# WW III....



## Lucky13 (May 13, 2017)



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## michaelmaltby (May 13, 2017)

... very impressive, IMO


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## Old Wizard (May 13, 2017)




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## Gnomey (May 13, 2017)

Interesting!


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## Wayne Little (May 14, 2017)

Mmmmm...Interesting...


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## michaelmaltby (May 14, 2017)

Personally, I don't believe the Allies would have accepted an "armistice" .... I think Moscow would have been nuked, multiple times if required, but after such a catastrophic series of wars the _only _way the democracies could have ended the conflict .... justified the sacrifice .... would have been with the defeat of Stalin ... the elimination of Stalin.

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## Fighterguy (May 20, 2017)

The video lost all credibility at the point it says, "Truman declares war..." Looks like a bunch of typical "Russia is the greatest" nonsense that comes out of them periodically. The Soviets had an over-reliance on sure weight in numbers as a general strategy. German forces usually out fought them using skill. But like a Judo master against ten Sumo wrestlers, there's only so long the Judo master can hold out. But not before five Sumo wrestlers are dead on the mat. Russia lost upwards of 60 million because of this bull headedness. Britain and the U.S. had superior equipment, leadership, and the ability to fight smarter. These little "would if" exercises have a tendency to focus purely on numbers while conveniently ignoring the other factors. Then there's the atom bomb. The good thing about such a scenario is we would've seen the end of the most devastating ideology in the world, communism.

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## mikewint (May 20, 2017)

A very popular misconception. While the Red Army was outnumbered by Axis forces in 1941 at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, Soviet mobilization efforts and steady German losses began to change the force ratios in 1942, but the Red Army only had a roughly 2:1 advantage from February 1943 until mid-1944 before maxing out at a little over 4: 1 at the very end of the war.
The Red Army in the field actually peaked in size in mid-1943, but the ratios continued to shift in its favor due to Germany’s inability to replace losses. The Red Army didn’t keep getting bigger, but it maintained its size while the Wehrmacht steadily lost ground, literally and figuratively.
A 2:1 advantage is significant, but falls short of the 3:1 force ratio that is generally regarded as necessary for attacking forces, and it’s a long way from the double-digit advantage that is often claimed. Both sides were able to temporarily achieve greater numerical advantages in certain times and places by concentrating forces.
Consider force ratios during the Battle of Stalingrad. During the defensive phase of urban warfare (August through mid-November 1942), the Red Army was outnumbered about 1.6:1. The Red Army reversed the odds in its counteroffensive in November 1942, achieving about a 2:1 advantage during Operation Uranus.
In actual fact the Soviet Union was not able to draw on a bottomless well of recruits to achieve these ratios. The Soviet Union had a larger population than Germany in 1939 — about twice as large. But the Soviet Union that fought World War II was not the Soviet Union of 1939. In 1941 the Axis occupied about a third of Soviet territory where 45 percent of its population lived — nearly 90 million people out of 190 million. Some refugees fled the occupied zones. The best estimate is that 110 to 120 million people remained in the unoccupied areas of the Soviet Union. For nearly two years, the Soviets actually fought with a lower population base than the United States.
By the end of the war, the United States and the Soviet Union actually had just about the same size total military forces (12 million) and the same size armies (6 million). However, the Soviets mobilized more troops during the course of the war, nearly twice as many. They fought longer and had to replace far more casualties. They did it by stripping the civilian and agricultural workforces, which dropped by 40 to 60 percent.
In 1990, John Ellis wrote Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War in which he suggested that American, Russian, and British commanders alike “seemed unable to impose their will upon the enemy except by slowly and persistently battering him to death with a blunt instrument.”
Ellis detailed the advantages of the Allies. For example: once American troops began landing in North Africa in late 1942, the Allies quickly achieved rough parity with Axis forces, and by March 1943 had a 3:1 overall advantage in divisions in North Africa. The Allies had more divisions in Italy than the Axis from July 1943 until the end of the war, at times achieving a ratio there of 1.5:1.
The Allies achieved parity with Germany in number of divisions in Northwest Europe by September 1944. The ratio changed steadily in the Allies’ favor in 1945 to 2:1. At the Battle of the Bulge, the Allies were initially outnumbered nearly 1.8:1, but in less than ten days gained the upper hand in troops and a 4:1 advantage in tanks. Within the span of four weeks, the Allies reversed the troop ratio and attained an 11:1 advantage in tanks. The Allies also had quantitative superiority in the Pacific, where they had more divisions than the Japanese from late 1942 until the end of the war, achieving advantages of 1.5:1 in 1943, 2:1 in 1944, and 2.6:1 in mid-1945.
In short, the United States and the United Kingdom often had numerical superiority in World War II — and often in a similar ratio to that enjoyed by the Soviet Union.

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## parsifal (May 20, 2017)

The reasons behind soviet success against the germans had something to do with the numerical advantages she possessed, but also in the ability of the Russians to 'play" the frontlines, using their superior mobility and better manpower reserves. They were sometimes referred to as "Zhukovs symphanies" or "Zhukovs operas". in stark contrast to the German methods of concentrated points of breakthrough, the Soviets favoured a broad front attack across 100kkm of front or more. moreover as the war wore on the Soviets would 'play the music" so to speak by working up and down the German lines with a series of rolling offensives designed to keep the heer off balance. they were highly successful at this. hitler is often criticised for his inflexible stand fast orders, but the truth is that after Kursk, the Germans had no choice other than stand fast in the face of overwhelming numbers. most of their MT and draft animals were dead or lost after 1942, and they could only move their logistic tails slowly at this time, by series of gradual steps. Russian offensives were generally crude affairs. and were really dependant on massive concentrations of artillery and weeks or months of build up as huge stockpiles of ammunition were made ready. When offensive began the artillery would basically fire until they had run out of shells and then the tanks with tank riders would pour through the gap, whilst the Soviet Infantry advanced with arms linked for morale purposes firing from the hip. If there was any German resistance remaining, they would be smothered by the swarms of tanks and Infantry, committed to the breakthrough.

the Germans retained a few mechanised formations that remained the key to their defence. These would usually inflict a heavy toll on the advancing Soviets, but not nearly enough to be decisive.
The Soviets would punch through and drive their tanks for as far as the fuel would allow them, and never envisaged resupply of advancing formations in an attack. They would advance until they ran out of fuel and/or ammunition, at which point the tank became an immobile pillbox. This limited the depth to which Soviet offensives could penetrate to no more than about 200 km. Anything beyond that was beyond their capabilities. After an offensive had run its course it would take a very long time before further advances in that sector was possible. soviets relied heavily on the rail network for supply, and were not particularly good at restoring the local networks in Europe outside of the USSR because of the differences in the rail networks they encountered in1944 central and western Europe.

At this time (May 1945), what little of the Soviet logistic lift capability that existed was deploying to the Far East, something that began in November and was continuing right up until August 1945. In the east, the Soviets by adjusting their modus operandi and avoiding direct battle were able, with the help of air supply able to push through a corps sized unit through the Gobi and attack the Japanese where they did not expect it. This was remarkable but it was also the exception to standard soviet procedures.

Against a mobile armed force like the allied armies in Europe Soviet methods would have struggled. Western artillery was more numerous and more flexible, moreover, allied formations were all fully mechanized highly mobile and crucially fully trained. If the Soviets were ready for offensive action, which they were not after the battle of berlin, they might have penetrated to the Rhine but would have struggled to even get there .

Soviets knew about the A-bomb, but did not know how many were available. I don't know where this video gets its ranges from but I sure aint from reality. in 1945, Persia was occupied nd turkey had joined the Allies. Both these places were capable of supporting B-29 deployments, and from here all points of the urals were within their range. 

This video I would place in the category of a nice piece of fiction....

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## mikewint (May 20, 2017)

At that time the US had 3 atomic bombs, two plutonium and one uranium. One plutonium was used in the Trinity test which left the US with just two bombs. Those first 3 bombs cost close to $2 billion in 1945 dollars closer to $35 billion today. However the Manhattan Project was not about just building those bombs it was more about building a weapons production system, i.e.
At the Oak Ridge site facilities included: K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant; Y-12 Electromagnetic Plant; Clinton Engineer Works; Clinton Laboratories; and the S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant 
At Hanford, the Engineer Works (nuclear reactor) and the Heavy water plants. The cost of all the above accounted for 80% of the $2 billion amount. But the US now possessed an Atomic Bomb assembly line.
It was a system so large that Niels Bohr referred to it as a country-sized factory
So while it is true as stated in the video that the US had only three it is also a fact that two more Fat Man assemblies were ready, and scheduled to leave Kirtland Field for Tinian on August 11 and 14, and Tibbets was ordered by LeMay to return to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to collect them. At Los Alamos, technicians worked 24 hours straight to cast another plutonium core. Although cast, it still needed to be pressed and coated, which would take until August 16. Therefore, it could have been ready for use on August 19.
In addition while those two Russian plants were technically out of range that would be for a two way trip. Look at the Doolittle Raid, while there were landing sites in China the planes took off before they had reached their planned departure point and it was problematical they they could land yet they did go

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## Glider (May 20, 2017)

The allies would have control of the air from the start and the often forgotten PR advantage would be critical. Russian attacks were planned in detail and involved a significant build up of forces to be unleashed on the enemy. The PR units would see the build up of Russian forces and the airforces flatten them.
People often look at the number of aircraft and not at the training and command and control abilities which often make a huge difference.

