BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 13 May 09 - 11:16 AM

If he had of done it would have cost old Ivan a fortune in Birthday cards!!

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 May 09 - 12:39 PM

Delay the French Revolution a decade or so, and by that time there might have been an English Revolution. Every change opens up fresh changes. And maybe they all happen...

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 May 09 - 12:57 PM

An even more disturbing thought: What if no one had thought to use selective breeding to bring the Dachshund into the world??? What then??????

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Skivee
Date: 13 May 09 - 01:17 PM

Some ideas are simply to horrible to contemplate.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 May 09 - 01:39 PM

How about if Max hadn't offered to host the Digital Tradition...

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Riginslinger
Date: 13 May 09 - 02:40 PM

"What if no one had thought to use selective breeding to bring the Dachshund into the world???"

                We'd have had to make do with Bassets!

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 13 May 09 - 08:47 PM

There WAS an English revolution, well ahead of the French one, it was magnificent (by which I mean it was on multiple levels, dramatic and profound and well worth studying)and probably a necessary precurser for the successful American War of Independence. It may have been a necessary precurser for the Soviet Revolution, for that matter (Levellers and all that).

As Harry Truman said "The only thing new is the history you don't know!" ("Plain Speaking")

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Riginslinger
Date: 13 May 09 - 10:00 PM

Cromwell took the British public to a very bad place from which many of them are still trying to recover.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 May 09 - 09:14 PM

Skivee-

"wined and dined"---but do we have any concrete results, aside from contented and sleepy industrialists?

Can we have some direct quotes--as I have given about Washington?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 14 May 09 - 09:26 PM

Rig:

I think if I were European I'd take Cromwell over Marat. Talk about going to a bad place, whatever that means.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 May 09 - 09:29 PM

LH--

Also, It's a question of time. I did an extensive study of the picture of the US as seen in the pages of the Voelkischer Beobachter, from at least 1936 to 1945 and it was fascinating how it changed.

It's certainly likely that in 1933-34 the ignorance about Hitler on this side of the Pond would have resulted in at least some people getting the picture that the 3rd Reich wanted to portray, and that was depicted in the pages of that organ:   specifically that Hitler and FDR were very similar: each one led a country with a very serious unemployment problem, and was administering tough medicine for a desperate time.

The question is how long the parallel was seen in North America.   I'd be very interested to know the exact date of the newspaper to which you refer.

It's also well known that there were Nazi sympathizers in North America.   As I recall one group was the "Silver Shirts".   Not to mention the Bund. And the followers of Father Coughlin must have been about as tolerant as the Hitler Youth.

So who ran the Toronto paper to which you refer in those years? That would be another interesting question?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 May 09 - 09:55 PM

Yes, Ron.

I'm not sure which of the Toronto papers it was. It's stored away here somewhere. It might have been the Star, the Globe and Mail, or the Telegram. I don't think it was the Globe, but I'm not sure between the other two.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 May 09 - 09:58 PM

Also: Washington:

What Dinwiddie offered was not a position as a regular commissioned officer in the British Army, but a position in the colonial army--which was considered lower-grade by the regular British army. Washington's annoyance at this attitude expressed itself in contempt for his British superiors--which probably did not help in his campaign to become a commissioned officer in the regular British Army

After the Braddock debacle, Washington "had come to regard himself as superior to anyone, British or American, in conducting this kind of guerilla war, and it rankled him that neither he nor his troops were paid at the same rate as British regulars"..."His protest on this score was more personal than ideological; that is, it derived less from any political convictions about colonial rights than from his own disappointment that neither he nor his regiment were sufficiently appreciated".

It seems likely that had a full commission in the regular British army been offered at that point, he would have been anchored in that society, and not so likely to be willing to lead the rebels.

Again, what-if's are basically nothing but a huge waste of time. If we want to discuss, we should at least break the topics up into different threads.

But a bit more on Washington:

What I find fascinating is that the "traitor" Washington, during the Revolutionary War, was in fact lionized by a large section of the British intelligentsia. It appears that the Revolution was indeed, as Stanley Weintraub depicts in Iron Tears, which I heartily recommend, Britain's Vietnam-- in so many ways.

And as for the straw man about self-interest: nobody claims Washington was without self-interest.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 May 09 - 10:02 PM

My quote about Washington's annoyance with his British superiors was again Ellis, p. 26.   I should have stated that.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 May 09 - 10:17 PM

And as far as the "English revolution" being "magnificent"--I assume you refer to the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688-- it depends on your perspective. A king was deposed, after a son had been born to him, and a foreigner was invited in to take his place, because of fear of Catholicism--and, no doubt, fear of possible entanglement with Catholic states like France, since at that point religion and politics were inseparable.   

