From the Mundane Luxury page.
Imagine believing soldiers would steal washing machines of all things lmao. Like just picture some guy lugging one around along with 30+ kg of gear or trying to stuff it into the crew compartment of a BTR-80 along with himself and his squadmates.
There is an ounce of truth to the WWII anecdote. Both Soviet and Allied troops were stunned at how well German civilians were living, even in 1945, compared to the Polish and French people they had just liberated. It mostly eliminated any idea that the Germans were also suffering or were victims of Hitler.
Excellent point and it's funny how the west still likes to have it both ways, to simultaneously paint the Soviets as backwards savages while also painting the nazi german citizens as poor little smol beans who couldn't be blamed for mean ol' hitler
The quote
In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
-- Michael Parenti, Blackshirts And Reds
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how well German civilians were living, even in 1945,
It helps when you report your neighbors for being Jewish/homosexuals/slavic/communists/Roma/Jehovah's Witnesses/disabled to the SS who take them away to death camps and you get to steal all their stuff. Especially if they didn't manage to hide their valuables to smuggle into ghettos or concentration camps and you got to take those things for yourself. In some cases, people took over entire businesses, restaurants, or shops from their "undesirable" neighbors.
Would be interesting to see how much wealth transfer the average German got from the extermination. What I want to know is how much it costs to turn the average lib into a murderer. How many Big Macs would it cost? Maybe we can compare it to how much the average Israeli gets and start a MacHitler index or something.
wealth transfer mostly benefited the upper and earliest members of the nazi party but they used membership in the party as propaganda tool, since you basically "needed" membership to land a "good job" and get promoted. The possibility of getting shit from the dispossession of undesirables was a major factor in the Nazis' getting support.
One of the major excuses for Lebensraum was that Germany was too poor due to lack of natural resources (I.E not enough land to feed people) and starvation-prone and thats why the needed to colonize Poland, Ukraine and Russia. So they needed more "room" to "live".
It does not even make sense, are we supposed to believe Russians don't have TVs?
We're supposed to believe Ukrainians in 2022 had a higher standard of living than Russians lol
Even by the overtly capitalist measure of HDI, in 2020 Russia had a higher HDI than Ukraine (49th vs 78th).
In 2024 Russia is still higher (52nd vs 77th).
in 2020 Russia had a higher HDI than Ukraine (49th vs 78th).
In 2024 Russia is still higher (52nd vs 77th).
So if the war lasts 25 more years then Ukraine will have a higher standard of living than Russia!
If the war lasts another 25 years it'll be the Polish the Ukrainians will have to be dragging off the streets and sending to war.
Please explain the logistics of a soldier in the field lugging around a 60+kg washing machine everywhere. Or getting it into an APC or IFV, which are not known for their roomy interiors. Seriously, where is there space for a washing machine plus a full crew complement in here? Why would a soldier choose it over jewelry, electronics, or anything else that has a much higher value for its weight and can comfortably fit in their pockets?
Again, even going by HDI which is a flawed measure, Buryatia is more developed than any region of Ukraine by some margin.
Obviously there are still nomadic peoples who live throughout the Russian Far East who may be surprised by a washing machine, but this would not generally be the case for any of the urbanized population.
Lmfao Guatemala had a higher standard than Ukraine in 2022 and it’s only gotten higher since the war started
Russia Today is distributed by carrier pigeons in tapestry form, and the spent tapestries are woven into rugs that they then hang on the walls of their apartments
I remember the reporting about Russians being astounded at the Ukrainian roads because Russia just has dirt roads or something.
Which must then be reconciled with the idea that Russia has state funded internet troll farms. Apparently Russia has modern computers with internet access and the same infrastructure as when Napoleon invaded.
Do they think the internet gets delivered via Troika?
Nevermind that Ukraine was part of the USSR and was part of the land between Russia and the probable European front of a future WW3 so they probably built some roads there.
And yeah the Red Army was probably astounded by the German quality of life because if you just got invaded by genocidal maniacs screaming about they needed to kill you to have a better life and you invaded their country and found out their quality of life wasn't that bad... You'd probably be really fucking confused as to why they killed millions of you to begin with! They had nice stuff! Why the fuck did they murder your people?! What more could the world owe them?!
And yeah the Red Army was probably astounded by the German quality of life because if you just got invaded by genocidal maniacs screaming about they needed to kill you to have a better life and you invaded their country and found out their quality of life wasn't that bad... You'd probably be really fucking confused as to why they killed millions of you to begin with! They had nice stuff! Why the fuck did they murder your people?! What more could the world owe them?!
I've been trying to think of how to put into words how this paragraph moves me, but I can't. I can't imagine the pain of having to endure a genocide/holocaust by bullet by people who aren't even desperately fighting for their lives, just fighting to have more. Honestly not nearly enough Nazis saw a noose at the end of WW2.
For what it's worth I'll leave you with this, because it certainly brings me much comfort to think about; General "Hap" Arnold set out this dining table for the accused at Nuremberg:
Show
This table dines fascists
And yeah its fucking mind boggling. The whole "Germany was essentially forced into fascism by the depression and the treaty of Versailles" thing has been debunked. They wanted more. And by God did they get something in return but it wasn't what they'd hoped.
You'd probably be really fucking confused as to why they killed millions of you to begin with! They had nice stuff! Why the fuck did they murder your people?! What more could the world owe them?!
Irl confusion WAS the most common feeling that soviets had about german nazism, after like anger of course.
shocked that Ukrainians had easy access to things like chocolate
The standard issue Russian armed forces MRE has tea bags, sugar, caramel hard candies, and multiple fruit jams with crackers. Every soldier gets this every single day
What the fuck are they talking about lmao I feel like if you've got all that, chocolate is probably not that surprising at all. Like 90% of military rations in the world have chocolate
It's a classic thing against [bad country]. During the cold war they said the same shit like how bad it was that East Germans had no coffee
Well no real coffee! Only cheap powder one!!1!1 and muh no jeans and bananas as well! The horror!