The Il-2 would have suffered huge losses as would their escorting fighters. Local build up of forces and supplies would be vulnerable to the B25/B26/Boston/Mosquito's and strategic build ups at significnat risk from the heavy bombers. The Russian airforce didn't come close in a large number of areas.

Lets also not forget the transport capabilites of the Allies, the Russian transport capability was almost negligable. When considering the distances invovled when fighting in Russia this would have been a really important advantage

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## mikewint (May 20, 2017)

an Army moves on its belly in many ways. Out of total 205,000 trucks produced, 150,400 were consumed by the military. So, on 22 June 1941 the Red Army had around 270,000 trucks, and received another 745,000 during the war. Out of these, 150,000 were new domestic production, 221,500 trucks drafted from the industry and agriculture sectors, 60,600 captured enemy's trucks and 312,600 lend-lease trucks.

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## swampyankee (May 20, 2017)

I remember reading that the Manhattan Project could produce about one bomb per month at the time.

I know a lot of people speculate about how an Allied attack on the USSR would the best thing ever, but would anyone trust any government that turned on any ally after a joint victory?


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## Glider (May 21, 2017)

mikewint said:


> an Army moves on its belly in many ways. Out of total 205,000 trucks produced, 150,400 were consumed by the military. So, on 22 June 1941 the Red Army had around 270,000 trucks, and received another 745,000 during the war. Out of these, 150,000 were new domestic production, 221,500 trucks drafted from the industry and agriculture sectors, 60,600 captured enemy's trucks and 312,600 lend-lease trucks.


An excellent point and its worth noting that a number of the post war russian trucks were based on the lend lease ones they received. I don't want to even think of the number of trucks the allies produced, it would have been staggering.

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## parsifal (May 21, 2017)

Britain and the commonwealth built about 450000 truck, the US just over 2 million. Numbers may not be fully comparable, some countries reported all MT in their soft skinned vehicle production figures, others just lorries, whilst others just report vehicles for the military. The figures are rubbery for sure, Wiki reports that the allies in total produced 4.5 million military soft skinned vehicles to 670000 vehicles (military and civilian) for the axis. These included about 100000 relatively inferior foreign types mostly of French or Dutch origin. It includes Japanese and Italian production.


These are crude figures but they do give an idea of the relative mobility of each side. Further with around 330000 vehicles available to them, the germans attempted to provide a motorised element to about 500 divs. We don’t know the precise divisional numbers in the red army, though Gehlen estimates in the red books that about 550 divs were raised. Thanks to her centrally controlled command economy nearly all of the 450000 odd vehicles available to the Soviets were for military use. The US army raised just over 100 divs, whilst the British and the CW raised about 90.


The Germans mis-used their MT assets. Unlike the soviets, it appears they allocated transport for both front line as well as rear area activities. The front line units suffered very heavy attrition, made worse by the non-standardisation of the vehicle park, and the non-military specs of many types like the French vehicles, that made them susceptible to wear and tear. In contrast, all of the Soviet vehicles were used for tail support greatly reducing their wastage. It did mean that Soviet formations lacked a lot of depth……..a unit once it had used the supplies it was carrying would take a long period to return to combat readiness, but this didn’t seem to worry STAVKHA. Troop s would often forage (code for loot) for food, something expressly prohibited in the west. The extensive use of plethora of rugged US types in the east, coupled with avoidance of front line attrition, kept Red army attrition of itsd soft skinned vehicles at a fraction of those in the German Army. But neither the German Army or the red Army were anything like the motorised marvels of the allies. This would have been decisive in a 1945 scenario of battle between East and West

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## michaelmaltby (May 21, 2017)

" ...I know a lot of people speculate about how an Allied attack on the USSR would the best thing ever, but would anyone trust any government that turned on any ally after a joint victory?"

Stalin .... and trust .... oxymoron


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## michaelmaltby (May 22, 2017)

"...This video I would place in the category of a nice piece of fiction...."

Of course it is .... but having read widely on the eastern war of late, I am struck by the timeframe portrayed. The events are all plausible but not at _the speed_ that the creator has them moving .... and .... an armistace motivated by fear of outrageous losses when you are in possession of the A bomb and have used it already is just a cop-out ending. 
By May 1945 the Russian Army had learned from _the_ very best -- paid in gallons of blood -- but in Communist Russia -- blood, lots of blood was the expected cost of any venture -- and the Americans would not have been shy of a fight -- a fight only George Patton could lead.


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## swampyankee (May 22, 2017)

michaelmaltby said:


> " ...I know a lot of people speculate about how an Allied attack on the USSR would the best thing ever, but would anyone trust any government that turned on any ally after a joint victory?"
> 
> Stalin .... and trust .... oxymoron



Trust of Stalin isn't the issue. It's the trust in the Western allies.


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## michaelmaltby (May 22, 2017)

... sorry, trust is a_ mutua_l state .... after Molotov Ribbentrop there is no trust in Stalin ... deals with Nazis, deals with capitalists .... trust of the western allies is hardly an issue.


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## gumbyk (May 22, 2017)

There was no appetite for further war on anyone's part, besides the US, so they would have been largely fighting alone.
My opinion is that Britain and France would have sold Germany out to Russia if necessary to obtain peace

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## parsifal (May 23, 2017)

"..._This video I would place in the category of a nice piece of fiction_...."

_Of course it is .... but having read widely on the eastern war of late, I am struck by the timeframe portrayed. The events are all plausible but not at the speed that the creator has them moving._


Putting aside the political overtones, which I really don’t want to get into more than is absolutely necessary, the main thrust of what I wrote was that the red army would not have been able to deal with the mechanized army of the allies in 1945. There were a number of reasons for that postulation, including:




Major elements of the Soviet logistic tail, which ate up the vast majority of its soft skinned vehicles were being shipped off to the far east in preparation for the attack on the Japanese. Without such logistic support the ability for the Red Army of occupation was severely degraded.


The Soviet formations in Central Europe were exhausted after 3 months of the most intense fighting of the war. During the battle of Berlin for example, the Soviet Fronts involved had suffered more than 350000 serious casualties (dead, wounded or MIA, with the wounded not fit for service for at least 3 months under the Soviet system), from a frontline force of just 1500000 men. 2/3 of the soviet armoured vehicles were written off, nearly all the others needed extended refits. The Soviet armed forces in Central Europe were in no condition to undertake any extended operations.


The Red army was heavily reliant on the rail system for logistics, but the rail system was under sever strain just to meet subsistence needs. In their own sector of occupation, the soviets were forced to divert significant resources to feeding the occupied populations under their control, which further put the brakes on any prospect of offensive action. Despit their efforts starvation was rife, by the end of 1945. It would be 1949 before this crisis was largely solved.


So, maybe an attack in conjunction with the berlin blockade is a possibility, but in the context of immediate post war time frames, there is not the slightest chance of the Russians attacking or acting in a bellicose way. Moreover, the victory achieved in 1945 ticked all the boxes for stalin in terms of his intended war aims. He didn’t need, nor di he seek and further territorial advances. There was zero chances of a soviet knee jerk reaction described in the what if conditions described. The red army was an instrument belonging solely to Stalin, and no-one, from the lowliest private would have risked deviating from the stated path of behavior set out for them by the supreme command.



_.... an armistace motivated by fear of outrageous losses when you are in possession of the A bomb and have used it already is just a cop-out ending. 
By May 1945 the Russian Army had learned from the very best -- paid in gallons of blood -- but in Communist Russia -- blood, lots of blood was the expected result of any venture -- but the Americans would not have been shy of a fight -- a fight only George Patton could lead._


Whilst the Russians were in no condition to attack, they had proven themselves as master of the defence several times in the great patriotic war. Moreover, defending, logistics wise is much easier than attacking, and the Soviets could well defend themselves as you point out. I don’t think the Americans, or any of the allies had the stomach for anopther war hot on the heels of the one just finished. But I will concede the allies were in bettr shape to launch an attack than the Soviets.


Much is made of Stalins bloodthirsty nature, and Im certainly not going to try and defend him. He was a dangerous psychotic in command of one of the most powerful weapons on earth, but all conquering beserker like hitler, he was not. He suffered from Psychitic delusions and persecution syndrome, but above the carnal urges driving him he was before anything else defensive in his outlook. After all the suffering and loss inflicted on the Russians in the just ended war, his aims were about establishing a Soviet dominated bloc, the so called Eastern bloc, to act as a buffer for western USSR. He had achieved that by 1945. It had been Russian foreign policy to achieve that since the time of the Tsars. Stalin was no different to that, just more ruthless.


In terms of his bloodthirsty nature, no argument that he was, but, was he really worse of better thasn any of the other pre-war central eastern euro regimes? In 1939 there had been totalitarian regimes of varying brutality (that I can think of) in Spain, Portugal, Poland (sort of….certainly not a democracy in the way we identify), Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece. And of course Germany and Italy. Some of the barbarity practised in these nations easily eclipsed Stalin. Stalin, and the Russians were the same or similar to many of these regimes, except that the SU was a big country with more resources to be a bully.

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## michaelmaltby (May 23, 2017)

... the British devotion to the brave, struggling USSR was very evident ... Soviet ambassador Maisky was warmly embraced whenever he went walk-about.


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## michaelmaltby (May 23, 2017)

... fair points Parsifal, but the Soviet rail system and military staff were organizing and deploying the attack on Japan ... August Storm ... a supreme test that the Soviets passed. They couldn't have been stretched that thin.

Overlooked is the reality of Stalin being forced to fight independence movements in the Crimea, Ukraine and Caucasus after German withdrawal.


