You wake up in an unfamiliar room. Plaster shakes off the wall with the thud of explosions. The rattle of sub-machine gun fire and crack of the rifle are all around.
You run outside and bump into a patrol of soldiers. *“Davai, davai!” *they shout as you hold your hands up and are herded to their commander. He tells you in pidgin English and gestures that you have a choice. Take a strip of red parachute silk, a weapon and fight in the city with them, or be deported to Siberia. Ladies fight in the Red Army too, if you are one.
You realise you’re in the bloody Battle of Budapest, sometime in late 1944, early 1945. On the other side are the Germans with the brutal Arrow Cross fascist militia who will give no quarter. What do you choose?
Another WWII hypothetical. If you’re wonder what the right choice is, post-war it was discovered that the death rates of Hungarian defectors thrown into combat and those deported into the USSR were roughly equivalent. Source; Hastings, All Hell Let Loose, p.602.
As I am a wicked good shot, and have experience with a moisin-nagant, and have seriously limited movement ability [unless part of the transport includes restoring me to healthy, which would take care of the joint issues and the diabetes, and heart condition] I say give me a couple ammo cans, a moisin-nagant, a scope, enough food for a week, and a good perch in a building somewhere. I will kill as many Germans as possible before I get shelled or die from lack of medications.
This is not a trivial question, although it seems to be, to most Americans. Because Americans are nearly the only people in the world whose country has never, in the living memory of its oldest citizens, actually been physically attacked by belligerent military forces intent on harming civilians and civilian institutions and infrastructures.
In almost all other countries, questions like this have been very real in their recent history, presenting a genuine threat. It is recognized as a fact of life, against which people have no real immunity.
I’d join my red comrades and kill as many Nazis as a could, especially those fucking arrow cross assholes. Then I’d cache my weapons and in '56 fight for Hungarian independence.
Then I’d cache my weapons again and wait for Orban Viktor to finally take that one step too far…*
*Only judging from the way things are going these days, the Viktator can do any damn thing he wants and no one cares anymore.
“Ez az új magyar narancs. Kicsit sárgább, kicsit savanyúbb, de a mienk.”
