YourValentine wrote:
April wrote:
Stalin was a bad guy. But he did win the war over the nazis. If not for the Soviet victory, who gave up their lives in that war, about 20 million people died, nazis might have won it. Americans joined the war when they saw that the USSR was winning, at the very end of the war, and hurried to share the victory. But they did let nazis kill first.
Maybe you should read a history book. Read about the Hitler-Stalin pact that allowed Germany to invade Poland.
This is true. Russia and Germany have historically been eager to annex as much of Poland as possible (which, it must be said, was originally a grand duchy, client to the Moscow regime
Stalin fought the Nazis when they attacked the Soviet Union and not because he thought the world needed to be rid of the Nazis.
This is not true. Stalin was waiting for an opportune moment to fight the Nazis, whom he regarded as ultra-capitalists. However, his army, which at his ascent to Russian leadership was not loyal to him, and had an officer-class still largely Romanov-oriented despite Trotsky's earlier reforms, needed to be reformed (meaning the elimination of nearly all officers above the rank of Major) for him to be able to control it. Therefore, he spent time getting his army into a shape ready for war. Historians suppose that this was also the reason for the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact, which seems to have served to buy time, but, it turned out, not enough time: Hitler invaded before Stalin was ready, which explains the chaotic state of the Russian army during the original German offensive. Stalin hated the Nazis, but he was not stupid enough to attack them with an army he knew would lose.
The USA entered the war after Pearl Harbour - when their own people were attacked and not any earlier. France and England did not declare war when Hitler invaded the Czechoslovakia in clear violation of the Munich agreement - the list goes on and on.
True. It might be worth mentioning the Lend-Lease agreement, which is regarded as an overt American act of war by most historians. Roosevelt wanted to enter the war, but Congress was in majority isolationist, and thus wouldn't allow him until the Pearl Harbour attacks (Japan's worst strategic mistake, ahead of Yamamoto's concentration of the fleet which led to the crippling of Japanese naval power as early as 1942).
The millions of people who died in the war were often innocent helpless civilians - for example almost the complete population of Nagasaki and Hiroshima where 100 000s of helpless men, women and children people were wiped out in seconds - an achievement that Hitler and Stalin as model mass murderers could only dream of!
Completely true. It has often been remarked that the allies were guilty of war crimes to almost the same extent as the axis. Truth is, in all wars, all sides commit war crimes.
Imo it's totally useless to compare these body counts - who killed more people. In fact ideology is only the excuse for power hungry regimes - it's just the flag under which the brainwashed population is gathered. It does not make a difference under which name people are suppressed, deprived of their human rights and killed
Agreed, providing you also consider "democracy" and "liberalism" as ideologies wielded by nations as instruments of power. [/QUOTE]