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Author Topic: The PACT. Did the Soviets HAVE to do it?
Ken Burch
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posted 27 September 2007 12:57 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sixty-nine years have passed since the signing of the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact, and leftists(as Fidel and I inadvertently demonstrated in the thread on the Rough Guide to Radical Thought) are still passionately divided on the subject.

My own view is that the "buying time" arguement simply doesn't hold. Two years didn't make the USSR any better prepared to fight Hitler. And millions of good antifascists around the world were demoralized, some expelled from the Party simply for refusing to abandon antifascism.

I will always wonder why those who left the Party or were expelled from it in the Pact years didn't form a new, independent Communist movement.

The Party, in defending the Pact, chose to betray the great words of La Pasionaria, preferring to live on its knees than die on its feet. In a sense, the Party never really got off its knees again after that.
The holy concepts of internationalism and solidarity were abandoned once and for all by the CPSU in the Pact years.

The Pact led to the German Communist exiles in the U.S.S.R. being sent back to die in the concentration camps. It also, albeit probably unintentionally, abetted the Holocaust by preventing Jews and other "non-Aryans" from finding the shelter they had every right to expect the Soviet Union to provide. And I would also argue that it increased the hold that basically dictatorial thought had on the Soviet system.

The heroic defense against the Nazi invasion of the U.S.S.R. was solely the triumph of the Soviet people. The Party itself, at least in its leadership cadres, was useless in that time.

Therefore, to me, the Pact proves that the U.S.S.R. was no longer, as of 1939, worthy of the support of any progressive on the planet.

It teaches us that we need to know when to declare a revolutionary project a failure, abandon it, and start a new one.

Learn from 1939, and another world CAN be possible.


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Cueball
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posted 27 September 2007 01:12 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It's a hard question. Looking at the results of operation Barbarossa, one could conclude that the extra distance that the Wermacht had to travel drasticly changed the course of the war. It took them four months to get from the new Soviet border to Moscow, and when they finally arrived in late October, their operations were socked in by the Russian winter. Likely without the extra 800 km of travel they would have arrived in (theoretically) 3 months, which would likely would have given them the opportunity to organize a proper assault of Moscow in early October.

So, I guess you could argue, at the very least that it did work, moral issues aside.

[ 27 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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M. Spector
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posted 27 September 2007 01:16 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Ken Burch:
Therefore, to me, the Pact proves that the U.S.S.R. was no longer, as of 1939, worthy of the support of any progressive on the planet.

Here's one "progressive" who disagrees with you:
quote:
Those who seek nowadays to prove that the Soviet-German pact changes our appraisal of the Soviet State take their stand, in essence, on the position of the Comintern – to put it more correctly, on yesterday’s position of the Comintern. According to this logic, the historical mission of the workers’ state is the struggle for imperialist democracy. The “betrayal” of the democracies in favor of fascism divests the USSR of its being considered a workers’ state. In point of fact, the signing of the treaty with Hitler supplies only an extra gauge with which to measure the degree of degeneration of the Soviet bureaucracy, and its contempt for the international working class, including the Comintern, but it does not provide any basis whatsoever for a reevaluation of the sociological appraisal of the USSR.
- Leon Trotsky, September 1939

[ 27 September 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


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Cueball
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posted 27 September 2007 01:32 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Another point to bring up when analyzing the realpolitik behind the pact is the fact that we can not tell what position France and Great Britain might have taken were the pact not signed. What we do know is that there was no Allied counter-offensive into Germany in 1939, or into 1940.

This lassitude on behalf the Allies after the invasion of Poland, might indicate that there was some cofusion as to who the Allies considered as the main enemy. Churchill's speeches when he was First Lord of Fleet under Chamberlain were very belicose in regard to the USSR. One could ask, if the Soviets had not signed the pact, might not the Allies have taken an effectively neutral stand against the Axis, if the Wermacht had continued its adavance through Poland and into Russia in 1940, instead of attacking France? Their lack of commitment during the so called "phoney war," adds credibility to this possibility.

Might not the Allies have thrown their lot in with Hitler, even?

In anycase, we have to assume that these were the kind of calculations that were considered by the Soviet leadership in the run up to the invasion of Poland. To them it must have seemed that they were reversing the equation, ensuring that the Germans would first attack west, and thus buying the Soviet Union time to prepare for an eventual assault on the USSR, later, as opposed to a scenario where Germany would attack East, and then deal with their Western enemies later.

Lets not forget that the Anti-comintern pact was in effect, so a Japanese invasion of Siberia, timed with an 1940 Barbarossa, would have caused a serious strategic dilema for the USSR.

[ 27 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Ken Burch
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posted 27 September 2007 02:56 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
If the Pact had ONLY been about non-aggression, it might have been barely tolerable.

But Stalin refused to leave it at that.

He insisted on attacking those internationalists who were STILL antifascists. You were expelled from the Party anywhere in Europe AND in the U.S. and Canada for questioning the alliance with Hitler.

Can we all at least agree that THIS was intolerable? That there was no excuse to silence all opposition to the Pact within the Party?

Can we all at least agree that the pact was clearly a betrayal of internationalism and that it made life worse for antifascists around the globe?

How can anything justify Communist attacks against uncompromised antifascists?


And the German Communist exiles and the other refugees from fascism were sent back to die.


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Ken Burch
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posted 27 September 2007 02:57 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Also, we can fairly ask, in my view:

Would Hitler have been able to complete the Holocaust had the Pact not been in place?


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Cueball
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posted 27 September 2007 03:06 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Ken Burch:
If the Pact had ONLY been about non-aggression, it might have been barely tolerable.

But Stalin refused to leave it at that.

He insisted on attacking those internationalists who were STILL antifascists. You were expelled from the Party anywhere in Europe AND in the U.S. and Canada for questioning the alliance with Hitler.

Can we all at least agree that THIS was intolerable? That there was no excuse to silence all opposition to the Pact within the Party?

Can we all at least agree that the pact was clearly a betrayal of internationalism and that it made life worse for antifascists around the globe?

How can anything justify Communist attacks against uncompromised antifascists?


And the German Communist exiles and the other refugees from fascism were sent back to die.


Those things are things that Stalin would have done anyway, under other auspices. We are talking about the policy itself not how the policy was used to justify other activities.

If you really want to find a hole in the arguement you should ask why the non-agression pact allowed for the invasion of Finland -- the decision to invade apparently served Soviet interst very badly in that they almost lost, and Finland joined the Axis largely to regain territories lost in 1940.