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## swampyankee (May 23, 2017)

michaelmaltby said:


> ... sorry, trust is a_ mutua_l state .... after Molotov Ribbentrop there is no trust in Stalin ... deals with Nazis, deals with capitalists .... trust of the western allies is hardly an issue.


Trust also applies to third parties, say Brazil or Spain or China. Why would any leader place _any_ value on a treaty signed by countries that just turned on an ally?


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## michaelmaltby (May 23, 2017)

... Nationalist China had no reason to trust communism, nor did Franco's Spain and Brazil was an appreciated minor ally that received generous material support .... poor examples swampyankee.


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## swampyankee (May 23, 2017)

michaelmaltby said:


> ... Nationalist China had no reason to trust communism, nor did Franco's Spain and Brazil was an appreciated minor ally that received generous material support .... poor examples swampyankee.


You're completely missing the point: nobody would trust the US not to invade them the day after they signed a mutual defense treaty. It's got nothing to do with whom is attacked, but who attacks. Give Patton permission to attack the USSR, the big treaty organization would be to keep the US from invading.

It's being posited the US just invaded a major ally, immediately after defeating a mutual enemy. Why should Brazil feel safe?


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## parsifal (May 24, 2017)

michaelmaltby said:


> ... fair points Parsifal, but the Soviet rail system and military staff were organizing and deploying the attack on Japan ... August Storm ... a supreme test that the Soviets passed. They couldn't have been stretched that thin.
> 
> Overlooked is the reality of Stalin being forced to fight independence movements in the Crimea, Ukraine and Caucasus after German withdrawal.




Your right, they weren’t stretched thin as such, but their logistic net in May 1945 was stretched to breaking point nevertheless. . When the war ended, the rail and road network in Germany for the Soviets was decimated, and took time to repair, The demands being made in Eastern Germany, with obligations to feed the armed forces and civilan populations could not be met at that time, nor could the SU fully meet these demands for several years. Its all well and good to say ‘oh, just let the East Germans starve!!!” but for even the Russians there were limits to that sort of behavior. Your mention of uprisings in Crimea, Ukraine and Caucasus, could also include restless populations in all to the occupied territories, revolts in Kazakhstan, pogroms in the Baltic states and a home population that were utterly war weary and exhausted after a 4 year fight for the right to live.

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## herman1rg (May 24, 2017)

Interesting video, however it was spoiled for me by the poor spelling and grammar

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## michaelmaltby (May 24, 2017)

"...You're completely missing the point"

You mean _your_ point, don't you, Swampyankee? 
Any country that mattered was already in the war and, if allied, were the beneficiaries of the U.S. .... I doubt that they would change sides .... despite what you might believe.


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## Peter Gunn (May 24, 2017)

I find the debate here, along with the information more interesting than the video.

You guys are well read and knowledgeable, makes me keep my mouth shut lest I remove all doubt, if you get my drift. 

I always learn something when I get here.

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## mikewint (May 24, 2017)

parsifal said:


> Its all well and good to say ‘oh, just let the East Germans starve!!!” but for even the Russians there were limits to that sort of behavior.


Limits??? To Uncle Joe??? Adolph was an altruist next to Uncle Joe. A bit if History:
1924
After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin ascends to power.
1928
Stalin introduces a program of agricultural collectivization that forces farmers to give up their private land, equipment and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms. Stalin decides that collective farms would not only feed the industrial workers in the cities but could also provide a substantial amount of grain to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance his industrialization plans.
1929
Many Ukrainian farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective farms, which they regarded as similar to returning to the serfdom of earlier centuries. Stalin introduces a policy of "class warfare" in the countryside in order to break down resistance to collectivization. The successful farmers, or kurkuls, (kulaks, in Russian) are branded as the class enemy, and brutal enforcement by regular troops and secret police is used to "liquidate them as a class." Eventually anyone who resists collectivization is considered a kurkul.
1930
1.5 million Ukrainians fall victim to Stalin's "dekulakization" policies, Over the extended period of collectivization, armed dekulakization brigades forcibly confiscate land, livestock and other property, and evict entire families. Close to half a million individuals in Ukraine are dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to remote, uninhabited areas such as Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter. A great many, especially children, die in transit or soon thereafter.
1932-1933
The Soviet government sharply increases Ukraine's production quotas, ensuring that they could not be met. Starvation becomes widespread. In the summer of 1932, a decree is implemented that calls for the arrest or execution of any person – even a child -- found taking as little as a few stalks of wheat or any possible food item from the fields where he worked. By decree, discriminatory voucher systems are implemented, and military blockades are erected around many Ukrainian villages preventing the transport of food into the villages and the hungry from leaving in search of food. Brigades of young activists from other Soviet regions are brought in to sweep through the villages and confiscate hidden grain, and eventually any and all food from the farmers' homes. Stalin states of Ukraine that "the national question is in essence a rural question" and he and his commanders determine to "teach a lesson through famine" and ultimately, to deal a "crushing blow" to the backbone of Ukraine, its rural population.
1933
By June, at the height of the famine, people in Ukraine are dying at the rate of 30,000 a day, nearly a third of them are children under 10. Between 1932-34, approximately 4 million deaths are attributed to starvation within the borders of Soviet Ukraine. This does not include deportations, executions, or deaths from ordinary causes. Stalin denies to the world that there is any famine in Ukraine, and continues to export millions of tons of grain, more than enough to have saved every starving man, woman and child.
November 1933, the United States, under newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt, chose to formally recognized Stalin's Communist government and also negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The following year, the pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations. Stalin's Five-Year Plans for the modernization of the Soviet Union depended largely on the purchase of massive amounts of manufactured goods and technology from Western nations. Those nations were unwilling to disrupt lucrative trade agreements with the Soviet Union in order to pursue the matter of the famine.


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## Shortround6 (May 24, 2017)

As far as the railroads in Eastern Europe go, you do have that change of gauge thing. I believe Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria all used the 4ft 8 1/2in gauge. Russia and close neighbors using the 5ft gauge. It is not that hard to reset the rails although that often fell behind rapid advances and with enough time it is possible to modify/change wheel sets on the rail cars. Locomotives are somewhat harder depending on design.
Point is that you can't just take the effort the Russians put into the moving east against Japan and roll it into Germany without work and preparation.
Converting the tracks in Poland and eastern Germany is do-able but it is not just the tracks but sidings and switch yards. It also means that whatever rolling stock and locomotives that survive in Eastern Europe are useless until converted to run on the wider tracks.


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## mikewint (May 24, 2017)

The Germans faced a number of problems with the Soviet Rail system. First off the Soviets were not rich in railways to begin with and destroyed much of it as they retreated. The Germans anticipated this, and had railway commandos (Wehrmacht railroad engineers , Reichsbahn personnel, civilians and forced laborers). rebuild much of the Soviet trunk lines and some feeders to standard gauge. They also maintained several of the wide gauge lines if captured intact and with enough rolling stock. Some efforts, primarily in 1942, were hindered either by the inability of the commandos to keep up with the front, or by the low capacity of a wide gauge line. The part of a track that is hard to build is the bed. To narrow a track, all you have to do is pull out the spikes, move the rail and drive the spikes back in again.
The bigger problem for the Germans was that the rail system in Russia is a hub-and-spokes design where all roads lead to Rome, meaning Moscow. The Germans didn't need rail lines going to Moscow. They needed rail lines going to Berlin. In other words, the big problem was not the gauge of the railroads, it was their direction.
And additionally, the problems were worse than just rebuilding the railroads to narrow the gauge and the track direction. Soviet stations, where trains were refueled were too far apart for German engines - the larger Soviet engines carried more fuel and water and could go farther. So the Germans had to rebuild the railroad to a narrower gauge, lay new track, and create new stations along the path

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## Glider (May 24, 2017)

No one in their right minds would have wanted a war, but had one come then the UK would have stood with the USA.

Interestingly I am not sure that Patton would be the right general to fight Russia my suspicion is that he would have failed. His style of fighting would have played to Russias strengths. Their defensive tactics were formdiable and his direct approach may well have floundered

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## michaelmaltby (May 24, 2017)

He certainly blew it at Metz, IIRC. But he was a master of mobility.

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## parsifal (May 25, 2017)

_Limits??? To Uncle Joe??? Adolph was an altruist next to Uncle Joe. A bit if History_:



_1924. _

_After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin ascends to power.1928. Stalin introduces a program of agricultural collectivization that forces farmers to give up their private land, equipment and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms. Stalin decides that collective farms would not only feed the industrial workers in the cities but could also provide a substantial amount of grain to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance his industrialization plans. _


Russia was in the grip of a famine even before the end of WWI. Using outmoded farming techniques, with an obsolete or non-existent transport system, the Soviets found that the peasants resisted changes to agricultural practices, extorted the rest of Russian society with high prices, and to boot, in the Ukraine, the main basis to opposition to the Bolsheviks during the civil war were the wealthy Ukrainian kulaks. Small wonder that Stalin came down on them harshly. They had themselves been responsible for millions of deaths in Russia itself by their opposition and their own methods of farming were just not going to curt it. Not that Stalin was known for his humanity, but the issue of collectivisation is one of the least understood issues confronting the new regime. It is often dealt with in a deliberately obtuse manner, as I believe in this case for a further unspecified agenda, generally about how superior the capatialist system is over communism.


The Soviets had no choice but to break up what amounted to a strangling medieval style of agriculture and try and replace it. This was made severe with the worst drought on record, 1929-33. That collectivization failed to deliver everything that was expected of it, dodges the fact that the Soviets were already heading towards continual famine and disaster unless they did something to address the chronic food shortages they faced anyway. Bashing up the Kulaks was a convenient way to deal retribution to a group already in opposition to the regime as well. Crude politics, but effective. I don’t condone it, but I understand why it was done.



