West Takes Tougher Stand at Yalta

Strange that I stand by the position that the Soviet Union was the country which won WWII in Europe and that Yalta was NOT a sell out to Stalin yet am now a Russophobe(which would especially shock half my ancestors).
 
Now, far be it from me to defend Stalin or Stalinism, but all of that is not entirely correct. The Purges, for example, were, excepting the very highest levels of command, not as big a part of the RKKA's bad readiness as has traditionally been thought; there were never enough officers for the Army, and they were traditionally badly educated. The purge of some 30,000 officers was a relatively minor affair; far more encompassing was the formation of so many new half-filled divisions in '40-41 and the complete reorganisation of large parts of the army.

As for the intelligence reports, Stalin had received many false alarms before, and was thus a little jaded when he got the correct one. He did step up preparations; the essential mistake he did was misjudging the time of the German attack.

None of which makes him any less evil, of course, but he wasn't as incompetent as is traditionally assumed.

I think that it was not a relatively minor affair, Stalin paranoid from the murdering of Kirov caused at the end in the Red Armed Forces an authentic carnage, although the purges of the Army have been the best known, not less important or even could be more importants were the purges in the Red Air Force, a Red Air force with a great level of technicity, professionalism and with great commanders was converted after the purges in a force unprepared for the german onslaught of 1941, the Luftwaffe thanks to the soviet purges made an authentic turkey shoot of the Red Air Force during 1941.

"
Purges of the military enacted by Stalin between 1937 and
1939 were an unmitigated disaster for the development of Soviet
air thought, as well as for the military capability of the Soviet
Union. In 1937 Marshal Tukhachevski w a s a r r e s t e d a n d
executed. Gen Ya. I. Alksnis , commander of the Red Air Force
since 1931, also was arrested and executed, and his deputy
disappeared. An estimated 75 percent of Red Air Force officers
vanished between 1937 and 1939. General Lapchinsky, the
strategic theorist , also was arrested and executed. At one stroke,
several of the most original and influential airpower thinkers of
the interwar period disappeared.​

Small wonder that the Soviet air force found itself ill prepared
to meet the onslaught of the Wehrmacht in June 1941."

From Paths of Heaven http://aupress.au.af.mil/books/Meil-Paths/Paths.pdf
page 194.​

 
You are free to draw your own conclusions about my accusations. I deliberately turned the heat in this statement on, to tell you the truth, but I really believe that plain Russophobia is one of mighty forces driving this kind of undying and unwavering devotion to Cold War tales.

I'm sure "Russophobia" may exist in some form, but it is thoroughly tainted with Putinist and/or Soviet apologism to be accepted as an accusation without very solid proof of motive.

And accusing those who disagree with your chosen positions of being Russophobes is pretty low, unless there is that proof - kind of like the equivalent naming of anyone who opposes Zionism as being an anti-Semite.

I would have thought we were a little more mature than that, but if you have proof of anyone bearing a particular animus towards Russia and/or the USSR, purely through reasons of illogical racial hatred, then let's hear it....
 
Thanks for the link Grimm Reaper. The article appears to have a very favourable slant towards the Cossacks. Nonetheless the thrust of my argument is supported by the facts it presents.

Some things the article failed to mention, as did some of the posters here, that are relevant to the discussion include the fact that the Cossack units in particular and others formed from inhabitants of the Soviet Union who chose to join the Nazi invasion force were incorporated into the SS. The article goes to some pains to point out that they were somehow separate from the SS despite the overwhelming evidence that they wore the uniform of the SS, were armed and supplied by the SS and like all SS units swore a personal oath to Hitler.

The amazing claim made here that because Vlasov tried to surrender to the western Allies and hand over Prague to them somehow makes him and his army secret allied sympathizers fails to take into account that hundreds of thousands of German soldiers surrendered to the western allies instead of the Soviets. This did not make them any less guilty of their crimes nor did it somehow prove they were reluctant participants.

Another fiction posted here is that because some people left the Soviet Union before the end of the Civil War that somehow they were not Soviet citizens. Unless they took up citizenship of another country, they were indeed citizens of the USSR. The Soviet Union was the legitimate successor state to Tsarist Russia and by the early 1930s the US was the last of the later western allies to acknowledge that fact when they recognized the USSR. Therefore, under International Law they automatically because citizens of the new state.