Furthermore, the pact itself in many ways is an extension of the original "internationalist" ideas of Russian Bolesheviks, which included agressive military operations to bring the revolution west, in Poland in 1920. So, it can hardly be seen as a new policy, but actually the resupmtion of an old policy.

This, does not indicate that the pact itself was an instrument of policy very much at odds with the original conception of the Soviet Union, and so a clear breaking point with the past, rather it shows the opposite IMO.

[ 27 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Fidel
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posted 27 September 2007 06:48 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Ken Burch:
Also, we can fairly ask, in my view:

Would Hitler have been able to complete the Holocaust had the Pact not been in place?


Uh! I've been reading the excellent comments, and I don't know where to start. And I think your's are legitimate concerns about the betrayals of international comrades in Spain, Ken. I recall your saying that had fascism been beaten back in Spain, then such a victory could have given momentum to the struggle against fascism in Germany. Excellent points are made by Cueball as per usual.

Actually, from what I've read, the pact was more a geopolitical head game between all of the leaders then. I believe Stalin and Hitler both saw Poland as an obstacle, with Poles having already waged war with Russia and certain Polish-Ukrainian efforts to sack Moscow during civil war from 1918-22. Hitler saw Poland, as Cueball pointed out, as too much separation between the German army and Moscow. That and the fact that Poland would be a good country to kidnap blond-blue children for restocking Aryan blood in Germany.

But the East and Russia was the object of Hitler's affection from the start. Hitler not only wrote about but gave squawking oratories concerning the Jewish-Bolshevik parasites. Socialism and Jewry were one and the same, and Russia was going to have to be purged of Jews and Bolsheviks(and everyone else) if the East was going to be habitable for the master race.

I think Stalin wanted to trust Hitler. The Soviet Union was isolated from the start. The 25 internationals invading Russia during civil war was the initial reason for believing this, that socialism would have to built in one country and a buffer zone of countries created all around to prevent something like that from reoccurring. And then Munich meeting happened with Hitler and Mussolini meeting with British and French leaders to Russia's exclusion.

It was incomprehensible for Stalin that Hitler would repeat the mistake which cost Germany WWI, waging war on two fronts. Hitler would keep his word, and the fascist nations would go to war against each other. In Stalin's mind, the western democracies waged economic warfare on Germany since the Versailles treaty. Instead of making warfiteers of WWI pay, the western bankers and leaders themselves assigned blame to Germany for unrealistic war reparations and crippling the economy. This, in my view as it was for British economist JM Keynes at the time, was a tragedy perpetrated on the people of Germany. The situation in Germany became ripe for a dictatorship promising a way out of indebtedness to the banking cabal and fast track to better times.

Stalin's trust in Hitler was confirmed when German attack failed to take place as spies forewarned him about in detail. But barbarossa was actually stalled due to some trouble with supply lines through the Balkans. Tito's anti-fascists were the cause of delay.

At the same time as wanting to trust, or at least believe Hitler would not be as insane as to wage war on two fronts let alone repeat a military error of Napoleonic proportions by attacking Russia during winter , I don't believe Stalin trusted anyone in particular. Hitler appears to have been insane. Or at least that's the way it looks according to historians. What if like Molotov-Ribbentrop, there were pre-existing "secret protocols" on the QT with western leaders? What if everyone but Stalin realized that the focus of the corporate-sponsored military machine would be living space in Russia and the kibosh put to Soviet communism, a common threat to free market capitalists everywhere?


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
RosaL
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posted 27 September 2007 09:01 PM      Profile for RosaL     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Ken Burch:
Therefore, to me, the Pact proves that the U.S.S.R. was no longer, as of 1939, worthy of the support of any progressive on the planet.

It teaches us that we need to know when to declare a revolutionary project a failure, abandon it, and start a new one.


I notice that people like to treat these matters on the level of historical detail but I'm going to take a more general approach. When do you abandon an institution or a movement? Any such body that exists for a reasonable period of time will do some horrible things. At what point do you abandon it and start something new? When it does something appalling? Or do you stay with it so long as its fundamental principles seem to be good or as long as most of the people who belong uphold what you believe in (and is this the same as the first consideration?) or as long as you see a reasonable possibility that it will correct its course - especially if you stay in and fight?

I don't think the answers are obvious by any means.

I don't know of any human project (individual or collective) that does not contain some horrible acts. Horrible acts, in my view, do not vitiate the project because no project is without them. That’s the nature of human beings and human history. We do horrible things. The question is whether the horrible acts grow from the very nature of the project or whether they in fact violate its fundamental principles. The question is whether the project is inherently bad, or has become inherently bad, or whether its essence - its fundamental principles - are ones I believe in. Beyond that, there has to be a genuine capacity for self-criticism and change in the group or the movement. So I'm not saying you should never leave or abandon a project.

I belong to a number of groups with some pretty bad things in their histories and I do not do so lightly. (I’m not just talking politics here. I’m talking religion and family and nation. I'm talking about myself too!) In fact, I don’t know if I belong to any group that is innocent of such atrocities. I could start a new group tomorrow and it would be pure – for awhile.


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Fidel
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posted 27 September 2007 09:32 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
What if Stalin had been a progressive social democrat?

And as Ken mentions about The Pact not preventing the Holocaust in Europe, we should know that the Pact also did not prevent the slaughter of 30 million people in Russia at the same time. Stalin took a simple approach with WWI and civil war in retrospect, and that was the relentless pursuit of steel production for weapons, agricultural equipment and machinery to manufacture them. Steel! I just don't see how any government of the Soviet Union could have avoided what was to be a war of annihilation.


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N.Beltov
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posted 27 September 2007 09:47 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Cueball: Lets not forget that the Anti-comintern pact was in effect, so a Japanese invasion of Siberia, timed with an 1940 Barbarossa, would have caused a serious strategic dilema for the USSR.

Further to that - The Soviets and the Japanese worked out a non-agression or neutrality treaty from April 1941 to April 1946. That pre-dates the Nazi attack of June 1941. The Soviets were smart enough to avoid the mistake of Germany in WWI of fighting on two front.

The Soviets broke the treaty, when, following the meeting at Potsdam, they agreed with their Allies to contribute to the war effort against Imperial Japan. Operation August Storm, involving Mongolian and Soviet troops, routed the Kwantung Army and took over half a million Japanese officers and men prisoner, including 148 generals. Following the defeat, Japan signed the unconditional surrender on September 2, 1945. (This was, incidently, well after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)


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Ken Burch
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posted 27 September 2007 10:20 PM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
What if Stalin had been a progressive social democrat?

