|
LeoMarr posted:Are you going to call me a holocaust denier next? "Where the hell do you lot get off calling me a conspiracy theorist?" shouted the man arguing a conspiracy theory.
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 03:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 21:28 |
|
|
LeoMarr posted:What if Dunkirk had resulted in the capture of 300,000 troops including most of the BEF. Would the UK still have fought back had their army been eradicated? The Germans had nowhere near the amphib capacity or knowledge required to land and support enough troops to occupy the UK nor did it have the air and sea power required to make that crossing feasible. Sealion was a figment of Hitler's imagination and even he gave up on it relatively quickly. A large scale capture of British troops at Dunkirk would have weakened the hand of England but the rest of the commonwealth could have made up the difference plus it would have added extra pressure on the USA to become more involved earlier Scratch Monkey fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Dec 12, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 03:25
|
|
|
LeoMarr posted:Are you going to call me a holocaust denier next? You'll concede that the Holocaust occured, but insist that it was orchestrated by Stalin as a means of overshadowing the various atrocities that he planned to commit. The gradual revelation of the Holocaust would serve as an indictment of the pitiless capitalist governments which were variously complacent or complicit in the murder of Jews. As each death camp was shut down, it would provide a mandate for the Red Army to sweep further west - until Aryan barbarism had been wholly eliminated from Europe. The citizens of Belgium may not have liked their new Soviet puppet-government, but anyone who complained about it could be denounced as an anti-semite Nazi sympathizer. It's so obvious! Wake up sheeple!
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 03:28
|
|
|
Why would the Soviets place their freshly drafted troops on their gigantic border with their ideological enemy that had just eaten most of continental europe instead of the rear end-end of Siberia???? idgi
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 03:42
|
|
|
Did you know that the BT tanks could drive on their road wheels faster than they could with their tracks? That PROVES that Stalin planned to take over the world by using his super fast tanks to drive on all those highways and roads those pesky not-Russians insisted on building!
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 03:50
|
|
|
LeoMarr posted:What about when Japan practically announced that they were not going to attack the USSR and Stalin moved a large army group out of Siberia? Had those divisions not been freed up would Moscow have been liberated? In the words of the Germans, what were they fighting to "liberate" moscow from, Leomarr?
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 03:54
|
|
|
LeoMarr posted:A) Russian Empire did this to cull uprisings by removing a large quantity of fighting aged males from areas of high revolt lol you really have no idea what you're talking about. The Russians did this to everyone, high revolt or no, across pretty much the entire empire. quote:Concentration of forces on German-USSR Border Hmm you're right, there's no reason for the deeply paranoid and insecure USSR to expand their military at all, or place them on the border with Germany for any reason, even after Germany conquered half of Europe. They should have stuck them all in the Urals training. Placing soldiers on the border of your powerful ideological enemy who has shown a proclivity for offensive warfare is completely illogical and the only reason why you would ever do that is if you were planning to invade them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 04:04
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:Not really. The Germans pretty much had the entire deck as stacked in their favour as humanly possible in 1941, and they still lost in the end. Wargaming gives a bit of insight to this, where you have to implement some tremendous handicaps to get a result that's anywhere near what happened historically, moreso if "the Germans drive to the Arkangelsk-Astrakhan line" is supposed to be a thing you can pull off in-game. Because if you don't, and you give the Soviets a relatively free hand in conducting their operations, the Germans are likely to stall out somewhere in the vicinity of Smolensk.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 04:18
|
|
|
vyelkin posted:Hmm you're right, there's no reason for the deeply paranoid and insecure USSR to expand their military at all, or place them on the border with Germany for any reason, even after Germany conquered half of Europe. They should have stuck them all in the Urals training. Placing soldiers on the border of your powerful ideological enemy who has shown a proclivity for offensive warfare is completely illogical and the only reason why you would ever do that is if you were planning to invade them. So wouldn't the idea that Germany was very well versed in offensive wars give plausibility to the thought that Stalin planned on preemptively striking Germany before he was thrown into a defensive war? Maybe one in say, 1941 when Stalin was at a significant manpower advantage proven in 1942 onwards?
