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Stalin’s Danish Mystery
- willvarfar 7y agoFascinating! If Bornholm had remained a Soviet garrison, it would have completely reshaped the cold war in the Baltic.
- Koshkin 7y agoHow?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago> Bornholm was quietly evacuated leaving no Soviet presence in Scandinavia. Arguably incorrect, since the Soviets maintained a naval base in Porkkala, Finland, just west of Helsinki, until 1956. (Arguably because Finland is culturally but not strictly geographically Scandinavian.)
- Trafz 7y agoFinland isn't a part of Scandinavia. The culture doesn't matter. A lot of countries share a "Western Culture". Doesn't mean that what happens in 1 country, happens in all of them.
- Svip 7y agoA lot of people confuse 'Scandinavian' with 'Nordic'. Scandinavia is a geographical description, Nordic is more cultural, which includes Scandinavia, Finland and Iceland.
- bmn__ 7y agoPoor Estonia suffers neglect. :) ‣ https://satwcomic.com/new-nordic https://satwcomic.com/new-nordic ‣ https://satwcomic.com/greatest-authority https://satwcomic.com/greatest-authority ‣ https://satwcomic.com/imposter https://satwcomic.com/imposter ‣ https://satwcomic.com/party-crasher https://satwcomic.com/party-crasher
- Svip 7y agoI was actually considering including Estonia in my list, but they are not a member of the Nordic Council. And Estonia's Nordic bona fide is a matter of dispute. Personally, I believe Estonia to be a Nordic country, including having the Nordic Cross design variant of the Estonian flag hanging on my wall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Estonian_alternative_flag_proposal.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Estonian_alternative_flag... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Estonia#Nordic_flag_proposals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Estonia#Nordic_flag_pr... Furthermore, in an article about military history, Scandinavia is understood - in a military geopolitical context - to only include Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
- tenant 7y agoAnd what about the Faroe Islands? The people of the Orkney and Shetland Islands of Scotland are fond of claiming Scandanavian heritage too.
- BurningFrog 7y agoI would argue an independent Scotland could become the 6th Nordic nation. Of course, I enjoy being contrarian more than I probably should. I'm Swedish, if that matters.
- tenant 7y agoWell it's certainly northerly anyway.
- BurningFrog 7y agoIt also has a similar culture, weather and history. Not sure if any Scots agree, but it seems right to me at least.
- httpsterio 7y agoas a half finn half dane, this is incorrect. Nordic countries aka Pohjoismaat does include Finland, Scandinavia does not.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoIt's not black and white, because the term is used for both culture and geography, and I say that as arguably-Scandinavian myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia#Use_of_Nordic_countries_vs._Scandinavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia#Use_of_Nordic_coun...
- jpkeisala 7y agoThis Wikipedia link actually describes it well. I am originally from Finland but been living abroad most of my life. After few years abroad I learned that there is no use to correct people "Finland is not Scandianvia" because apart from Finland and actual Scandinavia rest of the world says Scandinavia.
- BurningFrog 7y agoScandinavians usually include Finland in the term. Though some do insist on that distinction. They're kinda right, but don't get invited to parties.
- lb1lf 7y agoCame here to say this. Also, the Red Army liberated the northernmost part of Norway (Which, incidentally, also is the easternmost - the town of Kirkenes lies to the east of Istanbul) in the autumn of 1944; they quietly left in the autumn of 1945. From what I've been told by my grandmother, who along with a lot of other locals had dodged the forced evacuation ordered by the retreating Germans and hid for weeks in mines outside the town, cooperation with the Red Army was excellent, with very little friction - to the extent that when rebuilding of Finnmark started (the retreating Germans having blown up everything they couldn't burn!), some construction materials were shipped in from the Soviet Union, which presumably had enough rebuilding to do on their own turf...
- eps 7y agoClick-baity title, but an interesting article nonetheless.
- einpoklum 7y agoI thought this was about Stalin's craving for Danish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry
- thih9 7y agoReminds me of this article about unusual cravings from the 1940s; no mention of Stalin though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Coke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Coke
- dimitar 7y agoMost likely Stalin hoped that Denmark would become neutral in any future division of Europe (Finnish and Austrian Neutrality is highly useful for the USSR). I think this is consistent with the withdrawal of Red Army troops from places like Austria.
