Stalin Honored with Churchill at D-Day Memorial
In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand-fold in the future.
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
The foundation that oversees the revered site of our National D-Day Memorial, according to a New York Daily News report, has caused an outcry for including in its lineup of Allied leaders a bust of Joseph Stalin.
The Soviet dictator slaughtered more people than Adolf Hitler during his rule, provided no assistance in storming the beaches at Normandy in 1944, murdered millions of Ukrainians even before he and Hitler divided up Poland, triggered World War II in 1939, joined in marching a million Poles and Jews off to Siberia as Hitler’s ally, killed 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, changed sides when Hitler invaded his territory, and then enslaved Eastern Europe for 50 years after casting out the retreating Germans.
In response to protestations by WWII veterans and relatives of those who fought and died in the war, the president of the foundation (the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, Inc.), William McIntosh, contended that Stalin’s bust is included with those of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill because the Soviets “secured the eastern front and helped win the war.”
Alex Storozynski, whose father fought on D-Day as a member of a Polish Army unit, took issue with this explanation. “Given McIntosh’s logic,” he said, “should America put up a statue of Saddam Hussein because he was an ally of the U.S. in the 1980s when we supported Iraq in a war against Iran?”
If any tribute to Stalin should be paid at that memorial, his face should adorn urinals as a “bull’s eye” in the restrooms.
So honoring Stalin is ok because he “helped” us winning WWII. Even though Stalin did enable Hitler to start the war in the first place, and invaded half Poland himself.
Oh, I almost forget. He “helped us” so much, for the little price of not just the enslavement of half Poland, but half Europe for half a century. And a bronze bust on top of that….. What a bargain for so much “help”.
Well, now the Finns can erect statues of Hitler. He was a monster, but after all, his role in the war helped Finland survive soviet aggresion. Right? And no one would say nothing, he is part of history. Right?????
Up is down, left is right, big is little, flat is round, a lie is a truth. The world is getting dangerously warmer. Oh, no it’s not. And the truth wasn’t hacked as idiots say, but there in public view for any idiot to see. Now Obirdbrain goes to some foreign country to further the slimy-global warming lie while Gore goes back to counting his chads.
And as the hot sky is falling liars belch out their nonsense, the global Obama logic is seeping into every facet of American life, much like a sewer leaks till you smell the stench. If Obama has a nose the size of those ears, he’d be holding it wherever he goes.
Regardless, here’s a piece of my world that doesn’t accept the Neo-Com, post modern relativist logic. On climate change or anything else.
Obama, without a smidgen of a doubt, is the most extreme left President, the worst President America that has ever elected (the fact that Acorn may have really elected him I won’t address here). His crimes, misdemeanors and wrongheaded objectives (spread the wealth and tactics to get there) puts this nation in severe and present peril. Every week, Oblunder pulls some idiotic unAmerican idea out of his butt.
The fact that his approval rating is now about 47 doesn’t surprise me, but the fact African Americans still give him a 90% backing says they don’t give a whit about the content of his character. Just the sound of his voice and the color of his skin. At the same time, Holder doesn’t have a clue how to lawfully run America. He gets an open and shut case against the voter intimidating Black Panthers, they don’t show up for trial, and Holder decides to drop the case.
Sure is nice to have friends in high places.
Sure is unfortunate we have a commie as attorney general.
If Obama isn’t led out of the white house in handcuffs within the next six months, there’s no justice left in the world. Obama is more than a
seditious, clear and present danger to the United states. He’s the old proverbial fox in the chicken coop. The Coop being freedom, free enterprise and liberty. The Fox being a assortment of fascist, liberal, socialist, Neo-Com ideologies mixing together in Obama’s on the blink mind.
While it looks like we’re starting to smell him out because Obama no longer passes the simplest of smell tests, marching him out of government can’t be too fast for most of it. Every day he’s in office is another day the country is weaker.
The worst President in American history needs to be plied with justice in the worst way.
Maybe we try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Barack Hussein Obama together. I believe they’re very similar. Trying to destroy the United States
as we know and love it. One kills Americans overtly. One, I believe, kills Americans (the American way of life) in his own way.
What a ridiculous statement ‘The foundation that oversees the revered site of our National D-Day Memorial, according to a New York Daily News report, has caused an outcry for including in its lineup of Allied leaders a bust of Joseph Stalin’
What would have been more RIDICULOUS would be that he was omitted given that Joseph Stalin WAS one of the ALLIED leaders in WW11.
The evil he did mainly to his OWN people is no excuse to try and alter HISTORY. Look how the Global Warmists just cocked up tying to alter the TRUTH.
Well, the immoral beat marches on apace, even at venerable institutions such as MIT.
I can’t seem to link it, but google in -Chaim Kutnicki + When History Becomes Hijacked-and see how the PC concept of moral equivalence has become enshrined as the acceptable norm.
Therefore, I am not at all shocked that those who should know their history refuse to confront it.
Sorry, but no matter how distasteful Stalin was, the Russians, through their enormous sacrifices beat the Germans largely on their own.
The Germans had shot their bolt by Stalingrad, (end of 1942), before Lend Lease or the bombing campaigns had much effect. The west made the war shorter. The Russians won it.
80% of German casualties were on the Eastern Front.
The Western Allies would never have got ashore at Normandy if the Germans had had 5 times as many division as they did opposing them, rather than being bled white in the East.
If the US and British armies had bothered to learn some decent breakthrough doctrines from the Russians (who by 1944 had by far the best operational doctrine and techniques) then they might have broken out of Normandy much faster and efficiently.
Remember, roughly as many Russians died taking Berlin as the US lost in the whole war.
Stalin was a loathsome psycopath. He also happened to be a great war leader who was mainly responsible for beating the Germans. He was also our ally.
Trying to airbrush him out of history is a Stalinist action itself.
It would have been entirely appropriate for the museum to pay tribute to the **people** of the then-Soviet Union, whose courage and dedication indeed had a lot to do with the final Allied victory in WWII…and it is true that the magnitude of this contribution is often unappreciated in the U.S. But it is insane to honor *Stalin*, for all the reasons you state and more.
“[Stalin] “secured the eastern front and helped win the war.”
1) What a piece of gooey garbage! Stalin’s ambitions and “vision” was (complementing Hitler’s) a direct cause of WW II, a conflagration with a price in sufferance and lives lost second to none – and here I let aside Stalin’s merits inside the Soviet Union, where more that 30 million people, Russians and otherwise, were murdered upon the implementation of Stalin’s views of creating a new society. What a psycho!
Yes, you don’t need to subscribe completely to “Icebreaker’s” theory in order to give Stalin the credit for what he did -
2) It is simply amazing too see the resilience of this species, the “useful idiots” – prosperously living in their academic cocoons, and missing no opportunity to twist history in order to advance some “enlightened notions” -
3) and scarier than this is the fact that, had someone frisbeed a smart question to Obama (in a unguarded moment) regarding this matter, he would have answered in even more flattering terms about Stalin than McIntosh – after all, hasn’t Stanley Dunham met Obama senior at Hawaii U while taking Russian classes (nothing wrong with learning Russian), FOR READING LENIN IN ORIGINAL?
