: Russia At War 1941-1945, Barrie and Rockliff, (1964), Part Seven, 1944: Russia Enters Eastern Europe – Chapter II, Close-Up I: Ukrainian Microcosm, Pages 777-778
‘Somehow or other I reassembled my Walloons, who, less disciplined than their Prussian comrades, were enjoying their freedom a little while longer. There was a stir. An Army Corps general came toward me. Shaggy and caked with frozen mud, I stood to attention. “Come,” he said to me. “The Fuhrer has telephoned three times. He is waiting for you. We’ve been looking for you everywhere for two days.” He led me away…. At Uman I took a place in one of the Fuhrer’s special planes in company with General Liebe of the Army Corps and General Gille, glorious commander of the SS Viking.’
Leon Degrelle: Campaign in Russia – The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front, Institute for Historical Review, (1985), Chapter Six – Surrounded At Cherkassy, Page 224
Hitler killed and maimed 41 million in the USSR, 11 million during the Holocaust and hundreds of thousands throughout West and North Europe between 1939-1945. Hitler was just as prone to attack White Europeans as he was to target non-White Europeans. He wanted ‘living space’ for the German people – the ‘Volk’ – whom he believed to be endowed with a racial superiority. According to Hitler, from this superiority emanated cultural and spiritual pre-eminence. It was the German ‘Volk’ (and NOT the Pan-Whiteness of contemporary nationalism) which defined Hitler’s concept of racial fitness. Apart from the English – whom Hitler believed to be the product of German settlement of the UK – Hitler had a disparaging attitude toward non-Germans. Of course, whilst bizarrely associating the contemporary Germans with ancient Tibetans – and referring to this mythological identity as being ‘Aryan’ – Hitler also assumed that there was a ‘Nordic’ race inhabiting Scandinavia. Modern genetic science has proven all these ideas to be nothing but pseudoscience.
To acquire his ‘living space’, Hitler went on the offensive and attacked nearly every country in North, South, East and West Europe. Acquiring ‘living space’ involved the ‘cleansing’ of these geographical areas of the ‘inferior’ racial groups that already inhabited these spaces. Racism and colonialism were combined with Hitler’s attitude of ‘expansion’ at any cost. This was nothing new or original – as Western Europeans had been performing similar activities in the Americas, Africa and Asia for hundreds of years. European colonialism had already involved the ideas of racial, cultural and religious superiority – with the major difference being that this activity was aimed exclusively at non-Europeans. The English invasion of Wales, Scotland and Ireland is an interesting exception as this activity extended into relatively modern times. Whereas the various ethnic groups that comprise European civilisation had continuously invaded one another’s territory in the past (when movement was ‘limited’ by existing technology) Hitler revitalised the idea that a European power – if it so wished and possessed the material capability – could invade (and occupy) any and all other European areas!
Contemporary White Supremacy (and the so-called ‘Ethno-Nationalism’ that support it) – ‘inverts’ historical events as part of its belief system. This deficient thinking can be found in the work of George Lincoln Rockwell and Leon Degrelle as early the 1960s and may be considered far-right revisionism.
a) Hitler was NOT a ‘Pan European’ and did NOT view all ‘Europeans’ as being ‘equal’ or racially ‘superior’.
b) Hitler’s notion of ‘Aryanism’ referred to ethnic Germans ONLY and NOT ‘White’ people in general.
c) Hitler’s ‘Volk’ has a special place in Nazi ideology. This ‘Volk’ possessed its own ‘racial’ power through which it could ‘expand’ into any and all geographical areas.
d) Warfare was the key Nazi policy to secure full-employment (internally) and achieve all political objectives (externally).
e) The eradication of other contending ‘White’ races was part of Nazi ideology. There was NO solidarity between the White races as far as Hitler was concerned. Hitler’s betrayal of fascist Poland and his invasion of Northern and Western Europe confirm this. Other ‘White’ Europeans could support Hitler until he had NO further use for them.
f) The USSR was a federation of 15 countries – not all of them ‘White’. Scientific Socialism purses material ‘science’ as the guiding light for social and cultural development and relegates religion to the private sphere. Jewish people do not and did not control the USSR or its political ideology.
