Our Unholy Alliance with the Evil Empire in WW2

[PanzerGeneral]

No period of history is more rife with myths and fantasy than what has been written and what is widely accepted as fact about World War II. As a longtime student of World War II history, I have read probably hundreds of books about the period which have exposed the myth that it was a “Good War” at all. Rather, World War II was the most terrible war ever fought in human history and one full of moral ambiguities as you alluded to such as our all-out support of Stalin, the greatest mass murderer in human history up until that time, and his Evil Empire.

The US providing the Soviets with tens of thousands of tanks and aircraft and other direct military aid and appeasing them by ceding them the eastern half of Europe and northern Japan, northern Korea and northern China to boot ultimately leading to the fall of China itself to Communist genocidal control resulting in Communists still enslaving about 23% of the world’s population today.

Our massive direct military support of the USSR and our great appeasement at Yalta was entirely unnecessary as the USSR would have gone on fighting and beating the Germans without our assistance. Had we not aided them, the Red Army would have advanced at a somewhat slower rate allowing the US and British armies to occupy Germany, central Europe and potentially much of eastern Europe in advance of the Soviets thus ensuring that the Iron Curtain was moved much farther to the east of where it actually stood for half a century. Had we not supported and appeased Stalin to this unbelievable extent, the Cold War might have been entirely avoided.

As conservative authors noted shortly after the end of WW2, Stalin was the only victor in this war. While the US won World War II militarily, we lost the peace because we allowed the Soviet Union to emerge as the only real victor with a vast empire in eastern Europe and northern Asia which it could not have gained without our assistance. Stalin having murdered nearly 30 million of his own people by 1941 cared not a wit if 20-25 million more died at his and German hands during the war years if it allowed him to conquer much of Europe in accordance with his prewar plan to invade Germany and the Balkans and occupy Europe all the way to the French Atlantic coast.

At the end of World War II, we made the mistake of utterly destroying and dismembering Germany, which had long served as the defender of Europe against Bolshevik aggression, thus creating a power vacuum for the Soviets to fill. It was not until some months after the war in Europe that Churchill realized his mistake, exclaiming, "Gentlemen, it appears that we have slain the wrong pig" in realization of the fact that the USSR was a greater threat to the British Empire than Nazi Germany had ever been.

[Jim O]

Welcome along to the site. I recognize the writing style without the name

Hindsight is always 20-20, and while I won't defend the Georgian "man of steel", Soviet citizens suffered more than those of perhaps (arguably) any other nation with the possible exception of Poland. That they wanted a buffer of client states was a natural desire to guard against this happening again. How would you have reacted to seeing photos of recently liberated Belorussia (Belarus) where 30% of the pre-war population including virtually all of the 10% that were Jews were murdered and many hundreds of villages had been burned to the ground, often with the inahibitants locked in a barn if shown them at Yalta?

Had the other Allies been able to accurately predict the future then they would not have pushed for Stalin to enter the war in Asia and surely would not have sent matériel in the amounts that they did. That is likely true. Roosevelt, however, was a tired, dying man with end stage congestive heart failure by Yalta. Churchill perhaps should have known better but he didn't.

It was an "unholy" alliance. No one argues that. But prior to 1939 Stalin had not grabbed a great deal of Europe and was not a genocidal maniac. His rampages were primarily internal events in his country, and the citizens of the USSR had the responsibility to deal with those matters. Hitler had occupied most of Europe and went on to commit the greatest acts of genocide that mankind has known. Wrong pig? No. Both pigs? Probably.

[Lancer44]

Originally Posted by PanzerGeneral

Our massive direct military support of the USSR and our great appeasement at Yalta was entirely unnecessary as the USSR would have gone on fighting and beating the Germans without our assistance. Had we not aided them, the Red Army would have advanced at a somewhat slower rate allowing the US and British armies to occupy Germany, central Europe and potentially much of eastern Europe in advance of the Soviets thus ensuring that the Iron Curtain was moved much farther to the east of where it actually stood for half a century. Had we not supported and appeased Stalin to this unbelievable extent, the Cold War might have been entirely avoided.

