Wiesbaden, 14th August 2026
By Elisabeth Hellenbroich
A review of two different books, that the author recently has studied, should serve as a starting point to look afresh at the unfolding war in Europe. One book was published in spring of this year by former German Ambassador to Russia (2014-2019) Rüdiger von Fritsch: “Die Geschichte in mir- Eine deutsche Familie im 20. Jahrhundert” (Siedler 2026). The other very interesting book was published by the German historian Jochen Hellbeck “Ein Krieg wie kein anderer. Der deutsche Venichtungskrieg gegen die Sowjetunion. Eine Revision.” (S. Fischer 2025 – World Enemy #1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews -Penguin Press 2024). The books indeed serve as guideline for the following reflections: how it is possible that the majority of the German as well as western elite in the US and Europe, is actually blind in their rhetoric which will get us right into a war with Russia and split up the country? The answer: There is definitely the problem of “double moral standards “, as German Brigadier General and former advisor to Chancellor Merkel, Gen. Erich Vad stated in a recent Interview with 27-year-old Balthasar Becker (risk management analyst). The background to this “double moral standard” in the minds of the elite has to do with the erosion of” Christian -humanist” values.
On the other side, it is the willful blindness by some concerning Germany’s own history and its legacy that prompted the German elite under Hitler to conduct the most destructive “annihilation” war against the Soviet Union, “the Jewish Bolcheviks” combined with the planned “genocide” of Jews in Russia and in Eastern and western Europe. It culminated in the willful execution of millions of Russian soldiers and civilians as well as millions of Jews in the different concentration camps, mostly located in Poland. It all goes together with the hysterical block against the historical truth, that it was the Soviet Union that ultimately won the war against Nazi Germany in spring 1945, being at that time supported by the Allies – the US, GB and France.
The “narrative” of Rüdiger von Fritsch
A look at the recently published book by Rüdiger von Fritsch reveals his intent to push the narrative of the freedom loving Baltic states. Von Fritsch – former Ambassador of Germany to Poland (2010-2014) and Russia (2014-2019), whose mother came from a leading Lithuanian family (von Hahn), describes the idyllic life within his big family. A nice, well educated Baltic family, living in a beautiful landscape with family feasts taking place in the different country houses. During the war part of the family was living at such a country house in Poland. Von Fritsch, who was born after the war (1953), visited the Gymnasium in Düsseldorf and then studied history and German philology; after which he joined the diplomatic service. In the book he gives an account about his father, with whom he used to have endless discussions- given the fact that his father – as staunch supporter of the Nazi ideas- systematically blocked against the harsh truth of the Second World War, calling most of it “fake” news, including the number of exterminated Jews. He himself, originating from a Dresden based family, should have known about the executions that occurred during the war in Lithuania,(the father worked there as a leading administration official) – carried out by Lithuanian and SS officials.
The great uncle of Rüdiger von Fritsch was Werner von Fritsch, former General Chief of Staff under Hitler until 1938, who also should have known by that time about Hitlers plans to win “Lebensraum.” Rüdiger von Fritsch’s father in the 20 ies already joined the national socialist movement and remained an ardent admirer of Hitlers national socialist regime until his death in the late sixties. As we can read in the book, he was always praising those “wonderful times” in the thirties and after the war 1945 he went for 3 years underground with a false identity. So, the reader learns about a family, that despite all the horrors of the Second World War, being driven away by the Red Army from their eastern estates and having to seek refuge in the West, finally managed to settle in the Rhineland in Siegen and Düsseldorf. The author Rüdiger von Fritsch gives a subjective “narrative” about the war period and his family and combines this with his personal conclusions concerning today’s Russia under President Putin, in particular his almost ‘cultish’ celebrations of the commemoration of the Great Patriotic War.
The judgment given by the former Ambassador to Russia, von Fritsch is comprised in a meager sentence: “There was no disagreement on what had happened between 1941 and 1945 on the territory of the former SU; who was responsible for what had happened and guilty for this. No country has had to do so many sacrifices as the S.U. ;more than 20 Mio people died. There was hardly any family that had not been affected by the Nazi ‘war of extermination’ with its monstrous consequences for the civilian population, not only in Leningrad. Horrendous was the destiny of Jews living in the S.U. After the German invasion they were not brought into camps, but were immediately murdered by a ‘Special Force’. To remember these horrors was a central aspect of my activity as ambassador in Moscow,” von Fritsch wrote in his e book. (…) “But what became increasingly problematic, was the way in which the Russian leadership dealt with history (sic), which had consequences for the entire country as well as for Russia’s actions internationally(…) History was ‘reinterpreted’ and was looked at selectively, so that it got ‘instrumentalized’ and served as basis for ‘an aggressive foreign policy’.” According to von Fritsch this was highlighted by the fact that Russia until the end of the 80ies had denied the protocol addendum to the “Hitler- Stalin Pact” and had denied that the SU had anything to do with the execution of up to 25.000 Poles in 1940 in the Russian oblast Smolensk and in other locations, that became known under the name “Katyn.”
