Some books sit on shelves as silent witnesses to matters nobody really wants to know or talk about. It’s almost as if they exist to remind people of information that is unpleasant so that these same people can try to memory hole the fact that they ever saw them. Generally, you do not find these books in schools or colleges because educational dollars and funding do not follow those who promote such works. They simply do not fit the narrative that somebody, somewhere has decided is what we should teach. What Joseph Stalin Knew, is, assuredly, one of these books.
It is interesting to note that this book was published by Yale press, and perhaps Yale has a more expansive curriculum or maybe had one at one point that involved frankly discussing and researching academic material that exists well in the shadow. Indeed, most of the records of Soviet Russia under Stalin were destroyed because Stalin wanted them to be. Stalin wanted this record destroyed because the record would not reflect kindly on his decisions or the communist party. Therefore, he simply sought to eliminate anything and everything that might paint him in a less than favorable light.
What was it Stalin knew? Bluntly, Stalin knew that Germany was going to attack the USSR but because he trusted Hitler more than he trusted his own agents, he dismissed these warnings and reports. Some say he was trying to buy Russia time to get ready for such an attack, but what becomes clear is that Stalin, though he trusted hardly anyone, trusted, of all people, the words of Hitler. Perhaps it would be better to say that Stalin hoped that Hitler would do more damage before trying to invade the Soviet Union which would give Stalin the opportunity to launch some counter-invasion with many opponents of communism much weaker for the effort. From the point of view of war, this makes a kind of terrible sense. Attrition and weakening your opponents is a good military strategy. However, hoping that someone who actively hates your ideology and is keen on creating a master race which probably does not include you or at least you and your beliefs is not going to attack you so you can better divide the spoils between you and this other person is foolish. Stalin probably figured if Hitler centralized all of the middle of Europe and England, Russia could later join forces with other places closer to it and attack it on down the road. Of course, that is not what happened because Hitler decided that Russia was weak and could be taken quickly and its resources turned to the advantage of the Reich.
Weirdly enough, this book does not advance this theory which is fairly obvious to anyone who has ever studied any military strategy. The Soviet Union had lots of land, resources, and people. Germany had advanced military technology and had success with “fast lightening wars” but the Soviet Union due to sheer size alone was never going to be a fast event. In this Hitler had delusions concerning Ukraine and an uprising specifically, and the book does state as much. Between Stalin’s delusions, and Hitler’s delusions, and mutual paranoia and arrogance, it was perhaps inevitable that they would wind up at war with one another. Hitler, the book argues, eventually respected and even somewhat envied Stalin in what presumably is due to Stalin’s stalwart adherence to his principles. In the meantime, Stalin was busy ripping apart his own military apparatus for people that had been considered heros of the Soviet Union that he did not like that had spoken truth to him that he had rejected. He instead most often sought to scapegoat these loyal commanders, and in many cases ordered their deaths at a point he could blame them entirely for some failure that was ultimately his own.
In one instance, Stalin continually scapegoats an intelligence chief and installs him in various other military capacities until he ultimately orders his death for the simple reason that he could not control him. Anyone who spoke something to Stalin that Stalin did not want to hear was placed in the memory banks of Stalin as someone to later betray and destroy. Those that remained were too afraid to speak to Stalin about matters concerning Soviet security they knew to be true. Their choices where to face slaughter by German soldiers, or face slaughter by Joseph Stalin. It a terrible hidden tragedy of the war–service men who knew that their fates were sealed no matter which way they tried to steer things–patriotism for their country and service or facing an enemy with superior military power that would surely cut many of them down. Some of them, the book mentions, ran away only to be found later and shot by the army as deserters. The Nazis were cruel, but the Soviet leadership was savage. Both Hitler and Stalin had a fondness for repression and genocide.
One matter the book does not discuss is Stalin’s post-war conviction that Hitler was still alive and probably living somewhere in Argentina. At the same time, Stalin had received various forensic evidence to suggest that Hitler was actually dead. This, is, of course, quite interesting all on its own. Perhaps Stalin needed to insist on some manner of disinfo, or perhaps his instincts were right. It is certainly true that many Nazis did go to Argentina.
A final note concerns the eerie parallels to modern civilization and Russia under Stalin. If one replaces the word “de-platforming” with “purge”, one arrives at a process that sounds strangely familiar. In the online world, anything that does not fit the narrative has been subject to removal and silencing in the last five years or so in massive ways. Communist idealogy and issues are once again, prominent. The dictum that “history does not repeat, but it rhymes” appears to hold. If humanity does not have a terrible tragedy every sixty years or so, it seems to forget most everything learned during the last go-around. For this reason, this book should be required reading for high school or college curriculums. It is not a pleasant read, but then again, life and history is replete with unpleasant happenings. It does us no good to pretend that they never happened.