I totally agree with PanzerGeneral but want to add a little correction:

Soviets and now Russia always denied that lend Lease supplies were vital for their industry. I think that the most important of all comodities delivered to USSR were 229,000 metric tons of aluminium. How important it was you can see reading letter of Stalin to Roosevelt:

FROM PREMIER STALIN TO THE PRESIDENT, Mr. ROOSEVELT
In taking this opportunity to send you a personal message through the courtesy of Mr. Standley, who is leaving for Washington, I should like to say a few words about U.S. military deliveries to the U.S.S.R.
The difficulties of delivery are reported to be due primarily to shortage of shipping. To remedy the shipping situation the Soviet Government would be prepared to agree to a certain curtailment of U.S. arms deliveries to the Soviet Union. We should be prepared temporarily fully to renounce deliveries of tanks, guns, ammunition, pistols, etc. At the same time, however, we are badly in need of increased deliveries of modern fighter aircraft-such as Aircobras-and certain other supplies. It should be borne in mind that the Kittyhawk is no match for the modern German fighter.
It would be very good if the U.S.A. could ensure the monthly delivery of at least the following items: 500 fighters, 8,000 to 10,000 trucks, 5,000 tons of aluminium, and 4,000 to 5,000 tons of explosives. Besides, we need, within 12 months, two million tons of grain (wheat) and as much as we can have of fats, concentrated foods and canned meat. We could bring in a considerable part of the food supplies in Soviet ships via Vladivostok if the U.S.A. consented to turn over to the U.S.S.R. 20 to 30 ships at the least to replenish our fleet. I have talked this over with Mr. Willkie, feeling certain that he will convey it to you.
As regards the situation at the front, you are undoubtedly aware that in recent months our position in the South, particularly in the Stalingrad area, has deteriorated due to shortage of aircraft, mostly fighters. The Germans have bigger stocks of aircraft than we anticipated. In the South they have at least a twofold superiority in the air, which makes it impossible for us to protect our troops. War experience has shown that the bravest troops are helpless unless protected against air attack.
October 7, 1942
Sources:
http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/LendL.html
Interesting figures here.
http://www.theeasternfront.co.uk/lendlease.htm
Here a bit about soviet alumnium industry:

On the basis of the Tikhvin deposit's potential, 1929's Decree of Government Structures by the Soviet of Labor and Defense approved the construction of two aluminum complexes—one in Volkhov and one in Dnepr. Combined, these sites, with their alumina production lines and hydroelectric power, would have an annual aluminum production capacity of 20,000 tonnes. As a result, full development of the Tikhvin bauxite mine began in 1929; in 1930, construction of the Volkhov and Dnepr aluminum smelters began. The construction proved challenging owing to a general lack of engineering and design experience with aluminum smelters and the need to incorporate the new alumina production technology. Thus, the French company Ale Forge Comarg was commissioned to assist with developing the production facilities. On September 14, 1932, the first alumina was produced at Volkhov using Tikhvin bauxite. In April 1934, alumina production from Tikhvin bauxite began at Dnepr.
Complementary to these activities, various departments and laboratories that were focused on nonferrous metals in general and aluminum in particular were reorganized in 1931 into a light metals research institute (NIISaluminiy) and a design institute (Hyproaluminiy). Later, these organizations were combined as the All-Union Aluminium & Magnesium Institute (VAMI), which is today known as VAMI Ltd. The task of the new institutes was to coordinate research and development as well as the overall development of the Soviet aluminum and alumina enterprises.
During the construction of the Volkhov and Dnepr smelters, it was decided to increase the country's total aluminum production capacity to 70,000 t/y. The decision was based, in part, on the 1931-1932 discoveries of additional bauxite deposits in the Ural Mountains. Hence, two new alumina production facilities were planned—a 40,000 t/y plant near the Tikhvin mines and a 60,000 t/y plant in the Urals. The Tikhvin plant used a wet-mix variation of the alumina production technology employed at the Volkhov complex.
In 1933, development of the bauxite mines near Nadejdinsk (currently known as the Northern Ural bauxite mines) was initiated, as was construction of the Ural aluminum complex. This complex was built near Kamensk-Ural because of the nearby bauxite and coal reserves. The project stipulated construction of an accompanying 70,000 t/y alumina facility that would employ the Bayer method to treat the local hydrorhillite bauxite. However, after reassessing the quality of the diaspore Northern Ural bauxite deposits, it was decided to instead employ a novel autoclave method of bauxite digestion. In some stages of the construction, design concepts from Pechiney were employed. In 1939, the first alumina was produced at the Ural complex.
In 1941, there were four alumina plants in the Soviet Union. With the German invasion of Russia, however, this situation changed drastically:
Operations in the European part of the country were shut down. Equipment from the Dnepr and Volkhov complexes as well as the Tikhvin alumina plant were dismantled and sent to the Urals.
The construction of a new alumina plant in Northern Ural as part of the aluminum smelter in Bogoslovsk (today known as Krasnoturjinsk) was changed considerably—incorporation of a Bayer processing plant was abandoned in favor of the sintering method because of the availability of the dismantled equipment from the Tikhvin plant.
On June 17, 1943, aluminum hydroxide was produced at Bogoslovsk; on April 17, 1944, the calcination furnace was put into operation and the first alumina was produced. Only after the war was the Bayer flowsheet adopted at the plant (utilizing equipment from the sintering shop).
Source: http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9608/Smirnov-9608.html
You can clearly see that without Lend Lease aluminium deliveries soviets would never produce enough aeroplanes to gain air superiority over Luftwaffe.
And here look at aluminium production after the war in 1953: http://www.ndu.edu/library/ic2/L54-032.pdf
Roosevelt could put a lot of pressure on Stalin regarding Eastern Europe after war using Lend Lease as leverage. He did not wanted to do it.
Just because of that Roosevelt can be called an "architect of Cold War".