As an analogy consider the official position of former Confederate citizens after their territory was incorporated into the US after the Civil War. Were Vichy citizens exempt from French justice because at the time their crimes were committed they were technically citizens of another state? In these examples, the people were citizens of a state at the end of hostilities and were incorporated back into the original country. There was no Tsarist state in the 1920s, 30s and 40s so the people in question here were citizens of another state and unless they took up citizenship of another country they were Soviet citizens.

I could find no reference to citizens of another country being handed over to the Soviet authorities after the war against their will. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary I would appreciate some citations.

Grimm Reaper I appreciate your comments about the circumstances of the Red Army victory over the Japanese in Manchuria, but my point was that despite what was said regarding their somehow inferior quality to those units the Americans (and Australians and others) fought, they were of at least a similar calibre. Terrain made all the difference but the assertion someone made that Stalin ‘did a Mussolini’ is simply absurd.
 
MarkA, I don't deny the bias in the slightest, nor am I defending anyone who served as an ally of Hitler. I was solely interested in references to refugees from the Russian Civil War being handed back to Stalin 20+ years after they fled Lenin's rule.

Nor were those born on non-Soviet soil legally citizens of the Soviet Union and nothing can justify handing the women and children over to be murdered.



The Confederate comparison is a poor one because all Confederates were considered to have been US citizens all along by Lincoln's administration while extremely few were ever actually punished for any crimes(real or otherwise) committed.

The Vichy comparison is invalid. The Vichy government were all citizens of France, 'temporarily' relocating the government from Paris, and Vichy was a technically valid continuation of the Third Republic so a Vichy official on trial from 1945 to the early 1950s would technically have served under the same law and constitution which he was being tried under. Not only the state was the same but the law involved, one reason De Gaulle deliberately subjected Petain, Laval and other prominent Vichy figures to the precise punishments they had previously inflicted on others.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Thanks for the link Grimm Reaper. The article appears to have a very favourable slant towards the Cossacks. Nonetheless the thrust of my argument is supported by the facts it presents.

Some things the article failed to mention, as did some of the posters here, that are relevant to the discussion include the fact that the Cossack units in particular and others formed from inhabitants of the Soviet Union who chose to join the Nazi invasion force were incorporated into the SS. The article goes to some pains to point out that they were somehow separate from the SS despite the overwhelming evidence that they wore the uniform of the SS, were armed and supplied by the SS and like all SS units swore a personal oath to Hitler.

The amazing claim made here that because Vlasov tried to surrender to the western Allies and hand over Prague to them somehow makes him and his army secret allied sympathizers fails to take into account that hundreds of thousands of German soldiers surrendered to the western allies instead of the Soviets. This did not make them any less guilty of their crimes nor did it somehow prove they were reluctant participants.

Another fiction posted here is that because some people left the Soviet Union before the end of the Civil War that somehow they were not Soviet citizens. Unless they took up citizenship of another country, they were indeed citizens of the USSR. The Soviet Union was the legitimate successor state to Tsarist Russia and by the early 1930s the US was the last of the later western allies to acknowledge that fact when they recognized the USSR. Therefore, under International Law they automatically because citizens of the new state.

As an analogy consider the official position of former Confederate citizens after their territory was incorporated into the US after the Civil War. Were Vichy citizens exempt from French justice because at the time their crimes were committed they were technically citizens of another state? In these examples, the people were citizens of a state at the end of hostilities and were incorporated back into the original country. There was no Tsarist state in the 1920s, 30s and 40s so the people in question here were citizens of another state and unless they took up citizenship of another country they were Soviet citizens.

I could find no reference to citizens of another country being handed over to the Soviet authorities after the war against their will. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary I would appreciate some citations.

Grimm Reaper I appreciate your comments about the circumstances of the Red Army victory over the Japanese in Manchuria, but my point was that despite what was said regarding their somehow inferior quality to those units the Americans (and Australians and others) fought, they were of at least a similar calibre. Terrain made all the difference but the assertion someone made that Stalin ‘did a Mussolini’ is simply absurd.


A few points -

Because a following regime is a legitimate successor does not make those who fled them property of the successor state. If this was the case then refugees from any state would be subject to return to, in many cases, their deaths or life long mistreatment at the whim of the new government (the list here is almost endless, from anti-Castro Cubans to Palestinians). What was done to many of the unfortunates sent back to the tender mercies of the NKVD is no different, in fact far worse, than handing the Shah's family over to the Revolutionary Guard would have been in 1981.

