January 1936: British army, you run the show

[Robert Porter]

The founding documents of Communism clearly state the system cannot last nor succeed unless the entire world is brought under the same system. It advocates doing so by force. That said I don't believe Putin nor Stalin paid anything more than lip service to communist ideals, as mentioned above it is a means to an end for them. But you have to wonder if they don't perceive us as the threat since Capitalism is in and of itself a threat to any other economic system. Certainly it has proven itself a threat to the USSR and its follow on the SU.

Given that we are certainly a perceived threat to their status quo you have to conclude that they would want to defend against such a perceived threat. And as any good Russian knows the best defense is a great offense.

 

[Shortround6]

You have quite a few things that went on that affected peoples views of the "world" and you had more than few things that were not widely known (communist massacres/purges). The Western involvement in the Russian civil war (in support of the white Russians) was not something the Soviets were likely to forget or ignore even if they did turn to the west for technical assistance just a few years later.
The "Workers of the World" did not unit and rise up against their masters during the 20s and 30s (at least not in significant numbers, despite some very violent strikes and murders/massacres) in most countries enough to actually topple governments.
A hidden or long range threat (decades) isn't of much concern in the short term, next five years? and the "threat" of internal communists was stronger in most countries than the threat of the Russian military rolling over their country in the 1930s. Again see French labor troubles during the 30s vs chances of the Russians rolling over Poland and Germany to reach the French border.
The internal threats never materialized the way the Soviets may have hoped (although they did sway elections) but perceived threats and actual threats never line up anyway.

 

[michaelmaltby]

".. Given that we are certainly a perceived threat to their status quo you have to conclude that they would want to defend against such a perceived threat. And as any good Russian knows the best defense is a great offense."

Well said. We must recognize that we - NATO, western democracies, and like-minded democracies - threaten Russian autocracy - and Russian vision of its own "exceptionalism". Putin's minister said "the difference between American exceptionalism and Russian exceptionalism is that we - Russia - don't try and force ours down your throat"

And that's it - Russia is saying "respect us, leave us be"

What the west can and must answer is - "respect has to be earned. actions speak louder than words. You want respect, Putin, earn it. Demonstrate that your ideas and methods can prevail in a free market, pluralistic, continent-sized country that's rich but only exports raw materials and hockey players.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Of interest ...

The Nominal National Products of the major powers in 1938, in current dollars:

(1) United States: 84.7 billion
(2) Germany: 46.0 billion*
(3) UK: 27.51 billion
(4) USSR: 23.02 billion
(5) France: 16.18 billion
(6) Italy: 8.68 billion
(7) Japan: 7.49 billion

*The German number includes Austria and annexed Czechoslovakia

The USSR has made phenomenal progress in 10 years.

 

[swampyankee]

Maybe spreading bolshevism with a gun was Stalin's goal in the 1930s, but he did not have the capability to do so beyond countries on the USSR's immediate borders, and did not attack all of those: he wasn't rabidly invading everybody within reach; most of the pre-WW2 invasions were of countries that had been part of the Russian Empire. In this regard, I believe that the White Russians, had they won, would have done exactly the same thing. Hitler would have just made some trivial changes to his rhetoric, replacing "communist" with "Slav."

As for the internal threat of communism, anybody who joined with a friend in asking for a raise or some other improvement in working conditions was immediately labeled a communist.

I'm not defending the USSR here; I'm attacking the perception of the USSR being a military threat to countries in Western Europe. It wasn't; the countries that were targeted before WWII were those that had been in the Russian Empire and were adjacent to the USSR. Before WWII, the USSR couldn't send a force to invade the Faroe Islands.

 

[parsifal]

The founding documents of Communism clearly state the system cannot last nor succeed unless the entire world is brought under the same system. It advocates doing so by force. That said I don't believe Putin nor Stalin paid anything more than lip service to communist ideals, as mentioned above it is a means to an end for them. But you have to wonder if they don't perceive us as the threat since Capitalism is in and of itself a threat to any other economic system. Certainly it has proven itself a threat to the USSR and its follow on the SU.

