Why did Germany's WWI invasion of Russia work?

Yes, we hate you. With fiercest hate that russian soul capable to endure. You know - all tv shows in Russia start with mantras "You must HATE WEST!" and something. And all Russia covered by snow and trained bears walking in the street drinking vodka from samovars.

And you want to nationalise our women. Did I ever tell you that you only got anything done thanks to German tsars? That you dream about donning your jackboots and ushankas and conquering my country quite frankly goes without saying.

I'm afraid such attitudes are pervasive here as everywhere in the English-speaking world.
 

Susano

Banned
Ah, steveps post gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside! I knew he doesnt just hate Germany, this proves hes just generally too indoctrinated to make any detailed assertions at all! :)
 

King Thomas

Banned
The NKVD did their horrors more or less in private, whlist the SS did it more or less in public-so of couse the Russian people would come to hate the SS more.
 
Ah, steveps post gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside! I knew he doesnt just hate Germany, this proves hes just generally too indoctrinated to make any detailed assertions at all! :)

The Russians and the Germans? Agreeing?

Oh, I think we all know where this ends...

:p
 
The NKVD did their horrors more or less in private, whlist the SS did it more or less in public-so of couse the Russian people would come to hate the SS more.

The NKVD killed a quarter of Belarussians but they artfully hid the bodies and blamed it on a highly virulent disease contracted from an extremely dirty telephone?
 
Yes, we hate you. With fiercest hate that russian soul capable to endure. You know - all tv shows in Russia start with mantras "You must HATE WEST!" and something. And all Russia covered by snow and trained bears walking in the street drinking vodka from samovars.

How people can be so full of biased bullshit?

Good question. Why are you?
 

Susano

Banned
:D

But really, let's not be beastly to the Poles. We've made a bad habit of picking on them, which doesn't stop us from continuing to say nonsense about Russian and Soviet history.

Meh, I rather saw that as a Poletrolls reference than a Poles reference. .p Theres a difference!

stevep said:
Good question. Why are you?
He hasnt accused entire national groups to have nothing but hatred. I mean, gah, Orwell would be so proud of you! Really, compared to the stuff you write his nonsense about comparative propagandas is nothing.

Really, I mean, my god, how can a 21st century European still demonise an entire people as nothing more than hatredmongering savages? Thats... quite a new low.
 
Meh, I rather saw that as a Poletrolls reference than a Poles reference. .p Theres a difference!

Oh, of course. But it's not like Polish crazies are the only ones to worry about how the Russians are Planning Something.

He hasnt accused entire national groups to have nothing but hatred. I mean, gah, Orwell would be so proud of you! Really, compared to the stuff you write his nonsense about comparative propagandas is nothing.

When people routinely say things like what stevep is saying, you can rather see why, to an outside observer, it looks like we run a formidable propaganda job.

I think that it's possible (and the done thing) to underestimate just how much Cold War rhetoric continues to shape our discourse; but ignorance isn't propaganda machinery.

Really, I mean, my god, how can a 21st century European still demonise an entire people as nothing more than hatredmongering savages? Thats... quite a new low.

One thing that gets up my nose if the patronising tone of much Russophobia. We only want to educate the Tatar hoarde! We only want to free them from their own chronic inefficiency!
 
Good question. Why are you?

I'am not.


2Susano:
Really, compared to the stuff you write his nonsense about comparative propagandas is nothing.

Well, I try to elaborate my point.
Now Russia have access to almost all western mass media and culture of Cold war time and beyond. We watch your films and tv, read your books and news (you know - some Obama visit in some forgotten country had more coverage by central russian TV-channels than almost any internal news).
And we remeber soviet times, so we can compare. Both sides pile up lies about other.

And I don't think that "western propaganda" exists as some sort of enforced direct policy, this is just natural state of things.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
By people who got in their way you include people who had resources the party, as an organisation or individuals they wanted, people who wanted to govern themselves or simply live in peace without a bunch of thieving murderers grabbing anything they liked. Technically speaking, apart from the small number of party members the communists did enslave every Slav along with everybody else they ruled. Its just that they lusted for power rather than to exterminate people. They still murdered millions, which is a fact.

Urgh. This again...

When I say "enslave every Slav", I mean they wanted to, get this, make the illiterate to make them less rebellious. It was sick, sick, sick. The Soviets wanted productive, literate workers, and got 'em.

