Posted on 08/30/2023 2:02:52 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
In this BBC Documentary historian David Reynolds reassesses Stalin’s role in the life and death struggle between Germany and Russia in World War Two, which he argues was ultimately more critical for British survival than ‘Our Finest Hour’ in the Battle of Britain itself
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I doubt the people in Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Bessarabia, and Bukovina thought of Stalin as a hero.
Stalin was no good. He was a monster, an inhumane monster.
But I will give him great credit for one thing. When the German army reached the outskirts of Moscow in the fall of 1941, Stalin was strongly advised to retreat eastward. Get out of Moscow. Stalin refused. He remained in the Kremlin, and so served as a role model - for general and private alike.
Contrast that with George W. Bush’s and Dick Chaney’s behavior on 9/11. Both went into hiding for the day. Perhaps that was the wise thing to do. But it wasn’t very inspiring.
The guy who allied with Hitler? And only switched sides because he was betrayed?
No, no he was not a hero.
He was the lesser of many evils.
Read “The Gulag Archipeligo” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Stalin was worse than Hitler.
He was a far greater evil. He made Hitler look like a choir boy.
Stalin and Beria were monsters. But the communist cultures of the west treat these guys and the Oppenheimer’s of the world as heroes.
Beware liberals asking rhetorical questions.
Stalin was as evil a man that ever lived. But the question should be, could the USSR or Russia have survived without him?
I will say one thing about George W. Bush. He showed one hell of a lot of ‘Grace under Pressure’ when he was handed that note about what happened.
I know what you’re talking about. And now I will show my strong anti-W bias. When W was handed that note, I wonder if he even knew what it implied. You can be calm if you have no real idea about what’s going on.
I vividly remember that day, 9/11. I was at work, and a colleague came into my room and said that New York City was under attack. “Was anyone hurt?”, I asked.
Looking back, that sure was a dumb question to ask. I suppose I was as clueless as W was.
“Contrast that with George W. Bush’s and Dick Chaney’s behavior on 9/11. Both went into hiding for the day.”
ROTFLMAO! Both went to strategic command centers!
Another question is, should the USSR have survived?
Really? I heard the opposite.
I remember seeing a film that showed Stalin fleeing eastward on his train. I think it was The Inner Circle (1991), but it might have been Stalin (1992).
> Both went to strategic command centers! <
Yes they did. And I suppose that was the wise thing to do. But it was not the inspiring thing to do. Such actions do not rally the nation.
Contract that with the behavior of Rudy Giuliani on 9/11. Rudy wasn’t in some command bunker somewhere. He was right there on the front lines. One of the buildings actually collapsed not too far from where he was standing.
Was Rudy foolish? Maybe. But so was Churchill, and so many others. I’ll take courageous and foolish over the alternative any day.
No disrespect meant to any other view. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
The Queen Mum famously refused to leave London during the Blitz.
> I heard the opposite. <
It’s hard to believe anything coming out of the old Soviet Union. But I was always interested in the history of Germany’s WW II eastern front. It was a place of almost unimaginable tragedy.
Everything I’ve read says that Stalin stayed put in Moscow. But who really knows?
Lefties always point out that the meat-grinder than was the German’s Eastern Front was the deciding factor in defeating the Nazi’s in WWII, and hence Stalin’s leadership of the Russkies was the crucial feature; they almost always conveniently forget Stalin’s role in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, without which a war of that scale probably wouldn’t have happened.
The Russians did lose an enormous number of men in resisting HItler - and that’s their own damn fault for giving him the green light to pursue his aggression early on.
You are seriously comparing W to Stalin?
What are you drinking?
The Russia love around here has a cabbage fart stink about it. It’s bad enough you guys fellate Putin regularly…but sucking up to Stalin?
Of course W. knew what the note said and he did well in that moment, probably killing time to give his personal security a few minutes to catch up to and adjust to the situation outside and for his exit from the school.
As far as going into hiding, he and the vice president probably followed a well-established plan to remain in command and separate without being exposed, predictable, and returning to the White House.
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