I admit I never expected to hear a confession to this effect from the U.S. or its allies.

But two days ago, the Japanese Defence Minister stated openly that this was indeed the reason - and he supported it! In recent hours, he is reported to have "apologized" if his remarks were "misinterpreted". Here is a pre-apology report:

quote:

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Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said Saturday that he thinks the dropping of atomic bombs by the United States in the closing days of World War II "could not be helped" as it was aimed at preventing the Soviet Union from entering the war against Japan. [...]

The United States "dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki although it knew Japan would lose the war" without having to resort to using an atomic bomb, Kyuma said.

Noting that the Soviet Union was preparing to wage a war against Japan, he said the United States must have thought the use of an atomic bomb could prompt Japan's surrender, thus preventing the Soviet Union from carrying out its intentions.

"Luckily Hokkaido was not occupied. In the worst case, Hokkaido could have been taken by the Soviet Union," he said. "I don't hold a grudge against the United States."

---

Hard to "misinterpret" those remarks.

Let's see if I can find some of those back threads. Ah, yes, here we go ...

Hiroshima 60 years later - 2005 babble thread

By the way, the Soviets walloped the Kwantung Japanese army in Manchuria, where the bulk of/a huge percentage of the Japanese land forces were in August 1945. Up to the point the Soviets declared war on Japan (at the insistence of the other Allies) they had had a treaty with the Japanese. They were probably keen, as well, to make up for the shellacking that the Russian Navy took in 1905 from Japan.

quote:

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The entry into the war of the Soviet Union this morning puts us in an utterly hopeless situation and makes further continuation of the war impossible.

---

Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki on August 9, 1945.

Notice the date on that remark by the then Japanese PM. It's after the bombing of Hiroshima.

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

quote:

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
I don't think it's historically clear that Japan was either on the verge of surrender or that the Americans believed it was. The nukes certainly caused fewer casualties than a ground invasion would have.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
If the Soviets had captured Hokkaido, do you suppose it would have turned into another North Korean-style kleptocracy?

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Nice red-baiting.

The Soviets withdrew from Korea in 1948.

quote:

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The Soviets withdrew from Korea in 1948.

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You forgot to mention that they "withdrew" from North Korea only after they had installed a puppet tinpot dictator named Kim-Il-Sung at the head of a Stalin-style personality cult and flooded his regime with arms and advice on how to be repressive.

Remind me of the results of the free, fair multi-party election in North Korea that brought Kim Il Sung to power and of all the free fair multi-party elections over the past 60 years that have kept him and his Daffy Duck-loving deadbeat son in power all these years?

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was a show of force to make an impression on Stalin.

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I don't think so - what's the point of that? That's just pandering to the view that Stalin had aggression in mind and he needed to be warned off. The A-bombs were aimed at rigging up an unconditional surrender from Japan to the U.S. The U.S. was desperate to avoid any kind of surrender from Japan to the Soviets. It worked.

quote:

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The Republicans said FDR and Churchill gave up too much to the Soviets. The R's weren't in the driver's seat at the time though and probably a good thing.

---

I respectfully disagree. The post-war horrors - the nuclear bombs, the Cold War, the invasion of Korea, the isolation of the People's Republic of China, the beginning of McCarthyism - were all committed under the aegis of the Democratic Party. Likewise (later) with the failed invasion of Cuba, the war in South-East Asia - all Democratic presidential adventures. It was a Republican president that achieved a peace treaty in Vietnam, opened relations with Beijing, and started détente with the Soviets.

quote:

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Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was a show of force to make an impression on Stalin.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
In fact the world might have been better off if Thomas Dewey a LIBERAL Republican had been elected over Truman in 1948. Dewey's running mate was none ohter than Earl Warren, later to be become to most progressive chief Justice of the US Supreme Court of all time.

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quote:

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mind predicting when your U.S. friends will leave the Korean peninsula? Or are they not as good at installing a lasting tin-pot dictatorship as Stalin was?

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Obviously they aren't as good at it since for the last 20 years, South Korea has been a flourishing multi-party democracy with very competitive elections that have often resulted in victory by parties and candidates that were quite anti-American - such as Kim Dae Jung.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

US troops are in South Korea at the behest of the South Korean government. All the freely elected government of South Korea has to do is say the word and they will be gone.