I'm not Stalin apologist. I know perfectly that he killed millions of innocent hands. But people don't seem to have gotten it into their heads that philosophy schmilosophy, the Nazis were indescribably evil and insane.

The Nazis didn't lust for power? That must be why they tried to conquer Europe.

Lets try going through this again. Very, very slowly. We're talking about what if the war had been been the SU and an opponent who wasn't a bunch or murderous psychopaths. As such continually making false comparisons that we're talking about the Nazis is pointless.


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
So you mean the only ones who matter are those loyal to the regime?

No. A Soviet citizen is a Soviet citizen, political opinions of us or them aside. Would you rather I called them "Subjects of Eternal Russia, One and Indivisible"?

I was referring to your distancing your arguments from other non-Soviets.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
Yes there is Russophobia in the west, which is not just because of the long history of living alongside a huge highly militarised state that was committed to conquering and destroying everybody else.

Oh, hey! Casual Russophobia! How are you, I haven't seen you since breakfast.

What you're saying is that yeah, the Russians should man it up and accept that we have a right to screach about their plans to nationalise our women: it's essentially their fault, given how they've been planning to nationalise our women for so long.

Do you have any evidence for the Soviet desire to Tek Offer Ze Vurld? You may not cite Marx, because Marx and Stalin had major differences of opinion. Check out what marx had to say about Besserabia: 'tis instructive.

Ignoring the idiotic ranting - not sure what your on - try reading just about an Soviet propaganda about how their system was inevitably going to take over the world.


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
The difference is than in the west there is also Russophilia, unlike in Russia where hatred was the only permitted stance.

I give up.

I mean, really. I know Russians and know people who know Russians and this is ludicrous.

Your denying that the SU used propaganda to stir up hatred of any other power or internal group it found a reason to blacken? Strangely [or not] unlike other totalitarian powers.


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
Who's raising straw-men now? Ranoncles was talking about what the people in Stalin's empire would know before the Germans arrived.

I repeat: the Nazis entered the Soviet Union in summer 1941 and immeidately began to implement their "Kill 'Em All" doctrine. What people had revealed to them very suddenly was that Soviet military power was really not all it had been cut out to me and that the Nazis were really a lot less gentlemanly than Molotov had made out...

The point I'm making is that the idea of people running out to greet the Nazis with flags and flowers is a myth. They were met with trepidation and fear at the very best inside the old USSR. In the Baltic, people savoured the few days in which they could fly their own flags before the Nazis arrived, took down the flags, and started exterminating people's Jewish neighbours and killing liberals.

The 1st paragraph is irrelevant as I have made clear above. We're not talking about the Nazis here.

Interesting I have seen a lot of pictures and discussion about that on programmes about WWII. Or are you now saying they were all anti-Soviet propaganda? Including those sections that highlight the bravery and determination of the Russians who played such a major part in defeating the Nazis.

Also it denies common sense. Given how massively the populations had been brutalised by the Soviet system it is unbelievable to suggest that none of them would have been willing to fight if given a chance of a better life. [Please don't pretend we're talking about the Nazis here because we both know we're not].


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
As we all know, when they found the Nazis were even worse most of them, apart from desperately struggling to survive, did oppose the Nazis. It didn't stop them often being sent to camps by the Soviets afterwards.

Are you saying that every partisan did a dtint in Siberia? That's a somewhat controversial assertion.

What's "most of them" mean? Some Nazis were just misunderstood?

Are you very poor at English or being deliberately dishonest. I said 'often' not all. Millions of POWs and people who had been taken as forced labourers were imprisoned after the war. The most referred to the many Russians who fought against the Nazis after they realised how bad they were.


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
Lets see. There was a lot of propaganda in Britain to hide the details of a brutal regime. It was actually the Soviet ones that reluctantly became our allies not the Nazis.

What? What I'm saying is that (with propaganda frantically anti-German) people were saying "Nazis are evil and all, but really, let's not talk about sterilisaing people. It's vulgar. UnBritish." And the Germans, being unBritish and gentleman at all, refused to conveniently stop fighting and welcome us as liberators, the ungrateful bastards.

History doesn't seem to contain many examples of being running out to cheer the military invasion and defeast of trheir country. Iraq? Afghanistan? What did we do to them, besides invade their countries?

Be interesting what if anything your actually referring to by this 1st paragraph? Are you complaining that there were a small number of Nazis sympithisers in the west, as elsewhere? Or that some people in Britain didn't want to take a Nazi viewpoint and demonise all Germans as Nazis? Would you rather they had been all exterminated after the war?