My! Now we are talking some revolutionaries here, and one simply cannot avoid the conclusion that Obama’s formative years & contacts have layered upon his congenial resent and animosity towards America and the western world some solidly destructive revolutionary drives -
William McIntosh, contended that Stalin’s bust is included with those of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill because the Soviets
Ooops! Careless reviewing – last phrase fom prior “William McIntosh…” shouldn’t be there -
nothing says the defeat of the National SOCIALIST German Workers Party more than a bust of the dictator of the Union Of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics. they should take Stalin’s bust down and put one up of Ike who as the appointed 5 star General had as much military authority as President Roosevelt.
“” … Saddam Hussein … was an (American “ally” during) the 1980s when we “supported” Iraq in a war against Iran …. “”
Stalin’s statue has to go – that’s a lay-down misère.
But Hussayn as an “ally?”
And “supported?”
Hardly a “supported ally.”
More the (very slightly) lesser of two evils.
At least as I, during my 68 adventures into Iraq, around Iraq, cabinet-level dealings with its government, an aggregate couple of years or so in-country and, thank God, out of Iraq, observed it, during that (Iraq-Iran) war.
I humbly disagree.
The memorial is to honor those involved in D-Day, correct?
It can be argued that without Stalin, there would have been no D-Day.
Churchill is the one that shouldn’t be there. Winnie fought long and hard to get D-Day canceled. He and his fellow Englanders wanted no part of an invasion and land battle in Central Europe. He wanted to nibble around the edges of Hitler’s empire and formant rebellion inside it.
Sort of like a modern day Iranian appeaser.
The US Military (Marshal) knew that there was no chance of Hitler being overthrown or being bothered by having his cities bombed or losing any of his peripheral conquests.
Stalin was in serious trouble in ’42. He volunteered to allow US troops to fight on Russian soil under US commanders if that was what it took to get the US Army into combat against the Nazi’s.
Marshall wanted to invade Europe in ’42. Churchill didn’t. Africa (Torch) was chosen instead. This didn’t make Stalin happy, but it was better then nothing. The Nazi forces in Africa in late ’42 were not large enough to make a difference in Russia.
So Stalin hoped for Allied action in ’43. Didn’t happen. Churchill won the debate again and we got tied up in Italy, on the bogus theory that taking Italy out of the war would hurt Hitler.
So in the fall of ’43 Stalin started making nice with Hitler. There was the possibility of a seperate peace between Hitler and Stalin. They couldn’t reach agreement and by early ’44, Russia wasn’t in such bad shape.
The allies knew Hiter and Stalin were talking. They knew that if there wasn’t an invasion of Europe in ’44 Stalin would strike a deal with Hitler.
Churchill’s plan was to keep Hitler and Stalin fighting for as long as possible. He wasn’t real keen on having Brits dying to help Uncle Joe.
The US military, especially the Navy, never saw Hitler as more then a minor problem. They wanted to put Europe on the back burner and take care of the real issue, Japan. Sort of like the fools today that think catching Osama and destroying AQ will make any difference in the WoT.
So D-Day happened because Stalin and the US Navy were ready to make other arrangements if it didn’t.
Granted Stalin was a monster. That has nothing to do with the memorial. The world is full of memorials to monsters. Any statue of some white guy on a horse waving his sword is one.
Stalin prolly heads the list for monsters, but Churchill, FDR and Truman aren’t far behind.
Never forget that the Allies committed as many if not more ‘war crimes’ then the Axis did.
We won, which is why they went on trial for crimes that mostly weren’t crimes when they were committed.
RKC has it right. Stalin was evil. Stalin also had no choice but to fight the Nazis. And he’s right about the Red Army defeating Germany. Maybe we should use asterisks when we talk about Stalin? Like a baseball player on steroids? History is history regardless of how much we loathe comrade Stalin. Truth is truth, state all of it, not just the stuff we want to.
RE #6/rkc:
[...] the Russians, through their enormous sacrifices beat the Germans largely on their own. [...]
[...] the Russians (who by 1944 had by far the best operational doctrine and techniques) then they might have broken out of Normandy much faster and efficiently. [...]
Wrong, wrong, wrong – rkc, you are an excellent illustration of an “uselful idiot”, Soviet & left apologist at work – bellow I’ll address just a couple of your crappy lefty talking points:
1) “Russian… enormous sacrifices” – true, as the enormous price the Russians paid in lives for Stalin’s and Voroshilov’s crass military ineptituide goes -
Yet most of those sacrifices were forced by the Smerch, the NKVD goons and other forms of barbaric coercion upon a frightened and un-enthusiastic force – the Soviet army had a formidable defection ratio, actually.
And here I’ll add the fact that all along the war the Soviet army had a ratio of forced kamikaze penal batallions of about 25-30% – and I’ll also add in the picture of this gruesome operation run by Stalin, the fact that the Soviet army had about 30% of personnel non-Russian dragooned conscripts, from Moldova to Turkmenistan, you name them (Russian colonies, i.e.) , miserable units of walking dead who were on the front against their will, who deeply hated the Russians, and who never gave a damn’ on Moscow’s or Leningrad’s fate – and rightly so -
2) “If the US and British armies had bothered to learn some decent breakthrough doctrines from the Russians” -
It is mind boggling to hear about “decent breakthrough doctrines from the Russians” – leaving aside the phenomenal losses the Soviets had during the first part of the war, losses generaly caused by rank ineptitude, primitive & ossified structure & chain of command, complete destruction of the officers’ corps by Stalin (see the Tuhachevsky conspiracy*), generalized political terror paralyzing any initiative, all what can be (as you leisurely name “decent breakthrough doctrines”), were uniformly brute offensives managed by monstrous generals like Konev or Malinovsky, in which an apathetic & poorly equipped personnel’s efficiency was offset by the sheer, overwhelming number superiority of the Soviet army, and by Stalin’s (and his heroes’) barbaric disregard for their footsoldiers’ lives –
Rkc, peyote or just some quick MoveOn.Org history workshops don’t really help you in this Stalin/ Soviet Union matter – hey, am I talking to mister Obama?
—————-*———-
* Tuhachevsky conspiracy – coming back to Stalin’s alleged “brilliant military leadership”: actually Tuhachevsky’s death came in a large extent from Stalin’s jealousy for that person’s military abilities:
Years before, after the post bolshevick revolution, during the Polish war, Stalin was the political commisar in Tuhachevsky army, and, as the situation in the Red Army was, the military had to bow to the political doctrine enforcers, in this case to Stalin, who was, and remained for all his life, a totally incompetent strategist -
The war/invasion/ attempt at retaining Poland in that Soviet invasion failed – and the Poles, in a weird twist of fate, should actually be grateful to Stalin’s incompetence for their victory and ensuing fredom -
As far as Tuhachevsky, Stalin had a very good memory, and when the conditions were ripe, he killed Tukachevsky during the great purge – an eerie, sinister, pre-Orwellian description of Tuhachevsky’s last public apparition in Moscow at a 1st. of May parade (after he had became a non-person), can be found in Walter Krivitzky’s “I was Stalin’s Spy(??)” -
the loss
disregard for their soldiers’ lives, who were regarded as fully dispensable and replaceable -
The fire power
lives which were –
Those were the heroes
soviet instead of Russia
“It would have been entirely appropriate for the museum to pay tribute to the **people** of the then-Soviet Union”
Baloney.
The only “people of the Soviet Union” fighting in Normandy were fighting on the side of the Germans, and Stalin had absolutely nothing to do with D-Day.
