Smitty-48 wrote:
Yes, well, Suvorov goes over it, point by point, to show that Beevor doesn't know what he's talking about, and in fact the Soviets were massed, and ready to attack, and fully stocked, and had the better kit as well, and how the Germans actually took advantage of all that, after they encircled the Soviets and then plundered all their kit and stores to be repurposed to Barbarossa.
This may not be a question you can answer, but if there is academic politics at play in suppressing the true Soviet 1941 intentions, who benefits? The soviet union has been defeated, and before that we hated the shit out of them for half a century. This sort of revisionism would be wildly popular in America. What motive in academia would they have for suppressing the truth?
Yeah, I don't this as real suppression of their intentions, b/c like you said we had a ideological and Cold War with them for 50 years so wouldn't we want to blame them to? We sure as shit don't want to talk about the Russian colossus being a main reason why Nazism was defeated. We want to emphasize lend lease , american jeeps etc. and the Battle of the Bulge for god sake and not the Osfront. and how that war was the biggest "war" of all time taken alone.
Matt Welch and Moynihan say that almost all literature written about the soviet union during the cold war was favorable to them. buncha disloyal bolshie leftists somehow dodged getting the rope.
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2017 5:09 pm
by Smitty-48
GloryofGreece wrote:Good exchange and entertainment between Kotkin and Zizek on Stalin. And some of the shit we've been talking about.
I do agree wholeheartedly with Zizek that Stalin was shaped by the politics, but I still believe that his psychopathy enabled his prowess therein, I don't say that as some sort of "liberal-bourgeois" explanation for why Dzugashvilli became Stalin, I simply assert that Dzugashvilli was still in there, the little gangster, making the Big Gangster so much more formidable, because Stalin possessed both the diabolical nature of the Ultra Bolshevik, but it was advised by a streetwise gangsterism as well, he wasn't a soldier, he wasn't a politician, he wasn't at all academic, it's like when they said the Cali Cartel in Colombia had a "Cali KGB", but in fact, Stalin's use of the NKVD was just as Cali as the Cali Cartel's.
It's like Trotsky, he apparently didn't get it, he's acting like it's just some political rival who is after him, when it's the Cali Cartel coming from Colombia, dude, dead man walking and he's hanging like "ain't no thang". The Bolshies were bourgeois themselves, buncha college boy academics, and then there's Stalin, the shark amongst the seals, eating them all, one by one.
Hitler was more like Pablo Escobar, he wanted to be loved, but Stalin, he was next level, he was straight up reptillian, taking it from Medellin, to Cali...
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 6:33 am
by GloryofGreece
I know it was folly to invade Russia in the first place. But having done that, should the Nazis have taken Moscow instead of Kiev? Would it have made a difference in 1942/43?
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2017 2:52 pm
by TheReal_ND
GloryofGreece wrote:I know it was folly to invade Russia in the first place. But having done that, should the Nazis have taken Moscow instead of Kiev? Would it have made a difference in 1942/43?
I don't think it would have done much if they took Moscow really. Napolean had done as much. It doesn't really matter to Russians if you take Moscow like napolean did. They just fight you from Kiev. Like, if Canada invaded us and took D.C. (well they've done that before kind of,) it wouldn't end anything. Taking a capital is kind of a ace in the hole when you are at a table signing peace treaties I guess.
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2017 6:54 pm
by GloryofGreece
Nukedog wrote:
GloryofGreece wrote:I know it was folly to invade Russia in the first place. But having done that, should the Nazis have taken Moscow instead of Kiev? Would it have made a difference in 1942/43?
I don't think it would have done much if they took Moscow really. Napolean had done as much. It doesn't really matter to Russians if you take Moscow like napolean did. They just fight you from Kiev. Like, if Canada invaded us and took D.C. (well they've done that before kind of,) it wouldn't end anything. Taking a capital is kind of a ace in the hole when you are at a table signing peace treaties I guess.
Yeah I get the Napoleon reference but that was 120 years before. Was wondering if in the interim Moscow developed into a more strategic valuable city logistics and supple wise for the Soviets? Plus theyd encircled St. Petersburg as well and that would give them Western Russia totally. I wonder when precisely did Stalin send all that manufacturing into Siberia and if the Nazis could cut a lot of it off by taking Moscow by say two months into their invasion...
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 8:16 pm
by Okeefenokee
I agree with Dan that shit would have been a whole lot different to take Moscow in WW2 than it was when Napoleon did.
Hitler also could have accepted either of the two offers of surrender that Stalin sent. That would have also worked.
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 8:24 pm
by Speaker to Animals
What does it matter that you capture a capital if you can't stop them from producing more arms and equipment, and their armed forces are still able to resist?
And that's WW2. These days, even if you destroy their army, what's left of it goes underground and changes up to insurgency mode.
The only way to really do it any more is to be totally Roman about it. If you want to occupy Iraq, crucify hajis on the interstate from Kuwait to Baghdad. You have to be as brutal as ISIS, and we don't have it in us.
I mean.. if we are threatened, we will exterminate people. But we don't have the fortitude or inclination to so abuse a surrendered population.
1940s Germans.. maybe. But they couldn't really defeat the Soviets without losing to the Allies, so it was a fool's errand.
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:07 am
by StCapps
GloryofGreece wrote:
Nukedog wrote:
GloryofGreece wrote:I know it was folly to invade Russia in the first place. But having done that, should the Nazis have taken Moscow instead of Kiev? Would it have made a difference in 1942/43?
I don't think it would have done much if they took Moscow really. Napolean had done as much. It doesn't really matter to Russians if you take Moscow like napolean did. They just fight you from Kiev. Like, if Canada invaded us and took D.C. (well they've done that before kind of,) it wouldn't end anything. Taking a capital is kind of a ace in the hole when you are at a table signing peace treaties I guess.
Yeah I get the Napoleon reference but that was 120 years before. Was wondering if in the interim Moscow developed into a more strategic valuable city logistics and supple wise for the Soviets? Plus theyd encircled St. Petersburg as well and that would give them Western Russia totally. I wonder when precisely did Stalin send all that manufacturing into Siberia and if the Nazis could cut a lot of it off by taking Moscow by say two months into their invasion...
Moscow was far more strategically important to Russia in WWII than in 1812, it was the rail hub of the Soviet Union, but taking it wouldn't have ended the war, it would just be a major setback.
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 7:13 am
by GloryofGreece
Okeefenokee wrote:I agree with Dan that shit would have been a whole lot different to take Moscow in WW2 than it was when Napoleon did.
Hitler also could have accepted either of the two offers of surrender that Stalin sent. That would have also worked.
Do you have a link to Stalins "offers of surrender"...never heard of that.
Re: A perspective on Hitler's motivations
Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:29 am
by Alexander PhiAlipson
GloryofGreece wrote:
Okeefenokee wrote:I agree with Dan that shit would have been a whole lot different to take Moscow in WW2 than it was when Napoleon did.
Hitler also could have accepted either of the two offers of surrender that Stalin sent. That would have also worked.
Do you have a link to Stalins "offers of surrender"...never heard of that.