Sent from my iPad
On Oct 8, 2012, at 10:39 AM, "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> It's hard for people today to realize how much real gloom there was in the
> U.S. in 1942 -- and it was more or less realistic gloom. Had the Germans
> broken through at Stalingrad and at El Alamein -- both real possibilities --
> the last 60 years would have been quite different. I still remember quite
> vividly Gabriel Heater's news broadcast on the eve of El Alamein.
>
> Carrol
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On
>> Behalf Of andie_nachgeborenen
>> Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 10:24 AM
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The effect of drones
>>
>> Both versions of the Soviet victory are correct. Once Hitler lost his
> chance for a
>> quick win at both or either Leningrad and Moscow, material factors vastly
> favor
>> the USSR in the long run. But as with the Union in the the US Civil War,
> the long
>> run can be long, bloody, and tricky. Stalingrad was really the hinge of
> fate
>> (Churchill), the destruction of a whole German Army that also closed off
> Nazi
>> access to the oil in the the Caucasians and ultimately sealed the doom of
> the
>> Nazis. The battle back to Berlin was still incredibly bloody and chancy.
> Kharkov
>> might have turned things around again, for example. But both Soviet
> material
>> superiority, backed by Lend-Lease, and the brilliant victory at Stalingrad
> were key.
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>> ___________________________________
>>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
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