And as Ken mentions about The Pact not preventing the Holocaust in Europe, we should know that the Pact also did not prevent the slaughter of 30 million people in Russia at the same time. Stalin took a simple approach with WWI and civil war in retrospect, and that was the relentless pursuit of steel production for weapons, agricultural equipment and machinery to manufacture them. Steel! I just don't see how any government of the Soviet Union could have avoided what was to be a war of annihilation.


I don't know that I would wish Stalin or anyone else to be a "social democrat", not that social democracy has not produced some fine things, but that the term "social democrat" became debased by those in the right wing of its movement, from Friedrich Ebert and his decision to arm the Freikorps rather than to the right thing and join forces with Rosa Luxemburg, to the British Labour Party in mid-century with its obsession with "moderation" leading it to paralysis, to those like Sidney Hook who took their justifiable revulsion with Stalinism and twisted it into a rationale for becoming more anti-Left than Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, while abandoning to a man even a vestigial commitment to any form of social transformation or even mild social reform.

Had the Soviet Union stayed with or even returned post-1945 to their original model of power actually being wielded democratically by the workers' and peasants' councils, the USSR would exist today and the world would, in my view, have completed the revolution it still needs if it is to survive.

And the losses in the war prove my point about the futility of the Pact as a military strategy. Had the Soviets called on the workers of Europe, America and the rest of the world to join forces and defend the Revolution in 1939, the odds of victory would have been much greater. The comrades of 1917 faced far longer odds than the USSR would ever have faced fighting the good fight in '39 without delay and without betrayal.

And Rosa's questions about when you break with a project are precisely the questions we need to be asking ourselves, as I see it, at ever step of the struggle for the World that does not exist now, except in our hearts and minds and souls, but is always possible Possible.
The Left is STILL recovering from the consequences of the choice that millions of good idealistic comrades made: the choice to stay with the decayed Soviet project for years, sometimes decades, after its savage and ultimately reactionary true face was revealed.

There should have been a New Left born of the Pact. Those who left or were driven out of the Party because of that choice should have made the break clearly and permanently, and started anew.

All of the Lefts, whatever their orientation, suffered for the failure to make that new start at that time.


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Fidel
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posted 27 September 2007 11:32 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Ken Burch:

And the losses in the war prove my point about the futility of the Pact as a military strategy. Had the Soviets called on the workers of Europe, America and the rest of the world to join forces and defend the Revolution in 1939, the odds of victory would have been much greater.

That's a very nice thought. And the workers of the world did have their chance to join the mother of all battles against fascism when the Nazis invaded Austria, the rest of Czechoslovakia, France, the Baltics, Poland, the Balkans, Ukraine and Russia. The Pact was soon violated by Hitler as surely as he violated non-proliferation conditions of the Versailles Treaty. Churchill knew he was re-arming Germany for war, and so did Stalin.

Stalin knew that German aggression part two was going to happen. And he was sure that Hitler could not make the exact same mistake which cost Germany WWI. Stalin had no idea he would be chasing Churchill and Roosevelt around the world begging them for a second front for over two years. Was the "side show in the Mediterranean" the result of Hitler's secret protocol with the west? Or were Louis "Mountbatten" and company just a bunch of colossal screwups accidentally on purpose?

My mother was a worker who did her part in England, working on antiquated machinery in badly maintained English and Belgian factories, as did those women in California's secret aircraft plants. My father and his brothers couldn't get out of Canada fast enough to join the fight against fascism. The North African and Italian campaigns were well somewhat better organized, and the Nazis still fought ferociously on these fronts while two-thirds of the war machine went on a killing frenzy inside Russia. Russia stood virtually alone against Nazi Germany for over two years. Workers of the world were in awe of the Red Army and Russian people.

It wouldn't have mattered if Russia was led by Rosa Luxemburg or Josef Stalin wrt the coming war of annihilation. Rosa would have needed plenty of steel either way. The reason 30 million lost their lives in Russia wasn't because Stalin was threatening to invade Germany. He was buying the Russian people time with the Pact after watching Britain and France deal with Hitler and Mussolini to the exclusion and continuing isolation of Russia. Russia was just living space occupied by the enemies of Nazi freedom regardless. Who or what would have changed Hitler's plan to invade Russia?

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 04:00 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sorry Fidel. Stalin was not the architecht of Soviet victory. His record is as bad as it was good. If there was anything he excelled at it was managing his staff, which is a very important quality in these type of situations. On the other hand, his personal forsight was pretty bound up in his own misconceptions of the world.

There is no evidence that he was not completely blindsided by the German invasion. Yugoslavia had little to do with it. He really believed that Germany would not attack until after an armistice was signed with England. His lack of leadership in the first two weeks of the war is simply inexcusable. Many, many, many, (possibly millions) Soviet citizens died directly because of his faulty understanding and then his nervous breakdown after June 22nd.

The only thing he did in that period of note, was that he had D.G. Pavlov shot, which was probably, even by Soviet standards of the day, an injustice. Pavlov may not have been a genius, but it was largely Stalins misdirection before the war, and his apathy once it began which were the real cause of the debacle of the Minsk front, not Pavlov's mishandling of affairs.

Truly it is Stalin who should have been shot for that, if anyone was going to be shot. And because of it, I think they came very close to losing.

So. Strategically, I really can't give him much credit for forsight. He probably should have negotiated a unified front with the British, but he was so bound up in his views that this was simply impossible for him to consider. Had he done this, and not been tempted by territorial conquests, westward this might very well have nipped WW2 in the bud. That said his paranoia about the British was not entirely unfounded, as I outlined above.

Also, there is considerable evidence that the precipitous decision of the German high command to invade Russia was largely predicated on the possibility of a Soviet attack in 1942/43, and there is nothing I have seen that contradicts this view, and plenty of evidence for it. To say the least, this was on the table at Stavka.

Fortunately, Stalin was an able manager, and when push came to shove, he picked a number of really good people to lead the war effort, like Vasilevski, Zhukov amd Timoshenko, who put the show on the road, and being the able manager he was, he delgated and more or less let them do what they wanted after the winter of 1942.

Ultimately, it was the people themselves who resisted the German invasion, as much in spite of Stalin, as because of him.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 10:14 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:
There is no evidence that he was not completely blindsided by the German invasion. Yugoslavia had little to do with it. He really believed that Germany would not attack until after an armistice was signed with England.

