A Job for Rewrite: Stalin's War

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/arts/21WAR.html?ex=1078387208&ei=1&en=04adf7ee426f3e50 ^ | By BENJAMIN SCHWARZ

[RusIvan]

A plucky Britain refusing to bow to the Luftwaffe's blitz, Patton and Rommel dueling in the North African desert, the D-Day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge — these tend to dominate American's conception of the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany.

But as important as the episodes were, military historians have always known that the main scene of the Nazis' downfall was the Eastern Front, which claimed 80 percent of all German military casualties in the war.

[BrooklynGOP]

In 1940, Russian held 15,000, ~5,000 of them were shot in Katyn forrest, the rest was sent to various camps, etc. I doubt any of them made it out alive after the war, but at Katyn forrrest, specifically, I think it was 5,000 bodies that they found.

[BrooklynGOP]

thus eliminating the primary source of resistance to Stalinist rule in post-war Poland. Certain partisan groups, which were considered nationalist, in Russia were backstabbed by Stalin. Ie, they would arrange a drop (weapons, food, etc) at a certain location, but would get the word out to Germans.

[Sprite518]

We would have been first in Berlin, but we agreed to let the Russians fight.

[stationkeeper]

Could be right about that......what appeared to be highways on a lot of the wehrmacht's tactical maps were, at best, dirt trails that were impassable after rains.

[dfwgator]

The main reason we didn't go to Berlin was that there was a legitimate fear of heavy Nazi resistance in Bavaria and that it was more important to secure that area than Berlin. At the time it seemed like the logical thing to do, although in hindsight it wasn't.

[RusIvan]

The Eastern Front would have been a lot less bloody for the Soviets if Stalin hadn't purged all his officers who were worth a damn in the years leading up to Barbarosa. ===

True..

[skinkinthegrass]

I don't know about Russians destroying the whole Polish army, but yea, they killed some like ~5,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forrest.

My Bad...The Polish Officer Corp., Stalin wanted to snuff-out any Polish resistance (doctors, engineers, pols and yes, even lawyers...the cream of polish society), he wanted only slaves/people, he could control.

..Thats, Why an high-ranking Polish General was assassinated by Stalin's agents in North Africa during WWII.

[RusIvan]

It will forever be the task of the NYT to make Stalin and communism look as good as possible ==

The grimace of history is that russian people fought for thier survival during WW2. And it happened under control of communists.
I know that if commies won in 1922 then maybe there wouldn't 1941-45. After the war they used the victory for thier advantage. Only today russians began to understand what really happened during time of USSR.

[BrooklynGOP]

Stalin wanted to snuff-out any Polish resistance (doctors, engineers, pols and yes, even lawyers...the cream of polish society), he wanted only slaves/people, he could control.

Yep. Lenin did the same thing right after the communist revolution.

..Thats, Why an high-ranking Polish General was assassinated by Stalin's agents in North Africa during WWII.

Haven't heard about that one.

[RusIvan]

I think the rapes are pretty well documented. ===

HOW? Imagine the town under siege. There are sots and explosions everywhere. People die around.
And between all this mayhem someone goes and document those allerged "rapes".
If I'm corect in order to document rape today there have to be forensic analysis during few hours after fact. If no then no rape proved.
But "Cornelius Ryan" well documented them. I simply don't beleive that.

[littleopie]

If you included the Gulags, Stalin killed many more humans than did Hitler.

[Junior]

Any nation that lost 1/3 of it's population would cease to exist...

Upon what historical evidence do you base this claim?

[RocketWolf]

Once again, paraphrasing the saterist M Rodgers, WW2 was a contest between Hitler and Stalin to see who could kill the most Russians .

[BrooklynGOP]

And between all this mayhem someone goes and document those allerged "rapes".

Actually, I heard somewhere that there is some statue of a Russian soldier in Germany, which locals call "The Monument to the Unknown Rapist."

[fourdeuce82d]

If I'm corect in order to document rape today there have to be forensic analysis during few hours after fact. If no then no rape proved.

Not "beyond a shadow of a doubt" proved, but there are pretty strong indications that it did happen on a large scale. At one point CCCP high command gave an explicit go ahead to the troops as a motivator- a directive that was later rescinded. Especaily after some russian girls taken as slave labor earlier in the war were gang raped by the advancing troops.

Ryan suggests most of the abuse came not from the frontline, russian troops, but was more generally committed by second/third echelon siberian/ "-stan" troops.

[RusIvan]

Actually, I heard somewhere that there is some statue of a Russian soldier in Germany, which locals call "The Monument to the Unknown Rapist." ===

Is it prove to you anything?

[BrooklynGOP]

I am just saying that I heard this accusation from a source other then the one on this thread. Don't get me wrong, my grandfather was an officer in the russian army in WW2 (the other one was 16 when the war started and just finished flight school by the time the war ended)

[RusIvan]

I am just saying that I heard this accusation from a source other then the one on this thread. ==

Okey then I say you that you probably heard lot of accusations of many kinds about jews too. Especially from palestinians today right? Then you call them "anti-semitism".
SO I call those accusations "russophobia" of those supermen who came to destroy all russian "underhumans" but as result got beaten themselves.
I simply don't understand whyy YOU repeat after them?

[denydenydeny]

Nadezhda Mandelstam (who lived through the purges and Gulags) says in one of her books that "vast numbers of deaths were postdated to wartime." I'll have to look up the exact reference.

[RusIvan]

Nadezhda Mandelstam (who lived through the purges and Gulags) says in one of her books that "vast numbers of deaths were postdated to wartime." ==

I agree. That what I implied when said that there probably wasn't 20 mlns victims of war. Commies might put on Hitler thier victims too.