Reason For Overlord

These people would have been a tremendous advantage to Stalin in his quest for world power.

Cough! Gag! What quest for world power? :sign_wow: :sign_rofl:

More than that:



Did that ever exist? Puhleeeeeze! Only in the old Readers' Digests I made allusion to elsewhere, or in the scaremongering CIA World Reviews they used to scare US Congress shitless so they could vote any kind of monies for Defence!

In all my years of reading through Communist theory (jeeez, how boring!) I never encountered such a concept, but then who the hell am I...

 

I find this very surprising considering that Europe was the most progressive area of the world with its scientists, writers, artists, architects, etc.

These people would have been a tremendous advantage to Stalin in his quest for world power.

Bob Guercio
Bob, I'm not sure that Stalin was on a quest for world power. If you remember this was the whole point in the struggle for power following Lenin's death. Trotsky favored inciting world revolution whereas Stalin was about consolidation of power in one country properly. He wasnt about World domination. Now as for Maoism, I'm not sure but giving the falling out between Stalin and Mao I would say there were huge ideological differences to be honest.

 

I finally found the dude I mentioned earlier, Viktor Suvorov (real name Vladimir Rezun). The wiki article about him is quite interesting, and not surprisingly considering the controversial nature of his writings he has many opponents to his theories, but has gained more support in recent years since the declassification of various military documents.

Anyway, having never read his books I can't offer an opinion, but the wiki link might fan the flames a little :p

Viktor Suvorov - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The reason why "WE" invaded Europe, was simply to beat the German invader back, and defeat him. First you must get in your minds.. what Europe was like under the Nazi tyranny.

When Germans invaded, there descended on the European continent a new dark medieval age... a reign of brutality and murder. It was to free Europe that we went back, and to remove the danger from our own shores.

Wherever we went, the governance was quickly restored, where possible to the native people.
When we invaded, we never asked for anything, from anyone. We never tried to impose any type of Government... on any of the freed peoples.

We gave them back their freedom, a better life, and freedom from fear

Although I personally paid a very severe price, for their freedom from that tyranical yoke. It was a price worth paying.

I am very proud to have taken part in that great crusade to free the Continent of Europe. NEVER LET IT BE FORGOTTEN, for we paid a gigantic price in the loss of the cream of our manhood. A price that became even more sever post war, when the youth,the brains, and the zest of youth, of those young men.. was not there to carry our Country forward
That is where we paid the greatest price.
Sapper

 

Ropi, history and logic are two disciplines that hardly ever touch. But if you insist on the logic of stopping Stalin, then why as I said above was Stalin pestering for a Second Front in Europe? Was he being illogical? What have you been reading, the Reader's Digest issues from the Cold War?

Calm down Za!
I mean it might have seemed logical for the western allies to go in and stop Stalin, as they probably didn't know the status of the soviets, so they might have thought that the USSR might be a threat for them. From the point of view of Stalin it was logical to call them in, since he knew that the capacity of the USSR to wage war are not endless, and someone has to releave the presure on the Red Army.
Do you see what I mean?
Arthur

 

I am very proud to have taken part in that great crusade to free the Continent of Europe. NEVER LET IT BE FORGOTTEN, for we paid a gigantic price in the loss of the cream of our manhood. A price that became even more sever post war, when the youth,the brains, and the zest of youth, of those young men.. was not there to carry our Country forward
That is where we paid the greatest price.
Sapper

And I thank you and all in your generation for that.

Bob

 

Cough! Gag! What quest for world power? :sign_wow: :sign_rofl:



Please write a paragraph or two explaining your position without the sarcasm! Then I will read what you have to say. Otherwise, I will simply bypass your post and go on to others.

Bob Guercio

 

Bob, I'm not sure that Stalin was on a quest for world power. If you remember this was the whole point in the struggle for power following Lenin's death. Trotsky favored inciting world revolution whereas Stalin was about consolidation of power in one country properly. He wasnt about World domination. Now as for Maoism, I'm not sure but giving the falling out between Stalin and Mao I would say there were huge ideological differences to be honest.

But didn't he want to get all the scientific talent available for the Soviet Union. Most of the talent of the world was in Europe.

Bob Guercio

 

But didn't he want to get all the scientific talent available for the Soviet Union. Most of the talent of the world was in Europe.

Bob Guercio
I dont know if he wanted to get all the scientific talent, Bob. I know that Anthony Beevor in his book "Berlin" proposed that the Russians wanted to get the Germans supply of Plutonium from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute but I dont know of any other sources backing this up. What sources are you quoting from?

