Upon visiting my WEB-Page:
Http:// Arpad1.Com
MT sent me the following brief memo:
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MT: It's right-wing maggots that think like you do who nearly got us into a nuclear war with the Russians over a piss-ass country like
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LE: Dear Mr/Ms/Mrs “MT”,
Since you forgot to sign your memo, I have no idea how else to address you.
Now what do you know?
Based on your “Highly articulated” comment, it appears, not much.
Your comment betrays several misconceptions, and errors that you are harboring.
I wonder: were you born already 50 years ago?
While I have no problem with allowing you to have an opinion, I feel it is sad that people betray their ignorance in this way.
Maybe you should open your mind, and read, study history.
By the way, as far as I am concerned, I was there and did put my life on the line for what I believe in.
I wonder what kind of conclusions I should draw about you, from your comments.
What have you done? (I mean other than being abusive in your language…) Anything to be proud of?
With best wishes,
Leslie Eloed
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MT: "While I have no problem with allowing you to have an opinion, I feel it is sad that people betray their ignorance in this way."
Gee, thanks for allowing me an opinion.
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LE: Sorry, I did not mean to be sarcastic.
Maybe you should open your mind, and read, study history.
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MT: I have studied history and I have to conclude that President Eisenhower made exactly the right decision by not risking a nuclear war over tiny
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LE: To reach that conclusion did not take much studying of history. That is a given…
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MT: Sorry,
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LE: By the way: How do you define: “the major scheme of things”
By the way, as far as I am concerned, I was there and did put my life on the line for what I believe in.
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MT: Your putting you life on the line was very noble.
However, your request that millions of Americans put their lives on the line by risking nuclear war is not.
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LE: Wrong and exaggerated assumption.
Dear MT, (I still don’t know how to address you…)
1; Those of us who lived under communism, obviously had enough, and a popular - spontaneous revolt broke out in
2; To quote you: “However, your request that millions of Americans put their lives on the line by risking nuclear war is not.” I wonder, how and from where do you jump to this exaggerated assumption? Certainly not from studying history.
3; Any straight thinking person would not have wanted the
4; If you read all the materials, historic, military etc, including those that have been declassified since, you would find, that Eisenhower had no intention ever to risk any kind -- nuclear or otherwise – war with the Russians over Hungary. And I am glad for that. The Suez-Canal issue with the help of
5;
6; There is a certain arrogance in some of the political leaders of the US, wanting to force our ways, including the so-called “democracy” onto any other nation, regardless whether it agrees with their ancient lifestyle, habits, cultural – religious background. I personally am not in favor of military intervention as a solution to the societal problems of the world. Diplomacy yes. If I want to fault Eisenhower, a President who was dear to all Hungarians, it was his lack of diplomacy applied to the Russians, giving them free rain over whatever they wanted to do in the Russian satellite (East – Central European) region. He all but gave them a free hand. If you read the records, you will find the basis for this statement. You see, it is one thing to not interfere and so not risk a war, but almost guaranteeing that no matter what the Russians choose to do in
7; The practical and symbolic values of 1956 in world history are a different issue…
Regards, Leslie
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MT: To quote you: MT:“However, your request that millions of Americans put their lives on the line by risking nuclear war is not.” LE: "I wonder, how and from where do you jump to this exaggerated assumption? Certainly not from studying history."
I come to this conclusion by reading your webpage which says "The brave Hungarian people believed we would help -- that all they needed do was show their willingness to fight and we would spring to their aid. But we failed them in their hour of greatest need."
Your webpage also says: "It is of great importance to the Hungarian people who know the dangers, that the American people be warned of the insidiousness of Socialism."
As for myself, I am more concerned about the insidiousness of fundamentalist Christianity (and Islam). Many Christians seem to be ignorant of their own history. They seem to forget that there was a time -- between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance -- when almost everyone in
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LE:
Yes, many Hungarians at the time behind the iron-curtain, believed in help coming from the
The expectation was fueled by the Voice of
In your last response, you voice valid fears and valid criticism about fundamentalists.
