History sneers. Raw. Cyclical. Cruel. Every peace treaty gives birth to a field of ruins. Every solemn oath transforms, as soon as it is proclaimed, into a broken promise. Subtly—and sometimes ferociously.

From Potsdam 1945 to Istanbul 2025: The Metaphysics of Broken Promises

BY Cassandre G

The Tainted Oath

In 1945, in Potsdam [1], the Allies swore to build a new world. Four ideals were traced in fresh ink, while the still-warm ashes of the Apocalypse floated above the Berlin suburbs. Barely had the European fire extinguished when, in the shadows, others—driven by ideology or greed—stoked brighter embers.

The nuclear bomb had not yet struck Hiroshima, but the time was imminent. In a final burst of hope, the Allies proclaimed a solemn oath: to uproot Nazism. To disarm hatred. Liberate the people. Break the cartels.

A dream. Pious hopes, perhaps sincere. But this oath, born at the dawn of the atomic age, already carried within it the threat that still haunts the world. No sooner born than it was betrayed.

From utopia to realpolitik: the perversion of ideals

This betrayed oath paves the way for cold cynicism. "NATO's goal is to keep the Soviets out, the Americans in Europe, and the Germans down," Hastings Ismay, its very first Secretary General, would later blurt out.

"From Plato to NATO," diplomats, columnists, and insiders casually repeat—like a brilliant joke in circles that consider themselves lucid. From the ideal to the targeted strike. From the just city to preemptive war. From skillful dialectics to abrupt injunctions. It's the dark humor of experts, the knowing wink in think tanks where the world is remade behind closed doors, during a coffee break—casually inspiring the next disasters.

In the shadow of the 1930s, a discreet whisper from the chancelleries outlined Nazi brutality as a trump card, quickly consumed by horror.

Another aphorism, just as damning: "From Adam to Potsdam." A brilliant phrase born in the post-war period, evoking humanity, origins, civilization... But implicitly masking the moral shipwreck of modern times. So irreversible is the perversion of certain human beings—and remains so. Those nostalgic for inhumanity are tenacious, without remorse or repentance.

For Potsdam was not only the scene of a new world order. It was also the prelude to the great spectacle of renunciations—disguised as promises. As early as 1945, Operation Paperclip [2] embodied this renunciation, blatant and cynical: the United States exfiltrated more than 1,600 Nazi scientists, presented as valuable experts. Werner von Braun [3], designer of the V2 missiles that fell on London, soon became the father of the American conquest of space. Naturalized, decorated, celebrated as a hero of the free world.

Behind the scenes, General Reinhard Gehlen, head of Nazi intelligence on the Eastern Front, was protected by Washington. He would soon found the West German secret service.

Theodor Oberländer, a Nazi from the very beginning in 1923 and implicated in the massacres of the Jewish community of Lvov, became a minister of the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s.

Yaroslav Stetsko, head of a pro-Nazi Ukrainian puppet state in 1941, marched in Washington, welcomed with open arms. He was received at the White House and congratulated by President Ronald Reagan.

And this dark pragmatism, once whispered, now transformed into an unscrupulous choice where utility would prevail over memory.

Another forgotten scandal: at the UN, Kurt Waldheim, a former Wehrmacht officer, presided from 1972 to 1981—without provoking any real outrage. In 1968, only Beate Klarsfeld [4] slapped this oversight in the face, publicly striking Kurt Kiesinger, a former Nazi dignitary who became Chancellor. The fact that Kiesinger was able to rise to power despite his past testifies to a dubious repentance and constitutes an unbearable insult and affront to the countless victims of the Nazi abomination.

Even today, the machine of pragmatic revisionism is still churning. In 2023, the Canadian Parliament applauded Yaroslav Hunka, a former SS member of the Galicia Division (CBC News, 2023), simply because he had fought the Russians—our former allies. Ignorance? Cynicism? A concerted apology for Nazism? Some claim ignorance. Others claim historical complexity. But all remain silent about the essential: the war narrative erases ethics like wiping a clean slate.

While experts extol "European values," we applaud Oleksandr Alferov, a former Azov Battalion member, who sees Hitler as a cultured and refined man.

Yesterday's victims are being used against today's. Memory becomes a tool. A tool of war, too. So no, these aphorisms are not witticisms. They are warnings. "From Plato to NATO" draws a straight, undetoured line from philosophical utopia to military technology. "From Adam to Potsdam" retrace the fall—not of man, but of his promises.

2025: Chaos Perpetrated by NATO

Eighty years after Potsdam, chaos follows promises. In July 2025, in Istanbul, the third attempt at peace between Ukraine and Russia stalled, undermined by the chaotic belligerence of European leaders.