---

Similar to Iraq and Afghanistan, no doubt.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Remind me of the results of the free, fair multi-party election in North Korea that brought Kim Il Sung to power and of all the free fair multi-party elections over the past 60 years that have kept him and his Daffy Duck-loving deadbeat son in power all these years? .

---

The Yanks installed their own brutal right-wing dictator in Seoul, Syngman Rhee in 1948. It's a tossup which south Korean dictator was worse, Rhee or Park Chung Hee. Japanese imperial officers, veterans of the Korean occupation, were brought back to Korea because of their experience with controlling and maintaining division among Koreans after the war. It was brutal.

quote:

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They also encouraged him to launch a totally unprovoked unilateral invasion of South Korea in 1950.

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The Yanks were still flying over North Korea after murdering millions with bombs and destroyed cities and villages. USAF fighter pilots and bombers were flying over Manchurian airspace. They were testing the communists in their own countries. Stalin was actually a cooler head when he begged the North Koreans not to retaliate against the South for their attacks and border incursions. Stalin told them they weren't strong enough militarily, and the Soviets were in bad shape still after the war of annihilation against fascism.

Fascists have a habit of walking into other countries and declaring local people the enemies of freedom. We know whose freedom they've been meaning all along.

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:
I don't think so - what's the point of that? That's just pandering to the view that Stalin had aggression in mind and he needed to be warned off. The A-bombs were aimed at rigging up an unconditional surrender from Japan to the U.S. The U.S. was desperate to avoid any kind of surrender from Japan to the Soviets. It worked.

---

The Japanese were defenceless at the time. USAF bombers already flew over Japan unchallenged. There was no military need to murder hundreds of thousands of defenceless people.

quote:

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I respectfully disagree. The post-war horrors - the nuclear bombs, the Cold War, the invasion of Korea, the isolation of the People's Republic of China, the beginning of McCarthyism - were all committed under the aegis of the Democratic Party. Likewise (later) with the failed invasion of Cuba, the war in South-East Asia - all Democratic presidential adventures. It was a Republican president that achieved a peace treaty in Vietnam, opened relations with Beijing, and started détente with the Soviets.

---

This was a point in time when the Americans were deciding whether to pursue social democracy at home or "empire." FDR-Truman had just ignored Ho Chi Minh's pleas for aid in 1945-46 due to the Japanese' delibreate flooding of half the rice fields toward the end of the war. Minh wrote letters to the UN and to "your excellency" in Warshington begging for help. Over two million Vietnamese starved to death by the end of '46. Too many people forget that it takes Republicans and Democrats together to vote on policies of war and expansion of empire. By 1954, the U.S. was supplying 80 percent of small firearms, machine guns and munitions to the French occupation of Viet Nam.

quote:

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What "worse" do you suggest the Republicans could have done in 1945 - or indeed what worse have they done in the intervening period?

---

The Hoover government were the rotten eggs and responsible for allowing laissez-faire capitalism to go down the toilet. They weren't going to win any wars or expand militarily with conservatives running the show. The Republicans at the time loathed everything FDR and New Deal. Who knows when America would have pulled out of the economic spiral with Republicans at the helm. And the R's likely would have bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima with Democrat support, and who knows what else they'd have pulled. Their credibility on economic affairs was at an all-time low then, never mind foreign affairs. They were a mess but still compliant with military expansion. MacArther were complete psychopath, and the UN wasn't sure who was running the show in Asia at the time, Truman or MacArthur.

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:
[QB]The Japanese were defenceless at the time. USAF bombers already flew over Japan unchallenged. There was no military need to murder hundreds of thousands of defenceless people./QB]

---

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

I never said there was. I agree with you. What I said was that the U.S. wanted Japan to surrender unconditionally to the U.S. alone - which prior to the A-bombs Japan was still refusing to do - and not to the Soviets. That's why they dropped the A-bombs.

---

quote:

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The Yanks were still flying over North Korea after murdering millions with bombs and destroyed cities and villages. USAF fighter pilots and bombers were flying over Manchurian airspace. They were testing the communists in their own countries.