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 05:16
|
|
|
LeoMarr posted:So wouldn't the idea that Germany was very well versed in offensive wars give plausibility to the thought that Stalin planned on preemptively striking Germany before he was thrown into a defensive war? Maybe one in say, 1941 when Stalin was at a significant manpower advantage proven in 1942 onwards? No.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 05:20
|
|
|
By this point I'm pretty sure the only thing that would convince you Stalin wasn't planning an offensive war would be if he had disbanded the entire Red Army on June 21, 1941.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 05:36
|
|
|
Re: Nazi Germany developing nuclear weapons. Remember, Nazis explicitly rejected relativity as a Jewish science and spent pretty much all their effort in the sciences to promoting a pure aryan methodology. German engineers were amazing sure, but there's a really good reason all the great German scientists fled before the war and why even the Nazi ones had their greatest success outside of Germany after the war. So no, the Germans were probably never going to make a nuke. Because nukes were too jewish. ~Nazis~
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 05:43
|
|
|
LeoMarr posted:So wouldn't the idea that Germany was very well versed in offensive wars give plausibility to the thought that Stalin planned on preemptively striking Germany before he was thrown into a defensive war? Maybe one in say, 1941 when Stalin was at a significant manpower advantage proven in 1942 onwards? First, the fact that you're arguing against literally everyone else in the thread should give you a slight hint that you may want to take another look at your theories. Second, arguing that the Soviet Union was preparing to go to war in 1941 is just flat-out absurd. The Red Army was in the midst of a massive reorganization at this time, both as a reflection on their performance against Finland in the Winter War and in an attempt to replace their aging rifles, tanks, planes, and... everything, really. I mean good lord, you think the Soviets wanted to go to war when their primary tank was the outdated and obsolete T-26? Or when they were still fielding a thousand loving biplanes? The purge hurt the Red Army deeply, but the far bigger issue the Soviets had to deal with in 1940-41 was that they were saddled with literally tens of thousands of worthless tanks, planes, and guns they'd built during the '30s that were good at the time but were now worn down and hopelessly obsolete. Their replacements like the T-34 and the Yak-1 were top of the line, but far more time was needed not only to build them, but to train soldiers on how to use and maintain them. Hell, one of the reasons why the Soviet Union took such crippling losses early in the war was because their older poo poo kept breaking down and not enough soldiers were trained on the new poo poo to get the most effectiveness out of them. And this brings me to why: LeoMarr posted:Overcomplex? So it was all chance? Stalin happened to enact a draft which happened to end 4 months prior to the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Oh and these troops happened to be on the border of Germany? this is so stupid. Hey, guess what: The US started a draft in 1940 for the exact same reason why the Soviets implemented a draft: the US military was garbage and it takes time to get soldiers trained and up to speed on how to do this whole "War" thing. You train 'em up, you ship them out, and if a real war starts there's that much less time you need to train them to not be poo poo before you send them out. Unfortunately for the Soviet Union, they ran out of time. also lol at complaining about cost in a command economy Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Dec 12, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 06:34
|
|
|
Any counterfactual history that deals with the Russians getting their asses kicked and losing Moscow + Stalingrad + Leningrad and the war continuing on into 1946 or 1947 would still end with Germany losing but instead of Soviet tanks rolling through their streets it'd just be atomic bombs glassing their cities courtesy of the USA.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 11:12
|
|
|
LeoMarr posted:Overcomplex? So it was all chance? Stalin happened to enact a draft which happened to end 4 months prior to the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Oh and these troops happened to be on the border of Germany? I can't even tell what your conspiracy theory about the draft is supposed to be, I'm sorry. you're that incoherent. The USSR was revamping its military. Obviously when you do that you want to draft people to train them on new equipment and tactics. Again, a simple explanation that will be wildly rejected by you.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 12:03
|
|
|
Occam's Razor is a Stalinist Plot.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 16:35
|
|
|
It's true that the draft was secretive precisely because it was an act against the status quo in Soviet - German relations, arguably, but it takes a leap of logic to conclude the erosion of status quo was because of an imminent Soviet invasion of Germany rather than because as of the end of 1938 it was obvious that a major war would start in Europe sooner than later.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 17:56
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:It's true that the draft was secretive precisely because it was an act against the status quo in Soviet - German relations, arguably, but it takes a leap of logic to conclude the erosion of status quo was because of an imminent Soviet invasion of Germany rather than because as of the end of 1938 it was obvious that a major war would start in Europe sooner than later. The erosion occured because Hitler wanted to "liberate" the world from Judeobolshevikism and saw no difference between being a Jew and being a communist.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 18:04
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:The erosion occured because Hitler wanted to "liberate" the world from Judeobolshevikism and saw no difference between being a Jew and being a communist. I talked specifically about Stalin endangering the Soviet German relationship by enforcing draft. That Hitler wanted to destroy the USSR since forever is hopefully not disputed by anyone (LeoMarr?)