But this is absurd to start discussing on a "Stalin" thread.

No more what-if's for me.

Separate threads, or I will read but not comment. (I'm sure some will be relieved).

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 May 09 - 10:20 PM

"It's certainly likely that in 1933-34 the ignorance about Hitler on this side of the Pond would have resulted in at least some people getting the picture that the 3rd Reich wanted to portray, and that was depicted in the pages of that organ: specifically that Hitler and FDR were very similar: each one led a country with a very serious unemployment problem, and was administering tough medicine for a desperate time."

                   And the conclusion is completely dependent on who won the war.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 May 09 - 10:26 PM

Rig, please translate that last cryptic remark. And take your remark about "Jewish banking cartels" to the gutter where it belongs.   And leave it there.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 May 09 - 04:03 AM

Please remember that posts from unnamed guests are not allowed. Use a name in the "from" box, and use the same name for every message you post.
By rights, I should delete the entire thread, since it is a non-music thread started by a non-member.
Refer to our Posting Policy.
-Joe Offer, Forum Moderator-

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Les from Hull
Date: 15 May 09 - 03:39 PM

Riginslinger - I don't understand your remark about Cromwell. Our Civil War was basically an upper middle class revolution, leaving the majority of the English public unaffected, other than pushed into fighting for either side, and quite often dead. But give me Cromwell over Charles Stuart any day.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 May 09 - 03:50 PM

As well we aren't faced with that choice. If I had to I suppose I'd have to choose the other way. It comes down to, which would be more likely to kill my family.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 15 May 09 - 05:02 PM

As far as the English Revolution goes, I'm well aware that is still a pretty controversial topic. By 'magnificent' I strictly meant from a point of view of what a nexus it was and how grand for study:

Religious motivations (Catholic, Protestant, Puritan, Presbyterian, Jewish, Millenarian)
Social (Class issues, the Levellers)
Political
Ethnic (Scot, English, Irish)
Military (Innovations in tactics and battlefield behavior).
Historical (Enabled structural changes to the American colonial governments which made the American War of Independence more likely to occur, and, having occurred, more likely to succeed).

In seeing it from an American 20th century viewpoint, it always tickles me when I reflect that Parliament put their king on trial for 'tyranny' - isn't that like accusing a bear of being hairy? What a notion! What other country came close in that time period to an ideal of limited monarchy? At least they gave him a trial, I don't know if Louis XVI ever got that much of a chance a hundred fifty years later.

And on a personal note, I got to visit London on my family's only vacation overseas, and got to see Patton and Cromwell in their first releases in English theatres.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 15 May 09 - 05:13 PM

11 May 09 Peter K:

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.

11 May 09 Riginslinger (in answer to a comment in quotes):

"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.

I think you guys need to be called on those bigoted remarks. What constitutes Jewish elements or Jewish banking cartels? What were the "significant vested interests in the prospect of war"? This is precisely the kind of stuff the fascists and Nazis argued (and argue still) during times of economic woe, no matter what the woe was nor who or what caused it. If you are going to persist in these comments you need to back 'em up back down. Inserted comments for effect are actions more of a guttersnipe nature than a mature member.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Monique
Date: 15 May 09 - 07:18 PM

Trial of Louis XVI

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 May 09 - 11:17 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."

          Okay, robomatic, let's assume that the original poster was referencing Joseph Kennedy because he is the one that is often pegged with antisemitism. Maybe he got burned by bankers, maybe not, but Ford and Lindbergh were both trying to ramp up major industrial enterprizes, where would you think they would have to go for capital on the scale they would need it?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 16 May 09 - 02:41 PM

Riginsliger YOU'RE the one who is the banking expert here. This simply exposes your knowledge (or lack thereof) and your ability to parse that knowledge (or inabiility).

Right know you are reading like ignorance mixed with prejudice.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 May 09 - 04:22 PM

Okay - I think this whole thing is getting way off topic. To the extent that it's my fault, I apologize. The only thing I know about banks is I'm always getting screwed by them. I just thought they'd do the same thing to big time customers like Henry Ford--maybe not.
                  In any event, I don't want to insult anybody else, so I'm just going to shut up about it.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: GUEST
Date: 16 May 09 - 05:57 PM

Ron, my replies to your posts have been vanishing for a few days. My cookies are disappearing into the ether.
I am researching the underlying truths in the Intrepid book, including a visit to the National Cryptological Museum.
With luck, I'll have verifiable info before the thread goes away.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 16 May 09 - 06:26 PM

RIG:
you writted:
Okay - I think this whole thing is getting way off topic. To the extent that it's my fault, I apologize. The only thing I know about banks is I'm always getting screwed by them. I just thought they'd do the same thing to big time customers like Henry Ford--maybe not.
                  In any event, I don't want to insult anybody else, so I'm just going to shut up about it.