Cheers,

Lancer44

[PanzerGeneral]

Thanks for the welcome. Glad we agree it was an Unholy Alliance with Stalin’s Evil Empire during WW2. Soviet citizens suffered a lot more under Stalin’s rule than did the 35-40% or so that were overrun by the Nazis for three years or less during WW2. I would also point out that Germany suffered as much or more than any other nation during WW2 with 3 million plus soldiers KIA in the war and an additional ten million innocent civilians and non-combatants killed by the victorious Allies from 1940-49. It actually took four years after the German surrender for the Allies to stop killing Germans by starvation and other means (not counting the German POW’s which remained in the Soviet gulags).True the Soviets lost 20 million dead during the war, but a good percentage of those were due to Stain, not Hitler and this was out of a population of 199 million including the areas annexed by the Soviets in 1939-40 whereas the German population was 74 million in 1937 and was certainly less than 90 million after its annexations from 1938-1940.“Had the other Allies been able to accurately predict the future then they would not have pushed for Stalin to enter the war in Asia and surely would not have sent matériel in the amounts that they did. That is likely true. Roosevelt, however, was a tired, dying man with end stage congestive heart failure by Yalta. Churchill perhaps should have known better but he didn't.”Chamberlain and other US and British leaders foresaw that the Soviets were likely to Communize much of central and eastern half of Europe as far back as October 1939 when Chamberlain voiced his fear that Germany would be Bolshevikized as a result of the war—this at a time when Germany and the Soviet Union were allies. Truman as well as FDR pushed for the Soviets to enter the war in Asia. I think that Churchill really did know better, but was willing to pay any price to destroy and dismember Germany which he, FDR and Ike detested with what can only be described as murderous and racist hatred.“It was an "unholy" alliance. No one argues that. But prior to 1939 Stalin had not grabbed a great deal of Europe and was not a genocidal maniac. His rampages were primarily internal events in his country, and the citizens of the USSR had the responsibility to deal with those matters. Hitler had occupied most of Europe and went on to commit the greatest acts of genocide that mankind has known. Wrong pig? No. Both pigs? Probably.”Stalin was a genocidal maniac way back in the early 1920’s a couple of decades before WW2 even began and what is more FDR and Churchill were well aware of this fact. The fact that they were allying, appeasing and provide massive amounts of weaponry to the greatest mass murderer in world history at that time did not seem to bother them in the least.Like the neocons are fond of saying about Saddam, “Uncle Joe” Stalin liked to commit genocide against his own people, killing some 30 million of them by 1945. Between 1939-1940, Stalin annexed or occupied six countries--the exact same number of countries that Hitler had during the same period. Stalin joined Hitler in starting the war itself with his invasion of Poland. Still, Britain and France refused to declare war on the Soviet aggressor state as well as the Nazi one, though many conservatives in Britain and especially France wanted to.“Hitler had occupied most of Europe and went on to commit the greatest acts of genocide that mankind has known. Wrong pig? No. Both pigs? Probably.”Stalin and Mao hold the all-time records for mass murdering the most people, not Hitler. Stalin alone killed probably three times more than Hitler as did Mao. While Hitler had a singular focus in killing Jews, Stalin was much less discriminate—committing genocide against Russians, Ukrainians, Balts, Tatars, Cossacks, Germans, Poles, Jews etc. I don’t think being an indiscriminate mass murderer is any better than being a racist one.Churchill’s statement about having killed the wrong pig was not in reference to Hitler who obviously needed killing, but rather to Germany. The Allies great mistake aside from allying with the USSR was in destroying and dismembering Germany, the historic buffer state of the west against Soviet aggression. By destroying Germany for decades to come, the burden fell to Britain, France and the US to defend what little was left of free Europe against the Red Army hordes. It should be self-evident to all that the Allies did not need to destroy Germany in order to defeat it and most particularly to destroy and kill its people after it was defeated which was nothing more than misplaced bloody vengeance against the people who with the exception of the Jews were Hitler’s greatest victims. No nation suffered more from Hitler than did Germany as the Allies implemented their own “final solution” for the German problem after war’s end something that never would have happened had Hitler not invaded Poland. In fact, as late as 1944, the Allies actually talked of restoring Germany to its 1937 borders which would have made Europe a lot safer from Communism had we left its army intact. What’s more, a lot of the anti-Hitler conspiractors including Rommel himself supported surrendering to the Western Allies in exchange for being given a free hand to continue the war against the Evil Empire, something Patton was fond of supporting.Meanwhile, the British empire which Hitler far from threatening offered to send German army divisions to help defend in exchange for British recognition of German hegemony in continental Europe, quickly victim to postwar Soviet predations and was entirely lost within two decades of the war’s end. So, as renowned author John Charmley points out in the end it was the foolish actions of Churchill, the British Empire’s self-declared chief protector that ended up ensuring its destruction.David