---

I'd love to here what convoluted justification you can give us for the Soviet invasion on Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

Oh brother...I think I'll tiptoe away now. Been to any meetings of the Flat Earth Society lately?

---

Well I'm not sure what that was about. USAF pilots have since admitted to violating Manchurian airspace in 1950. "Mig Alley" was a case of flyovers of North Korea. The Soviets sent Migs and now known that some toward the end actually piloted by Russians with Chinese markings. My dentist who flew bush planes in N Ontario and now deceased, ferried Saber jets to Asia for the Yanks and told me all about it.

MacArthur amassed 50 thousand US and UN troops along the Yalu River and were staring across the way at China while eating Turkey dinners sent from home on Thankksgiving Day. Overnight, about 300, 000 Korean and Chinese troops mobilized to Yalu and were dug in by morning. The UN troops didn't just walk away, they had to high-tail it the fuck out of there.

MacArthur was mad as a hatter, Stockholmer. Peter Seller's "Dr Strangelove" actually wasn't too far off the real situation in the 1950's.

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

BTW: What right did China have to be fighting in North Korea??? Esp. after Truman dismissed MacArthur and made it clear that the UN forces would not cross into China?

quote:

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Stalin declared all of Eastern Europe for the sake of Soviet security.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
YOu said that North Korean unilaterally invaded South Korea in 1950 because supposedly the US air force was killing "millions" of North Koreans in bombing raids prior to the start of the Korean War. This is absurd.

---

No, you said that, and I'm not sure why. The South Korean border police and military forays into the North were a going concern for the North Koreans. There was no peaceful situation there beforehand, if that's what your implying.

quote:

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BTW: What right did China have to be fighting in North Korea??? Esp. after Truman dismissed MacArthur and made it clear that the UN forces would not cross into China?

---

Truman gave MacArthur the hook after the UN pressed him to do so. MacArthur was a rogue general, and Truman was hiding in the White House. You can imagine what UN members thought about MacArthur's plan to drop the bomb on North Korea and drawing the Soviets and Chinese into a nuclear war. He would have incinerated hundreds of millions to kill an idea. MacArthur was a madman, and Truman was incompetent. The pipe and glasses wanted to "unleash Chiang Kai-shek" from Formosa. Totally bonkers and frighteningly similar to Sterling Hayden's character in Dr Strangelove.

It wasn't clear to Mao or Stalin who was running the UN sideshow. Not when MacArthur and US troops were staring them down at the Yalu River. Mao warned MacArthur not to cross over into China. It was a Mexican standoff, and MacArthur realized that land war in Asia isn't feasible.

quote:

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Did anyone ask the people of Eastern Europe what they thought of being colonized by the Russians?

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Someone had to liberate Eastern Europe from Nazi occupation. Stalin insisted that nothing like that happen again and declared Eastern Europe a security concern handled by them exclusively. What with 60 - 80 million dead and missing at the end of WWII, nobody was arguing with Stalin. Apparently there were plans to liquidate millions, and millions more would have been worked to death by the Nazis and their corporate sponsors.

Stalin pleaded for a second front for over two years with backdoor visits to Roosevelt and Churchill. The west didn't become overly exciteable about Eastern Europe until about 50000 red army troops and Jewish partisanis turned the tables on the Nazis at Leningrad. The red army had General Paulus and 400 000 German soldiers surrounded at the cauldron. The Soviets originally thought there were only 80 thousand trapped at the infernal kessel. Hitler ordered Paulus to fight to the death for the fuhrer's name's sake. The new concern for the west was that the Russians would liberate Europe by themselves. Too much SALT on that popcorn, Stockholmer

Scuse, I'm watching this CNN special on a lack of armour-plated STEEL on the humvees and APCs in Iraq. Did anyone realize that in the early part of the fascist occupation of Iraq, six out of 10 U.S. soldier's deaths were attributed to lack of steel armour for APCs and Humvees?. Only a few of them still have canvass doors on them today. The humvees are about as popular with frontline U.S. soldiers as screen doors in a U boat.

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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500_Apples:
I don't think it's historically clear that Japan was either on the verge of surrender or that the Americans believed it was. The nukes certainly caused fewer casualties than a ground invasion would have.