But, the answer I don’t believe -- after personal experience -- is not in Socialism or Communism, or at that rate any .ism whatsoever, or anti-Christianity.
Sadly, to war is part of basic human nature.
I don’t think that the Dark Ages would return just because of God fearing -- including fundamentalist -- Christians. If that would be the case, should we not also fear of civilization crawling back into the caves? The Dark Ages and caves have been in our past, no question about that. I have hope, that those days will not repeat themselves.
But look at what happened in Soviet
What about terrorism and
What about illegal aliens invading this Country, (10 to 22 million?) and in their illegal status being supported by the Liberal Left?
Quite a big bag of worms.
I would be really curious what do you think would be the answer. So far I have heard a lot of put-downs from you. What about the half full glass?
Regards, Leslie
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MT: "But look at what happened in Soviet
The Russian revolution would never have happened except for the stupidity of the Russian monarchy in allowing itself to be drawn into World War 1. This disaster is what destroyed the monarchy and allowed the Bolsheviks to come to power. Likewise Communism would have never been imposed on Eastern Europe had the anti-Communist Hitler not attacked the
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LE: Well now, here you sound like what you call: “right-wing maggots that think like …” You almost sound like you would have preferred Hitler to win the war? Then there would have been no Communism in
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MT: Likewise, the Chinese Communists probably would not have come to power except for the disruptions caused by the Japanese imperialists during World War 2. The Communists have only had success, because right-wingers in the form of the Russian monarchy, Adolf Hitler, and Japanese militarists have done stupid things.
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LE: By the way, Japan invaded China in the 1930 already, long before the official start of the Second World War.
Dear MT,
I still don’t know how to address you…, and would love to hear were you are coming from. I feel it is unfair, that you know quite a lot about me, and still are not divulging any info about yourself.
If at the end of the Second World War the
Just imagine a different course of action at that time could have precluded the entire Cold-War era with its arms race, including all of its aftermath including the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Now that was preventable stupidity on the part of the “experts.”
The Russian Communist rule in that region was more the fault of the
Revolutions break out if conditions in a country reach a boiling point, so in
It seems to me to be an oversimplification to blame the “stupidity” of the Russian Monarchy allowing itself to be drawn into the First World War. Without the war, conditions already have been ripe for the revolution. Don’t forget, the Monarchy was probably good only for the small privileged minority, not for the masses. Same way as in
Regards, Leslie
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MT: "The Western allied forces -- or their leaders -- felt that after the Russians have lost so many lives in defeating the Germans on Russian soil, they should have the glory to march through
This is nonsense. The West did not give the Russians
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LE: Keep on dreaming MT,
but I guess you are just a Ghost, not willing to identify yourself. You hide behind anonymity without the courage of convictions, afraid to stand behind your words.
So far you have uttered only a lot of unidentifiable noise.
Without knowing anything about you, I have no idea how much weight I should give to your statements, and so I have no way to pay you respect, which you may well deserve.
Likely, our point of view is different, our knowledge, assumptions and conclusions and life-experiences are not identical. But I will not put labels on you, or your differing opinions.
Sure, I may have some of the dates and sequence of events somewhat out of order, but the fact remains, that without US agreement, as well as the agreement of the four super-powers, Eastern Europe would not have been given to the Russians at Yalta.
True,
The
In one of your earlier comments you mentioned Islam. I must assume, you are aware of the fact, that in fifteenth century days,
When a nation of 10 million is willing to rise up and bare-handed oppose his 200 million strong oppressors, there must be rather terrible conditions. Just like in the Dark Ages. And taking the initiative to show the world how deceitful those oppressors are has some value.
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MT: Just answer one question and then we can be done with this discussion. Why was it that the Western powers delayed an invasion of Europe for two-and-a-half years after
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LE: Good and valid questions MT,
In 1941 I lived in
I think, part of the delay may have been the disbelief of the cruelty that a civilized western country like
Further, the expectation was that
If I recall correctly, it was
Hesitation by the Western allies was perhaps a costly error. And this brings to my mind the current situation in
I do hope, we will continue this discussion. Makes me think too …
Regards, Leslie
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MT: After doing some research, here is a web page that I wrote and posted on the Internet. I tried to be as objective as I could but, as always, there are some things that are open to interpretation.
