Hi Dilandu,
Actually it was Lenin himself who said in 1914 that Russia was improving so much so fast that in 5 years the communist 'opportunity' would evaporate.
Then WWI happened and all the European working classes went happily off to war with each other, often singing hymns.
Then don't ignore Lenin's NEP or New Economic Policy which was free enterprise, at least at the small business level that allowed the country to recover somewhat from the stupidity of socialism.
Socialism doesn't work because it denies the inner spirit or soul of the individual , NTM the whole of humanity, in trying to hammer it to fit its stupid economic ideology, which has never worked and never will.
Dilandu wrote:PeterZ wrote:Russia was an economic basket case before they became the USSR. They would have been better off liberalizing their economy and government instead of doubling down on centralized control.
Its a myth, unfortunately. The reality was much more grim. Russian Empire was incredibly backward by European standards, in some areas it was even behind the Spain (!!!). The government was corrupt, backward and incompetent, the population was dirt-poor and illiterate, the national business was weak and most of industry belonged to foreign corporations. And, sorry, but in real world there were no "enlightened, benevolent" capitalists around. The British and French capitalists were perfectly fine in squeezing Russia dry without any thinking about its interests.
Without some kind of rigid central control over economics, we simply would never be able to pull out of all this mess. Communists were simply the best out of worst solutions, but only the worst solutions were available.
Had Patton been allowed to continue Eastward at the tail end of WWII, he would have destroyed the USSR forces west of Russia propper.
I'm sorry PeterZ, but I've had to correct this silly notion many times. One of the earliest times was when I was in high school, with a retired USAF sergeant who thought the AF could have nuked the soviets along with usual 1000 heavy bomber raids and thousands of fighter bombers etc, claiming the Russians didn't have anything to compare to American aircraft. Despite his 20 years of service etc he was ignorant of the Yak-9 among other things, which one of my too simplistic junior high library books had pointed out the Free French pilots who flew a wing of them compared it very favorably to the FW-190, which France continued to produce after the war.
When I was 7, I discovered Avalon Hills' Stalingrad war game at a local toy department store and convinced my mother to buy it.
My father was very impressed with it, including the detail of all the unit designations, supply and weather factors etc.
Though it's rated for 12 years and up, I learned how to play it pretty well when I was ten. Avalon Hills' The Russian Campaign game in the '80's added some extras, but I still have my original copy along with a newer one in much better condition.
The important thing I learned early on was war was far more complicated than I'd previously thought, although I'd already dismissed most war movies as too simplistic to be taken seriously.
At the same time, my then favorite toy and model tank was the Josef Stalin mark III, with its beetle-like shape, it's 122 mm gun, etc. I didn't find out its limitations until years later, but my father who was commissioned an officer in the US Army at the end of January 1942 (his ROTC class was accelerated 4 monthes after PH) and actively served for 30 and a half years, made sure I understood the Russians made some pretty good things and were very serious students of war. The JS III's appearance at the July Berlin victory parade had all sorts of strategic and political effects, but don't forget what a handicap Montgomery would have been; ie being seriously outnumbered for the first time would have made him very leery at the best of times, NTM the Labor/socialist parliamentary victory/government. He and Britain would have totally opposed any such adventure which would have put the ca-bosh on the very idea of any US assault on the Soviet Union without any allies, NTM all the soviet agents in Washington DC and the country at large.
Besides, the soviet/Russian willingness to spend millions of lives to achieve sometimes ludicrous goals besides excellent strategic ones, could have easily swamped the US Army then in Europe, if the communist supported campaign hadn't already been screaming to bring the boys home ASAP.
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Seriously... it just laughable. Not only the US forces in Europe were vastly numerically inferior to Soviet, but there were no US general with strategical experience & competence of Soviet military leaders by 1945.
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You don't mention Stalin's dismissal, betrayal and even murder of so many of the best soviet generals before and after the war, just like Saddam Hussein, who again only followed Stalin's footsteps.
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I respect Allied military command greatly, but truth is, their strategical solutions were primitive by the Eastern Fronts standards. They never launched any operation on the scale of "Bagration", never ever tried to command such enormous number of troops simultaneously. It wasn't their fault, it was simply the lack of experience. Before 1944, Allies never deployed such large number of troops on such great frontlines. USSR done this routinely, and Soviet strategical solutions - like refined "Deep operation" conception - was much more advanced than anything Allies have in pockets.
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Please, given the smaller scale of the western European theater, they did well (if not very
, and the American battle death's was only ~2.5-3% or less of Russia's, NTM Zhukov's explanation of how the soviet army cleared minefields being totally unacceptable to any western democracy, nor a casualty/death rate of 25-30% of the whole soviet army be anything western generals would consider smart.
P.S. Of course, in case of prolonged conflict, the USSR in 1945 was doomed. It simply was too exhausted to fight anymore, have no resources for prolonged fight against USA. But it would not save the US armies in Europe from quick destruction.[/quote]
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Yes, assuming assuming the US somehow had had the political will to nuke/bomb soviet war production, and accept heavy B-29 losses to Soviet AF rammers (something they'd been doing since 1941), the US could have ground the soviets down, but at what cost and for punishment of what kind of crime against the US?
Those were certainly interesting times.
What RFC has in mind for Safehold will be very fascinating of course.
L