What really disturbs the former Russian Ambassador is the almost cultish commemoration celebration of Russia’s the Great Patriotic war against Nazi Germany (May 9th). “The Great Patriotic war has become the overriding ‘narrative.’ It allows Russian society to see itself in retrospect, as a victim of western, in particular of German policy and celebrate itself as victor (…). 9th of May, the day of victory a “substitute holiday, founding myth and salvation in one.” The people gather behind a power that sees itself in the “continuity of the great historical events.” (..) there is no reflection, no suffering – only splendour and gold, v. Fritsch commented at one point- “Wrong ideas in respect to one’s own history is a disease for the soul of a nation. It serves primarily ‘xenophobia’ and ‘megalomania’.” He further reasons that someone who looks at history in this selective way comes to wrong conclusions, as Putin confirmed, when he stated that ‘the collapse of the SU had been the ‘biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.’ When the Russian leadership decided to attack Ukraine, the narrative of the Great patriotic war, according to v Fritsch, helped Russia to legitimize the aggression along the line that the country has to “stay united as was the case in 1941 (operation Barbarossa E.H.), when Hitlers fascists invaded the S.U.” Hence Russia’s logic today would be along the line that there is need to fight against those fascists in Kiev.
Professor Hellbeck’s book reveals shocking details on Operation Barbarossa
The second very interesting book was written by the German historian Jochen Hellbeck (2025) who having been educated at the Bonn University (History and Slavistic studies) teaches at present at the Rudgers University (USA). He also was pupil of George Kennan. By making use of new sources, testimonies, as well as the documents and books written by the former Jewish Soviet writer Ilja Ehrenburg, he offers a wealth of information, using eyewitness reports by partisans, Russian soldiers and civilians as well as by former SS officials, and this way -gives a shocking revelation about Hitlers “Operation Barbarossa”, which began June 22, 1941, and covered territories in a war of extermination without precedence. The crusade against “Jewish Bolchevism” (the key slogan) was the main driving force of the Nazi Regime. It was the pre-condition for the mass murder committed against Soviet Jews and then became blueprint for the Holocaust in the rest of Europe. Hellbeck correctly notes that many soldiers of the Soviet Red Army who came as liberators and won the war, after crossing the Eastern Prussia border, did engage in brutal rapes against women and children.
We should also note here that in a presentation given by Prof. Hellbeck at the “Einstein Forum” in Berlin 2025, that was moderated by the Doyen of Eastern European history, Prof. Schlögel, Hellbeck emotionally complained about the fact that so little attention had been given to his research presented in the book, except a very well written review in the Jüdische Allgemeine Wochenzeitung, as he remarked.
The book of Hellbeck indeed many years after the extraordinary book by Cologne Historian Andreas Hillgruber (1965) who gave a shocking account about the “Final Solution and the German Eastern Empire, being a cornerstone for the racist ideological program of National Socialism” is a true eye opener about Operation Barbarossa. Given the fact that one cannot give an account about the 516 pages long book, one can only point to some aspects: Especially the last two chapters 9 and 10 entitled “Falsified memory.”