g) Socialism emerges from within each ‘Nation’ State – when the dialectical conditions are right. When the false consciousness that shackles a particular faction of the working-class is thrown -off – then the working-class reorganises itself and predatory capitalism is rejected and replaced by Socialist realism.
h) Socialism is NOT forcibly spread from one country to another by an external force – and does NOT mirror European colonialism in any way. The concept of ‘Internationalism’ evolves out of the necessity of many ‘freed’ factions of the worldwide working-class needing to progressively and effectively communicate in a fraternal manner.
i) Hitler (and his followers) did NOT ‘defend’ Europe from ‘Communism’ as many of the far-right (past and present) erroneously claim, Communism (‘Socialism’) is not spread by an external force. Socialism is NOT ‘Nazism’ – and emerges ‘internally’ from within a working-class population when the socio-economic conditions are correct.
j) Most of Hitler’s victims were ‘White’ Europeans – a point ignored by contemporary ‘White Nationalist’ movements. The Jewish people are a special case which I fully acknowledge to be a separate category. Jewish people are part and parcel of the Socialist world movement – but Socialism is NOT the synagogue writ large.
What I present below are sections from two long chapters extracted from two very different books. These two books tell the same story from diametrically opposed perspectives – namely that of the utter destruction of the Nazi German Army (Wehrmacht) and its associated (foreign) “SS” (Volunteer) Units operating in the Ukraine theatre. The two books in question are as follows:
Anti-Nazi German
1) Alexander Werth: Russia At War 1941-1945, Barrie and Rockliff, (1964), Part Seven, 1944: Russia Enters Eastern Europe – Chapter II, Close-Up I: Ukrainian Microcosm, Pages 771-812
Pro-Nazi German
2) Leon Degrelle: Campaign in Russia – The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front, Institute for Historical Review, (1985), Chapter Six – Surrounded At Cherkassy, Pages 163-229
My copy of Werth’s ‘Russia At War’ is a First Edition (hardback) copy which I acquired many years ago at the book-selling village located at Hay-on-Wye. I have read and re-read this book many times – making copious quotations from it. As for Degrelle’s book – this is the 1985 (hardback) edition produced by the far-right (US-based) ‘Institute for Historical Review’ – an entity which essentially presents the Hitlerite perspective in the English language. Although my copy appears to be a ‘First Edition’ – it is in fact a British imprint issued through the ‘Crecy Books’ division of the Bristol-based ‘Cathedral Publishing’. Make of that what you will. However, Degrelle’s book started life in the French language when it was published under the title ‘front de l’est 1941-1945’ or ‘The Eastern Front – 1941-1945’ – first published in 1969. In other words, this book appeared just four-years after Werth published his book – which reveals that Degrelle ‘escaped’ from the Ukrainian battlefield in an aeroplane especially sent by Hitler to rescue high-ranking Germans – and those non-Germans considered to be of more ‘propaganda’ value alive. The ‘Belgian’ Leon Degrelle (being the Commander of the “SS” Wallonia Division) was one such person – who shared the small Hitler-supplied aeroplane with the likes of ‘Herbert Gille’ – the German ‘Commander’ of the “SS” Viking Division and ‘Lieutenant General Theobald Lieb’ the German ‘Commander’ of the ‘XLII Army Corps’.
These two chapters examine the events surrounding the battle of the Korsun–Cherkasy Pocket – fought between January 24th– February 16th, 1944 – which happened during the Soviet Dnieper–Carpathian offensive in Ukraine.
Werth’s work was published in 1964 whilst Degrelle published his work (originally written in the French language) during 1969 – around five-years after Werth. Whilst studying the content of each of the two respective chapters, I am convinced that Degrelle is a coward who read through the published work of Alexander Werth before plagiarising the content and attempting to pass-off the finished product as being his personal ‘war diary’ of events that supposedly happened around 25-years earlier. To comprehend the method Degrelle’s deception used – the general reader must first understand how a soldier perceives ‘combat’ when he is involved in it. Evidence tends to point to the fact that Degrelle did not see frontline service and was used by the Nazi Germans as an aid to anti-Soviet and pro-Hitlerite ‘propaganda’ during Nazi Germany’s invasion of the USSR. This approach was taken as Nazi Germany was aided in its attempted genocide of the Soviet population by numerous other (often ‘Catholic’) countries. Leon Degrelle was from a well-known Catholic (far-right) political party in Belgium and served as an important figure-head for non-German recruitment and retainment of anti-Soviet ‘Volunteers’.