Keep his head out, and honor the Commonwealth, American and Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen who fought the battle. If each one of them doesn’t have a bust, then why should some commie ratbag who wasn’t there, and contributed nothing have one?
Bad move by the people who run the memorial.
This is classic PJ reactionary emotional ranting. If it wasn’t for Stalin and the Red Army grinding down 80% of the Nazi land forces, like the cream of their tank and infantry divisions, we would still be trying to break out of Contentin Peninsula. At the same time of DDay and the breakout, the Reds launched Operation Bagration which destroyed 5 times the German forces of Army Group Center as we did in Normandy
misanthropicus
It seems that the contents of every one of your pointless rants is the same. Read a good histroy book and you may find out exactly how the Reds helped by tying down then destroying the bulk of the Nazi army
There were no Soviet troops at Normandy at D-Day, so no bust of any Soviet leader or of any of the troops is appropriate at the Memorial. President Obama, ignoramus that he is, included the Soviets as worthy of memorializing at the D-Day celebrations. (He had previously refused to go to the Normandy site when invited by Sarkozy to do so.)
Granted that Stalin was a bloodthirsty despot but let’s not whitewash Winnie, either.
Churchill is on record endorsing the vicious tactics of the undisciplined mercenaries, the Black and Tans, in Ireland. They wreaked havoc pillaging and burning Irish villages and murdering defenseless Irish civilians.
Later, Churchill was highly indignant that Ireland would remain neutral in WWII, and not support the British cause.
Is it any wonder?
uh, wasn’t Stalin that urged Churchill to open a second front in North Africa in 1942, so that it gave a bit of rest to the russian troops fighting against the Nazis on the eastern front ?
21. Marie Claude:
uh, wasn’t Stalin that urged Churchill to open a second front in North Africa in 1942, so that it gave a bit of rest to the russian troops fighting against the Nazis on the eastern front ?
yes …remember Stalin also had Kim Philby sending him classified secrets during the war as Philby + his queer 5 had access to vital information before it even got to the higher ups if it got there at all.
also if the Allies came at Germany through the first front (Italy) they would get to all of Germany before the Russians were able to.
…and then on top of all that the allies were tricked into waiting for the Russian to meet in Berlin.
just goes to show that the leftists are still pushing their Stalinist agenda even today.
What’s with Tiger Woods ?? isn’t that what the stories should be about ??
regards
“There were no Soviet troops at Normandy at D-Day”
Well, there were some…unfortunately, they were in the Wehrmacht.
“If it wasn’t for Stalin and the Red Army grinding down 80% of the Nazi land forces”
Maybe we ought to put up a memorial to the Germans. They did kill a ton of commmies. Gotta give them some credit for that, I suppose.
RE #18/javelin:
[...] misanthropicus – It seems that the contents of every one of your pointless rants is the same. Read a good histroy book and you may find out exactly how the Reds helped by tying down then destroying the bulk of the Nazi army [...]
Blunt Javelin, before going to that, you explain:
1) how Stalin’s/Soviet Union’s attack on Finland in 1939 helped maintain the stability in Europe,
2) how the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty (including its secret clause) helped maintain the stability in Europe -
3) how Stalin/ Soviet Union’s involvement in Spain (and it’s sadistic destruction of the republican cause – and this comes fom a conservative!), helped maintain the stability in Europe – (an introduction in this matter can be found in Krivitzky’s narrative, since he was for a while a GPU operative in Spain at the time) -
4) how Stalin’s countless home murders made in a manner or other this planet a better place -
5) why Stalin/ Soviet Union shouldn’t be regarded, in the same extent like the 3rd. Reich, as a chief offender in causing that war start –
6) … and a bonus question: why Walter Duranty’s name shouldn’t be removed from the Pulitzer Prizewinners list -
Ugly job you have, lefty trolls -
The human mind can make some terrible decisions to absolve itself of guilt. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Jong Il, Pol Pot, these are example of delusional individuals who`s demented thinking caused the deaths of untold millions. Praising these people is an example of a sick mind….
“the Reds launched Operation Bagration which destroyed 5 times the German forces”
I think we’re exaggerating just a tad there.
That being said, if you commie-loving, leftoid dolts want to honor your great hero, Stalin, why don’t you build a Destruction of Army Group Center memorial? You could put up a giant statue of Stalin and wank off to it to your heart’s content.
Just a suggestion.
Well lets settle this discussion once and for all.
Here is a video of the Russians celebrating the invasion of Poland (and the start of WWII) with their ally, the Nazis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=IT&hl=it&v=2TdCwudcFRk
The only reason Stalin was an “Allied leader” was because Hitler made the incredibly stupid error of invading the USSR. Up until that time, Stalin was quite happy at the prospect of dividing the spoils of Europe with Hitler.
It’s quite astounding that the one person the paranoid Stalin trusted was – Adolph Hitler.
And many, many of the Soviet deaths can be laid at the feet of Stalin, since he shipped off many thousands of returning Red Army troops to the gulag.
Although the Soviets did not take part in D-Day, I would have no objection to seeing the average “Ivan” honored – but not a monster who killed more innocents than Hitler.
Like Hitler, Stalin was not in the “liberation” business. He aimed to enslave – and was quite successful at doing so.
This is what happens when you get your history from the History Channel.
No matter what convoluted path these mental giants take, the devil or his representative in this case Stalin does not and will never deserve a place beside the saints who sacrificed themselves for freedoms sake.
The most perceptive of our greatest generation at the time wanted to finish the WWII job, meaning crushing Stalin while they were there. Most knew the evil they were dealing with at the time and the consequences of doing nothing; the Cold War and the subsequent death of tens of millions and the enslavement of half the world to communism.
Just imagine this; the next generation after the greatest generation tries to undo the good works that their fathers have done.
Taking the long view of history we are still in the same war against the Marxist, Statist, and National Socialist Party that really began more than a century ago. Now we have to add in the second jihad whose philosophies jive nicely with the previously named; hatred of Christians and Jews.
Now the enemies of truth are ready to execute their final strategies to at last rule the world, enslaving or killing the remnant of the chosen, the culmination of the long war and the last dream of a fallen angel.
Everyone always argues the extent that the Soviets were our allies during the Second World War. Above you can read assertions that Stalin allied himself with Hitler and helped cause World War II. This is correct, but a vast over-simplification of what occurred. Stalin, among his other endearing characteristics, was a raging paranoid maniac. During the pre-war period, he was obsessed with the idea that the Western Allies, France and England, were trying to maneuver the Germans into invading the U.S.S.R., leaving them to expand after the two totalitarian powers exhausted themselves beating each other to pieces. While there’s no evidence now that this was the intention of the Western Allies, in retrospect you can see how he would come to this conclusion. My favorite incident of the pre-war period is when the Western Allies wished to send a military mission to the Soviets to discuss possible coordinated moves against Hitler if he invaded Poland. Neither the Brits nor the French knew that Ribbentrop was in Moscow negotiating with Stalin, but sending the military mission to Moscow literally by a “slow boat” essentially reinforced the fact that the Western Allies weren’t really serious about allying with the Soviets. The French and British had stumbled the previous year with Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets were willing to help resist Hitler, but pointed out (reasonably, if a bit disingenuously) that they could hardly be able to help in the fight against Hitler without moving their troops through Czechoslovakia itself–something the Czechs resisted mightily.