 

I dont know if he wanted to get all the scientific talent, Bob. I know that Anthony Beevor in his book "Berlin" proposed that the Russians wanted to get the Germans supply of Plutonium from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute but I dont know of any other sources backing this up. What sources are you quoting from?

I don't have any sources to quote. It was just what I inferred from the readings that I have done and my life experiences.

I'm probably wrong on this one.

Bob Guercio

 

Stalin had been demanding that the Allies open-up a second front in Europe from the first day of German Invasion of Russia. It was the Allies who had postponed invasion of the North-West Europe in favor of invasion of Sicily and Italy in 1943. And if the Allies was so afraid of Soviets why then they send thousands of planes, tanks and tons of other military equipment to Soviet Union. Of course at the end of war there ware some political games between US and UK on one side and Soviets on other but but still in the first place was destroying Nazi Germany and the liberation of Europe and that was why the Allies landed on Normandy.

http://www.ww2incolor.com/d/203436-1/the+Elbe+in+April+1945

 

These people would have been a tremendous advantage to Stalin in his quest for world power.

My apologies for my uncouthness but sometimes I'm like that.

Bob, I'm not sure that Stalin was on a quest for world power. If you remember this was the whole point in the struggle for power following Lenin's death. Trotsky favored inciting world revolution whereas Stalin was about consolidation of power in one country properly. He wasnt about World domination. Now as for Maoism, I'm not sure but giving the falling out between Stalin and Mao I would say there were huge ideological differences to be honest.

As Gottard says, there are a lot of flavours in communism as there are in, say, Christian churches. To make a long story short, Stalin's brand was a rection to Trotsky's adventurism, whose brand was indeed world revolution - which does not mean world power, something which doctrine had never come to terms with as it was recognised that a central authority was a physical impossibility. Stalin's brand recognised world revolution would bring certain confrontation with the western world which the SU would definitely lose, and instead posited it would be best to concentrate in the place where socialism had been a "success" already, the Soviet Union, and pay lip service only to the rest.

As a consequence there was little attempt in the thirties to further communism outside the SUs borders, reaching the extreme of signing that Molotov-Ribbentropp pact, which was done to the complete astonishment of the communist movement all over the world as it made the SU look like it selling its soul to the devil, to Nazism!

All the pre-WW2 land grabs (the Baltic Republics, Bessarabia, eastern Poland, etc) can be coherently argued as being restorations of former Russian territories but that is a long and sad story which I don't want to prolong here.

Outside our period doctrine shifted in Khrushchev's and Brezhnev's times and then it can be argued it became rather much expansionist.

Off topic, I never understood why the US became so flustered about the missiles in Cuba, while at the time there were a number of US IRBMs based in Turkey already!!! By the way, these US missiles were quietly removed from Turkey after the Cuba crisis, but that's another story

So Communism history, it's developments and envelopments with world politics are to me a fascinating field. Not everything is black and white, there were good guys and bad guys in both sides, a hero to one is a traitor to the other and vice-versa. Nobody had their hands lilly-white during that Cold War.

I finally found the dude I mentioned earlier, Viktor Suvorov (real name Vladimir Rezun). The wiki article about him is quite interesting, and not surprisingly considering the controversial nature of his writings he has many opponents to his theories, but has gained more support in recent years since the declassification of various military documents.

Tmm, there is a good debunking of this fellow here. After defecting he had to make a living, and as Tom Clancy's position was already taken he had to go second best writing military fiction

 

Off topic, I never understood why the US became so flustered about the missiles in Cuba, while at the time there were a number of US IRBMs based in Turkey already!!!

Here is part of the answer

Monroe Doctrine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

NIMBY

Now, honestly, who was/is doing the world domination dance?

 

A somewhat related question, wasn't their some sort of controversy surrounding the way the Germans had handled the invasion? More specifically, the Germans had reinforcements waiting to be deployed, reinforcements that would have changed the tide of the battle or made it much tougher for the Allies.

The problem is the person who had to ok the order was Hitler, he was sleeping during the battle and apparently their was a rule in the party that said "you don't wake the Fuhrer".

 

Well if I'm not wrong Hitler had direct command only on panzer divisions and Germans had thought that Normandy landing was just a diversion. So in the first couple of days they didn't send panzer divisions but they had send infantry. Only 21. Panzer Division was under command of 7. German Army and 12. SS Panzer Division was send as reinforcement for counterattack but other panzer divisions were held in reserve.