- walterkrankheit 7y agoIs it just me or did he lose the Hamlet thread? It doesn't seem so much a mystery as a purely strategic post-war moment that no really knows about.
- pvg 7y agoShe (Caroline Kennedy-Pipe ) - and the Hamlet thing is mostly colour but it did send me down a clickhole of tracking down 'Stalin hated Hamlet'. That the "story of bloody intrigue in the court of Denmark supposedly reminded Stalin of Kremlin politics" sounded a bit off to me - after all, Stalin famously commissioned Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible. It seems around 1940 or so Stalin did stop a Hamlet production (based on a Pasternak translation) at the Moscow Art Theatre. Recollections vary somewhat but the most plausible explanation is that Stalin felt Hamlet (the character) was weak. Completing the circle, the Russian wikipedia page on Ivan The Terrible has a quote from a Central Committee critique of a different movie in which, as an aside, part two of Eisenstein's film is criticized as ahistorical and as portraying Ivan as too weak "like Hamlet". The second part was not screened until some years after Stalin and Eisenstein's deaths. Hamlet itself was not staged in the last 12 years of Stalin's life.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoI'm imagining the Stalin from Death of Stalin sitting around complaining that Hamlet takes nearly two hours and doesn't hardly kill anybody! And then dies himself!
- pvg 7y agoHah, it's hinted at in the movie but Stalin was actually something of a performing arts (and theatre in particular) superfan - that's why the Hamlet bit caught my eye.
- mci 7y ago> The country was ultimately liberated by the Americans in Greenland [...] Hmm. "On 8 April 1941, the United States occupied Greenland to defend it against a possible invasion by Germany."[1] So, first, there never were any German occupiers to liberate Greenland from, and second, the US occupation of Greenland started 4 years before 1945. > Furthermore, there were emplacements for massive guns with 42 kilometre range, which could close the strait south of the island to the coast of what is now Poland (then Germany). First, the strait is 90 kilometres wide.[2] Second, the last German stronghold on the southern coast of the strait, the port of Kolberg (Kołobrzeg) fell to the Polish People's Army on March 18.[3] Calling the coast "then Germany" in May is pretty weird. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Treaty_of_Kiel_to_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Treaty_of_Kiel_to_Wo... [2] http://visitkolobrzeg.com/bornholm# http://visitkolobrzeg.com/bornholm# [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolberg_(1945) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolberg_(1945)
- zeveb 7y ago> Calling the coast "then Germany" in May is pretty weird. Founded in 1255 by Germans, Kolberg was part of Prussian Pomerania from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia until the August 1945 Potsdam Agreements which implicitly recognised the Soviet capture of eastern Poland and gave Poland eastern Germany in return; this was not finalised until the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. It's perfectly reasonable to refer to Prussian territory in early 1945 as Germany. (I am not complaining about the transfer to Poland — after the inhumanity of the German occupation of Poland itself it was only just. It does seem a bit unjust that eastern Poland is still part of Russia though!)
- socialdemocrat 7y agoIf Denmark was a mystery then certainly Norway should have been mentioned as well in this article. Northern Norway was liberated by the Soviets and to my knowledge no allied forces ever set their foot in Norway at the end of the war. Thus in principle the Russians could have claimed all of Norway. They did not which I think is one of the reasons we in Norway retained a pretty good relationship with the Soviet Union through the Cold War sometimes to anger and bitter resentment by our American NATO allies which seemed to prefer to refer to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire”.
- johnchristopher 7y agoInteresting. Off-topic but: How was that norvegian TV show about a Russian led occupation received by Norvegians considering the good relationship ?
- lb1lf 7y agoI cannot vouch for others, but I didn't think much of it; while no-one are seriously expecting a Russian occupation of Norway, we're rather aware that we are a NATO member, the Russians very much not - and that there is bound to be some strain in the relationship, despite it (in particular in the border zone up north) being good on a day-to-day basis. For instance, citizens of both countries living in a defined zone either side of the border can visit under a visa waiver-esque program. IIRC the debate following the TV series was more about how some figured the plot - that the EU wanted access to our natural resources and were willing to use force (by proxy) to get it - seemed plausible if international relations deteriorated sufficiently. Our own little Suez crisis, that.
- johnchristopher 7y agoThank you.