So saying that Stalin caused all of this is a bit of a stretch. His record is more pragmatic than that. He spent most of this period trying to preserve his power in the Soviet Union, and towards the end of the war extend his power over other countries opportunistically when he could. Was he evil? Sure, no question. Was he our ally in defeating Hitler? Of course, without him the Germans probably would have been close to unstoppable, short of us nuking half of Europe. And could we have done “Patton’s Dream” and kept the armies going eastward, overrunning the Soviets and liberating Eastern Europe? No one knows for sure, but those who think this would have happened easily are idiots. Frankly, I doubt we could have done it without liberal use of nuclear weapons. Anyone *really* think that would have been a good idea?
So should Stalin have been on this memorial? A real cynic would point out that neither Churchill nor Roosevelt was without flaws when it came to the policies of their governments re civil rights. Neither was in Stalin’s league as tyrants, but on the other hand, neither killed as many Nazis, either.
Hmm, this is one debate where I think we really can split the difference: put up a quintessentially Stalinist statue of Stalin, to represent his symbolic presence as co-war leader, and behind that have a sculpture depicting Stalin slaughtering millions with one hand while with the other feeding millions into the line of Nazi fire.
We’ve attempted to “de-Nazify” Western culture; when we can conceive of “de-Communizing” we’ll know we’ve really learned the lessons of WWII.
No Donna, it’s not astounding. You can always trust your enemies. They are out to do you harm, which is why they are enemies. Very dependable, trustworthy that. The ones you can’t trust are your allies. Being allies, one depends on them. That means they can do great damage if they are undependable.
I’m not sure left or right has a place in WW2 history. As an example, almost all the protagonists were Socialists to one degree or another. In 3 of the nations, Socialism had evolved to it’s ultimate form, which is tyranny.
In the others is still had a ways to go. That is by today’s standards, of course.
The thing is, it took the combined power of the allies to drag down Nazi Germany. The outcome in Europe became inevitable on Dec. 8th, when Hitler declared war on the USA. Without Russia to keep the Nazi’s busy and England to provide a base for American power, Hitler could have won. Russia only survived the onslaught of ’41 thru ’43 because of mistakes made by Hitler.
With Russia under control, there is NO chance of America invading Europe.
Russia turned the tide in ’44 because 4 out of 5 German fighter planes were in Germany, trying to stop the USAAF from rubbling German cities. Ship 3 of those 4 to Russia and the Nazi’s have control of the air. That means the Soviets would have been beaten as badly in ’44 as they were in ’41, ’42 and ’43. The Nazi war machine was based on tactical air power and control of the airspace over the battlefield. So long as they had that, they won. When the Nazi’s didn’t have that, they lost.
So to deny Stalin his place in history just because he was a bloodthirsty tyrant who murdered millions is wrong. Stalin differed from his contemporaries only in scale. ALL great Leaders are bloodthirsty tyrants.
Gandhi is a possible exception. Possible because he doesn’t really fit the mold of a great leader.
I’m not an amateur historian, but I play one in blog comment sections.
While the Allies may have been advantaged on D-Day because they faced an enemy fighting a two-front war, so what? The Allies were fighting on multiple fronts, as well.
The Allies nations fought a global war, including the high seas, against two of the most formidable military machines the world had ever seen. By comparison the Soviets fought a single-front war and barely made it out of their own front yard.
I mean, should the Japanese get credit for tying up Allied assets?
To 7. rkc
Your ignorance of WW2 is impressive… russia was only able to be in the war because of the US… and the russian winter did alot more damage to germany in the 1940-42 then the russian army did.
But thats ok you keep right on believing in fiction… hows that global warming working out for you?
Stalin was an uneasy ally during World War 2, but a necessary one to defeat the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, & Italy; Hitler had an irrational hatred for the Russians. Hence, Hiter’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler wondered why America, France, & the United Kingdom did not become allies of Nazi Germany over the Soviet Union. Hitler sent thousands of POW Soviet Union soldiers to the concentration camps & were used in sick German experiments in the camps. Stalin allied himself with the Allies for this & other reasons…
Nonetheless, Stalin should not stand with Churchill. Stalin was as much of a monster as Hitler.
ALL great Leaders are bloodthirsty tyrants.
Reagan? Washington?
Let’s dispel a few myths about Soviet Union’s role in WWII.
First: Soviet Union could have won alone. NO. Even if we don’t account for troops and planes who had to reamin in Western Europe, even if we don’t account for the efexts of Allied bombings, even if we don’t account for the cost of building U-Boots (in 1942 Germany sepent as much producing U-Boots than in tanks or in otherr words couldf have produced twice more tanks) the fact is that most of the powder used by the Red Army was produced by the Allies (words of General Joukov), that Russians would have starved without America, that Soviet Union produced about zero locomotives from Barbarossa to the end of the war and had to rely on British and American ones, that its artillery depe,ded on American radios, that its mobility depended on American trucks and that last but not least the high octane gasoline without which its planes would have been easy preys for the Luftwaffe was provided by the Allies: Soviet Union was unable to produce it.
D-Day would have beeen impossible had notr been most of the Wehrmacht busy in the Eastern Front. True:the formidable task of an amphinous landing would ahve required an unrealistic number of divisions if all the German Army had been able to cponcetrate on costal defences. The question howeever is if D-DAy would have been need at all without the assistancxe Soviet Union provided to Germùany in conquering Poland (there was a good cahnce the Poles would have been able to resit until the rains converted Poland into a sea of mud, leaving the Wehrmach mired in it all while the XWesterbn Front was nearly undefended) or in conquering France had the Wehrmachct been bloodied in Poland not to mention the supplies provided by Soviet Union and the work of sabotage and demoralization by the French Communist Party.
Third Myth: Russia made most of the work. True for the lad war but it was the Allies who made most iof the bombings.
The fact that the left can so casually display a bust of Stalin is chilling. The fact of the matter is that most leftists either try and justify what he did or deny what he did. i think this is in part due to the fact that they themselves would love nothing more than to emulate the Soviet economic/social model here in the US. Notice how loud and rude they are when one dares question any part of their ideas regarding political correctness or for that matter the historical facts of what transpired during the years of Communist rule anywhere it was tried. It is no coincidence that the Left is so cozy with China…and certain factions of the Republican party.
Commies love Stalin. Killing millions of your own people is fine, as long as you are ‘progressive’ and want what’s best for the ungrateful little people.
Stalin should be remembered, but accurately.
If his bust is displayed, along with it there must be some account of his crimes and his victims as well.
What is the point otherwise of having historical memorials at all?
you idiots. stalin is responsib;e for ww2. you dont get points for repelling an invasion that would otherwise result in your personal destruction – not when you bankrolled thatregime with raw materials, diplomatic support, etc. you idiots who argue for the red army’s roll should be shot – just like so many millions of soviets sacrificed for stalin’s ‘world revolution.’ QED.
Operation Bagration destroyed group Center and that was probably the largest defeat suffered by Wermaht in 2nd WW but so what? Operation Bagration exchanged Wermaht occupation forces in Belarus for Red Army occupation forces in Belarus.
Stalin does not deserve place beside people who sacrificed themselves for freedom, but neither Churchill not Roosevelt in Yalta were lily white.