 

More details:

Rommel proposed that the armoured formations be deployed close to the invasion beaches. Von Geyr argued that the Panzer formations should be concentrated in a central position around Paris and Rouen, and deployed en masse against the main Allied beachhead when this had been identified. When the matter was brought to Hitler, he gave an unworkable compromise solution, giving three tank divisions to Rommel, and allowing Von Geyr to scatter the other tanks across Northern France and the Netherlands. The other mechanized divisions capable of intervening in Normandy were retained under the direct control of the German Armed Forces HQ (OKW) and were initially denied to Rommel.


German commanders at all levels failed to react to the assault phase in a timely manner. Communication problems exacerbated the difficulties caused by Allied air and naval firepower. Local commanders also seemed unequal to the task of fighting an aggressive defence on the beach, as Rommel envisioned. The German High Command remained fixated on the Calais area, and von Rundstedt was not permitted to commit the armored reserve. When it was finally released late in the day, success was immeasurably more difficult, and even the 21st Panzer Division, which was able to counterattack earlier, was stymied by strong opposition that had been allowed to build at the beaches. Overall, despite considerable Allied material superiority, the Germans kept the Allies bottled up in a small bridgehead for nearly two months, aided immeasureably by terrain factors.

 

Tmm, there is a good debunking of this fellow here. After defecting he had to make a living, and as Tom Clancy's position was already taken he had to go second best writing military fiction

LOL

Thanks for the link though, I shall have a read.

 

If you look back to August 1939,a historical occasion took place when Hitler and Stalin agreed to a non aggression pact.It was something of a surprise to European and US policians of two polarised ideologies agreeing to live in peace and cooperation.

It is now known that both sides had no intention of honouring the pact.

Stalin signed the pact in order to gain time to raise his war economy to a standard sufficiently to withstand any German aggression of the future.The Red Army was not ready for war and the pact seemed the best way of maintaining peace until they were ready for war. He also achieved an understanding that Hitler would leave him freedom to annex the Baltic states and most importantly improve the security of the Soviet Union by taking a half share of Poland and push his effective border, westwards.However, Stalin had to pay dearly in that one condition of the pact was that the Soviet Union had to supply raw materials and foodstuffs to Germany which further built up Germany's capacity to wage war in the west.

Hitler's gain was the fact that he thought that an accomodation with Stalin would prevent him fighting on two fronts.His intention was to defeat the British and French alliance,then turn to the task of defeating the Soviet Union and expanding the Greater German Reich to the Urals.But Britain would not offer him any accomodation despite his assurance that he would leave the British Empire untouched.Hitler then carried out the biggest gamble of his political career when he decided to invade Soviet Russia.

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union,the British (along with the US from December 1941),despite opposing ideologies, saw the opportunity of bringing the Soviet Union into an anti Nazi alliance and persevered throughout the early setbacks of the Red Army,to keep Russia in the war by supplying her with war materiel.One of the assurances eventually given to the Stalin was that the Western Allies, as they became known would assist the Soviet Union by invading the mainland of Europe as soon as they could.Stalin,for his part keep the pressure on the Western Allies by reminding them of their commitment "to open a second front "

1942 passed by and the Allies were not in a position "to open a second front" but tried to pacify Stalin that preparations were in hand for the invasion of Europe.A half hearted,ill thoughtout operation to Dieppe, ended in disaster.It was not until 1944 that preparations were thought to be adequate to mount a full scaled invasion and that was intially planned for May but put back a month because adequate tank landing craft were considered not available.

When the second front did open,the German Reich were squeezed on both fronts and the regime collapsed within 12 months.Even though the Zones of Occupation had been agreed,the west did not trust Stalin to give up acquired territory.There was concern by the British that the Red Army would push far westwards on the North European plain and the absence of British forces would result in the territory being annexed by the Soviet Union.As it was,the Soviet Union had captured the Danish island of Bornholm and were not to allow it back to the Danes until August 1945.Consequently as the Germans collapsed,there was a concentrated effort to quickly gain a presence in Denmark by British forces which Montgomery enacted when he claimed Denmark for the Danes in early May 1945.

Overlord was neccessary because it was part of the plan to defeat Germany and end the war in Europe which was to be the first priority as agreed by the "big three".The defeat of Japan was agreed to be second in the alliances objectives.Stalin was not trusted in the creation of the post war European borders and while recovering occupied territory,the Allies and particularly the British in North Germany were anxious to ensure that Stalin's empire did not entend to the North Sea.

 

.Off topic, I never understood why the US became so flustered about the missiles in Cuba, while at the time there were a number of US IRBMs based in Turkey already!!! By the way, these US missiles were quietly removed from Turkey after the Cuba crisis, but that's another story



The United States became flustered because that would have evened the military threat of one country against the other. The United States was not willing to give up its edge over the Soviet Union.

As I understand it, only some missiles were removed from Turkey and they were antiques.

Bob Guercio