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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (861166)	5/31/2015 1:19:10 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Recommended By jlallen Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575758

wtf does that have to do with anything ? Patton said I don't want you to die for your country I want the other guy to die for his counrtry. No fukking wonder you are a liberal. How many Russians died at the hands of their officers shooting them in the back when they wouldn't charge on a mass wave suicide mission god joey stick to drinking and let us conservatives do the thinking

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (861166)	5/31/2015 1:22:41 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (7) \| Respond to of 1575758

It wasn't just the number of Russians that died. A lot of Americans still believe that most of the Soviet equipment came from American lend-lease. This is completely false. By the end of the war, the Soviets had produced 67,000 T-34 tanks, a Soviet design produced entirely in Russia. Compared to them, our tanks were complete crap. Here's what two famous German Generals had to say: en.wikipedia.org The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank which had a profound and lasting effect on the field of tank design. Although its armour and armament were surpassed later in the war, it has been often credited as the most effective, efficient, and influential tank design of World War II. [3] At its introduction, the T-34 possessed an unprecedented combination of firepower, mobility, protection, and ruggedness. Its 76.2 mm (3 in) high-velocity tank gun provided a substantial increase in firepower over any of the T-34's contemporaries; [4] its heavy sloped armour was difficult to penetrate by most contemporary anti-tank weapons. First encountered in 1941, German tank general von Kleist called it "the finest tank in the world" [5] and Heinz Guderian confirmed the T-34's "vast superiority" over German armour [6] and found it "very worrying." [7] ..and that's just tanks. They also produced the vast majority of their own aircraft and other vehicles. Any objective student of WWII has to credit the majority of the allied victory to the Soviets. en.wikipedia.org

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (861166)	5/31/2015 1:38:32 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575758

Why did Stalin ALLY with Nazi Germany and only fight them after the Nazis broke the alliance?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (861166)	5/31/2015 2:18:27 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575758

Stalin's War Against His Own Troops The Tragic Fate of Soviet Prisoners of War in German CaptivityBy Yuri Teplyakov At dawn on June 22, 1941, began the mightiest military offensive in history: the German-led Axis attack against the Soviet Union. During the first 18 months of the campaign, about three million Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner. By the end of the conflict four years later, more than five million Soviet troops are estimated to have fallen into German hands. Most of these unfortunate men died in German captivity. A major reason for this was the unusual nature of the war on the eastern front, particularly during the first year -- June 1941-June 1942 -- when vastly greater numbers of prisoners fell into German hands than could possibly be accommodated adequately. However, and as Russian journalist Teplyakov explains in the following article, much of the blame for the terrible fate of the Soviet soldiers in German captivity was due to the inflexibly cruel policy of Soviet dictator Stalin. During the war, the Germans made repeated attempts through neutral countries and the International Committee of the Red Cross to reach mutual agreement on the treatment of prisoners by Germany and the USSR. As British historian Robert Conquest explains in his book Stalin: Breaker of Nations, the Soviets adamantly refused to cooperate: "When the Germans approached the Soviets, through Sweden, to negotiate observance of the provisions of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, Stalin refused. The Soviet soldiers in German hands were thus unprotected even in theory. Millions of them died in captivity, through malnutrition or maltreatment. If Stalin had adhered to the convention (to which the USSR had not been a party) would the Germans have behaved better? To judge by their treatment of other 'Slav submen' POWs (like the Poles, even surrendering after the [1944] Warsaw Rising), the answer seems to be yes. (Stalin's own behavior to [Polish] prisoners captured by the Red Army had already been demonstrated at Katyn and elsewhere [where they were shot]." Another historian, Nikolai Tolstoy, affirms in The Secret Betrayal: "Hitler himself urged Red Cross inspection of [German] camps [holding Soviet prisoners of war]. But an appeal to Stalin for prisoners' postal services received a reply that clinched the matter: 'There are no Soviet prisoners of war. The Soviet soldier fights on till death. If he chooses to become a prisoner, he is automatically excluded from the Russian community. We are not interested in a postal service only for Germans'." Given this situation, the German leaders resolved to treat Soviet prisoners no better than the Soviet leaders were treating the German soldiers they held. As can be imagined, Soviet treatment of German prisoners was harsh. Of an estimated three million German soldiers who fell into Soviet hands, more than two million perished in captivity. Of the 91,000 German troops captured in the Battle of Stalingrad, fewer than 6,000 ever returned to Germany. As Teplyakov also explains here, Red Army "liberation" of the surviving Soviet prisoners in German camps brought no end to the suffering of these hapless men. It wasn't until recently, when long-suppressed Soviet wartime records began to come to light and long-silenced voices could at last speak out, that the full story of Stalin's treatment of Soviet prisoners became known. It wasn't until 1989, for example, that Stalin's grim Order No. 270 of August 16, 1941 -- cited below -- was first published. -- Mark Weber

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (861166)	5/31/2015 2:25:46 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575758

As Soviet defeats continued into 1942, Stalin issued Order 227 that authorized a series of punitive measures against Soviet soldiers. The Red Army was ordered to form its own units of blocking troops to stiffen its soldiers, apparently there being insufficient NKVD units to go around. Red Army blocking troops were not a great success, soldiers being reluctant to fire on their own, unlike the NKVD, and the innovation was quietly dropped later, leaving the NKVD again responsible for battlefield discipline. Another innovation Order 227 introduced was penal battalions. Penal battalions were formed from those suspected of malingering (Order 227 authorized immediate execution of anyone showing cowardice under fire), liberated Red Army prisoners (automatically assumed to be guilty of cowardice) and Gulag prisoners from criminals to the politically suspect. Penal battalions were assigned the most dangerous duties from clearing minefields by "trampling," frontal assaults on entrenched positions to scouting enemy positions before attacks. Penal battalions were often commanded by NKVD officers and were always backed by NKVD blocking troops. About 420,000 Red Army soldiers served in penal battalions. In theory, death or severe injury in battle could redeem a soldier (or his family in case he was killed) but in practice a limited term in a penal battalion was a death sentence.