This is just blatantly false. It’s the sort of story that is popular amongst revisionists, seeking to take the genuine suffering of German women at the hands of Red Army soldiers and turn it into a sort of equivalency story. There was no official policy of rape. There wasn’t at times any serious attempt to control the raping & pillaging done by soldiers, but that’s a different thing.
My view of Stalin as warlord: in the initial phase of the war, he was a disaster, as has already been mentioned by others. The officer purges, the obsession with holding onto his ill-gotten gains in Poland, his paranoia and distrust of the war signals he was getting, etc. etc.
However, he gradually learned some realism under the punishment his forces received at the hands of the Nazis and started to listen to his military advisors like Zukov, and withdraw from attempting to micro-manage the war.
No question that Russia would have received less punishment in the first place, had someone else been at the helm (at it is amazing that the Soviets survived the disasters he inflicted). But his willingness to relinquish some power was absolutely necessary to the eventual victory.
Contrast with Hitler, who became ever-more convinced of his singular genius, and gradually ceased to listen to his military advisors, indulged in micro-managing, etc. This did the Nazi cause endless harrm and, more than any other factor, led directly to their defeat.
Nope. April 5th. I come bringing a citeand everything. I’m not aware of any declaration on August 5th. If you have a link I would love to see it.
I believed what you posted above, that the Soviets were legally free to declare war from the moment they renounced the pact. But I was wrong. The pact was in force till April of '46 regardless of what the Soviets did. It was five years long from the date of signature. By renouncing it, the Soviets were simply preventing its auto-renewal in April '46. You can see the full text here. Legally the Soviets broke the treaty by attacking when they did… the treaty was still legally in full force.
Obviously none of that matters, and there were no repercussions for breaking the treaty. But it was broken.
I agree. After being a major cause of the disastrous start of the war, Stalin’s main positive contribution was his eventual decision to sustain (and not purge!) competent generals like Chuikov, Konev, and especially Zhukov. Zhukov placed fourth in the SDMB’s own Greatest Military Leader ranking thread.
Stalin’s second-greatest contribution to victory was his early and cold-blooded decision to move a great deal of Soviet productive capacity eastward out of the path of the oncoming Germans. While this disrupted industry at a critical time, it proved a lifesaver when the German conquest drove very far into Soviet territory and overran a lot of the places where the factories had originally been. It was a hard decision, not unlike a decision to amputate a gangrenous leg.
I’m inclined to rank the combined industrial might of his enemies as a more important factor.
It’s worth noting that IMHO a very important factor in Japan’s decision to leave the Soviets alone was the complete drubbing they’d received just before the war at Khalkin Gol. At the hands of none other than the above-mentioned Zhukov.
To clarify: I think Stalin’s leadership was, on the whole, deleterious to the war effort (and certainly increased human suffering aside from the contest against Hitler). I was merely pointing out the two significant positive contributions I can readily identify. Certainly another leader could have recognized and promoted Zhukov; it’s somewhat less obvious whether anyone else would have been as ruthless and decisive at moving the factories eastward.
Any military successes by the Germans and Soviets during WWII were despite their supreme leaders rather than because of them.
Exactly. Hitler, as others noted, was actually worse, and his command structure was a disaster. He deliberately set it up that way so that all critical decisions would have to come through him and so that no one would have a solid power base. It totally crippled the Germans, especially later in the war.
-XT
This is an overstatement. Even the policies for which they are rightly criticized (Not One Step Back/Hitler’s refusal to retreat or surrender) at times lead to military success. Hitler’s order against retreat in winter 1941 after the Wehrmacht had failed to take Moscow is generally considered as being correct, and even saving the Wehrmacht from rout.
When the troops and field leadership manage to achieve a (temporary) victory when carrying out a stupid order, that eminently qualifies as “despite.”
When absent the order, the Wehrmacht in the East would have been savaged, and left in a massively worse position, anyone who isn’t totally blinkered would question whether it was a stupid order.
That’s a good point - and it was totally counter to some of Stalin’s more disasterous military instincts to hold on to territory at all costs.
It is Hitler’s decisions, taken entirely on his own initiative, which made it so. I’m thinking particularly of his decision (made against all advice) to declare war on the US after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
By doing so, he resolved Roosevelt’s strategic dilemma - had he not done so, there was still an opportunity to keep the two wars seperate, have the US focus entirely on smashing Japan (there was plenty of sentiment in the US for doing exactly that), and carry out the original plan - defeat the Soviets and present the US with a Nazi Eurasia - when the US was finished with Japan, there may have been less appetite for taking on such a collossus, even with the US having nukes.