1929

_Many Ukrainian farmers, known for their independence, still refuse to join the collective farms, which they regarded as similar to returning to the serfdom of earlier centuries. Stalin introduces a policy of "class warfare" in the countryside in order to break down resistance to collectivization. The successful farmers, or kurkuls, (kulaks, in Russian) are branded as the class enemy, and brutal enforcement by regular troops and secret police is used to "liquidate them as a class." Eventually anyone who resists collectivization is considered a kurkul.
_

The Kulaks didn’t care that there was a return to serfdom. Serfdom had existed in Russia officially until 1860, but continued more or less unchanged, until the Soviets arrived. What was different, was that the Kulaks, rather than being the landlords, became part of the workforce. They lost their priveleges by birth and joined the queue like everybody else. So many were executed because of the resistance that continued and continues to this day in the Ukraine to Russian presence. Stalin was brutal, but there were reasons behind why he did what he did. I put his actions on a par with the 1916 uprisings or what the US should have done to the KKK after the civil war. Distasteful but necessary


1930
_1.5 million Ukrainians fall victim to Stalin's "dekulakization" policies, Over the extended period of collectivization, armed dekulakization brigades forcibly confiscate land, livestock and other property, and evict entire families. Close to half a million individuals in Ukraine are dragged from their homes, packed into freight trains, and shipped to remote, uninhabited areas such as Siberia where they are left, often without food or shelter. A great many, especially children, die in transit or soon thereafter._


Yep, and what choice did stalin have after continual famine since at least 1913, a most brutal civil war that almost tore the country apart, a resistance led by an ethnic and social group opposed in every sense to the principals of the new Soviet. Stalins methods were brutal in the extreme, as he dragged a bankrupt and redundant nation, deeply divided in itself kicking and screaming from the 16th century to the 20th. This was always going to be a difficult, bloodthirsty process, but it did work. Under the Soviet control, between 1920 and 1940, agricultural outputs roughly doubled, industrial outputs I think quadrupled. It was an evil process, fast tracked forcibly to get the results needed quickly rather than accepting a more gentle process of change, but it worked, and as history shows, was found to be absolutely essential given what happened 1941. As it turned out, Stalins Psychotic phobias and xenophobia turned out to be pretty well founded.



1932-1933
_The Soviet government sharply increases Ukraine's production quotas, ensuring that they could not be met. Starvation becomes widespread. In the summer of 1932, a decree is implemented that calls for the arrest or execution of any person – even a child -- found taking as little as a few stalks of wheat or any possible food item from the fields where he worked. By decree, discriminatory voucher systems are implemented, and military blockades are erected around many Ukrainian villages preventing the transport of food into the villages and the hungry from leaving in search of food. Brigades of young activists from other Soviet regions are brought in to sweep through the villages and confiscate hidden grain, and eventually any and all food from the farmers' homes. Stalin states of Ukraine that "the national question is in essence a rural question" and he and his commanders determine to "teach a lesson through famine" and ultimately, to deal a "crushing blow" to the backbone of Ukraine, its rural population._


The Ukraine was a region under military occupation by 1932. Moreover the early failures of collectivization meant the regime had to make difficult and brutal decisions about who was to live and who was not. They made a choice. Those who had resisted in the past and were going to die anyway, would be robbed and allowed to die, so that others more sympathetic to the regime might have a chance at survival. Sitting back today, sipping on our lattes and watching the sunsets across rolling fields of wheat and corn, we often just don’t understand the absolute stark realities facing the Soviets from 1924 through to 1947. It was a brutal, bitter situation, with no easy choices and no soft answers. I don’t think anyone bu Stalin had the stomach to face this situation.


1933
_By June, at the height of the famine, people in Ukraine are dying at the rate of 30,000 a day, nearly a third of them are children under 10. Between 1932-34, approximately 4 million deaths are attributed to starvation within the borders of Soviet Ukraine. This does not include deportations, executions, or deaths from ordinary causes. Stalin denies to the world that there is any famine in Ukraine, and continues to export millions of tons of grain, more than enough to have saved every starving man, woman and child.
November 1933, the United States, under newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt, chose to formally recognized Stalin's Communist government and also negotiated a sweeping new trade agreement. The following year, the pattern of denial in the West culminated with the admission of the Soviet Union into the League of Nations. Stalin's Five-Year Plans for the modernization of the Soviet Union depended largely on the purchase of massive amounts of manufactured goods and technology from Western nations. Those nations were unwilling to disrupt lucrative trade agreements with the Soviet Union in order to pursue the matter of the famine._



No idea where you got this idea that the USSR was swimming in excess grain production sometime after 1932. Sounds like convenient propaganda to me.


In actual fact Russian grain outputs fell sharply between 1913 and 1935. My source for this information is Wheatcroft and Davies, 1994.


Known or confirmed grain production in this period are as follows (millions of tons):


1913: 68

1921: 55

1928: 65

1929: 63

1930: 65

1931: 56 ;

1932; 55

1933: 54

1934: 60

1935: 75

1936: 56

1937: 97

1938: 75

1940: 107


The planned target for 1931 was fixed at 97.9 million tons but already by 1 June, when drought manifested itself in many productive regions, the authorities had to lower the plan to 85.2 million tons. The drought continued and the target was revised again to 79.2 million tons. Already with these estimates, there was a net deficit for grain production, a famine of the most severe order was now known to be inevitable. However, this was not the end of the crisis. The target was then lowered once again to 78.5 million tons, and in the autumn more realistic estimates were already assessing the harvest to be as low as 70 million tons. The plan for state grain provision was reduced as well from 26.6 million tons to 22.7 million tons. In 1931 the USSR did manage to export 5.2 million tons, which does seem anomalous, but far from your claim of being suffificnt to avoid the famine. By this stage, the country was in deficit for grain production to the tune of 25 million tons. 5 million tons was not going to change anything.


In spite of the very poor harvest that year (Yutkropht, 2001), in the autumn of 1931, one of the Soviet party leaders, Anastas Mikoyan, even stated that the grain problem had been solved in the USSR. One official source reported that 69.4 million tons of grain were collected, but this was mere propaganda as the Soviets attempted to hide from the world the depth of their crisis. more realistic Western estimate was only 55.8 million tons, the lowest for many years.


In 1932, the next planned target was set at 84.8 million tons, including 29.5 million tons for the state grain provision. Within a few months the plan for grain delivery had been cut to 23.5 million tons (for the collectives). This was then lowered to 22.1 million tons. Finally, the plan for gross grain production was lowered to 73.3 million tons. The actual gross grain production officially announced was even lower, at 69.9 million tons, 34 percent short of the planned target for the final year of the five-year plan, and still shy of the absolute minimums needed to avoid starvation. . The actual size of the harvest ought not to have been unexpected as many regions were still suffering from the previous year's famine which had begun in 1931 and continuing with the worst drought on record. The USSR exported a mere 1.8 million tons that year, none of it of a type suitable for human consumption (Yutkropht, 2001).

In January 1933, Stalin reported that the five-year plan had been fulfilled completely in four years and three months. He was lying. The main targets, even in industry, were nothing like achieved. In agriculture it was even worse: a mere one-eighth of the mineral fertilizer and less than a third of the tractors had been produced. The failure of the grain production sector was evident as the harvest in 1932-1933 was significantly lower than in 1928-1929. Grain exports had declined during the period. In 1933 only 0.8 million tons were exported (Conquest, 2002). Your claim that vast amount of grain were being exported in this early 1930’s period is, im afraid not supported by reputable sources.

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## mikewint (May 25, 2017)

Norman M. Naimark, author of the controversial new book Stalin’s Genocides and the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of Eastern European Studies at Stanford University and a respected authority on the Soviet regime, argues that we need a much broader definition of genocide, one that includes nations killing social classes and political groups.
The book’s title is plural for a reason: He argues that the Soviet elimination of a social class, the kulaks (who were higher-income farmers), and the subsequent killer famine among all Ukrainian peasants – as well as the notorious 1937 order No. 00447 that called for the mass execution and exile of “socially harmful elements” as “enemies of the people” – were, in fact, genocide
Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin’s henchmen.
“In some cases, a quota was established for the number to be executed, the number to be arrested,” said Naimark. “Some officials overfulfilled as a way of showing their exuberance.”
All early drafts of the U.N. genocide convention included social and political groups in its definition. But one hand that wasn’t in the room guided the pen. The Soviet delegation vetoed any definition of genocide that might include the actions of its leader, Joseph Stalin. The Allies, exhausted by war, were loyal to their Soviet allies – to the detriment of subsequent generations.
Accounts “gloss over the genocidal character of the Soviet regime in the 1930s, which killed systematically rather than episodically,” said Naimark. In the process of collectivization, for example, 30,000 kulaks were killed directly, mostly shot on the spot. About 2 million were forcibly deported to the Far North and Siberia.
They were called “enemies of the people,” as well as swine, dogs, cockroaches, scum, vermin, filth, garbage, half animals, apes. Activists promoted murderous slogans: “We will exile the kulak by the thousand when necessary – shoot the kulak breed.” “We will make soap of kulaks.” “Our class enemies must be wiped off the face of the earth.”
One Soviet report noted that gangs “drove the dekulakized naked in the streets, beat them, organized drinking bouts in their houses, shot over their heads, forced them to dig their own graves, undressed women and searched them, stole valuables, money, etc.”
“There is a great deal of evidence of government connivance in the circumstances that brought on the shortage of grain and bad harvests in the first place and made it impossible for Ukrainians to find food for their survival,” Naimark writes.

