Vault of Secrets - Unpopular History

In 1992, the US military and intelligence community actively recruited former Soviet military research facilities and weapons institutes, bringing hundreds of Soviet scientists onto the Pentagon payroll. The Soviet Scientists Immigration Act of 1992 (SSIA) facilitated this by providing 750 visas to eligible scientists and engineers from the former Soviet Union. The program expired in 1996, but legislation later extended eligibility until September 30, 2006, and increased the visa cap to 950. Scientists who entered through other channels, such as exchange programs, temporary work visas, or refugee and family routes, also benefited, as the Act signaled an official preference for former Soviet scientists, easing their integration into US research efforts. One notable example is Roald Sagdeev, a Soviet plasma physicist who married Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Soviet aerospace engineers also assisted the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson Base. In the 1960s, a radar specialist at Lockheed’s Skunk Works recognized that Ufimtsev’s equations, translated from Russian, allowed precise calculations of radar wave reflections off flat panels. Lockheed used this Soviet mathematics to develop the F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft and the B-2 bomber. Following the Soviet collapse, Ufimtsev moved to the US, where his aerospace engineering concepts were integrated into US military research.

George H. W. Bush to Nixon about the break up of the Soviet Union.

"In the sphere of international polltics I find two convictions generally held. The frst that another world war will mean the wiping out of white civilisation and the passing of the control of world affairs into other and probably less competent hands, and the second impact that another world war is inevitable." —Bishop Batty of Newcastle, 1931 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/25573879

Rhodesian tankers with a round from their Polish-made T-55D MBT. The equipment was taken from the Astor, a civilian French-flagged merchant ship operated by commercial mariners, and South Africa subsequently gave it to Rhodesia. Under Botha, sanctioned ARMSCOR and DMI maintained active gray-market shipping channels, French maritime links, and international arms brokers. South Africa had acquired zero-mileage Soviet armor in what appeared to be a brief moment of double dealing with the USSR. Durban was South Africa’s most heavily guarded military and commercial port, making the circumstances particularly notable. A commercial freighter carrying ten main battle tanks, re-consigned to Angola—South Africa’s active enemy in the Border War—does not simply “wander” into Durban by mistake. Hence, contemporary criticism suggested a direct back-channel transaction between Moscow and Pretoria, something that would have made Washington furious, particularly as Washington already maintained its own back-door channel to Moscow dating back to the Carter era.

Norbert Schücking was born on Jan. 15, 1921, and served as a fighter pilot in the Luftwaffe during the final years of World War II. He flew with Jagdgeschwader 11, a fighter wing heavily involved in defending Germany against Allied air attacks. Schücking flew aircraft including the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190. He is generally credited with between 9 and 13 aerial victories, although surviving records differ on the exact total. His combat took place primarily on the Western Front, where German pilots increasingly faced large formations of American bombers protected by long-range fighter escorts. By 1944 and 1945, those missions had become extraordinarily dangerous. Luftwaffe pilots were often sent against heavily defended bomber formations that could include hundreds of aircraft at a time. In February 1945, Schücking reportedly bailed out of a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 at only about 330 feet above the ground. He survived after landing in deep snow.

The Cantillon Effect is what happens when extra money is created (like a government or bank printing more). The new money does not reach everyone at the same time. People who get it first (banks, governments, or big companies) can spend it while prices are still low immediately. They buy things cheap. Later, prices go up for everyone. People who get the extra money last — or never get any — have to pay more with the same old money. After the 2008 financial crisis, and again in 2020, central banks created huge amounts of new money. This money went first to banks and people who already owned stocks and houses. Those prices rose quickly, so those owners became richer. A few years later, prices of food, rent or house prices, and everyday things also went up. Families who only had regular jobs and savings found that their money bought less. So it helps some people and hurts others, even if nobody meant it to be unfair. Think of it like this: the people closest to the new money win first, and the rest of the country pays later.

Morgan and Rockefeller trying to take over and monopolize the agriculture of the world — claim made to the Tariff Commission of Australia, 1905.

Photo from M

Another Soviet myth is that Belarusians welcomed the Bolsheviks with open arms in 1920.

On this German poster from 1932, you can see what the communists would have liked to make Germany into and how they regarded the National Socialists. This shatters the stereotype imposed by postwar myth-makers that the communists and the National Socialists were all leftists and acted in concert against the democrats.

The start of the British welfare state model was formalised in the "Model Family Plan" (the Beveridge Report), which was a British government system of family allowances (child benefits). The primary goal of these allowances was pronatalist: encouraging British families to have more children to reverse a declining birth rate and rebuild the population after World War II. The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)—which also backed the Anglo-Soviet alliance—gave its support, while the British Fabians actively promoted the plan. The Fabians utilized their immense institutional influence within Clement Attlee's 1945 socialist Labour government to transform the Beveridge Report's blueprints into the foundation of the modern British Welfare State. Ultimately, however, socialists repurposed the system not to breed the native British population, but to breed immigrants, as seen today.

"Keep out alien Jews." The British Union Of Fascists.

The Brotherhood of the Union, later known as the Brotherhood of America, was a secret society founded in the 1850s by American writer and social activist George Lippard to promote American nationalist ideals and social reform. As one of the earliest structured entities in America to explicitly advocate for and popularize the concept of an eight-hour working day, the Brotherhood served as a precursor to the "Knights of Labor." The group directly inspired Uriah Stephens, who used the Brotherhood's ritualistic, secretive, and industrial-organizing model to establish the Knights of Labor—which became the most dominant and massive American labor federation of the 1880s. Furthermore, the Brotherhood strongly supported private ownership for the common man. One of its primary demands was the Homestead movement, in which it argued that the government should give every working family its own plot of land and a house. While the vast majority of its members were Christian, the organization itself was strictly non-sectarian and non-denominational.

"The victory of communism in Germany would mean another war." This map was published by Hugo Fischer in 1933 in the book A battle for Germany.

Unser Rommel Marschlied Our Rommel (with German and English subtitles)

Christi-Auferstehungs-Kathedrale (Resurrection Cathedral) is located on Hohenzollerndamm. It served as the central cathedral for the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) German diocese. It was inaugurated in May 1938, and remained open for services in 1944 despite ongoing Allied air raids. The cathedral was designed by German architect Karl Schellberg, under the Prussian Building and Financial Directorate, as a three-nave basilica in the Russian-Byzantine style.

Suicidal Empathy in Rhodesia. This is Judith Todd. She had the luck to be born in one of the wealthiest and most secure countries at the time. But she chose to make it a life's mission to destroy it. She was advocating for the destruction of Rhodesia and the majority rule of the black population, claiming that this would bring prosperity and democracy. During the Bush wars, she was openly sympathizing with Marxist guerrillas and terrorists. The government did not punish her and just put her under supervision. After Rhodesia fell and Mugabe raised to power, she celebrated. Then Mugabe started a brutal genocidal civil war and turned Rhodesia into the kleptocracy of Zimbabwe. Again, Judith started criticizing the government, but this time it did not work out well. She was arrested, beaten, and raped by a black militant. Then she stripped her of her Zimbabwean citizenship and had to flee to South Africa. Don't be like Judith. Don't destroy the foundation of your security and wealth.