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.
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".