*Russian grain exports continued during the worst months of the famine, and Soviet government reserves contained enough grain to feed the starving. *When aid was first authorized in February 1933, it was selective, and not nearly enough grain was released to save millions from starvation. The mobility of Ukraine’s peasants was blocked through the January 22, 1933 decree depriving them of possible access to food in other regions of the Soviet Union. It is also clear that Stalin in 1932 was worried about losing Ukraine, tied the shortfall in grain collections in Ukraine to perceived failures of the republic’s leadership, and referred to this to justify removing some of Ukraine’s leaders when he replaced them with loyal followers. He also saw resistance in the Ukrainian countryside to grain collection as motivated by both class antagonisms and nationalism. If one considers the anti-Ukrainian measures he promoted, including authorizing persecutions of Ukrainian intellectuals and of the more nationally oriented political leadership, the overall anti-national thrust of Stalin’s decisions in 1932–1933 becomes more evident. Finally, news of the famine was suppressed in the Soviet Union, offers of outside aid were refused, and unntil the late 1980s the Soviet government denied that a famine had even taken place.
We will never know how many millions Stalin killed. There’s a reason for Russian obliviousness. Every family had not only victims but perpetrators. “A vast network of state organizations had to be mobilized to seize and kill that many people,” Naimark wrote, estimating that tens of thousands were accomplices.
One of Stalin’s colleagues recalled the dictator reviewing an arrest list (really, a death list) and muttering to himself: “Who’s going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years’ time? No one. … Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one. … The people had to know he was getting rid of all his enemies. In the end, they all got what they deserved.”

Dictators like Stalin are not keen to record how many people they are killing. So it is tricky to establish exactly how many people died as a result of his policies.
Modern estimates of the death toll vary widely, from 3.5-8 million (G Ponton) at the low end to 60 million (A Solzhenitsyn).
Today, most historians seem to have settled on a total of about 20 million.
According to John Heidenrich, in his book “How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen” the death toll can be divided into three broad groups:
Kulaks and forced collectivisation: 7 million
Gulags: 12 million
Purges: 1.2 million

Robert Conquest, in his book The Great Terror: A Reassessment, divides the figure another way:
1930-36: 7 million
1937-38: 3 million
1939-53: 10 million

The number of deaths in the Soviet Union that were explicitly ordered by someone – in other words, the number of executions – is actually relatively low at around 1.5 million.

The majority of the deaths were caused by neglect or repressive policies – for example, those who died in the Soviet gulags, those who died while being deported, and the German civilians and Prisoners of War are believed to have perished while under Soviet guard and the Holodomor in the Ukraine .
Some historians argue that victims of famines should be counted as victims of Stalin. However because they were, if not the direct result of Stalin’s policies, at the very least exacerbated by Stalin’s policies, there is a very strong counter-argument to say that they should be included. Most historians do include the victims of famine in any counts.
Despite the horrific death toll listed above, Stalin doesn’t hold the distinction of being the most genocidal leader of the 20th century.
Mao: 40 million
Stalin: 20 million
Hitler: 12 million
Leopold II: 10 million
Tojo: 5 million

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## mikewint (May 25, 2017)

Letter from the Health Inspector to the Western Siberia Board of Health (1932)
Top Secret
TO THE HEAD OF THE WESTERN SIBERIA REGIONAL BOARD OF HEALTH Comrade TRAKMAN.
Copy to POKROV REGIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE ALL-UNION COMMUNIST PARTY (Bosheviks), REGIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE and RUSSIAN COMMUNIST LEAGUE
MEMORANDUM
On the instructions of the Regional Committee of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) issued to Kiselev on 24 March 1932 on the subject of finding hunger-caused illness, several families of the Kartsovskii village soviet were observed and the following was found: as stated by soviet chairman Comrade Sukhanov and secretary of the First Party Organization Comrade Medvedev, a series of written and oral statements from the kolkhozniks of this village, that they and their families suffer from starvation, were received.
The statements were made by the following people: Gorokhova Mariia, Pautova Malan'ia, Rogozina Irina, Logacheva Ustin'ia, and others. The soviet chairman, the secretary of the First Party Organization and other communists substantiate the fact that the kolkhozniks use animals that have died as food.
Together with the soviet chairman and other citizens I visited the quarters of the above-mentioned kolkhozniks and also as per my wish I observed a series of homes besides the aforementioned in order to be convinced that the worst family cases were not chosen as an example.
From my observation of 20 homes in first and second Karpov, I found only in one home, that of a Red Army veteran, a relative condition of nourishment, some flour and bread, but the rest subsist on food substitutes. Almost in every home either children or mothers were ill, undoubtably due to starvation, since their faces and entire bodies were swollen.
An especially horrible picture of the following families:
1) The family of Konstantin Sidel'nikov who had gone to trade his wife's remaining shirts, skirts, and scarves for bread. The wife lay ill, having given birth 5 days earlier, and 4 very small children as pale as wax with swollen cheeks sat at the filthy table like marmots, and with spoons ate, from a common cup, hot water into which had been added from a bottle a white liquid of questionable taste and sour smell, which turned out to be skim milk (the result of passing milk through a separator). Konstantin Sidel'nikov and his wife are excellent kolkhozniks--prime workers, ex-perienced kolkhozniks.
2) IAkov Sidel'nikov has 2 children and elderly parents, both 70, living in one room, but they eat separately; that is, the elderly obtain their own food substitutes with their savings; the son, IAkov Sidel'nikov, with his own; they hide their food substitutes from each other outside (I have attached examples of these food substitutes to this memorandum). The elderly in tears ask: "Doctor, give us death!"
3) Filipp Borodin has earned 650 work-days, has a wife and 5 children ranging from one-and-a-half to nine years of age. The wife lies ill on the oven, 3 children sit on the oven, they are as pale as wax with swollen faces, the one-and-a-half year old sits pale by the window, swollen, the 9 year old lies ill on the earthen floor covered with rags, and Filipp Borodin himself sits on a bench and continuously smokes cigarettes made of repulsively pungent tobacco, cries like a babe, asks death for his children. In tears he asks Comrade Sukhanov: "Give us at least 1 kilo of potatoes, give us at least 1 liter of milk, after all, I worked all summer and even now I work unceasingly (now he takes care of the bulls and in the summer he tends the grazing cows).
According the the statement by Comrade Sukhanov and the brigadier of the kolkhoz "Red Partisan," Borodin was a non- complaining worker. Borodin does not even have food substitutes for nourishment, two days ago he and his family ate two sickly piglets thrown out of the common farmyard. In the Borodin home there is unbelievable filth, dampness, and stench, mixed with the smell of tobacco. Borodin swears at the children: "The devils don't die, I wish I didn't have to look at you!" Having objectively investigated the condition of Borodin himself I ascertain that he (Borodin) is starting to slip into psychosis due to starvation, which can lead to his eating his own children.
My inspection of the series of families took place at the dinner hour, where they use those same food substitutes which they eat with hot water, but in several homes (2) on the table there were gnawed bones from a sickly horse. According to the explanations of the kolkhozniks, they themselves prepare food in the following manner: they grind sunflower stems, flax and hemp seeds, chaff, dreg, colza, goosefoot, and dried potato peelings, and they bake flat cakes. Of the food substitutes listed above, the oily seeds are nutritious, which are healthy in combined foods since they contain vitamins, by themselves the vegetable oils do not contain vitamins and by not com-bining them with other food products of more equal nourishment and caloric value they are found to be toxic and will harm the body. Based on: General Course on Hygiene by Prof. G. V. Khotopin, p. 301-4--_.
The homes are filthy, the area around the homes is polluted by human waste, by diarrhea caused by these substitutes. People walk around like shadows, silent, vacant; empty homes with boarded-up windows (about 500 homeowners have left their homes in Karpov village for destinations unknown); one rarely sees an animal on the street (apparently the last ones have been eaten).
In the entire village of 1000 yards I found only 2 chickens and a rooster. Occasionally one meets an emaciated dog.
The impression is that Karpov village seems to be hit by anbiosis (hibernation, a freeze, falling asleep).
The livestock is free to feed on thatched roofs of homes and barns.
In reporting the above-related to the Pokrov Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Regional Executive Committee, Russian Com-munist League, and to you, as the regional health inspector and doctor of the Pokrov region, I beg of you to undertake immediate measures to help the starving and to notify me of the practical measures taken.

March 25, 1932 Regional health inspector--doctor--KISELEV

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## Glider (May 25, 2017)

michaelmaltby said:


> He certainly blew it at Metz, IIRC. But he was a master of mobility.


I agree but the russian method of defence in extream depth could easily have strangled his attempts to manoeuver.

Allied armour would have been very vulnerable to Russian defences


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## parsifal (May 25, 2017)

I don’t think there is any question that what happened amounted to systematic genocide. Stalin was a man with no conscience in that regard. But the question that circles that basic fact is what was the motivation or reason for such murderous behaviour.


I think that we have both presented some basis for people to think about.


If I could be allowed the option to generalise, I would think that we generally agree that Stalin was a murderous bastard. Unquestionably he committed war crimes crimes against his own people, and crimes against humanity generally. These are basic agreed facts I think.