Given that we are certainly a perceived threat to their status quo you have to conclude that they would want to defend against such a perceived threat. And as any good Russian knows the best defense is a great offense.

Sorry Robert, but where in Das Kapital does it say anything like that? Id suggest you actually read Marx and Engels before making statements like that, because, with respect, what you are saying is just untrue. It might be in soviet manifesto, or Lenins Interpretation of the Communist Manifesto, but the "founding works" of communism say no such thing as you are claiming.


The critique of the political economy of capitalism proposes that:

• Wage-labour is the basic "cell-form" (trade unit) of a capitalist society. Moreover, because commerce, as a human activity, implied no morality beyond that required to buy and sell goods and services, the growth of the market system made discrete entities of the economic, the moral, and the legal spheres of human activity in society; hence, subjective moral value is separate from objective economic value. Subsequently, "political economy" — the just distriibution of wealth and "political arithmetick" about taxes — became three discrete fields of human activity ….economics, law and ethics, each relatively divorced from the other (Marx)

• "The economic formation of society a process of natural history" according to Das Kapital, , thus it is possible for a political economist to objectively study the scientific laws of capitalism, given that its expansion of the market system of commerce leading to Objectified human relations (ie I think materialism); the use of money (cash nexus) voided religious and political illusions about its economic value (ie Marx's take on the principal of the separation of powers and the necessary separation between church and state). Marx also talked about the natural tendency of society toward "commodity fetishism". Something all too apparent in modern society. Marx questioned the the belief that an object (commodity) has inherent economic value. Marx believed that because societal economic formation is a historical process, no one person could control or direct it, thereby creating a global complex of social connections among capitalists; thus, the economic formation (individual commerce) of a society precedes the human administration of an economy (organised commerce). He did not advocate worldwide armed conflict to overthrow or change the system, the opposite actually.
• The structural contradictions of a capitalist economy, the gegensätzliche Bewegung, describe the contradictory movement originating from the two-fold character of labour, and so the class struggle concept between labour and capital was developed as a social theory by Marx, but again he is so often misquoted here as advocating armed struggle to redress the imbalances between the classes. It happens that this often was the result of his thories, but he did not advocate that this needed to be conducted on a global scale. He was observing the nature of societal conditions and how that might play out.
• The economic crises of recession and depression on the one hand and boom and oversupply by the free market were observed by Marx and he advocated a different societal model to address those shortcomings
• In a capitalist economy, technological improvement and its consequent increased production augment the amount of material wealth (which Marx sometimes described as "use value") in society, while simultaneously diminishing the economic value of the individual units built or acquired under that system. He was academically describing the cost savings that come with economies of scale. Marx argued that such unit duplication was bad for profits, but I think he was wrong in this regard. Though I agree that the percentage of profits per unit does drop in a mass production environment. Marx described this phenomena as a paradox….a characteristic of economic crisis in a capitalist economy; "poverty in the midst of plenty" consequent to over-production and under-consumption" in this he was undoubtedly correct. Our worl enjoys higher levels of abject, life threatening poverty, in a world where consumption and wealth are greater than they ever have been at any other time in history .

After two decades of economic study and preparatory work (especially regarding the theory of "surplus value") the founding works behind the communist movement first volume appeared in 1867: The production process of capital. After Marx's death in 1883, Friedrich engels introduced, from manuscripts and the first volume; Volume II: The circulation process of capital in 1885; and Volume III: The overall process of capitalist production in 1894. These three volumes are collectively known as Das Kapital.

 

[michaelmaltby]

".... I'm attacking the perception of the USSR being a military threat to countries in Western Europe."

.... and defending Soviet Communism's behavior of expansion which was as brutal and totalitarian as Hitler's. In 1939 - 40, the Communist cells in France and Britain were fed the line from the COMINTERN that the "enemies" of the Revolution were the bankers of Berlin and London. The object was to weaken and disrupt these countries ... and that is hostile behavior as surely as cyber war against Estonia or the USA is today

 

[Robert Porter]

Sorry Robert, but where in Das Kapital does it say anything like that? Id suggest you actually read Marx and Engels before making statements like that, because, with respect, what you are saying is just untrue. It might be in soviet manifesto, or Lenins Interpretation of the Communist Manifesto, but the "founding works" of communism say no such thing as you are claiming.