Given that, I think one cannot keep “racking up a disasterous number of enemies all at once, capable of burying the Nazi regime” and “Hitler’s increasing willingness to make crack-brained decisions on his own initiative and against advice” seperate. A more sensible Nazi leadership would never have added Japan to its list of allies at the price of adding the US to its list of enemies.
I think Stalin deserves credit for industrializing the Soviet Union before the war and for consolidating his power in such a way as to forestall any dissent (coups, revolutions) during the war.
The difference is that every time the Soviets lost a battle, Stalin decided he should get more advice next time. Every time the Germans lost a battle, Hitler decided he should get less advice next time.
Heh, well put. 
That’s not entirely accurate. Early on, every time the Soviets lost a battle whoever was in command would generally get sacked…sometimes with a bullet to the back of the head. Stalin seriously distrusted his military at first, while I think Hitler did trust his (to the extent he trusted anything). But remember that later on, Germany’s military DID plot against Hitler and actually tried to whack him at least once (and nearly succeeded…I think there was a movie about this in the last year or so). After a hell of a lot of dead Soviets, Stalin grudgingly DID start to trust SOME of his military leaders, and relaxed enough that a defeat or even a tactical withdrawal didn’t equate to a bullet the the head or at best summary dismissal.
-XT
Yeah, it took a good few disasters for Stalin to relax his grip. Still, though, for the last part of the war, it’s a nice one-sentence summary of the essential difference between the two, as war-lords.
Arguably it was the right decision in December 1941.
Hitler had two alternatives. He could let Japan fight against the United States alone. If he did that Japan would almost certainly lose and the United States would be fully mobilized. And the United States at that point would be unlikely to go back to an isolationist policy. So Germany’s choices were do we fight a weak United States in 1942 with Japan on our side or do we fight a strong United States in 1944 on our own?
It was quite obviously the wrong decision in 1941 - and not only in hindsight: plently of top Nazis thought the same.
There was never any realistic question that the US was going, eventually, to flatten Japan. The Japanese thought otherwise for essentially psychological, not material, reasons, in that they thought a pre-emptive strike could deter the Americans.
Assuming that the Americans remained focussed on Japan - they would have won easily. However, this victory would have taken time. During that time, the Nazi battle with the Soviets would presumably have been concluded one way or another.
There was never any realistic expectation that the Nazis would attack or invade the US - the only issue was whether the US would attack or invade Nazi Europe. Had the Nazis won against the Soviets, the US would have faced invading a Europe united under Nazi rule and a Nazi enemy not distracted by war elsewhere - not a tempting target, particularly after fighting a vicious war with the Japanese.
The most likely outcome would have been a cold war - but with Nazis rather than Communists on the other side.
In short, a “hot” war with the US was never in Nazi best interests - they had nothing whatever to gain from it, and much to lose. Their best plan would have been to let the US get entangled with Japan, leaving them free to conclude matters with the Soviets (assuming they could).
Admiral Yamamoto notably excepted ;).
I agree with Malthus…it was an exceedingly bad call both at the time and in hindsight. Even a cursory understanding of American politics would have shown that declaring war on the US at that time was the absolute worst thing you could do…sure to bring the powerful American Navy into the fray against Germany if nothing else (true, we’d been fighting a covert war against Germany for a while, but there is a huge difference between covert and open). The best thing Hitler could have done would have been to point out to the Japanese that their treaty was one of mutual defense and tell the Americans than he was washing his hands of the whole thing…possibly use propaganda in the US to convince people that he was actually outraged at the Japanese and fully understood why America would want to get revenge (hint hint, nudge nudge). It would have thrown enough confusion into the mix that I doubt FDR would have been able to bring the US into the European conflict anytime in '42 and maybe not in '43…and it might have made FDR back down from his covert war using the US Navy against Germany subs.
And as Malthus says, there were plenty of Germans who tried to explain all this to Hitler…but he over rode their advice and did it his way. I remember reading something about Churchill celebrating when Hitler declared war and saying something to the effect that Germany had just royally screwed themselves. Perhaps apocryphal, but I think that’s pretty close to what he was thinking at the time, as desperate as the UK (and the Russians) were for the US to enter the war in Europe.
-XT