It is not often that one reads autobiographies of living people–or at least it seems that it takes death to make people who have written an autobiography worthy of having written something that is notable. Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame, however, is not such a case because his book stands as, perhaps, the most bizarre and sincere work simultaneously that one could endeavor to read in the modern world.
Mr. Lindell does not hide the fact that he was once a crack cocaine addict. He was also a gambling addict, and probably also an adrenaline addict. As can be imagined, this gets Mr. Lindell into some serious scrapes up to and including having a drug dealer that belongs to some Mexican cartel holding a machete at his throat in some seedy area of Mexico. This, as one might imagine, is about as bad as it sounds, and it is here that Mr. Lindell begins his exposition which, in terms of grabbing the reader’s attention, does so. Shortly after the machete is applied to Mr. Lindell, his cover story to these dangerous people is in peril of being exposed as an outright fabrication although the cause of this fabrication is that Mr. Lindell forgot or overlooked the small packet of coke that threated to make itself known due to a cigarette being pulled out of his shirt pocket. They say smoking is hazardous to your health, after all.
From here, we are taken back into Mr. Lindell’s life through the twists and turns and ups and downs that his existence has entailed. We learn that he was a bar owner who really was more concerned with having a family than a bar. The family were the customers who came to the bar. Unfortunately, this often meant that Mr. Lindell overlooked his actual family, which is a theme throughout the book. Eventually, this overlooking winds up costing him his wife, and in no small way, one feels that it probably also alienated his children who, after awhile, are no longer in his custody as his spiral into cocaine madness continues.
At the same time, Mr. Lindell keeps receiving premonitions and messages which, as his life attests to, tend to come true. Mr. Lindell attributes these messages to God and while that is not unusual for most of those who use cocaine, what is unusual is that Mr. Lindell’s messages seem to come into reality into fulfillments. The biggest theme is that one day, Mr. Lindell would have an important “platform” that was also important to God. The phrase “the son of man had no place to rest his head”, comes to mind as perhaps an ironic commentary on a business which is founded on nothing other than pillows. Maybe God has a sense of humor, or perhaps He simply wanted a lot of people through Mike Lindell to have a place to rest their head for their specific dreams.
The majority of the narrative involves Mike Lindell receiving messages from God in some serious, totally improbable way, and then Mr. Lindell more or less somewhat discarding those messages until a series of absolutely insane events transpire. MyPillow is a success, in no small way, according to Mr. Lindell’s exposition, because God was threatening to kill him if he did not stop doing crack and get to work.
At the very least, this book discusses the divergence and confluence of fate and free will and where divine intervention lies and the patience of God in such matters. Mr. Lindell eventually finds “Jesus” and feels that he has a moment where he truly releases much of his traumatic past as he begins to realize that Jesus was there all along. The only thing Mr. Lindell does not realize is that the relationship he seeks to have with a love interest in part because of her relationship with Jesus is unusual in the sense that his experiences which he attributes to Jesus and his relationship therewith is, in fact, all ready extraordinary. On some level, Mr. Lindell must view all the things that have happened in his life as being somehow “not tight with Jesus” except that it is clear through reading the exposition about the only entities capable of slowing Mr. Lindell down would have to be supernatural. Of course, love is one of those gifts that we all have trouble seeing when it comes to ourselves perhaps because though we may be compassionate in a thousand ways to others, we are not so when it comes to our own self.
Mr. Lindell is eventually led on a path that leads to Donald Trump and his run for presidency, and the outcome of this meeting is transformative for him as we can see now, looking back, that perhaps the platform God was speaking of had something to do with voting and the United States and Christianity as a religion in the country during trying times. During a time of “Great Awakening”, a pillow salesman might seem to be the exact opposite of what one might want since sleep is usually the antithesis to awake, but the line becomes quite blurry throughout Mr. Lindell’s book–and world history in the past five years is equally as smeared with vaseline.
Mr. Lindell also has all the pictures to back up his stories which is a plus, since some of them are so crazy sounding one wonders whether or not he is making some parts of it up to make his life stories sound “bigger” than they actually are. One concludes, after awhile, that no, Mr. Lindell is nothing if not genuine. This genuineness is, perhaps, what allows him to sell pillows when other people would be able to sell nothing at all. Mr. Lindell actually cares about his customers, his God, his country, and ultimately, his President. Even when he is a “crackhead” he still cares about people in ways that the “selfish drug” usually does not allow from testimonies of others who have used it. Yes, Mr. Lindell blows through money like a fiend. Yes, Mr. Lindell allows the drug life and business success to take his focus off his family. However, there are plenty of people who have lived through the early beginnings of the 21st century and latter half of the 20th century who were not “crackheads” who were just as bad if not worse when it came to addictions they fed. Whatever anyone wants to say about Mr. Lindell, they can only admit that when he finds something he believes in, he “goes hard”.