The difference that emerge are at the periphery. Some of the questions people need to consider and where we don’t agree include



1) whether stalin as a barbaric human being was worse or better than all or some of the other despots in power at that time. In my opinion Stalin was the worst, only in terms of the scale of his monstrous behaviour. Some accounts suggest that he was responsible for at least the deaths of 20million of his own people. That’s a huge hurdle to overcome, but in terms of the relative levels of barbarism he exercised, he actually was quite tame compared to a few of his contemporaries.


A few that stand out for me

The activities of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Movement.


http://konfliktuskutato.hu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=285:hungarian-extremists-the-arrow-cross-movement&catid=36:english



The activities of the Rumanian Iron Guard from 1920 through to the end of the war is also particularly gruesome. The following article deals only with the way they went about exterminating nearly every jew in their territory, but the iron guard also exterminated ethnic ukrainan peasants, particularly the Kulaks on and industrial scale. They made Stalins behaviour look positively angelic in comparison. This does not justify or defend or exonerate Stalin, but it does put him in perspective


http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/pdf/IuliaPadeanu_The%20Holocaust%20in%20Romania.pdf


There were similar or worse movement in the Baltic states and in some parts of Yugolsavia. Despite the utter barbarism and depravity these movements displayed , I still rate Hitlers Germany as worse, because the germans were an affluent well educated nation that knew right from wrong better, and should have been able to avoid such tragedies. They chose voluntarily to caste away their moral compass for reasons that still confound me and defy logic to this day.


2) The motivation for the genocide. Was there a food shortage and was there disunity driving Stalin, or was he just a psychotic lunatic. The interesting question of whether food shortages existed in Russia in the 1920’s and 30’s. If I am reading your submissions correctly, you are saying not and quoting some sources to back that up. I have supporting information to say the opposite.


My wife’s now dead relatives (particualalry her grandfather who was an artillery officer serving under Zhukov) talked about the chronic shortages of food across the country at the time. He fought in front of Moscow, in the far east and elsewhere. One of those dastardly Siberians that chopped the german army to pieces in 1941. In the 1930s he was a newly married man. Apparently he used to talk about that in the 30’s there were chronic and severe food shortages wherever you went in the country. There just wasn’t enough food to go around. That doesn’t prove the issue but it sure suggests that there were famines and food shortages in the country.


It is further indisputable that the nation suffered about 5 years of continual drought across much of its grain producing regions. None of this proves the case, but it certainly suggests that food was scarce. 


It should also be not in contention that the Ukrainian middle class, represented in the form of the Kulaks were in strong opposition to the Soviets. Further and worse, the armed mobs that tore them apart as an ethnic and economic class were often from the same regions as the victims, and often pursued these people with unnatural vigour. Kulaks as a class were exploitive and hated because of the rents they charged to the lower orders of peasants. The Kulaks, as a generalization were not a downtrodden oppressed class at the beginning. They owned and controlled about 80% of arable land in the western Ukraine and charged rents that were about 200% (on average) above what they should. Stalin did play on those latent hatreds. The Kulaks since at least 1600, as a class, had systematically screwed over the rest of society, and now were doing the same to Soviet society. Its no better than the German anti-semitic behaviour, but the difference is that the germans were educated and should have known better……In any event the Soviets tapped into an enthusiastic, supportive underclass with no education and a 400 year old axe to grind. It should not be viewed with surpise what the outomes of those pre-loaded prejudices would yield.

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## Peter Gunn (May 26, 2017)

Really good stuff in this thread, but I've had to stop reading for a bit, the stark realities of the massive suffering and death starts to give one a heavy/aching heart. Just need to read in moderation I think, all excellent posts, not enough gold stars or bacon rewards for this kind of discussion. I wish they'd turn you guys loose at my daughters high school history class for a day or two.

Well done.


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## mikewint (May 26, 2017)

Thanks Peter, American ignorance of history, even current history is appalling. I do regular Vietnam War presentations at area high schools and I am shocked every year.
1. Only 45% of Americans were able to correctly identify what the initials in GOP stood for: Grand Old Party. Other popular guesses were Government of the People and God’s Own Party. Republicans obviously scored much better than Democrats did on this answer.
2. 55% of Americans believe that Christianity was written into the Constitution and that the founding fathers wanted One Nation Under Jesus. This includes 75% of Republicans and Evangelicals.
3. Although a “relatively” high 40% of people were able to name all three of the United States branches of government — executive, legislative and judicial — a far lower percentage knew the length of a Senator’s term. Just 25% responded that a Senator’s term stretches for six years. Even less, 20%, knew how many Senators there were.
4. Americans are known to pick recent heads of state as among the best president in history, which is why Clinton and Reagan regularly rank higher than Lincoln, FDR and Washington (20% said Reagan, 15% Bill Clinton, 12% John Kennedy, 5% George W. Bush. Only 14% picked Lincoln and only 5%, Washington). However, Hoover used to routinely top polls of the worst, but today, just 43% of Americans knew who he was, according to statistics from the University of Pennsylvania.
5. When asked on what year 9/11 took place, 30% of Americans were unable to answer the question correctly, even as few as five years after the attack. This was according to a Washington Post poll conducted in 2006. .
6. It’s not shocking that 80% of Americans believe that there is life out there somewhere, because it’s hard to look at a vast universe and think we’re completely alone. But another 1 in 5 allege that an alien life form has abducted a friend or family member of theirs, which based on population estimates of around 300 million means that a lot of forking people have been probed.
7. When looking at a map of the world, young Americans had a difficult time correctly identifying Iraq (1 in 7) and Afghanistan (17%). This isn’t that surprising, but only a slim majority (51%) knew where New York was. According to Forbes and National Geographic, an alarming 29% couldn’t point to the Pacific Ocean.
8. 25% of Americans were unable to identify the country from which America gained its independence. Although 19% stated that they were unsure, Gallup findings indicated that others stated answers varying from France to China. Older folks scored much better than young people on this question, as a third of those 18-29 were unable to come up with the correct answer.
9. Despite being a constant fixture in school curricula, another 30% of Americans didn’t know what the Holocaust was. Despite being some of the worst devastation in human history, Americans were unable to identify the country responsible.
10. Even though we are a predominantly Christian country, only half of Americans knew that Judaism came before Christianity, because the words “Old Testament” are apparently very confusing in that regard.
11. A surprisingly high percentage of Americans, 20%, believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth, instead of the opposite, aka. the correct answer. This is despite the fact that centuries of science have consistently proved otherwise.
12. In 2011, Newsweek found that 29% of Americans were unable to correctly identify the current Vice President, Joe Biden, when asked to take a simple citizenship test. Although a relatively low 6% didn’t know when Independence Day was, a much, much higher percentage (73%) had no idea why we fought the Cold War.
13. According to most polls, Americans didn’t know that Obamacare was scheduled to go into effect. Kaiser puts the number at 64%, whereas others say as few as 1 in 8.
14. 2006 AP polls showed that a majority of Americans were unable to name more than one of the protections guaranteed in the first Amendment of the Constitution — which include speech, assembly, religion, press and “redress of grievance.” Just 1 in 1000 could name all of these five freedoms. However, 22% were able to come up with the name of every member of the Simpson family.
15. 70 per cent of Americans do not know what the Constitution is, and six per cent don't even know when Independence Day falls.
16. 63 per cent did not know how many justices are in the Supreme Court? Those who did (presently nine) thought the number was fixed by the Constitution (it’s not Congress decides).
17. Who said the "world must be made safe for democracy"? Just 14% know it was Woodrow Wilson.
18. Only 49% knew it was the United States that dropped the first nuclear bomb?
19. 16% did not know what happened at Pearl Harbor. 19% did not know who Lee Harvey Oswald was and 19% could not identify Martin Luther King, Jr.
20. Only 34% know that it is the Congress that declares war (which may explain why they are not alarmed when presidents take us into wars without explicit declarations of war from the legislature). Only 35% know that Congress can override a presidential veto. Some 49% think the president can suspend the Constitution. Some 60% believe that he can appoint judges to the federal courts without the approval of the Senate. Some 45% believe that revolutionary speech is punishable under the Constitution.


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## mikewint (May 26, 2017)

Michael, post #40, as always, it seems, you and I are +90% in agreement. I was with you until your last paragraph. Historically the Russian Kulaks were a class of peasant farmers who owned their own land. The term "Kulak" was originally intended to be derogatory. Soviet propaganda painted these farmers as greedy and standing in the way of the "utopian" collectivization that would take away their land, livestock, and produce. "Kulak" means "fist" in Russian and may have had something to do with the supposed tight-fistedness of the Kulak class which is probably how they managed to buy the land.
Peter Stolypin a minister under Czar Nicholas II undertook agrarian reform in 1906. His program was to dissolve peasant communes and buy land from the nobility, then to divide the land among the peasants. This actually increased efficiency and boosted food production in the country-side by over 40%. Stolypin felt that by making peasants actual owners of the land and the product of their labor they would take a keener interest in land improvement and productivity. He felt that these peasants would also be more supportive of a stable Czarist state.
During the Russian Civil War (1918-21) the Kulaks generally supported the White Russians who were fighting to restore the Czarist regime. The Kulaks in general understood that the Bolshevik government was antithetical to property ownership and would strip away the rights and land the Kulaks had worked so hard to acquire and maintain. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks won the Civil War.
After the Russian Civil War there was widespread famine throughout Russia. This was partly due to the war and partly due to the inefficiencies of collectivization. To relieve the hunger, Lenin attempted to confiscate grain from the peasants, including the Kulaks. Because not enough grain was collected he blamed the Kulaks and ordered not only that the Kulaks be deprived of grain themselves, but also any seed grain. He declared "Merciless war against the Kulaks! Death to them." This, of course, only had the effect of making the shortage more severe.
After Lenin's death, Stalin took power in the Soviet Union. He continued the policy of collectivization. But the repeated failure of communist policies continued, and supply problems became even more endemic as the policies were more rigidly enforced. A scapegoat had to be found. The Kulaks were blamed for recalcitrance and a campaign of deportation was begun that amounted to wholesale slaughter. Kulaks were transported to Siberia, which was bad enough. However, they were simply dumped off in the middle of nowhere, without food, supplies, or resources of any kind. Many more were forced to work their farms but not allowed to keep any of their production - even for sustenance. Literally millions of Kulaks died.
Once dispossessed, the Kulaks no longer existed, except as an excuse to be used by the communist regime to attack the peasant class whenever it seemed convenient. *Many of the people who died as "Kulaks" were shocked to find out that this accusation had been laid upon them and that they were to suffer or die for it.*


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## herman1rg (May 26, 2017)

How about "Creationism"


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## mikewint (May 26, 2017)

A large, publicly funded charter school system in Texas is teaching creationism to its students, Zack Kopplin recently reported in Slate. Creationist teachers don’t even need to be sneaky about it—the Texas state science education standards, as well as recent laws in Louisiana and Tennessee, permit public school teachers to teach “alternatives” to evolution. Meanwhile, in Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, taxpayer money is funding creationist private schools through state tuition voucher or scholarship programs.

