What If Everything You Learned About the Soviet Union & WW2 Was Wrong?

追加: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Why you decided to write a book and to stand up against rewriting or attempts to rewrite the history?

[00:00:09]>> Lies about the Soviet Union and Soviet history, in particular regarding the Second World War, are essential to, you know, what's going on now around the world. The neocons, they have this whole narrative about the Second World War where they equate the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. They say that America is the antithesis of both systems and that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were the same and that's a big part of the mythology that is used to justify all the wars that are happening around the world. And it's just a whole pack of lies. My whole life I was told that the Soviet Union never accomplished anything. They were just poor and starving the entire time because communism just doesn't work. It just naturally doesn't work. And I accepted that to be the truth, but I got vaguely interested in socialism or whatever as as a young person. So, I remember I went to the library and I got a copy of one of Leon Trotsky's book, Revolution Betrayed. And the first chapter of that book, I figured, you know, Trotsky, Stalin killed him, right? So, chapter one of his book, Revolution Betrayed, was What has been achieved? And it was all economic statistics. And about how much the Soviet Union had multiplied electrification, about how much, you know, they were producing in terms of steel, and raising people up out of poverty. And I thought, well, this can't be true because every Everybody knows that communism just doesn't work. It just They were all just starving the whole time. And so, I went and checked those statistics.

[00:01:26]And I I got the old encyclopedia that they had at the library and I was checking and I saw that the Soviet Union had massive industrial success. I mean, so many people went from being an impoverished country to a modern industrial society in a very short time.

[00:01:40]And I thought, I've been lied to. And so much of the American mythology and the the justification of military interventions around the world is based on this mythology about Soviet history.

[00:01:50]This idea that somehow the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were on the same side in World War II, which is like, how can anyone think something so absurd? I mean, the Soviet Union gave more lives than anyone to defeat Hitler.

[00:02:02]Um and just so much of the mythology is part of what leads Americans to support wars, what US leaders use to justify wars around the world. That's why we have to just take it on head-on. We just have to counter it, and that's why I've been so interested in all of this.

[00:02:15]>> Yeah, it seems that without normalization, so to say, of fascism, without legalization of fascism, so without rewriting it in this way, they cannot support the right sector in Ukraine, for example. Because they're openly glorifying, not just supporting, they're glorifying Bandera, who aligned with with with the Nazis.

[00:02:34]Uh yeah, we see the same thing in other countries, but what's going on in the Middle East right now cuz the the Zionists, I wouldn't call them Jews cuz the Zionists, yeah, they're using the same methods, and you cannot justify them if you don't normalize what what the Nazis did, right?

[00:02:53]>> Well, sure. And I mean, the way that they have kind of covered up and and just, you know, tried to justify support for fascist sympathizing forces, forces that take the opposite side in the Second World War, uh is they have this narrative, well, the Soviets were just as bad or the Soviets were somehow worse. Dr. Timothy Snyder of Yale, I I take him on in the book quite a bit. I mean, he's made his career uh with this historical revisionism.

[00:03:18]>> Bloodlands, yeah.

[00:03:18]>> Yeah, yeah, just this historical revisionism, trying to equate the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. When from 1935, you know, August 2nd, 1935, you had the Communist International, they had their Seventh World Congress, and they announced, we have to build a global movement against fascism. And all over the world, uh people that were inspired by the Communist International were opposing Hitler and opposing the Nazis.

[00:03:40]You had the Battle of Cable Street in London where the the workers went out and battled against Oswald Mosley, the Nazi sympathizer in in Britain. You had volunteers going to Spain to defend the Spanish Republic, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from America and others going to to fight Nazis and fascist sympathizers in Spain, you know, and when the Nazis had a rally in Madison Square Garden in in New York City, you had thousands of communists that came to counter it. All over the world, the communists were building an anti-fascist movement. And in fact, during the McCarthy period that came after the Second World War, they had different categories of potential communists and subversives. You know, you had a communist, you had what was called a fellow traveler, which maybe you weren't in the party, but you were too close or too friendly. One of the categories they had for a subversive in America was what they called a premature anti-fascist.

[00:04:25]>> [laughter] >> You know, you were you were anti-fascist, but too soon, too soon.

[00:04:29]So, you you might be a communist.

[00:04:31]>> Wow.

[00:04:32]>> Yeah.

[00:04:32]>> W- One of the things I noted, um, too, and we've discussed this, actually, was, um, how there's a myth in the United States about the Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe, right? And that myth still perpetuates today in in this time.

[00:04:49]Um, and you know, I agree with you, Caleb, because I grew up in the United States and was educated there. I grew up with the with propaganda. I'm older than you, but it was very strong propaganda about World War II. America was the hero. America saved the world from the Nazis.

[00:05:07]27 million people in the Soviet Union were not even mentioned. So, it was again college where I got my great awakening and from my parents, actually, who were well-read, who kind of let me know, "Mm, what you're learning isn't quite the truth." Um, so, you have this strong propaganda, but one of those pieces I wanted you to talk about was this myth about the Soviet Union.

[00:05:29]>> Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, right? They use that as their strongest argument and they say, I mean, they use it as an argument to prove that the USSR even wanted to invade Europe first. So, they appeased Hitler. That That's how they use this argument. Which was definitely not the case.

[00:05:46]>> From the moment Hitler took power, the Soviet Union was saying to all the Western countries, we need to form an alliance against him. And the Western countries rebuffed them. And for year after year, they they mobilized the anti-fascist popular front movement. You know, in America that meant supporting Roosevelt against fascism and labor unions and all of this. And after year after year of trying to build this global anti-fascist alliance, which the Western countries weren't interested in, they made a non-aggression pact in 1939, which is basically they drew a line down Europe and the understanding was Nazis don't go on this side of it and the Soviets don't go on this side. That's all it was. And when the Nazis invaded Poland, right? The government in Poland collapsed and went into exile in Britain. And the government in Poland never declared war on the Soviet Union.

[00:06:30]We're we're always told it was a joint invasion of Poland. It wasn't because if it had been a joint invasion, the government in exile of Poland would have declared war against the Soviet Union, which they never did. The government in Poland was overthrown by the Nazis. They went into exile. And then the Soviet Union brought its troops right up to that line saying you won't go any further. And there was a handshake, you know, an understanding like you we have this pact, this agreement, which the Nazis eventually broke, which they knew they would eventually break. And that Anna Louise Strong, a writer that I quote, she called it the pact that blocked Hitler. It was to buy time and it was because of the failure of the Western countries to really sufficiently oppose the Nazis. And that they were trying to build a global anti-fascist movement and they temporarily bought time and were able to prepare for what they knew was inevitable. I mean, you watch Soviet films from the 1930s. They knew there would be a German invasion.

[00:07:16]It was almost inevitable that when the Western economies started to collapse with the Great Depression, they would start to mobilize an attack against the Soviet Union. It was coming. They were preparing for it. And that's why they had the five-year plans to mobilize and build up the country to prepare for that invasion.

[00:07:31]>> High speed.

[00:07:32]>> Yeah, that that the idea that there was any kind of sympathy or alliance, that's just not the truth. I mean, the 1939 pact was a necessary move that was very strategic. All right? Russians are very good at chess and I think it was a brilliant chess move.