Hellbeck illustrates in the various chapters that the Soviet Red Army, being during the war ideologically supported by the allies (GB, US and France etc) that in 1944 began the Normandy invasion, had won the war after conquering of the German capital Berlin and hissing of the soviet flag above the Reichstag in spring 1945. Hellbeck notes at one point that American Secret Service agents from the Rhineland, were reporting at that time, how little “emotionally” the Germans reacted to this “liberation” from the Nazi yoke. Instead of feeling guilty about the entire Eastern operation, many Germans felt guilty about the “injustice” committed against the Jews. “Germans negated that there was anything ‘human’ in the Soviets.” But this of course was a precondition to recognize the Red Army as human beings, that had suffered injustice and that needed justice, as the well-known Jewish Soviet writer, Ilja Ehrenburg, one of the key sources,used by Hellbeck, demanded. He was qualified as “soviet propagandist” in Germany after the war, completely ignoring the wealth of documents and interviews Ehrenburg had gathered. Ehrenburg had documented in his articles and books, that the Germans lacked a deep consciousness about the “crimes” committed by them against the Soviets, whom they looked at as “Untermenschen” from the east, that were a threat against the “Herrenmenschen” and the German race. Hitler personally and his close circle including Himmler and Heydrich were obsessed by the idea of “ annihilating” those “beasts”, represented by the Jewish Bolshevik enemy. The book gives a shocking insight into the methods used by the Nazis when they invaded the Soviet Union, being almost drunken by the idea that they would win the war quickly,- how they methodically “cleaned “German occupied territories in Ukraine, Belorussia and Lithuania from those bolshevik Jews, culminating in the elimination and mass murder in Babi Jar.
The Nuremberg Trials (1946)
Hellbeck documents in the last chapter 10 “falsified memory” very well, how the Nuremberg Trials came about and how they proceeded. “In the morning of the 8th February 1946 the Russian chief prosecutor General Lieutenant Roman Rudenko began his eight-hour long plea in the Nürnberg trial against the main war criminals. He spoke after the Americans, British and French had made their plea: For the Soviet Roman Karmen who captured the moment with his camera, the day with the Russian plea, marked the “triumph of justice”, Hellbeck commented: (….) in which the Soviet people have the right to speak for itself.” The trial, as Hellbeck reports, conducted against the 20 main War criminals (among them Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Karl Dönitz, Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Frank and Fritz Sauckel), all gathered in the room, was held by the four allied powers, but the indictments were presented by each side separately, different in tone and content.” When the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson spoke in the introductory plea, the main emphasis was that the victors in this war had a trial based on the “rule of law”, rather than being based on “revenge”. Jackson made clear that the US had been the least “harmed” by the war and hence the least driven by revenge feelings. “Our American cities were not bombed during the nights. Our religious sites were not put in ruins.”
The Soviet prosecutor and judges-unlike the representatives of the allied powers US, GB and France,- were dressed in military uniforms. While Jackson concentrated on the leading Nazis sitting in the dock and emphasized that one could not accuse the entire German people, the soviet Prosecutor’s accusation went a step further. It was directed against all officers of the German Armed forces, against the Police and other pillars of the Nazi state and against a whole generation of Germans, whose consciousness and minds had been poisoned by the nazi propaganda. Rudenko exposed as key “driving force” for the war of extermination, that the war was based on the Nazi theory of “racist supremacy”. This theory meant that the fascist German conquerors did neither follow nor respect any laws nor any generally accepted rule of “humanist moral”, but felt as members of the “Herrenrasse.” He quoted from Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf”, from SS reports and Nazi songs, in order to illustrate how German fascism succeeded to unleash in the German population the “wildest and lowest instincts” and to make out of ordinary Germans mass murderers. The actions of German policemen and soldiers, that were so horrendous and shamelessly cruel, were based on the idea of the “supremacy of the German race.” He emphasized the difference between the Nazi Ideology of “Herrenrasse” and the “Ideas of enlightenment” and the “imperative of humanity.”
Rudenko spoke in the name of a country that had specifically suffered under the impact of racial hatred. He described the German assassination plans: “30 million slavic people were supposed to be killed in the context of a ‘colonial conquering campaign.’ Himmler had given this number to the leading SS men in the East and during the cross examination in the Nuremberg Court, Rudenko was able to get confirmation from one of the higher-level SS men in the East, Erich von dem Bach- Zelewski, whom the Americans had invited as witness, to confirm this number (!) Hellbeck comments in his book. Rudenko also quoted from a from a “guideline” given by Heydrich (…) “who had ordered before the start of “Operation Barbarossa” to annihilate the entire political and cultural elite of the SU: “All prominent Government and Party functionaries, in particular professional revolutionaries that worked in the Komintern, all former political commisaires of the Red Army… the soviet Russian intelligence and all jews(!).” After that Rudenko spoke about the planned extermination of the Jewish people in the world till the last person. The Nazis for example killed 80.000 Jews in Ukraine. “When the Red Army liberated the place there were only 140 Jews left.” (!)