Regarding both the Confederates and Vichy examples - I may have missed it, but did Grant or DeGaulle line up masses of "repatriated" collaborators or traitors and shoot them in the head (or in DeGaulle's case, machine gun them)? I am not referring to "popular" or "street" justice or other extra-judicial acts, but acts by organized, authorized elements of the French or U.S. government acting under orders. To my knowledge, Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee, and Phillipe Petain all died of old age, as did virtually ALL of the members of the Confederate Government (a surprising number of whom served in the UNITED STATES Congress after the war)and the vast majority of the Vichy state machine (even most of the French survivors of SS Charlemagne were spared, many of them going almost immediately from the SS to the French Army in Indochina). Jefferson Davis was, as punishment for his actions, disinfranchised; this is the same punishment given to paroled criminals. He was the President of a treasonous Government that waged WAR againt the United States and his punishment was losing the right to hold public office.

Hmmm... Get shot in the head without trial vs. not being allowed to be a Senator? Not exactly comparable is it?


Actually, by late 1945, the Kwantung Army was a shadow of it's former self (not that even at it's peak it was any match for the Red Army). Virtually all fuel, supplies, and the best troops had been withdrawn to prepare for the final battle against the Americans (ironically many of these troops and their equipment were lost to marauding Allied submarines). The troops that the Soviets faced were brave, but utterly incapable of opposing the Red Army. It is not just that the Red Army was, by 1945, the strongest land force the world had ever seen, it is also that the IJA was ill prepared, both by doctrine and equipment, to face any modern combined arms force.

I will not repeat the litany of deficiencies that plagued the IJA, but it would have crumbled just as rapidly before Patton's Third Army or the British Eighth as it did against the Soviets.
 

backstab

Banned
.

Some things the article failed to mention, as did some of the posters here, that are relevant to the discussion include the fact that the Cossack units in particular and others formed from inhabitants of the Soviet Union who chose to join the Nazi invasion force were incorporated into the SS. The article goes to some pains to point out that they were somehow separate from the SS despite the overwhelming evidence that they wore the uniform of the SS, were armed and supplied by the SS and like all SS units swore a personal oath to Hitler.
.

Where on earth did you find this tripe ?
The Cossack formations were NEVER part of the SS , there IS no evidence, they wore the same uniform as the German army and not the SS camoflage uniform, They were Armed by the German Army and NEVER swore a personal oath to Hitler.
At the end of the war they were put under ADMINISTRATIVE command of the WAFFEN-SS... this means that the SS gave them food and ammo, much like when Regular Formations had Waffen SS units attached to them.
Maybe some research is in order ?


Another fiction posted here is that because some people left the Soviet Union before the end of the Civil War that somehow they were not Soviet citizens. Unless they took up citizenship of another country, they were indeed citizens of the USSR. The Soviet Union was the legitimate successor state to Tsarist Russia and by the early 1930s the US was the last of the later western allies to acknowledge that fact when they recognized the USSR. Therefore, under International Law they automatically because citizens of the new state.

Another load of crap....... even the NKVD could not understand why the British handed over the White Russians as most had renounced their Citizenship ..... More homework for you


I
could find no reference to citizens of another country being handed over to the Soviet authorities after the war against their will. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary I would appreciate some citations.


Read a book called Victims of Yalta by Nikolai Tolstoy, it will open your eyes and clear out that Stalinist Propaganda
 
The White Russians were not Soviet citizens; they were stateless persons. Which is why they got the so-called Nansen Passports, which were all but useless but nevertheless denoted their status as such.
 
Chetniks were Monarchists and fought against both Germans and Communists. After British aid failed in favour of Tito, they entertained relationships and collaboration with the Axis, especially with Italians to fight against Communist Partisans, or to keep at bay Ustashi.

I have seen photographs with Chetniks and Italian soldiers collaborating together.

After September 8th, many Italian soldiers in the Balkan joined the Chetnik Army and fought against both Tito and Germans.

Anyway, one should consider that there was not a very strong central command, so there were several autonomous Chetnik bands.

[IMO: As an Anti-Communist, I personally believe that Chetniks were in the right.]
 
Top