Anyone who loves freedom owes such a debt to the Red Army that it can never be repaid.”
— Ernest Hemingway
On June 22, 1944, three years to the day after German troops invaded Soviet territory, the Red Army launched Operation Bagration, a massive offensive on the eastern front aimed primarily at annihilating Army Group Center, the once mighty Nazi force that had reached the outskirts of Moscow in 1941 during Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa.
Deceptions indicating a Soviet offensive to the south around the Black Sea left Germans to the north exposed when nearly 1.5 million Soviet troops attacked. Hitler made things worse by not allowing forces caught in that onslaught to withdraw until it was too late. The German Fourth and Ninth Armies were decimated as Soviet pincers closed around them at Minsk. The Third Panzer Army was hard-hit as well. Soviets then advanced into German annexed Poland before halting to regroup in August at the Vistula River near Warsaw.
The Red Army did not renew its offensive in Poland and take Warsaw until January 1945. In the meantime, Soviet troops made great strides to the north and momentous gains to the south, where they invaded Romania and other nations allied with Germany. After Soviets seized the Ploesti oil fields and denied their output to fuel-hungry German forces, King Michael I of Romania ousted that country’s pro-Nazi dictator, and yielded to the USSR.
The final battle in the savage struggle between Germany and USSR opened before dawn on April 16, 1945, when Soviet artillery along the Oder River unleashed a thunderous bombardment that reverberated 40 miles away on the outskirts of Berlin. German troops had pulled back to avoid that pounding and held firm initially. But they could not long withstand onslaughts by the First Belorussian Front under Marshal Georgi Zhukov, hailed as the savior of Moscow, whose numerically superior forces now bludgeoned their way toward Berlin.
To the south, Marshal Ivan Konev, commander of the First Ukrainian Front, shredded the Fourth Panzer Army before pivoting toward Berlin to compete with Zhukov for that prize. “Whoever reaches Berlin first,” said Stalin, “let him take it.” Zhukov had a shorter path to the city and won the race, but Konev’s swift advance drew a noose around the capital.
On April 26, a half million Soviets launched a furious assault on central Berlin, site of the Reich Chancellery—under which lay Hitler’s bombproof Führerbunker—and the nearby Reichstag, the old German parliament building, abandoned after an arsonist set it ablaze in 1933 and Hitler seized emergency powers. Berlin’s last-ditch defenders, including Waffen-SS units and civilians of the Volkssturm, a people’s militia made up largely of boys and old men, were outmanned and outgunned. Many fought to the bitter end in subway tunnels and streets as the city became a funeral pyre for the Reich and the leader who drove it to ruin.
On April 30, Adolf Hitler committed suicide while holed up in the Führer bunker; his body was cremated by aides. That evening, Soviet troops fought their way into the Reichstag and raised their red flag over the smoldering capital. German forces conceded defeat on May 2, 1945. Five days later on May 7, 1945, Grand Adm. Karl Dönitz, left in charge of the doomed Reich and its shattered armed forces, signed a formal unconditional surrender to the victorious Allies.
Here is a list of Trans rights organizations you can support :cat-trans:
Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:
Foundations of Leninism :flag-su:
:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:
Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:
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Yesterday’s megathread :sad-boi:
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THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:
COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:
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Next Friday 7th of May at 8 pm CST we will watch
:gamer: Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris :turtle-pogger:
on hexbear cytube :og-hex-bear:
did you missed the first and second gamera films and want to watch the 3° one? well here is the link to the first movie :president-parrot: :turtle-pogger:
and Here is the link to the 2° movie :posad: :turtle-pogger: part 1 , part 2
netflix has a reality show called "Canine Intervention" which follows a dog trainer that heavily uses aversives (e-collars, prong collars) and positive punishment... fuck :angery:
i'm watching the first episode and this trainer goes into a dog with serious fear issues that manifest as defensive aggression and instructs the owner to yank on the leash and give harsh verbal corrections WHILE THE DOG IS FREAKING OUT. god.
what is the correct way to fix that i dont have a dog just outdoor cats
The problem with aversive methods is that they "work" in the short term. By punishing the animal for a particular behavior, that behavior is indeed repressed. But the thing is that you're not treating the underlying emotional response, you're just telling the dog that if it acts on those emotions, it gets hurt. What ends up happening is that the animal becomes even more fearful/anxious, but now has no way to communicate that fear/anxiety. So the handler has no way of knowing when the animal has gone "above threshold". So you have a much higher likelihood of a bite that "comes out of nowhere". But even if the animal never bites anyone, it still lives its life in fear and anxiety, which is just a shitty thing to do to a conscious being.
Behavior modification via positive reinforcement takes a long time. It's essentially cognitive behavioral therapy for dogs, where you gradually over time re-condition responses to whatever stimuli trigger them, while building engagement with the handler. Counter-conditioning and desensitization. I'm working with my own dog right now who is reactive to pretty much all new things (barking/lunging at other dogs, people). I play engagement games with him with tug and fetch, and play other games that take the form of patterns. For example, I put a treat on the ground and when he looks up at me, I say "yes!" and put another treat on the ground. Rinse and repeat. Dogs are really good at picking up patterns like this, and they feel comfortable when they know what to expect next. While this pattern game is going on, I can get a person or dog to walk nearby. While we're playing the game, he might look over at the person. But because he trusts me and understands the pattern game, the other person (which usually would elicit a fear response) becomes just another part of the game. He looks at me, I say "yes!" and put a treat on the ground, and the game continues. In this way, I can re-condition the stimulus of seeing another person from evoking a fear response to a neutral response.
There is a lot more to it, but that hopefully gives a small window into it! It's a fascinating and really rewarding process.
that sounds cool where i can learn more about this? my cousin has a dog that could use some TLC like this.
Sure thing! The pattern games come from an amazing dog agility trainer Leslie McDevitt. She has three books in a series called "Control Unleashed". The third book is specifically about helping anxious and reactive dogs. Dogs doing agility sport need to be able to focus on their handler off-leash in high distraction environments (think about a dog agility competition space where there's tons of other dogs, handlers, judges, blaring music and lights, a full stadium audience).
You might also look into Karen Overall's protocols. She is probably the world expert at behavior modification, and Leslie McDevitt studied under her. Here is a link to some of her protocols: https://belleplainevet.com/links/behavioral-protocols/. Grisha Stewart is also well known in this space with a training method called BAT (Behavioral Adjustment Training).