Return of the Soviet Union

Yeah thats right i went to St Petersburg/Leningrad then it was a long jorney on the sleeper train to moscow. i preferred Leningrad it was much more old school but i did enjoying seeing red square and Lenin's tomb what was scaring as i just thought i would be seeing a tomb not Lenin himself it was freaky.

I started answering this then at the end thought what if he actually means western as in loction, and i changed my post silly me. i should not doubt myself so much.


If you went to europe fitz where would you like to go?

 

It is pretty cool if you like that kind of stuff. The Hermitage museum is amazing as is the Winter Palace. You can see the legacy of the Tsar's all over the place, the buildings are amazing and it seems the Soviets were very keen to preserve, protect and restore a lot of things like this in Russia.

 

We commies love our leader's corpses.

Mr785, I'd like to spend a few years there seeing everything. Seriously. I'd like to see Roman architecture far from Rome like Hadrian's wall, I'd like to see Viking settelments and artifacts like Edinburgh, stone age monuments in Ireland like New Grange, I'd like to visit Verdun and the Somme, the Maginot line, Normandy, Berlin, Amsterdam, the Low countries, Basque country, Southern Italian coastal areas, Madrid and Barcelona, the vineyards of France, the Vatican, Srbrenica, Athens, the Argonne Forest (where the US was deployed in WWI), I'd like to trace the path of Operation Market Garden in Holland, the sites of the Nazi concentration camps, Vicarage Road, Croke Park, Wembley, Munich in August, many many English pubs...I could go on.


If I had just a week or two, which is the most likely scenario, London, Dublin and Paris.

 

I went to Peter and Paul Cathedral that has the remains of almost all the russian emperors that was interesting. i liked the general feel of Leningrad everything was alot cheaper there and its not really been modernized at all and i like that unlike moscow.

 

As it happens in two weeks time I'm going with my Dad on a week long tour of the WW1 trenches. He normally goes with his mates but they have dropped out so I volunteered to go with him. It should be very interesting, maybe I'll write a fans blog about it when I return. That'd be something a bit different!

 

The world war one battlefields are a fantastic trip. Some really amazing sights and monuments, especially when you see the distance that would be gained in a few weeks or so, that takes less than a minute to walk.

 

speaking of trips: this is something I am determined to see before I die.

 

There was no MaccyD in Moscow or Leningrad when I went in 1976. There was nothing in any of the shops except for GUM in Moscow which was for foreign currencies.

It was a similar story in East Berlin. I haven't been back to Russia but the way Berlin changed so quickly post 1989 was amazing.

 

In the mid 70's, I had a fellow air force brat at the same air base I lived on who had been stationed at Crewe beforehand (I think). They took a vction in Moscow for a few days. They had a "guide" in the daytime and a not so covert tail round the clock. This was standard procedure for military tourists, I suppose.

Anyway, one night on the way up to their room after dinner, out of sight of their tail in the stairwell (since the lift was busted), a black marketeer met them and offered a pretty high sum of money for their Levi's brand jeans. It didn't seem to bother him that they would have to walk back to their room in their panties and shorts, though it did bother my friend and his mom dad and sister. They said no and the black marketer swore at them and left.

 

Fitz - why do yanks shoot down Canadian aircraft and then not apologise - how arrrogant is that, not taking stupid into consideration. who needs enemy's with friendsfiends like you?

 

That reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Bart starts walking toward Lisa saying "I'm going to punch the air like this as I walk and if you happen to get in the way, that's your problem." So, Lisa says "Well I'm going to kick in front of me as I walk and if you get in the way that's your problem."

They then proceed to walk right towards each other. Actually that is more analogous to the Soviet/Georgia scenario.

 

Anyway, what's wrong with a little amicicide between friends?


In all seriousness, Friendly Fire incidents are heartbreaking, and I am deeply troubled by them...but war is war, and **** happens. They aren't playing with toys. They do go to extreme measures to prevent things, but it's never enough. My advice is don't go to war. As to the contrition aspect, what would you expect from the Bush administration? They are idiots.

I am far more disturbed by the behavior of the stupid Marine pilots who tried to hotdog under the cable of the tram line in Italy in 1988.

The stupid pilots should have been busted down to buck nothing and thrown in Fort Leavenworth's military jail forever. Those idiots were warned and warned not to do things like that, but they still did until the worst possible result happened. It's things like that that gives Marines a really bad reputation even among other US servicemen.

 

i'd maybe move as far as london and then spend the rest of the time outside of britain and ireland. especially scotland. scotland is rubbish

 

As far as I'm aware while it was understood that there was persecution of Jews et all other non-Aryans, the concentration camps and death camps did not come to light until the Russians broke through the Eastern front and found mass graves and other horrific things.