The Americans had 6 witnesses such as an SS Command Leader Otto Ohlendorf who claimed to have acted on higher orders. Jackson showed film clips about the liberation of concentration camps, in April 1945, showing disturbing pictures of mutilated bodies and corpses piled up in a Cremtorium room, including Czechs, Poles, French, Belgians. Yet the fact that they were Jews was not even mentioned, Hellbeck noted. The S.U. was the only power among the Allies that called Jews as eyewitnesses to the court, Hellbeck noted. There was also a film shown, made by the Russian Photographer Roman Karmen; the film presented a panorama of suffering, the liberation of Rostow end of 1941, the events in Kertsch, Charkov, Babi Jar, Madjansk, Auschwitz till the prison in Slonks – leaving a tremendous impact on the audience in the courtroom.
Churchill speaking about the new “iron Curtain” leading to the Beginning of the Cold War
Yet, as Hellbeck documents, after the film was aired, Winston Churchill gave a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.(5th of march 1946). He stated, that he didn’t visit Fulton in an official mission, but only spoke for himself. He did this however in the presence of President Truman who thanked Churchill for his visit in his home town. Churchill, according to Hellbeck, used the occasion to criticize political “Tyranny” that reigns in places where the Soviet Red Army had set its foot on the ground (!). “An ‘iron curtain’ has come down, that separates Warsaw, Berlin, Prague and other Soviet occupied cities in Central and Eastern Europe from the rest of the continent.” Churchill invoked the danger of a further communist expansion,” that according to him would be similar to the aggressive procedure by Hitler Germany( sic) . He appealed to the brotherly alliance of the English-speaking people and called to “defend the great principles of freedom and human rights” against the assault by Communists.” In the newspaper “Prawda” Stalin responded in a sharp way: Hitler would have unleashed the war, he said, based on his racial theory whereby only the German speaking people are a true nation. He accused Churchill to call for war against the Soviet Union, that is based on the Racist Theory, that only English-speaking nations are true. He reminded that the Invasion of the Nazis in the S.U. had cost by far more lives than the losses of GB and the US altogether.
The red menace
These events illustrate that the front of the allies began to crumble concerning the principal judgement about the NAZI regime. Even when in April 1945 still Soviet and American soldiers embraced and shook hands, a US journalist warned of Soviet expansionism: A new buzz word emerged in the US when congressman Clare Booth Luce compared the Soviet Gulag with Auschwitz and spoke about the excessive number of 18 Mio people having died in concentration camps and forced labor camps, “Red fascism” was the new scare. In 1947 Truman spoke about the global Soviet threat and won his presidential elections.
The beginning of the “Cold War” revived the fear of communism and reduced the US- Soviet Relations to become an “intermezzo” in the years of the second world war, in a long history of American anti- communism. Among the proponents of this line were CIA Director Allen Dulles and FBI Chief Jay Edgar Hoover. While a series of special tribunals and congressional hearings began in autumn 1947, investigating the influence of communism on the American film industry, dozens of people were condemned to prison sentences. There were films like the “red menace” in 1949 and the 1951 film “I was a communist for the FBI”. According to Hellbeck the fight against Nazi aggression was very different in the S.U. from the western narrative, that only focused on the holocaust. “Thus, in portraying the holocaust as a singular event, this became the liberal Creed of the West.” Jimmy Carter in 1978 ordered Elie Wiesel to chair a commission for a national Holocaust memorial site. The commission investigated the Holocaust memory in different countries. More and more memorial sites were founded to remember the holocaust.
In April 1993 the “United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) was opened in Washington. It soon became to most visited memorial site. Very impressive, but very little about the liberation of concentration camps by SU,” according to Hellbeck. The most subtle weakness of the exhibition is that “it waters down the racist policy calculations that were linked to the worst Nazi- crimes and the war of extermination.” In the aftermath of 1989 when the Berlin wall crumbled -followed years later by the collapse of the S.U.- the three Baltic republics, which had become independent after 1990, joined in 2004 the EU. At the time the EU qualified the “Holocaust” as the “most important crime on the continent.” In 2019 the European parliament declared that both Nazi Germany and the SU committed crimes, leaving Millions of victims. It demanded a second Nuremberg Tribunal, in order to investigate the “historical crimes” of the S.U.” (sic). What kind of history is this, Hellbeck asks in his book, when Europe forgets and suppresses the decisive role of the SU in the victory over Nazi Germany? How under these above-mentioned conditions, could one again integrate Russia in the European community? Even if Putin may excessively use the cult of the “Great Patriotic War,” the thinking about this war is deeply seated in the consciousness of the peoples.
