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Offtopic: > which allowed them to pilfer surviving equipment from German factories Remember kids, the Soviets only pilfer and plunder, while The Great West gi

Offtopic: > which allowed them to pilfer surviving equipment from German factories Remember kids, the Soviets only pilfer and plunder, while The Great West gives jobs and opportunities (especially in the rocket industry)! It is especially jarring in the article what essentially praises the same Soviets.

surfingdino 2y ago
The author is not wrong. The Soviet Army stole all equipment it could find on its way West only to "gift" some of it back. German industry was officially treated as spoils of war, watch factories, optics, photography, chemistry, the lot.
- jajko 2y ago
  It was common trope to see soviet soldiers with multiple stolen watches on the wrists, even most famous photo of raising flag on Reichstag had to be retouched to hide that common and very visible fact. People greeted soviet liberators pompously, then came sobering up.
  - geoka9 2y ago
    The Soviet top military commander (Zhukov) even got in trouble with Soviet customs for smuggling whole trainloads of loot back home.
    - surfingdino 2y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU1f47SC_A8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU1f47SC_A8 They were greedy at times of peace and out of control during war.
ahartmetz 2y ago
AFAIK, it is true that the Western allies focused more on top personnel and prototypes while the Soviet Union took whole factories but scored much less top personnel. Top personnel often fled the Russians, expecting better treatment and economic conditions in the West - and they were right about that. Besides its own nature, the SU had also suffered many large-scale German war crimes to make it harsh on the defeated Germans.
amenhotep 2y ago
It would be completely uncontroversial to say that the US pilfered Germany for rocket scientists. Very tiresome of you to deliberately take offense at something you have only imagined.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  The Soviets had their own Germans much like Operation Paperclip (look up "Operation Osoaviakhim") except that the relocation to the Soviet Union didn't happen quite as voluntarily. The Germans and their families were simply loaded onto trucks in the middle of the night and carried off to Moscow. In the end the Soviets didn't make much use of their Germans because they never trusted them (the only somewhat popular and surviving result of German designed tech by those engineers are the Tu-95 engines).
flohofwoe 2y ago
It's objectively true though. The Soviets moved entire factories from their German occupation zone back into the motherland as war reparations (initially they essentially wanted to turn Germany into a deindustrialized and demilitarized agrarian state). Meanwhile Western Germany received massive funding from the US via the Marshal Plan which helped to kickstart the economy and turned the western half into an economic powerhouse.
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  > It's objectively true though Webster: pilfer intransitive verb : steal especially : to steal stealthily in small amounts and often again and again transitive verb : steal especially : to steal in small quantities OED: pilfer, v. transitive. To steal (property), esp. in small quantities; to filch. Also figurative. Or it's spoils of war or it's pilfering. It can't be both. Especially when a country with 27M of casualties is accused of robbing[0] the country which inflicted those casualties. Do I need to provide the definition of the word 'steal'? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40388461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40388461
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    Semantics... you can call it what you want and I actually agree that it was in the SU's right as a winner of WW2 and occupant of East Germany, but the point is that the US cannot be accused of the same thing (like you did in a perfect display of whataboutism), because the US pumped massive amounts of money into the West German economy, which then made West Germany a much more thankful and valuable ally to the US than East Germany ever was to the Soviet Union.
    - justsomehnguy 2y ago
      Ah, yes, labeling taking war reparations as stealing is just 'semantics' and any other option is 'whataboutism'. Also casually ignoring what Drittes Reich did to the Soviet People, because that's also semantics, I guess. Yes, they are thankful to Uncle Sam what the Soviet Union didn't do to them what they did it the Soviet Union people (it didn't do that anyway or else East Germany would be a desert). And the most amusing thing is what in the first comment I explicitly marked the difference on how it's described depending on the side.
simion314 2y ago
History always upset Russians, do not remind them about their collaboration with Hitler , the genocides or how they robbed everything they could East of Berlin. No what about X that also genocide the natives or Y that did Z, that does not excuse what USSR/Russia did or is a good reason for Russians to modify their history books and attempt to push alternate history in media and push excuses why their crimes are justified compared to other countries.

