I basically consider myself a amateur military historian. I do various impressions and this impression here today is to represent the contribution of the soviet union as an ally of the americans and the british to helping them win world war ii. We have to give equal credit to our allies. Now some would say we couldnt have done it by sur selves but the point is that people ask me why do i do this impression and i think because the reason is that we need to tell the story about the eastern front, okay. If you dont understand what happened on the eastern front, you dont understand world war ii. The soviets made a significant contribution to winning that war. Now, for example, what i normally do is on my display on the table over here, i have a National Geographic magazine, dated may of 1944. The first article in it has to do with the liberation of the ukraine. The point being the significance of that is that of course one month later we had dday. And the point the relationship of the soviet contribution is that as of that date, when we push and when you liberate the ukraine, you have pushed the germans out of your country. So by that point in time, one month before dday, we had been occupying 65 , maybe, of the best german troops fighting us. If we hadnt done that, if they hadnt failed that, if we failed at moscow or stollin grad or kurtz, all of those troops could have been on normandy beaches and it could be a different outcome. And the story told is that that is a significant contribution to winning the war that needs to be, if you will, explained to us as americans because we all contributed, and there is nothing wrong with supporting as we all do, my father fought in world war ii, our contribution. But we have to understand the war as a total picture. And the eastern front, that is where we need to do it. As well as that strategic advantage. Just the numbers, the sacrifice is a story that needs to be told. There were something in the area of 20 to 22 Million People who died on the eastern front. Half of woman they allege may be military. And even if you dont like those numbers, if you were to cut them in half, that is a lot of people. And when it comes to the soviets for example, at least half im sorry, about as Many Red Army soldiers died in one battle in stalingrad as all of the americans killed in action in the entire war. So we could see that is a significant contribution, a part of the story that needs to be told. When it comes to the soviet contribution, the interesting thing that i find that i try to communicate to people is the differences, if you will, in the soviet contribution as opposed to the british and the americans. And i find there are three significant differences. One of them has to do with the partisan movement. Now the partisan movement in the soviet union, as a resistancetype function, is totally different than all of the other resistance in france or belgium. All of those were underground, okay. They did good things. No doubt about it. For example, the french found a lot of american got a lot of american airmen back to london. But in the soviet union, the partisan movement was big. It was wellorganized, it was organized in a military fashion. There were, i say, not only numbers but because of the geography of the place they could obviously hide, if you will, from the germans. And behind the lines a new army was formed. An army without uniforms whose whom was the forest and whose front was the enemys rear. A guerrilla army. A minimum of glory and a maximum of determination. Theyre achievements were seldom recorded. Look well at these faces. You will never see them again in the ranks of war prisoners. Or read their names over heroes graves. Ahead of them lay nothing but the rope and the halter. But they stayed behind and went on fighting. Their only goal was merciless destruction. Now the partisan Movement Began in 1941 basically in terms of the composition. When stalin made his first speech to the people, okay, he reminded them and urged them to become partisans, to rise up like the russians did when napoleon invaded russia, referencing back to the history of russia. This war is not an ordinary war. It is the war of the entire russian people. Not only to eliminate the danger hanging over our heads, but to aid all people growing under the yoke of fascism. When you said that, you probably didnt mean it. There were either Red Army Soldiers caught behind the lines or communist party members. Now in many cases, that wasnt a bad deal because you werent getting a lot of other volunteers especially in places like ukraine which were behind the lines because the ukrainians were initially, when the germans first invaded the ukraine, the ukrainians welcomed them, thinking like in world war i when the germans came into ukraine and made them an independent nation that they would again be an independent nation. I think after about a year they began to realize they have two devils. Stalin on the one hand, because they dont like the soviet system or the fact that collectiveization cost them tens of thousands of people who died of starvation because of that system. But oh, by the way, we see that today. That juxtaposition and term between the ukraine and the russians and the animosity they have there. But what happened is that now they realized there was another devil. That is hitler and the nazis. Because they are killing people who are just because they are slobbed. Because theyre on the low totem pole of the racial nazis connect and they send them back to germany as slave labor. So at that point were able to get people to join the partisan movement. And in the soviet union in moscow, the leader of the partisan bureaucracy finally convinced stalin that he should actually issue an order that would now open the partisan movement to all people of the soviet union. Whether they were red army or communist party members. So they began to move, as i said, and increase in numbers through that period of time. And most everything they did as an organized group was designed to support the regular army, the red army, okay. And so for example, they had basically four different things, lets say, as a bipartisan movement. Again, three of them in adjunct to or in support of red army. One was to provide intelligence. Now, again, on my table over here we have a picture, okay. And this picture depicts one of those elements. A