DavidN
1) the Ribbentrop-Molotov act is real and is supported by documents. It is not an assertion i.e. a positive statement or declaration, often without support or reason
2) the contention that Stalin was a raging maniac has nothing to do with the fact that CCCP invaded Poland, and it does not excuse the fact that he was imperialist par excellence.(opportunistic extension of mother Russia’ power). It also does not excuse the fact that many more former POW soviet soldiers were killed in gulags than killed in Germany concentration camps. Majority of soviet POW were sent to camps because it was thought that they were infected by capitalists and were no longer loyal to the system.
3) “German would have been unstoppable” – there are other factors which you did not take into consideration. But we are not talking about S-F alternative reality we are talking about facts and their interpretation, aren’t we?
4) Why should Stalin get memorial just because Russians killed many Nazis? Russians during that time killed also many Estonians, Latvians, Poles, Fins and Ukrainians. You mean you want killer of Europeans get a D-day memorial?
Consider me astounded too, Donna V. I don’t know why people don’t seem to get that Stalin and Mao are both comparable to Hitler in terms of evil perpetrated. Next to any of them, mass murdering dictators like Pol Pot, Mugabe, Miloslevic, etc look like a schoolyard bullies and Chavez looks like a saint.
rkc, a casual glance at war production numbers easily demonstrates just how wrong your claim is. While the Soviets proved they could achieve Pyrrhic victories using limited advances and attrition tactics, what finally allowed them to successfully launch the deep offensives of 1943 and 1944 was mobility, and what gave the Soviet army mobility was 375,000 American lend-lease trucks.
http://www.sturmvogel.orbat.com/SovLendLease.html
66% of trucks, 20% of tanks, 15% of fighters, 25% of bombers, 90% of TNT, 80% of locomotives and rolling stock that the Russians employed during the war was provided by lend-lease. That’s not even starting to look at less obvious but equally critical supplies like aluminum, explosive filler for bombs and artillery shells, nitrates, rails, tinned food, field telephones and radios, copper, rubber, and aviation fuel.
And we aren’t even considering things that are harder to quantify, like numbers of fighters that were pulled away from the eastern front by the bomber offensive.
Suggesting the Soviets won the war “largely” single-handedly is just not at all accurate.
RE #39/Ammosmith:
[...] The fact that the left can so casually display a bust of Stalin is chilling. [...]
… and the fact that someone in the closeset ripple of our luminous president dba Obama’s entourage, like Anite Dunn, can publicly & dreamingly evoke chairman Mao, is telling about the nature and beliefs of the band of adventurers that comandeered this country -
There is a famous old photograph taken in St. Petersburg in 1917 – greish, high & long shot, a street intersection, with Lenin followed by a few acolytes, freshly returned to Russia, bundled in long winter jackets, purposefully marching to somewhere -
This picture always comes to my mind when I see Obama and his followers trying to sway the course of this country -
As far the “useful idiots”… thanks tovarisch Lenin for reminding us that it’s good to cultivate them – just look at MoveOnOrg, ANSWER, ACLU and Amnesty! They do such a fine job!
What a mixed up buch of Ingrates !
Stalin was an important part of history but should be remembered for exactly who he was and what he did.
As many other commenters have pointed out, the author’s line about how Stalin did not help with D-Day is idiotic. Operation Bagration, the July 1944 Soviet operation that basically blasted a hole hundreds of miles wide in German lines from Belarus all the way to the western Polish border, killed or captured three to four times as many Germans as in the Falaise pocket at the end of the Normandy battle.
In fact, in terms of manpower plus territory lost, it was the most crushing Nazi defeat of the war, even worse than Stalingrad and Kursk. I agree with other commenters that an unknown Russian soldier would have best represented our Soviet allies, but they did the brunt of the bleeding and dying and in Churchill’s words ‘tore the guts out of the German army’. What we did in the West, and Lend Lease combined with strategic bombing, cannot be dismissed as a mere sideshow, but perhaps best described as a series of operations in support of the main operation in the East.
Where is this place?
1) “Russian… enormous sacrifices” – true, as the enormous price the Russians paid in lives for Stalin’s and Voroshilov’s crass military ineptituide goes -
I think this is a myth, that all large Soviet losses can be attributed solely to incompetence. In 1941-42 yes, but how else could the Red Army have learned certain operational lessons? Not purging the officer corps may have saved a million lives, but it would still not have spared the USSR the full brunt and massacres of the Nazi war machine.
Stalin not ordering useless spoiling attacks or overestimating his armies’ strength, and avoiding Operation Mars, would have saved another million and perhaps hastened the end of the Stalingrad slaughter. Or perhaps it would have freed up Hitler to send more divisions from the East to the Afrika Corps, or Italy, if there had been less pressure in spring 1942. We don’t know…
Let’s not forget Hitler had plenty of little helpers when he invaded the Soviet Union, 3 million Germans plus a million Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, and other allies, some of them (particuliarly the Romanian Iron Guards, compared to the Italians) much more enthusiastic than others. That is something all those Estonians and even some Lvov Ukrainians whining about how they’re repressed by modern Russia want YOU to forget. The most rabid nationalists today have uncles, great uncles or grandfathers who fought in the Galician or Estonian SS. It’s not a coincidence that 90% of the prewar population of Jews in the Baltic states were wiped out, neighbors denounced and massacred neighbors, like at Babi Yar.
2) “If the US and British armies had bothered to learn some decent breakthrough doctrines from the Russians”
This again is not an apples or oranges comparison. The Germans invaded directly on to Soviet soil on a thousand mile front, the Americans were at the end of a 3,000 mile logistics chain, and even the British had great difficulty keeping the gasoline flowing 40 miles from home separated by the Channell. The only apples to apples comparison would be having 3 million Wehrmacht start at the East Coast and not stop until they were turned back at the Mississippi and probably St. Louis. So it’s not even in the same ball park in terms of the intensity of conflict.
That said, it would have been nice if the USSR could have spared some T-34s and the parts for our own tank corps, in exchange for all those trucks, locomotives and P-39s we supplied.
I would not go so far as to say the USSR would have starved but for Lend Lease. But probably it would have only slogged in to Berlin in late 1946-47 at an even more staggering cost of life. The strategic bombing campaign did divert a huge number of 88 mm guns and fighters to the West, allowing the Red Air Force to gain superiority by spring 1944.
“[Sargent Major] Gandhi is a possible exception.” He was a capable politician and activist, but a moral midget. Yes, that’s what I said. He certainly wouldn’t advocate that Indians follow the advice he gave European Jews – which is that they should commit mass suicide. http://history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt
His so called non-violence is a sham. If he had been attempting to free the sub-continent from Russian colonialism instead of the British variety he would have been killed, early on. Self-defense can and does require the physical and moral courage to kill your enemy. Anything less is not enough to do the job. This is the attitude we must adopt against the islamofascists. Pacifism is worthless against their ilk, and will only result in dhimminitude.
“That said, it would have been nice if the USSR could have spared some T-34s and the parts for our own tank corps, in exchange for all those trucks, locomotives and P-39s we supplied.”
The reputation of the T-34 has become greatly inflated in popular history. It is true that it was most likely the best tank of its type in 1940, but by the time of Operation Torch in 1942 it and its derivatives were no longer the world-beaters they had been. The earliest M4 Sherman models were roughly equivalent in capabilities.