I think Stalin realized something was amiss at the start of barbarossa, in June. By this time there was no mistaking Hitler's intentions. That opened up the Eastern front. And although a military victory for the Nazis, it contributed overall to the bad result for the Nazis. Stalin did not believe Hitler would launch an all out assault with Russian winter looming. Again, it was Tito's multi-ethnic guerilla fighters who caused a diversion in the Balkans. No one foresaw this happening except maybe the Slavs themselves.

In Stalin's mind, Hitler would have to wait until spring of 1942 for an all out invasion. As the weeks rolled on and reports from spies of an invasion did not happen, a spring invasion was the only sane option for Hitler. In Stalin's mind, Russia would have time to prepare.

Yugoslavia was supposed to be in the firm grip of the Nazis and Croats. Had the Nazis secured fuel supply routes to Romania and Turkey, the result would have been much different. The Nazis ran low on fuel for the Panzers and luftwaffe and were reduced to hauling supplies and munitions on horseback toward the end.

The political purges and famine in Ukraine aside, Stalin is credited by historians with increasing steel production by 500 percent between 1928 and 1937. I don't believe Churchill or Hitler understood how prepared the Russians were, or knew about the secret steel plants and munitions factories. Joseph Goebbels wrote in western newspapers that Stalin was liquidating the middle classes and Europe would be next.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 12:11 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:

I think Stalin realized something was amiss at the start of barbarossa, in June.


Yeah, like the German army was rolling acorss the border, after he had explicitly ordered the Red Army to not return fire on German units because he was afraid the German would use that as an excuse to invade, and told the Airforce not to be combat ready because front line officers who were warning of the coming invasion because they were being alarmist, and so allowed 1/3rd of his the Soviet airforce to be destroyed on the ground, and ordering that German deserters who had crossed the line to specifically inform Soviet intelligence of the exact date and time of the invasion to be shot, because he thought they were German spies sent as provocateurs. Yes, there was something amiss alright.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 12:24 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:

and so allowed 1/3rd of his the Soviet airforce to be destroyed on the ground, and ordering that German deserters who had crossed the line to specifically inform Soviet intelligence of the exact date and time of the invasion to be shot, because he thought they were German spies sent as provocateurs. Yes, there was something amiss alright.


Either way the deserters and spies had to be shot. That's basic espionage/intel 101, especially when tens of millions of lives are at stake. In the end, Stalin realized his own costly mistakes with intervening in military strategy and allowed Russian commanders to call the shots.

Hitler fancied himself a Roman battle line tactician. He overrode battle-hardened field commander's advice and cost Germany another war. Hitler was Germany's worst enemy from the start.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 12:33 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:

Either way the deserters and spies had to be shot. That's basic espionage/intel 101, especially when tens of millions of lives are at stake.


Oh I see, German workers impressed into the Wermacht who came to help their Soviet brothers by reporting the illegal attack upon the Soviet Union, revealing the exact time and date of the operation had to be shot.


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 01:04 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:

Oh I see, German workers impressed into the Wermacht who came to help their Soviet brothers by reporting the illegal attack upon the Soviet Union, revealing the exact time and date of the operation had to be shot.


The Red Orchestra was off by one full day. Nevertheless, when the attack did happen, Stalin went home and remained there for two weeks. He awaited the people's assassins. They never came. Stalin had many people shot or hanged who didn't deserve it, and Richard Sorge was probably one of them. We have to remember that Stalin was a former editor of Pravda not a natural military leader. These were extreme times. There was no UN then, and Russia was kept isolated before and after the Munich appeasement and other closed door meetings between leaders of western democracies, Hitler and Mussolini.

The first few months of the war was disasterous for the Soviet Union. Zhukov called for the Red Army to retreat from Kiev, but Stalin overrode him and insisted they fight. Military historians also credit Stalin on this occasion with delaying the assault on Russian cities.

By October of 1941, the Nazis were 15 miles from Moscow. Stalin ordered an evacuation, and two million Russians fled east. Hundreds of thousands of Russians were ordered to pack up the munitions equipment and strip factories. They carried equipment and machinery on horseback and on foot over the frozen Urals where it was reassembled and set in motion to feed the resistance.

Stalin remained in Moscow in a bomb shelter under the Kremlin and rallied morale as the Nazis launched a new offensive on the city in November. To the surprise of his own commanders, Stalin called for counterattack on December 4th, and the Nazi offensive was stopped. By January, the Nazis had been pushed back some 200 miles.


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jeff house
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posted 28 September 2007 01:24 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Obviously, the Hitler-Stalin deal was a monstrosity, connived in by monsters.

One has to be morally blind not to see this, or to be making arguments about "buying time".

For one thing, there was a SECRET protocol in which the two powers divided Poland between them in a nakedly imperialist act.

It is really not THAT important to create a little universe in which Stalin was always right, and "the bourgeoisie" always wrong.

To do so is a sign of religious thinking, with similarly loose connection to the actually existing world.


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 01:29 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:

The first few months of the war was disasterous for the Soviet Union. Zhukov called for the Red Army to retreat from Kiev, but Stalin overrode him and insisted they fight. Military historians also credit Stalin on this occasion with delaying the assault on Russian cities.

Stalin basicly ordered no retreats anywhere. It just happened that the inititial assault on Kiev happened when the Wermacht was at the far extension of its offensive supply, and so failed, in this instance to yield results. The Wermacht resolved this issue by surrounding the city,

Half a million Red Army soldiers were captured. A figure which amounts to the sum total of the Red Army reserve. These soldier were needed elswhere. For instance had they been deployed along the East bank of the Dnepr, they very likely would have been able to delay the river crossing for substantially more time than the Germans lost besieging Kiev.

40 odd Soviet Red Army Divisions ceased to exist.

Meanwhile the Germans forded the Dnepr with relative ease and continued their drive eastward almost unopposed.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 01:33 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
My goodness, another progressive checks in. jeff, the Nazis didn't pour two-thirds of the corporate-sponsored military machine into Canada to make with the living space. Bolshevism and Jewry in Russia were the targets. Eventually, useless eaters everywhere would have been exterminated had the Nazis gained control of Russia, Europe and North Africa. An estimated 50, 000, 000 to 83, 000, 000 dead and missing by 1945. It all started after a second rate leader with ties to royalty was assassinated in a third rate European city. Any pretext will do. We know that for sure by now.
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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 01:37 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That is irrelevant to the discussion of Stalin's strategic forsight, and his value as a military commander.