 

alot of germans were unaware also. after the war the allies embarked on a large cinema program that doceumented all the nazi regime horrors to the disbelief of many of the german public

 

Ah! Excellent question, I've recently finished reading a book called 'I Escaped from Auschwitz' by Rudi Vrba and it is very much on this theme. He spent about 2 years in Auschwitz and in the end escaped with the sole reason of telling the world about what was going on in there. He made it out in April 1944 and wrote a report (with his fellow escapee) on what was going on at Auschwitz. The report was presented to the Hungarian government who were about to transport over a million Jews to the camp. However this did not stop them deporting at least 400,000 of the million. The report eventually fell on Churchill and Roosevelt's desks in June 1944 and whilst they had an idea about what was going on they had no proof as such until this moment.

I think the lack of involvement in ending what was happening was because although the allies suspected it was going on, a) they had no solid proof until 1944 and b) they just could not believe Humans could stoop so low. Also the Germans kept the whole thing so hush hush for this reason and because if the 6 million or so people who went to the gas chambers knew in advance what was going to happen, in all probability they wouldn't have gone quietly. Compared to the number who got off the deportation trains at Auschwitz and went into the gas chambers the number of SS guards was small, so mass panic could have upset their fine tuned killing machine.

You can be quite cynical about why the allies didn't bomb the railways to the extermination factories but I believe for most of the time they could not believe the Germans would do this, although I can't defend their lack of action after June 1944 when the real truth was known, except that maybe they were concentrating on the second front, i.e D-Day.

 

Begs the question, why didn't anybody help the Chinese as the Japanese murdered and raped them by the million from 1937 on? Aren't Chinese people human beings, too? The west very much knew about this, notably 'the Rape of Nanking'. Yet only the people who lived there in the international zone, including a Nazi party member named John Rabe, did anything to help the people of the city.

Answer: It was Japan's colonial sphere of influence, affirmed by their victory in war over China in 1895 and Russia in 1910. This is another window onto pre-war colonial prevailing wisdom.

Question: Shouldn't some world government body have gotten invoved then?

Answer: It wasn't until after WWI and the 'League of Nations' tried to end war forever that we started to think about Right and Wrong in the way we do now, and began to anticipate problems that may turn into general war before they happen. Unfortunately, despite US President Woodrow Wilson's commitment to the League, it failed and the US slipped into isolationism and economic depression. It re-emerged in San Francisco after the end of WWII as the 'United Nations'. It's always interesting to see where countries are at odds with the UN General Assembly or the UN Security Council on various issues. They are usually the most telling of where a particular nation's values differ from the general global viewpoint.

The UN topic and colonial sphere of influence topic is very applicable to this Soviet Union re-emrgence thread.

I forget my history here. How did the UN look at the Falkland Islands war?

 

its called eurocentrism

and as for the un, its called resolution 502 baby, unless its not.

 

Was 502 a sort of 'look the other way' type deal?

 

Now there's a topic for discussion!

 

my rather optimistic view of that war is as such, "the falklands were British territory, populated by people who wished to be British. Therefore when an unpopular military junta (what seperates a junta from a regime?) invaded these self-determined islets Britain had every right to defend herself. The only contentious bit is that since the islands were more or less worthless why would any nation go to war over it (although war was never officially declared i think)? well thatcher was unpopular at home too and according to my seminal work on northern ireland 'it's grim up north: a nation apart' it also further served to ram home to the people's of northern ireland that their terriroty and claims to british nationhood were completely irrelevant to westminster. sure it's not the greatest reason to enter a conflict but that's like a reason to put a foot on an accelerator at 80mph in a 20 zone. as long as the light was green though, it's kind of alright, if you pardon the ill thought out traffic analogy.


i note now i mention nothing of legitimate claims to the malvinas islands but thats politics *****! otherwise we'd still have scandinavian problems over the aalands or franco-german issues on the alsace and lorraine. there needs to be a cut off at some point and possession is nine-tenths of the international law.

 

I have a more cynical view of the Falklands war. The Thatcher government was very unpopular. The conservative party was facing a thrashing in the local government elections in May and it wasn't looking good for the general election the following year. I was canvassing every night after work and the signs were for heavy defeats for the conservatives then I watched the opposition evaporate as the nation rallied round the flag.

 

Ah good, something I can disagree with.

We did not invent the concentration camp.

A simple check of your historical facts would show that this is a lazy, self-perpetuating myth intended to generate hand-wringing introspection about the British Empire.

The Spanish had used concentration camps in the Americas for generations before the British hit on the idea in southern Africa.

Next time + Facts x check before you open your big, virtual gob = not making yourself look a tool in front of the class

 

"It confuses me somewhat that FDR understood the threat completely, and yet Britain could still very, very easily have gone down in an instant. If Hitler hadn't left his Luftwaffe to deal with us rather than sending a few tanks in we would have been completely destroyed within weeks I would imagine. We ahve the Ruskies to thank for their well-timed offence which dragged the Nazi military might away from us. He appears to have understood the level of threat and then simply under-supplied us, if you see what I mean. What we received was only enough because we only faced airborne assault"

Drivel

 

ahem lets leave the word Malvinas out of this fan good sir! The Falklands always and forever!

