On 4/27/05, John Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Frank, I have to take some issue with you on this paragraph. The USSR was > certainly not fighting the Nazis single-handed. You may recall that Britain > fought from September of 1939 until the German invasion of Russia in 1941 > with no manpower assistance from either of the two major powers, the USSR or > the USA.
Correct. I meant that Russia didn't get any help on the Russian Front in terms of troops. AFAIK, there were only Russian troops involved in, for instance, Stalingrad (surely the bloodiest battle of the war, if not in the history of warfare). Britain certainly stood alone against Germany in the Battle of Britain, and I didn't mean to diminish that heroic feat. I recall reading that on what turned out to be one of the last nights of heavy bombing over English cities, Churchill asked his Air Marshall (can't remember his name), "How many reserves do we have?" (meaning "how many planes on the ground, ready to go up?") The answer was "None!" Every English fighter capable of flying was in the air. Had the Germans sent one more wave of bombers, it would have been over. The Battle of Britain would have been lost. That's how close it was. > Prior to 1941, Germany and Russia had a non-aggression treaty in > place, which was breached by Hitler unilaterally with the invasion. Once > the Russians were involved, much materiel and many lives were lost in convoy > operations to ports such as Murmansk in attempts to supply Russia with the > modern arms and supplies it did not have (read about PQ17 for the full > horror of those voyages), and the lack of which led in some ways to the high > casualties the Red Army suffered in the early stages of the war. > > Whatever the motivation of the Russians post-1945, even a cursory reading of > Eastern European history of that period will show that, had Russia wanted > only friendly states in Europe to act as a buffer, she did not need to > militarily occupy nations which were supposed to have been liberated by the > Allies, to overthrow or refuse to allow their legitimate governments to > reform, and to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of people for decades > simply because they had been in those formations, such as the Free Polish > Air Force, who fought with the Allies against Germany. Russia even > incarcerated her own freed POW's because of Stalin's paranoia that they were > corrupted by the West, after being held in POW camps in Europe. I didn't say that Russia wanted "friendly" buffer states. I'm not, and did not say that what was essentially the Russian occupation of East Europe was a good thing, or that I condoned it. I'm just saying that the Russian point of view was that they were entitled to what the US had: a group of allied states in which it could put military bases to fend off an attack (or launch one) on the "enemy". I'll say it again (in case you didn't read that part of my previous post): Soviet Russia was one of the most evil regimes the world has ever seen, especially under Stalin. Full stop. > > IMV, the Russian occupation of Europe was simply a device to steal the > resources of the occupied countries of Eastern Europe (oil from Rumania, > machine tools and expertise from Czecho-Slovakia and East Germany, for > example). I agree that was a large part of it. > > Growing up in Europe in the 1950's to 1960's, the threat from Russia seemed > real enough: we had no way of knowing whether her territorial ambitions were > satisfied or not, as the Iron Curtain which descended on Europe in 1945-6 > was not relaxed until the 1990's. Look at Prague 1968, Gdansk 1980, Berlin > 1949 for examples of Russia's inflexibility. By the time Russia and the West had "divvied up" Europe after WWII, nuclear stalemate had set it. Russia wouldn't have dared take over any Western European countries; the stakes would have been too high. I know that hindsight is 20/20, and I know that the fear of the general population was real. I agree with what you say WRT Russia's inflexibility. I also mentioned (in my previous post) Hungary in 1956. Again, I don't defend what they did, but I also see that they had their reasons, and a different viewpoint of what was going on. > > Nothing personal - just record-straightening! > I understand, John. I don't think we're too far apart here, but the difficulty is the forum in which we exchange these thoughts is quite limited. I'm sure sitting having a few beers during a long discussion, fleshing out our thoughts, we'd discover that we're more or less in accords. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