I should have been more precise. I have read both Marx and Engels, and the information I am referring too is from Lenin not them so you are correct in that it was not the foundational documents. That said every leader since Lenin and including Lenin advocated the spread of communism by force. And Mar and Engels both said the system could not survive in isolation but had to be spread to the world. They used different language but the meaning is pretty clear.

 

[Robert Porter]

For some reason history (rightly) vilifies Hitler and the Nazi's but gives considerably more latitude to Stalin and the Communists. Stalin after liberating various concentration camps filled them with his own undesirables, he established and greatly expanded his own version of the Nazi approach to consolidating power by confining and murdering dissenters wholesale. His methods and results were at least as horrific as anything the Nazi's did yet history has largely let that pass. While I have yet to find a source I can trust with 100% confidence all indications are he killed far more civilians and his own troops than Hitler dreamed of. He ordered the destruction and death of units of his own troops that were Nazi POW's to include civilians that had lived under occupation of the Nazi's as they had been "tainted" and were no longer reliable.

 

[Robert Porter]

After two decades of economic study and preparatory work (especially regarding the theory of "surplus value") the founding works behind the communist movement first volume appeared in 1867: The production process of capital. After Marx's death in 1883, Friedrich engels introduced, from manuscripts and the first volume; Volume II: The circulation process of capital in 1885; and Volume III: The overall process of capitalist production in 1894. These three volumes are collectively known as Das Kapital.

An applicable quote from Marx to illustrate my point:

Marx divides the communist future into halves, a first stage generally referred to as the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and a second stage usually called "full communism." The historical boundaries of the first stage are set in the claim that: "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

[michaelmaltby]

"....For some reason history (rightly) vilifies Hitler and the Nazi's but gives considerably more latitude to Stalin and the Communists."

The Judeo-Christian tradition contains teachings and foundations that former-believers have been comfortable with accepting as their new non-theistic creed ..... and acceptance, of course, gives Communism the luster of science and philosophy which lures academics and social commentators. However, Communist science was/is demonstrably bad science while Communist philosophy is mechanical philosophy .... dialectical.

 

[Robert Porter]

One thing that most people that study Marx and Engels leave out is the extensive correspondence between the two where they openly discuss and debate what would eventually become Das Kapital. In particular they discuss what to leave out of it in order to not "shock" the proletariat and thereby loose their message. But the fact that they both understood that force would be necessary is clearly expressed in a great deal of that correspondence. Little of which made it into Das Kapital. If you read the Constitution of the former Soviet Union it appears to give all manor of rights and protections to the citizens. None of which actually mattered or were implemented. Das Kapital was similar in that it expressed what the creators chose to express not their entire vision. Their own notes and correspondence expresses that the world was perhaps not ready for the full story.

 

[swampyankee]

".... I'm attacking the perception of the USSR being a military threat to countries in Western Europe."

which it wasn't. The USSR had neither the military nor industrial capability to attack any country not on its borders.

.... and defending Soviet Communism's behavior of expansion which was as brutal and totalitarian as Hitler's. In 1939 - 40, the Communist cells in France and Britain were fed the line from the COMINTERN that the "enemies" of the Revolution were the bankers of Berlin and London. The object was to weaken and disrupt these countries ... and that is hostile behavior as surely as cyber war against Estonia or the USA is today

Blaming bankers is a favorite hobby of left and right; it's a reflex.

As an aside, I said absolutely nothing defending Soviet behavior; what I said was that a) politicians in many Western countries used the non-existent Soviet military threat for political purposes, and b) used the threat of communism to promote their domestic political agenda and c) that the White Russians would have invaded Poland, Ukraine, etc. in exactly the same way as the bolsheviks. The Whites may not have deliberately starved people in Ukraine had they won the civil war, but I never said the Bolsheviks didn't do so.

Politicians, left, right, and center, demonize groups all the time. The ones in Western Europe were following a long tradition. Sometimes they are so busy demonizing one group, they fail to notice the real threat. In this case, before WWII, many politicians did just that. The bolsheviks were a minor internal security threat, not an existential one to any of the Western democracies. They had the chance to break Hitler in 1936, when he remilitarized the Saar. They blew it then, when Germany was too weak to do anything but back down.

