BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer

Subject: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: GUEST,not a member
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:08 PM

seeing as Guests aren't allowed to start BS threads.
Please could a mod/member ask this question..

or maybe make an exception and let this one go ?

reason for asking; just been watching documentaries
on satelite TV, re Stalins adverse impact on Russian Scientific/military technology.

So...

What if Stalin had lived and stayed in power 10 years longer ?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:15 PM

A scary thought! Well, it would certainly have slowed down the pace of liberalization of the Soviet system. Other than that, I can't say...I don't know enough about it.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Acorn4
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:25 PM

Among his other sins, he was a strong supporter of the notion of target setting, so he has a lot to answer for outside of Russia as well.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Wolfgang
Date: 11 May 09 - 12:33 PM

I sometimes think about the question what if Hitler had lived 10 years less.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 May 09 - 01:27 PM

Indeed!

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 May 09 - 01:29 PM

What if the South had won the Civil War in the USA - I love that one!!

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:03 PM

So many of these - if Lenin had lived long enough to dump Stalin, if Montcalm had beaten Wolfe and Canada stayed French, if Clinton had kept his pants on...

It's scary thinking how arbitrary it all is sometimes.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Skivee
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:10 PM

IMHO Stalin's paranoid nature, coupled with the hard-line faction in Curtis LeMay's SAC and the Soviet Air Force, and the pressure of posturing politicians on boths sides may well have resulted in a thermo-nuclear war. The resulting nuclear winter may well have ended human life on the planet. The actors on both sides did not appreciate the consequenses of their actions. They tended to think of atomic and thermonuclear as being just the same as a bunch of the old iron bombs, only more-so.

Regarding Wolfgang's Hilter supposition. It's unlikely that Hitler would have lived another 10 years. It would be difficult to imagine how he could have avoided capture by the Allies, or the personal retribution of Stalin.
Between his various severe medical issues, the disillusionment of Germans with the disasterous results of his failed evil policies, and the power of the various armies bent on stopping him, he was a dead man walking by the winter of 1944.

This dialog from "Band of Brothers" pretty much says it all:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cpt. Nixon: Hitler's dead.
Liebgott: Holy shit.
Cpt. Nixon: Shot himself in Berlin.
Sgt. Denver 'Bull' Randleman: Is the war over, sir?
Cpt. Nixon: No. We have orders to Berchtesgaden. We move out in one hour.
Pvt. David Kenyon Webster: Why? The man's not home. He should have killed himself three years ago. Saved us all a lot of trouble.
Cpt. Nixon: Yeah, he should have...But he didn't.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Acorn4
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:12 PM

Napoleon, apparently, early in his life thought about a commision in the British navy?

What if the wind on that day in 1066 had been blowing in the opposite direction and Harold had fought William of Normandy before Harald Hadrada?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 May 09 - 02:19 PM

What if Custer had listened to his Indian scouts, not divided his forces into 3 separate groups who couldn't help each other, and had made a far more judicious and sensible massed attack on the enormous Indian encampment at the Little Big Horn?

(In my opinion, he'd still have probably experienced a reverse and had to retreat eventually...but his people wouldn't have got wiped out the way they did.)

Custer, however, was a man who never hesitated, but always struck without delay, no matter what the odds. It had served him well in previous encounters. It did not serve him well at Little Big Horn.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: michaelr
Date: 11 May 09 - 03:44 PM

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 May 09 - 03:56 PM

Aha! Spoken like a true Taoist. ;-) The uncarved block. The silent mind.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 11 May 09 - 04:37 PM

This is getting awfully close to nonexistence theory, which I should have copywritted in 1967.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 May 09 - 04:47 PM

Non-existence is required in order to supply the endless field of apparent emptiness and nothingness upon which and within which all the things that seem to "exist" appear...

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 May 09 - 04:48 PM

Well, Stalin would have been 10 years older when he died. I'm sure of that.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 May 09 - 04:59 PM

Of course if David Deutsch is right, and "many worlds theory" is actually how things really are, none of this is hypothetical, it's just a matter of which of the many worlds that make up the multiverse we happen to be in. (The Fabric of Reality)

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 11 May 09 - 05:20 PM

Skivee, you answered a question that Wolfgang didn't ask. The one he did ask was more interesting.

