There is simply no question that Stalin made a very hard and concerted effort to create a Soviet-Western anti-Nazi alliance in the 30s before, rebuffed, he made the Soviet-nazi Pact to buy time and steal territory. He thought he would have longer before the Nazis attacked than he did, and ignored solid and indisputable very specific evidence of the details of Barbarossa, as well as issuing destructive orders like No Step Back that came close to losing the war in the early days. But the attempted pacts with France and Britain were real and their failure, not Stalin's direct fault, a very great tragedy. They might have stopped the war altogether. We will never know.
I have seen reliable figures if up to 50 million Soviet dead, although 20-25 is probably more accurate and we will never really know. There is no question that either way the destruction visited on the FSU was Biblical in proportion and on a scale not suffered by any nation since the Mongols invaded Russia eight hundred years before, worse with modern warfare,
Sent from my iPad
On Oct 8, 2012, at 9:54 AM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>
>
> Thank you all for the responses to my question(s) on the below thread.
>
> —ravi
>
>
>
> On Sep 28, 2012, at 2:46 PM, Mark DeLucas <mkdelucas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't know very well the history of the lead-up to the Hitler-Stalin pact
>> (if that's what you're referring to), but as to the significance of the
>> USSR's involvement in defeating Nazi -- uncontroversially, it was decisive.
>> Western material aid to the USSR was important, but the latter's success in
>> transporting the bulk of its industry east of the Urals, and therefore
>> beyond the reach of the German army, was more or less sufficient to meeting
>> the long-term armament needs of the Red Army -- the sheer size of which the
>> German's had little long-term chance of overcoming. Indeed, the true
>> turning point of the war, I've always thought, was the failure of the
>> Wehrmacht's final push on Moscow in late 1941; having failed in what has to
>> be considered their only good chance of effecting the collapse of the
>> Soviet regime, the Germans were thereafter (from '42 to '45) fated to be
>> ground down by the overwhelming manpower and material might of the USSR
>> (and, of course, tipping the scales further, the United States).
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 2:25 PM, // ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sep 28, 2012, at 2:13 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>>>> The U.S. didn't defeat the Nazis. The Soviets did.
>>>
>>> I was just going to ask about this. At least the version of history I was
>>> taught put the Battle of Stalingrad at the centre of the turnaround/victory
>>> and attributed the bulk of the credit to the Soviets (of course we in India
>>> had our special relationship with the SU and reasons not to buy too much
>>> into the Churchill worship). Which version is truer? It seems beyond
>>> question that the Soviets took the brunt of the battle with ~ 20 million
>>> dead (9 million or so of that being military).
>>>
>>> The other Western meme that I learnt after I left the old country was the
>>> story that Stalin struck a deal with Hitler, going against the West — newer
>>> investigation seems to show that if at all he did so, that was after his
>>> overtures to the West had been rejected. What’s the modern consensus on
>>> that?
>>>
>>> Apologies for the thread fork,
>>>
>>> —ravi
>
>
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