I have been fair in my estimate, I conclude that Stalin was an able manager, but that his strategic vision was severly lacking. Fortunately for him, after Kiev FM Buddony found a desk job at the Kremlin, and people with more vision replaced him.

Unfortunately, there was no SW Front to put a FM in charged of since Stalin and his old civil war chum lost it at Kiev.


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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 01:39 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:

Meanwhile the Germans forded the Dnepr with relative ease and continued their drive eastward almost unopposed.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


Sure they were unopposed, There was no second front for over two years while the Nazis ran roughshod through Europe, jockeyed for position outside Moscow and laid siege to Leningrad, Kiev, and Stalingrad. Hitler poured two-thirds of the military machine into the heart of Russia and Ukraine and slaughtering willnilly.

In the end, Time magazine named Stalin man of the year. Historians still say he was the biggest winner of the last century not Hitler. And sure as hell not Chamberlain or the bulldog.


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 01:39 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Irrelevant.

You just said losing 40 Divisions at Kiev was brilliant. It was not. Losing 40 divisions at Kiev was stupid.

It was a good thing that Buddony and Stalin were buds, otherwise he would have likely suffered the fate of D.G. Pavlov. Still he was disgraced as a front line commander because someone had to pay for Stalin's mistakes, other than Stalin of course.

By 1943 Buddony was back in charge of the Soviet cavalry forces.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 02:07 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sure. Stalin probably should have done it like the U.S. military does it today with a multinational U.S.-led medieval siege of a country for ten years to soften them up before carpet bombing in the dark.

And Stalin might have been smarter to wage proxy war for years before attempting to make living space out of Germany, Europe and the western democracies.

It's true that Stalin wasn't a very efficient military commander. War is hell, but there are always two sides to it before any crimes against humanity are perpetrated. Let's not forget who was helping Hitler re-arm Germany to the eye teeth. The Russians weren't going to win with Stalin implementing sweeping social reforms and human rights. They needed steel and lots of it.


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BetterRed
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posted 28 September 2007 02:09 PM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Very interesting arguments here. I'll get back to you on that.

quote:
Irrelevant.
You just said losing 40 Divisions at Kiev was brilliant. It was not. Losing 40 divisions at Kiev was stupid.

Agreed. A documentary on Buddony\'s life was released lately. They mentioned that he got a Hero medal from Stalin after the war, despite his mistakes. The guy was a brave commander, but his tactics were from an ancient, cavalry era.

But you know who were stupid? The allied commanders on the Maginot Line circa Sept. 1939 to May 10, 1940. How would one declare a war and have an overwhelming superiority on the frontline and sit on their hands for 8 goddamned months?
I believe Brits and the French has about 30 divisions on the Maginot.
The German defenses were somewhat weaker.
So why did Gamelin and the other Allied bigshots did nothing for such a long time? That is a real tough one.

The Soviets had an easy explanation - that the West secretly expected Hitler to break his pact and invade USSR.
However, Stalin was pretty confident that the Nazis wouldnt do it. Was it just blind hubris or something else? Soon enough, Hitler indeed decided to strike France instead...
Because, oddly enough, Barbarossa wasnt laid down until December 1940.


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 02:17 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
Sure. Stalin probably should have done it like the U.S. military does it today with a multinational U.S.-led medieval siege of a country for ten years to soften them up before carpet bombing in the dark.

And Stalin might have been smarter to wage proxy war for years before attempting to make living space out of Germany, Europe and the western democracies.

It's true that Stalin wasn't a very efficient military commander. War is hell, but there are always two sides to it before any crimes against humanity are perpetrated. Let's not forget who was helping Hitler re-arm Germany to the eye teeth. The Russians weren't going to win with Stalin implementing sweeping social reforms and human rights. They needed steel and lots of it.


All of that is background that Stalin the military leader needed to take into account, in his strategic equation. It is the same with all military leaders, whether they be the commander of one of the worlds largest armies, or a tiny country like Finland.

Mannerhiem outshone Stalin, and his consort of civil war buddies, and severely embarrassed the SU in 1940.

Both were given what they had to work with. The proof of the quality of their vision, and command is what they did with it. Manerhiem had nothing, and turned it into something, Stalin too everything and turned it into nothing, repeatedly.


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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 02:19 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The only commander more stupid than Hitler was Leggy Mountbatten with the Dunkirk evacuation. Colossal fuckup of the century awards to those two.

And MacArthur deserves stupid idiot of the century award for attempting land war in Asia and for wanting to start nuclear warfare in Korea. He wanted to murder hundreds of millions of human beings to kill an idea. Monumental asshole-deluxe of the 20th century award to the pipe and glasses.


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 02:30 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yes, well, the British got more than 2/3rds of their force out of pocket at Dunkuerque, didn't they? Unlike the Soviets at Kiev, or Minsk, or any number of the stupid encirclements that Stalin forces upon the Soviet army through his stupid "stand firm" orders.
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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 02:37 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ultimately, only one supreme commander stands out as a comprehensively sound thinker, not only as an able adminstrator, but also as a military startegist, and that is Franklin Delano Roosovelt.

I'd give honourable mentions to Tito, and Mannerhiem, and Mao as well, but of the major military powers only FDR really stands out as superior.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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BetterRed
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posted 28 September 2007 02:39 PM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Dont forget the one at Kharkov in 1942.

Much of the failure in 1941 happened because the best generals were killed by Stalin in '38.

But Im surprised why no one talks about the Maginot line and the so-called "sitzkrieg"


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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 02:40 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ya, I think the Nazis even had a few Panzers and backup divisions in France at the time to defend against what was an international force supposed to land under cover of darkness and fog and completely surprising the Germans. They were spotted halfway across the channel, ffs. I'm no fucking military genus, but I'd have called it off. It was a slaughter. Where in hell were the fucking spies to relay information about the artillery and bunkers and machine gun nests ? Total fubar, a complete an utter disaster.
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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 02:41 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by BetterRed:
Dont forget the one at Kharkov in 1942.

Much of the failure in 1941 happened because the best generals were killed by Stalin in '38.

But Im surprised why no one talks about the Maginot line and the so-called "sitzkrieg"


I commented on that in my first post of the thread.


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 02:48 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by BetterRed:
Dont forget the one at Kharkov in 1942.

Much of the failure in 1941 happened because the best generals were killed by Stalin in '38.

