Red Army

Stephen, one other significant development or at least confirmation of ongoing developments that emerged from Russia this week was that leak from Rostat confirming 412,000 Russian dead in Ukraine since February 2022, which is a staggering number.

I The Red Army lost 15,000 men in an entire decade in Afghanistan.

Why is that astonishing attrition not yet having more of an impact on Russia?

Because of Putin.

It was a Bund antagonist, but not from the right, from the Zionists, but from the communists.

But he went on to lead the Red Army in Soviet Russia.

And you have this line that kind of just like blew my mind.

In Soviet Russia, Trotsky was a hero, the first Jew to command a nation's army in Europe since 1037, when Samuel Hanagid led the troops of the Emirate of Grenada.

It's not just the Israeli right who said that.

I had an article in Haaretz that said that recently as well.

So I start by asking myself, why did the Jews of Palestine survive and the Jews of Poland murdered? And what was it about Palestine? Was it that the Jews in Palestine had such an amazing military organization that they could have held off the Nazis, the strongest war machine? that the world had known up until that point, a war machine that pushed the Red Army back to the suburbs of Moscow.

Is it that the Jews in Palestine had that strong a military organization? No.

There was an interlocking of efforts.

The Red Army does most of the sacrificing in the combat front and the Western front couldn't have survived without that.

But the Red Army is not much good if it's not supplied, fed, transported, equipped, all sorts of vital factory elements, all sorts of transport equipment, all sorts of tens of spam and millions of pairs of boots.

and rolling stock and locomotives.

And it's actually very hard politically once you've got a Cold War raging to make that point, that there is an interlocking interdependency in defeating the worst thing the species has ever seen in the middle of Europe.

I think Patrick is right.

It was an interlocked war.

And there is absolutely no doubt that had the Red Army not existed or had the Stalin-Hitler pact continued, Hitler would have taken Europe.

But they decided after the Tsar was overthrown, but when the Russian Revolution really, really began to have an impact, they ran away from home.

to join the Red Army.

And they fought in the Red Army as teenagers.

And then when, after the Bolsheviks won and defeated the counter-revolution, well, anyway, as it was nearly over in 1920, they were christened and joined the Young Communist League.

which they were very happy about and excited about.

And during the time of later years, when he would talk about corruption, he would say the contrast with the corruption was his father, who never brought home extra sugar for them, even though everybody wanted more sugar.

And he could have stolen some more for his family, but he never did.

But his mother, when he ran off to join the Red Army, His mom wondered what happened to her little boy, and so she got on a horse, which is the first time anybody in the town had ever seen a Jewish woman on horseback.

There was an interlocking of efforts.

The Red Army does most of the sacrificing in the combat front, and the Western front couldn't have survived without that.

But the Red Army is not much good if it's not supplied, fed, transported, equipped, all sorts of vital factory elements, all sorts of transport equipment, all sorts of tens of spam and millions of pairs of boots.

and rolling stock and locomotives.

And it's actually very hard politically once you've got a Cold War raging to make that point.

I think Patrick is right.

It was an interlocked war.

And there is absolutely no doubt that had the Red Army not existed or had the Stalin-Hitler pact continued, Hitler would have taken Europe.

And so they take possession of it.

Who are they? They are the Red Army.

The altar, the throne of Satan passes from Nazi Germany now into the hands of the Soviet Union.

Wow.

Oh my goodness.

Okay.

Well, first of all, the big revelation to me was I thought when you first started talking that when the red army took over the possession, that it was just because they went in there and they took over.

I just learned that.

Tenacity.

The reason they are the most decorated flying regiment in the Red Army in World War II is because they did it better and cleaner than everyone else.

They slept under their planes.

They ate under their planes.

They were over it.

I can add a misconception as well.

One that I hear, because it is not only about the Night Witches, but also about, because I did another about the Soviet women snipers who were part of the Red Army.

And the thing that I would hear is they didn't fight.

They're trained at night, on weekends, in vacation cabins in the woods.

They're trained to assassinate Soviet officers, blow up bridges, ambush Red Army convoys, and unalive collaborators in their own country if Moscow ever rolled west.

And the Swedish government has no idea they exist.

Curious, Sweden's officially neutral, hasn't been to war in over 100 years.

Think about how much sports matters in our culture.

The Flyers have won two Stanley Cups and defeated the Soviet Red Army team to lay claim to the fact that they are the best hockey team in the world.

The Phillies are about to make the playoffs for three straight years.

The Eagles are just about to hire Dick Vermeule as their head coach.