WWII Question...

[fgalkin]

There is a distinct difference between Stalinism, Maoism and Communism.

Eh? Stalinism and Maoism ARE Communism.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

How is that so? Derivatives yes, but I don't recall the original Marxism including burning of books, persecution of intellectuals etc. By and far, the former are more totalitarian in nature than the original ideals allowed. There is a state in India that reflects this as the state government is run by communists.

They are Communism because their leaders were communists, they were run by the Communist Party of wherever, they believed in the ideals of Karl Marx, etc. They may not have been pure Marxism, but then Marx never said anything about building communism in agrarian nations. So, his works had to be adapted to local environments, by Lenin, by Trotsky, by Stalin, by Mao, and by many others. They're still communist and they're still Marxists, but they're not pure Marxists.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[K. A. Pital]

Communist states differ a lot from one another and develop through time. Neither are they a monolithic bloc of 'evil genociders'. The Khmer Rouge was stopped by Vietnamese Communists, and Maoist China's influence was hitting a block in the form of the USSR. The Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, the Indian Kerala state have proven that you can reach a very good life level with a communist government, while places like DPRK or Cambodia show an opposite example.

Would Communism still rise, even if you kill 100 million Russians? Yes, because this ideology derives from the real social injustice. Did the Allies need to murder 100 million Germans to ensure Nazism never comes back? No, because Nazism was derived from bogus reasons and mass hysteria.

And if victims of planned economy mismanagement can be counted as "murdered in the name of communism", why can't we run a similar tally of those killed by capitalist mismanagement? Because it's criminal neglience as opposed to "communist terror"? Tell me please how the Bengal famine, or Tsarist russia famines, or the Bangladesh famine 1974 is any different from the 1930's Soviet famines. Little difference there is for a person, to die because the government exports grain, or a greedy grain trader. Behaviour of both is identical and so is the result.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

They are Communism because their leaders were communists, they were run by the Communist Party of wherever, they believed in the ideals of Karl Marx, etc. They may not have been pure Marxism, but then Marx never said anything about building communism in agrarian nations. So, his works had to be adapted to local environments, by Lenin, by Trotsky, by Stalin, by Mao, and by many others. They're still communist and they're still Marxists, but they're not pure Marxists.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Alright, but their idea of Marxism, seems more clothed in the guise of the ideals of communism but underneath is a dictatorship or junta or whatever other leadership systems these states adopt. Not too dissimilar from theocracies or monarchies even. Even democracies aren't immune to such depredations, if the whole populace supported the leaders in question wholely into some ridiculous endeavor.

[PeZook]

Alright, but their idea of Marxism, seems more clothed in the guise of the ideals of communism but underneath is a dictatorship or junta or whatever other leadership systems these states adopt. Not too dissimilar from theocracies or monarchies even. Even democracies aren't immune to such depredations, if the whole populace supported the leaders in question wholely into some ridiculous endeavor.

First of all, no state in the world has ever reached the state of communism, because it's impossible due to such trivial things like human nature and scarcity.

Second of all, positing that the world would be better off with every Russian, Pole, Belarussian and Ukrainian exterminated by the Nazis is morally bankrupt, whenever anybody likes it or not.

Third of all, I love how to some people, when a totalitarian government has right-wing policies, it's a dictatorship, but when they have left-wing policies, then they're suddendly communist. The Cold War has really poisoned the language.

Personally, I'm somewhat glad Poland was "liberated" by the Red Army. Because, you know, the only alternative to fifty years of varying levels of opression was being fucking dead. But for a lot of ignorant Westerners, communism in Eastern Europe was as bad as the fucking Nazi occupation which was systematically starving the native population. Yay for Cold War propaganda!

[K. A. Pital]

I can put the same dilemma up easily, watch that:
Would the world be better or worse off if someone murdered the entire population of the British Isles somewhere in the 1500s. Come on, morally bankrupt assholes. Tell me why not. Also, would the world be better or worse if we exterminated France and Belgium? Hmm, I wonder.