If you’re interested, Hero of the Soviet Union recipient Dmitriy Loza, who commanded a battalion of “Emchas” (lend-lease Sherman tanks) from 1943 to 1945, has recently had his memoirs translated into English. It’s certainly worthwhile to read the whole thing, but even if you don’t, you should at least check out this interview with him which covers a lot of the same themes:
http://www.library.by/portalus/modules/warcraft/special/remember.ru/tankers/loza/loza1.html
Stalin was a murderer.
Stalin was evil.
Stalin won battles by burying the enemy under the bodies of Russian soldiers.
All true.
But if it weren’t for those battles, Hitler would have had many more soldiers and tanks available in France.
To simply remove Stalin’s bust would be wrong. It should be replaced by a representative of the Russian soldier who, ill-trained, ill-equipped, and often with an officer’s gun at his back, gave his life for Mother Russia, and tied up a large part of the Wermacht–at the cost of his own life.
“Stalin was a murderer.”
Yeah, and you don’t usually put up busts of murderers at memorials, especially memorials to battles that the murderer had nothing to do with it.
“The earliest M4 Sherman models were roughly equivalent in capabilities.” I don’t think so, especially from the point of view of easily the early Shermans burned after getting hit.
Now that the Cold War is over, I think both sides can acknowledge the reality — Russians the Lend Lease that enabled them to finally blitzkrieg the Germans and move from a war of attrition to mobility; and Americans for the massive toll in blood Russians gave bearing the brunt of the Nazis fury.
“Operation Bagration exchanged Wermaht occupation forces in Belarus for Red Army occupation forces in Belarus.” And this is one of those dumb Captive Nations resolution type statements you see on neocon-leaning sites like Pajamas Media. Thankfully most here don’t seem to be drinking the koolaid anymore that Russian = Soviet and we should carry on the Cold War as if nothing has changed in twenty years, in either Russia or in America’s relative financial clout/power.
The two occupations aren’t remotely comparable in terms of the slaughter or brutality. That’s not to say the Soviets did not execute or deport people for ‘collaboration’, and that there was not a counterinsurgency campaign against the UNA in Ukraine, but come on. The Nazis viewed everyone outside of the Baltics east of the Niemen as subhuman, cattle fit for either slavery, rape or death by starvation. Only Poland and Serbia’s suffering can come close to that of the USSR and that was precisely because they too were untermenschen in Nazi ideology, though once Germans started losing the war they used more and more Slavic auxiliaries, some of whom fled, or provided intel to partisans, or otherwise switched sides (I am thinking of the Hungarians) as soon as the Red Army approached.
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/05/09/victory-day-special-myths-of-eastern-front/
Have a look at this article and have a nice day.
The Soviets were not as incompetent or lacked rifles (like in the infernal Enemy at the Gates) as they have been portrayed. Besides, post WWII some on our side wanted the Bomb precisely because they felt the Soviets had more soldiers AND more adeptness at landwar while our strength was air and seapower plus the Bomb.
I wish someone would make a movie about Lend Lease to Murmansk or the father of the current American ambassador to Russia who fought as a GI, was captured, then liberated by the Red Army from a POW camp and rode shotgun with them as an Amerikanski ally until he was wounded again. Now THAT would finally show American WWII film buffs what the Eastern Front in the final marches on Berlin were like.
“ALL great Leaders are bloodthirsty tyrants.
Reagan? Washington?”
Why do you consider them great leaders? Great Americans, yes. Great Leaders, no. Napoleon will be remember and studied centuries from now. Washington is an American hero. The rest of humanity rates Michael Jackson ahead of him, Mike the Molester will be remembered long after Reagan is nothing but the answer to a trivial pursuit question.
It is generally accepted that what makes a great leader ‘great’ is having an impact on most of humanity, not just a certain nationality or generation.
Stalin was evil, and he has little relevance to a D-Day memorial. He should not be included.
However, there are several people in this thread that denigrate the Russian contribution to defeating Nazi Germany. That is a huge misunderstanding of history. Compared to the epic scale of the Eastern War, the Western Front starts to actually look rather small. Even the Battle of the Bulge is dwarfed by several of the major Eastern battles, including Stalingrad, Kursk, and the seige of Leningrad.
Yes Stalin’s strategic ineptitude compounded their misery. Yes, the U.S. supplied a great deal of the Russians’ war material. Yes, the post-war Soviet imperialism was terrible. But 20 million dead Russians deserve a little more than glib dismisals of their efforts. America lost less than 1/40th of that number.
And, keep Stalin off our war memorials.
Clauss Clown
But 20 million dead Russians deserve a little more than glib dismisals of their efforts. America lost less than 1/40th of that number.
Nope. It is a testimony about Communist’s indifference to soldiers lives. When you clear minefields by having men walk on them (at least what a Soviet General boasted about) don’t come asking for sympathy about those deaths . I have much for the poor Russian chaps who died in the war (Soviet Union quickly refrained of using non-slavs in combat) but I have only contempt for the entity Soviet Union and I despise its leader.
Also since I have been one of the people who “denigrated” Soviet Union’s contribution to victory allow me to disagree. My points were:
-It was Soviet Union’s pact with Nazi Gerrùany who brought Germany at the edge of victory. The backstabbing of Poland allowed the Wehrmacht to be in top form in 1940 instead of bloodied by a difficult campaign in Poland’s mud. And let’s not forget Communists sabotage of the French Army. Given that allow me to recognize Soviet Union’s contribution to victory, to honor its fallen but not be grateful for it and to despise both Stalin and the people who want to honor him
-That the assertion that Soviet Union could have won the war singlehandedly doesn’t hold water: even without allowing the transfer of a single additional soldier or plane facing the allies, withdraw Allied aid from the picture and Soviet Union loses the war. To begin with because the high number of soldiers in the front and the high production of tanks were only possible because the Allies fed the Russians and provided the locomotives needed to produce those tanks, not to mention their contribution in trucks or the high octane gasoline who made Soviet fighters competitive against German ones.
-That the Soviet/Communist/progressist propaganda has minimized Allied contribution to victory. For instance when you look at the number of tanks the Soviets had June 22, 1941, those they had in March 1942 and those allegedly destroyed by the Germans (usually overestimated) the production numbers given by Soviet Union don’t match: real production was about one third of Soviet claims. And that means that Allied contribution was in percentage 3 times bigger than officla numbers. We could also look at the resources tied building U-Boots instead of tanks, that Germany’s aces weren’t available for the Eastern front (and it would have been a lot harder for Soviet pilots to gain experience had they been), that in 1943 Germany was already spending against the Allies as much as against the Soviets, that at crucial moments in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk Geramny sent its best units to the Western front (plus the fact that when it tried to keep Von Paulus supplied half its transport planes were busy supplying Rommel).
Could the Allies have defeated Germany single handedly? Certainly not. Given the massive advantage for the defender in an amphibious operation nothing short of nukes (not a miracle weapon since the Germans were far ahead of the Allies on gasses and unlike Los Angeles for the Japanese London was not beyond their reach) could grant victory. But I reiterate: without Soviet Union’s assistance against Poland and France it is not certain D-Day would have been needed at all.
#54 NJ Commuter: Excellent post,excellent suggestion.The problem is that the west’s cultural elites are all stalin sympathizers.These people would love to inhabit a murderous nomenklatura,as long as the state it served promised them a redemptive utopia that gave their worthless lives meaning.