- vl 7y agoWhile plot in the current political climate is obviously a stretch, it’s an allusion to the annexation of Crimea. Overall, given constrains, it’s well executed.
- zeveb 7y ago> our American NATO allies which seemed to prefer to refer to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire”. It wasn't an entirely inappropriate term, given the Holodomor, the Katyn massacre, the massacre of the Cossacks, the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Berlin Wall, the gulag system, the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan &c. The U.S. was imperfect too, of course, but most of the badness was non-policy like the My Lai massacre, or evil or wrong policies (e.g. segregation) which pale in comparison, and anyway whatboutism isn't really wise: one should call out misbehaviour anywhere it rears its head. It's fair to say that even in its kinder, gentler post-Lenin and post-Stalin form the Soviet Union was a malign force in the world. 'Evil empire' was a fair shorthand.
- billfruit 7y agoI would'nt be so cocksure as that. Much of western peoples view of Soviet Union is coloured by the cold war propaganda still.(Witness the recent HBO series Chernobyl, even West based Russia-scholars feel that it gives a very inaccurate portrayal of Perestroika era Soviet Union. Even it was made with no Russian/Ukrainian talent either in the front or rear of the camera. Imagine a drama of Three Mile Island, made entirely by Russians, with a wholely Russian cast and crew, how preposterous it would be.). There was much incompetence surely, but pure malice, I think is yet debatable.
- gkilmain 7y agoInteresting. I work with a bunch of older Russians and they say it was very accurate.
- billfruit 7y agoSee this opinion: https://wap.business-standard.com/article/opinion/if-chernobyl-was-made-by-russians-119053101715_1.html https://wap.business-standard.com/article/opinion/if-chernob... And this too: https://www.rt.com/news/460878-chernobyl-hbo-fake-soviet/ https://www.rt.com/news/460878-chernobyl-hbo-fake-soviet/ May be RT is not the most reputed organ, but that particular article seemed written with an authentic motive: "These elements of Soviet life may seem like the background to the central human stories, but in fact they dictated how each scene shown in Chernobyl unfolded in real life. And although occasionally the show hits upon the right note, perhaps when it sticks closest to a verbatim recreation, it does not seem to realize it. Most of the time, those involved act wrong on the wrong motivations, talk about the wrong things, and say them in the wrong order with an alien cadence that is more than just a different language." "The most jarring scene is a Soviet minister bargaining with coal miners at gunpoint to persuade them to dig a tunnel under Chernobyl. Moscow mandarins did not negotiate with those 10 rungs below them – they sent down orders and didn’t need bullets to enforce them." "Mazin’s party officials are more like sullen gangsters protecting their own patch – they bully, shout, laugh ostentatiously, and bang their fists on the table. Stellan Skarsgard’s senior cabinet minister threatens to throw Jared Harris’s renowned academic off a helicopter, then to shoot him, but the conversation is as implausible as it would be if it were shown between Vice President George H.W. Bush and physicist Richard Feynman, to pick two contemporaries."
- rob74 7y agoNot related to Bornholm at all, but it struck me how the "Map of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, 1914" emphasizes railways (the thick black-and-white lines) over roads (the much thinner dashed lines). Of course, those were the heydays of the railroad, and road travel was still largely by horse-drawn carriage...
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAnd rail was several orders of magnitude more efficient at moving goods. The 'roads' were tracks made by repeated wagon traversal. Bumpy, muddy, rocky, eroded.
- gerikson 7y agoThe area around Bornholm (Skåne, Denmark, Germany/Prussia) has some of the best agricultural lands in Europe. The roads were just fine.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoHm. I come from a rural setting in Iowa, and the roads even today are not much good. Here's a painting of Danish roads around that period. Looks like a buggy track thru the countryside: https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=gUPDkI10&id=9F09B8ABA74B01BE30BFA1BA7A84DE50155C3AB2&thid=OIP.gUPDkI10PTfqvrmAlnHeBQHaFG&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.christies.com%2fimg%2fLotImages%2f2016%2fCSK%2f2016_CSK_12582_0475_000(carl_wennemoes_winter_road).jpg&exph=2207&expw=3200&q=danish+roads+1914&simid=608036887598926641&selectedIndex=18&qpvt=danish+roads+1914&ajaxhist=0 https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=gUPDkI...
