>>>> Brett Knowlton <brettk at unica-usa.com> 12/09/99 04:38PM >>>
>Come on, Charles. The Nazi/Soviet Pact also allowed Stalin to conquer
>Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Eastern Poland without having to worry about
>German interference. The Soviets also invaded Finland. The Soviets
>behaved like imperialists themselves, at least in this respect. Were these
>also necessary evils?
>
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>Charles: No , I would say these were militarily and strategic defensive
moves by a nation that had been highly beleagured by the imperialist
nations( or deleaguered of nations like Ethiopia). There is a complex and
somewhat differentiated historical background to these several nations of
course. But by 1940 the Germans were rapidly mopping up the nations between
Germany and USSR in preparation for their gigantic invasion of USSR. The
Soviet takeovers of the nations you mention was very much a defensive
necessary evil, although it didn't stop the German war machine, the biggest
in the world, when it got going. The stop came much later at Stalingrad.
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This is crap. You sound like Henry Kissinger rationalizing US brutality in South East Asia - bombing Vietnam and Cambodia is a necessary evil. We have to stop the greater threat of the rising tide of Communism, blah, blah, blah. Substitute Poland and Finland for Vietnam and Cambodia and change the year from 1969 to 1939 and Henry Kissinger becomes Charles Brown.
Attacking another country is NEVER a defensive move. Do you think in made any difference to the Poles whether it was the soviets or the nazis who bombed their homes, forced large numbers to relocate and rooted out and murdered the "political undesirables"?
In any case, the Germans mopped up Poland with Russia's assistance. The Nazi-Soviet Pact was vital in this respect. The Germans were worried about a two-front war, since this was a big part of why they lost WWI. Making sure the Russians would not interfere gave Hitler a free hand in Poland and later in France and the low countries (Belgium and Holland).
>Furthermore, the Soviets won the war against Fascism because they were
>attacked. You claim Stalin did this to "prepare for war," but there is no
>reason to believe Stalin ever planned to fight Hitler, at least none that
>I'm aware of. By all accounts the Russians were taken by surprise by the
>German invasion.
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>Charles: There is every reason to believe that the CPSU had been preparing
for years , since they defeated the first imperialist invasion of 14 or so
nations, including the U.S. , Britain, France, Japan , Poland, preparing
to fight some capitalist invasion. It might have been as in 1919 ,a "NATO"
of that day, all the big capitalists of the day in a coalition; or it
certainly may have been Germany ,as it became more evident , as the Nazis
built up their war machine and Hitler openly said that the best place for
the German's to get more land and some slaves was to conquer Russia. The
whole rapid industrialization program that Stalin has been famous and
infamous for was in part a necessary premise for the Soviets to build a
military strong enough to sustain an assault from the powerfully industrial
capitalist nations. So, it is abundantly clear that the Soviets had been
anticipating war from capitalism in some form. They certainly did not
exclude that the Germans would be part o!
>f the attack, and as I say ,definitely so after the Nazis came into power.
The Nazis made it clear that they considered the Communists their main
enemy. See Dimitroff _United Front Against Fascism_.
>
>There are debates as to whether when the German attack actually came that
the Soviets or Stalin or someone did not know immediately ahead of time,
i.e. did not calculate the exact moment of attack correctly. But the German
army was superior. The Soviets won by a sort of sucker punch, rope a dope.
Letting the Germans take a big swing and then catching them when they were
stretched out with a full punch, caught in the Russian winter , etc., etc.
But on the other hand the Soviets couldn't show that by retreating early.
This is also crap. If the Soviets had been preparing for years, why the purges of the military in the '30's? This eliminated a vast swath of the officer corp and weakened, not strenghened, the Soviet military. Could it be that Stalin was more concerned with internal political opposition than with external military threats?
Yes, its true that Stalin and Hitler were ideological enemies, but Stalin played the international game just like the western democracies and Hitler did. Stalin was perfectly willing to cut deals. He decided to make peace with Hitler, and no doubt he was delighted when Hitler attacked France and bombed England.
Only he didn't play this game as well as Hitler did. After conquering France, Hitler was much more powerful than he had been only a year earlier, and Hitler could then fight Russia on his terms.
Finally, your description of Soviet "strategy" is patently absurd. First of all, the Germans had their initial successes because they really did catch the Russians by surprise (despite a massive military buildup by the Germans on the Russian frontier in the summer of 1940). In the initial days there was relatively little actual resistance mounted by the Russians because they were overrun before they even knew what had happened. Besides, its a rare military handbook which suggests handing over vast amounts of territory to your enemy, especially such rich agricultural regions such as the Ukraine.
Secondly, the Russians were able to launch such a successful counterattack during the winter of '40-'41 because the Germans did not provide their troops with proper equipment. Zhukov deserves a great deal of credit as well, as he did an admirable job preparing for and carrying out the counterattack. But this was only part of the story.
Brett