Being 'screwed by' banks is not what is the issue:
This is what brought a reaction from me and at least one other:

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

You are trying not to insult anybody 'else', but you already passed a calumny against Jews. You seem to have made an association between Jews and banks. Your last post in which you apologize evades the Jewish part and tries to make it simply a matter of banks. To me there are a couple of issues, your problem with banks, (which may also be my problem with banks), and your association of banks with Jews, which you have not buttressed with any facts. Peter K above made a similar allusion before he disappeared, also with no support. I think the nasty part of this is the seagull approach to this attack(fly in, crap, then fly out- no harm done).

If you've got something against 'Jewish banking cartels' float it out or specifically say you have no information, you were just passing gas so to speak.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: GUEST,Skivee
Date: 16 May 09 - 07:35 PM

Ron, that unknown guest at 5:57 was me above...again.
I dunno what the problem is.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 16 May 09 - 08:26 PM

Skivee:

I'm interested in your Intrepid research, i.e. what sources are there how does this stuff get confirmed, y'know the epistemological realities of our past. I think it might be worth its own thread because it concerns more than mere 'what ifs'.

BTW, local public television (US) just aired a mini series documentary with re-enactments about Stalin, the Nazis, and the West. I don't really think there was much that was new there but I'm wondering what the motivation was for someone to dredge up a lot of nasty stuff about Soviet German Polish inter-nastiness.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 17 May 09 - 07:42 AM

What would have happened if Germany had won the FIRST World War? And why does no-one ever seem to ask this question (apart from me, of course)?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:20 PM

If Germany had won the FIRST world war, it might have been a rather good thing, I think.

It would have left the French and the Russians weakened. The Russian Revolution would probably have occurred anyway in much the same way, either before or following a German victory. The French would have retrenched after the war and done some soul-searching...and they would probably have lost a small amount of land around Alsace-Lorraine, the traditional piece of ground that the Germans and French have fought over repeatedly. There would have been NO cause for the future rise of either Hitler or the Nazis. The German overseas empire in Africa and Asia would have been secured for a time, but I doubt that the British would have suffered any notable defeat themselves in the war (except for their armies on the continent of Europe), so Britain would have remained strong in the world regardless with a huge navy...and their naval rivalry with the Germans would have continued as a potential source of some future conflict. The Austro-Hungarians were so disorganized by 1914 that they might well have gone on to their own revolution, even if the Central Powers had won the First World War. Germany would have become the strongest and most secure nation on the continent of Europe...matched by the similar power of both Great Britain and the USA.

I find the whole scenario considerably preferable to what DID happen with Hitler and the Nazis.

I think it would have been a more stable and less dangerous situation for the world than what did occur in 1914-18.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:29 PM

The French, however, would probably disagree passionately with my views on that! ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Monique
Date: 18 May 09 - 01:36 AM

Little Hawk, I agree that probably most of us would disagree, but they could ask "What if we had won the 1870 war when we lost Alsace-Lorraine" etc etc and we can go backwards on time till we reach "what if some apes hadn't 'lost' a pair of chromosomes = we wouldn't be here asking what if's..." and it would spoil the whole chat, wouldn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 18 May 09 - 09:47 PM

Y'see- Back to Nonexistence Theory, which I invented in the late sixties, which then went out of existence in the early seventies, but which encompasses an infinity of threads like this one as a minor corollary-







-Which does not exist!

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 19 May 09 - 04:34 AM

Thank you, LH.
I suspect that you're right. I also suspect that, given the level of suffering and death that the First World War entailed, the idea that the world might have been a better place if the Allies had lost it is just unthinkable to many people.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 May 09 - 10:47 AM

That sort of thing is usually unthinkable to people, Shimrod....but it's not nearly such a big deal in the long run as they think it is. A German victory in 1918 would not have been the end of France, England, democracy, civilization, liberty, or anything else we hold dear.

Monique, you made a good point there! ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Monique
Date: 19 May 09 - 03:08 PM

I agree about the long run. I suppose the French, as other people, wouldn't find unthinkable a different outcome of long passed wars -let's say 150+ years. Actually, I don't believe a different outcome of WW I and WW II to be "unthinkable", I feel it more as "unbearable" therefore we don't want to even think of it, as Shimrod said. But... in the year 2525 if man is still alive, if woman can survive they may find...