Admittedly the Falklands conflict was in part down to Thatcher's and the Tories desire to increase their flagging popularity. However I feel that the British population on those islands wanting to remain British and the fact that the Argentines invaded is reason enough to go and defend them. Whether we'd be able to do that in this day and age, what with the current world conflicts and the tragic underinvestment in the armed forces is another matter. I do believe as well that Argentina is building up it's military presence in the area again now, so watch this space.

One beneficial legacy in retaining the Falklands - and here it comes back to the same old chestnut - is that there are believed to be big reserves of oil and natural gas located in the territorial waters around them and due to improvements in technology these resources are now within touching distance. People might not like the idea or thought of it (i.e environmentalist types), but these reserves would be more than useful to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

In a footnote in regard to things along the line of Franco-German issues, I believe Germany should be given East Prussia back instead of it being that damned Baltic enclave for the Russian fleet.

 

"Possibly although the Germans were basically successful in Russia until Stalingrad in 1943 when I think the tide really did turn after the loss of the 6th Army (i.e their best and biggest)"

Complete and utter cobblers

 

Yes Mrlizard it's a generalisation I know, but I couldn't be arsed to go into the ins and outs of all the battles on the Eastern Front up until 1943 otherwise I'd be writing until next year. In general terms the Germans did ok until Stalingrad, admittedly they had set backs - especially in the winter of 1942 - but come the summer they did manage to recover most of their losses.

 

Where would you like me to start?

Do I need to spend the afternoon explaining the nuances of the Eastern Front to a bunch of nylon-clad, vegetable fiddlers?

How long are you prepared to spend being educated on the subject before you start wandering off to discuss your favourite ever away socks?

 

"Germans did ok until Stalingrad"

DRIVEL (In size 72 bold font)

 

Easy now, lets not turn this thread into a slagging match, it's been interesting up to this point, so just state any arguments with evidence, because actually some find that more interesting than one line answers.

As for the Eastern Front, as I said above there's loads to write about on that subject, so much in fact it could be worth another thread!

 

I know, I just fancied being spikey for a few minutes while I'm waiting for my bacon sandwich.

The statement that the Germans did okay up until Stalingrad however, warrants nothing but ridicule.

 

It may be drivel but we were enjoying it and we were managing to hold a discussion without being rude or sneering to other contributors.

 

Good job I'm here then isn't it?

 

Well generally they did, winter 42' Stalingrad attacked, Leningrad under siege in the north, Kursk and Kiev and the Crimea under the Nazi thumb (except Sevastopol)- admittedly they had been driven back from Moscow slightly. Still that's not bad at all for a war just over a year old. Ok I'd say. From January 1943 though...............not so good.

 

Rubbish.

The German invasion of the Soviet Union could not be sustained militarily beyond a single campaign, to be completed well before Winter 1941. The German war economy would be unable (as was subsequently proven) to continue providing the forces without the capture of new sources of oil and strategic materials. The capture of major cities such as Leningrad, Minsk, Kiev and so on held no intrinsic strategic value except in the overall objective of the capture of Moscow and the resulting collapse of the Soviet system.

The war in the East was essentially lost in the late summer of 1941, when Hitler repeated his near catastrophic Meuse diversion of the battle for France the year before, on a grander scale. The forces which were alligned against Moscow in the late summer 1941 were sufficient to have captured the capital within 5-7 weeks, but were instead sent on militarily eyecatching, but strategically pointless assaults into The Ukraine (culminating in the battle of Kiev) and towards Leningrad. Neither of these targets held any strategic value, whereas Moscow was the heart of Soviet goverment, the heartland of Soviet manufacturing power and the key to the war.

The failure to capture Moscow in 1941 meant that the Germans would never again have sufficient strength to launch a war-ending offensive. Operation Blau (the offensive towards the Volga, leading to the battle of Staligrad in late 1942/43) could not lead to a strategic political victory, resulting in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even after the defeat at Staligrad, the Germans maintained the strategic initiative, largely due to the defeat of the Soviet Operation Mars offensive against Army Group Centre, at the same time as the Operation Uranus against the forces holding Staligrad, but the operations in 1943 (Citadel, the attack on Kursk and other subsiduary operations along the front and around Leningrad) again held no war-winning potential. At best, they would have led to an accomodation, due to a military stalemate.

In summary, what you describe as 'doing okay' on the basis of holding cities and nominal territory is an incorrect appreciation of the strategic situation. The Germans held vast swathes of Soviet territory, but it was ground of no strategic value, once the ability to launch a war-winning offensive ws lost in summer 1941. Everything else that followed, was merely a series of waypoints along the road to German defeat.

I can provide you with links to a number of books on the subject, for some of which I have provided research (insert gay, 'smuge' smiley here).