Share this page!

Kyle Orton Profile picture
Twitter logo
22 Oct, 5 tweets, 2 min read
"Many of the NKVD ... personnel decorated during the [Second World] War received their medals not for valor against the enemy, but for crimes against humanity", including deporting entire nations within the Soviet Union and terrorising captive populations into submission.
"The Sword and the Shield", p. 102
Soviet official history gave a lot of credit to spies like the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra) for their success on the Eastern Front, but the real turning point was after the Rote Kapelle was rolled up by the Nazis, and came about due to British and American SIGINT passed to Moscow ImageImage
The NKVD was not helpful as an intelligence agency during Stalingrad, but it did provide discipline through a massive campaign of terror, executing 13,500 of its own soldiers. Their main other "achievements" were solidifying Stalin’s imperial gains, notoriously at Katyn.
If the NKVD's "domestic" achievements were mostly in crimes against humanity to cow captive populations, old and new, into submission, its primary foreign success during World War Two were against Stalin's alleged allies, Britain and America, not Germany.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Kyle Orton

Kyle Orton Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @KyleWOrton

Kyle Orton Profile picture
24 Oct
Avrom Sutzkever was sworn in as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials on 27 FEB 1946. Sutzkever was the only Jew to testify, despite the centrality of the Holocaust to the charge-sheet, and he had to testify in Russian (he was a Soviet witness), despite wanting to speak in Yiddish. Image
Sutzkever had said ten days earlier: "I want to speak in Yiddish … I wish to speak in the language of the people whom the accused attempted to exterminate. I wish to speak our mameloshn [mother tongue]. … May my language triumph at Nuremberg"
Sutzkever had been in Lithuania when the Soviets took it over with a Nazi green-light and was still there and interred in a ghetto when Stalin's allies betrayed him before he was ready. Sutzkever escaped in 1943, reached Soviet lines, and became a Partisan.
Read 7 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
24 Oct
"It seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest … There is no substitute for victory" - letter from Douglas MacArthur, read on the floor of the House, 5 April 1951
MacArthur was entirely correct that Truman's Europe-focused strategy and his limited war aims in Korea misunderstood the Communist menace. Shame MacArthur was not heeded.
See also
Read 4 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
29 Sep
#Russia's civil war was to all intents and purposes over by autumn 1919, though the main phase of fighting only ended a year later. A pocket of resistance against the Bolsheviks held out until June 1923, however <Thread>
The defeat of #Denikin's offensive on Moscow in the west and #Kolchak's offensive from the east in late 1919 ended any serious threat to the Bolsheviks. Kolchak was murdered in FEB 1920 and the remnants of Denikin's Army, now under #Wrangel, evacuated from Crimea in NOV 1920.
In Sept. 1921, Yakutia rose in revolt and a Volunteer Army commander, Mikhail Korobeinikov took the lead, expanding the pocket, and in March 1922 announced the establishment of an interim administration, the "Provisional Yakut Regional People's Government".
Read 13 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
28 Sep
During the trial of the final #Nazi defendant at Nuremberg, Hans Fritzsche, the #Soviet prosecutor brought up Fritzsche's radio broadcast justifying the attack on Poland. Fritzsche responded: it had been "a matter of great satisfaction" that the Soviet press said the same thing.
#pt: from Francine Hirsch's wonderful book, "Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg" (2020), pp. 322-23.
Hans Fritzsche was only on trial at Nuremberg in the first place because the Soviets demanded it as a substitute for Goebbels. Everyone understood that Fritzsche just did not measure up in terms of responsibility to the other Nazis being tried.
Read 7 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
27 Sep
Great piece by @Levitt_Matt: "The Assad Regime’s Business Model for Supporting the Islamic State" lawfareblog.com/assad-regimes-…
One of the first things I wrote in 2014, and kept updated for a while as a rolling compilation of evidence, at a time when it was regarded as something of a conspiracy theory: "The Assad Regime's Collusion With ISIS and al-Qaeda: Assessing The Evidence" kyleorton.co.uk/2014/03/24/ass…
Wrote about this a couple of times since then:

"Provocation and the Islamic State: Why Assad Strengthened the Jihadists" kyleorton.co.uk/2014/09/03/pro…

"Partners in Terror: The Assad Regime and the Islamic State" kyleorton.co.uk/2016/03/10/par…
Read 8 tweets
Kyle Orton Profile picture
15 Sep
In Sept. 1971, the KGB's Oleg Lyalin defected from the London Embassy and told the British government about the really alarming (and some quite bizarre) "special actions" the Soviets had been planning on the West, precipitating the mass expulsion Soviet spies in Operation FOOT.
The interesting thing is that this meant the West was quite well aware, from near the beginning of Andropov's renewed campaign, that Soviet terrorism was a very real phenomenon, and yet down to the end most in the West considered it a "conspiracy theory"
The KGB recruitment of Wadi Haddad of the PFLP in 1970 was the turning point: his Palestinian group was given weapons that even Eastern Bloc states hadn't received and given tasks as various as kidnapping CIA officers and assassinating Soviet defectors.
Read 7 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @KyleWOrton has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @KyleWOrton!

Read all threads by @KyleWOrton

:(