We know now that there were elements (some of them Jewish) within western capitalism that had a significant vested interest in the prospect of war. For them Hitler, and his readiness to exploit the antisemitism that had been rampant not only in Germany but equally across most of Europe and to some extent in the US, was a godsend. They might still have managed to engineer their war. The criminal insanity of the Versailles treaty had given them plenty to work with. But Hitler's extraodinary demagogy gave it to them on a plate.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 May 09 - 06:25 PM

A great way to end a worldwide financial depression, wasn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Peace
Date: 11 May 09 - 07:46 PM

"What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer"

He'd a died in 1963.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 11 May 09 - 07:52 PM

I think we did a 'what if Hitler won the war?' thread sometime back.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 11 May 09 - 08:41 PM

Gee Peter K why not peddle that over on the Nazi website where you can get an amen brother.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Skivee
Date: 11 May 09 - 09:09 PM

Peter and Wolfgang...errrrps. You are correct, sir. I need new glasses.
On the other hand, the implied idea that broad capitalist interests in the US engineered the conflicts with the Japanese and Germans is a bit broad. The great depression was fading years before we were sucked into the conflict.
The Nazis were building ties WITH American industry as far back as the Early 30s. The support of Henry Ford, Charles Lindburgh, Joseph Kennedy for Nazi policies is well documented. It is less well known that many huge American companies forged bonds with them. Beyer and Sherling pharmacuticals, Standard Oil, Western Electric, Ford, Boeing were all doing business (just for a few examples, There were many more). Lots of folks in the higher strata of American society were far from viewing Hitler as an evil player.
If Hitler had not come along or had been killed in the vicious early internal intrigues of the party, It's quite possible that Heidrich would have followed a similar path. They were cut from the same cloth.
There's no doubt that capitalists made a lot of capital during the war, but that's not the same things as them working to start it.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: CarolC
Date: 11 May 09 - 09:59 PM

What sort of creature would dolphins be if they had never gone to live in the ocean? And would they be primates?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 11 May 09 - 10:01 PM

Lindbergh, Ford, and Kennedy, in addition to being deluded in their individual ways, were also antisemitic.   But we'd need more evidence before concluding that "lots of folks" in the upper strata did not view Hitler as an evil player. At the beginning of his influence many may not have taken him as a serious threat, just as many Germans saw him as a buffoon at the start. But that is not the same as endorsing him or his ideas.

And, as Skivee points out, we need a LOT more evidence before concluding that US industrialists were pushing for a war.

But let the conspiracy theories begin. After all, this is Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 11 May 09 - 10:15 PM

Re: Napoleon and Royal Navy:   Washington really wanted a commission as an officer in the British Army. And of course was turned down. Admittedly at the time he was pushing for this (about 1758) he had "played a leading role" in two massacres: "one a massacre that he oversaw, the other a massacre that he survived; one an embarrassing defeat; the other a hollow victory." (His Excellency George Washington, by Joseph J Ellis, p 38).

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 11 May 09 - 10:22 PM

Ellis p 26: Washington: "we (Virginia troops) want nothing but Commissions from His Majesty to make us as regular a Corps as any upon the Continent." He wrote this in 1755 (before the Braddock massacre).

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Skivee
Date: 11 May 09 - 10:32 PM

Ron, one source is the book "A Man Called Intrepid" by William Stephenson. It deals extensively with the socio-politico- economico-hypheno-espianagio climate from the early 20s to the end of WWII.
There are pictures in the book of several hundred American industrialists being wined and dined by Nazi representatives and dupes in NYC. The Nazi's were drumming up alliances and sodifying new ones.
I know that this is a single example,. but it's late, and I don't feel like writing a tome about it here.
Wanna borrow the book? It's a great read.
"But we'd need more evidence before concluding that "lots of folks" in the upper strata did not view Hitler as an evil player". I'm not saying that they were right...or smart,... or moral.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 May 09 - 10:42 PM

Ron, I have an old copy here of one the Toronto newspapers from about the mid-thirties, and on the front page is an article about how Chancellor Hitler of Germany is revitalizing the German economy. There isn't even a hint in the article that Hitler might in any way be a bad guy or a danger to other nations. Rather, he is presented simply as a highly effective and well respected national leader among western nations.

It's fascinating to read this article now in a mainstream Canadian newspaper of the time with the benefit of hindsight and realize that most people's view of Hitler in North America and in the UK and Europe also was radically different than it became after the Czech crisis in '38. He was clearly not seen as a threat by the average Canadian at the time that article was written. I imagine that was true of the average American or Englishman too. Given that situation, why would most North American businessmen not have happily done business with Germany when there was money to be made?

The powers that be, after all, meaning our governments and our mainstream media, had not yet officially labelled him as a threat...

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: number 6
Date: 11 May 09 - 11:01 PM

what if Stalin died 10 years earlier?

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 May 09 - 11:12 PM

That would have been quite a psychological blow to the Russians in 1943...and the Nazis would have been in absolute ecstasy at the news! However, I think the Russians would have soon recovered from their initial shock and would still have won the war handily in any case.

