Ilya Ehrenburg called for the genocide of Germans after World War II.
Posted by The Pete Quiñones Show, Checked
- Sources
- 3 contradict3 context
- Said
- 1 time·
- Confidence
- 60%
The Pete Quiñones ShowOct 1, 2026
The sources document Ehrenburg's wartime articles urging soldiers to kill Germans, but they do not show any postwar call for genocide. One source says official Soviet propaganda reined in his rhetoric at the war's end to avoid incitement, which contradicts the claim's postwar timing and its 'genocide' framing. The claim tracks the passage faithfully.
What was said
… They were talking about just the natural, um, of course, with an ethnic solidarity. So it's special pleading there, uh, that, that it seems to be an already socialist. Uh, even Ilya Ehrenberg, this is the infamous film director, called for the genocide of Germans after World War II. Um, and, uh, the essay regarding one letter, and he said, We're sympathetic to the struggle being waged by the Israeli workers. …
The Pete Quiñones Show · · from the transcriptPost →What we found
Contradicts. Sources describe the 'kill the German' rhetoric as wartime (1941–1945) propaganda; the Nuremberg media piece states that at the end of the war official Soviet propaganda brought him under control lest his rhetoric be considered incitement to hatred of the Germans.[2]
Contradicts. A source on his wartime writing notes he later clarified his articles targeted 'German aggressors' rather than the whole German people, and another says he never openly called for revenge against civilian Germans.[3][4]
Context. Ehrenburg's most inflammatory calls to kill Germans appear in Krasnaya Zvezda articles and the 1942 essay 'Kill!', all written during the war; his December 1944 Pravda piece invoked the murder of six million Jews and revenge, but still during the war.[1][3][5][6]
Context. Postwar sources focus on his Nuremberg essays about German crimes and his later novel The Thaw, not on calls for the genocide of Germans; the 2026 Mazellist entry attributes atrocities to Red Army conduct but does not describe a postwar call by Ehrenburg himself.[2][5]
Sources
6 sources: 1 primary, 5 not rated
- 1Chapter 2. Ilʹia Ehrenburg and the Holocaust in the Soviet Pressacademia.edu · primary source · cited for: context
- 2We Tried to Understand, But We Could Not | Historyen.nuremberg.media · not rated · cited for: contradicts, context
- 3Ilya Ehrenburg - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org · not rated · cited for: contradicts, context
- 4Ilya Ehrenburg - #19 by Egorka - 2008 Archive Roomdiscuss.ww2incolor.com · not rated · cited for: contradicts
- 5Ilya Ehrenburgmazellist.com · not rated · cited for: context
- 6Ehrenburg, I.G. - SovLit.net - Encyclopedia of Soviet Authorssovlit.net · not rated · cited for: context
Where this claim was made
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