Was Stalin a Communist?

[Lord Baal]

Then you missed my point, since I meant to say that Germany could withstand such a pre-emptive assault and end up better overall by invading Turkey, or even invade Turkey simultaneously with the USSR and still be better off. Especially considering the USSR would need to reroute troops to the Caucasus in such scenario.

However, even then, it might not be unimaginable that Stalin would have bought a German invasion of Turkey anyhow, and far from becoming hostile to Germany would instead be tempted to come to Germany's aid ala Poland, and take Turkish Armenia, which was something the USSR also considered doing after the war (though Turkish membership of the NATO prevented it).



All of this, of course, assumes Bulgarian support for an invasion of Turkey was necessary, which totally isn't the case. Bulgaria's support for the Axis in a military sense was completely negligible, and the Bulgarians were in because of political benefits for the Axis, and certainly not because of military ones.

A very small amount of the USSR's wartime commerce travelled through the Dardanelles in OTL, largely due to the Italian threat to Mediterranean commerce. As such, the German closing of the Straights would not actually impugn Societ ability to prosecute the war. For this plan to actually have any merit, Germany would have to seize the entire north of the country and attack the Caucasian oil fields. There are several mountains in the way which make the defence of those fields from the southwest reasonably simple.

While Germany may very well succeed in closing the Straights, all they would accomplish is opening another front and gaining themselves a new enemy, since they were not capable of actually taking and subduing Turkey, a not-insignificant military power - more so than any country Germany conquered, as a matter of fact, except France. Poland likely had a better military, but Turkey's natural defences would give it an edge. That extra front would enable Soviet forces to concentrate against the Germans in Romania, then Hungary. With Germany now deprived of oil, controlling the Dardanelles wouldn't mean much.

Stalin could not have permitted a Great Power - and Germany certainly qualified - control of the Straights. That was a pinnacle of Russian foreign policy for centuries, and while Stalin dropped several Czarist foreign policy issues, he was not about to let Germany control the Dardanelles. The Soviets would have launched an immediate assault on the Germans if they had tried to pull that. Armenia was itself merely a means of prodding Turkey into granting joint control of the Straights to the USSR.

How are those German troops getting to Turkey without crossing Bulgaria? Why would Bulgaria grant the Axis transit rights without a share of the spoils? And why would Hitler allow them spoils without forcing them to make even a token military effort?

 

[r16]

... Turkish Armenia ...

All of this, of course, assumes Bulgarian support for an invasion of Turkey was necessary, which totally isn't the case. Bulgaria's support for the Axis in a military sense was completely negligible, and the Bulgarians were in because of political benefits for the Axis, and certainly not because of military ones.

trust me , there is no such thing .

for the paragraph , Germans were quite content to allow the Bulgarian Army to cover their flank , in case we came . Before the coup in Yugoslavia , one Panzer division was earmarked to Bulgaria in any case for the same task .

 

[ParkCungHee]

The Nazis were often big on talk and lacking in follow through. The Japanese, OTOH, when it came to fanaticism, tended to deliver.

Yes, if there's one thing the Nazis were known for it's their practical, reasonable bent and lack of ideological fanaticism.

The idea that surrender was a terrible moral wrong was quite firmly believed by the military, perhaps even more-so by the leadership, and not uncommon among civilians.

As compared to say Karl Doenitz's plan to continue the war from Flensburg.

In addition the Japanese gov had both less regard for the inevitable plight of civilians, and fewer resources to cope with the aftermath of an invasion.

Nazis, also apparently known for their concern for the plight of civilians.

Words

And there we go. Downfall can't be discussed on it's own. It has to be part of a narrative.

 

[Tarquelne]

Yes, if there's one thing the Nazis were known for it's their practical, reasonable bent and lack of ideological fanaticism.

Ah, snark. You *imply* the Nazis were just as bad if not worse while ignoring the differences I pointed out.

It's OK, I guess... but too obviously merely a rhetorical gesture IMO.

Nazis, also apparently known for their concern for the plight of civilians.

First: The same as above. I mean, really, look at this possible response to mentioning Doenitz's plan: "So... just one guy?" See? Lame.

("But... Nazis!" Talk about trying to fit things into a narrative. )

Second: Relatively speaking - yeah, very much so. Especially when you consider the way they thought about their own people, which is what we were discussing. US Republicans would be horrified with the lack of foresight or effort the Japanese leadership put toward long-term upkeep or maintenance of even their military, let alone the boring, non-glorious civilian world.

"Words"
And there we go. Downfall can't be discussed on it's own. It has to be part of a narrative.

Hello! Your reply being nothing but evasive snark, lets talk about "narrative". You keep harping on others pushing one while blithely behaving as if major military or political decisions occur in a vacuum, with absolutely no regard for the consequences of alternatives to action or (and this is what I like to harp on) non-action, or the relevance of the goals and information available to the historical actors. I know you're not a complete idiot, so wonder if you're the one trying to make history fit into some preconceived narrative. What that narrative is, I'm not sure.