[lord Martiya]

If we consider that Nazism killed between 5.6 millions and 6.1 millions of Jews, between 400000 and 800000 Rom (who were used for scientifical experiments), between 3.5 and 6 millions of Slavs and between 200000 and 300000 handicapped people because they existed, plus between 1 and 1.5 millions of political dissidents because they used their brains, between 2.5 and 4 millions of POW and 2000 Jehova's witnesses because they weren't Nazi fan and between 10 and 250 thousands of gay because they didn't reproduce, and if we consider also that Nazism would killed more of them with more time, I think that Nazism is definitively worse than every other thing. Period.

[K. A. Pital]

...between 3.5 and 6 millions of Slavs

More like 10 million (if we take only non-Jewish Soviets), with inclusion of some minor ethnic non-slavic groups. Only the murdered Soviet POWs alone numbered 3 million. That's discounting the murders of civilians, where lots more were killed. Belorussia alone ended up with 2 596 000 dead (every third person) in mere three years. Killing POWs and Slavs, etc. was all part of the "Kleiner Planung". Nazi plans for Moscow and Leningrad - all multimillion cities - were to murder them wholesale, then destroy so that not a trace exists. Urban centers were routinely destroyed since Nazis wanted to turn Russia into an agricultural slave plantation during the "Kleiner Planung" (immediate war course). I can't find a similar plan for a wholesale city murder sans the Khmer Rouge with their depopulation of Pnom Penh. But I guess the USSR should be killed for the Khmer Rouge, even though it's client state stopped the genocide.

The intensity of these actions meant that Nazi Germany, in mere 3 years (1941-1943) managed to kill off over 10% of the Soviet population, and a yet greater percent of occupied territory population. For Belorus, for example, which was already used as GPO "testing ground", this resulted in 865 000 dead per year, 2370 dead per day, 98 dead per every hour - over one person killed for every minute that the Nazis existed on Soviet territory.

Stalin's record here pales in comparison: ~27,000 dead on the average per year of his rule - and most of those come from the intensive 1937-38 repression, during which years most of the 681 692 were executed. The death toll for the penal populations 1927-1953 would be around 500,000, thus we also must add ~20,000 per year on the average. A total of 50,000 average persecution deaths per year can be accumulated. That's less than the Nazi murder rate in Belorussia alone by a factor of 20. And this was for the whole Soviet Union! If we were to consider that Nazis murdered 13,5M civilians in USSR in 3 years, while the Soviet government had a ten-times less rate of death for both executed and penal population dead - for 24-26 years of Stalin's rule... I can't really see how one can "compare" the two in any meaningful fashion.

Were Sidewinder's comparisons even remotely correct, the population of the USSR would not have fought for it's survival. Because the Khmer Rouge was easily destroyed by Vietnamese Communists - that's what repressing 1/3rd of your population does to you.

The Axis did not run any "restrained" political repression, it was hellbent on totally annihilating "subhuman" nations, and whoever does not understand that is an idiot.

Look at Allied-Axis casualties. Hwoops, the Axis murdered Allied civilians like mad, while the Allies did not do anywhere the same level of damage to the Axis... hmm, something to ponder.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... rchart.png

How the fuck can anyone say with a straight face that killing from 6 (Yugoslavia) to 12 (USSR) to 20 percent (Poland) of the population in the course of JUST THREE YEARS is comparable to Stalin's repression and this justifies the further death of 120-140 million East Europeans?

[PeZook]

How the fuck can anyone say with a straight face that killing from 6 (Yugoslavia) to 12 (USSR) to 20 percent (Poland) of the population in the course of JUST THREE YEARS is comparable to Stalin's repression and this justifies the further death of 120-140 million East Europeans? Rolling Eyes

Well, to some Americans, it's more important to Spread Democracy (TM) than save lives. It's all a product of Cold War propaganda, with it's retarded slogans like "Better dead than Red". How nice that Americans could afford the luxury of such bold statements when nobody was trying to murder them wholesale.

[Ryan Thunder]

I can put the same dilemma up easily, watch that:
Would the world be better or worse off if someone murdered the entire population of the British Isles somewhere in the 1500s.

Easy: It'd be worse, because I wouldn't be in it.

[lord Martiya]

...between 3.5 and 6 millions of Slavs

More like 10 million (if we take only non-Jewish Soviets), with inclusion of some minor ethnic non-slavic groups.