[Ingsoc]

The "Evil Empire"? who you think you are, Reagan? infact the German invasion to the USSR wasn't to "served as the defender of Europe against Bolshevik aggression" but a war of annihalition and conquest against the innocent people of Russia, infact the German manage to alienate a population that otherwise be friendly to the enemies of Stalinism.

Perhaps you should try be a little less bias toward the Soviets.

[Jim O]

Hey David,

First, do those of us who don't think like you write and use some paragraphs so we can follow your thoughts.

Next look up genocide and mass murderer and you will see:

genocide: The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

mass murderer (in this context): A person, especially a political or military leader, who is responsible for the deaths of many individuals.

More than a semantic difference, as we'll see.

Now one point of contention is that USSR and Nazi Germany were "allies". They had a non-aggression pact. They may even have been co-belligerents, but hardly were they ever allies. They were mortal enemies.

Stalin may have been a mass murderer, but he didn't write Mein Kamp and implement a "Final Solution". When Hitler imposed his genocidal (and I use that term correctly) rage outside the borders of Großdeutschland, in fact outside of the 1919 borders then one can argue that the world had an obligation to stop him.

In discussing these issues I am often reminded of Thomas Jefferson's words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It was the right and duty of Soviet and German citizens to "throw off" their own despots, so long as they remained their despots. Stalin made land grabs, but primarly of territories that were lost in the first war (not that it is excused, just an observation). Hitler grabbed lands that were never part of Germany.

So while Stalin was reprehensible, in effect, his citizens suffered his because they failed to rise up.

On the other hand, in the last free elections of the Weimar Republic, the "innocent Germans" gave the Nazi party the largest number of seats. Hitler had already written Mein Kampf and if they didn't know what they were getting into then they should have. He made very clear what his ideas and his intentions were. That Germans were a superior race, that Slavs were an inferior, slave race, that Gypsies and especially Jews were the lowest, and the book at least mentions gassing of substantial numbers of Jews.