 

[michaelmaltby]

What you said:
"I'm not defending the USSR here; I'm attacking the perception of the USSR being a military threat to countries in Western Europe. It wasn't; the countries that were targeted before WWII were those that had been in the Russian Empire and were adjacent to the USSR. Before WWII, the USSR couldn't send a force to invade the Faroe Islands."
To which I replied:
"... and defending Soviet Communism's behavior of expansion which was as brutal and totalitarian as Hitler's.

I am discrediting your argument because the threat in 1939 was real and it was as much from a heavily armed Red Army conscripted to the service of an internationally disposed Soviet communist party. Stalin's proposal to France and Britain in 1938-39 says it all - "let me occupy Poland and I can stop Hitler because I will have a buffer".

In 1939, was the Russian Army a threat to Poland - with whom both western France and Britain were bound in mutual defense treaties? Was the Russian Army a threat to Finland? To Estonia? Latvia? Lithuania? Romania?

History says "yes".

As for this:
"Blaming bankers is a favorite hobby of left and right; it's a reflex."

You're flippant.

 

[parsifal]

Seems to be lost in this debate that marx did not consider armed conflict with nations, rather armed conflict between the classes. marx saw the nation state as a tool of elite, and in the class war that he saw the nation state was an obsolete concept. it was not war between nations that he forecast, it was war between the classes

 

[Shortround6]

And this is why some western officials viewed communism as an internal security threat and not an external one. With riots, demonstrations and strikes going on they feared a really big riot or uprising (even if it had no real chance of success) more than a Russian invasion.
Whatever the politicians or newspaper editors feared the better military officers knew the Russians were in no position to march hundreds of miles across Europe, anymore than the Germans could March hundreds of miles across Russia several years later.
Russians had less motor transport, crappier railroad equipment and the different rail gauge. Military officers had figured out rates of advancement and ranges of advancement from supply points back around the time of Napoleon (if not before, Napoleon just proved them right). Yes the Soviets could gobble one country, stage there awhile and advance again, stage and advance again and stage again..........But to roll across Europe in weeks wasn't going to happen.

 

[Shortround6]

Trying to get back the premise of the thread, Doctrine often dictated weapons and weapons/equipment in turn could dictate tactics.

For instance the British developed their armored theories on the Salisbury plain, which might have lead to the British exploring long range gun fire to fit in with the long open spaces found there. Instead they got the idea of near land fleet actions. Groups, often large, of tanks moving about in formation and firing on the move. Large formations would be impractical as tactical formations in much of Western Europe, and while theoretically ideal the for the open dessert in NA the firing on the move idea came up very wanting in the desert (although it may have worked better at the shorter ranges in Europe.)

British tanks in the dessert seem to have been limited to max effective range of around 800yds, both for the 2pdr gun and the co-ax gun.
The problem NOT being a the fault of either gun but rather the doctrine. The tanks were fitted with the shoulder control elevation mount which allowed for quicker reaction while moving, it made the ability to fire on the move a possibility even if not very likely. However it made precise follow up shots at longer ranges a near impossibility. the gun kicked up on firing and each shot had to be re-layed (aimed) all over again for elevation.
This was coupled with a lousy long range sighting system. The difference between the German sight/s and the British sight/s in magnification was not really significant. What was significant was that the British sight/s weren't much more than a simple cross hair. The gun/s were zeroed to the cross hairs at a given range and the gunner had to use experience and judgement on much to hold over at longer ranges. The point blank range (range at which you could put the cross hairs on the center of mass of the target and still get a hit either top or bottom ) was close the previous mentioned 800yds.
The Germans had a crude range finding reticule in their sight. A series of triangles that were multiples of 2 mils in angle (center one was 4 mils. Once the gunner estimated the range using the mils and size of the target he turned a dial or ring on the sight to the appropriate range setting and the aiming mark moved to the correct elevation for that range. Combine that with the geared elevation mechanism that prevented the gun from changing elevation when fired and the Germans were in much better shape to engage in long range gun duels in the dessert.
German co-ax guns were provided with an adjustment of 1200 meters on most tanks ( a few differed) USING THE SAME AMMUNITION as the Besa guns that limited to about 800yds in the British tanks due to doctrine---gunsight----elevation mechanism.
Likewise the German 37mm, short 50mm and short 75mm were all given sight settings of up to 2000 meters with the long 50 and long 75s (L43 and L48) going to 2500- 3000meters.

