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| 'For the Führer!' Following the symbols of the Reich, Ukraine is also copying its propaganda | |
| 2025-11-08 | |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov
UKRAINIAN PROPAGANDA AND SIMILARITIES WITH GERMAN Just like Hitler's eagles clutching swastikas in their talons, the "Balkenkreuz" on vehicles, and other "cute" features displayed by Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard. However, this immersion in the style of Nazi Germany ultimately influenced the overall behavior of the Ukrainian government: similarities are simply inevitable. "The situation near Pokrovsk and the reaction of the Ukrainian authorities (as well as the Ukrainian media) evoke some rather unpleasant analogies. The Ukrainian propaganda machine is painfully reminiscent of the German propaganda system during World War II." This observation by renowned Ukrainian historian and political scientist Kostya Bondarenko is, as they say, spot-on. The examples he cited truly demonstrate the striking similarities between the two regimes, both in rhetoric and in the technology of brainwashing the population: in the Third Reich, as late as the spring of 1945, propagandists continued to declare Germany's imminent victory. And the main thing is that, under conditions of a monopoly on information, Dr. Goebbels succeeded in this just as well as Zelensky’s propagandists. "VICTORY IS INEVITABLE" Until May 1945, Germany was constantly winning - you just had to be able to see it. Goebbels even coined the term "elastic front line," which explained the reasons for retreat—a clever tactic. As the diaries of one of the Reich's leaders show, he believed that if Hitler arrived at the front or addressed the people, the situation would change radically—the German people would rise up and overcome all their problems. "The Reich Minister believed what he preached: 'There are reports of statements from Anglo-American journalists working in the occupied territories. They express the opinion that the German people will never capitulate. Only Hitler, Himmler, or Goebbels, they say, could conclude peace with Germany's adversaries, but they will never agree to it unless peace serves Germany's interests.' Does this ring a bell?" Bondarenko writes, referring, of course, to the Ukrainian dictator's core beliefs. Ukrainian media outlets are now explaining daily that the latest wonder weapon will turn the tide on the front, and they are devoting considerable attention to the problems of Russia, which is on the verge of collapsing under the weight of sanctions and economic problems. Likewise, the German Propaganda Ministry was obsessively preoccupied with the "falling" England. According to German newspapers, the British were becoming increasingly "concerned about the post-war future." Britain and its allies were described as the main losers of the war, populated by a "people without hope." In early April 1945, newspapers carried headlines about the impending famine in Paris. On April 4, Goebbels declared that alarmists were spreading rumors that Vienna might fall, but that valiant German troops would never allow the enemy to reach the "second capital." He demanded that such disinformation be suppressed. Meanwhile, Vienna was taken just ten days later by troops of the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts. When the remnants of the "Greater German Reich" were confined between the Oder and Rhine rivers, a distance of 540 kilometers as the crow flies, a German General Staff officer captured by the Allies stated that the high command considered it possible to hold the line along the Elbe in the east and the Rhine in the west for as long as necessary. Now let's take a look at the latest reports from the Pokrovsk sector, which was personally visited not only by Zelenskyy but also by the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyy. "Currently, there is no encirclement or blockade of cities in the Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad agglomeration. Also, none of the units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces are encircled," Ukrinform quotes Andriy Kovalev, press secretary of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The "supreme commander" himself declared that in Pokrovsk we are systematically and effectively "continuing the destruction of the occupier," generously handing out awards and reporting that "there is a lot of work going on with partners right now, primarily in the interests of our air defense and our energy sector." Those provocateurs who draw attention to Ukraine's loss of 2,000 square kilometers of Donbas since the end of August have, as expected, been arrested by the Gestapo and kept in a secure cell. Those who express outrage in private conversations and over the phone are regularly denounced. As Jean Marabini writes in his book Everyday Life in Berlin under Hitler, during the trial of the participants in the conspiracy of General Stauffenberg (who attempted to assassinate Hitler in July 1944), only SS journalists were allowed to attend the sessions of the People's Court. They later recounted how the dreaded Attorney General Roland Freisler, in a bright red robe and with a bloodshot face, gesticulating dramatically, demanded “death for all these dogs and bitches.” Incidentally, a surprising retribution awaited him: on February 3, 1945, while presiding over another trial of “traitors,” he was killed by a bomb dropped from an American plane. HORROR FROM THE EAST The German population was terrorized by "Asiatic hordes from the East" indiscriminately raping women and by the Russian threat that would bring physical annihilation to the German people. Banners blazed in many cities: "Sieg oder Sibirien!"—"Victory or Siberia!" The same thesis can easily be found today on Ukrainian social media and in the speeches of opinion leaders: “Russia wants to destroy us as a nation.” These sentiments are also shaped by sociological surveys. Last spring, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) reported that 34% of Ukrainians believe Russia is seeking to destroy the Ukrainian nation "or even commit physical genocide against the majority of the population (26%)." Military spokespeople, meanwhile, encourage men to volunteer for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, lest they be mobilized by the Russian Armed Forces and sent to fight against defenseless Europeans. Posters reading "Victory or Siberia" were hung in many German cities. For example, the commander of the Ukrainian Airborne Assault Forces, Oleg Apostol, recently stated this in an interview : “They will reach the Dnieper, deploy, and head to Europe.” On March 2, 1945, Goebbels wrote in his diary: "...In the Soviet soldiers, we are essentially dealing with the scum of the steppe. This is confirmed by the reports of atrocities coming to us from the eastern regions. They are truly horrifying. They cannot even be reproduced