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Also, next time some Wehrmacht or SS fanboy preaches about blitzkrieg, throw this in his face and watch the glorious mental implosion:
http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/7...sofadvance.jpg
That's the Soviet advance into Manchuria against arguably one of the best equipped, most motivated formations the Japanese Army ever had. By 1945 the Red Army was pretty much the scariest thing on the planet (when they didn't like you, anyway).
Too bad the West had Nukes and more production than any country has ever had before or since :iamafag:
Neither side could have won a war in 1946-8. They were too depleted, and our peoples were too sick of sending their boys to foreign lands to fight wars. It would have just been an ugly mudfight in Germany over nothing.
That and neither side actually wanted one. The Soviets threw a ton of armies into Germany because they really didn't feel like a third invasion in the same century, the West was used to large concentrations of forces being a sign of aggression and assumed that's what it was.
Well because in a way it was, and it really frustrated the Americans especially because most of the politicians had assumed the two countries would become very close allies. As a nation we felt extremely betrayed that Stalin didn't trust us enough to work with us.Quote:
Originally Posted by rossmum
Another disappointment, damn shame somebody mounted a PU scope with the PU base on a unrefurbed SKS. The wood was so beautiful and everything matched but 550 for it all wasn't worth it and he wouldn't budge. Urgh gonna have to wait next month for a local gun show...
It wasn't. Even under Stalin, who was by far the least stable or diplomatically-minded Soviet leader, there was no chance of the USSR expanding into Western Europe without NATO being the aggressor in the first place. It's just fucking impossible for people to get their heads around that, because they've heard all their lives (and often their parents have, too) that the Soviets were evil and bad and wanted to spread Communism all over when the last thing they wanted was any more people trying to invade them.Quote:
Originally Posted by TVTyrant
As for trusting the US; would you? I'm nowhere near Stalin's level of paranoia and I would trust a drug addict before I would trust the US.
Okay, sorry to burst your bubble dude, but in Lenin's era he made it VERY clear what the fucking cause was. And the way Stalin behaved when he was at the meetings with Roosevelt and Churchill was ridiculous. No, there wasn't a stone cold way in hell they would have invaded, but when you start building up massive tank forces in Poland, East Germany, and any other place you can fucking put them, that doesn't tend to make you supposed allies very happy. And besides, less than ten years before the Germans had done the exact same damn thing saying "Oh, we're not doing anything bad, we're just defending ourselves." Funny how that turned out for everyone, isn't it?Quote:
Originally Posted by rossmum
Quit acting like fucking hindsight man and look at the time. America was THE country to trust if you were European. We rebuilt the whole continent with our money, gave away billions to the UK, France and Germany so they could have a future. Most of those "best countries" are countries that we rebuilt in our own image. But you wouldn't have trusted us after WW2 huh? After we sent millions to the Soviets so they could produce ammo and weapons, after we saved Britain from certain defeat. Nope, those actions apparently weren't worth anything.
And sorry to burst yours, but Soviet military doctrine was not the same as NATO's and they had been invaded twice in thirty years and nearly fucking exterminated for the second time in Russian history. Considering the rabid anti-Communist rhetoric that WWII merely put a four-year pause on, and the fact that America's poster child general (Patton) had himself stated that the best course of action would be to immediately roll through with the Germans and utterly fuck the Soviet Union, they had every reason to be suspicious of the US and its NATO allies and they absolutely had cause to throw the bulk of their forces along the only conceivable line of attack. It's not hindsight, it's common fucking sense, and if anyone had thought to shut the fuck up about the 'RED MENACE' for two seconds and consult some history books they would see that Russians have such a long history of being fucked over that of course they're going to completely overdo their defences.
If anyone in the West had done some reading, a little psychological profiling, and maybe (God forbid) speaking with the Soviets, they would have realised that there was never a scrap of hostile intent there, just an immense fear of being stabbed in the back and destroyed. It's not rocket science, when your allies' most prominent and influential general is publicly quoted as saying you should be destroyed, when their public believe you to be as bad as the Nazis you just gave so much to destroy, you start worrying in a big way.
I'm sorry but the Cold War was as much a product of Western ignorance - both of the Russian mindset and of the ideology of the USSR - as it was of Soviet overreaction and Stalin's paranoia. I wouldn't expect Americans now or at the time to fully understand, since your existence has never truly been threatened since Independence, but older nations like France and Britain in particular should have damn well known. We see the same thing with Israel now; when you've been the target of extermination, your idea of defence becomes either "throw the 8th Guards and 3rd Shock Armies up along the wall and back them with everything we have" or Israel's "fuck it, send in the tanks and bomb hell out of that rocket site".
The fact that Western perceptions of, and interactions with, the Soviets barely changed after Stalin's death shows just how ignorant NATO was (or rather, how little anyone cared about actually making fucking peace with an inconvenient ideology they would rather see just crawl into a hole and die).
I meant it was mutual. Our reaction was towards their paranoia etc. That's what I meant, I wasn't trying to shift blame towards either side.
And I hate that Patton and McArthur are the poster children of the US in WW2. Ike was clearly the superior human being and represents the American mind set of the time much better.
And I totally agree on the post-Stalin thing. The Cold War continued endlessly because both sides were too scared of each other to even try to meet in the middle. It was really unfortunate, especially when we decided to elect Reagan (awful, awful president).
As far as the Soviet defense thing, it has a lot to do with that, yes. But America was new to the world politics stage. The time we had been involved before, England and France had ignored what we'd contributed and continued to make secret deal to carve up the Mid-East and Africa. We'd been isolationists for so long that the idea of being THE big player was intimidating, and we didn't expect anyone to have such a standoffish attitude towards us. Its really unfortunate that we lost Roosevelt, because he could have done a lot to keep the USSR and USA together (Stalin and FDR had become very good friends). In fact, FDR was essentially a socialist, and from what I understand didn't much care for the way Churchill and the Brits handled anything.
McArthur was a horrible piece of shit and I cannot believe there are still people in the world who do not hate him with the intensity of a billion suns, let alone hero-worship him.
But yeah FDR was pretty cool as far as US presidents go.