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## herman1rg (May 27, 2017)

OMG


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## michaelmaltby (May 28, 2017)

"... Stalin was a man with no conscience in that regard. But the question that circles that basic fact is what was the motivation or reason for such murderous behaviour."

He didn't believe in 'nations'. Estos, Balts, Tartars etc. and believed that 'nationalism' obstructed the goals and fulfillment of the international worker soviet state. Thus he squashed little nations .... and some not so little


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## mikewint (May 28, 2017)

Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953 ruled the country with an iron fist. According to Professor Harold Shukman of all the dictators the world endured in the twentieth century, Joseph Stalin was unquestionably the mightiest. Nisbet (1986) describes Joseph Stalin as a low-born revolutionist and bandit from early years, successor by sheer ruthlessness to Lenin as absolute ruler of the Soviet Union, liquidator of the Kulak class in the Ukraine, purger of his own party and totalitarian to the core.
Stalin feared his alcoholic father who physically and verbally abused him and his mother. The neighbors long remembered Vissarion’s brutal beatings of the boy and on one occasion out of rage Vissarion threw a hammer at the boy, barely missing him. Stalin frequently witnessed family violence. At the age of nine Stalin was sent to a workshop to work as a child laborer by his father. When he refused to work he was severely punished by Vissarion.
Stalin never received the love that he expected from his mother. His mother Yekaterina Geladze was an illiterate woman. She wanted Stalin to become a priest. He was sent to a Seminary in Tbilisi. But young Stalin was expelled from the Seminary due to his poor performance and for reading Marxist books.
The Seminary life made a huge impact on his life in the later years. He frequently underwent physical beatings by the priests. He saw their double standards and found nothing sacred in life.
Stalin had attachment problems with his mother. According to some sources Stalin’s mother had an affair with his God father Yakov Egnatashvili and Stalin’s real father was not Vissarion Djugashvili.
Stalin gradually distanced himself from his mother and hardly visited her. When Stalin got angry he often used derogatory names to insult her. Stalin’s mother Yekaterina died in 1937 Stalin did not attend the funeral and he only sent a wreath.
Young Stalin had a negative self image and was plagued by the inferiority complex. His face was badly scarred by smallpox. He had a defect in his left arm. The left arm was shorter than the other and it was half-paralyzed. The toes on his left foot were fused due to a congenital defect. These physical defects gave a bizarre “Stalin” gait. He was 5 feet 4 inches tall (Napoleon was 5 foot 6 inches) and looked even shorter. To compensate he wore built-up shoes. When his first wife Ekaterina Svanide (Stalin called her Kato) died of Typhus Stalin was emotionally devastated. After this heartbreaking event Stalin became emotionally numbed and said to his friends “my last warm feelings for humanity died”. This emotional numbness became the central feature of his character.
Stalin organized a number of armed robberies to raise funds for the party. Some unofficial reports concur that Stalin cold-bloodedly killed people in armed robberies. After he came in to power Stalin wiped out most of his old gang members. Hence he erased his criminal history from the records.
Stalin was arrested for revolutionary activities and exiled to Siberia. There he underwent awful human conditions which further deteriorated his emotional wellbeing. But he managed to escape in 1904.
Stalin was able to win Lenin’s trust. He had organizational skills and worked with an iron will. He knew the importance of terror in achieving the goals and defending the Revolution. Stalin used ruthless measures during the Russian Civil War earning a fearsome name.
In 1922, Stalin became the Secretary General of the Party. Stalin was rude, intolerable and had a bad temper. Lenin denounced him when Stalin verbally abused his wife Krupskaya. Lenin demanded an apology from Stalin.
Shortly before his death in 1924 Lenin wrote to the Central Committee that Stalin must be removed from the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR and be replaced by another who was “more loyal, more courteous, and more considerate of comrades, less capricious. But this decision was overruled by Stalin with the help of his supporters in the Politburo. As the General Secretary Stalin could control the party members. Thus he was able to put his own supporters into place and establish himself a strong base for support.
After Lenin’s death Trotsky’s position became vulnerable. As Trotsky’s political prowess decreased, he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and later was assassinated in 1940 in Mexico on Stalin’s orders.
Sergey Kirov was the Leningrad Party chief. In 1934, Kirov was assassinated by a lone gunman. Many suspected Stalin behind the assassination. Immediately following the death of Kirov, Josef Stalin unleashed one of the greatest political purges in history. The show trials organized by the Communist Party implicated thousands of political opponents in the conspiracy to kill Sergey Kirov. Stalin arrested two prominent Politburo members- Zinoviev and Kamenev on false charges. They were tortured heavily by the Stalin’s Secret Police. Kamenev and Zinoviev confessed that they were the key conspirators behind the murder of Sergey Kirov. Although Stalin gave them a personal assurance that their lives would be spared both were shot in 1936.
Following Stalin’s terror Mikhail Tomsky who was the leader of the trade union movement committed suicide in 1936. Mikhail Tukhachevsky –the former Red Army chief-of-staff was arrested in 1937 and shot. Sergo Ordzhonikidze – Commissar for Heavy Industry ended his life in 1937 as a result of forced suicide instigated by Stalin. The Politburo member Jānis Rudzutaks was accused of Trotskyism and espionage for Nazi Germany and was shot in 1938. Stalin purged more than 40, 000 Red Army Officers. Some of them were active participants of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and were heroes of the Russian Civil War.
According to some reports Stalin actively engaged in signing death warrants. Stalin personally ordered and signed tens of thousands of death sentences. On just one day in December 1937, he approved 3,167 death sentences, and then watched a movie.
In his young days he adopted the name Koba (a Georgian fictional hero) then Stalin (man of steel), Thavarish Stalin (Comrade Stalin), Vileki Stalin (Great Stalin), Nash Vilekei Voshd (Our Great Leader) and finally Otsa Narodov (Father of the Nation). He was troubled by his Georgian heritage while ruling the Russian masses. He spoke Russian with a thick notable accent. He launched anti-religious campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church. Stalin’s picture replaced the God’s image and he became a Demigod. He destroyed churches and religious monuments to proliferate Cult of Stalin, one of the most persuasive personality cults of all times. Soviet public spaces were saturated with images of Stalin. A torrent of portraits, posters, statues, films, plays, songs, and poems galvanized the Soviet population and inspired leftist activists around the world.
By the time of the Teheran Conference, Stalin felt confident of victory. The German Army had suffered defeat at Stalingrad and had been driven from the Caucasus which opened the route for delivery of aid through Iran by his Western allies. On 6 March 1943 Stalin bestowed upon himself the rank of ‘Marshal of the Soviet Union’, and he was proclaimed ‘the greatest strategist of all times and all peoples. But Stalin never had any military training and never served in the Army.
Stalin severely mistrusted doctors. He ignored medical advice, listening to a veterinarian instead and started treating his hypertension with iodine drops. His mental and physical health started to deteriorate rapidly. He became more suspicious, irritable and paranoid.
On the 1st of March 1953 Stalin’s inner circle were invited to dine with him as usual. During the dinner Stalin got drunk and chased all the guests including Lavrenthi Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav and Molotov from the dinner table saying “It’s over for all of you”. Then Beria knew that they were doomed. He realized that Stalin was planning another purge. After this incident Stalin suffered a stroke and became unconscious. He was lying on the floor helplessly. Beria did not call the medics. At the last stage the Doctors wear called but it was too late. Stalin died. Later Beria said to Nikita Khrushchev that I saved all of you from Stalin’s final blow. Considering all these accounts its possible suspect that Beria had poisoned Stalin but by having Stalin embalmed, Beria destroyed any traces of poison in Stalin’s body.

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## Old Wizard (May 29, 2017)




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## mikewint (May 29, 2017)

Those are only the highlights, STALIN was NOT his actual name but one of the titles he bestowed upon himself, i.e. Man of Steel. His birth name is/was *Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. *Born December 18, 1878, his official birthday was 21 of December 1879 over a year later, an invented date. He generally stuck to 6 December 1879 until an interview in 1920 with a Swedish newspaper. In 1925 he ordered his secretary Tovstukha to formalize the 1879 date.