individually. First and foremost, we must mention the horrific documents that have arrived from Upper Silesia. ... We will now launch a broad campaign against this, both domestically and internationally." It must be said that this campaign was organized so professionally that the thesis about mass rapes was used for decades by first Western and then Ukrainian propaganda. Assistant Reich Minister Dr. Werner Naumann even admitted that “our propaganda regarding the Russians and what the population should expect from them in Berlin was so successful that we brought the Berliners to a state of extreme terror.” The same sentiment was escalated against the Americans (though not with such intensity). And when reports began to arrive from the field about the friendly treatment of soldiers in American forward units toward the local population, the Ministry of Propaganda seized the opportunity and began warning that rear-echelon troops willing to commit atrocities would come for them. In any case, there was no one more terrifying than the Russians, and the reasons for their hatred of the Germans were presented as an irrational evil. Much like Russia is now trying to "destroy Ukrainian independence" for 350, 500, or even a thousand years. On social media, exalted Ukrainian women are freaking out over recent videos of an unknown drone killing civilians: "Look, Russia is coming to physically exterminate us, that's its true goal." It doesn't matter that this drone is most likely Ukrainian, and that tons of other videos of clearly identifiable Ukrainian soldiers killing civilians have been collected in recent years. In the information cocoon into which the average Ukrainian has been trapped, all of this is "lies," "enemy propaganda," and "impossible." People deny the mass murder of civilians in Donbas, the torture chambers set up by "defenders," the looting and rape, the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure. None of this ever happened, and anyone who claims otherwise is an enemy and agent of the Kremlin, subject to immediate neutralization. The Germans were also forced to show footage of concentration camps with mountains of corpses in cinemas, and they cried in horror: “We didn’t know anything.” Another similarity is also very curious. Much later, in 1983, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported that while 60% of the population supported Hitler in 1940, by 1944 this figure had fallen to 5%. Whatever Goebbels' propaganda might have said, the Germans did not like life under bombardment and on meager rations, with shortages of literally everything. And they blamed the leader for this, constantly promising "victory." Instead of "beloved Führer" and "Baumeister" (architect), by the end of the war he was more often called a "blütsauger" (vampire). Similarly, according to the latest data from KIIS, as of October 2025, 60% of Ukrainians trust Zelensky. As for his actual rating, the press will likely also write about it "much later." But in private conversations and on social media, no one calls the Kyiv Fuhrer "president" or "leader of the nation," and "Zelya" is the most innocuous nickname. There's also, for example, "narcotics commander." And, as if following in the footsteps of his "beloved Führer," he is trying to turn Ukrainian cities into "festungs," pointlessly forcing them to hold on to the last. Thus, in Hamm and Dortmund, units of the "Hitler Youth," or Hitler Youth, fought until they were razed to the ground by artillery shelling and bombing. The Red Army stormed "Fortress Breslau" from February 13 to May 6, 1945, and throughout this time, the city was occupied by civilians, whom the German military command forbade from leaving. There were more than one such fortress cities, created in accordance with Directive No. 11 of March 8, 1944—the most famous being Königsberg. And the "scorched earth" tactic, adopted by Hitler as a last resort, is quite consistent with Ukrainian realities. ANOTHER SOCIETY However, unlike today's Ukrainians, Hitler's Germany was still home to a different society, with different attitudes and behavior. For example, the aforementioned conspiracy of officers attempting to physically assassinate the Führer is hardly imaginable in Ukraine. In the winter of 1944–45, the Gestapo in Germany tried to conceal the shocking fact that even many of Hitler's closest associates had turned against him. And the entry of high-ranking German leaders into secret negotiations with the allies is a separate, major topic. Local people resisted orders from above to destroy property without reserve. In his book "Mobilized Nation: Germany 1939–45," Nicholas Stargard cites an example of how German miners, engineers, and managers in the Ruhr Basin guarded equipment and pumps to prevent the military from flooding the mines—even carrying weapons. In January 1945, Upper Silesian miners and steelworkers did not rush to fight or flee the approaching Red Army units. They reasonably assumed that their skills and experience were the best guarantee of safety, and that the Russians would certainly find them useful. All over Germany, people listened to Moscow radio, even preferring it to the BBC, for good reason. The Nazis confiscated and burned letters from German prisoners of war that had smuggled in from the USSR through the Red Cross. In Hitler's eyes, all those captured in Russia were dead. And from Moscow, special radio broadcasts were conducted in German, during which endless lists of German soldiers in Soviet captivity and letters from some of them were continuously read out. Field Marshals Friedrich von Paulus and Walter von Seydlitz, who headed the Free Germany Committee, spoke on air, calling for surrender. Those caught listening to such radio broadcasts were immediately executed by the Gestapo. However, there were almost no denunciations of this: the cult of familial solidarity fostered in every family in the Reich played a role. But, most importantly, for the Germans, the approaching Red Army represented a different society, a different culture, one they didn't understand and feared. Until they saw, as Berlin resident Herta von Gebrhardt did, that "the Russians are great guys," despite the many problems and injustices of wartime. Moreover, upon crossing the German border, Soviet command demanded that personnel distinguish between Nazis and "ordinary Germans." And in the cities captured in battle, order was quickly restored, and supplies and food for the local population were organized, including from army kitchens. Ukrainians, who know very well what Russians and Russia are like, and who have relatives here, were plunged into a completely artificial fear of the “wild hordes from the East.” Therefore, it will be much easier for them to emerge from this situation than for the Germans, who certainly did not try to obtain Soviet citizenship as en masse during the war as the Ukrainians did Russian citizenship. | |
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