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For the full text of these articles and further comments by me, please go to the Comments page.
# end
2 comments:
Hitler and Stalin / Clash of the Dictators
By: MT of the Dialogue : MT and EL
Adolf Hitler / 1889 - 1945
"The great masses of the people ...
will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in the small Austrian village of Braunau am Inn near the border of German Bavaria. His father, Alois had risen from a poor peasant background to become an Austrian customs official. At home, Alois was a strict disciplinarian. Adolf's older brother, Alois Jr. bore the brunt of his father's scolding and occasional beatings until he ran away from home at age fourteen. This put young Adolf, age seven, in line for the same treatment.
From age seven to nine, Adolf attended monastery school in the town of Lumbach. He idolized the priests at the school where he received good grades, and even considered becoming a priest himself. However, in 1898, Adolf changed schools when the Hitler family moved to the village of Leonding.
One day, the young Hitler came across his father's book collection, including a picture book on the War of 1870-71 between the Germans and the French. After that Hitler, by his own account, became obsessed with military books and soldiering. He also discovered that he had a talent for drawing, especially sketching buildings.
At age eleven, Hitler had to decide which type of secondary school to attend, classical or technical. He had dreams of becoming an artist and wanted to go to the classical school. But his father decided that this was impractical and in the year1900 sent him to the technical school in the city of Linz.
Hitler did poorly his first year at the technical school and, as a result, was kept back. He would later claim that his bad performance was meant to show his father that he was unsuited for technical work. However, Hitler's father remained hostile to his artistic dreams, resulting in a bitter struggle between father and son.
The young Hitler's arguments with his father ended in 1903 when his father died suddenly of a lung hemorrhage. Nevertheless, Adolf Hitler continued to do poorly in school and in 1905, at age sixteen, he dropped out.
With his aspirations of becoming an artist still intact, Hitler traveled to Vienna with the goal of attending the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. In 1905, he took the school's entrance exam, but his test drawings were judged unsatisfactory.
Hitler's failure to get into the academy shook his confidence. He left Vienna and returned home to his mother who had contracted cancer. His mother's condition steadily worsened and she died two years later.
Hitler returned to Vienna in 1908, where he failed for a second time to gain admission into the art academy. At age nineteen, with his artistic dreams shattered, Hitler made no effort to find steady employment. He was gradually reduced to living in homeless shelters and eating at soup kitchens.
In 1910, Hitler moved into a home for poor men where he would stay for the next three years. During these years of deprivation, he became interested in politics. He read newspapers, as well as books and political pamphlets. From his readings, he began to assemble a hodgepodge of racist and nationalistic attitudes that would over time become a political philosophy.
Hitler watched with great anticipation events unfold that would soon lead to war in Europe. For Hitler, the prospect of war gave him a sense of purpose. When Germany declared war in 1914, Hitler "thanked heaven" and immediately enlisted in the German army.
Hitler fought bravely in the war and received the Iron Cross first class. (Interestingly, the lieutenant who recommended him for the medal was Jewish.) One month before the end of the war in 1918, Hitler was temporarily blinded by a British chlorine gas attack near Ypres. As Hitler recovered in a hospital bed, he received word that the German monarchy had fallen, that Germany was now a republic, and that the new republic had requested an armistice with the Allies.
Upon hearing the news of the armistice Hitler was distraught. He believed that Germany had not really been defeated, but had been betrayed by politicians, Jews and Communists. This "stab in the back" theory of Hitler's would become popular among the German army.
Germany's defeat brought with it huge economic problems, which led to worker uprisings in Berlin and Munich. The German army sought to crush these revolts by recruiting undercover agents. Hitler, who was still in the army, became an agent. He was given the job of weeding out dissidents within the ranks and of investigating left-wing political organizations.
