report

report

Rovenkar’s completely wrong, but this isn’t correct either. The only western government that was sympathetic to the loyalists in the Spanish Civil War was France; the UK and others adopted a stance of false neutrality which starved the loyalists of supplies. The west was deathly afraid of communism spreading, even more so than fascism up until the late 1930′s.

report

report

The USSR officially lost 27 million combined military and civilian dead, although given the number of unregistered and undocumented settlements in the Ukraine and Belorussia, that number is generally believed to be conservative. German losses are disputed, ranging from a rather low-sounding 6 million to a rather high-sounding 14 million.

“The troops lost by Russians in the first year of war were actually the best-equipped. Poor supply had been the issue in 42-43 due to the need to push as many people into service as possible. It has nothing to do with Stalin’s bloodthirstiness – he just needed to replace the losses sustained in 41. Poorly equipped soldiers are better than surrender, don’t you think?”

The troops lost by Russia in 1941 were actually relatively poorly equipped, with few units equipped with the T-34 tank (which scared the hell of the German high command, as even Panzer IVs had to score half a dozen direct hits at medium to close range to be sure of a kill and could be picked off in turn from long range), few airfields equipped with modern aircraft (the Luftwaffe mostly encountering Yaks in Barbarossa until they had a nasty surprise when MiG-5s and Sturmokovics entered the fray) and few units equipped with modern artillery or rocket batteries. Actually, the troops lost in Barbarossa were the ones that Russia could most afford to lose, as if they’d lost all their T-34s, decent aircraft and heavy artillery in the opening weeks of the war they’d have been really screwed when the Germans reached Leningrad and Moscow.

“UK and US allowed Germans to progress ’cause they wanted it to get rid of Russia, not being glad to have a competitor with developed industry and superior ideology. Actually, they encouraged Hitler to attack Russia. If my memory serves me right, British Prime Minister said that they’ll see who’s winning and aid the losing side, so that both Germans and Russians would have lost the greatest deal possible. Unfortunately, it worked. Seeing that now they try to pin the blame on Russian military command for going for Berlin in the end is really amusing.”

This is nonsense. In the late 1930s Churchill was deeply suspicious of Russia and Stalin and regarded them as an eventual threat, but his opinion (irrelevant at that point as he was not in government) was in the minority. Most of the British and American governments were favourably inclined to Russia because they had helped out the underdogs in the Spanish Civil War and there was a lot of admiration for Russia’s economic redevelopment (the cost in lives not being known outside of Russia at that time). They did not regard Russia as a military threat because of the way it had its ass handed to it by Germany in WWI. They also regarded Communism as a more beneficial ideology than Fascism, which the West was extremely suspicious of. British policy in the late 1930s was to maintain a three-way alliance with Russia and France to contain Germany.

The reason this idea collapsed was because France and Britain refused to invade Germany in 1938 after Czechoslovakia fell when Russia was willing to go in, and because their ally Poland would not allow Russian soldiers to cross its borders. At that point Stalin came to regard the West as too weak-willed to stand against Hitler, so when Hitler came calling with the olive branch Stalin was receptive to the idea. Stalin’s theory was that Germany would not be able to defeat France and Britain until 1941 or so, and would then take another year or two to rebuild and attack Russia. As a result, Stalin didn’t reorganise the Red Army as urgently as he should have done.

“It’s worth remembering that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact before WW2 was signed by Stalin in order to encourage a UK/French war against Germany, thus weaking/destroying those countries prior to future Soviet expansion.”

Actually, Stalin thought that France and the UK would not fight without Russia’s aid, so when he signed the pact he was guessing that France and Britain would sit out Germany’s invasion of Poland (which was blatantly imminent) and wouldn’t do anything until/unless Germany attacked France directly. Neither Stalin nor Hitler were expecting them to declare war over Poland, although given they didn’t do anything to help Poland either, this was a bit of an empty gesture.

At the time of the Pact, Stalin thought a showdown with Germany possible but was still a few years away. In the meantime, and this actually seems to have become a stronger view the longer the Pact went on, he actually quite liked the idea of Germany and Russia fighting as allies, as he thought that together they could conquer the world or something. Even after Germany turned on Russia Stalin had a tendency to say things like, “Ah, what great things we could have done had we stayed friends!” An odd display of sentimentality and lack of realism from the man.

report

report

In addition, the West was deeply concerned about the Russian juggernaut overrunning Germany, to the point where at the end of the war Churchill anxiously pushed for the Brits and Americans to get to Berlin first and ensure the demarcation line between the Allied and Russian areas of control was as far east as possible. He was overruled on military grounds (by Eisenhower, who deemed Berlin of no strategic importance) and on political ones by Roosevelt and later Truman, who were both very heavily blinkered when it came to Stalin and his motives.

Certainly in Barbarossa Britain and later the USA (who didn’t enter the war against Germany until six months after Barbarossa began, in fact not until four days after the Russians halted the German advance on Moscow and forced them to retreat) were unable to send much help to the Russians that made much of a difference at the start, only later on when the Russians were grateful for the American-built jeeps and trucks and the British-built Spitfires they used to equip several squadrons (but not the American Sherman M4s, which they thought was some kind of joke and left behind to guard their rear supply areas whilst their proper T-34 tanks did the heavy work on the front).

report

report

report

And the music is entirely inappropriate and yes it’s from Last of the Mohicans.

report

report

report