Erma's comments (member since Jun 10, 2009)

Erma's comments from the Our History group.

Today, Sept. 1/09 marks the 70th anniversary of WWII. The question remains: who started WWII? Was it Hitler or was Stalin also responsible? Last July the EU and the OSCE passed a resolution stating that both Stalin and Hitler, with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that carved up Europe, were both equally to blame. As Germany moved in on the Westerplatte fortress in western Poland, just over two weeks later the Red Army launched an attack on eastern Poland. But Putin and Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, argue that Stalin's actions were "necessary", and the two are now going about setting up bodies to challenge, as Medvedev puts it, the "falsification of history".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug...

I have to admit, the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact touches a very special nerve in my system because my father, author Theodore Odrach, lived in Vilnius and later Pinsk (then both a part of eastern Poland) when Bolshevik troops moved in. For anyone interested in this part of the war, my father wrote a novel, Wave of Terror, which details the atrocities committed by the Soviets during this time. His book is set in the Pinsk Marshes in southwestern Belarus, the same location as the movie "Defiance". Though fiction, Wave of Terror is heavily based on eyewitness accounts, and according to my mother (I was a child when my father died and I hardly knew him), almost all the events and people are real. I should also add, I'm my father's translator and we're Publishers Weekly and TLS approved.
http://nitro5.goodreads.com/author/show/...

As for who started the Second World War, the debate continues. But what's indisputable here is the fact that the war gave birth to two monsters both at the same time.

Don't really like books dealing with murder but now i think I'll check it out because it sounds fascinating, especially the great Chicago fair.