A ballet of the deaf in a closed room. People talk, sign, observe each other—a timid progress, the beginnings of dialogue. But behind this facade, European diplomacy, discredited and a spectator, maintains the illusion of a peace imposed by force and a coalition without resources or ammunition. Should we smile? Perhaps, with exasperation and fatalism. This diplomatic theater exists only for the sake of the photo. Positions remain fixed. 

The West clings to its fables, fantasizing about an "enemy" it has itself constructed, driven by an arrogant and illusory faith in its "values," or by a stubborn denial of the facts. The Maidan coup in 2014 overthrew Yanukovych and fractured Ukraine. The Minsk agreements were trampled. NATO's obsessive expansion continued. The Ukrainian government, infiltrated by extremist factions—nationalists and neo-Nazis—kept silent about these documented truths.

The West, blinded by its certainties, ended up believing its own lies. Does it even understand the root causes of the conflict? Discriminatory laws, state Russophobia, the bombing of Donbass since 2014, the betrayals of Minsk I and II, and Moscow's demands—neutrality for Ukraine, recognition of Donbass, an end to NATO expansion, protection of Russian speakers, denazification—all ignored.

These demands, rooted in a concern for geopolitical balance, are rejected wholesale. Diplomacy is swept aside by the Atlanticist obsession. War becomes inevitable. The refusal of peace becomes doctrine.

The naive cling to their illusions, the others to a fragile morality—reserved for designated enemies, ignored as soon as it interferes with the dominant narrative.

The West intoxicated: the war of narratives 

After the quagmire of Istanbul, the West persists in its blindness. What will these EU and Western elites do? Proclaimed horsemen of the Apocalypse by observers and the people alike, initiators of a "coalition of the willing"? Will they "fight to the last Ukrainian"? Why not—it's not their skin. Will they definitively ruin their economies, exhaust their societies to arm Ukraine? And above all: do they still refuse to consider peace on anything other than their terms, without questioning the real causes of the conflict?

If there is a ceasefire, it's only a respite. Just enough breathing space to reignite the conflict. Do they think of the people, of their well-being? Or, even in good faith, are they straying into an abstract crusade, where NATO dictates and the people pay?

In reality, their certainties are crumbling: these elites have lost the strategic and moral ground. So, in a desperate reflex, they seek to save face—even if it means setting everything ablaze. This is the true "Great Reset" they are preparing.

A war of images, not outcomes

It's diabolical—but that's what's playing out before our eyes. War doesn't need outcomes. It needs images. And the civilians aren't playing: they're dying.

Another hypocritical scenario is playing out non-stop on Western channels. The news, aligned with the Kievan and Atlanticist narratives, is oversimplified, and portrayed as spectacular. The headlines say the negotiators left after less than an hour. But they fail to mention that there had been prior talks.

Modest but real agreements on prisoner and civilian exchanges. Is that not much? It's already a lot. And there is so much left to say about the rest.

Off-Camera Diplomacy

Real diplomacy doesn't happen live, on set, narrated by ideologues obsessed with the formula that will boost ratings. Today, peace is sought elsewhere: via videoconference, in discreet working groups. It's fragile, uncertain—but it's a start. I believe it is.

Peace isn't decreed in prime time. It's developed, silently, fragile—but it's the only way out. Under Biden—a Democrat in appearance, a neoconservative in fact—peace was taboo. With Trump, it will be about deal-making, about pragmatism. Business is business. MAGA in uniform, to justify arms sales. It's profitable, and it restores America to a supposedly central role.

For Europe, it's relentlessness, neurosis—a disaster. At the bottom of the hole, she digs deeper, mired in her denials.

History under Drone 

And meanwhile, the war continues: on full screen, live, on the ground and on social media. History doesn't stutter. It repeats itself—differently, but always cynically.

From Plato to NATO: what irony. From the thinker to the drone. From the ideal city to convoys of Leopard tanks, lined up under flags of stars and hypocrisy. Could you imagine, eighty years later, German tanks bearing the Baltic Cross returning to the outskirts of Kursk and in the Donbass?

In the past, people recited: "From Adam to Potsdam"—like a civilizing litany. But behind the brilliant slogan, the garrulous intentions, and the empty words: what remains? The mutilated truth.

Desecrated Memory

We were promised: never again. But cynicism dies hard. In the hushed corridors, former Nazis were recycled as "peace technicians." Von Braun, a notorious SS officer, built NASA. Oberländer, an accomplice in massacres, became a minister. Stetsko, a Ukrainian collaborator, paraded in Washington. And Klarsfeld, alone and courageously, slapped Kiesinger, stunning the amnesiac Federal Republic of Germany.