surfingdino 2y ago

The author is not wrong. The Soviet Army stole all equipment it could find on its way West only to "gift" some of it back. German industry was officially treated as spoils of war, watch factories, optics, photography, chemistry, the lot.

jajko 2y ago
It was common trope to see soviet soldiers with multiple stolen watches on the wrists, even most famous photo of raising flag on Reichstag had to be retouched to hide that common and very visible fact. People greeted soviet liberators pompously, then came sobering up.
- geoka9 2y ago
  The Soviet top military commander (Zhukov) even got in trouble with Soviet customs for smuggling whole trainloads of loot back home.
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU1f47SC_A8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU1f47SC_A8 They were greedy at times of peace and out of control during war.

ahartmetz 2y ago

AFAIK, it is true that the Western allies focused more on top personnel and prototypes while the Soviet Union took whole factories but scored much less top personnel. Top personnel often fled the Russians, expecting better treatment and economic conditions in the West - and they were right about that. Besides its own nature, the SU had also suffered many large-scale German war crimes to make it harsh on the defeated Germans.

amenhotep 2y ago

It would be completely uncontroversial to say that the US pilfered Germany for rocket scientists. Very tiresome of you to deliberately take offense at something you have only imagined.

flohofwoe 2y ago
The Soviets had their own Germans much like Operation Paperclip (look up "Operation Osoaviakhim") except that the relocation to the Soviet Union didn't happen quite as voluntarily. The Germans and their families were simply loaded onto trucks in the middle of the night and carried off to Moscow. In the end the Soviets didn't make much use of their Germans because they never trusted them (the only somewhat popular and surviving result of German designed tech by those engineers are the Tu-95 engines).

flohofwoe 2y ago

It's objectively true though. The Soviets moved entire factories from their German occupation zone back into the motherland as war reparations (initially they essentially wanted to turn Germany into a deindustrialized and demilitarized agrarian state). Meanwhile Western Germany received massive funding from the US via the Marshal Plan which helped to kickstart the economy and turned the western half into an economic powerhouse.

justsomehnguy 2y ago
> It's objectively true though Webster: pilfer intransitive verb : steal especially : to steal stealthily in small amounts and often again and again transitive verb : steal especially : to steal in small quantities OED: pilfer, v. transitive. To steal (property), esp. in small quantities; to filch. Also figurative. Or it's spoils of war or it's pilfering. It can't be both. Especially when a country with 27M of casualties is accused of robbing[0] the country which inflicted those casualties. Do I need to provide the definition of the word 'steal'? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40388461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40388461
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  Semantics... you can call it what you want and I actually agree that it was in the SU's right as a winner of WW2 and occupant of East Germany, but the point is that the US cannot be accused of the same thing (like you did in a perfect display of whataboutism), because the US pumped massive amounts of money into the West German economy, which then made West Germany a much more thankful and valuable ally to the US than East Germany ever was to the Soviet Union.
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    Ah, yes, labeling taking war reparations as stealing is just 'semantics' and any other option is 'whataboutism'. Also casually ignoring what Drittes Reich did to the Soviet People, because that's also semantics, I guess. Yes, they are thankful to Uncle Sam what the Soviet Union didn't do to them what they did it the Soviet Union people (it didn't do that anyway or else East Germany would be a desert). And the most amusing thing is what in the first comment I explicitly marked the difference on how it's described depending on the side.

simion314 2y ago

History always upset Russians, do not remind them about their collaboration with Hitler , the genocides or how they robbed everything they could East of Berlin. No what about X that also genocide the natives or Y that did Z, that does not excuse what USSR/Russia did or is a good reason for Russians to modify their history books and attempt to push alternate history in media and push excuses why their crimes are justified compared to other countries.