The DDR actually had a Karl Marx Stadt, but they picked Chemnitz instead of Berlin. That's like saying "let's rename NYC to Leninsville" and then instead of NYC, you rename Milwaukee.
Fun fact: Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Milwaukee had an art exchange in 1989. One of the results was a peace mural, that was featured in Milwaukee Mitchell Airport for many years.
This is absolutely bonkers. I don't even know where to start.
I'm glad he got basically no influence whatsoever in the actualy outcomes because we could be arguing over some really really stupid shit if people didn't reject his nonsense.
I like this except the inflicting of germans on other places, just leave them there under the multinational occupations. Half the french zone should be algerian or syrian to replicate the british-british-indian split as well
my impression is that it's real but haven't looked that deep into it. there's accounts of Stalin being freaked out that his daughter was alone with him iirc? also being real it's understandable that a guy suited for that position would have those kinds of tendencies. im sure it gets exaggerated and dramatised and stuff but it's pretty believable to me.
I have not heard anything exculpatory about Beria, he seems like a real bad dude, but Fedvans has a real big hateboner for the USSR and will happily take fictional events from movies as historical fact if they fit his biases.
i trawled r/askhistorians, i can't account for beria's #1 fan living in a georgian bunker and printing defenses on a far right russian forum but:
cw:sv
spoiler
Many other people, both associates and victims, gave testimony as well, and the scenario that emerged, as in the Zhemchuzhina case back in 1949, came to focus on his sex life, with lurid allegations of multipleremoveds, forcible abduction of young women from the street, and so on. Although this subsequently entered into Soviet folklore, the story of Beria as a sexual predator seems, though not wholly unfounded, to have been wildly exaggerated. His own account under interrogation of how he conducted his relations with the women he had affairs with, including a young one picked out on the street for him by a subordinate, is basically supported by that of a singer claiming to have been his mistress, after catching his eye during a performance, who described seduction (admittedly under intimidating circumstances) rather thanremoved
from Sheila Fitzpatrick's On Stalin’s Team, seems to be the most cited and accepted take. he was a cop so it's very easy to believe, and the charges have some credibility from being unneeded to secure the death sentence, but it's also easy to see why exaggeration/fabrication could be in the interest of his detractors.
I want to know how many fortified wines deep you have to be to decide that Dresden should go to the Chinese communists but Munich goes to the nationalists.
They should have just decided that Germany is the one PvP zone in the entire world. Sharpening of contradictions leads to civil war in your country ? No need to totally wreck the place, both sides just send their troops over to Germany where they can fight it out. Instead of the current civil war in Sudan displacing millions and destroying infrastructure, each side could have just sent their best fighters over to Germany to settle things. Something to think about.