---

It is pretty clear that Japan was beaten. An island nation which had lost control of the sea and air around it. A land invasion was unnecessary. Look for other reasons why the bomb was dropped.

quote:

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Fidel:
Well I'm not sure what that was about. USAF pilots have since admitted to violating Manchurian airspace in 1950.

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We were still spying on Northeast Asian territory by air in the 1960s when I was stationed there.

quote:

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MacArthur amassed 50 thousand US and UN troops along the Yalu River....

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The Chinese gave ample warning that they would enter the war if the UN approached the Yalu. Had the UN stopped at the Pyongang-Wonson line things might have ended differently.

quote:

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Stockholm:
What right did China have to be fighting in North Korea?

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Self defense. By the time Truman canned MacArthur the fat was in the fire.

I don't think Fidel ever actually HAS justified those acts.

I know I haven't.

And it is perfectly possible to be against the way the Soviets behaved in Eastern Europe(yes, they DID liberate it, but there was no reason to keep those countries under effective military occupation for the next 40 years when those countries would gladly, in exchange for having been liberated, signed a VOLUNTARY defense pact with Moscow, with troops stationed there but at the same time non-interference in the internal policies of those countries)and at the same time believe that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan was an unjustifiable atrocity and that U.S. policy in Korea was suicidally reckless.

The Cold War was a four decades of shame and disgrace for BOTH the U.S. and the Soviets. Each superpower, in those four decades, completely abandoned the ideals they supposedly represented. When it ended, in 1989, it was just a question of which superpower decayed first.

I wish you could accept that it is possible to be anti-Stalinist without sounding like Joe McCarthy or Roy Cohn. There's no need to be a strident scold about a system that no longer exists.

Don't insist on making everything so "either-or".

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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I don't think so - what's the point of that? That's just pandering to the view that Stalin had aggression in mind and he needed to be warned off. The A-bombs were aimed at rigging up an unconditional surrender from Japan to the U.S. The U.S. was desperate to avoid any kind of surrender from Japan to the Soviets. It worked.

---

This is pretty much the way it seems to have happened.

After the 1945 Yalta Conference, it was pretty much assured that the US and the Soviet Union were to be the main winners of WW II, and they would be making the biggest claims on the two post-war theaters.

According to the The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs,, (need a sub to read the whole thing) ever since its first Five Year Plan, the Stalinist regime was looking take Lenin's transitional capitalist model on the road by expanding its sphere of influence beyond its own borders by securing access to greater markets to fuel its growing economy.

As the war drew to a close, it saw a chance to get into Asia via Mongolia and Korea, which they invaded in accordance with the Yalta plan, and later China.

That of course collided directly with the US regime's plan, which would later become known as part of the
"Truman Doctrine", which was literally to colonize the whole Asian theater to fuel its growing economy.

The decision to use the A-bombs had nothing to do with defeating Japan, since it had already discussed surrender with the Allied command BEFORE they were dropped.

Rather, it clearly was to force Japan to unilaterally surrender to the US--not jointly along with Russia or China, in order to fulfill that economic agenda (obviously, letting the Stalinists in on the surrender would involve having to share the spoils, like in Europe, which is not what Corporate America wanted).

quote:

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The post-war horrors - the nuclear bombs, the Cold War, the invasion of Korea, the isolation of the People's Republic of China, the beginning of McCarthyism - were all committed under the aegis of the Democratic Party.

---

Largely true. The Truman Administration was a Democratic Party one. But it differed greatly from the previous Roosevelt Administration, which was also a Democratic Party one, on foreign policy--which was far more violent and aggressive and openly imperialistic.

Stockholm wrote:

quote:

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US troops are in South Korea at the behest of the South Korean government. All the freely elected government of South Korea has to do is say the word and they will be gone.

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You know, Stockholm, you and Fidel should be locked in a room and have a contest as to see who can out-flake, out-detract, out-apologize and out-BS the other, with the winner getting a million-dollar prize. It would make for a great “reality” TV show.

Just exactly where in any major theater or region has the US military ever left ANYWHERE voluntarily or simply at the request of a government? Where? When?

A “freely elected government of South Korea??”