Not if they identify with the country, which many of its subjects didn't with the SU. Nor if the their being invaded by a group more brutal than the ones already ruling them.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is a prime example of a war that is going to be very difficult to win yes. Not sure when the SU invaded Iraq. :p


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
It might be discribed as common sense. However your dodging the point again. With a different Germany many of them would have sought to save Russia and themselves, by fighting to defeat the Soviet dictatorship that was until the OTL Nazis arrived, the biggest single threat to the Russian people.

Again:

1) History doesn't seem to support this assertion.

Any evidence other than your desire to believe otherwise? Even with the Nazis many tens of thousands, at a bare minimum, choose to side with them against the SU.

2) I fail to see why any sane German regime would invade Russia.

Beside the point as we're discussing what if a war occurred between a power in a similar military/economic position to WWII Germany which was not a bunch of ranting murderous maniacs. Could be that Stalin had sought to take over somewhere, say Finland or part of Rumania as he did OTL and the 'invaders' were some combination of powers who decide to counter the attack.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
The obvious one is an ardent communist who became disgusted by the corruption and incompetence of the Soviet regime and didn't realise that for all its lies Soviet propaganda was [largely by accident] correct about the Nazis.

Um. what? The names I asked him to name, were "paramilitary Nazi supporters".

I think you know who I mean. Unless your statements are indicative of your actual ignorance of what happened in WWII. A certain General Vlasov.




Anyway, Soviet propaganda lied a lot, but it was capable of telling the truth. It's rather insulting to insist that the Russian people didn't know they were fighting to save their country from the most barbaric regime in history and were merely being told so by a Soviet propaganda machine that spat out any old thing.

There's only one person in this discussion insulting the intelligence of the Russian people and its not me.;) I'm saying simply that they were so used to hearing any immediate enemy of the state being demonised by a state that they knew lied to them that there was plenty of reason to assume it was the same old lies about the advancing Germans until they actually encountered them.



Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
Again your ducking the issue. What is being talked about is if a rational government had been fighting the Soviets in 1941. No one is arguing that just about everybody in the Soviet empire was better off with the Nazis defeated.

He states that had the Nazis treated people "a little" better, by "encouraging the desire for freedom"...

That is to misrepresent Nazi policy. I corrected him.

Bullshit and you know it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
Simple. If you treat the population decently and have more local troops, knowing the terrain and the population you have a number of advantages.
a) They will fight damned hard to defend their people and will be helped by knowing the land, climate etc.


Funny, usually, it's the defending army with these advantages, not the aggressive power!

Exactly what I said. ;)


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
b) Seeing that they are being treated properly [and probably the brutality the Soviet system is dishing out] more will join them.

I'm not denying that people will join the army of Freedom Germany Fights For Freedom Yay. They joined Schuma, which is a differant matter altogether. But that doesn't mean they ahve guns.

So? Apart from the fact I responded to that point, it does mean their not, willingly or unwillingly, aiding the SU.


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
c) Little/no partisan activity as the few that feel loyal to the Soviet regime will be quickly hunted down by the local population.

This is why Iraq was a triumph?

It seems to em that people take this as an article of anti-communist faith. And you've still got Red Army escaping from kessels, to start with. Add in the ideological communists (they absolutely did exist; as reading something as simple as a traveller's tale of 30s Russia makes clear), people who aren't thrilled their contry was invaded...

Guerilla groups can not survive without considerable popular support. That is a fact. The bulk of the people your talking about are the former Red Army soldiers. How many of them are going to act as terrorists when they realise that the forces advancing through the land are a lot more civilised than those that ruled them before. Similarly with the locals other than a few idealogical fanatics and those who gained by abuse of positional power. When orders come from Moscow to start murdering civilians because they are 'traitors' how many are going to attack their neighbours?


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
d) If a sizeable proportion of the German population is not moblished as local manpower can replace them that leaves those people free to produce other things, including more weapons.

This is a pretty major retool. We couldn't pull this trick instantly after liberating France. If we consider the logistics of this (bearing in mind, the obvious realities of the situation, such as that without the M-R pact, the Soviets were be far better prepared, and the Germans less experienced), we're asking the Germans to summon German-standared divisions out of the untrained populations of contested, recently occupied disticts while de-mbolising German divisions to gun up their production. And the Soviets are right there, waiting to return...