It *could* be "A-bombs" are bad, but everybody knows that. It could be "America's WWII leadership was racist." But I don't see how the A-bombs in particular follow from that. It could be "America's WWII leadership was too hyped-up on power, glory, and sheer technocratic arrogance to seriously consider not using the A-bombs regardless of Downfall's prospects." But ... no. While I think that's an interesting question and quite possibly true, looking over your posts again I can only conclude that you're a fanboi of major amphibious invasions and feel cheated that history didn't give you a super-Normandy or, at least as likely, a slightly-genocidal debacle.

So... we're done now? I think so. I really do.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Ah, snark. You *imply* the Nazis were just as bad if not worse while ignoring the differences I pointed out.

And you implied the Nazi state was not motivated by ideological fanaticism.

First: The same as above. I mean, really, look at this possible response to mentioning Doenitz's plan: "So... just one guy?" See? Lame.

So Fanatical resistance is only fanatical if it has a high degree of success? I can absolutely say then that there was not a single fanatic in the Japanese military in 1945.

("But... Nazis!" Talk about trying to fit things into a narrative. )

I don't think you know what that word means.

Second: Relatively speaking - yeah, very much so. Especially when you consider the way they thought about their own people, which is what we were discussing. US Republicans would be horrified with the lack of foresight or effort the Japanese leadership put toward long-term upkeep or maintenance of even their military, let alone the boring, non-glorious civilian world.

Again, you seem to vastly overestimate how callous, cruel and negligent the Nazi government was.

Hello! Your reply being nothing but evasive snark, lets talk about "narrative". You keep harping on others pushing one while blithely behaving as if major military or political decisions occur in a vacuum, with absolutely no regard for the consequences of alternatives to action or (and this is what I like to harp on) non-action, or the relevance of the goals and information available to the historical actors.

I've never talked about the availability of information to the actors, because that's irrelevant to whether or not their assessments were correct. And yes, the difficulty of conquering Japan by conventional forces does occur in a vacuum from the atomic bomb. It's not like the creation of the atomic bomb suddenly made the islands more difficult to invade, by some sort of law of Bioware plots.

I know you're not a complete idiot, so wonder if you're the one trying to make history fit into some preconceived narrative. What that narrative is, I'm not sure.

You can't figure out what narrative I'm pushing for, but I must be pushing for something.

It *could* be "A-bombs" are bad, but everybody knows that. It could be "America's WWII leadership was racist." But I don't see how the A-bombs in particular follow from that. It could be "America's WWII leadership was too hyped-up on power, glory, and sheer technocratic arrogance to seriously consider not using the A-bombs regardless of Downfall's prospects." But ... no. While I think that's an interesting question and quite possibly true, looking over your posts again I can only conclude that you're a fanboi of major amphibious invasions and feel cheated that history didn't give you a super-Normandy or, at least as likely, a slightly-genocidal debacle.

So... we're done now? I think so. I really do.

So you're kind of thinking literally only allows for interpretation of events to be determined by some outside motivation?

I guess that's how you concluded I'm a military fanboi.

 

[Lord Baal]

Second: Relatively speaking - yeah, very much so. Especially when you consider the way they thought about their own people, which is what we were discussing. US Republicans would be horrified with the lack of foresight or effort the Japanese leadership put toward long-term upkeep or maintenance of even their military, let alone the boring, non-glorious civilian world.

Say what? You're aware that during the latter stages of the war the number of rapes by German soldiers actually increased, despite the fact that they were now on German soil, where the only available women were German? That Adolf Hitler planned a scorched earth policy that would have killed more Germans than the war and the Morgenthau plan combined, which was only thwarted by Albert Speer's - and others, but Speer's name is the only one that comes to mind now - refusal to obey the order? That the Nazi treatment of German civilians was astonishingly poor, even before the outbreak of war?

Have you heard of the euthanasia program? The forced labour camps for schoolteachers and university professors? The murder of political dissidents?

The Germans treated their own citizens just as callously as the Japanese treated theirs.

 

[Tarquelne]

The Germans treated their own citizens just as callously as the Japanese treated theirs.

Sorry, I was focusing on why Downfall was a bad idea and addressing the way the govs differed in their readiness and planning to provide for their people overall - at least the ones they still liked - not the many and various atrocities committed. Sure, morally they were both in the toilet but that doesn't mean they harbored the exact same capacities for further resistance, post-war disaster relief or ... well, anything, in either quality or quantity.

 

[Lone Wolf]

That the Nazi treatment of German civilians was astonishingly poor, even before the outbreak of war?

Have you heard of the euthanasia program? The forced labour camps for schoolteachers and university professors? The murder of political dissidents?