17 18 Javelin: True to form, the libtard rips off his veil, and reveals his inner Stalinist.Stalin helped cause the war idiot,he was Hitler’s loyal friend and ally.To honor Stalin in any way is to honor the 20th century,s greatest monster.
That’s the JFM I prefer, of whom I can learn a lot
But I don’t agree about “communist’s indifference to their soldiers life
just remember a few russian movies about WWII, exemple, “The Cranes are flying”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cranes_Are_Flying
the strongest movie on war, ever, for me
Marie Claude this is a movie and one made in Krouthchev’s times not in Stalin’s.
I told about the mines but I could have told about Red Army’s little or no usage of smoke, about the use of non-camouflaged troops to attract German fire, about the virtual inexistence of ambulances and medics (if you are wounded walk until the nearest hospital), about NKVD troops behind regular ones, about the indifference to the millions of Russian soldiers captured in 1941 without any fault of their own (the few survivors were sent to Gulag), the human wave attacks of previously drunken soldiers.
To sumarize it Stalin is alleged to have said:
“You need to be very brave for NOT being a hero in the Red Army”
What about that other guy? The one who did nothing even after Poland was invaded?
The one who let GB fight alone, against all odds, an imminent invasion in 1940. The one who didn’t had the Blls to declare war on the nazis (Hitler had to declare war on him). The one who then gave the Soviets everything they wanted, even half of Europe, in exchange for nothing. In short, what about the man who made the Soviet Union a superpower and left us a dangerous Cold War to fight for a couple of generations?
I think only one of those busts really deserves to be honored.
Mr. X:
“I don’t think so, especially from the point of view of easily the early Shermans burned after getting hit.”
Again this something that has been greatly exaggerated in popular history. All WWII-era tanks burned when hit with frightening regularity. In particular, the T-34 had a fuel tank directly under the front armor which as late as the Model 1943 was not subdivided or ventilated to prevent buildup of explosive vapors inside.
Do keep in mind that we’re comparing the first production M4 Shermans to the T-34 Model 1942, which was a badly flawed vehicle. The turret only had room for two (forcing the gunner to do double duty as commander) and was manually traversed. The optics were of poor quality and tolerances on the gun barrel was low, and the gun was not stabilized. The armor was comparatively thin and prone to heavy spalling when hit. Only one in five had radios. They were simple to manufacture but reliability was poor.
I would argue that the M4 Sherman remained superior to the T-34 throughout the production life of both vehicles, but there are a few specific models where that could be debated. Certainly, though, the M4A3E8 “Easy Eight” Sherman proved far superior to the T-34/85 in Korea.
The one who let GB fight alone, against all odds, an imminent invasion in 1940. The one who didn’t had the Blls to declare war on the nazis
That guy did everything in his power (Cash and Carry, Lend Lease). And given isolationistic feelings he was far from all-powerful: it came to _one_ vote for the program of building up the Armed Forces being cancelled letting America nearly powerless against the axis and Japan. For the isolationnistic feelings: Americans had gone to WWI thinking it would end all wars, they weren’t willing to die for those whose incompetency and cowardice (1) at Munich had given Hitler the time he neded to build an army able to crush them.
The one who then gave the Soviets everything they wanted,
This can be faulted on him. It was also his New Deal who allowed many people with pro-Soviet sympathies to reach positions of power. Ten or twenty years mater some of them were found to have handled information to the Soviets. More of them acted as influence agents or useful idiots.
(1) Mostly British. Unlike Chamberlain, Frenach premier Daladier was aware that Munich was a major disaster but at this point France could no longer take Germany alone.
JFM,
actually, you were not one of the commenters I had in mind. And I support your contempt for the Soviet Union.
Lets not forget that the Russian army would have been rolled flat by the Germans if it wasn’t for the British (to a lesser extent), and the Americans (to a huge extent), supplying the inefficient Soviets with the Steel, Food, and Mechanisation for its armies.
By the end of the war the Soviet infantry was fully mechanised. The tanks might have been T34s (made with American steel), but the infantry were sitting in American halftracks and eating American food.
Marie Claude
I am #67. The one who says that the responsability for Munich was mostly British.
Shane told:
Again this something that has been greatly exaggerated in popular history. All WWII-era tanks burned when hit with frightening regularity. In particular, the T-34 had a fuel tank directly under the front armor which as late as the Model 1943 was not subdivided or ventilated to prevent buildup of explosive vapors inside.
The T34 had a diesel engine and its fuel catched fire less easily than the Sherman’s gasoline. On the other side in the site you mention (Sturmvogel) there is a link towards the testimony of a Soviet tankist who siad that the Sherman’s HE ammo didn’t cook off and the T34′s did.
For the statitics given at Stürmvogel it is pity it doesn’t give the source for Soviet production numbers as specially in the teh first year of the war the official numbers for weaponry were grossly inflated and it was probably the same for more mundane items like gunpowder or copper ore. On the other side it is realtively easy to check production numbers against tanks and planes the Germans alleged to have destroyed while there is no such method for non combat goods.
If, as I suspect it bases on official Soviet numbers then the proprtion of Allied aid respective to proportion should be drastically raised. For instance the Allies are supposed to have delivered one third of Soviet explosives while Marshall Joukov told :”it is not true that the Americans didn’t help us. In fact most of our gunpowder was American. I doubt he should have said “most” if it had only been one third.
JFM
merci mon ami to point on this crucial detail
As far as Mr X, I would like that he gets the same attention from you as I did when I first came, an Oscar was there (and a Mak Malone) to wellcome me and to smooth the angles.
Being from a different perspective isn’t evident, but we can manage to find some common sense in explaining our positions, and he doesn’t make “soviet” propaganda
The two occupations aren’t remotely comparable in terms of the slaughter or brutality.
Also while over two thirds of German POWs survived captivity (the fate of those caught at Stalingrad was an exception) less of one third Russian POWs survived. In “Gruppenbild mit Dame” one of teh characters (I believe that Heinrich Böll reports real facts) tells of Soviet prisonners walking without food or water for days. Some villagers send a five years old girl to give them some. The guards, probably Wehrmacht BTW since there were few SS at this stage of the war, didn’t try to stop her, or to frighten her. They just shot her. Several decades later an American officer wrote: “Had the Germans done to us half what they did to the Russians we would have wiped them to a man”
“The T34 had a diesel engine and its fuel catched fire less easily than the Sherman’s gasoline.”
In liquid state, diesel is considerably less flammable than gasoline. In fact, a full tank of diesel fuel could actually be considered part of the vehicle’s armor.
However, as soon as the fuel in the tank is being used, the tank becomes a bomb. Once there is air inside, the motion of the vehicle will cause the liquid to slosh around, forming an aerosol that is very explosive. The lower the air/fuel line gets, the more dangerous it becomes.
For instance:
“Ref. № 632/3
11/IX-44 y.
Report of spec.lab. NKV № 101-1 on theme:
Examination of hitting features of T-34 tank fuel tanks with armor-piercing/high-explosive and cumulative [HEAT] shells of German fascist army.
In the battles of spring-summer 1943 tank army, tank corps and tank brigade commanders began to note that cases of T-34 combat losses with catastrophic explosions of fuel tanks or fire in engine compartment became more frequent. For instance, cases of ignited T-34 tanks in the battles of summer 1943 near Kursk exceeded those of T-70 tanks by 4-9%…
By order of Red Army chief of BTU GBTU engeneer-colonel Afonin, 11 Sept. 1943 a comission was formed to study this problem.