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 May 09 - 04:47 PM

It does feel pretty unbearable to lose a major war, specially if your own country is invaded and devastated during that war and specially if you have given your all for your country. Many German soldiers and civilians committed suicide in the last days of Nazi Germany. Many Japanese also, needless to say, killed themselves in despair when they found they had lost the war. It seems unbearable at the time, and there's a deep grieving process that people go through. Then you start rebuilding, and life resumes.

Many nations have gone through this. The southern states of the USA went through it in 1865. The northern and most of the western states have never gone through it.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 19 May 09 - 09:53 PM

I know I said I would only read, not comment. And as long as it's just speculation, fine. But when assertions of historical fact are made, it is reasonable to ask for evidence.   "Many German soldiers and civilians" committed suicide in the last days of Nazi Germany. I don't think it's reasonable to count the Volkssturm in this category--they thought they were defending Germany.   And what "many" German soldiers and civilians did at the end of World War II was flee west, hoping to avoid being captured by the Russians.   I know personally two of them--I used to work for one--and there were far more who did this than committed suicide.

It would be quite easy to provide evidence for this view.

The self-identification of most Germans with the Third Reich was quite weak by the end of the war, certainly not enough to commit suicide---aside from Hitler's inner circle-- Goebbels and his wife being obvious examples, who also had their children killed. The exception was if suicide was considered better than capture by the Russians.   Quite a few were quite willing to surrender to Westerners.

However, if there is in fact evidence to support the "many Germans committed suicide" theory, we can certainly consider it.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 May 09 - 03:43 AM

Don't get carried away by overestimating what I mean when I say the word "many", Ron. I am not suggesting that a large percentage of the overall German population committed suicide, but I am suggesting that quite a significant number of ordinary soldiers and civilians did so under the stress of facing total defeat and destruction of the society they had just spent over 5 years fighting for to the best of their ability. They were in despair. It was that despair that drove most of them to suicide, not some kind of fanatic loyalty to Naziism (although that would have applied in a few cases).

I'm not talking about the bigwigs like Goebbels, Hitler, etc...I'm talking about ordinary people. Many Berliners in particular committed suicide, specially a considerable number of women who had been raped and beaten by Russian soldiers. A good many German soldiers shot themselves rather than be captured by the Russians, because they expected that being captured would lead to far worse suffering than they wished to endure...and a worse death than a self-inflicted bullet.

And they had good reason to think so. Most of the German soldiers who were taken prisoner by the Russians went east to concentration camps from which they never returned. They died in those camps.

As regards the vast number of people who fled west toward the western Allies...you are dead right about that. Any German who could find any feasible way to escape west and surrender (with the exception of Hitler and Goebbels and Mrs Goebbels) made the utmost effort to do so.

I was not suggesting that "many" Germans in the western theatre of action committed suicide at war's end. I was referring to those in the Russian-occupied areas.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 20 May 09 - 10:02 PM

"...5 years fighting for that society".   I'd disagree.   They mainly fought for Germany, and, as soldiers always do, for their fellow soldiers---not for the 3rd Reich. Hitler tried to merge the two--but for most of the military that was a veneer, which was long gone by the final stages of the war.

It was not despair at the destruction of the 3rd Reich which drove some to suicide--and I'd still like some figures on numbers of suicides. and a specific, reputable source.   I'd particularly like some hard evidence that more than a few soldiers committed suicide.

I just pointed out that the main reason by far for any to commit suicide was fear of falling into the hands of the Russians, since many were aware of the incredibly inhumane treatment meted out by the 3rd Reich to the Russians, and, with good reason, feared payback. And some women did commit suicide after their treatment by the Russians.

The main reason any--aside from Hitler's inner circle--would commit suicide, was not    despair at the disaster after "having given your all for your country" but a very personal fear--primarily a well-grounded fear of the Russians.

It is not reasonable to make generalizations about the Germans and the Japanese together on this topic.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 May 09 - 10:21 PM

That's what I mean, Ron. They were fighting for Germany. That's what I MEAN when I say "that society". And they were fighting, naturally, for their fellow soldiers, and their families, towns, and cities....as any soldier does.

If you weren't so busy trying by hook or by crook to find something...anything....some tiny bit of minutiae...to disagree with me about, you wouldn't keep misunderstanding what I am saying in the first place.

