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Originally Posted by bad manners
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Originally Posted by mike
You tell people they have to back up their claims with evidence or else such claims are worthless, yet you provide none yourself! Excellent work, really excellent.
I told you I'd fetch the book and give you a quotation; I just do not have it at hand now. Thanks to N, you have the sources now.
Save your energy. I regret being the last one on the forum to recognize how pointless it is discussing Stalin with N and bad manners. It is my fault for not bothering to fully read the rest of the topic until now.
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120 KIA versus 50 KIA
330 total versus 100 total
It is a normal ratio of casualties when attacking a heavily fortified area. Why do you think anyone planning an offensive wants at least triple numerical superiority?
For one thing, the legitimacy of these numbers is not out of the woods yet. The numbers for the Finnish casualties are attributed to "Finnish sources," yet the endnote refers vaguely to an article in a Soviet magazine from the 80s and another from the early 90s. There is no indication of what these sources were or when/how the numbers were obtained. I just don't understand the double standard you have here, bad manners. The Finns' numbers are skewed because they were the enemy, Kruschev's numbers are skewed because he hated Stalin, so apparently the only person in the world whose figures we can rely on are the pro-Soviet military leader Krivosheev--who, by the way, claims to have based his casual figures on "official Finnish numbers." One cannot really know what that means since: A) while he spends a paragraph explaining the origin of the Red Army statistics he attributes a whole two endnotes to two Russian magazines from 1989 and 1993 for his resources in obtaining the Finnish figures, B) I'm having a hard time finding any numbers similar to these that don't come from the book itself (in other words these mysterious "official Finnish statistics" are nowhere to be found), and C) to my knowledge the Finnish government has never stated that they know for sure the amount of casualties. So either Krivosheev has a really liberal definition for the word "official" (as in, maybe he just asked some guy from Finland once) or he has contact with somebody who for some reason knows these exact casualty numbers down to the ones' place for the Finnish losses yet refuses to reveal himself to the government of Finland. Again, it is just completely insane how you two will refuse to believe anything critical of the position you already have while naively accepting anything that supports such position as the God's truth (which is an ironic choice of words on my part since you remind me of a certain other group that acts like this).
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[quote:20k9v3sx]As far as I know most historical estimates range from 200,000 at the lowest to 600,000 at the highest for Soviet casualties.
That's why I like these "estimates" so much.
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Actually, Kruschev estimated it at 1m, but of course, nothing he said was true so I will not bother mentioning him.
That would have been wise.
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And you question the legitimacy of the Finnish numbers but not the official Soviet ones? Which country would have more to gain by fabricating its casualty lists? The outnumbered victim or the humiliated aggressor with a less than perfect record of honesty?
I question the legitimacy of the Finnish numbers. I'm not aware of any attempts by Finland to correct the outrageous lies about the performance of the adversaries and the casualties. As for the record of honesty, this whole discussion centers around the lies about the USSR, and there are a lot of them. Who has a perfect record of honesty, BTW?[/quote:20k9v3sx]
The whole discussion did center around the lies about Stalin, but all of the people defending this point (you, N, Tupolev) have turned everyone off. All that is left is me because I got here late, and I couldn't care less about this topic. Stalin killed a million people, Stalin killed 200,000 people...Who cares? Arguing about what degree of being an stupid asshole Stalin was is like arguing over which animal is responsible for the mess that you stepped in. Either way you're still talking about a piece of shit. And which do you think is the reason nobody is talking? Because you are right and the vast majority of the world are wrong...or something else that I will be polite and not say?
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[quote:20k9v3sx]
I don't think you will find this ratio in any accounts on Russian history. It was merely an exaggeration of the staggering differences to illustrate a point about the sloppiness of Stalin's failure in Finland.
A failure. Nice. The country won the war, got more than it asked before the war, yet it is a failure. What kind of absurd is that?[/quote:20k9v3sx]
You're right. It's not a failure. Any time 330,000 die needlessly for the sake of imperialism and paranoia it is a glorious victory for the misunderstood Дядя.