Those same people were silent and did not rise up when the Nuremberg laws were passed, when Sudetenland was stolen, when Czechoslovakia was finally done away with. By then the handwriting was on the wall.

Those same people also did not rise up on November 9, 1938 (Kristallnacht) except to aid in killing and tormenting Jews. And those same "innocent" people did not rise up when German Jews were deported. And after the war, amazingly, nearly 100% claimed they had no idea what was happening with the deported Jews. I'd like to believe that, but by then most everyone had a family member who had served on the Eastern Front and could have and should have told of atrocities committed in the captured territories of the Soviet Union. Those "innocent" people chose not to look or to think or to listen, or to rise up against their tyrant. Buchenwald was outside Munich. One can say they didn't see Auschwitz, but the camps within Großdeutschland? And for that they suffered. Perhaps more than what was deserved, but to call them "innocent" is understating the truth at the least, and perpetuating a myth perhaps.

Here's another little tidbit for you to ponder. Mein Kampf predicted an eventual war with the US. So had we stayed out of the European war in the hopes that the two tyrants would kill each other off, Germany might have won in the east. Now imagine if Nazi Germany had acquired nuclear weapons by 1945 (because we weren't bombing the crap out of them and if they hadn't so stupidly let their Jewish scientists leave). As we know, in 1945 Germany had the most advanced rocket science in the world. Do you think for one moment that Hitler would have hesitated to use nuclear weapons say on London or New York? Again, if the US didn't have German scientists the US probably did not have an atomic weapon in 1945. Even Stalin didn't use his nukes.

All this said, it was an evil alliance but one that was a necessary evil at the time. Argue all that you like about the Cold War, but most of us on both sides of the Iron Curtain survived it. And the US enjoyed great prosperity during it, as did much of what was left of Germany. And those oppressed peoples did finally rise up and free themselves of Soviet domination.

Lastly, you can be at odds with Stalin's management of the military but your opinions are not necessarily in the majority of historians (like David Glantz) who have actually studied the source documents.

All this being said, this is set up to be a non-political site for discussion of facts and opinions. This thread has already crossed that line by more than a bit. Let's try to rein it in and not make statements as fact that are clearly political opinions.

[PanzerGeneral]

Ingsoc“Perhaps you should try be a little less bias toward the Soviets." Only a Soviet apologist or Communist sympathizer could get away with making a statement like that. I have a lot of bias against any system—Nazism or Communism that makes it a practice to kill tens of millions of people. Communism killed about ten times more than Nazism, but both were unquestionably evil and worth fighting AGAINST not for as we did in WW2. I generally don’t make it a practice to debate with people who defend genocidal totalitarian systems.
PanzerGeneral

[Ingsoc]

Relax PanzerGeneral I could assure you I'm not a Communist nor a Soviet apologist, the point I was trying to make is the you see the whole thing in an ideological light, infact it's wasn't got anything to do with Communism, behind the Nazi rhetoric of "defending Europe against Bolshevism" as you put it was nothing more than a simply desire to occupy and eslave the Russian people, do you relay think they rally behind Stalin out of love to him?

[PanzerGeneral]

