Quote Originally Posted by mike
Yes, everyone is wrong except you. And you can prove it with your 3 books by completely unbiased Russian historians with no possible motive to clear Stalin's name. This is about as believable as Ann Coulter's treatment of Joseph McCarthy. It's called selling books and being famous because you know there are dupes out there willing to believe whatever you want them to. I'm sure gaining political power doesn't hurt either.
Funnily enough, the same argument applies to the anti-Stalin arguments. Think about it, mike.

[quote:3a7xlq34]Even here your analogy is flawed. Gravity does not exist. Ask any physicist.
Anything else you want to deny while we're at it? The earth is not round? The number of Jews exterminated in Germany? Dinosaurs perhaps?
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I do not mean to insult, but you are clueless about gravity, mike. I'll not even try quoting textbooks on field theory, general relativity and cosmology, I suspect you will not understand what they say.

Oh, and the Earth is not round. It is three-dimensional so it cannot be. It is not spherical either, it is a geoid. I don't care about the Jews and dinosaurs.

I don't deny the Tsars were as abominable if not worse than the Premiers of the USSR. Anyone who disagrees is romanticizing history to the point of voluntary ignorance and nostalgia. But this is not an excuse in my book. "Well things are awful but they used to be worse." This is too complacent an outlook on life.
But it is a fair one. Back then, it was the standard practice in Russia, and it was not as terrible as it looks now. Why do you refer to today's standards when judging the past? If we go further back, a lot more cruelties were being done, outside Russia, too, which would seem unthinkable today.

[quote:3a7xlq34]Ouch. And I remember your saying something about certain ideological difference between you and me.
The difference being one is capital punishment for crimes (in the case of the military officers we are not even talking murder, we're talking about being executed for lesser crimes) committed by citizens and the other tyranny and despotism by those who allegedly are looking out for the citizens they are killing/torturing. I do not believe the end always justifies the means (for example I opposed the war in Iraq, but I am not going to lose any sleep when Saddam Hussein is killed), but I do not feel any compassion for dead tyrants.[/quote:3a7xlq34]

Strangely enough, by then current law conspiracies were punishable with the capital punishment.

And nobody made you respond to me.
You're free to ignore my messages, too.


[quote:3a7xlq34][quote:3a7xlq34]But he was an asshole now that you mention it. And I'm fairly sure he was lacking as much downstairs as up- if you get my meaning. You can whine about this not being relevant to political argument if you want.
I'm not whining. You're mixing your arguments with @@@@ without any coercion whatsoever.[/quote:3a7xlq34]

I don't know what you're referring to precisely. My ad hominems of Stalin or of you? The latter are a case of being easily annoyed and angry that I am not going to apologize to anyone for, the former are a lack of sympathy for a member of government. Especially the authoritarian ones.
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Shitty arguments are just that, they smell. They make you smell, too.

Only if we assume that these numbers are correct...which you've offered no evidence of except that "Krivosheev is respectable." Somehow he is able to pinpoint the exact number of casualties when no one else to this day is certain, so he must be right. Sure.
I gave you another argument why 35 to 1 was laughable. You're still welcome to proving Krivosheev wrong, though.


[quote:3a7xlq34]
Oh, arithmetic. I'm fascinated by arithmetic, you know. So: 330,000 / 0.5 / 40,000 = 16,5 men per year per sq. km. On the other hand: 360,000 / 10 / 0 = infinity. The Americans in Vietnam fared infinitely worse than the Soviets in Finland. Even ignoring the climatic and "enemy toughness" factors. You should really try harder when you select models to compare.
The models are meant as a basic analogy, not a precise one. If we were being precise then you would've already pointed out that Vietnam was not a territory the Americans planned to own.[/quote:3a7xlq34]

Just like Finland was not a territory the Soviets planned to own, except a tiny plot of it.

Had I known you were going to focus on the differences between the two analogies rather than the overall similarity I would have given it a second thought. I thought, on some crazy instinct, you might be able to see the forest for the trees. I apologize for being wrong.
What bloody similarities? The Americans were waging a war for no reason save an imaginary one, they were doing it thousands miles from home, they were sweating in T-shirts sitting in helos rather than wading waist-deep in snow, they never came across any fortifications, they were doing it against an enemy whose principal weapon was AK-47 (on the ground), they were massacring civilians by a village. Forest? I can see the forest, but can you?