Leon Degrelle received ‘Special Treatment’ – but unlike that meted-out to the Jews, disabled, homosexuals, dissidents and other so-called ‘Enemies of the State’ – the ‘Special Treatment’ applied to Degrelle involved good and ample food, regular sleep, regular ‘Leave’ and mostly rearguard activities when not entertaining the frontline troops. Any danger he happened to be in was incidental rather than intended – and the result of a sudden Soviet attack and successful breakthrough at an unexpected time. Photographs of the era concerned that feature Degrelle seem as if they were taken during training days – and have a bizarre lackadaisical nature about them considering the mass-killing that was supposedly going on! Degrelle is smiling, well-fed, well-dressed (although with scuffed-boots) and is wearing his Hitlerite ‘Iron Cross’ for all to see! Although Werth states that the “SS” were generally better looked after then the ordinary Nazi German soldiers – I believe that Degrelle, who would not have had any real ‘strategic’ understanding of the Nazi German war effort – deliberately usurped Werth’s beautifully written and meticulously well-researched over-all battle-plan. As a Journalist who could read, write and speak the Russian language (a feat Degrelle could not match) – Werth visited hundreds of places, interviewed hundreds of participants, and provided in-depth research – a mass of information he reorganised and carefully edited over a 20-year period after WWII.
As a foot soldier, despite being a supposed ‘Commander’ (the term is used lightly in Degrelle’s case), he would have only possessed a tactical knowledge of the situation at best. This is to say that he would have only known about the immediate position in front of himself and his men (the so-called ‘Wallonia’ SS). All that matters for individual soldiers is the need to survive. This immediacy of action only requires local knowledge and the effective processing of changing circumstances. The failure to carry out this task effectively leads to the death of Officers and the men they command. Given that Degrelle did not possess the over-all strategic information he conveys in his 1969 book – the question becomes ‘where did he get his historical data from?’ – and the logical answer is that he lifted it from the meticulous work of Alexander Werth. I state this as the structure of Degrelle’s narrative mirrors that of Werth’s exactly. This is yet another example of the ‘lying’ utilised by the far-right which has its origin in Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’. All that matters is the ‘result’ and not the ‘means’. Degrelle deliberately falsified his biography by inventing a ‘heroic’ narrative for himself and then ‘inserting’ it into his vague memory of events.
Degrelle possessed NO operational reason to possess the knowledge he presents in his 1969 biography – but more to the point – he did NOT possess the academic ability to research his own military history simply because he could not read Russian or German, and that his far-right political views (and historical membership of the “SS”) excluded him from Soviet and Russian historical sources – as well as most German Archives (East and West). He probably purchased a copy of Werth’s book in 1964 and spent the next five-years stealing Werth’s work and fabricating his own insertion into the plot. The original publishing of the book in ‘French’ was probably a sloppy attempt at throwing people off the ‘plagiarism’ scent. After-all, the modern science of Criminology states that quite often those individuals who willingly ‘insert’ themselves into Police investigations are usually either directly responsible for the crime in question – or were involved in the committing of the crime is some way. Leon Degrelle was most certainly a ‘War Criminal’ – albeit one that went unpunished and who has served as a ‘Poster Boy’ for the political far-right ever since. As with all members of the far-right, it is important to continuously expose their lies and efforts to ‘mislead’ and ‘deceive’.
‘Inside the pocket XI and XXXXII Corps had a combined strength of six divisions, two of them very weak. The strongest was the SS Wiking Division, which had two armoured infantry regiments, a tank regiment, and the Belgian Volunteer Brigade Wallonien. The safety of the Belgian Rexist leader, Leon Degrelle, serving in the later, was a source of some concern for Hitler. The first orders to the two corps instructed them to hold where they were, but that was clearly impossible since both were already vastly overextended and now would have also to form a front on the south.’
Earl F Ziemke: Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East, Center of Military History – United States Army – Washington DC, (1968), Chapter XI – Offensives on Both Flanks – the South Flank, Page 231
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 