red army scout dressed in a camouflage uniform is consulting with partisan members. So moving back over here to this display, we then see parts of the uniform and equipment that he would have worn. In this case he wears the camouflage outfit, it is in this case a leaf pattern as opposed to what they call the amoeba pattern in that picture. Hes lightly dressed with that. He doesnt have a helmet. He has a soft cap. He has a bag which is his backpack with a few items in it. That is his map case and he has binoculars, he has a canteen, he has a belt and his compass, all right. His weapon is the pps 4041. Again lightly dressed. This is what he does. He provides intelligence. Also, i have another element that he would be carrying and this is the scout knife. Very few Red Army Soldiers were provided with knives of any sort, unlike the americans who had things like the kbar or whatever. The scout knife was provided to scouts by the soviet army. And unique thing about it, of course, is it is used in a particular way. As you could see, the knife has a blade edge and a nonblade edge and one would think you use the knife in that manner but a scout is trained to use it in one particular way and if you see the hilt, the way it fits my fingers, it is designed for two motion, one motion is across the neck from behind. And the other one is from the bottom and up. It is designed to be lethal, quick and silent. Which is the role of the scout. Not to be discovered to take his intelligence back to the main red army, unobserved. The other thing that partisans did for example were then raids, sabotage, the things that we think of guerrilla fighters being involved in. Sabotage. One of the more significant ones was what they called the railroad war as part of the battle of kurtz. The partisan movement is being directed from moscow. There is a bureaucracy in moscow. They knew about the battle and were going to be attacked and defended against it so the orders went out to the various units of the partisan that they should begin attacking the germans communications, the supply and whatever. And that is what they did. And those would be small unit operations in which you would have, let say, half a dozen man or a dozen men again with munitions to go out and blow things up, attack convoys and whatever. The other thing they did is raids. Which were different in the sense of the size and purpose. For example, copac ukrainians were directed by stalin, as we called him, the boss. They should conduct a raid down to the car pagian mountains and this is a unit involving substantial number of arms, mortars, like machine guns, to draw the germans away to chase them and that is the idea of the raid as opposed to the sabotage. So those are the three things, for example, that the partisans did in support of the army itself. The other thing the hints did is they represented the government of the soviet union to the people behind the lines. For example, one of the directives, by the way, as an aside, over again to my display, youll note a number of weapons on this other display. Most of them are german. One of them, by the way, is italian. Again, an axis ally or ally of the german. Even the belt buckle, of course, is german. But the point is the directive was we were supposed to be selfsufficient so in order to get arms, one of the ways to do it was to capture them from the germans and that is exactly we used the german supply chain to supply the partisans. Even including as i said the belt buckle but we adopted it to the soviet union partisan group by covering the swastika with the soviet star. So youre somewhat directive that doesnt mean that we werent provided supplies by the soviet union. We were. But we supplemented them, as you were, to try to be as selfsufficient as possible. When it came to food, though, then had you to go to the collective farms. And you went to the collective farms an the theory would be it would bring along your political officer and he would talk to the people. He would say, you must give food to the partisans because they are fighting to support the motherland just like your motherland. Oh, and by the way, a speech of giving support, if you will, and motivation and confidence to the people about the fact that the war is going to be run and comrade stalin is still in moscow and were going to win. But then also probably a directive, a warning, go not give aid to fritz, as they were called, the germans. If you collaborate and give aid you might be given permanent discipline and permanent discipline would involve a firing squad. And sometimes the partisans did have to exercise that kind of discipline in terms of representing the government. The partisans continued on until 1944, the last operation being the operation in which it indicates in that article we saw, ukraine was liberated. They were pushed out of the soviet union. Now there is no need for partisans any more because there are no lines to fight behind. So most of the units were disbanded and they were amalgamated into the regular red army units. One of those units that i portray, as i say one of the other things that i find that is interesting about the soviet contribution, as i said, one of them was the partisan. The other one was calvary. So i represent a calvary and in many case a calvary sergeant. My uniform is a standard latewar uniform well call it. I have the red stripe on my pants to represent the calvary movement. My hat has various combinations of colors. The idea being, again, the blue on my arm and i also have a symbol with the cross sabres and of course im carrying a saber, what they call the shotska. But there were other types of sabres. And again, calvary men were lightly armored, they were mounted. And the point here, the advantage, the interesting thing about the soviet military in terms of calvary is that they have the large numbers of mounted calvary groups. And by the way, a guard has this medal. What happened as the war progressed, things changed in the military and part of the change was to adopt a ill call it a prewar set of medals an uniform. And so in the times of the czars, there were elite guard units. So when you were a unit, that did something good, notable, probably heroic you would be distinguished as a guard unit and you would be given better pay and better supplies. So say im the fourth guard, the being point is that we would take that