One of Hitler's undercover assignments in 1919, was to investigate a small group in Munich known as the German Workers' Party. After attending a party meeting, Hitler discovered that the party was not a Marxist group as he anticipated. Instead, the party had a strong nationalist, pro-military, and anti-Semitic outlook much like his own.
Hitler began to frequent German Workers' Party meetings and his interest grew to the point that he decided to join. Party members soon recognized Hitler's oratory skills and he became a featured speaker.
Within a year, Hitler had enough prestige within the party to remake it according to his own wishes. He chose the swastika as the party's symbol and changed its name to include National Socialist -- Nazi for short. By the end of 1920, the party had about 3,000 members and Hitler's influence had expanded to the point that he was able to convince the party's executive committee to make him chairman with dictatorial powers.
Meanwhile, under the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar Republic of Germany was required to pay war reparations to the victorious European Allies. These payments caused ruinous inflation in the German economy and, consequently, there was bitter resentment among the people. Many Germans gravitated to extremist political groups and the Nazi Party was a major beneficiary. By 1923, Nazi membership had increased to 55,000.
With the German government and economy in chaos, Hitler made a bold grab for power. A group of Nazis under Hitler's command shot its way into a Munich beer hall, kidnapping high officials of the Bavarian government. The captured officials reluctantly pledged loyalty to Hitler who proclaimed "a new national government." However, The Beer Hall Putsch, as it would later be called, soon unraveled. Hitler was unable to enlist the support of the German army and other important institutions.
Hitler was arrested, charged with treason, and placed on trial. In a bizarre twist, the trial's presiding judges proved sympathetic to Hitler. They allowed him to use the courtroom as a propaganda platform to achieve nationwide publicity.
Hitler only served nine months of a 5-year prison sentence. During his time in prison, Hitler was allowed his own personal secretary, Rudolph Hess. Hess began writing down Hitler's political and racial ideas, which became the book Mein Kampf.
In 1924, a few days before Christmas, Adolf Hitler was released from prison. Having learned from his Beer Hall Putsch failure, Hitler changed strategy. His goal now was to bring his Nazi Party to power legally, through elections.
Yet Hitler's new strategy was facing a big obstacle: the German economy had improved markedly. As a consequence, Hitler's extremist rhetoric was losing much of its appeal. (The economic improvement was due in part to the Allies having agreed to reduce Germany's war reparations payments.)
Moreover, Germany had a new president, the famous World War I Field Marshal, Paul von Hindenburg. He was backed by a coalition of conservatives and moderates, which helped to stabilize the republic and keep the extremists in check. In 1928, the Nazi Party received only 2.6% of the vote, which translated into 12 seats in a 474 seat Reichstag.
Yet Hitler had a sense that Germany's good times would not last and, as fate would have it, they would not. In 1929, the Wall Street stock market in New York crashed with disastrous worldwide consequences.
Germany was particularly hard hit. Unemployment soared; it would soon reach 30 percent. For many Germans, poverty and starvation became real possibilities. By the autumn of 1930, the parliamentary coalition that had governed Germany fell apart.
New elections were held and the Nazi Party received over 18 percent of the vote, entitling it to 107 seats in the Reichstag. Overnight, the Nazis went from the smallest party in Germany to the second largest.
Yet none of Germany's political parties had close to a majority required to form a government. As a result, vicious power struggles broke out in the Reichstag. President Hindenburg attempted to mediate these disputes, sometimes issuing decrees to break the political stalemate.
In 1932, German voters again went to the polls. The 85-year-old Hindenburg was reelected president. However, in the parliamentary election, the Nazis increased their share of the vote to 37 percent, becoming Germany's largest party. Still, with none of the political parties having a clear majority, the German government remained paralyzed.
Meanwhile, Hitler enlisted the support of many influential Germans who saw the Nazis as a bulwark against Germany's powerful Communist Party. Those supporting Hitler included industrialists, military officers, and even Hindenburg's son, who some historians believe the Nazis had blackmailed. They urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler to a high government position. Not trusting Hitler, Hindenburg initially refused.