To be fair, the majority of Nazi violence was still directed "outwards". Quite nasty and violent types, these Nazis <rolls eyes, sipping a cup of tea>.

 

[Gucumatz]

Random story to go along with the point Baal is making about poor treatment of German citizens by the regime -

In my German side of the family's small farmers' town there were several young boys just below the potential age for the army. Three of them didn't want to enter and they were brothers. Whoever was responsible for recruiting talked to the mother of the boys and when she wouldn't agree to convince them, the recruiter shot one of the young boys in both legs so that he really couldn't fight and threatened to do the same to the others if they didn't join up.

 

[Hygro]

I really liked Cheezy's post. And I liked Reindeer's post.

Reindeer I invite you to voice your disagreement with whether Stalin was a good communist or not. Disregard that this isn't the tavern, look at the rest of this thread.

TF do you have anything more detailed? Anyone else?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Reindeer I invite you to voice your disagreement with whether Stalin was a good communist or not. Disregard that this isn't the tavern, look at the rest of this thread.

I just wish I had my copy of The Essential Stalin Introduction, because Bruce Franklin's arguments as to Staljn's merits as a Communist are more eloquently put.

Strong's The Stalin Era, albeit from a progressive non-Commumist, speaks volumes to achievements under Stalin's leadership.

Franklin, a once-radical Maoist, argues that since all history is presented from a class perspective, most of what we read about Stalin came from people who were his class enemies. Yet, a billion peoe around the world still know, read amd follow his works. Even Fidel's most harsh criticisms were not in question of Stalin's "communism" but in signing a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Fidel said "To blame everything on Stalin would be simplistic."

One of my principle arguments that Stalin was a good communist comes his "Address to the Graduates from the
Red Army Academies" 1935 :

Can it be said that our people have fully grasped and realised the great significance of this new slogan? ["Cadres decide everythin"]
I would not say that. Otherwise, there would not have been the outrageous attitude towards people, towards cadres, towards workers, which we not infrequently observe in practice. The slogan "Cadres decide everything" demands that our leaders should display the most solicitous attitude towards our workers, "little" and "big," no matter in what sphere they are engaged, cultivating them assiduously, assisting them when they need support, encouraging them when they show their first successes, promoting them, and so forth. Yet we meet in practice in a number of cases with a soulless, bureaucratic, and positively outrageous attitude towards workers. This, indeed, explains why instead of being studied, and placed at their posts only after being studied, people are frequently flung about like pawns. People have learned to value machinery and to make reports on how many machines we have in our mills and factories. But I do not know of a single instance when a report was made with equal zest on the number of people we trained in a given period, on how we have assisted people to grow and become tempered in their work. How is this to be explained? It is to be explained by the fact that we have not yet learned to value people, to value workers, to value cadres.
I recall an incident in Siberia, where I lived at one time in exile. It was in the spring, at the time of the spring floods. About thirty men went to the river to pull out timber which had been carried away by the vast, swollen river. Towards evening they returned to the village, but with one comrade missing. When asked where the thirtieth man was, they replied indifferently that the thirtieth man had "remained there." To my question, "How do you mean, remained there?" they replied with the same indifference, "Why ask - drowned, of course." And thereupon one of them began to hurry away, saying, "I've got to go and water the mare." When I reproached them with having more concern for animals than for men, one of them said, amid the general approval of the rest : "Why should we be concerned about men? We can always make men. But a mare...just try and make a mare." (Animation.) Here you have a case, not very significant perhaps, but very characteristic. It seems to me that the indifference of certain of our leaders to people, to cadres, their inability to value people, is a survival of that strange attitude of man to man displayed in the episode in far off Siberia that I have just related.
And so, comrades, if we want successfully to get over the dearth of people and to provide our country with sufficient cadres capable of advancing technique and setting it going, we must first of all, learn to value people, to value cadres, to value every worker capable of benefitting our common cause. It is time to realise that of all the valuable capital the world possesses, the most valuable and most decisive is people, cadres. It must be realised that under our present conditions "cadres decide everything."
If we have good and numerous cadres in industry, agriculture, transport, and the army - our country will be invincible. If we do not have such cadres - we shall be lame on both legs.

Food for thought, imo.

 

[Hygro]

I'm pretty certain most of the demagogues of the world said something equally positive and universal about those they included as "people" at some point or another. You don't get to rule without having some kind of positive, constructivist side.


But Reindeer, I got the vibe earlier but I get the vibe much stronger with your last post, and I can't help but be reminded of Carl Schmitt on The Political. I've been referencing here lately, a bit, but what you are defining as a class struggle just looks like an assertion of us vs. them, with us as the good guys, and them as the bad guys. So any critic of Stalin is therefore the bad guy. Which further proves Stalin is the good guy, because he has critics who are therefore the bad guy.