Amnesty International--Torture, internment and murder

Human Rights Watch--Government Backtracks on Democratic Reforms

ICFTU--Defiant Workers Take-on Restrictions of Free Association and Assembly

quote:

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Stockholm, when your anti-communist bile level has subsided somewhat, mind predicting when your U.S. friends will leave the Korean peninsula? Or are they not as good at installing a lasting tin-pot dictatorship as Stalin was?

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Well, to be fair, there’s a huge galactic difference between being anti- communist and anti-Stalinist. The two have absolutely nothing in common.

Stocko isn’t anti-communist because he opposes the predominantly capitalistic/imperialistic nature of the Soviet-era and Chinese economies, but rather because he’s such a star-spangled suck-hole to the even mor3e capitalistic/imperialistic US-style corporate capitalism

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Steppenwolf Allende ]

quote:

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Stockholm, it really wasn't fair to bring the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian situations into this thread.

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Well, as long as it’s another big fight over who’s more of an imperialist, why not? (you didn’t actually expect this thread to remain focused and civil, did you? )

quote:

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I don't think Fidel ever actually HAS justified those acts.

---

Don't be too assured. He's justified just about everything else the Soviet and Chinese corporate power clans have done. In a slug-fest between apologists, anything can happen!!

Actually, the Stalinist regime had expansionist plans in Eastern Europe well before the Second World War.

The Stalin-Hitler Pact allowed the Stalinists to consider much of Eastern Europe within "within the Soviet Sphere of influence." That's when the Stalinist regime not only co-invaded Poland with the Nazis, but used the opportunity to re-conquer the nations once under the Czarist’s imperial rule that gained their independence after the Russian Revolution.

Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, western Ukraine and Moldavia fell to Soviet armies and stayed under Russian rule until the Soviet break-up,. Finland fought back and held off the Soviets.

The security buffer zone argument used by the Stalinist regime is just an expression of its imperialistic nature, since throughout history Russia, with it huge military, vast resources and unfavourable climate, had always proved pretty impervious to foreign conquest.

The fact the Stalinist regime forced itself over these nations (that’s what the formation of the COMECON was mainly about), took control over their governments and most industries and monopolized much of the commercial ownership and markets and subjected them to being battlegrounds for any possible future wars just to spare itself shows this clearly.

Stocko wrote:

quote:

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Did anyone ask the people of Eastern Europe what they thought of being colonized by the Russians?

---

No, stocko. That's why we call it Imperialism.

Just like no one ever asked the people of Western Europe, Central and South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East what they thought of being colonized by the New American Empire either.

On vacation!!!

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Steppenwolf Allende ]

quote:

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Stephenwolf Allende:
According to the The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs,, (need a sub to read the whole thing) ever since its first Five Year Plan, the Stalinist regime was looking take Lenin's transitional capitalist model on the road by expanding its sphere of influence beyond its own borders by securing access to greater markets to fuel its growing economy.

---

To add an even broader perspective to this consider that both Russia and Japan had historic designs on Manchuria. They competed in the region for about 50 years prior to WWII. The Russians and the Japanese fought a major war in 1904 and later the Soviets and the Japanese a smaller one just before WWII.

Also, the Soviet Union began expanding its influence abroad, particularly into China, long before WWII.

Soviet actions in Asia at the end of the war are influenced by this history.

quote:

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Stockholm, it really wasn't fair to bring the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian situations into this thread.

I don't think Fidel ever actually HAS justified those acts.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:

He seems to be an apologist for every other Soviet atrocity so I think that until he explicitly and without reservation condemns the Russian invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia - we have to assume that he will be an apologist for this atrocities as well.

---

McCarthyism at its best. You can't make any such assumption. It could just as well be that Fidel feels that if he condemned those things, you'd just have more and more things he had to condemn just to prove his purity or whatever.
That you'd never be satisfied. It's that feeling, I suspect, that probably stopped a lot of Communists, no matter how disillusioned or disgusted they became with the Soviet system and its betrayals, from publicly condemning it. They didn't want to have to keep jumping through hoop after hoop after hoop, or having to move further and further away from not only communism but any form of socialism, just to satisfy the Cold Warriors.

Stalinism is extinct, Stockholm. It's never going to come back anywhere. What matters is what we work for now and what we do in the future.

There's a lot I disagree with Fidel about, but I really think you're getting out of hand with the redbaiting here, Stockers.