- JoeAltmaier 7y agohttps://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=BzfZXwJY&id=77A376503149650BCC92565C1482EF66E610D8F8&thid=OIP.BzfZXwJY0U88tDTPMIYEaQHaFQ&mediaurl=http%3a%2f%2f2.bp.blogspot.com%2f-OJ_Xn7iCsfA%2fTnEOYS0RjnI%2fAAAAAAAAA0s%2fpzAk5WI_ALc%2fs1600%2fNiels%2bWalseth%2bA%2bDanish%2bsummer%2blandscape%2bwith%2btwo%2bboys%2band%2bfowls%2bat%2ba%2bthatched%2bhouse20c.jpg&exph=613&expw=863&q=danish+roads+1914&simid=608001235032214888&selectedIndex=32&qpvt=danish+roads+1914&ajaxhist=0 https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=BzfZXw...
- JackFr 7y ago> The war with Japan, to which the Soviet Union was committed by Treaty, and in which it played an immense role, continued until the end of August. Really? I think the Soviet campaign in the Far East began 3 months after VE day, after the US had dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan, and lasted less than 4 weeks. Its real strategic importance was that it forced the Japanese to realize the Soviet Union would not broker a negotiated peace with the other Allies. The Soviets had no beef with Japan, to them it was a land grab,
- vegan_zaddy 7y agoCheck this out https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...
- cat199 7y ago> The Soviets had no beef with Japan, to them it was a land grab, didn't this: a) radically shift power balance in the region b) revert losses from imperial war with japan in early 1900s
- vkou 7y agoThe Soviet campaign in Manchuria started before the bombings. Japan's forces on the mainland were swept away by experienced, battle-tested, and overwhelmingly large armies redeployed from the Eastern front. Japan's plan for the defense of the home islands consisted of pulling everyone they could out of Manchuria, but relying on its resources and industry to support the war effort. This obviously required the Soviet Union to uphold it's end of their non-aggression pact. Which it didn't. With Manchuria under Soviet occupation, and the Japanese armies routed, this plan completely fell apart. The invasion convinced Japan that capitulation was the only solution more than the bombs did.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago> The Soviet campaign in Manchuria started before the bombings. No. (And also no to JackFr.) The Soviet campaign in Manchuria started on August 8, after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki. The Japanese plan to use Manchuria for defense of the home islands would never have worked. The US could have put enough naval forces there to make transport of troops and material impossible.
- yaakov34 7y agoThere are much more significant instances of Soviet retrenchment and retreat during this period. Probably the most notable is the withdrawal from Austria. The USSR held a significant amount of territory in Austria at the end of the war, with the US holding the rest, and quickly agreed splitting the country into 4 allied sectors of control, and doing the same in Vienna. Shortly afterwards, the USSR withdrew from Austria completely. Why? Well, Stalin was not one to share his strategic thinking with the public, so we can only guess. Probably he did not want to deal with a "West Vienna" along the lines of "West Berlin". But who knows. As for Bornholm, I really don't see why people think it would have some great significance. The Soviets already had many bases in the Baltic which were contiguous with their territory. What would an island add? The Soviets did not have a good record of supplying their forces by sea. During WW2, i.e. immediately before the time in question, they suffered a number of disasters when their forces were cut off from supplies by land and had to be supplied, and then evacuated, by ships. There was the disastrous evacuation of Tallinn at the beginning of the war, the battle (and evacuation) of Odessa, the loss of Crimea, and the Leningrad front with immense civilian and military losses. Bornholm would have looked like a death trap to the Soviet commanders of the time, rather than some great asset. No wonder they agreed to return Porkkala to Finland 40 years early, and never placed naval assets of any significance there.
- pvg 7y agoShortly afterwards, the USSR withdrew from Austria completely. The Soviets did not withdraw from Austria until 1955, two years after Stalin's death. The neutrality of Austria was a condition.
- cbnotfromthere 7y agothe USSR withdrew from Austria completely. Why? Well, Stalin was not one to share his strategic thinking with the public, so we can only guess. Probably he did not want to deal with a "West Vienna" along the lines of "West Berlin". But who knows. Stalin died in 1953. The Soviet Union retreated from Austria in 1955. Your theory is wrong.
- jtlienwis 7y agoMy fist thought was what could Denmark trade at that time for the return of Bornholm? My first thought was the atomic secrets that the Neils Bohr group had.