However, by January 1933, the elderly Hindenburg had become exhausted from the political turmoil, even fearing the prospect of civil war. Believing he could ultimately control Hitler, Hindenburg gave in to the Hitler supporters and appointed Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
Hitler quickly used his position as Chancellor to subvert the German democratic process. Within a month, Nazi leaders Goering and Goebbels hatched a plan to burn the Reichstag building. When fire engulfed the Reichstag on February 27, 1933, Hitler blamed the Communists and used the incident as an excuse to begin a brutal crackdown.
Hitler persuaded a befuddled Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree "for the Protection of the People and the State." The decree empowered Hitler to suppress all political activity and inter anyone he deemed a threat to the nation.
Truckloads of Nazi storm troopers rounded up Communists, Social Democrats, liberals, and other political rivals. These "enemies of the state" were put in hastily constructed holding pens, which became the first concentration camps.
In March 1933, Hitler presented a defining piece of legislation to the Reichstag called the Enabling Act. The purpose of the act was to get the Reichstag to dissolve itself and hand over its constitutional powers to Hitler, in effect making Hitler dictator of Germany. The act required a two-thirds majority vote to become law. It passed easily with the support of Germany's right-wing parties; the only party to vote against was the Social Democrats. Members of the Communist Party, who would have voted against the Enabling Act, had already been arrested by the Nazis.
In early 1934, Hitler was faced with a conflict between the generals of the German army and the storm troopers of the SA. To alleviate the discord and further consolidate his power, Hitler told the generals that he would suppress the SA if they would accept him as the legitimate successor of President Hindenburg, who was now in failing health.
The army command readily agreed to Hitler's proposal. In what would become known as, The Night of the Long Knives, Himmler (the head of the SS) carried out Hitler's instructions to arrest and execute leaders of the SA. A few weeks later, Hindenburg died and Hitler became the undisputed ruler of Germany, officially assuming the title of Fuhrer.
From 1935 to 1939, Hitler moved toward the complete "Nazification" of Germany. Censorship became extreme and covered all aspects of life. Those who spoke out in opposition were carted off to concentration camps. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Jews were no longer considered German citizens and thus no longer entitled to any legal rights.
As part of his "Nazification" program, Hitler put the German economy on a war footing. In 1935, in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, Hitler proclaimed open rearmament. In 1936, he remilitarized the Rhineland and formed an alliance with Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini.
Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, and occupied the Sudentenland (the German-inhabited border area of Czechoslovakia) in October. At this point, Hitler disavowed any further expansionist aims and, in so doing, won approval for his control over the Sudentenland from Britain and France at a conference in Munich.
However, in March 1939, Hitler violated the Munich Agreement by occupying all of Czechoslovakia. When Hitler began to threaten Poland, the countries of Britain and France abandoned their appeasement policy and guaranteed Poland's integrity. In response, Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939.
One month later, Hitler invaded Poland and was surprised when Britain and France honored their promise to defend Poland by declaring war on Germany. Yet Britain and France were hesitant and disorganized in mobilizing toward war and Hitler was able to achieve a lightning victory over Poland.
In April 1940, the German blitzkrieg conquered Norway and Denmark; in May and June it swept through the Netherlands and Belgium and finally France. On June 22, 1940, Hitler forced a defeated France to sign an armistice at Compiegne, the site of the armistice of 1918. Hitler was at the peak of his power.
With most of the European continent under his control, Hitler made a peace offer to Britain. When the British refused the offer, Hitler launched an air war against the British Isles. Over the next few months, Hitler would try unsuccessfully to defeat Britain by bombing its cities and by attacking British troops in North Africa.
Meanwhile, the non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union was showing signs of strain. During the summer of 1940, Russian forces had annexed the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, plus two Romanian provinces. Soviet expansionism was interfering with Hitler's goal of dominating all of Europe. In December 1940, Hitler drew up Operation Barbarrosa -- a plan to invade the Soviet Union.
On June 22, 1941, the German army attacked across the Soviet border and penetrated swiftly into Russia. During the first weeks of the campaign, the surprised Soviets took enormous casualties. Hitler had predicted an easy victory over the Russians, and it looked as if his prediction might become reality. In the Ukraine, over 600,000 Soviets were taken prisoner when German forces encircled the city of Kiev.