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Don't be too assured. He's justified just about everything else the Soviet and Chinese corporate power clans have done. In a slug-fest between apologists, anything can happen!!

---

You're an apologist for fascism. You're either deliberately ignorant of recent history of the last century, or you're an unwitting apologist for fascism. In either case, your tires are flat.

quote:

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Actually, the Stalinist regime had expansionist plans in Eastern Europe well before the Second World War.

---

Ah, the sympathizing apologist for fascism typically ignores the capitalist crisis leading to WWI and the 25 international army invasion of Russia from 1918 to 1922 and jump immediately to the Stalin era with no intermediary foreplay. We can just imagine how unsatisfied his partners have been to now. Conversational partners that is.

quote:

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The Stalin-Hitler Pact allowed the Stalinists to consider much of Eastern Europe within "within the Soviet Sphere of influence." That's when the Stalinist regime not only co-invaded Poland with the Nazis, but used the opportunity to re-conquer the nations once under the Czarist’s imperial rule that gained their independence after the Russian Revolution.

---

Molotov-Ribbentrop II in 1939 wasn't an alliance between Russia and Germany. The actual wording of the document specified an understanding that the two countries would not go to war against each other with secret protocols for annexation of the Baltics, Finland and Poland.

The Soviets signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement after the September 1938 Munich Appeasement made it evident to the Soviets that the western nations were pursuing a policy of appeasement with fascist Germany and were not interested in joining the Soviets in an anti-fascist alliance promoted through a presumed popular front of united left. It appeared to Stalin, especially since Munich, the appeasement of all appeasments, and then Hitler's "dove of peace" lands in England in the month prior to barbarossa, that the west was collaborating with Hitler against Russia.

Stalin had two options : 1. align with Britain and France and join the war against Hitler over Poland immediately, or 2. delay war against Nazi Germany with a non-aggression pact

The secret protocols of the pact were being violated by both sides within weeks, and so this dingbat conspiracy theory by apologists for fascism typically describes Stalin, Time Magazine's one-time man of the year and biggest winner of the last century, as a bumbling fool who trusted Hitler. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

After the Nazis invaded Poland, Stalin anticipated Britain and France would attack the Nazis on the western front. It didn't happen. In Stalin's mind, this was turning into western aggression against Russia part two. In fact, Stalin's predictions were on the mark as Hitler threw two-thirds of the corporate-sponsored military machine deep into the heart of Russia and Ukraine.

quote:

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Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, western Ukraine and Moldavia fell to Soviet armies and stayed under Russian rule until the Soviet break-up,. Finland fought back and held off the Soviets.

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This must be the week for half-truths. In fact, the Nazis, with Czechoslovakia, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg,Denmark, Norway and Western Poland already under Nazi occupation, Hitler's Nazis proceeded to invade the Baltics where collaborators in those countries gave up their Jewish citizens for deportation to slave labour camps. The first large scale exterminations would take place in the Soviet Union and Ukraine, events which apologists for fascism tend to overlook.

quote:

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The security buffer zone argument used by the Stalinist regime is just an expression of its imperialistic nature, since throughout history Russia, with it huge military, vast resources and unfavourable climate, had always proved pretty impervious to foreign conquest.

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This makes no sense. Must be filler before some heavy duty cow manure.

quote:

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The fact the Stalinist regime forced itself over these nations (that’s what the formation of the COMECON was mainly about), took control over their governments and most industries and monopolized much of the commercial ownership and markets and subjected them to being battlegrounds for any possible future wars just to spare itself shows this clearly.

---

Comecon was an international barter system, not free-for-all market capitalism. You'll get it right some day, Dr Steppenkapital.

And you'll discover that about ten percent of Russia was fertile and perma-frost free for growing food. That was true of Tsarist era Russia as well and Ukraine was still considered Russia's breadbasket. As commissar of multiCultural affairs, Stalin realized in the 1920's that the satellite nations independence would weaken trade links and weaken Russia as a result.

Defending the truth from apologists for fascism, once again.

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ken Burch:

Stalinism is extinct, Stockholm. It's never going to come back anywhere. What matters is what we work for now and what we do in the future.

There's a lot I disagree with Fidel about, but I really think you're getting out of hand with the redbaiting here, Stockers.