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 18:08
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:I talked specifically about Stalin endangering the Soviet German relationship by enforcing draft. That Hitler wanted to destroy the USSR since forever is hopefully not disputed by anyone (LeoMarr?) It's the entire reason Hitler invaded Poland. From '33 to '39, Hitler was trying to recruit Poland into the anti-commintern pact and into alliance against the Soviets, offering generous land swaps in Ukraine and Belorussia for the Gdansk corridor. Polish diplomats were non-commital, and when Germans made a final pressing in '39, they refused to take sides and stuck ardently with neutrality. Lest we forget what the Soviets were up to during this time period, they were ethnically cleansing Poles from their borderlands. The Soviet army was deployed to support ethnic cleansings, not to take defensive positions against Germany.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 18:13
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:It's the entire reason Hitler invaded Poland. From '33 to '39, Hitler was trying to recruit Poland into the anti-commintern pact and into alliance against the Soviets, offering generous land swaps in Ukraine and Belorussia for the Gdansk corridor. Jesus christ don't bring your bullshit into this thread, MIGF. Hitler's approaches to Poland, if they even rise to that level, were bellicose demands for territorial concessions and acquiescence to the preliminaries of what became Generalplan Ost. Go be retarded somewhere else.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 18:55
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:It's the entire reason Hitler invaded Poland. From '33 to '39, Hitler was trying to recruit Poland into the anti-commintern pact and into alliance against the Soviets, offering generous land swaps in Ukraine and Belorussia for the Gdansk corridor. You moron, Poland was ruled by loving fascists who would have gladly went arm-in-arm with Hitler in an anti-communist pact but they were not going to hand their entire coastline over to do it. Being landlocked is a massive, massive handicap and no Polish leader with half a brain would have landlocked the country in exchange for favors from Hitler. Also there's the whole fact that German imperialists had been agitating for Drang nach Osten for almost an entire century. They even largely sat out the Scramble for Africa because they were more interested in colonizing the Baltic region. Polish and German conservatives had common interests in containing communism in general and the USSR in particular during the 1930s but they were not friends. Also [citation needed] on the land swaps part. Leaving out the fact that Belarus and Ukraine are landlocked and their land would not have been an acceptable substitute for the corridor, Germany could not afford to piss off the USSR in 1939 and Hitler knew it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 19:27
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:
You're both thinking of Admiral Clifton Sprague. Spruance wasn't in command at Leyte.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 20:04
|
|
|
Even moderately conservative Germans were outraged at the very existence of Poland since they saw that land as having legitimately been part of Germany for centuries. Poland knew that it was going to be invaded by Germany at some point and I believe their prime minister said something to the tune of "We'd rather be dessert than breakfast."