However, the German advance toward the cities of Moscow and Leningrad had not gone as well. Faced with ever increasing supply lines, the German campaign to capture these distant cities began to stall. By October, German forces were bogged down by rain and mud and increased Soviet resistance. The weather continued to worsen with the onset of an early winter. Soon rain turned to snow and then to record -40 degree conditions. By December, the German advance on Moscow and Leningrad had ground to a halt. Other factors assisting the Soviets included the deployment of a new agile tank, the T-34, and the introduction of fresh Siberian troops
As the snow melted away in the spring of 1942, Hitler's forces were again on the move and still scoring victories, but the tide was beginning to turn. A few months earlier, in December 1941, Hitler had declared war on the United States. As a result, Germany was now at war with the world's two greatest industrial powers -- the US and the USSR -- who were busy ramping up war production.
Hitler gradually came to believe that his best hope for victory against the Soviets lay in capturing the rich oil fields of the Caucasus. At the gateway to the Caucasus stood the city of Stalingrad.
Hitler's campaign to capture Stalingrad began in the summer of 1942 and during that summer and for the rest of the year, the German army fought an epic struggle against a tenacious enemy. By the time winter approached in November 1942, the situation for the Germans had grown precarious. Hitler's generals informed him that his troops would soon be surrounded. The generals advised a retreat, but Hitler would not heed their advice. For Hitler, capturing Stalingrad had become an obsession. The result was the encirclement of the Sixth Army by Russian forces and the capture of 91,000 German soldiers. Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in human history with total casualties for both sides estimated to be about two million.
The German defeat at Stalingrad combined with the British-American landings in North Africa marked the turning point in the war. In July 1943, Hitler launched his last great offensive against the Russians at Kurst in what would become the largest tank battle in history. The Germans lost the battle and from then on it was Russia and the western Allies who would take the offensive.
In September 1943, the Allies landed troops in southern Italy to begin a tough fight north. The following year, an Allied armada of American, British and Canadian troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. Soon France was liberated.
In a desperate attempt to regain the initiative in the west, Hitler attempted a final offensive through the Ardennes, Belgium in December 1944. The offensive failed and soon Allied troops were converging from all directions on the Third Reich.
In 1945, with the western Allies crossing the Rhine River and the Russians closing in on Berlin, Hitler retreated to his bunker, bitter in his defeat. It was here, on April 30, 1945, that Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun committed suicide.
Joseph Stalin / 1879 - 1953
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
Joseph Stalin was born in 1879 in Gori, Georgia, a province of the Russian Empire located in the Caucus Mountains. Stalin's real surname was Djugashvili. He would later change it to Stalin which means "man of steel." Stalin's family was poor. His mother was a seamstress and a cook who worked for wealthier families in Gori. His father was a cobbler and an alcoholic who beat his wife and son.
At age eight, the young Joseph was sent to the Gori church school. He was a good student and, at age fourteen, earned a scholarship to the Tbilisi Theological Seminary. However, a year into his seminary studies, Stalin began to associate with underground groups of revolutionaries and to read illegal Marxist literature. As a result of these activities, Stalin was expelled from the seminary in 1899.
With his expulsion, Stalin became a full-time revolutionary organizer. In 1901, as a member of the Georgian branch of the Social Democratic party, Stalin roamed the Caucasus, agitating among workers and helping with strikes.
In 1903, when the Social Democrats split into two groups the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Stalin supported the more radical Bolsheviks and their leader, Vladimir I. Lenin. Between 1902 and 1913, Stalin was arrested and exiled to Siberia several times, but he always managed to escape and rejoin the Bolsheviks.
Lenin rewarded Stalin by bringing him into the party's Central Committee in 1912. Stalin lacked oratorical skills or charisma, but he showed talent at organizational activity. He served as one of the first editors of Pravda, the party newspaper.