[ 01 July 2007: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

---

I think we forget that the leadership in WWII were men informed by WWI. I think, in the case of Germany and Japan, they wanted an utterly defeated enemy this time, they wanted a German and Japanese population that understood it was defeated.

Nothing like an awesome superweapon to get that point across. Even if fire bombing was more devastating at the time.

It also played happily as a warning to Stalin's Red Army which could have pushed Allied forces back off the European Continent if it had a mind to in 1945.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stockholm:
So, Fidel, you still have never answered the question. Do you think the Soviet Union was right to invade Hungary and Czechoslovakia and were they right to tell their East German puppets to build the Berlin Wall and shoot dead anyone trying to cross it?

---

No, it was no more right for the Soviets to do so than it was for the Nazis to takeover Czechoslovakia after Chamberlain and Daladier signed it over to Hitler.

Would you agree that fascism was a threat to Russia after 27 million soldiers died at the hands of the Nazis as well as an estimated 19 million civilians, Stockholmer?.

Would you agree that Russia was devastated by Hitler's war of annihilation to the point where there was a severe shortage of manpower after western aggression against Russia part two ?.

The wall went up to deter people from leaving war-devastated East in need of rebuilding for the West, which was made into a showcase for capitalism very quickly as a front line deterrent to the spread of communism, the same political scenario which existed during the collapse of western capitalism leading up to WWII. Note that Latin America and several third world capitalist countries were never made into showcases for capitalism, just colonial labour and gross human rights violations and ongoing to today.

This is a 2005 review of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s book Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan.

quote:

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This hour-by-hour examination of why and how the Japanese leadership decided to surrender finds that it was the Soviet declaration of war on August 8th – and not the Hiroshima bomb on August 6th or the Nagasaki bomb on August 9th – that led to surrender. As Hasegawa notes in his conclusion, “Justifying Hiroshima and Nagasaki by making a historically unsustainable argument that the atomic bombs ended the war is no longer tenable”.

---

unionist, it seems to me Stalin and the Soviets were a significant consideration for Truman in his pre-meditated decision to drop atomic bombs on non-military targets at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[ 02 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

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Originally posted by unionist:

Nice red-baiting.

The Soviets withdrew from Korea in 1948.

When do you think your American friends will comply?

---

And the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Still waiting for the military aggressors to pullout there and in Iraq and to close down over 700 military bases around the world.

quote:

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Fidel:
Dropping the bombs on non-military targets Hiroshima and Nagasaki....

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Not quite true. Hiroshima was a military center with an Army headquarters and surrounding naval bases, including the base at Kure. Nagasaki was also important to the navy. Both had heavy industry and ship building.

quote:

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Defending the truth from apologists for fascism, once again.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! This goof actually believes his own lies and whitewashing. Amazing!

Truth, of course, is based on fact--which is the enemy of the apologists of every stripe, as we see here.

Maybe we should propose a shot-gun wedding between Fidel and Stockholm and create a loony nut-bar apologist forum just for them, where they can keep everyone else entertained with all the BS, excuse-mongering, detractions, insults, factless assertions, defending the indefensible, etc.

On the road and gone!!

[ 02 July 2007: Message edited by: Steppenwolf Allende ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Jerry West:

Not quite true. Hiroshima was a military center with an Army headquarters and surrounding naval bases, including the base at Kure. Nagasaki was also important to the navy. Both had heavy industry and ship building.

That doesn't justify the bombing, but there was some military excuse for it.

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Jerry, I was meaning that the overall death toll in those cities were mainly civilians, women and children. I didn't know they were also military targets.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
YOu still haven't found the time to tell us you support the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Do you need to check with your commissar to get "talking points" first?

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Oh, I answered your tongue-in-cheek question above, if you're even interested on expanding that topic.

But you're evading the question of the U.S. military's gulags for torture at Gitmo and the CIA's "ghost prisons" for torture and basic human rights violations around the world, I do believe.

quote:

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Would you agree that fascism was a threat to Russia after 27 million soldiers died at the hands of the Nazis as well as an estimated 19 million civilians, Stockholmer?.

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It's hard to say that "fascism" was a threat to Russia after World War Two when by any commonly accepted definition of "fascism", Russia under Stalin was FASCIST to begin with.

