Text 29711, 91 rader
Skriven 2012-06-16 04:56:50 av Lee Lofaso (2:203/2)
  Kommentar till text 29676 av alexander koryagin (2:5020/2140.2)
Ärende: Napalm & Agent Orange
=============================
Hello Alexander,

 BF>> But with the US aggression -- thanks to all the misinformation
 BF>> that Reinhard Gehlen provided them with -- the USSR had little
 BF>> choice but to escalate their military presence.

 LL>> Tell us about Finland.  The failed Soviet invasion of Finland.
 LL>> Didn't quite work out as planned for those Russkie soldiers, with
 LL>> Viking blood still running through the veins of those nasty Finns.
 LL>> Maybe those Russkie soldiers would have had better luck invading
 LL>> Sweden?

 ak> Stalin, BTW, did not want to conquer Finland.

Nobody can pretend to know what went on in the mind of Joe Stalin.

 ak> He wanted to move away the border from Leningrad and he did what he
decided.

A nice theory.  However, the only part I can agree with is "he did
what he decided."  Not that what he chose to do necessarily worked.
At least, not in the way he had planned it.

 ak> At that time it was obvious that a new war was coming and Leningrad was
 ak> almost on the border with Finland.

A new war?  With who?  The Americans were leaving.  The British
were leaving.  The French were leaving.  Everybody else was leaving.
The war was over.  Soldiers were ready, and eager, to go home.

 ak> It was a question of life, BTW.

In his own mind, maybe.  But then, Joe Stalin was always kind of
paranoid.  And probably for good reason.  :)

 ak> Russia started that war after failing to negotiate peacefully the new
border
 ak> (BTW Finland was the part of Russia until O.R. in 1917 and the border was
 ak> questinable).

A bank robber always tries to "negotiate peacefully" before
shooting the bank teller.  "Your money or your life" is kind
of a credo.  But what happens when the bank teller shoots
back?  Duh.  The bank robber didn't prepare for that...

 ak> But we must understand: Stalin had moved away the border from Leningrad
and
 ak> it was the key reason why Leningrad was not captured during WW2, and it
was
 ak> a key event during that war.

Hitler wanted control of the Soviet Union's natural resoures, hence
his choice of attacking Stalingrad.  Some historians argue that Hitler
should have taken Moscow, thus giving a fatal blow to the Soviet
political establishment.  Leningrad has some fine museums and other
places of interest, but militarily was not appealing.

 ak> Another key event - in 1940 the USSR returned Russia's lands that had been
 ak> captured by Poland in 1918 (yes, the Poles were not angels either). If
 ak> Stalin had not done it, Moscow would not have had a single chance to
defend
 ak> itself either. And most probably, if the USSR's
 ak> western border was as close as it was in 1940, the USSR would have been
 ak> defeated by Hitler.

Poland had ceased to exist as a nation for 400 years.  Yet its
people retained the Polish language.  Along with their Catholic
faith.  That is how they endured.  Militarily and economically,
Stalin had no other realistic choice but to make a deal with
Hitler.  His hands were tied, in the sense that had he not done
so the Soviet Union would most certainly have fallen to German
forces in a short matter of time, with no chance to recover.

 ak> In other words, these Stalin's military operations actually _saved_ the
USSR
 ak> together with the other world. Certainly Hitler and Japan could not have
 ak> been defeated if the USSR had been defeated by Hitler.

Stalin had to find a way to stall for time.  His military tactics
may be questionable, even sickening.  But look at what options he had.
Those options were very few, and extremely limited.

Could Stalin rule in today's world?  I doubt it.  Russia has
changed dramatically, as well as Stalin's native Georgia.  But
he was a man of his times, and did what he felt he had to do
to save his people.

--Lee

--- MesNews/1.06.00.00-gb
 * Origin: news://felten.yi.org (2:203/2)