??? What the hell are you talking about here? I'm talking about the Germans [or whoever is fighting the SU] not moblising as massive as Germany did OTL because locals are doing much of the fighting. Hence they have more manpower for producing the weapons for arming the allied armies. Also no new units going to spring full-grown as experienced veterans. Stop raising straw men. I'm saying that the opposing forces will gain potentially very large numbers of new recruits while the Soviets will suffer a similar loss. [Or where do you think Stalin was getting a lot of his 'recruits' from by the end of the war?]


Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
e) Free people can be a lot more productive. Given protection and a little stability the populations of the area can produce a lot more than then can under either dictatorship. This is shown by the productivity of the private plots throughout the Soviet period.

Guns don't grow in the soil.

No but only an idiot would think only guns matter.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
f) If nothing else, if somehow the Soviet state survives under those circumstances it becomes a war of attriction as much as OTL. However this time around the bulk of the total population [German, other Europeans and Russians in Europe] are on the anti-Soviet side so the latter loses.

Simple, see.;)


Gosh, how many times have I seen this scenario?

The fact you don't like an idea doesn't make it impossible, or even any less likely to be accurate. If you can provide factual or logical reasons why I'm wrong please do so. Otherwise your just whining.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stevep
The only assumption you seem to be questioning is that any of the population of the Soviet empire would be willing to fight for any half-way decent opponent of the Soviets who might protect them from it.

Uh, yes. Yes I am. Although I'mn also assumptions like "making combat divisions from peasants is pretty easy, really" and "the Nazis, when you get right down to it, were at least not Russian."

Again this is rambling. If I take your 1st sentence literally your saying you don't believe any subject of the Soviet empire would ever want a better life, despite all the evidence. For all your contempt of 'peasants' they can make very good troops with properly equipment, leadership and motivation, as many armies, quite a number of them Russia have shown. And "the Nazis, when you get right down to it, were at least not Russian". What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Other than seeming to suggest that in your closed and bigoted mind any criticism of the Soviet empire is in some way Russo-phobia.
 
Other than seeming to suggest that in your closed and bigoted mind any criticism of the Soviet empire is in some way Russo-phobia.

It isn't. And now, as an aside, I began my acquantaince with IBC by having a giant argument about how evil the whites vs. reds were and what Russia's long-term prospects were following White takever. He was, naturally, solidly on the white side and championed Denikin. I'd say that his Russophilia aside, the chosen nickname is, well, accurate.

And, as a Russian who does live in the West, I will echo most comments people found most issues with.

1. The West does do propaganda better than the Russians; that's because the West does most things more professionally. When people in the West are protesting that they're being fed propaganda, it's very cute. It means it's working.

2. The Germans in WW1 advanced as far as they did becasue the Russian armies essentially disintegrated; had they kept on advancing and had the Russian state been intact, their success would have probably been far more qualified.

If you really badly want an example of a regime that was really hated, the Tsarist Empire was it. It sneezed badly in 1905 and failed utterly by 1916. By a combination of brutality and stated purpose, the Soviet state avoided the same fate, any fantasies of German-led liberation of the Russian people from Russian rule aside.
 
I'd say that less than 0.0001% of the Russian Army had the information necessary to make a 'rational choice'. From propaganda, then of course fighting for whoever issues that propaganda is the rational choice, that is after all the goal of it.

Similarly, unless a person has had the unimaginably bad luck of both serving in the Wehrmacht and Red Army, as well as being captured by both as a POW, and survived, his 'rational choice' would be influenced by his personal experiences.

Rational choice was not a decision available to the majority during WW2.

Good catch.

You force me to add the caveat 'in retrospect'.

In retrospect the Slavs et al who sided with Comrade Stalin made a rational choice compared to those who sided with Herr Hitler, particularly as we now know about the Nazi plan to starve to death the urban population of the Soviet Union, and to reduce the rural 'citizenry' to a level of perpetual, inescapable feudal serfdom.

LATE EDIT: Oh, except the Jews and the educated elites of the Soviet Union actually did make this rational choice based on fairly good information.

And there is a wealth of anecdotal information about people who weren't Jews or 'Jew educated' (the Nazi attitude towards people with degrees) who instinctively knew that the Germans were worse than the Communists.
 
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Lets try going through this again. Very, very slowly. We're talking about what if the war had been been the SU and an opponent who wasn't a bunch or murderous psychopaths. As such continually making false comparisons that we're talking about the Nazis is pointless.