[quote:3a7xlq34]Whatever. He failed. So much for his military aptitude.
Based on one invasion that it is doubtful anyone in his place would've won you come to the conclusion that he was a worse military leader than Stalin . I wish I could enjoy such a simplicity in logic.
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I wish that too. Only a jerk like Trotsky could entrust that to a fool like Тухачевский, who failed in a country that is ideal for highly mobile warfare, with numerical superiority in all troops and cavalry in particular. The latter is a reference to highly mobile warfare, proto-Blitzkrieg, FYI; but as you've demonstrated your ignorance in military matters (I’m referring to your perception of the finnish war, the atomic bomb, etc), I doubt you will understand.

And finally, had he been such a brilliant militarist, who had allegedly felt a coming disaster in Poland, he should have done everything and persuaded the Party to cancel the invasion. He was not the smallest member of the party, you know, and he could have done so. His alleged inability to do so is again an indication of his impotence in military matters. His stupid "world revolution" obsession is an indication of his impotence in political affairs.

[quote:3a7xlq34]Not the climate alone. The terrain and the fortifications. The Russians can handle cold weather without much problem. They spend half a year below freezing.
Right, right. So I guess you're not disagreeing with me then that Germany would've been a much easier country to invade in 1930 than Finland was in 1939.
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With then current Red Army, I doubt it would have been easier.

[quote:3a7xlq34]His commanders were good tacticians. Some of them were able strategists. I don't think he ever made any tactical decisions, he was mostly concerned with strategic issues. He did have a few good ideas, but then he performed badly in other cases.
Well, I am no expert on Hitler so I cannot even begin to argue about it. But I have read accounts from his former "able strategists" that he would demand to be involved in the planning of every major operation and give his own directives as to what should be done regardless of what they thought of these plans. The seriousness of his mistakes or how much responsibility for the losses he is accountable for I could not say.
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Major operation. That's strategic. Like I said, he did have a few good ideas, and quite a few bad ones.


[quote:3a7xlq34]Then you need to read them again. Because they say he was obsessed with the idea of attacking the USSR and when he saw that the air offensive was not going on perfectly, it was all the better for him so he could concentrate his efforts on the USSR. If not for the USSR, he would have pulverized the UK in a couple of months.
Well, I consider that to be pretty incompetent on his part, don't you? Perhaps it is just me, I don't know. I am not a military strategist. But if I were fighting two men I would not beat one to the point of submission and then stop, and focus on the much stronger second man (who was making no attack on me this whole time) while allowing the first to recuperate. This doesn't seem like something a competent man would do.
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I agree that was stupid. I do not want to discuss why he did so, that's completely irrelevant. Except for one thing: he genuinely believed in weakness of the Russian "colossus"; few doubt that it was due to his WWI perception of Russia, which was indeed weak. But suddenly she was not that weak anymore in 1941. Would you explain what exactly had happened in Russia between 1918 and 1941 that provided for such a bad surprise for him?

Yes, I did not think of this. Had he not invaded the USSR this would probably come true. The point I set out to make was that Stalin alone was not responsible for Russia's self-defense. I have no idea what point I thought I was making by mentioning this about Hitler never invading the Soviet Union.
Probably not alone. But if you, on one hand, charge him for all the bad that happened in Russia, then it would be fair to attribute him all the good, on the other.

Well, you're assuming somehow the Germans would know the real effectiveness of the weapon and how long it would take to be built. They could not have possibly known either of these things (just as the Japanese couldn't know how many the US had left or how easy it would be to deliver them).
The atomic bomb was not what put Japan on her knees. The Japanese government had been seeking peace before that happened. If you need quotations on that, I'll provide.

Your arguments on alleged German ignorance about the weapon is laughable. Please do not be offended, but that shows your absolute cluelessness in science, just like with gravity. The Germans were trying to make one themselves, it is only thanks to repeated destructions of the key plants that they never made it. One does not even need to have such plants to estimate how long it takes to manufacture ~50 kg of highly enriched U-235 or make an equal amount of Pu-239. Such estimates can be off by a factor of two or three, but either two or six 20 kiloton bombs are nothing.

And it would have been impossible anyway, for the reasons that you seem to have agreed with.

And the bombing of Berlin need not necessarily kill Hitler or his officers to get the point across.
The Germans were suffering a lot more from the conventional bombing, entire cities were being wiped out, yet they continued their resistance.

Who said the USSR wouldn't exist? I said without Stalin. Maybe it is to you, but the words "Stalin" and "USSR" are not synonymous in my opinion.
My point is that without Stalin the USSR would indeed have fallen in two or three months just like Hitler reckoned. Continue my argument from here.


Yes, and I'm sure the evidence against them was real and the trials fair as was customary in the Soviet Union, particulary under Stalin.
Prove them wrong. Especially the particular case of Тухачевский et al.