Of course they didn't have as much tropical fruit, they didn't overthrow socialist governments to get it cheaper
why doesn't the larger country simply grind humans from the weaker country into dust for cheap banana? are they stupid?
They never even got to have the wonders of Nescafe
No fr I watched that decent-ish spy show from Germany set before the re-unification (literally Deutschland '83, '86 and '89) and tried to hammer home how bad it was they couldn't get the same treats that the West Germans had. The funniest part was the last season of the show where they were like "Walls are bad, Mr Trump! We should know because we're German!" in the end of season montage.
This story, as with the many others like it, is spread maliciously. The people spreading it are not fools. They are not suffering from a mental defect, but from a moral one. They have chosen to bear false witness, and they do so knowingly.
The kitten-burners seem to fulfill some urgent need. They give us someone we can clearly and correctly say we’re better than. Their extravagant cruelty makes us feel better about ourselves because we know that we would never do what they have done. They thus function as signposts of depravity, reassuring the rest of us that we’re Not As Bad As them, and thus letting us tell ourselves that this is the same thing as us being good.
People like Ken Lay or Hugh Hefner don’t work as signposts of depravity because we’re capable, on some level, of envying them for their greed and their hedonism. But we’re not the least bit jealous of the kitten-burners. Their cruelty seems both arbitrary and unrewarding, allowing us to condemn it without reservation.
https://redsails.org/false-witnesses/
Also, just forgetting that even before the war Ukraine was much poorer than Russia. IIRC, the are one of the only post Soviet States to not even recover to their 1980s GDP per capita.
The amount of money and effort that has been put into making Russia seem like an underdeveloped shithole would be enough accumulatively to make another Russia. People fucking believe it too, like the world's other superpower for the 20th century was just mideval peasants for the most part and/or all.ofmthar infrastructure just suddenly disappeared in the 90s. These people are morons
That would be nice, but it's the result of an intentional and motivated result of over 100 years of dehumanizing Russians as a result of the cold war. The time this was the most true was under the tsars and there's no coincidence of that. There's arrogance as a result but the cause was a long existing concerted effort.
Even before the cold war mind you. This has been a thing since at least the crimean war.
You could go earlier even. Western Europe has always been wicked chauvinstic towards the east. I was gonna say fuckimg napoleon made that mistake but really he wasn't even the first either. Thers midevsl examples cause orthodox church and not catholic. Russians and Eastern Europe in general has always been given shit.
And the amenities the Russians are supposed to be surprised about weren't things like TVs or candy bars. The local resident claimed they were in awe of their gas and private baths lmao.
amazing.
i'm sure the Russians just stopped dead in their tracks and asked "Wait, are we the baddies?"
Took one step into Ukraine and immediately succumbed to their immaculate treatlerism
The right once again showing it’s the ultimate example of the villain with good publicity trope.
Nah, they'd call them Designated Villains.
EDIT: the edit made my reply un-senseable now. i am in shatteres.
i'm sure Red Army soldiers in 1945 were absolutely astonished at the variation in standards of living between East Prussian bourgeois and militant nobility and the common people there
also WW2 Germany near the end of the war, famous for it's abundant resources, food, supplies, ammo, and overall abundance.
East Prussia was rather uh poor, expect for the big landlord and noble estates, which tbf by that point most of the working class had left for the industrial regions and Königsberg.
tvtropes is such garbage lmao sometimes i regret ever discovering that site
Half of the time they barely give the right tropes. Also they forget important ones! Like why is there no trope for “the gruff white dude who protects the innocent female child character, which brings out forgotten joy due to muh war crimes” that was popular in most media in like 2010-2021
Wow, they really don't have one for the "serious hairy dad" trope?
one thing that i remember recently was one of the house of the dragon season 2 episodes, where rhaenyra and that one woman who joins her cause, who previously were depicted having sex with men, start passionately making out
and tvtropes put the trope "Ambiguously Bi" on it
yeah, very ambiguous
it made so much sense once i discovered that it was founded by joss whedon fans
tvtropes is good for mindless scrolling, but by god that place is such a nazi cesspool. pretty much the worst of reddit
It broke my "blue curtains" phase that I had through highschool and early uni, though could have been a lot better on its part
Lmao what even is this nonsense Ukraine was one of the poorest nations in the world their GDP per capita was like $300 IIRC
https://www.boredpanda.com/cheap-apartment-rent-russia/
A literal 30 second search for "Russian Apartments" debunks this. But who am I kidding, your average burger can't be assed to do that much research and instead just opens their mouth for whatever state department propaganda is thrown their way.They are also not a democracy, are extremely homophobic, sexist to the point that you can legally hit your wife and have a terrible attitude towards human rights. I am not a fan of USA but Russia is not a good place.
Is this comment on the article trying to draw a distinction between Russia and the US?
Yeh. It's just smooth brain no thoughts silliness, like even a cursory look at Russian should suggest how BS this is, and yet.
Also notable; Mordor was by far the most industrialized nation in Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age, so make of that what you will.
Ok WW2, I kinda see. In IMF-shocked and Privatized Ukraine? not rlly
Yeah Ukraine is the only post-soviet country that still hasn't dug itself out of 1991 in terms of wealth. So stupid.
i could walk into a hut in africa and i wouldn't be shocked to see a tv. why would russians be shocked to see ukranians have tvs lmao
I think the news was probably just testing the waters to see how stupid their audiences really are; turns out very.