Hitler was briefly elated when the news of FDR's death came in 1945 (very shortly before the fall of Berlin.) He seemed to think it was the hand of God that had struck down the American president and that the tide would turn and Germany would somehow win the war now that Roosevelt was gone. He was dead wrong about that...

He didn't understand how the American government works, obviously. It didn't stop the USA one bit. Stalin's death wouldn't have stopped the Russians either in '43, but it might have improved their government some.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Riginslinger
Date: 11 May 09 - 11:27 PM

Washington really wanted a commission as an officer in the British Army."

          If that's what he wanted, that's what he got. From Wikipedai - In 1754, Dinwiddie commissioned Washington a lieutenant colonel and ordered him to lead an expedition to Fort Duquesne to drive out the French

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Riginslinger
Date: 11 May 09 - 11:30 PM

"Lindbergh, Ford, and Kennedy, in addition to being deluded in their individual ways, were also antisemitic."


                   These are people who had to deal with Jewish banking cartels. We are experiencing now what they were dealing with then.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: meself
Date: 11 May 09 - 11:48 PM

As to Custer - I can't see that it would have made much difference if he had fared better at the Little Bighorn.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 May 09 - 01:19 AM

Well, it wouldn't have made too much difference to the ultimate fate of the Indians...but it would have made a hell of a big difference to the length of Custer's lifespan, I think. ;-D He might even have gone on to serve in Congress. After all, Crook was repulsed by Crazy Horse at the Battle of the Rosebud, and Crook went on to a glorious career after that.

If Custer's unit had extricated itself from Little Big Horn in reasonably good shape, I'm sure they would have spun it into a tale of bravery and grit that would have served Custer very well for helping fulfull his further ambitions.

The papers would have said something like:

"Severely outnumbered by the howling Indian hordes, the courageous 7th Cavalry demonstrated matchless skill and endurance under Custer's inspired command, and they inflicted great loss upon their savage adversaries, writing another glorious chapter in the history of the US Cavalry...blah, blah, blah!...."

Yeah, I bet it would have made great reading back East. ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Riginslinger
Date: 12 May 09 - 08:36 AM

But what would they have called him after his hair turned white?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Les from Hull
Date: 12 May 09 - 11:29 AM

There's been some controversy over Stalin's death (whether it was a brain hemorrhage, or if he was possibly poisoned by his rivals). As it was I don't think the option of living 10 more years was open to him - too many enemies, too much booze. more here

As to the others:

The French could never have retained Canada as the British fought them three times: American Revolution, French Revolutionary War and Napoleonic War. I'm sure that in the last two a French Canada would have fallen to Britain after more American Loyalists had moved there and Britain had control of the sea.

In my not very humble opinion Lt Colonel Custer (as he was at Little Big Horn) should not have been allowed command of a Boy Scout Troop. He prided himself on never reversing a decision - even when everyone around him told him he was wrong. The only reason most people had heard of him was because of his shameless self-publicity. LH is right about what the newspapers would have said, particularly as Custer took his own journalist with him - Mark Kellogg, who died at the battle.

And as for the traitor Washington - obviously no self-interest there!

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 May 09 - 12:23 PM

Well, Les, I'd give Custer maybe a C+ or a B- as a commander, based on his whole career.

His strengths were: tremendous courage under fire, great enthusiasm, a good deal of charisma for leading men into battle, lots of energy and determination, and great tenacity.

His weaknesses: arrogance, over-confidence, recklessness, some dishonesty here and there in negotiations, a tendency to break the standard military rules (he went AWOL to visit his wife on one occasion and got in major shit for it) , and as you point out, an inability to admit to having made an error.

He fought well and effectively in the Civil War, though, and he did so also in the Indian wars up until his disastrous fight at Little Big Horn.

History has judged Custer harshly for one and only one reason: he screwed up at his very last battle and got himself and his men killed.

The Indians of the time admired Custer on a personal basis for his bravery and flamboyant warrior style....but they were quite angry that he had broken his word to them in various past negotiations, and they had sworn to kill him over that issue.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Les from Hull
Date: 12 May 09 - 02:23 PM

LH I think what you are saying is that he would have been a great sergeant, but should have never been promoted past captain. He was bottom of his class at West Point, and even then his class was passed out early because the American Civil War had started.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 May 09 - 02:30 PM

I think you have hit on a pretty good assessment of Mr Custer there, Les. :-)

Mind you, the man was tremendously ambitious. That was one reason why he rose as high in the chain of command as he did.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 12 May 09 - 03:57 PM

RE: Pre-war Germany the United States was full of differing reactions to what was going on in Germany. My mother remembered German exchange students singing Nazi songs in her high school in New York City.