People are making outrageous statements about the Nazis being "maybe possibly somewhat worse that Stalin", while as usual exagerrating Soviet crimes into an endeavour to send everyone to GULAG and, you guessed it, nationalise our women. I am attempting to remind people the reality of the situation. I am also addressing the (strange, hypoethtical) "Good Germans invade Russia for kicks" scenario in terms of military and logistics in other parts of my posts. These are seperate arguments. One is factual, the other, hypothetical.

I was referring to your distancing your arguments from other non-Soviets.

I really have no idea what you're talking about and why you object to my use of the term "Soviet people" to mean "Soviet people".

Ignoring the idiotic ranting - not sure what your on - try reading just about an Soviet propaganda about how their system was inevitably going to take over the world.

You know what totalitarian regimes do? They lie. Incessantly. It's another reason I really don't like totalitarian ideologies like communism.

Shall we take a look at the actual policies of Stalin, a much more reliable source for Soviet goals than their own propaganda? He withdrew from Austria like a good boy. He signed a peace with Finland when he could have let a few thousand more Red Army men and occupied civilians die and added another SSR to the list for his trouble. He generally acted like an evil, ruthless man... running a sane state with essentially the same (evil, ruthless) foreign policy of leaders that had come before him.

Your denying that the SU used propaganda to stir up hatred of any other power or internal group it found a reason to blacken? Strangely [or not] unlike other totalitarian powers.

Excuse me if I misunderstood you; I may have let a past tense slip by me because the belief that Russians are to this day educated to hate us blended in awfully well with everything else you've been saying, such as the idea that Russia is a "huge and highly militarised state dedicated to conquering and destroying everything else."

Remember when 1066 and All That nailed this attitude? "Another cause of the Crimean War was that Russia was in general far too large and pointed directly at India." That was in 1930 and we're still making the arguments they so skillfully satirised. The mind boggleth.

The 1st paragraph is irrelevant as I have made clear above. We're not talking about the Nazis here.

Ramocles is talking about Nazis when he says that is the Nazis had been "a little better" the Soviet regime would have gone down the toilet. You may not be talking about Nazis, that's fine, but he is and you're defending his arguments for him.

Interesting I have seen a lot of pictures and discussion about that on programmes about WWII. Or are you now saying they were all anti-Soviet propaganda? Including those sections that highlight the bravery and determination of the Russians who played such a major part in defeating the Nazis.

Do you actually have a source showing anyone welcoming Nazis as liberators? And again, when it comes to Ramocles, we are talking about Nazis.

Also it denies common sense. Given how massively the populations had been brutalised by the Soviet system it is unbelievable to suggest that none of them would have been willing to fight if given a chance of a better life. [Please don't pretend we're talking about the Nazis here because we both know we're not].

Totalitarian states defy common sense on a daily basis. It's what makes them tick. If common sense was a valid argument about Soviet Russia, whatever happened in Summer 1941, when Stalin set out to defy all strategic logic and pretend that everything was all right?

A
re you very poor at English or being deliberately dishonest. I said 'often' not all. Millions of POWs and people who had been taken as forced labourers were imprisoned after the war. The most referred to the many Russians who fought against the Nazis after they realised how bad they were.

1) Again: why I keep referring to the OTL Nazi invasion is because of this persistant myth that it took anyone time to "realise" what the Nazis were up to. If you read an actual account, the first response of a people educated to have a deep faith in Soviet power was to prepare for their own overwhelming victory; in days they were disillusioned and the scale of the disaster gradually became clear.

If they really thought the Nazis were liberators and didn't realise the reality until some time later under occupation, why was their an immediate rush to defend the imperiled country?

2) Another horror perpretrated by the Soviets was indeed sending innocent people to GULAG in huge numbers. If missing a word while frazzled late at night makes one's English "very poor", I apologise.

Be interesting what if anything your actually referring to by this 1st paragraph? Are you complaining that there were a small number of Nazis sympithisers in the west, as elsewhere? Or that some people in Britain didn't want to take a Nazi viewpoint and demonise all Germans as Nazis? Would you rather they had been all exterminated after the war?

As a Briton who is proud to be a Briton and proud to have a German middlename, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to think about the idea; I was merely using it to point out that people have this irrtating tendency to keep fighting for a regime worse than their opponent.

Not if they identify with the country, which many of its subjects didn't with the SU.