I'm referring only the numbers that I found on the Italian Wikipedia. Personally, I believe that the numbers are a lot higher than reported on it.

[Frank Hipper]

PeZook

A dry comparison of designs is all I was interested in, to address the WWI claim.

Equipment outfits, campaign success; that's pretty much tangential to that, and in the most part you'd be preaching to the choir.

[Master_Baerne]

I can put the same dilemma up easily, watch that:
Would the world be better or worse off if someone murdered the entire population of the British Isles somewhere in the 1500s. Come on, morally bankrupt assholes. Tell me why not. Also, would the world be better or worse if we exterminated France and Belgium? Hmm, I wonder.

If France were gone, there would be no French toast.

Seriously, I don't think the world would be much more different on a moral level then it is now. I don't see how either of the mentioned nations invented any truly revolutionary ethical or moral concepts.

[Sea Skimmer]

If France were gone, there would be no French toast.

French toast isn’t from France, and probably originated at several places independently. Some areas of the US actually called it German toast up until 1917.

[Elfdart]

FDR isn't going to ally with Nazi Germany, full stop. You'd have to make pretty major changes in American political history to get an alliance going.

Ah, but what if Hitler denounced and declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbour? I had never actually seen someone foam at the mouth before I asked a WW2 historian that.

There was a better chance of FDR hopping out of his wheelchair and beating Phar Lap in the Kentucky Derby than there was for him to join up with Hitler.

[Elfdart]

If France were gone, there would be no French toast.

I'd miss Laetitia Casta more than french toast.

[Elfdart]

How the fuck can anyone say with a straight face that killing from 6 (Yugoslavia) to 12 (USSR) to 20 percent (Poland) of the population in the course of JUST THREE YEARS is comparable to Stalin's repression and this justifies the further death of 120-140 million East Europeans?

They can't, which is why they talk so much horseshit. They also leave out that Hitler wanted to exterminate every non-Aryan man, woman, child and pet from the Rhine to the Urals -with maybe a handfull of Untermenschen kept around for menial labor and low comedy. It could have been a lot worse, which is sometimes hard to imagine.

[Sidewinder]

How the fuck it should follow that you should kill 100 million Russians to avoid purges in China by a dictator? That's fucking dense.

I'm a man of Chinese descent, hoping there was some way for China to avoid the destruction caused by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. I admit it was selfish of me to substitute one great tragedy with another.

Then there's the millions killed by the Khmer Rouge...

Khmer Rouge was a racist, agricultural radical movement from Maoist roots. The USSR opposed the Rouge, and it was the Soviet-backed Vietnamese Communists who ended it's reign of terror.

Don't forget, Communist China was a key supporter of the Khmer Rouge. In fact, Pol Pot was trying to duplicate the Cultural Revolution's effects on Cambodia. The overthrow of the Khmer Rouge was a the result of a proxy war between China and the USSR.

[K. A. Pital]

Don't forget, Communist China was a key supporter of the Khmer Rouge. In fact, Pol Pot was trying to duplicate the Cultural Revolution's effects on Cambodia. The overthrow of the Khmer Rouge was a the result of a proxy war between China and the USSR.

Indeed so. What is more staggering is that the US allied with China, and funneled funds through the UN to the Khmer Rouge. This shows clearly that anti-Sovietism, not just merely "anti-Communism", dominated U.S. policy. U.S. leaders were ready for back hand deals with any enemy of the USSR, no matter how bad that enemy might be.

I would also bring to your attention that Maoism is also distinct from Stalinism, since the most economically and culturally damaging event, the Cultural Revolution, is really distinct from other forms of Communism, which form a more or less bureaucratic party state.

Maoism and it's derivatives uniquely stimulated ideologically-driven "mob rule" - violent abolition of government commitees, facilities, Party offices, lynch-style "justice", and radical anti-intellectualism... the whole country plunged into active destruction of it's own government and total chaos. That would not be possible under late Soviet-style socialism, or in the periods of Stalinism or Leninism - the Cultural Revolution is a phenomena rather unquie to Maoism.

Neither did any Communist states experience the level of destruction witnessed in Maoist ones. Moreover, Maoism mostly spread in the eastern heavily agrarian societies, and mimiqued many eastern despoties. Communism in Eastern Europe, USSR, Cuba, and the Soviet Vietnam was remarkably different.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Cuba's communism could be regarded as somewhat successful, contrary to the demonisation that the West had made heads or tails of it.