But Im surprised why no one talks about the Maginot line and the so-called "sitzkrieg"


They also almost got screwed outside Rostov, as well in 1942.


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BetterRed
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posted 28 September 2007 03:00 PM      Profile for BetterRed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
Ya, I think the Nazis even had a few Panzers and backup divisions in France at the time to defend against what was an international force supposed to land under cover of darkness and fog and completely surprising the Germans. They were spotted halfway across the channel, ffs. I'm no fucking military genus, but I'd have called it off. It was a slaughter. Where in hell were the fucking spies to relay information about the artillery and bunkers and machine gun nests ? Total fubar, a complete an utter disaster.

Are you referring to the Dieppe fiasco, Fidel?


Cueball, you covered the encirclemnts in detail, but what do you think of the sitzkrieg on the Maginot?


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Tommy_Paine
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posted 28 September 2007 03:23 PM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
When Stalin wasn't breaking the backs of the workers with Czarist abandon, he broke bread with fascists.

I'm a worker,a fairly left one at that. And one who has a hard time keeping his mouth shut.

Stalin would have killed me. Or had me killed by one of his apologists. Or had me worked to death digging a canal or other project.

I find this whole thread in poor taste.

If Stalin was "forced" to sign the pact, the "force" was his own paranoia, and the time he bought was to continue his liquidation of anyone he thought might be opposed to his dictatorship.


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 03:37 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by BetterRed:

Are you referring to the Dieppe fiasco, Fidel?


Cueball, you covered the encirclemnts in detail, but what do you think of the sitzkrieg on the Maginot?


quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:
Another point to bring up when analyzing the realpolitik behind the pact is the fact that we can not tell what position France and Great Britain might have taken were the pact not signed. What we do know is that there was no Allied counter-offensive into Germany in 1939, or into 1940.

This lassitude on behalf the Allies after the invasion of Poland, might indicate that there was some cofusion as to who the Allies considered as the main enemy. Churchill's speeches when he was First Lord of Fleet under Chamberlain were very belicose in regard to the USSR. One could ask, if the Soviets had not signed the pact, might not the Allies have taken an effectively neutral stand against the Axis, if the Wermacht had continued its adavance through Poland and into Russia in 1940, instead of attacking France? Their lack of commitment during the so called "phoney war," adds credibility to this possibility.

Might not the Allies have thrown their lot in with Hitler, even?

In anycase, we have to assume that these were the kind of calculations that were considered by the Soviet leadership in the run up to the invasion of Poland. To them it must have seemed that they were reversing the equation, ensuring that the Germans would first attack west, and thus buying the Soviet Union time to prepare for an eventual assault on the USSR, later, as opposed to a scenario where Germany would attack East, and then deal with their Western enemies later.

Lets not forget that the Anti-comintern pact was in effect, so a Japanese invasion of Siberia, timed with an 1940 Barbarossa, would have caused a serious strategic dilema for the USSR.

[ 27 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 04:01 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by BetterRed:

Are you referring to the Dieppe fiasco, Fidel?

That's correct. I was confusing the Dieppe disaster with the foulup at Dunkirk and sideshow in the Mediterranean in general.


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 04:17 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There is a good arguement to be made that Churchill as as flipant with the lives of British soldiers, as Stalin was with Russian ones.

That said there were distinct differences in style, Churchill more of the swashbuckling adventurer, who wasted many lives unwisely in trying to bring off the "peripheral" strategy, while Stalin, was simply a blockhead, who thought the war could be won as a matter of pure will.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 04:38 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Churchill was an old pervert who wanted to bring out the army and turn machine guns on striking British coal miners in 1926, tha fat fuck. The bulldog expressed admiration for Generalissimo Franco for murdering over 200 coal miners and communists during a wobble in Spain. Most of England was on rations while the old bastard enjoyed all the best food. My relatives turned off the radio when he was on. He was an irritant more than an inspiration.
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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 04:41 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Lots of excelent military leaders are fat perverts. So, are some bad ones. I don't see how that relates.
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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 04:54 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:
Lots of excelent military leaders are fat perverts. So, are some bad ones. I don't see how that relates.

It relates if you happened to live in England and were earning your living as a coal miner when the fascist old bastard was on the go and opening his stupid mouth about military and machine guns. It's kinda like when Trudeau ran away from a miner's strike in Quebec and Levesque called him a coward. Churchill was an old pervert and coward who hated workers and people in general. He ordered the fire bombing of Dresden, a non-military target. Lots of Brits would have preferred the old bastatrd, Mountbatten and a few more of them had been lined up at dawn after the war.


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 04:55 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
So your argument is that Stalin is absolved of his clearly evident military incompetence because Churchill was fat?
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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 05:21 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:
So your argument is that Stalin is absolved of his clearly evident military incompetence because Churchill was fat?

WHERE in the world do you come up with these conclusions ? History is history and facts, facts. No one here is idolizing Stalin. I've never said things like Stalin was a "swashbuckling adventurer." Although he may have considered the wild political purges, summary executions and marauding around the countryside as being justified within the context of maintaining the revolution and grip on power. And there are historians who have said as much. That's not what I've said though. I don't think I'd dare with the delicate states of opinion in this thread.

The point is, you've got a madman in Germany whose anti-semitic rhetoric was getting him nowhere in the 1920's. He writes a book called My Struggle. He somehow comes up with all kinds of money for a political campaign and sounds a lot like a socialist in front of the people but apparently something else in front of Germany's elite. See Emil Kirdorf and pamphlet entitled, The Road to Resurgence"

Willy Lyon Mackenzie King was enthralled by the dictator as were Chamberlain, Daladier and a few captains of industry and Wall Street bankers.

Russia was considered wiped out since the last decade. There were economic boom times happening in Russia while capitalism in the west was flat on its ass. One old Russian on HNN described Stalingrad as a beautiful green city sprawling 60 kilometres along the Volga River. It was a city where people could go to work, learn and live life. Workers of the world and JM Keynes said it was impressive.

Our western fascists just didn't appreciate being shown up by a bunch of Bolsheviks and feared for their own livelihoods as parasites and opportunistic industrialists operating within a western system that was working as it should as far as they were concerned at the time.

Something had to give, and Germany was considered a flashpoint for the spread of communism to the west. Plenty of money suddenly grew on trees. "Daddy Warbucks" was considered a good and upstanding citizen in Orphan Annie newspaper cartoons for a long time.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


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Cueball
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posted 28 September 2007 05:34 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
All of that is irrelevant to the quality of Stalin's leadership in the face of the "objective" factors. Those factors, whether or not they are "true," are the factors which any leader in Stalin's position would have to analyze and then react to. The quality of his leadership specifically relates to how he managed the strategic situation, given the "objective" reality.

