[lbo-talk] stalin vs. hitler, the comic book

[andie nachgeborenen]

Of course I don't deny, indeed I insist, on the
centrality of the Soviet role in defeating Hitler. But
I was addressing the claim that the Brits and the
Americans didn't do "squat," which is ignorant; you
don'ta ddress this, and I was disputing the idea that
Stalin's contribution to the Soviet victory outweighed
his detriment to that cause. You pick on my missing
the date of Z's appointment to the General Staff, but
you miss the key thing, which include Stalin's
decimation of the Red Army, and his terrible
_strategic_ mishandling of the space and time won by
the Pact, and his refusal to take countermeasures when
he had reliable information about the attack -- all of
which you can find in Erickson, whom I have read.
Fugate I haven't. 

It doesn't address this to say, well, Stalin used the
time to build a lot of industrial plants -- which then
had to be dragged back over the Urals in the terrible
summer and fall of 41 because Stalin made criminal
errors that allowed the Nazis to be knocking at the
gates of Moscow in the winter of 41. So, I stand my my
appraisal. Stalin was a disaster as a war leader, not
just a vicious psychopathic thug and the hangman of
socialism. jks

--- John Mage <jmage at panix.com> wrote:
> Justin wrote:
>  >> Stalin was a brutal thug, but he was a brutal
> thug who just happens
>  >> to have saved civilization. Churchill and
> Roosevelt didn't do
>  >> squat. Stalin is a demon-figure in the West, not
> in Russia...
> 
>  > Well, both of these claims could be debated.
> 
> Not only could be, but have been here, by us.
> 
> See, e.g.:
> 
> <http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0011/0349.html>
> <http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0011/0534.html>
> 
> The work of leading experts John Erickson and Bryan
> Fugate are readily
> accessible in English, and they are still as against
> your
> Stalinophobically obsessed version as they were
> three years ago. But now
> you have added some truly ignorant nonsense, of
> which the most ignorant:
> 
>  > his generalship in the early stages of the war
> was disasterous,
>  > nearly fatal, until he got Zukhov and some other
> folks who knew what
>  > they were doing into the military leadership.
> 
> Look Justin, Zhukov became Chief of the General
> Staff on January 31, 1941.
> _January 31, 1941_  Not 1943 or 2003.  January 31,
> _1941_
> Five months before the Nazi invasion.
> 
> And before trotting this stuff out again, at least
> read Fugate and read
> Erickson and above all...read Zhukov. Writing after
> Khruschev's "secret
> speech", when criticism of  Stalin went from being
> dangerous to being
> encouraged (and if you read Zhukov you will see he
> made many criticisms
> of Stalin), this is his judgment on the claim that
> the 1939-1941 period
> was "wasted":
> "On the whole, the tremendous production capacities
> built ...especially
> in the three years preceding the war, provided a
> sound basis for the
> country's defence capability."
> G. Zhukov, _Reminiscences and Reflections_ [English
> ed.] (Progress :
> Moscow) Vol. 1, p. 230.
> I recommend, if you would like an informed account
> of the plusses and
> minusses of the USSR's (damn it, not "Stalin's")
> preparation that you
> read Zhukov's Chapter 9 "Eve of the War" (Vol 1, pp.
> 227-279).
> 
> And of course the USSR played the leading role in
> the defeat of Hitler.
> You know the disparity in casualties with the US &
> UK. And you know that
> the defeat of the Nazis before Moscow in the winter
> of 1941-2 happened
> before any US supplies had been received. And you
> know that the Nazis
> had been strategically defeated the east _before_ 
> Normandy. Denying the
> primary role of the USSR in the defeat of Hitler is
> cold war drivel, and
> neither worthy of you nor probably intended by you.
> But, unfortunately,
> that's the impression this silly post left.
> 
> john mage
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ___________________________________
>
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