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 20:47
|
|
|
SolarFire2 posted:You're both thinking of Admiral Clifton Sprague. Spruance wasn't in command at Leyte. Whoops, my bad for not paying the closest attention in my hurry to 
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 21:26
|
|
|
Sergg posted:Even moderately conservative Germans were outraged at the very existence of Poland since they saw that land as having legitimately been part of Germany for centuries. Poland knew that it was going to be invaded by Germany at some point and I believe their prime minister said something to the tune of "We'd rather be dessert than breakfast." Most of it wasn't though. Germany lost the Polish Corridor, Danzig, and...  (there's also Alsace-Lorraine, but that's  )The territorial losses in 1918 were insignificant compared to 1945, where they lost all of Prussia except Brandenburg, which was absolutely devastating.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 22:34
|
|
|
Oh yes, Germany has been totally devastated since 1945, completely in tatters.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 22:54
|
|
|
Woolie Wool posted:Most of it wasn't though. Germany lost the Polish Corridor, Danzig, and... Germany also lost parts of Silesia which had been under German rule since at least the partitions (I don't quite remember), as well as Poznań and its surrounding territories.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:06
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:Germany also lost parts of Silesia which had been under German rule since at least the partitions (I don't quite remember), as well as Poznań and its surrounding territories. The Saxons got Silesia from Bohemia during the 30Y war as a guarantee they wouldn't declare war against the Habsburgs. E: Wait, I got Silesia mixed up with Lusatia, Prussians won Silesia in their wars against Maria Theresa. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Dec 12, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:09
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:The Saxons got Silesia from Bohemia during the 30Y war as a guarantee they wouldn't declare war against the Habsburgs. Well there you go then, was German-ruled even longer than I thought and Poland got part of it after 1918.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:12
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:Oh yes, Germany has been totally devastated since 1945, completely in tatters. Thanks for the completely idiotic strawman. The first ten years after the end of the war were really loving bad and for the East Germans, the next thirty after that weren't so great either. Not that it excuses or even mitigates anything the Nazis did (the Nazis did much worse things to Russia) but Germany suffered immensely as a consequence of starting and losing World War II, and the West German economic miracle (on the back of massive American investment and the biggest bailout in human history, which should have been a lesson to future capitalist leaders) came after a lengthy period of privation and misery. And speaking of worse things done to Russia, Russia recovered in the 1950s, completed its industrialization, and had almost thirty years of success before Brezhnev and Andropov hosed everything up so I guess Nazi Germany turning the western USSR into a barren hellscape and killing 
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:25
|
|
|
Woolie Wool posted:And speaking of worse things done to Russia, Russia recovered in the 1950s, completed its industrialization, and had almost thirty years of success This is some leomarr level poo poo
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:27
|
|
|
So are you going to actually refute the assertion that the USSR had a period of expanded influence and prosperity during the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, and that subsequent recoveries of the various nations wrecked by World War II do not mean those nations were not severely affected or that world wars are really terrible things, or are you going to take content-free potshots again? P.S. the Soviet stagnation and eventual decline started in 1973, which indeed is almost thirty years after the end of World War II. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Dec 12, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:32
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:Jesus christ don't bring your bullshit into this thread, MIGF. Hitler's approaches to Poland, if they even rise to that level, were bellicose demands for territorial concessions and acquiescence to the preliminaries of what became Generalplan Ost. Go be retarded somewhere else. Moscow had its own interpretation of the diplomatic realignment brought about by the Ukranian catastrophe. Whereas Warsaw saw the nonaggression agreements with both Moscow and Berlin as proof of a policy supporting the status quo, and Berlin saw its engagement with Warsaw as pointing towards a common campaign against the Soviet Union, Moscow saw the Polish-German rapprochment as a sign that Poland and the Soviet Union would never be allies. In the European war that Stalin expected, Poland would be either hostile or neutral toward the USSR. This meant that Polish statehood was of no possible value to the Soviet Union, and should be eliminated when the occasion arose. It then transpored that the large Polish minority in the western reaches of the USSR had been hostages to the possibility of some future Soviet-Polish accord. Once Stalin ceased to believe that Poland could ever be a Soviet ally, Soviet citizens of Polish nationality became disposable. Poles in the Soviet Union could be blamed for Soviet policy failures and punished accordingly. In the five years between