Posted on 04/30/2021 5:20:10 AM PDT by C19fan
Moscow on a midsummer’s night in 1941 was a balmy place to be. For the discerning, there was Chekhov’s Three Sisters playing to full houses, while opera lovers had a choice between Rigoletto and La Traviata.
Others fished for their suppers on the banks of the river, tended their allotments, or simply strolled through Gorky Park.
All felt safe in the knowledge that, for the past two years (give or take a few weeks), Stalin’s Soviet Union had been in a pact of friendship and non-aggression with Hitler’s Germany.
Though their fundamental political beliefs were polar opposites — one communist, the other fascist — the two biggest nations in Europe had agreed not to go to war with each other.
Until, suddenly, this cosy world turned on its head. The next morning those same Moscow streets were filled with silent, anxious crowds surrounding public loudspeakers, from which came the trembling, echoing voice of Molotov, the minister of foreign affairs.
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Clearly they would not have. Unless the hard winter alone would have crushed the German Army.
What could have happened would be a lot more American lives lost, but then no Eastern bloc.
Russia itself might have been broken up with Belarus, the Baltic states, Caucasian states etc. freed and Russia split into Moscowy, Siberia, Novgorod etc.
Even if the Germans won in Russia, they were ultimately going to have to make peace with Britain, there was no way they could have taken on the whole British Empire, even Hitler knew that.
The only difference is one word, inter. One was National Socialism; the other International Socialism.
I also find it interesting that the opposition by the left in the US to WWII ended on the day Germany invaded the USSR.
Hitler’s order to kill Russians instead of taking them prisoner created a “fight to the death” situation. The mass surrenders stopped and the Germans found themselves fighting a stronger Russian army.
Vacillating between Leningrad and Moscow didn’t help either. He got neither.
Delay was strategic error. As was failure in getting to Baku oil fields, even if the soviets destroyed it on way out as this would have denied red army of oil.
Stalin hated Jews, too.
He could have made a deal with Ukraine, similar to what he did with Slovakia. Basically a puppet state but pretty much leaving the Ukrainians alone, and even allowing them to exact revenge on the Russians. Most Ukrainians would have welcomed it.
Turning Soviet government apparatchiks into Republicans would have been an awful idea. With the fullness of time, Republican leadership has demonstrated itself to be every bit as wicked as the Soviets, in an internationalist and war-like way.
I would make the argument we could have moved into Poland and the other Central European countries, what would the Soviets have done about it? But I definitely would have not tried to invade the Soviet Union, that would have been madness.
Hitler’s mistake was that he postponed the Invasion several times, if he had invaded in the early spring instead of June it is quite possible that he would have beaten Stalin and been in Moscow. Those two critical months lost made all the difference in the outcome of the invasion.
That mistake plus Stalin’s willingness to sacrifice untold numbers of troops on the Eastern Front as cannon fodder to stop the germans was what stopped the Germans in their tracks.
Read Sir Max Hastings book on the last year of the European aspect of W.W. II, Stalin was brutal in what he did to make his armies fight.
But the Italians were getting their asses kicked in the Balkans and Hitler had to bail them out.
The big difference was National Socialism under Hitler had a Crony Capitalist system as far as the means of production was concerned.
The Soviet Union had no such system, the State controlled all means of production with no risk reward system at all, which is why they could not make enough munitions for war and were totally dependent on Lend-Lease to survive.
Soviet Union also relied on Slave Labor for their big projects.
That was actually the main reason for The Night of the Long Knives. Rohm and the SA advocated the complete government takeover of the means of production. Hitler knew this would scare off the industrialists that he needed to build his war machine, and so to get their support, he killed off the SA and ended the threat.
But it should be known, that once Germany won the war, and they were no longer needed, the industrialists would have faced the same fate as the Jews.
It’s an interesting discussion especially with those of us who lived through the entire cold war. Patton’s thoughts never progressed beyond his quotes, but he clearly saw the danger of communism, as did Hitler to be historically fair. I can’t help but think had Operation Barbarossa been successful, we all would have been better off (with the proviso of the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany)
Very true
hundreds of thousands probably killed and wounded with little to show for it.
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