WW III....

[parsifal]

"...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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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.

 

[michaelmaltby]

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

 

[michaelmaltby]

... 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.

 

[swampyankee]

... sorry, trust is a mutual 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?

 

[michaelmaltby]

... 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.

 

[swampyankee]

... 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?

 

[parsifal]

... 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.

 

[herman1rg]

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

 

[michaelmaltby]

"...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.

 

[Peter Gunn]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[Shortround6]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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

 

[Glider]

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

 

[michaelmaltby]

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

 

[parsifal]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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

 

[mikewint]

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

 

[Glider]

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

 

[parsifal]

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.