Wow. Seriously??

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

And speaking of WWII, it wasn’t the U.S. who finally defeated Germany, it was Russia. We take WAY too much credit for defeating Germany. We could at least acknowledge Russia’s role.

Are you talking about the same Russia whose Uncle Joe Stalin sent 80 % of his best and brightest Officers to exile, the Gulags, or death by the secret police?

Are you talking about the same Russia where 8 to 9 million died from starvation and disease in WWII because of Socialism’s trademark shortages of food, medicine, and hygiene caused by collectivized industry and agriculture, the latter ran by the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko, a man who tried to make wheat grow in the ice of Siberia almost until his dying day?

Are you talking about the same Russia whose Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact a.k.a. The Non-Aggression Pact allowed both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to piece apart Poland and sent Nazi Germany coal, oil, coke, iron, wheat, and other raw materials to run the Nazi war machine?

Are you talking about the same Russia that, even when at war with Nazi Germany, allowed the Nazis to slaughter Polish Resistance fighters in Warsaw, because the Resistance fighters hated both Nazi and Soviet tyranny?

Are you talking about the same Russia that forbade Jews from practicing rememberance ceremonies at the site of Nazi mass murder at Babi Yar in Kiev?

Russia’s people suffered immensly in World War II, but they suffered at least as much from Stalin’s tyranny as Hitler’s conquest, which also was enabled and assisted by Stalin’s tyranny.

(Highly recommended for viewing are the series The World At War, narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, as well as every Netflix World War II series in HD and Color.)

[DavisModerator]

Unseen I watched the video. His arguments are compelling though I haven’t had a chance to look up his credentials (as I would with any podcast) and so I would prefer to independently verify some of his claims.

[_Robert_Participant]

We are looking for a man. Lets occupy a country, kill thousands of them. Manufacture a generation of jihadists. Oh wrong country. Again. Pakistan, that’s the ticket. We will just sneak in, this time. The US, a country where John Lennon can’t stay alive. It is not even surprising. Freedom. What a fucking joke.

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco

I get it. You don’t like socialism and certainly the Russian brand of Communism, but most of that rant was beside my point.

Contrary to the American party line, it wasn’t just the Russian winter that snuffed out Nazism in Europe. Here’s a summary I came across from The Washington Post:

“…there can be little question that the Soviet Union’s contribution to winning World War II for the allies was monumental. The vast bulk of the German armed forces were tied down on the Russian front in a brutal struggle. …by 1942 the Russians were producing mass quantities of high-quality armaments east of the Ural Mountains — out of reach for Germany’s air force. The Soviets also possessed a tremendous overseas intelligence-gathering operation, via the international Communist movement, that was critical in defeating Hitler.

“If the German army had not been tied down in Russia in a huge battle of attrition that they could not hope to win, D-Day would have certainly been vastly delayed. In fact, it might not even have occurred.”

You seem to be letting your disregard for Stalin and Russian Communism get in the way of understanding the truth.

Out of a lot of bad came some good.

[UnseenParticipant]

@davis

Thom Hartmann is a well-known and widely-respected journalist and author. Just go to ThomHartmann.com and you’ll find he’s a widely-respected author of many books. He does a weekday 3-hour webcast on Youtube, does podcasts, writes articles, and is the author of numerous books. Info on all of that is right there on the above link.

[_Robert_Participant]

I agree unseen, the Soviets outwitted the fascists hands down, giving them thousands of miles of scorched earth and then swallowing entire undersupplied Nazi armies. They also threatened Japan with a 2nd front. The Soviets never did implement Marxism anyways…it was just another corrupt dictatorship/oligarchy.

And remember who created the Taliban (aka the Mujahideen) in the first place, giving them arms and training to fight the Soviets. Yeah, it was us. Again.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

Without the appeasement of a war-weary Continent, Hitler wouldn’t have got past Austria at best, and that only because he had supporters there.  And of all the appeasers of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union was the biggest up to the moment Hitler turned on Stalin.

All of Soviet Russia’s vaunted armaments came from designs and materiels ultimately from the West.  And Russia wouldn’t have lost near as many lives were it not for Stalin’s pig-headed brutal domestic policies of poverty and starvation.

The war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia was a street-fight among global gangsters over turf, not some honorable, noble struggle.

Now, contrast that with this:

The stiff-upper-lip British both in their bomb shelters and in the skies taking on bombs and V-2 Rockets…

The Swiss who, though neutral, were willing to blow up their own tunnels in the Alps to maintain their independence, who shot down German Luftwaffe invading their airspace, and who had 50,000 top crack rifle marksmen ready to greet 100,000 SS troops by shooting twice and going home…

Wave after wave of thousands of American, Canadian, and British forces who stormed the shores of Normandy to liberate France, Italy, and ultimately Germany, many never living to see the end…

The Tuskeegee Airmen who swept the skies clean of Luftwaffe and rained death on Nazi forces on the ground and sea, flashing two ‘V’s: One for Victory against Fascism abroad, and one for Victory against Jim Crow racism at home…

The Partizans throughout Europe fighting with makeshift zip-guns and Molotov cocktails until they could aquire the real things…

The Brothers Bielski in the woods of Belarus, who set up and trained a whole village of Partizan fighters, fought the Nazis, were betrayed by the Soviets, and saved thousands of Jews from slaughter…

The Holocaust victims themselves who rose up in armed resistance in the Lódź Ghetto of Warsaw and in the death camp of Sobibor, starting with shop-made knives and axes and then turning their oppressors weapons against them…

All of that is honorable and noble.