the signing of the German-Polish declaration of January 1934 and the clear break in German-Polish relations that would come in January 1939, Poles in the Soviet Union were subjected to a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Right after Piłsudski's death, Göring proposed a common German-Polish invasion of the Soviet Union, an offer he repeated in February 1936. Throughout that year, Hitler made similar appeals to the Poles. Jan Szembek, Beck's number two in the Polish foreign ministry, reported upon extensive conversations with Hitler at the Berlin Olympics of August 1936: "Hitler's policy to us is dictated by the conviction that Poland will be his natural ally in future conflicts with the Soviets and communism." Though ostensibly a defensive arrangement against international communism, this rather quickly became the basis for a military alliance. Berlin asked Warsaw to join the pact in February 1937, a full six months before Italy became its third member. Warsaw refused this proposal then, as they did on at least five occasions thereafter. ... It was a dire situation, whise logic Polish diplomats, of course, did not explain to their German colleagues. They tried, as diplomats do, to make the most of what their interlocutors wanted, without acceding to it. When asked about a German-Polish alliance against the Soviet Union, they evaded the issue for as long as possinle. When finally forced to issue a categorical response, they catrgorically refused. In summer 1938, Göring was once again trying to tempt the Poles with the fertile soil of Ukraine. Matters came to a head that October, when Hitler presented the Poles with a "comprehensive solution" to all of the problems in German-Polish relations.... The claims he made on Poland's territory were mild by comparison with the German mainstream: that Danzig, a free city on the Baltic coast, be allowed to return to Germany; and that German authorities be allowed to build an extraterritorial autobahn across Polish territory between the main body of German territory and its noncontiguous Prussian districts. These two issues were negotiable, and indeed were negotiated. The real problem was what Poland would get "in return." As German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop explained to Ambassador Lipski, the Germans envisioned for the near future "joint action in colonial matters, the emigration of Jews from Poland, and a joint policy to Russia on the basis of the Anti-Commitern Pact." Ribbentrop made much of the gains of Ukranian territory that Poland would supposedly win in the conquest of the Soviet Union. This fell on deaf ears. The decision against intervening in the Soviet Union had been made in Warsaw in 1933.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:33
|
|
|
Woolie Wool posted:So are you going to actually refute the assertion that the USSR had a period of expanded influence and prosperity during the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, and that subsequent recoveries of the various nations wrecked by World War II do not mean those nations were not severely affected or that world wars are really terrible things, or are you going to take content-free potshots again? Yes. The Soviet Union post-war recovery was fueled by stripping her "allies" and other occupied territories of industrial machinery and resources and of severely underperforming compared to the West in every development indicator, actually lowering standard of living in the western parts of the Eastern bloc. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Dec 12, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:33
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:Yes. One cannot understand the post-war world without understanding the pre-war German, Polish, and Soviet land policy. Germany was colonial; Poland, decolonial; Soviet, self-colonial. The acquisition of additional territory in the wake of the war allowed the Soviets to expand their self-colonial land reform policies and give the false appearance of expanding influence.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:35
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:Yes. If the US Air Force sends B-52s to carpet bomb your hometown into a pile of cinders, it's OK because it will just be rebuilt, right? No harm no foul!
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:36
|
|
|
Woolie Wool posted:If the US Air Force sends B-52s to carpet bomb your hometown into a pile of cinders, it's OK because it will just be rebuilt, right? No harm no foul! I do believe there was a Peter Sellers film about this very subject.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:37
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:One cannot understand the post-war world without understanding the pre-war German, Polish, and Soviet land policy. Germany was colonial; Poland, decolonial; Soviet, self-colonial. This post is gibberish. Woolie Wool posted:If the US Air Force sends B-52s to carpet bomb your hometown into a pile of cinders, it's OK because it will just be rebuilt, right? No harm no foul! See my expanded post. Also I don't think this post is even tangentially related to anything. Losing territory is qualitatively different from losing infrastructural power.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 21:28 |
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:I do believe there was a Peter Sellers film about this very subject. The Mouse That Roared is a great movie, and everybody should watch it. While the politics in it are simplified, it reflects the bewilderment the post-WWII world experienced over the fact that you can now lose a war, yet win the peacetime through economic policies.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:40
|
|