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[quote:20k9v3sx]To call the Winter War a Soviet success is a pretty narrow and subjective conclusion of what happened in my opinion.
It was a success. The USSR prevailed.[/quote:20k9v3sx]
And that is indeed a rather narrow and subjective conclusion of what happened.
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[quote:20k9v3sx]If you think losing this many men
The losses are entirely within the normal limits for military operations of that kind.[/quote:20k9v3sx]
No, they aren't. You're thinking of a conventional war, not global conquest. There was no strategic military value in controlling Karelia save that it gave Stalin an easy way to launch an offensive against the capital later. The Winter War was the equivalent of the US involvement in Korea or Vietnam, only they lost a lot more soldiers than the US did in a fraction of the time.
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[quote:20k9v3sx]and coming out of it with 10% of the land that you intended to conquer
The USSR never wanted to get the whole of Finland. It wanted a small piece of it only. And it got more than what was asked before the war.[/quote:20k9v3sx]
Once again you are the most gullible person in the world. It "wanted" just a small piece of Lithuania too. What happened there? This is how Stalin annexed countries. It was standard practice for him. Maybe he learned it from Hitler with the Sudetenland, I don't know. You can't possibly be that naive though to believe Stalin was not planning to invade Finland. He spent most of the 1930s trying to bolster a Finnish revolution and subvert the government. When the USSR declared war on Finland part of the declaration even stated that the Red Army would march to Helsinki and seize its power. Had the Finns not given such a surprisingly strong resistance in one of the worst winters in history it is hard to believe this would not have come true.
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[quote:20k9v3sx]is a victory then do me a favor and don't ever become a military leader. That is psychotic.
Any war results in casualties. An offensive against a strongly fortified area results in greater casualties. So what? That's war for you. Stalin wanted to get that without waging a war, but the Finns were stubborn.[/quote:20k9v3sx]
Aw, so Stalin was trying to do it the easy way! It was Finland's fault for not giving up their territory to him. This is so idiotic. You are apparently nothing but an empty-headed apologist for every crime ever committed by this man. How you can even come to the conclusion that a country is to blame for defending its interests against someone who wants to annex part of their land is beyond me. I tell you what: Let Washington make a nice offer to Moscow for a piece of Russia with half a million inhabitants living on it and we'll see if you defend our President for wanting to do things the peaceful way while your country was too stubborn to acquiesce. When we lose a great deal of soldiers but Russia is weak and gives in, you can write all you want in here defending our country to all the naysayers poisoned by propaganda from other "democratic nations" and use the unbiased, impartial resources by the neocon patriots like Wall Street Journal and Fox News.
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[quote:20k9v3sx]Great. I really do not want to spend my time thinking of all the logistical reasons why Stalin lost his evil, imperialist war against Finland. But I think it shows he is not the tactical genius you seem to believe he was.
Did I ever say he was a tactical genius? He had his generals and marshals for it. Strategically, the winter war was a success. As far as I know, it was the world's first large offensive on that (difficult) kind of terrain, in that kind of climate, and against that kind of fortifications. Even if a few mistakes were made in the beginning, that was because nobody had done it before. Not to mention that the experience derived from that war could be more important than the immediate results of the war.[/quote:20k9v3sx]
Don't care.
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But we were comparing with Trotsky. Poland was a real failure, both in political and military terms. It was what stopped the "world revolution" once and for all. And I'm afraid the losses were heavier, because the army was beat.
We were...but you never replied to my last argument pertaining to him. You began talking only about the Winter War. I am still waiting for this response. And the world revolution never existed to begin with. It was all in the Communist Party's imagination because the foreign representatives were too gutless to tell the Bolsheviks that the masses in the Western world were not going to come and save them from the blockades. Instead they would just say, "Yeah...any day now we are expecting the revolution here in France/England/US. The workers there have seen what can be accomplished and are becoming restless." With the exception of Germany it was total bullshit. So Trotsky stopped nothing that didn't already fail to exist, and it is no surprise the Red Army failed to secure Warsaw. Trotsky openly protested being sent there at all, considering the entire thing to be a disaster waiting to happen.