The question of the thread revolves around the necessity of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, in the face of the "objective" factors. In hindsight, I think it would have been possible for Stalin to have made a unified front against Germany, with the Allies, and likely forstalled or even prevented the war.

But note, I am saying that is in hindsight. I am fully willing to accept that at the time, signing Molotov Ribbentrop seemed logical, in the light of the international situation.

But I think his specific intention was to get Germany to commit to war against his "other enemy" the capitalist west, and bide for time, not to prevent the war.

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


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Fidel
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posted 28 September 2007 06:10 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:
The question of the thread revolves around the necessity of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, in the face of the "objective" factors. In hindsight, I think it would have been possible for Stalin to have made a unified front against Germany, with the Allies, and likely forstalled or even prevented the war.

Stalin was on the outside looking in wrt the west. They excluded Stalin when meeting with Hitler and Mussolini. The handoff of Czechoslovakia to Hitler by western democracies was seen by Stalin to be collaboration among fascists. This was said to have angered Stalin and members of the Kremlin. So of course the pact was viewed by Stalin as a way of avoiding war with Germany.

So you've got the west appeasing Hitler with the great Munich giveaway, apparently to avoid war with Germany. And you've got Stalin's Russia - still recovering from the worst loss of life and destruction from the previous German aggression and ensuing invasion by 25 international armies and mercenaries to overthrow the revolution - wanting to avoid war for the exact same reason. Now you're trying to tell me that Russia held all the cards against Hitler and not the western allies. I'm sorry, but I don't agree with that.

And if that was anything close to being true, then why did Stalin have to make so many backdoor visits to Churchill and Roosevelt begging for a second front for two years while two-thirds of Hitler's war machine laid siege to Russian cities ? Where was the will to create a second front in Europe if the allies had emboldened themselves to stopping the spread of fascism?

A serious second front against Germany would have pulled the Germans apart as it did in WWI. EVvverybody knew that.

The decision to put significant troops on the ground in Europe didn't occur until the tables were suddenly turned on the Nazis by 50 thousand Red Army troops with support of the partisanis at Leningrad, and when it appeared that General Paulus' army was being pushed back and surrounded at the kessel soonafter. The western leaders at that point were under the impression that the Russians could liberate Europe by-them-selves.

"Prevented the war"? Are you serious ? Too much money to be made from warfiteering to crush communism. Too much real estate in Russia at stake. The only way Stalin could have appeased Hitler was with complete surrender and compliance with mass exterminations. Living space for Germans and total annihilation of Bolshevism and Jewry were, apparently, not on the table.

Next up, what if Superman was there to broker peace in 1939 ?

[ 28 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


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Ken Burch
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posted 29 September 2007 01:24 AM      Profile for Ken Burch     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
When Stalin wasn't breaking the backs of the workers with Czarist abandon, he broke bread with fascists.

I'm a worker,a fairly left one at that. And one who has a hard time keeping his mouth shut.

Stalin would have killed me. Or had me killed by one of his apologists. Or had me worked to death digging a canal or other project.

I find this whole thread in poor taste.

If Stalin was "forced" to sign the pact, the "force" was his own paranoia, and the time he bought was to continue his liquidation of anyone he thought might be opposed to his dictatorship.


Tommy, check your PM's.


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Tommy_Paine
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posted 29 September 2007 03:45 AM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh oh.
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Tommy_Paine
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posted 29 September 2007 04:02 AM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ah, wasn't so bad.
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Fidel
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posted 29 September 2007 09:31 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Okay, Stalin's gone in 1928, because Tommy and Cueball are sent back in time to abduct and leave him on a deserted island somewhere away from people in general. It's a one shot deal, and no one else is able to go back through the time machine for whatever technical reason.

Hitler seizes power in 1933 right on time in time, and he's still bent on taking over Europe and Russia for living space and annihilating Bolshevism and Jewry everywhere. The biggest mass murderer of the 1940's, and who knows if he'll be stopped, has just been handed the keys to Czechoslovakia by Chamberlain and Daladier. Now what?


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sven
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posted 29 September 2007 09:44 AM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
Hitler seizes power in 1933 right on time in time, and he's still bent on taking over Europe and Russia for living space and annihilating Bolshevism and Jewry everywhere. The biggest mass murderer of the 1940's, and who knows if he'll be stopped, has just been handed the keys to Czechoslovakia by Chamberlain and Daladier. Now what?

Assassinate Stalin and Hitler.


From: Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!!! | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Sven
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posted 29 September 2007 10:04 AM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
“Maybe they think even capitalists aren't that insane...to want to kill after they themselves have been killed.

These are Marxist fanatics, not normal people.

They do not reason the way you reason, General Black.

They're not motivated by human emotion such as rage and pity.

They are calculating machines.”

-- Professor Groeteschele, character in “Fail-Safe”

I just watched that great film again last night.

Well, modern-day Marxists may not be “calculating machines” but they are frequently “machine-like”, automatically defending Stalin under all circumstances.

[ 29 September 2007: Message edited by: Sven ]


From: Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!!! | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 29 September 2007 10:27 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:

Assassinate Stalin and Hitler.


Exactly. Except now you still have some anxious capitalists and industrialists in the west, and a booming economy in Russia. Things are looking really good in Russia while stubborn economic depression lingers on in the west. Germans will now choose a true leftwing political party, and the possibility of socialism in Europe and Russia are real possibilities.

Will the banking cabal and power elite allow it to happen? Will they find someone else in Europe to rebuild and rearm for war against the red menace? Generalissmo Franco? Mussolini ?


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sven
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posted 29 September 2007 10:36 AM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:

Exactly. Except now you still have some anxious capitalists and industrialists in the west, and a booming economy in Russia. Things are looking really good in Russia while stubborn economic depression lingers on in the west. Germans will now choose a true leftwing political party, and the possibility of socialism in Europe and Russia are real possibilities.

Will the banking cabal and power elite allow it to happen? Will they find someone else in Europe to rebuild and rearm for war against the red menace? Generalissmo Franco? Mussolini ?


I'd take that chance if it could avoid WWII. We would just have had a cold war earlier and, perhaps, if we were lucky, the Soviet Union would have likewise crumbled earlier than it ultimately did.