If the Germans get to Georgia, then maybe we're in trouble.

Nor if the their being invaded by a group more brutal than the ones already ruling them.

Which the Nazis were not.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is a prime example of a war that is going to be very difficult to win yes. Not sure when the SU invaded Iraq. :p

Who's ducking arguments now? We went into those countries to replace wicked regimes with democracy and look how well that turned out.

Any evidence other than your desire to believe otherwise? Even with the Nazis many tens of thousands, at a bare minimum, choose to side with them against the SU.

Again, I've adressed this: Balts and Estonians who kept their heads down, Galicians who were willing to fight both sides, Schuma, useless PoW battalions. And if that came to "tens of thousands", it's because the Soviet state was very large.

The Nazis invaded Norway, overthrew its democracy, toppled its king, brutalised its people, and still found Quisling and a crop of SS men. Was Norway a communist tyranny?

Beside the point as we're discussing what if a war occurred between a power in a similar military/economic position to WWII Germany which was not a bunch of ranting murderous maniacs.

And I am questioning:

A) The likelihood of the scenario in terms of German diplomatic logic.

B) That the Soviets will just curl up and die. I nowhere suggested that they'd win, but "everyone runs out to help the invader" seems to me a cliche which has gone too long unchallenged.

Could be that Stalin had sought to take over somewhere, say Finland or part of Rumania as he did OTL and the 'invaders' were some combination of powers who decide to counter the attack.

This is to betray a big misunderstanding of Soviet diplomacy, which lived in phobic fear of invasion from the west by a capitalist alliance.

I think you know who I mean. Unless your statements are indicative of your actual ignorance of what happened in WWII. A certain General Vlasov.

And how many people fought for the Soviets who were not ardent communists or did not have any readon to love Stalin? More than a few.

I name again the name of Vidkun Quisling: someone will always collaborate. I don't have quite the opinion of General Vlasov that I do of Quisling (Quisling is not popular with Orcadians), but I consider him a deeply misguided man and a traitor.

There's only one person in this discussion insulting the intelligence of the Russian people and its not me.;)

Hmm. People routinely invoke an imaginary Ukrainian vox-pop against me even though my Scouts are led by a Ukrainian; but this is the first time someone has appealed to a Russian vox-pop whilst arguing with two Russians...

I'm saying simply that they were so used to hearing any immediate enemy of the state being demonised by a state that they knew lied to them that there was plenty of reason to assume it was the same old lies about the advancing Germans until they actually encountered them.

The two regimes had been dancing around eachother until the invasion, when the real propaganda blitz started; what people were finding out was not that it was all true about the Nazis but rather that the Nazis were much worse than what they had cause to believe (after all, the Nazi actions were, save perhaps Yugoslavia, without precedent) and that Soviet military power wasn't such a big deal.

And yet miles behind the front there were queues to sign up...

Bullshit and you know it.

Pray dismantle my argument ("the difference between a war of extermination and slavery and a war of national liberation is more than a little") without recourse to profanity and a total absense of anything substantial?

Exactly what I said. ;)

"Aggressive" and "defensive" are military terms; pray don't bandy them about ideologically. The Germans were the "defending army" at every point after 1944.

So? Apart from the fact I responded to that point, it does mean their not, willingly or unwillingly, aiding the SU.

Sorry, what?

Guerilla groups can not survive without considerable popular support. That is a fact. The bulk of the people your talking about are the former Red Army soldiers. How many of them are going to act as terrorists when they realise that the forces advancing through the land are a lot more civilised than those that ruled them before. Similarly with the locals other than a few idealogical fanatics and those who gained by abuse of positional power. When orders come from Moscow to start murdering civilians because they are 'traitors' how many are going to attack their neighbours?

Iraqiraqiraq.

I am willing to keep saying it.

Can you name one example where people actually have immediately and whole-heartedly welcomed an invading power?

??? What the hell are you talking about here? I'm talking about the Germans [or whoever is fighting the SU] not moblising as massive as Germany did OTL because locals are doing much of the fighting. Hence they have more manpower for producing the weapons for arming the allied armies.

One cannot instantly convert Soviet peasants into divisons any more than one can instantly convert German divisions into industrial productivity. Therefore one must clearly have less (and worse, since they haven't had all those practice runs elsewhere in Europe) German divisions against a better prepared Soviet army.

In our Summer 1941, the Germans rolled almost every six they could possibly have rolled; and yet it seems most alternate Barbarossa scenarios are deicated to mkaing them do even better.