RE: "A Man Called Intrepid" read this a few years ago and I understand it's considered somewhat mythological regarding the importance and ever-presence of its main character. I am not steeped in the historical events but the book left me suspicious about the central character and what really happened around him.

Just read an interesting book of fiction based on a real period of history: "Germania" by Brendan McNally which is placed at the end of WWII at Hitler's demise and the brief reign of the Doenitz government in Flensburg. It is somewhat fantastical with its fictional characters but so are the real-life events of the time. It was a good read and I'm still ruminating on it.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 May 09 - 05:27 PM

There were differing reactions to the Nazis in Germany too in the pre-war era. There were many Germans who distrusted or even detested the Nazi Party. Unfortunately, there weren't quite enough of them to prevent Hitler's party from winning a plurality in the 1933 elections. Then the Reichstag fire happened, and a frightened nation gave Hitler emergency powers. (think 911) Once a party has gained that sort of power in a crisis situation, it starts re-shaping things according to its own notions...look what Bush did between 2000 and 2008. He legalized torture, invaded 2 countries, set up offshore prisons for enemy combatants....

Once a country goes to war, specially if that war is viewed as a legitimate act of defense by its own people (and it almost always is seen that way)....well, you very quickly have the public lining up willingly to do their patriotic duty. Very few voices of open dissent can be found once the bullets start flying and the bombs start dropping. This is even more true in a major war such as Germany got into in 1939.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Amergin
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:06 PM

I think if Hitler had died ten years earlier...the fight would have been against Stalin...

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 May 09 - 06:11 PM

Possibly...

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 May 09 - 08:20 PM

You think that if the French had still been in force in Canada and points South and West that there would have much call in the American Colonies for getting rid of the British connection, Little Hawk? And without an American Revolution would there have been a French one?

Once you make any significant change all kinds of other things change too.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 12 May 09 - 08:47 PM

What if Adam was allergic to fruit?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 12 May 09 - 08:51 PM

What-if's are a classic black hole of time.   Any one of the topics raised in this thread could be a thread in itself --and some have.


I'll only address Custer this time: no time for anything else.

No way would I give Custer anything remotely approaching a B- or C+ for command.

He was a discipline-crazed hypocrite, among other qualities.   He had deserters shot on the spot.   But for himself, another standard. Concerned about his wife or desperate to see her, he rode 60 miles in a mule-drawn ambulance, then hopped a train to her.

For the shooting of the deserters and for leaving his regiment, he was courtmartialed (convicted). Sentence: to be suspended from rank and command for a year and forfeit his pay for the same time.

General Grant on the sentence: "in awarding so lenient a sentence", the Court must have taken into account his previous service (possibly in the Civil War, where he had to be rescued at least once.) Son of the Morning Star, by Evan S Connell, obviously not an objective report--name one that is!---states that Custer lost more men in the Civil War than almost any other commander.

Custer threatened to cowhide with a rawhide quirt the party who had passed on to a newspaper an account of a campaign (during the Indian wars) which displeased him.

Grant on Little Bighorn: "I regard Custer's massacre as a sacrifice of troops, brought on by Custer himself, that was wholly unnecessary--wholly unnecessary.   He was not to have made the attack before effecting the junction with Terry and Gibbon".

Why did he do it?   Connell p 259: "On at least two occasions--at Fort Lincoln and at Young Man Butte--he told the Ree scouts that this campaign against the Sioux would be his last and he must win a great victory. Yet even a small victory, he told them, would make him president."

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 12 May 09 - 09:07 PM

Obviously Grant is also not an objective observer--Custer testified against his brother early in 1876--but the question is whether what Grant says is supported.   It seems clear that it is.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Skivee
Date: 13 May 09 - 01:57 AM

Robomatic, you are correct in saying that there is some scepticism about the Intrepid book.
I took some of it with a bit of salt. I will note, however that the nature of secret opps that many people would not know the extent of Intrepid's involvement.

On the other hand, there are folks to the west of Toronto, who regarded him enough to name a park after him at the site of a spy training faciolity he ran, Camp X. Ian Fleming used many of Intrepid's exploits as models of various James Bond stories; and the points I was directing Ron to can be found in other sources. It just happened that I've been re-reading "Intrepid", so it was the first book that came to mind.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 May 09 - 02:02 AM

McGrath, I think that there probably would have been a French Revolution eventually anyway, yes, but it might have been delayed by a decade or so, because the success of the American Revolution certainly helped inspire the later revolutionary efforts in France.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Skivee
Date: 13 May 09 - 10:55 AM

Hey, Wolfgang,
regarding the Nazi sub-thread, since you actually live in a place that was greatly affected by the consequences of Hitler's action, what do YOU think would have happened?