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World War II was totally unrealistic

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Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#141

Post by borism »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #132
borism wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then you have oversimplified view of the world and I don't. let's agree to disagree.

Cute, get the last shot in, then pretend its reasonable to stop discussing. Books have been written about the "Stalin Personality Cult", his enormous personal power and his perfect control over all matters of state. And you dismiss this with a few cute remarks. For your remarkable claims, you will have to provide MUCH more evidence. Try this: google Stalin and start reading.

we can continue to debate if you insist, but judging by your other comments it may not be exactly pleasant experience.

also let me caution you that probably unlike you I have actual experience living in Soviet Union (not under Stalin, fortunately) and getting to know the "evidence" first hand.

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#142

Post by chc »

jimbokun wrote: post #53
stcredzero wrote: post #8

Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Sheer ignorance. Simply read Mein Kampf . The Nazis had an urgent prog…

"The death camps? To rid the world of so-called genetic contamination." What part of that does not sound like a cartoonishly evil super-villain motivation suitable for a comic book?

In a world where it's the 1920s and not the 2010s?

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#143

Post by dgordon »

sedachv wrote: post #139
sedachv wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The total numbers pulled from Reagan's imagination? edit: I'll post some sources when I get home

As promised: This includes the best available numbers on the people imprisoned and executed for counter-revolutionary (political, kulaks, etc.) crimes from 1921 to 1954 in the entire Soviet Union (includes republics annexed in 1939) from a report ordered by Khruschev (ie - the real numbers, not speculation), as well as an analysis of the commonly published speculative numbers: http://www.thewalls.ru/truth/repress.htm…

According to Solzhenitsyn a quarter of the population of Leningrad were arrested in and around 1937. Apparently this turned out to be a conservative estimate.

If this is so, your numbers cannot be correct.

And yes, the Holodomor counts too.

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#144

Post by btilly »

btilly wrote: post #81
dimitar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually why Hitler had an incursion in the USSR while waging war in North Africa and the Atlantic, creating an anti-Hitler coalition and thus having no chance of an outcome that isn't a catastrophe for Germany. Surely an unwise decision. The Soviets knew in advance of the invasion of the USSR but Stalin could not believe that the Germany could do such thing. Not because he trusted Hitler, but because such a…

I disbelieve. When Hitler invaded, he immediately put his plan from Mein Kampf into action, and tried to consolidate control and create Lebensraum (aka "living space") for the German people. He had made his desire for that invasion clear many years earlier. If Hitler hadn't been a deranged fool he would have not sent the SS into Czechoslovakia (which turned the initially rejoicing population hostile), and would have…

Oops, I picked the wrong area. I was misremembering a reference to the Ukraine. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa for more details.

In particular note that the claim that the Nazis were attacking first to head off a counter-attack is a claim the Germans made during WW II. However there is little evidence for this, and Stalin's instructions to his generals in December of 1940 suggests that the Soviet Union knew it would eventually be invaded, thought it would easily be ready in 4 years, and was trying to put the invasion off for at least 2. When the invasion came in May they were caught unprepared and by surprise.

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#145

Post by sedachv »

dgordon wrote: post #143
sedachv wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As promised: This includes the best available numbers on the people imprisoned and executed for counter-revolutionary (political, kulaks, etc.) crimes from 1921 to 1954 in the entire Soviet Union (includes republics annexed in 1939) from a report ordered by Khruschev (ie - the real numbers, not speculation), as well as an analysis of the commonly published speculative numbers: http://www.thewalls.ru/truth/repress.htm…

According to Solzhenitsyn a quarter of the population of Leningrad were arrested in and around 1937. Apparently this turned out to be a conservative estimate. If this is so, your numbers cannot be correct. And yes, the Holodomor counts too.

I'm so glad this article was posted on HN recently:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/...

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#146

Post by dasil003 »

ojilles wrote: post #124
dasil003 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what of Stephenson's Cryptonomicon?

Are you trying to argue that Fiction is sometimes not believable, are actually the reverse?

It wasn't actually a rhetorical question. Just wanted to point out that historical fiction is interesting food for thought on the question and hoping someone else would say something enlightening.

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#147

Post by pfedor »

sedachv wrote: post #86
MarkPNeyer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"these guys are worse or on a par for atrocities with anyone ever, real or imagined" If you look at the total number of people killed, hitler's atrocities pale in comparison with those of Stalin and Mao.

The total numbers pulled from Reagan's imagination? edit: I'll post some sources when I get home

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#148

Post by easp »

riffraff wrote: post #119
arethuza wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in the Soviet Union the arrests were made to quota to feed the slave labor camps of the gulag - not because of anything the prisoners had actually done (of course, they had to confess). There were some courageous Germans who chose to defy the Nazis (e.g. the White Rose group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose ) but that to me is quite different. The overwhelming majority of Germans, if they didn't belong to…

I had not heard of a "arrest to quota" design in the USSR, could you point me to a relevant source so I can read about it? I still disagree on the main point that to be at risk in nazi germany you had to somehow defy the regime. Your view seem to be that in nazi germany you could simply comply with the ruling ideology and be fine, but as I said above, you can think of the killings and arrests by the thousands of the…

Whenever shit like that happens, you can be sure that there are people taking advantage of the situation to settle old scores. Wherever the official reason for depriving people of life or liberty, corrupt functionaries will trump up accusations to suit their personal agendas.

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#149

Post by martey »

btilly wrote: post #77
patio11 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the aircraft carriers made out of ice, the campaign to firebomb Japanese cities using bats with incendiaries tied to them, or the brilliant idea to starve out Japanese island garrisons by airdropping pigs onto them in the hope that the pigs would eat the grains before the Japanese ate the pigs (failed).

My favorite messed up weapons from WW II. The Americans came up with an anti-tank grenade that was really sticky so that it would stay to the tank it was thrown at. Discontinued due to an unfortunate tendency to remain in the thrower's hand. The Russians (land of Pavlov and all that) came up with the idea of dogs with bombs strapped to their backs that had learned to associate the under side of tanks with food. Great…

The wikipedia article about the sticky bomb - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_bomb - notes that it was made by the British for use in the event of a German invasion, and so only saw limited front-line use in North Africa and by the French Resistance.

There is also info about the Soviet anti-tank dog program at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog#Deployment_by_the...

Re: World War II was totally unrealistic

#150

Post by hughw »

anamax wrote: post #140
avar wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously we'll never know, and we can speculate all day. But I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that yes, Germany would have calmed down eventually. Empires have a tendency to reach their zenith and slowly recede after that. When you have occupying powers like Nazi Germany they're likely to fall apart eventually due to internal strife. The Roman Empire did, so did the Soviet Union, partly. Had WW2 not happene…

> The Roman Empire did, so did the Soviet Union, partly. The Roman Empire didn't "calm down" for hundreds of years. Even the USSR took a couple of decades. And in both cases, they ran into opposition. If you're going to argue that a legacy-obsessed Hitler would have calmed down within a year or so despite encountering no significant opposition, you need something more than "it could happen".

That's the point of reading the books: it offers something more than "it could happen".
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