The book ends on a to be continued note. The work is interesting enough that one looks forward to the next installment if for no other reason than to see if Mr. Lindell eventually “mellows” or has some other “crazy” adventure. The odds are against any one of the events outlined in this book for any average human being. While it is clear that many average human beings get themselves into such messes, it is unusual they find themselves “back out” of those same messes. I suspect Mr. Lindell’s guardian angels are probably due some serious overtime/hazard pay. What a testimony, though!
In this story is some World War II history that is not commonly told. The fact that the Captain of the submarine, Joseph F. Enright, is telling the story makes it all the much better. The fact that Captain Enright has been given full permission to tell his tale complete with references to certain “Secret information” adds an interesting element to the narrative that probably took place aboard many other ships than his own. While it is commonly thought that war is a decision against the enemy with the ally, there are other considerations that have to be weighed. Like a poker game, certain actions or movements allow your opponent to know what it is you think you know. If you know too well, the most likely assumption is that you have access to some of their secrets which means that either you have broken their codes, or you have spies in their ranks. Either one of those scenarios means that immediate action is necessary on the part of the compromised to ferret out any potential moles or bad actors.
This book gives you plenty of considerations along those lines in regard to if you were the Captain of the Archer-Fish, how would you have parsed the scenario given the variables that Captain Enright delineates?
What Captain Enright does in this book is to give his vanquished foes a voice. In a sense, his fame is directly attributable and entangled with all the men who went down on the Shinano which was the largest aircraft carrier built in World War II. The entire project was secretive, and originally the ship had aspirations to be a battleship but was instead converted to an aircraft carrier to attempt to turn the tides of the war back in Japan’s favor.
The problem, of course, is that the Japanese decision makers are in a hurry and act in haste and in pride. Though their engineering is novel the ship sets sail without being properly tested and outfitted. This puts the entire crew at a disadvantage and the decisions aboard the Shinano continually reflect a kind of arrogant thinking on the part of the Japanese. For one thing, they conclude that the Americans are “stupid” because they keep “pinging them” with radar noise, and the only logical explanation as far as Captain Toshio Abe is concerned is that the Americans must be hunting their new warship with a wolfpack of submarines. This is how the Japanese fought in the skies, and certainly there is evidence of the tactic at sea and so the Japanese project what must be true of their fighting style into the battlefield as opposed to considering that with decisive, aggressive action and superior firepower that they can simply defeat a lone sub that is stalking them.
Really, Captain Abe throughout the story, is portrayed as simply wanting to get the ship where it was going as quickly as possible. He, of course, pays the price for this dedicated focus by becoming a sacrifice along with the many other men on the ship that would go down with her after being impacted by four torpedoes that left gaping holes in the vessel.
The entire read is riveting, and horrifying. One can sympathize with both Captains to the point that one can forget that Japan is allied with Nazis from time to time which is, without a doubt, an evil that had to be quashed. Still, between the respective Captains, one begins to understand how each Captain is shouldering a lot of burden under the banner of “duty” and really neither of them especially want to be where they are. Captain Enright, it seems, has more of a delayed reaction but in his telling of this book, there is a definitive “needing to understand the enemy and the conditions and stories of the men” whom he played a key role in killing in naval combat.
The battle could have just as easily gone the other direction, had different decisions and orders and risk-taking been different within the personalities of the Captains. The aspect of how Japan handled the aftermath of all of this action at sea is just as interesting if not as reflective of a most evident hubris. The administration decides that those most worthy of blame, it seems, were the crew. The crew of the Shinano might have been the ultimate losers in the sense that even those who survived lived long enough to hate those who had issued the orders to dispatch them aboard their ill-fated vessel in the first place. Even the Destroyer escorts were of no immediate help, hog-tied by the orders of Abe who in turn was bound by Japanese military command. One cannot help but feel like just as the men in Pearl Harbor were sent to their deaths by a series of either errors or coordinated indifference, certainly the crew of the Shinano was another such sacrifice that need not have been.
The book left me disturbed by my own reactions to the story that was told but disturbed in a somewhat good way. The conclusion is that war is hell, which is a cliche, but that the absolute waste of human life and resources must border on something close to being unforgiveable. If you are a student of history, this book is well worth the read. Pick it up, and do not give it a second thought. You will have plenty of time for second thoughts when you finish the contents of the book.