Also no new units going to spring full-grown as experienced veterans. Stop raising straw men. I'm saying that the opposing forces will gain potentially very large numbers of new recruits while the Soviets will suffer a similar loss.

And I'm saying that this doesn't resolve the question of how the new forces will be armed.

[Or where do you think Stalin was getting a lot of his 'recruits' from by the end of the war?]

The Soviet state was brutal? Now there's a shock!

I don't like the Soviet state.

Gah.

No but only an idiot would think only guns matter.

In war, however, their importance is quite considerable.

The fact you don't like an idea doesn't make it impossible, or even any less likely to be accurate. If you can provide factual or logical reasons why I'm wrong please do so. Otherwise your just whining.

I've provided plenty: the idea of people rushing to greet an invading army is almost entirely without precedent, least of all in Russia; the logistical realities don't allow Liberation Armies to be summoned with a snap of the fingers.

Again this is rambling. If I take your 1st sentence literally your saying you don't believe any subject of the Soviet empire would ever want a better life, despite all the evidence.

No, I'm questioning that "any half-way decent power" would attract everyone's support immediately.

For all your contempt of 'peasants' they can make very good troops with properly equipment, leadership and motivation, as many armies, quite a number of them Russia have shown.

Absolutely; but it takes time and training. And guns.

And "the Nazis, when you get right down to it, were at least not Russian". What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Other than seeming to suggest that in your closed and bigoted mind any criticism of the Soviet empire is in some way Russo-phobia.

As RGB points out, I'm really genuinely anti-communist. I'm an old fashioned British social-liberal. I find the communist idea repellant in and of itself. He also mentions how we became acquainted; I've actually changed my views since then (I was doing exactly what I've set out not to and letting grasp of the topic just siufficent to feign knowledge and a bucket of ideology justify my argument) after doing proper reading on the subject, and I should take this opportunity to drop him an apology. But I remain a devotee of democracy and free speech and all that jazz: I would go so far as to describe myself as a liberal romantic.

And perhaps being a romantic dooms me to be disappointed about history, which has led me to sometimes be rather a cynical realist; but I should rather that than to let ideology get the better of my innate fascination and affection for any nation and convince me that the world would by a happy place if only nation X weren't such pricks.

You've implied I don't like Germans, for instance. Get me into a discussion of Anschluss or Schleswig-Holstein or Weimar politics or Heinrich Heine or mustard or my middle name or my family reunion in Thuringia and you'll see just what I think of the Germans.

If you get me to discuss the Sudetenland, though, you'll find I'm rather fond of Czechs. Get me to talk about Culloden and I can dismiss British-bashing myths all day; get me to talk about the British Empire in Africa and I'll do my best to dismiss British-lauding myths.

RGB has commented that I'll defend anyone from anything, with the exception of Nazis. I'm a Russophile and proud of it; but I'll certainly defend people from Russia: Poles, Estonians, Finns, Circassians, Georgians, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, the Ottoman Empire.

If I find myself defending Russia very often, it's merely because Russia is very, very often unfairly attacked, misunderstood, and demonised. People literally do it without thinking.

So given this, I find it a bit rich to be accused of a "closed mind".
 
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wormyguy

Banned
This is rather unmathematical. The Nazis have X troops. They equip them. Sort of. Thus the Nazis, we can calculate, are able to equip a number of men, N, which is less than X.

The Nazis raise Y troops from Ukrainians desperate to shake off the evil wicked yoke of woman-nationalisating Soviet tyranny.

How does this change the value of N?
Well, you assume that N must be smaller than X. During WWII, the Germans were able to produce small arms faster than they were able to raise men, although this was not the case for tanks, heavy artillery, supply trucks etc. So the Nazis could theoretically have equipped theoretical Russian anti-Communist forces, at least to a bare minimum.

That said, SteveP is being a bigoted, ignorant idiot who knows quite a bit less than he thinks he does.
 
Well, you assume that N must be smaller than X. During WWII, the Germans were able to produce small arms faster than they were able to raise men, although this was not the case for tanks, heavy artillery, supply trucks etc. So the Nazis could theoretically have equipped theoretical Russian anti-Communist forces, at least to a bare minimum.

That said, SteveP is being a bigoted, ignorant idiot who knows quite a bit less than he thinks he does.

I see, thanks. Phew, a factual criticism of my position was just what I needed there. :)
 
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