Jim,I did use paragraphs and it showed up as having paragraphs when I wrote my response, but when I pressed “submit”, it posted without paragraphs. I don’t know if that is a defect in the posting software or not.I agree with your definition of genocide and mass murder so I will certainly concede your point there. Where we differ is that you seem to think Hitler was more evil because he focused on killing one particular group whereas Stalin was a more equal opportunity mass murderer who liked killing off pretty much everybody—his own people, people in other countries, even his staunchest allies just because it gave him personal pleasure to do so. His favorite thing to do was to prepare lists of thousands to be executed each day. He thought he was a god, but instead he was a devil. He killed many times more innocent people then did Hitler. Hitler at least did not want to commit genocide until his last few years in power. He had long hoped to create a Jewish homeland state where he could export all the Jews of Europe preferably Madagascar when the British denied him that opportunity. Only in 1942 did he became a monster when he decided to kill six million or so of them.“Stalin may have been a mass murderer, but he didn't write _Mein Kamp_ and implement a "Final Solution". When Hitler imposed his genocidal (and I use that term correctly) rage outside the borders of Großdeutschland, in fact outside of the 1919 borders then one can argue that the world had an obligation to stop him.”This I think is a bit of a distortion of actual history. Britain and France did not declare war on Germany to stop Hitler to stop “the final solution” since of course Hitler did not even come up with that idea until three years after the war began after the Brits had stymied his plan to deport all of Europe Jews to a Jewish homeland state. Ironically this was the same goal as Jewish terror groups at the time two of which offered to ally with Hitler to free Palestine from British rule and establish Hitler’s planned Jewish homeland state there. It was not until 1942 that Hitler became a genocidal maniac. Previous to that he had killed perhaps only a few hundred thousand innocents whereas by 1942 Stalin had already killed thirty million innocents or over 100 times more. In fact, most of the Jews were not killed until the final 10-12 months of the war. Over the past few years, there has been a lot of evidence in fact that both Churchill and FDR knew that Hitler was implementing the Jewish Holocaust and did little to nothing to stop him when they could have bombed the rail stations that were bringing the Jews to be killed. Churchill himself made anti-Semitic remarks suggesting his anti-Semitism all the way up until 1935 when he decided that the Jews would make better allies then enemies in his quest for power.Rather the Allies oddly decided to guarantee Poland over the just German claim to recover Danzig which had been taken from it by the Treaty of Versailles and opted to expand a localized conflict with the Evil Empire and Nazi Germany invading Poland into World War II. Chamberlain predicted that this would only lead to the Bolshevikization of central and eastern Europe and he was right. If you read the history books for example the most excellent book, “Origins of World War II” written by a self-described Marxist Socialist of all people, you will find that Hitler had no desire to fight France, let alone England (which he viewed as a natural ally against Bolshevik aggression) and was wholly focused on his desire to find a land bridge (ultimately Poland) from which to invade the Soviet Union. Both sides had arguably just claims and so there was no real right or wrong side at this point except the world new that Stalin had slaughtered millions (actually tens of millions) of his own people. FDR of course never declared war on Nazi Germany until after Hitler idiotically declared war on the USA in accordance with FDR’s brilliant plan.“Stalin made land grabs, but primarily of territories that were lost in the first war (not that it is excused, just an observation).” I was expecting that you would criticize what I wrote above in relation to Germany along these lines, but obviously since you have made the same excuses and justifications here for the international invasions, annexations and aggressions by Stalin, you will obviously not be able to credibly argue that point. I find it interesting, if not annoying, that so many people are detached enough, morally speaking, to excuse Stalin’s mass murders and enslavement of over a dozen countries and to justify our wartime alliance with the Evil Empire and immoral appeasement of Stalin by handing these same dozen countries to Stalin’s bloddy control as somehow a necessary evil, but cannot bring themselves to apply the same detachment to Nazi Germany or consider alternative opinions and facts to the propaganda they have been engrained in the schools by our Communist-leaning education system. Please note that I am not trying to imply that you are guilty of that here, but what you have written reminds me of discussions I have had with people like that.