Stalin was arrested again by the czarist government in 1913, and exiled to Siberia where he remained for four years. In 1914, one year after Stalin's exile, Russia entered World War I. Russia suffered heavy losses in the war, which caused social turmoil at home and severely weakened the monarchy. When the monarchy was overthrown in February 1917, and replaced by Alexander Kerensky's Provincial Government, Stalin returned to St. Petersburg under a general amnesty.
A few months later, in November 1917, Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power by overthrowing Kerensky. Lenin appointed Stalin to the post of Commissar of Nationalities in the new Bolshevik government. During the ensuing civil war from 1918 to1920, Stalin was active in political-military affairs and held several administrative positions.
Stalin assumed the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922. Stalin shrewdly used his new authority as General Secretary to control appointments, set agendas, and transfer thousands of Party officials around. In time, everyone who counted for anything owed their position to him.
By the time the Party's intellectual core became aware of Stalin's duplicity, it was too late. The only person with the moral authority to challenge Stalin was Lenin. However, Lenin had become partially paralyzed and was unable to speak as the result of a stroke. Near the end of his life, Lenin wrote a testament in which he strongly criticized Stalin's arbitrary conduct as General Secretary and recommended that he be removed. Lenin died in 1924 before any action could be taken and his testament was suppressed.
Between 1924 and 1929, Stalin forced most of the other Bolshevik leaders out of power. He would ally himself with one political faction and then another, gradually isolating his rivals. Stalin's main target was Trotsky, who left the Soviet Union (as Russia was now called) for good in 1929. Trotsky would later be assassinated by a one of Stalin's agents in Mexico.
Having achieved absolute power, Stalin began to change agriculture and industry. Believing that the Soviet Union lagged far behind the West, Stalin was determined to catch up. He established a "command economy" that set ambitious targets for production. The Soviet Union's first Five Year Plan was adopted in late 1928.
Stalin hoped to finance rapid industrialization by squeezing the agricultural sector, which included peasants in the Ukraine. To this end, Stalin forcibly collectivized agriculture and adopted other extreme measures. These included the expropriation of much of the Ukrainian harvest by the Soviet government.
The most successful of the peasants, the kulaks, resisted Stalin's edicts. The result was bloodshed, disruption and one of the worst famines in Russian history. An estimated five million Ukrainians perished during the collectivization period. By the end of the 1930's, the Soviet Union had created an industrial infrastructure second only to the United States, however, at an exorbitant cost in human lives.
In 1936, Stalin turned his attention to those who appeared to have doubted his wisdom and ability. He staged a series of show trials, at which trumped up charges were leveled at prominent old Bolsheviks and army officers. The purges, arrests, and deportations to labor camps extended beyond the Party elite, into nearly every Party cell and many of the intellectual professions. Stalin viewed anyone with a higher education as a potential threat to his power.
Meanwhile, Stalin's propaganda apparatus proclaimed him a genius in nearly every field. By the time the blood purges eased in 1938, Stalin's dictatorship had become a "personality cult," unrestrained by the Party or any other institution.
By the late 1930's, Stalin was worried about Germany's leader, Adolf Hitler, who openly expressed his intention to expand toward the east. Stalin tried to form an anti-Hitler alliance with France and Britain, but these two countries were reluctant to do so. At this point, Stalin concluded a non-aggression pact with Hitler in August 1939. One month later, World War II began when Hitler attacked western Poland and, in response, France and Britain declared war on Germany.
Meanwhile, the Soviets invaded eastern Poland and by 1940 had annexed the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, plus two Romanian provinces. (Most of this new territory had earlier been part of the tsarist empire.)
In 1941, Stalin refused to listen to warnings by his military advisors that the German Wehrmacht was massing for an attack. He instead chose to believe that Hitler would abide by their non-aggression treaty.
In June of 1941, Germany struck with a force of three million men and 3,400 tanks, advancing in three groups. The northern group headed for Leningrad, the center group headed for Moscow, and the southern group for the Ukraine. The Soviet army was caught totally unprepared and suffered enormous defeats, made worse by the fact that Stalin's purges had stripped the military of some of its best leadership. In one battle, over 600,000 Soviets were taken prisoner when German forces encircled the Ukrainian city of Kiev (the largest mass surrender in the history of warfare).
