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

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.

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.

“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.

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.”

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”

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

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.

I am #67. The one who says that the responsability for Munich was mostly British.