large mounted force, again, all they are armored with is pistols, sword, maybe a poppa shaw, that submachine gun, maybe mortars or light submachine guns. And they would take that corp or division and combine it with a mechanismed group or mechanisms division. So they were a group that worked in tandem. So they were of course armored with the soviet t34 and the kv1 and also some american tasks that were provided under land lease. And the way they would work theoretically is first of all the calvary would perform a function since the American Revolutionary war, intelligence, recognizance. Calvary is sent out and they gain information and bring it back to the commander to use. When theyre going to mount an operation, the theory of working together is this that the calvary first will come in on the flanks and get into the rear and supply and transportation and attack headquarters, cause turmoil in the rear and as theyre doing that, again trying to extricate themselves because many times they are outnumbered and outed, then the mechanism hits the front and that causes the germans to respond to that given time for the calvary to escape. And then therefore accomplishing the purpose of surprise and causing turmoil in the rear. Now that is the theory. Didnt always work. There are certain battles where unfortunately the mechanized didnt get there fast must have and units were pretty badly mauled up. But that is a very unique part. Outside of the polish calvary and the german calvary in world war ii, a country that used a large group of mounted calvary in an effective manner. The other big thing or important thing i think about the soviet contribution is the use of women in combat. And with that ill turn it over to do you want to introduce yourself. Yes, my name is Cheryl Williams and im representing the female contribution to the soviet effort in world war ii. I guess just to start off just to let you know, the soviets were unique at that time in their desire and ability to include women in combat. So the women served as medics. They served as tank drivers. They served as pilots. They were actually called not quite so affectionately by the germans, the night witches. They would bomb during the day and the ladies would bomb them at night and so they were called the bomb witches. And there were the women snipers, the soviet women snipers and they were lethal and effective and one of them went on tour with Eleanor Roosevelt to raise money. It was a war bond tour. And that is the soviet contribution to world war ii. How do you this portrayal. It is a story that hasnt been told and craig and i enjoy doing things that are just a little bit different. And people seem to respond very well to it. These events are always well attended. To me it is an interesting story and it is something that doesnt get told a lot. What reaction did you get from the public. We get a lot of i didnt know that. And ill tell you something conversely, i learn something every time i do this. I learn from the people who come, i learn from my partner and i learn something every time i come and do one of these events. So we get a lot of questions about the spam, actually. Well, the spam, by the way, represents on our table and part of our scenario the fact that we, of course, were an ali of the United States and britain and it represents lend lease that we wore provided supplies and military and non to help supply the tanks and the interesting thing about spam we like to add a little human to our presentation to ill tell you the bad joke. For example, we say some mornings the cook will come to the troops and say i have good news and bad news and he will say well we have potato soup all week and what is the bad news and he would say no potatoes. So thank you america for spam to help us substitute for the potato soup during the week. And again, this is again part of the display. The interesting thing, i kind of touched on it a little bit about the regular red army because as i said, our goal here is not to describe the red army in detail. There are many reenactors or living historians like myself who could give a lot of information about the red army. This book for example again down here on my display emphasizes obviously a picture of the Red Army Soldier. Over here we have the life magazine from 1944. That is a Red Army Soldier and in the life magazine. Again, we were allies. Even to the point of being in the movies. You probably heard of this fellow gregory peck. Well this is his first movie and it is about red army partisans. And of course he dies a noble death fighting for the soviet union. And then over here is also another one called the north star which again depicts partisans, containing actors and actresses of the 1940s. Of course after 1945, things changed. The soviets became our enemy. We saw them we saw them very seldom in the movies. Excuse me. Until the soviet union fell. And then all of a sudden we began to see movies again. For example, again, defiance. About soviet jewish partisans and many others that came along. But as i was saying about the uniform and about the reference that im a guard, when the red army was first organized in the 1920s by trotski one thing he wanted to do was eliminate the uniform of the past, of the czarist regime. So under the czars, the uniform of a regular soldier in many cases would look like the one im wearing. The difference would be the raised collar and have ep illets. So he took the red army and said i want to make it a working mans army. So when you go to work, you dont wear a suit with a raised collar and ep illets, you have a suit that has a laydown collar. So as we saw on the front of the book, that is what we call the early war uniform and it was just a simple spock like this with a lay down collar and all of the rankin significa insignie collar. But there was more and more reference to the past, to the heroics of the military achievements under the czars. So a lot of the changes were made to kind of encourage that, to reinforce that. So later on during the war, the uniform was now changed back to, in a sense, the czarist looking type uniform with the boards and the raised collar, okay. Again, the medals came back. Medals were prolific. As i said, the guard medal, and the guard units now we have elite red army guard units. Again, to raise morale and encourage the men to fight. So i guess id like people to