>>105685413>"Hitler had tried a dangerous experiment. The hundreds of thousands of German workers mobilized and sent to the Eastern Front could have made
dangerous comparisons if the Soviets had actually achieved great things for
the working class.
>On the contrary, every German thought back to the delightful workers' housing in the Reich, to its comfort, to the family garden, to the clinics and
maternity hospitals for the people, the leisure time, the paid vacations, the
magnificent cruises to Scandinavia or to the Mediterranean. They
remembered their wives, their children, happy, in good health, well clothed.
Looking at the ragged Russian people, the miserable isbas, the workers'
apartments, gloomy and rickety, they drew clear conclusions.
>Never had a workers' group made such a study trip. >Four years later, the comparison worked in the opposite direction: after having looted the watches, the jewelry, the clothes from all of Eastern
Europe, the Soviet soldier returned grumbling to the USSR, astonished at
the comfort of the non-Communist countries and disgusted with his
"paradise" of wooden spoons, tattered dresses, and muddy excrement
stretching around his house-barracks. "