I am NOT claiming the 2pdr could shoot enemy tanks at 3000 meters given better sights but the sights and mount were more of a limitation that the ballistics of the gun/ammo.

Given the limits of the gun/sight/mount system what tactics could have been used by the British tankers? Close range as fast as possible to get the enemy tanks within the effective range of the system.

Doesn't matter if you change to a 47mm gun (3pdr) or a 57mm gun. If you don't change the "doctrine" and change the gun mount and sights (which might work better than the German system in Europe at ranges of under 800yds) then you are going to get near the same results as historically. Doesn't matter how powerful the gun is, if you can't hit the enemy tanks.

 

[Robert Porter]

Seems to be lost in this debate that marx did not consider armed conflict with nations, rather armed conflict between the classes. marx saw the nation state as a tool of elite, and in the class war that he saw the nation state was an obsolete concept. it was not war between nations that he forecast, it was war between the classes

Agreed, however it was unrealistic and he knew it. While he chose to believe that a "State" was a construct, the reality was and remains that states are the arbiters of class and as such any conflict between classes necessitate the destruction of the state. That too is an oft discussed subject between he and Engels. It honestly matters very little what he thought so much as how those thoughts were realized and put into action. We could debate, and indeed academics still do, about what he thought or meant. The real world however is still dealing with how his thoughts and ideas have been placed into action. Those that took up his ideology, debatably as a means to an end rather than any real belief, have taken the ideology of a stateless classless society and instead made one of the most rigidly defined class based societies and a very totalitarian state.

 

[parsifal]

Its a matter of opinion if he did know it, and its a matter of opinion that if he did know it that it isn't going to happen still, though I don't think marx took into consideration all the factors. Nation states have difficulty dealing with international issues like global terror or global warming, because the national interest outweighs the wider societal interests. this explains the overall disillusioment with the political system and the political class we are witnessing today. States cant solve the societal fundamentals because they are set up to inherently protect the vital interests of the ruling classes. My opinion is that within a century we will be witnessing the failure and collapse of the nation state on a more or less global scale.

How does this relate to the british army in 1936. it relates to the perceived threats as they existed at that time. it relates to whether the USSR was ever a possible greater threat to world security over Nazi aggression.

It really is a matter of opinion and the relative weight you want to give to the various issues at play here. The Nazis were possessed with greater war making potential and were geographically in a more dangerous position, whereas ideologically the Soviets and their brand of socialism were more of a societal threat. Nations knew that the Soviets in 1936 were not in the same level of threat as the germans, though people like Churchill were avid anti-communists just the same. For Britain and France, Germany was a far more serious threat to their vital interests, whereas the Soviets were far more dangerous to their societal stability. It got down to a choice between which was the greater threat and Britain (and France) were never in any doubt that it was Germany that was the greater threat to their vital interests. even as late as 1945 that assessment was valid. With Germany prostrate and almost defeated, though doubts about Soviet intentions were beginning to permeate the allied consciousness, there was never the slightest chance that the allies would abandon the Soviets until the job was done. that was the right decision IMO.

 

[swampyankee]

At least some sources have said that two goals of Britain's establishment were avoidance of a land war on the Continent, and not to permit France to dominate Europe (the last time that appended, it did not go well); these both tended to favor a softer policy towards Germany than had been agreed to at Versailles. Combine this with penurious military budgets and an expensive empire to defend, one wonders if an army competent for sustained operations against an industrialized country, like Germany, was considered a priority by Whitehall or 10 Downing Street. As to Eastern Europe, one wonders how Britain or France could have directly intervened without Germany's cooperation. Hitler would not have given that consent, and Weimar may not have had enough power over its security services to do so.