From: Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!!! | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 29 September 2007 10:44 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:

I'd take that chance if it could avoid WWII. We would just have had a cold war earlier and, perhaps, if we were lucky, the Soviet Union would have likewise crumbled earlier than it ultimately did.


Ah, but everything else is still true at home here, Sven. Millions are unemployed and riding the rails looking for work. Capitalism is crumbling and already flat on its ass at home in North America for ten years, Sven. Germans are returning from Russia and telling of a booming economy. They're tired of seeing dirty faces on German children. There will be no massive destruction and loss of life in Russia, and perhaps instead of a 70 year-long experiment in Soviet communism and no cold war to drag it down, things will turn out somewhat differently with the extra manpower and resources to build communism.

I don't think the capitalists will be that keen on New Deal socialism in the U.S., Sven. I think there's also the possibility they may decide on a fascist coup right there at home if not propping up an Italian or Spanish dictator to wage war of annihilation against communist Russia.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sven
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posted 29 September 2007 10:50 AM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'd still take the chance, if it would have avoided WWII and the killing of 50 million people.
From: Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!!! | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 29 September 2007 11:01 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:
I'd still take the chance, if it would have avoided WWII and the killing of 50 million people.

That's a noble thing to want to avoid world war two. A lot of money was made with during that war and the previous one, Sven. And a number of countries were heavily indebted to the financial cabal after it was over. I think it was the beginning of a new age of crisis-oriented capitalism.

I would hope that the spread of true socialism in the 1920's and 30's would result in those same debates leading up to German elections and pointing to the collapse of laissez-faire capitalism in the west. I would want the socialists and communists to decide to scrap capitalism and the monetary system altogether. No more profiteering, no supperich elite with the power and means to buy democracy, and no more war. Do we think the rich and powerful would let it happen?


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
RosaL
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posted 29 September 2007 11:33 AM      Profile for RosaL     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:
“Maybe they think even capitalists aren't that insane...to want to kill after they themselves have been killed.

These are Marxist fanatics, not normal people.

They do not reason the way you reason, General Black.

They're not motivated by human emotion such as rage and pity.

They are calculating machines.”

-- Professor Groeteschele, character in “Fail-Safe”

I just watched that great film again last night.

Well, modern-day Marxists may not be “calculating machines” but they are frequently “machine-like”, automatically defending Stalin under all circumstances.

[ 29 September 2007: Message edited by: Sven ]


That's ridiculous. It's also insulting.


From: the underclass | Registered: Mar 2007  |  IP: Logged
Sven
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posted 29 September 2007 11:45 AM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by RosaL:
That's ridiculous. It's also insulting.

It would be "ridiculous" if it weren't true. Are you saying that there are no Marxists who "machine-like" defend Stalin?


From: Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!!! | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
RosaL
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posted 29 September 2007 12:13 PM      Profile for RosaL     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:

It would be "ridiculous" if it weren't true. Are you saying that there are no Marxists who "machine-like" defend Stalin?


No. Why ever would you think that? I'm disputing what you approvingly quote and your application of the quote. I am denying:
1) that marxists are somehow deficient in their reasoning
2) that marxists do not have human emotions like rage or pity
3) that modern-day marxists frequently and in an "automatic", "machine-like way" defend Stalin.

A denial of those three propositions does not entail the proposition you attribute to me, i.e., "there are no Marxists who "machine-like" defend Stalin".

Doubtless there are some. But they are very rare exceptions. Most - probably all - marxists would dispute the typical portrayal of Stalin in "bourgeois" history and popular culture but virtually all marxists see Stalin as having committed appalling crimes.

On the other hand, my denial of these three propositions, and my protest that they constitute an insult, goes well beyond the question of marxist attitudes to Stalin.

[ 29 September 2007: Message edited by: RosaL ]


From: the underclass | Registered: Mar 2007  |  IP: Logged
aka Mycroft
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posted 29 September 2007 12:19 PM      Profile for aka Mycroft     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There are several factors here

1) Stalin devastated the Red Army's general staff with his purges in the 1930s so the military was in no position to fight a war with Nazi Germany in 1939

2) The Soviet Union tried, in its "popular front" phase in the mid-1930s, to build an alliance with liberal democratic countries against Nazi Germany. They were rebuffed with the final nail in the coffin being the Munich Pact.

If it hadn't been for Munich and, in particular, had France and Britain formed a common anti-fascist front with the USSR against the Axis the Molotov-Ribbentrop deal would never have happened.

However, because of the USSR's own (self inflicted) military weakness and the decision by the west to isolate it rather than join it against the Nazis the non-aggression pact with Hitler was tactically necessary.

This isn't a moral stamp of approval, however, it's a recognition that you can't take Molotov-Ribbentrop out of the context of what led up to it.


From: Toronto | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 29 September 2007 01:03 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Molotov-Ribbentrop II was a lie. And Hitler was the biggest liar of the last century. He had no intention of honouring any part of it. The end result was corporate-sponsored war of annhilation against Soviet communism and the slaughter of 30 million Russians, and 55, 000, 000 to 83, 000, 000 dead and MIA total.

And the Soviets used the body counts with so many zeros to justify raising an iron curtain around a layer of buffer countries to ward off future fascist aggression.

Today, the Soviet Union doesn't exist. And yet there are still more than 700 U.S. military bases around the world and U.S. nuclear weapons on foreign soil and roving battleships on the world's oceans. And our newspapers are more concerned with Russia's interest in the Arctic than with U.S. maneuevering to install anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe and surrounding Russia and China.

"United States Essays 1952-1992" by Gore Vidal, Page 1029

quote:
"Since the victory of 1945, the United States, as befits the leader of something called "the free world," has fought open and unsuccessful wars in Korea and Vietnam; and relatively covert wars in Cambodia, Laos, the Caribbean, Central America, Africa, Chile, the Middle East, etc. In almost every case, our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people. We justify our affection for fascist (or, to be cozy, authoritarian) regimes because..."

From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sven
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posted 29 September 2007 01:10 PM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
Molotov-Ribbentrop II was a lie. And Hitler was the biggest liar of the last century. He had no intention of honouring any part of it.

And Stalin did?!?!


From: Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!!! | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 29 September 2007 01:36 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:

And Stalin did?!?!


If I remember my grade school history at all, it was the Nazis who marched into Stalin's Russia and declared Russians, Jews and useless eaters the enemies of freedom and the natural order of things. The corporate-sponsored war on Soviet communism was one big resource grab on behalf of capitalists and the banking cabal - fascist aggression part II.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged

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