I also think that building a wall around a city and shooting to kill anyone who tries to get out and having a vast secret apparatus to spy on everyone is also fascist.

I'm glad you're in the minority of whackos who cover up and apologize for fascism.

Only an apologist for fascism would have the audacity to change the subject in a thread about the fascist crime of nuclear holocaust. There should be a new pill for this mental disorder: ritalin for fascists!

You should watch a few movies yourself, like: Schindler's List, Romero, Motorcycle Diaries, Salvador, Platoon, The Pianist and Enemy at the Gates. Go to hell.

[ 02 July 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book "Racing the Enemy" is based upon study of the Japanese, Russian, and US archives.

What he finds is this:

1. Since Stalin had not declared war on Japan, it was hoped that he would be a peacemaker between the US and Japan.

2. When Stalin entered the war a day or so after his non-aggression pact with Japan had lapsed, the Japanese ruling class was profoundly shocked, as they did not wish to see Japan "sovietized".

3. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not break Japan's will to fight. Stalin's invasion did.

Interestingly, the most important "revisionist" historian, Gar Alperovitz, has reviewed the Hasegawa book, mostly favourably, and has concluded:

quote:

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My own view continues to be that although there are very
strong suggestions in the available documents both of the
deviousness of Byrnes and of the importance of both European
and Asian issues related to the Soviet Union in the decision
to use the atomic bomb, the truth is we still do not have
sufficient information to definitively answer some of the
most important questions concerning why the bomb was used.

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quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
I hope I won't be called a fascist for pointing out that the best recent book on the end of the war doesn't really accept the revisionist story, either.

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book "Racing the Enemy" is based upon study of the Japanese, Russian, and US archives.

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Click here, jeff. I know it's hard to scroll through archeological layers of thread drift, but it's up there, trust me.

Hasegawa's book has sparked a lot of controversy, but not many historians today will deny that the decision to use atomic bombs had something to do with the Soviet Union.

What I find fascinating (returning to the actual theme of this thread) is that a Japanese defence minister is instantly silenced and humiliated for saying what many western historians have been saying openly for over 40 years. When you combine that with recent Japanese leaders' ambiguity about militarism and war crimes of the past, that silencing speaks volumes.

[ 02 July 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

Stockholm:

quote:

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Oh brother...I think I'll tiptoe away now. Been to any meetings of the Flat Earth Society lately?

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And then the nasty tone continues, after Fidel makes a heroic effort for a couple of posts not to get sucked in by Stockholm's snarkiness:

quote:

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I'd love to here what convoluted justification you can give us ...

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quote:

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I'm still waiting for how you justify the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia (I already have my popcorn ready. This should be quite amusing)

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Fidel kept his cool, and it looked like the conversation was going to get past it, when Steppenwolf decided to get his two cents in with this:

quote:

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You know, Stockholm, you and Fidel should be locked in a room and have a contest as to see who can out-flake, out-detract, out-apologize and out-BS the other, with the winner getting a million-dollar prize. It would make for a great “reality” TV show.

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Gosh, that was necessary, and a wonderful way to dial back the hostility. This even moreso:

quote:

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but rather because he’s such a star-spangled suck-hole to the even mor3e capitalistic/imperialistic

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Thank you so much. Then Steppenwolf goes on to say:

quote:

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(you didn’t actually expect this thread to remain focused and civil, did you?)

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and

quote:

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Don't be too assured. [Fidel]'s justified just about everything else the Soviet and Chinese corporate power clans have done. In a slug-fest between apologists, anything can happen!!

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Well, gee thanks. Thank you so much for helping to keep this thread "focused and civil". It's a joy moderating threads with such self-controlled adults posting to them.

And then the thread just goes down the tubes from there with:

Stockholm:

quote:

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He seems to be an apologist for every other Soviet atrocity so I think that until he explicitly and without reservation condemns the Russian invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia - we have to assume that he will be an apologist for this atrocities as well.

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Fidel:

quote:

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You're an apologist for fascism. You're either deliberately ignorant of recent history of the last century, or you're an unwitting apologist for fascism.

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etc and so forth.

You know what? This sucks and I'm not moderating this thread any longer.