“Hitler grabbed lands that were *never* part of Germany. So while Stalin was reprehensible, in effect, his citizens suffered his because they failed to rise up.”This is completely untrue. In fact, Hitler was careful to limit all of his annexations to lands that had once belonged to Germany at one time or another. You may recall that both Austria and the Sudetenland belonged to Germany during the Holy Roman Empire or First Reich while Alsace-Loraine in fact belonged to the Second Reich. Meanwhile, in the east, Hitler limited his annexation of Polish lands to that which had been annexed by Prussia during the Third Partition of Poland in around 1798 or so. As for your point about Russia’s citizens being responsible for their own enslavement and mass murder because they never rose up, this is another distortion of history. If that is true, how do you account for the Russian Civil War and the resistance of most nationalities of the Russian Empire including Poles, Balts, Finns, Germans, Tatars, White Russians, Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks and ethnic Siberian rising up against the Bolsheviks from 1917-1922?In fact, so many people rose up to fight Lenin, Stalin and the other Soviet mass murderers that at one point in late 1919 the Bolsheviks only controlled Moscow and a radius of about 200 miles around it while the anti-Communist freedom fighters controlled all of Siberia with Anglo-Japanese assistance, the northern region with British assistance, the Balts with Anglo-German assistance, Ukraine, the Caucasus, etc. all the way up to Tsaritsyn later renamed Stalingrad. The White Army under General Denikin was defeated at a point only 100 miles from Moscow. Had the nascent GermanWeimarRepublic been allowed to aid them after WWI ended, the Bolsheviks could have been defeated in their cradle as Churchill once hoped for. All other resistance to Stalin was brutally crushed. Nevertheless, Russian, Ukrainian and Cossack resistance movements against Stalin continued all the way up until the 1950’s when Stalin finally succeeded in crushing them aided most of all by the Allied Operation Keelhaul in 1945 when Truman, Churchill and Ike handed over 2-6 million anti-Communist freedom fighters and their families to Stalin to be slaughtered. Stalin was so murderous, he sentenced his own Red Army POW’s to death merely for the “crime” of having been captured by the enemy. So my point is the people of the 100 nations comprising the Soviet empire rose up repeatedly against Stalin to be crushed. I would add the further point, that it is almost impossible for a people to overthrow a murderous totalitarian dictator and I cannot think of one instance of it happening during the past century so to blame the people of a country for their own mass murder instead of the actual perpetrators of those mass murders despite the fact that they had no real ability to liberate themselves is rather amazing to me.Lastly, as has already been mentioned on this forum, the enslaved peoples of the Soviet Empire greeted the German army as liberators before Hitler pissed away their goodwill by oppressing them so the Germans could have had a lot of anti-Communist allies in their war against Communism had they simply allowed the “liberated” areas of Russia to come under control of a Free Russian German vassal state.“On the other hand, in the last free elections of the WeimarRepublic, the "innocent Germans" gave the Nazi party the largest number of seats. Hitler had already written _Mein Kampf_ and if they didn't know what they were getting into then they should have. He made very clear what his ideas and his intentions were. That Germans were a superior race, that Slavs were an inferior, slave race, that Gypsies and especially Jews were the lowest, and the book at least mentions gassing of substantial numbers of Jews.”Hitler’s book does not mention gassing the Jews it mentions the need to ethnically cleanse them from Europe to their own homeland state. It mentioned the need to free Germany from French occupation and Hitler’s plan to invade the Soviet Union led by the Bolsheviks who Hitler blames along with their Jewish supporters for Germany’s defeat in the First World War. It does not mention any plan of Hitler to go to war with the U.S. I don’t believe you have read Mein Kampf. Hitler did not run for office on his plan to kill Jews since he didn’t have any such plans in 1933. He ran on his plan to make Germany a great power once again after Germany had lost everything—West Prussia, Posen leaving its main constituent state of Prussia completely bifurcated, Alsace-Lorraine, Upper Silesia, Memel, Eupen-Malmedy, and north and central Schleswig province not to mention its army, navy and air force, its king, its great power status, all of its colonies including unpopulated islands and was totally humiliated by the Allies forced to admit war guilt where none existed, with its economy brutally crushed in 1923 due to tens of billions of dollars worth of Allied war reparations, racked by revolutions, starved by poverty and so on. I would venture to say that if you lived in a country that had gone through that, you might have made the mistake of initially supporting someone like Hitler who seemed determined to regain all that Germany had lost before you realized his evil side and repented of your mistake.