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco

And yet, in one of the great miracles of production of the 20th Century, like the United States, Russia came up with highly serviceable and effective planes and tanks that played a large role in defeating Germany by not allowing Germany to take its eyes off the second front.

Did they borrow designs and technologies from other countries? Obviously, and you blame them, with their survival on the line? The United States would have done the same, intellectual property rights be damned. Are you so sure that we invented every piece of military hardware from the ground up without “borrowing” technology someone else invented while not paying them royaltiess?

In terms of the human cost, there’s hardly any comparison at all. In terms of military deaths, Russia lost 10.7 million, the U.S. only 416 thousand. By “military deaths,” I am excluding civilian deaths. In the case of Russia, the civilian toll is well over double the military toll. The American civilian toll is almost negligible by comparison.

Give credit where credit is due.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by  Unseen.

[DavisModerator]

 

Russia was the undeniable saviour of Europe through WWII while America spent years ignoring the war and their allies and only entered the war theatre when the war became inconvenient (they totally appeased facist governments and even collaborated with them until it became bad optics). To claim Russia was some non-valliant thug is utterly outrageous and a super illustrative example of pure American nationalistic arrogance and ignorance. Not to mention your country came in at the last minute ignoring the horrors that your allies were suffering and then claimed credit for winning a war while Russia was completely destroyed and gave up dozens of millions of lives is pretty outrageous. And then America valiantly went on to end the Pacific war as it was becoming super inconvenient and then dropped not just one dubious atom bomb but a second completely unnecessary one on Japan. Enco you have out done yourself there.

[DavisModerator]

Indeed. The US liberally borrows technological innovations coming out of underdeveloped nations all the time (buying it out often). They did so when Taiwan and South Korea were developing their economy, Eastern European countries as they were transitioning from communism to capitalism and they do so now with India and Brazil.

[UnseenParticipant]

Davis wrote:

Indeed. The US liberally borrows technological innovations coming out of underdeveloped nations all the time (buying it out often). They did so when Taiwan and South Korea were developing their economy, Eastern European countries as they were transitioning from communism to capitalism and they do so now with India and Brazil.

Maybe China should bill the United States for using their formula for gunpowder or India for using their “Arabic” number system.

[UnseenParticipant]

@davis

The sort of ideas that find favor with @Enco is why Americans can’t have nice things like people in Europe. Healthcare with acceptable rates of good results, for example, and with virtually no possibility of a person or family being bankrupted due to one serious incident. Free education, sometimes with stipends as well, in contrast to the United States where education is actively discouraged through astronomically high tuitions and usurious loan rates many students never escape from or retire only after decades of serious indebtedness.

Many Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that socialism necessarily means the fate of Stalinist Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Either that or economic collapse like Cuba or Venezuela, conveniently ignoring that both Cuba and Venezuela would probably do much better without America actively working on making them fail. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can’t argue with them because their definitions are slippery. When you point to the better quality of life in socialistic European countries, if they don’t actually deny the data, they will say that they really are capitalist countries and, besides, their quality of life is only possible because they depend on the U.S. for their defense.

The United States is “A legend in its own mind,” to paraphrase a famous quip. Not nearly as exceptional as it thinks it is, mired in dysfunctional attitudes and disinformation that keep many Americans trapped in a middle class that the Republicans are slowly sinking into poverty.

BTW, when I was in college I got a summer job combing through old records at a major company that made machine tools (machines that automate work formerly done by hand, like operating a lathe). I handled many invoices for machinery sold to Japan and Nazi Germany up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Until then, this company was profiting from the wars in European and Pacific theaters.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by  Unseen.

[DavisModerator]

I love the whole we can afford our social programs because America defends us garbage bullshit.

America’s involvement in Iraq made Europe far less safe (terrorism commenced on a monthly basis pretty much after the second invasion of Iraq thank you). Europe has the same number of troops as America does…we just don’t have obscenely overpriced unnecessary toys.

I really am curious how long it would take, if America cut its defence budget by 90%…until the Mongol horde decided to invade Europe!!!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by  Davis.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

In terms of the human cost, there’s hardly any comparison at all. In terms of military deaths, Russia lost 10.7 million, the U.S. only 416 thousand. By “military deaths,” I am excluding civilian deaths. In the case of Russia, the civilian toll is well over double the military toll. The American civilian toll is almost negligible by comparison.

Give credit where credit is due.

You actually consider it a “credit” to Russia that it suffered so many senseless deaths because of Stalin’s purges of competant Officers and because of his disasterous agricultural and industrial policies that caused his troops to be without food, medicine, and provisions on the battle front???

You have a strange idea of what constitutes “credit.”

 

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

Maybe China should bill the United States for using their formula for gunpowder or India for using their “Arabic” number system.

It’s not our fault that they didn’t have a system of patents to protect intellectual property which they didn’t place great premium on in the first place.

By the way, to keep this all on-topic: Sleepy, Creepy, Crazy, Cranky, Tankie, Corn-Pop, Lunch-Bucket, Basement-Bunker, Shotgun Joe is still screwing up.

 

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