Your combative attitude is the problem here, Ron. We DO not disagree about anything substantial on this subject, and you are wasting your time and mine looking for a dispute that isn't real.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 20 May 09 - 10:27 PM

"Minutiae".   Anything the poster says. I like facts. Evidence. Logic. Some people like empty pontificating--no particular person meant, of course.

The poster is of course welcome to actually provide some evidence. With source.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Teribus
Date: 21 May 09 - 10:38 AM

Had Stalin lived 10 years longer, I believe that the Soviet Union would have collapsed very rapidly after his death.

Had the French retained Canada after the Seven years War, a number of things would have followed that would have had a significant impact on that side of the "pond". There would have been no War of Independence and there would have been no expansion by the "colonists" westward into the Ohio and Wabash Basins, Britains fledgling colonies on the eastern seaboard of America were hemmed in by French and Spanish possessions, and it would have they who would have "Won the West" - a thing I suppose the natives would have been much happier with.

Points made regarding what would have happened if Germany had won the First World War rather fancifully allows France retention of her overseas possessions. Now I say fancifully as IIRC Kaiser Bill at one point or other prior to the totally pointless stramash that became known as the "Great War" was known to have wittered on about Germany "winning her place in the sun". In the wake of a German victory France would have lost her colonies to France and that would have set Germany on a collision course with Great Britain.

While the thinking behind the treaty of Versailles was seriously flawed (at the insistance of Clemanceau) Hitler would have been stopped dead in his tracks if he had been confronted the second that Germany started to break and ignore the conditions of the treaty that they had signed.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Teribus
Date: 21 May 09 - 12:41 PM

Apologies that should have read

"In the wake of a German victory France would have lost her colonies to Germany and that would have set Germany on a collision course with Great Britain."

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 09 - 01:42 PM

Ron, we have nothing to argue about on this particular subject. I know you must find that somewhat disappointing, but we don't, so kindly piss off.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: robomatic
Date: 21 May 09 - 09:06 PM

Little Hawk, as usual you mean well but you don't always mean what the rest of us mean.

To say the Germans were fighting for Germany is to overlook that they were fighting for Germany in Poland, they were fighting for Germany in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, in Norway, over England, in France, in Russia. Much as the Japanese were fighting for Japan in Korea, China, Russia.

You have an automatic sympathy for the underdog, no matter how much of a cur he might be.

I just finished a book called "Germania" which concerns itself with the end of the Hitler regime and the brief Doenitz government. As the Americans and English are encountered, Doenitz is trying to surrender under terms that the Germans will immediately become allies of the West and proceed against the common enemy, the Soviets. Their desperation and exhaustian has fed this delusion to the extent that they can't comprehend that the West won't do this.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 21 May 09 - 09:31 PM

Too bad, LH, that you feel compelled to sink to gutter language.

It's simple. Either you can refrain from making unsupportable statements or you can support them. Among other assertions "A good number of German soldiers" shot themselves rather than be taken prisoner by the Soviets.

Source?

Either you can support that with a specific quote from a reputable, and verifiable, source, or it bears all the field marks of somebody running off at the mouth just to hear himself talk.   I'm sure you wouldn't want to be lumped with those who ramble on meaninglessly, so since you are not one of that sort, you can support what you say.

When I make a historical assertion, I'm prepared to back it up.

I have too much respect for history to accept dubious notions--without evidence. So sorry if that doesn't meet with your approval.

But you may as well get used to it--or go back to your what-if's--the ostensible topic of this thread--which will be safe from my unwanted queries for evidence, logic, sources etc.

Subject: RE: BS: What if Stalin had lived 10 years longer
From: Ron Davies
Date: 21 May 09 - 10:09 PM

As far as I can tell, Germania appears to be a novel. But it's certainly true that Donitz and others were desperately grasping at straws to try to persuade the Western Allies to join them in an anti-Bolshevik crusade. I've just recently read a fascinating book called Tapping Hitler's Generals.   British intelligence set up a means to record, between 1942 and 1945, conversations of German high-ranking prisoners--officers-- they had set up in an (amazingly luxurious) estate in North London.   The Germans discussed freely--and argued with each other, forming cliques etc., often on the basis of attitudes toward Hitler, and dealt with questions of the war in great detail. They appear to truly have not realized they were being recorded, since some gave incriminating anti-Semitic remarks and discussed atrocities, etc.

Among many other things, the excuses given are amazing, as are the stories of how some at least tried to bring soldiers who committed atrocities--against Russians at least,--to justice. And how any attempts to do so were steamrollered by higher authorities.