That scares me. The guy who wrote the theory of The Political had such a hard on for the value of The Political being the central organizer of people that he quite happily joined the local racial-fascist party after they assumed power in his country. Some dude named Hitler or something.


In the framework of the political, taken to its conclusion, us and them is as good and as evil as we can make ourselves, the us, believe. Maybe the people critical of Stalin are not criticizing him because Stalin was their enemy, but Stalin was their "enemy" because he was a heinous polito-genocidal totalitariocrat worth criticizing? Or perhaps Stalin wasn't even their enemy, he just, after weighing the pros and cons, weighted unfavorably enough that the criticisms were the important conversation.

The ability to see a complex picture is good, but if we start calling state sponsored mass killings in the name of economic or "class" progress enough to make someone a good communist, I'm not sure I see any advantage whatsoever. It starts looking less like a philosophy and more like an identity.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I don't mean to over-simplify, but I am referring both to a CLASS identity more than an identity. If in fact I viewed all of Stalin's critics as enemies, then Hugo and Fidel would be on the list, and they are not. I am saying what most people read about Stalin has a necessary historical bias.

It's not "Good v. Evil" but the People v. a system that exploits 99% for the gain of the less-than-1%.

It is often, imho, the over-complication of class struggle that often stands as an obstacle to progress.

 

[Hygro]

I don't mean to over-simplify, but I am referring both to a CLASS identity more than an identity. If in fact I viewed all of Stalin's critics as enemies, then Hugo and Fidel would be on the list, and they are not. I am saying what most people read about Stalin has a necessary historical bias.

It's not "Good v. Evil" but the People v. a system that exploits 99% for the gain of the less-than-1%.

It is often, imho, the over-complication of class struggle that often stands as an obstacle to progress.

How we treat those least well off pretty well clues us into the amount of oppression a system has.

I think those being sent to labor-until-death camps are definitely the least well off.

Spoiler :nya: :

 

[ReindeerThistle]

How we treat those least well off pretty well clues us into the amount of oppression a system has.

I think those being sent to labor-until-death camps are definitely the least well off.

In the US, maybe, and Nazi Germany, but Cheezy has a few things more to say about Gulags than I do. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was captured in a Nazi uniform, and rather than shooting him on the spot, he was imprisoned and still survived his Gulag experience. They even cured his cancer.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was captured in a Nazi uniform, and rather than shooting him on the spot, he was imprisoned and still survived his Gulag experience. They even cured his cancer.

You heard it here folks. The Red Army = Nazis.

 

[Mouthwash]

Say what? You're aware that during the latter stages of the war the number of rapes by German soldiers actually increased, despite the fact that they were now on German soil, where the only available women were German? That Adolf Hitler planned a scorched earth policy that would have killed more Germans than the war and the Morgenthau plan combined, which was only thwarted by Albert Speer's - and others, but Speer's name is the only one that comes to mind now - refusal to obey the order?

That actually seems like an interesting idea. Abandon the front when they started to fall back, and leave nothing for the Soviets to follow. Could it possibly have saved Germany?

 

[Dachs]

That actually seems like an interesting idea. Abandon the front when they started to fall back, and leave nothing for the Soviets to follow. Could it possibly have saved Germany?

No.

But then again, hardliners like Baal and the late lamented Maryland papist who used to haunt these parts think that absolutely nothing could have 'saved Germany' from the moment of the Machtergreifung. And they also think that anybody who disagrees with them is an idiot who knows nothing of history, even though there are plenty of real historians - and good historians - who think otherwise.

 

[Mouthwash]

No.

But then again, hardliners like Baal and the late lamented Maryland papist who used to haunt these parts think that absolutely nothing could have 'saved Germany' from the moment of the Machtergreifung. And they also think that anybody who disagrees with them is an idiot who knows nothing of history, even though there are plenty of real historians - and good historians - who think otherwise.

What's a likely scenario for you?

 

[Lord Baal]

That actually seems like an interesting idea. Abandon the front when they started to fall back, and leave nothing for the Soviets to follow. Could it possibly have saved Germany?

You mean the scorched earth policy? No, it wouldn't have saved Germany, either from the Soviets or the Western Allies. Abandoning the front would have merely resulted in the Soviets advancing faster, as, with the exception of the Battle of Warsaw, which is an argument I don't want to get involved with right now, the Soviets seem to have advanced rather slowly against a determined German offence. If the Germans didn't confined their scorched earth tactics to German territory, they'd likely be on the receiving end of some back-stabbing from their allies as well.

Even assuming the Soviets can't possibly advance any quicker than in OTL, this is not Napoleon's march to Moscow. The Soviets, while they did live off the land to an extent, they mostly did so out of convenience. Unless the Germans could cut their supply lines as well as scorching the earth in front of them, it would have negligible effect. Might force them to sleep outside instead of inside, and deprive them or a few rape victims. That's about it.