…
Comission’s survey of 72 T-34 tanks destroyed during Kursk battle on SPAM [field repair] bases have shown that most of them (68%) were destroyed by fire originating in fuel tank depressurization with ignition of diesel fuel.”
Here is David Glantz and Jonathan House’s “When Titans Clashed” summary of the role of Lend Lease.
“Another controversial Allied- contribution to the war effort was the Lend-Lease Program to send supplies to the Soviet Union: Although Soviet accounts have routinely belittled the significance of Lend-Lease in the sustainment of the Soviet war effort, the overall importance of the assis¬tance cannot be understated. 23 Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 1941-1942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of Stalin, Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and their subordi¬nates. As the war continued, however, the United States and Great Britain provided many of the implements of war and strategic raw materials necessary for Soviet victory. Without Lend-Lease food; clothing, and raw materials (especially metals), the Soviet economy would have been even more heavily burdened by the war effort. Perhaps most directly, without Lend-Lease trucks, rail engines, and railroad cars, every Soviet offensive would have stalled at an earlier stage, outrunning its logistical tail in a matter of days. In turn, this would have allowed the German commanders to escape at least some encirclements, while forcing the Red Army to prepare and conduct many more deliberate penetration attacks in order to advance the same distance. Left to their own devices, Stalin and his commanders might have taken 12 to 18 months longer to finish off the Wehrmacht; the ultimate result would probably have been the same ,except that Soviet soldiers could have waded at France’s Atlantic beaches.
While the Red Army shed the bulk of Allied blood, it would have blood for longer without Allied assistance.”
Colonel David Glantz is the director of US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office.
As I said originally. Lend Lease made a big difference, but not to the result of the war, just how long it lasted. The Germans were effectively beaten by the end of 1942 (lost Staingrad and the Battle of the Atlantic), before the West ad done very much. Anything that happened after that didn’t really affect the final result. Just the timing.
When it comes to armour, the Sherman, T34 and PzIV were all roughly equal with advantages and disadvantages.
Dmitri Loza who commanded a squadron of Lend Lease Shermans liked them well enough.
What the West didn’t have were heavy tanks like the IS2 and IS2m that were equivalent to the Tiger and King Tiger, or the heavy ISU assault guns. Instead they had generals who refused to upgun the Sherman because they didn’t think tanks should fight tanks. This sentenced many fine US and British tank crews to death in tanks that had a pretty useless gun.
Thousands of Ukrainians died because of the man-made famine which Stalin instigated in Ukraine-the bread basket of Europe because of his fanaticism and hatred. Millions died in the war, millions were incarcerated and died in prisons, and thousands of families lost their loved ones and their homes. Some were sent to Siberia and Kazakhstan never to be heard from again because of his plans and obsessions, and your organization would like to honor him! How well did you research this project? Shame, shame, shame!
Please honor the men and women who fought against this tyrant and those who through prayer and perseverance came home alive to tell the world about Stalin’s atrocities. I have four such cousins. Please do not embarrass yourselves and the U.S. with such a terrible show of ingnorance of Stalin’s evil.
Stalin should be included in the National D-Day memorial in Virginia despite the fact that he killed millions of his own citizens because Russia fought more of the war than any of the other allies.
II. Creation of the Memorial A. The Memorial was created for the valor, fidelity, and sacrifice of the Allied forces on D-Day. Stalin was an allied force who on d-day and throughout most of the war was fighting heavily against.
a. Russia should be recognized in the memorial because he was a ally and his troops also had valor, fidelity, and sacrifice during WW2.
III. Public protests – There are many public protests over Stalin’s bust everywhere because of the millions he killed however the bust doesn’t insult those millions who died.
A. Protests including the fact that the Soviet union has removed most images of Stalin
1. “In the Soviet Union itself, most statues and other images of Stalin were removed from public view a half century ago in recognition of the fact that he ranks among history’s most homicidally prolific autocrats. Veterans groups and others are organizing petition drives demanding the bust’s removal from the memorial.” (Why is, n.p.)
i. Stalin is being removed from the Soviet Union for the most part because the Soviet Union is no longer communist but now have a form of democracy. Also even though the demand the removal of the bust the leaders of the memorial have deemed that the bust should stay there.
B. Public Protests
1.“AMERICANS GENERALLY avoid publicly memorializing foreign tyrants who commit murder on an epic scale. That fine custom is all the more sensible when it applies to struggling private foundations whose solvency depends on the goodwill of the public and, specifically, patriotic veterans for whom murderous dictators are not a big selling point.” (Why is a, n.p.)
i. It’s not really memorializing the tyrant as recognizing him for his role in the war the mass murders that he committed are noticed in a plaque underneath the bust.
C. Stalin’s bust does have a notice to all those concerned about his murders
1. The plaque : “In memory of the tens of millions who died under Stalin’s rule and in tribute to all whose valor, fidelity, and sacrifice denied him and his successors victory in the cold war.”
a. This includes the soldiers who died fighting under his rule while at war.
D.The head of the memorial is standing firm against opposition
1. “They did so despite public protests, the memorials serious financial problems and the possibly pertinent fact that Stalin played no direct role in the D-Day landings.” (Why is, n.p.)
IV. War Effort – Russia spent much more troops in the war than the Allies since he lost 25 million citizens and soldiers as the result of the war. During WW2 Stalin was basically fighting Germany all by himself waiting for the other allies to open up a second front which wasn’t until d-day. Until d-day Russia had a one front war against Germany while the other allies took their time reaching Germany and going through Africa and Italy first.
A. Russia ruled by Stalin fought most of the war against the Axis powers.
1. James Dunnigran, author of “Dirty Little Secrets of World War II,” reveals that seven-eighths of all months in combat by German divisions in World War II were expended on the Russian front.” (Why Stalin, n.p.)
a. Shows that during the war Stalin was fighting Germany mostly by itself save for a few allies fighting only one eighth of all of the months in combat of the German divisions.
2. “By mid-August, the German Army Group Center had been destroyed, the Soviet offensive had moved 350 miles west, The Red Army took Warsaw and Romania.” (Stalin’s, n.p.)
This shows how much land the Soviet Union covered and how much they did.
B. The war might have been lost without the Russian help
1. “These data suggest that had it not been for the Soviet Union — and the decisions of its leadership, however odious — the Western Allies on D-Day would have met a fate similar to their abortive landing at Dieppe in 1942.” (Why Stbalin, n.p)
C. He defeated more divisions than the Allies
1. “Charles Winchester, in “Ostfront,” informs us that in August 1944, 38 Allied divisions defeated 20 German divisions in France; further east, 172 Soviet divisions overwhelmed 67 German divisions. ( Why Stalin, n.p.)
D. He compared leaving Stalin out of the lineup of Allied leaders with not including Judas, the betrayer of Jesus Christ, in “The Last Supper” — a famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. (Pumphery)
V. Stalin’s bust should stay there because it helps to better tell the story of D-Day at the D-Day memorial.
A.Stalin’s bust helps explain D-Day better
a. “Illuminating Stalin’s role in the planning of Operation Overlord is not to “honor” him as a person, but to recognize him and his country in a coalition effort to win the war.” (n.p.)
i. was to recognize him in their effort in the war