And while these camouflaged remains are being hailed, mass graves are opening elsewhere, threatening new massacres. Gaza is suffocating. Kursk is bleeding. Donbass has been burning since 2014.

But emotion is selective. Compassion is dictated by the imperatives of the oligarchs. Europe could have once again become "thought," a balancing force. It is losing its way. It is losing its credibility. It's tangled up in its ideologies, its pretensions, its unbearable arrogance.

Lack of arrogance

France, Germany, Poland, Great Britain—each brings its own arsenal. War has become a spectacle. A dramatic scene where the powerful—those who know each other—don't bleed. Civilians, on the other hand, succumb to the bombs.

And meanwhile, the BRICS are weaving a different geography. They're challenging the hegemony of the dollar. They're connecting the peoples the West wants to punish for disobeying. Jean-Noël Barrot, this so-called head of French diplomacy, acting like a good, exalted "Young Leader," zealously applies the ideology of sanctions—and punishes a Russian economy... which is climbing to the rank of fourth-largest world power. But shh! We must not disrupt the official narrative. Even if it's wavering: speaking Russian is forbidden in Odessa, in Kharkov—just as being moderate is on a TV set.

Slogans proliferate: COP29, ZFE, Climate Package, Defense Package. Everything is "for our good." Even the gag, or rather the mask.

Democracy is now played out behind closed doors, in a dead language, under the cold lights of studios and think tanks. And we laugh—or rather, we cringe. We call "suckers" these citizens too exhausted to bleat or coo. But who plucked them? Who sheared their heads?

A final, revealing affront!

In Drap, near Nice, another war is being waged—that of memory. Boulevard Stalingrad has been erased from the maps. Shamelessly renamed. The deputy mayor claims that this battle deserves no tribute. That the victory over Nazism no longer has any meaning.

Thus, the resistance fighters are being buried a second time. No longer under bombs, but under municipal decrees. A martyred city is being erased. Pavlov's house is being erased, where, during a 58-day siege, a handful of Red Army soldiers held firm, breaking the backbone of the Wehrmacht—while the French army, in 1940, surrendered in 41 days.

Revisionism no longer needs the sound of boots. It has civil servants, elected officials, and zealous and amnesiac municipal councils. And the memory of Potsdam—that old, sullied oath—is slowly fading from people's minds.

————

Conclusion: Breaking the imbroglio, rekindling utopia

From Potsdam to Istanbul, from broken promises to media chaos, the West is falling into its own trap. The elites, mired in their slogans—"From Adam to Potsdam," a chimera of order; "From Plato to NATO," a mirage of war—are orchestrating a chaos that is crushing people, from Gaza to Donbass, from Kursk to Odessa.From Operation Paperclip to the scuttled Istanbul talks, from the broken promises of Minsk to NATO's insatiable expansion, their moral amnesia has drowned the truth in a toxic fog.

But history is not their monopoly. As the young La Boétie might have written today, revisiting our era: "Our submission feeds the insidious beast." » In Mouseland [5], in this Tommy Douglas fable, mice still elect cats who devour them.

And yet, the voiceless rise up, attempt the impossible, and sometimes manage to disrupt the narrative. The Yellow Vests, despite the appropriation and defamation, have defied conformity.

Recently, Thierry Laurent-Pellet [6], an analyst who lived in Ukraine, challenged Jean-Noël Barrot during a public conference in Aix-en-Provence, delivering harsh truths about the Ukrainian situation—earning him boos from an audience clearly incapable of hearing any other reality.

Disturbingly, the full video of this exchange, initially broadcast, has since disappeared from the internet. Only a short excerpt survives, relayed in an independent compilation [6]. This kind of erasure is sobering: what truly took place, in the eyes of many witnesses, seems never to have existed. Yet, we were not dreaming.

They are rare, but they exist: those who still speak, who dare, who show. Those who remind us that "lucid" does not mean mute. Let us be vigilant. Let us hunt for facts in archives, testimonies, raw documents—far from the sanitized platforms where "moderation" masks censorship, and where the truth is disturbing.

Let us support these independent voices, those who critique and analyze the narratives patched together by elites who are often more cynical and strategic, but never benevolent. Let us refuse to be those docile "suckers," bleating and cooing at all the imposed narratives. Because, as Orwell wrote: "Who controls the past controls the future." "He who controls the present controls the past," only free, enlightened, and collective speech can disrupt this charade and revive the promise of a reconciled human world.

Without that, it's terrifying—but the beast will swallow us up.

Cassandre G, summer 2025

https://www.legrandsoir.info/de-potsdam-1945-a-istanbul-2025-la-metaphysique-des-promesses-trahies.html

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