“Those same people were silent and did not rise up when the Nuremberglaws were passed, when Sudetenland was stolen, when Czechoslovakia was finally done away with. By then the handwriting was on the wall.”After Hindenburg died in 1934 and Hitler proclaimed himself all powerful Fuhrer of Germany and killed his enemies in the Night of the Long Knives, the German people ceased to have any political freedoms to stand against the Nuremburg laws or Kristallnacht. They were as powerless as the Jews to do so. Again, I don’t think you know what it means to live in a totalitarian country and to be a slave who is attacked for failing to free himself of his chains. The Sudetenland was not stolen. It was comprised almost entirely of ethnic Germans who were wildly supportive of the idea of reuniting with a German state after being treated for two full decades as second-class citizens by the majority Czech population. I note that even FDR and Churchill supported the German claims against the Czechs though Churchill may have differed with the fashion in which the Sudeten Germans were returned to German control. Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia was a tragic error since although Bohemia and Moravia had once comprised part of the First Reich, they were not ethnic German provinces and worse his occupation of those lands brought an end was so offensive to Chamberlain that it caused him to make the mistake of guaranteeing Poland against German claims of the entirely German city of Danzig when Germany had a far better claim to the return of West Posen and Pomerania than it did for the annexation of the Sudeten Germans.“Those same people also did not rise up on November 9, 1938(Kristallnacht) except to aid in killing and tormenting Jews. And those same "innocent" people did not rise up when German Jews were deported. And for that they suffered. Perhaps more than what was deserved, but to call them "innocent" is understating the truth at the least, and perpetuating a myth perhaps.”Well here is where we really differ. The Islamists like to use terrorism as a means of collective punishment against the Israelis and Americans for their alleged or actual crimes whichever the case might be against the Palestinians, Iraqis, etc. It is morally wrong for any nation or terrorist group to impose mass terror and collective punishment of starvation, death, dismemberment and mass murder on any people for the crimes of a few of their leaders. If it was wrong when Hitler killed six million Jews to avenge the Bolshevik Jew led Spartacist revolution in Berlin in 1918, it was equally wrong when the Soviets and western allies killed ten million innocent Germans from 1942-1949 of which the Western allied total was approximately 3.85 million. To blame the innocent slave citizens of Germany for the crimes of Hitler and his henchmen is like blaming white people in America as guilty for the horrendous crime of slavery against blacks prior to 1865 or the State of Israel for the Jewish terrorist attacks against the Brits prior to independence. But since you blamed the Soviet citizens for their own mass murders I guess blaming the innocent German people for Hitler’s crimes must seem logical to you as well.“Here's another little tidbit for you to ponder. _Mein Kampf_ predicted an eventual war with the US. So had we stayed out of the European war in the hopes that the two tyrants would kill each other off, Germanymight have won in the east. Now imagine if Nazi Germany had acquired nuclear weapons by 1945 (because we weren't bombing the crap out of them and if they hadn't so stupidly let their Jewish scientists leave). As we know, in 1945 Germany had the most advanced rocket science in the world. Do you think for one moment that Hitler would have hesitated to use nuclear weapons say on London or New York? Again, if the US didn't have German scientists the US probably did not have an atomic weapon in 1945. Even Stalin didn't use his nukes.”As I previously noted, Mein Kampf did not predict a future war with the USA and in fact prior to December 1941, Hitler went out of his way to avoid war with the US in response to FDR’s many provocations of convoying British ships into war zones, sinking German U-boats and killing hundreds of German sailors, etc. Actually, so long as Hitler was at the helm, the Soviet Union had the ability to defeat Nazi Germany on its own without any Allied help whatsoever. Germany was very far from developing nukes in 1945 for the reason you stated, the German and Hungarian atomic scientists left Europe to avoid being persecuted after Hitler took power so this is really a strawman issue you are raising. Even under a best case scenario, it would have taken Germany until the mid-1950’s to build an ICBM capable of reaching US cities. Also, considering that Hitler refused to use his most powerful wonder weapon of the war—nerve gas up to a thousand times more powerful than any chemical weapons in the Allied arsenal—against Allied troops even when they were in the process of overrunning and destroying Germany forcing him to kill himself, I can say it is far from certain that Hitler would have unleashed atomic weapons on British cities although the Truman apparently had no such qualms with regards to atomizing 140,000 innocent Japanese civilians. Churchill wanted to use anthrax to kill millions of innocent Germans. Why do you think Hitler never used nerve gas to kill British soldiers let alone civilians when he easily could have done so and when it might have made the difference between defeat and victory?? Stalin didn’t use his nukes against the West because we were never at war, but with the collapse of the USSR, it has been revealed that he had plans to do so. I will post the rest of my response in the next E-mail.Best,David