[PeZook]

Cuba's communism could be regarded as somewhat successful, contrary to the demonisation that the West had made heads or tails of it.

The things me and Stas are getting at is that there is, never was, and probably never will be such a thing as a unified "communist" style of government.

The government of Cuba is as different from the Soviet Union as Germany is from the United States. It's just based on a certain rhetoric, but that's a superficial similarity at best.

Cold War propaganda simply lumped all governments hostile to the USA as "communist", even when they had vastly differing ideas on how to run their affairs, which did a shitload of damage to language, and the very way people think.

[AniThyng]

How the fuck it should follow that you should kill 100 million Russians to avoid purges in China by a dictator? That's fucking dense.

I'm a man of Chinese descent, hoping there was some way for China to avoid the destruction caused by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. I admit it was selfish of me to substitute one great tragedy with another.

Personally I don't see the point of this kind of speculation - you and I are born here today because history played out that way - would China be the rising star it is today without the collective scaring of the national psyche wracked by WW2, the great leap forward and the cultural revolution? Would it have been a better country under the nationalists? Maybe it would still be a second world country on the verge of warlordism. If you could do it without upsetting the apple cart somewhere else and just killing another 100 million humans, so be it, but clearly...

Besides, and this is something I always felt about these "let's fix the past" time travel scenearios is that effectively you're sacrificing all of us of this world to let our ancestors do it all over again...

edit: it kind of is by analogy vaguely like a somewhat healthy person saying "what if i went back in time and told myself what to do when I entered high school" - he might either be more sucessful, *or*, because he never had some critical bitter experiences, will now proceed to fuck up in adulthood instead. Modern China and more importantly Chinese cultural legacy isn't so far gone that we need to go and "fix things" IMO. I know it kinda sucks if you're the one that died, but hey, that's how all these things work - *somebody* *somewhere* has to die, and unless the cultural revolution lead to global thermonuclear war or something, not enough did.

[starfury]

Stas Bush wrote:
How the fuck it should follow that you should kill 100 million Russians to avoid purges in China by a dictator? That's fucking dense.

I'm a man of Chinese descent, hoping there was some way for China to avoid the destruction caused by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. I admit it was selfish of me to substitute one great tragedy with another.

If you are going wish for that, I wonder why you didn't wish for an end to the Japanese Invasion which helped brought about the rise of Communism in China in the First place, instead of the destruction of the USSR at Germany's hand. I am Chinese too, and I feel the tragedy of the Cultural revoultion/Great leap Forward was terrible, but to avoid that you wanted this as opposed to stopping the whole thing in it's tracks by having the US crush Imperial Japan before they rampaged across China seems very runabout and stupid.

[Stuart]

I assume that the first principle is having a clear objective?

The ten principles of strategy are:

Concentration of Force
Maintenance of the Objective
Unity of Command
Achievement of Surprise
Preservation of the Initiative
Simplicity of Conception
Economy of Force
Freedom of Manoeuver
Flexibility of Planning
Retention of the Reserve

They vary a bit from place to place and time to time.

[Isolder74]

I assume that the first principle is having a clear objective?

The ten principles of strategy are:

Concentration of Force
Maintenance of the Objective
Unity of Command
Achievement of Surprise
Preservation of the Initiative
Simplicity of Conception
Economy of Force
Freedom of Manoeuver
Flexibility of Planning
Retention of the Reserve

They vary a bit from place to place and time to time.

Sun Tzu The Art of War.

[Stuart]

Sun Tzu The Art of War.

Sandhurst.

Sun Tzu's six pinciples are somewhat different. They go

1. Aim to Win All Without Fighting
2. Avoid Strength, Attack Weakness
3. Exploit Deception and Foreknowledge
4. Ensure Speed and Preparation
5. At Every Turn, Shape the Enemy
6. Base Leadership upon Character

They're more tactical or operational than strategic in the modern sense. Sun Tzu has an almost mythological following that rivals L Ron Hubbard. He's a great source of advice though, as long as one is fighting a Chinese dynastic war.