Allies against fascism?

[Justin Schwartz]

Charles doesn't actually challenge anything I said that was concrete in 
critizing Stalin's follies vis a vis Hitler. I might have added to the purge 
of the Army, the moving the defense lines in '39, the refusal to accept 
correct information about June 22, '41, and the "provocation" order, the 
insane "not one step back" order that lost the Soviets literally millions of 
men in the first mad days of the war. In fact, Stalin developed into a 
tolerable leader after having his (and our) ass saved by the unbelievable 
heroism of the Soviet people. Partly this was because he did eventually 
deign to listen to people like Rossokovsky, whom he had chucked into a 
concentration camp, or Zukhov  and Chuikov (a pair of bastards, but good 
soldiers), at least while the war hung the balance.  As a politician, 
especially operating against the allies in the later days of the war, Stalin 
was unparalleled. As a military leader, he was no better than Hitler, who 
was in fact pretty good,a nd maybe not as good. I don't think his 
"philosophy," which was in fact idealistic, had anything to do with it. 
Hitler never read Heidegger, probably never hear of him, and almost 
certainly never read Nietzsche, who is btw not an idealist. --jks
>
>  I wouldn't mind giving up old , ugly Stalin, and giving all the credit to 
>the working masses, afterall, masses not great men make history. But, 
>realistically, it is difficult to see how even the superduper Soviet people 
>could have carried off such an unbelievably difficult 
>accomplishment/"miracle", if the top guy had been a total incompetent. I 
>can understand not wanting to associate anything whatsoever positive with 
>the person Joseph Stalin. Yet, reality is more contradictory than story 
>book versions of history,where the heroes are completely virtuous. Looking 
>at the situation as a whole, making the inferences, it seems that an 
>absolutely horrible individual, did a competent job in an extremely 
>difficult task of avoiding being annihilated by the biggest army on earth, 
>and even annihilating that army. One way to think of it is that Stalin's 
>ruthlessness and shrewdness in the Party infighting served him well in the 
>outfighting with the Nazis.
>
>Stalin also might have  had the advantage that his philosophy was 
>materialism from Marx and Engels, while Hitler was an idealist, i.e. 
>nightmaring,  with Heidegger and Nietzsche  allegedly ( *) as his 
>philosophers. :>))
>
>*  http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a03.shtml
>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a04.shtml
>http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a05.shtml
>

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