The General Georgy Zhukov who planned the major military strategy to defeat Hitler’s forces had to fight two war fronts simultaneously. He fought one against Hitler and other one against Stalin’s ego. However Hitler’s Moscow invasion made the man of steal nervous and the General Zhukov was given more power and liberty to control the armed forces. But soon after the war General Zhukov was sidelined and sent to Odessa. He was partially denounced using the term Bonapartism of Zhukov. If not for his popularity Stalin would have purged one of the proficient military generals of all time.

In 1932 Martemyan Ryutin – Russian Marxist revolutionary wrote a thesis titled Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship. Ryutin argued that the party and the dictatorship of the proletariat have been led into an unknown blind alley by Stalin and his retinue and are now living through a mortally dangerous crisis. Martemyan Ryutin was shot in 1937 with his two sons.
Stalin arrested Molotov’s Jewish wife Polina Zhemchuzhina for greeting in Yiddish to the first Israeli ambassador to Moscow- Golda Meir at a Kremlin reception.

The Great Russian Psychologist Vladimir Mikhailovic Bekhterev (1857–1927) was ordered to examine Josef Stalin in December 1927 during the First All-Russian Neurological Congress in Moscow. Vladimir Bektharev found psychopathology in Stalin. Bekhterev said only one word “paranoiac”. After making this diagnosis Bekhterev had less than 24 hours to live. He died mysteriously and without a post mortem his body was cremated.
The Kremlin doctor – Professor D. Pletnev knew Stalin for a long time. According to Professor Pletnev Stalin had a snake mind, strong tendency to adventurism and delusions of persecution. Professor Pletnev was arrested in 1937 on Stalin’s orders. He was tortured and his tormentors forced him to sign a false confession stating that he was involved in the murder of Maxim Gorkey. Pletnev was shot in 1941 in Medvedevsky forest.

There is ample evidence to show that Stalin was behind the Katyn Forest massacre in which the NKVD killed 22,000 Polish officers who were taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland.
It was estimated that nearly three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II. In the Battle of Stalingrad Field Marshal Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus surrendered to the Soviet forces with 91,000 German soldiers. But only 6,000 returned home.
He drove his second wife Nadia Allilueva to commit suicide. He had shallow feelings for his son Yakov from his first marriage. When Yakov became a POW during the Battle of Smolensk in 1941 Stalin did not make any attempt to release or comfort him. Yakov committed suicide at the Sachsenhausen death camp in 1943. Stalin’s malevolent attitude towards his other children affected them detrimentally. Vasily Stalin died of chronic alcoholism. Svetlana Allilueva (Lana Peters) defected to the West in 1967.

After removing Yagoda (Director of the NKVD appointed by Stalin) Stalin appointed Yezhov as the NKVD chief showing him friendship and brotherhood. He was known as Stalin’s faithful friend. In December 1938 Yezhov was removed accusing him as an enemy of the people. Yezhov was shot in 1939. Stalin made his old Georgian friend Alexander Egnatashvili his personal bodyguard. He served Stalin with utmost loyalty. He disappeared somewhere in 1953 shot on Stalin’s orders.

Late in 1951 Stalin had a regular checkup by his personal physician- Professor V.N.Vinogradov. During the examination Stalin said that the Politburo members A.S.Shcherbakov (in 1946) and A.A.Zhdanov (in 1948) had been poisoned by Kremlin doctors. Stalin mentioned the names of the doctors, all of whom were Jewish. Vinogradov knew them well and said he had absolute trust in their honesty and professional competence. After the checkup, Vinogradov advised Stalin to rest more and work less. To Stalin this advice had a familiar ring: three decades earlier, plotting to hasten Lenin’s death and pretending to worry about his health, he had insisted that Lenin be kept from his daily duties. Stalin at once suspected Vinogradov of conspiring against him and ordered his arrest

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## Glider (May 30, 2017)

Excellent information, a little I knew but this is way beyond the norm, many thanks


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## Peter Gunn (May 31, 2017)

Mike, can I ask a small favor? Not to be critical or anything but could you pop the <ENTER> key twice after every paragraph to get just a little space in there? I'd appreciate it as there's sooooo much good info here, but it's coming off as a wall of text that's tiring to read, at least for my middle aged eyes.

I've taken to copy/pasting your posts into Word and getting a little white space in there. Again, not trying to be a jerk, just a little hard to read.

Cheers

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## mikewint (May 31, 2017)

Peter, no problem Sir, just trying to condense and not take up so much space in the thread.
That History repeats itself and that History never repeats itself are equally true

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## at6 (May 31, 2017)

Interesting information here. The irony of the second world war is being allied with one war criminal against another. Having allowed the Soviets to participate in the Nuremberg trials was something akin to putting Jack the ripper on a Judicial bench. Perhaps that is why I see Putin as Stalin light. Each time I see old news reels from WWII supporting "our brave Russian comrades", I nearly barf. I used to work with a woman from Germany. She was six years old in May of 1945 and lived in Berlin when the Red army marched in. They were looting and raping their way through the city. A Russian soldier had his rifle pointed at her mother demanding valuables while they hid a young girl under the bed to protect her from such "brave liberators". If it hadn't have been for a Russian officer entering the room at that moment, her mother would have most likely been raped and murdered.

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## Graeme (May 31, 2017)

mikewint said:


> He was 5 feet 4 inches tall



And he continues to shrink...

Joseph Stalin: height | History of Russia


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## mikewint (May 31, 2017)

There are no official reports about the Joseph Stalin height because Stalin was sensitive about his height, his pockmarked face and his withered left arm. In fact, he went to great lengths to conceal his lack of stature from the Soviet people and the world. Contemporary reports of the exact Stalin height vary. At the lower end, people report that he was 5 foot 4 inches (163cm) tall and, at the higher end his height shoots up to around 5 foot 8 inches (173cm). The general consensus among historians seems to be that Stalin was about 5 foot 5 tall (165cm). 

Many who met Stalin in their lifetime were said to have been shocked by his diminutive, real-life presence. US President, Harry S Truman once dismissively referred to Stalin as a “little squirt”. Both Truman and Winston Churchill found the lengths Stalin went to make himself appear taller amusing when they met with him. Grigol Uratadze, a man who was imprisoned alongside Stalin during his time as a revolutionary, described him as unassuming with a “creeping way of walking, taking short steps…”, while Milovan Đilas, a former Yugoslavian politician mentioned that he was “small” with an “ungainly build” in a later book describing their encounters.

To maintain the illusion of height in face-to-face meetings, Stalin also took to wearing boots with cleverly masked, significantly raised heels and would often pose for photos while standing on a raised platform or positioned well in front of or above those around him. Besides the high heels, platforms in photographs, and exaggerated stature in paintings, Stalin’s private residence in Sochi was specially constructed with his frame in mind and everything in it, from the chairs to the staircase were made slightly smaller than usual so that Stalin could use them perfectly comfortably and otherwise appear especially tall in stature. Even his pool was only a little over four feet deep at its maximum depth because he couldn’t swim (he did, however, enjoy taking little walks back and forth in it) and didn’t want to be submerged if he ventured into the deep end.

Other features of Stalin’s mansion, which you can still tour today, include a smaller than regulation size billiards table complete with a smaller than average, weighted cue the dictator used to make his shots more powerful. Stalin reportedly never lost a single game of billiards against any of his guards… it no doubt had something to do with the fact that Stalin could have any of his guards killed if they displeased him.

Winston Churchill (5 ft 6 in.), Harry Truman (5 ft 8 in)

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## Old Wizard (Jun 1, 2017)




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## Peter Gunn (Jun 2, 2017)

Mike, as Patton would say... "Many Tanks"...


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## herman1rg (Jun 2, 2017)

Coat, Sir?


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## mikewint (Jun 3, 2017)

No problem sir...spaced as you requested, hope that helped.
*History would be a wonderful thing....If it were only true*


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## Fighterguy (Jun 3, 2017)

These scenario's always seem to have a RTS "gamer" mindset to them, backed up with a healthy helping of poetic license. For example; watching the Greatest Tank Battles episode about SS-Panzer Ace Michael Wittmann, they point out how his unit was re-assigned to the Normandy area shortly before Operation Overlord kicked off. Before he could get his Tiger tanks to face the Allies, they had been reduced to a fraction of their original strength by Allied air power. Soviet aircraft at the time had little ability to operate at higher altitudes. This would allow British and American bombers to rain steel on Soviet equipment, supplies, and manpower before it had a chance to concentrate mass, with impunity. Then there's the inconvenient (unmentioned in this video) fact, that British and American Naval strength was at its peak in all categories at this time.

In all likelihood, a small unit skirmish over treatment of civilians would be brushed under the rug very quickly as a misunderstanding. The Americans and British continuously overlooked instances of Soviet transgressions throughout the war. This video relies heavily on "a Patton quote" from the movie about him. Patton was a soldier, not a rogue. He wouldn't have run off willy-nilly, endangering his country and men, without explicit orders. Here's the quote being misstated:

*“We promised the Europeans freedom. It would be worse than dishonorable not to see they have it. This might mean war with the Russians, but what of it? They have no Air Force anymore, their gasoline and ammunition supplies are low. I've seen their miserable supply trains; mostly wagons draw by beaten up old hoses or oxen. I'll say this; the Third Army alone with very little help and with damned few casualties, could lick what is left of the Russians in six weeks. You mark my words. Don't ever forget them... Someday we will have to fight them and it will take six years and cost us six million lives."*


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## Fighterguy (Jun 3, 2017)

Operation Unthinkable - Wikipedia


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