With the German victory in the Ukraine, Hitler turned his attention to the Russian capital of Moscow. By early December, German tanks had advanced to within 27 km of the Kremlin spires. Russian soldiers exhorted the populace to defend Moscow and "mother Russia" at all costs. Soldiers directed the citizenry to dig entrenchments, construct anti-tank barricades and form paramilitary organizations.
During the battle, Stalin remained in Moscow in an air raid shelter positioned under the Kremlin. He emerged unexpectedly one day in Moscow's Red Square when the population was in a state of near panic. Stalin's sudden appearance helped calm the situation and inspire the soldiers and militia.
Stalin also reinforced Moscow with fresh troops from Russia's far eastern frontier (the Siberians) after Soviet spies informed him that Russia no longer had to fear an attack from Japan. He also placed his best general, Zhukov in charge of operations.
The Russian strategy was to hold off the German onslaught until the full force of the Russian winter arrived. The winter of 1941 was the coldest in 140 years and literally froze the German advance in its tracks. However, the better adapted Russians remained mobile and, in early December, surprised the Germans by taking the offensive. As a result, the German army suffered its first serious setback.
Stalin was also successful in obtaining aid from his new Western ally, the United States. He ordered that whole factories be moved behind the Ural Mountains where they would be safe from German attack.
Although Stalin's commanders were outmatched by their German counterparts, Russia had advantages of its own, including mass production techniques and a large population (two-and-a-half times that of Germany). This allowed the Soviets to sustain heavy losses in both equipment and men. Another asset was Russia's huge territorial expanse, which allowed the Soviets to exchange space for time and regroup.
As the snow melted away in early 1942, Stalin assumed that Hitler would again attack Moscow, but the attack never came. Facing fuel shortages, Hitler turned his attention south toward the city of Stalingrad and its huge oil reserves. In response, Stalin again brought his best general, Zhukov to the battle. Zhukov employed the blitzkrieg tactics he had learned from the Germans to his advantage.
By December 1942, the Soviets had exhausted some of Germany's best divisions. In operation Winter Tempest, Soviet troops encircled the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. This would mark the beginning of the end for Hitler.
Yet it would not be easy for the Soviets. After Stalingrad the German army counterattacked and caught the Red Army in a riposte, inflicting heavy casualties. Biding his time, Stalin waited for Hitler to mount his next big offensive. Hitler chose the city of Kursk, and the Red Army was waiting for him. With close to 3,000 tanks on the move, Kursk was the largest tank battle in history. The German attack failed and Hitler was forced to withdraw.
Now Stalin was confident enough to release fresh forces and to take the initiative. By June of 1944, the Red Army had recaptured most of the Soviet territory that the Germans had taken three years earlier.
As the Soviets and the Western powers began to close in on Germany in 1945, Stalin participated in Allied meetings at Yalta and Potsdam. At these meetings, Stalin obtained recognition of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.
However, at the war's conclusion, the Western powers and the Soviet Union soon became distrustful of one another. As Stalin established Communist governments in Eastern Europe, Winston Churchill began speaking of an "iron curtain" and of the dangers of Soviet expansionism. Policy makers in the United States would soon share Churchill's view.
In the post-war years, Stalin was involved in an economic and ideological struggle with the Western nations, which came to be known as the Cold War. Stalin attempted to curtail economic relations between the newly formed Eastern European governments and the "capitalist West." The East-West struggle also included such confrontations as the Berlin Blockade and the Korean War.
By 1953, Stalin had become increasingly paranoid and physically weak, and apparently was about to start another purge. In January 1953, he ordered the arrest of a Kremlin corps of doctors, charging them with "medical assassinations." The so-called Doctors' Plot seemed to herald a return to the 1930s, but Stalin's sudden death on March 5, 1953 forestalled another bloodbath.
Stalin's reputation took a steep dive when his successor, Nikita Khrushchev began exposing Stalin's crimes in 1956. Khrushchev was political commissar at the Battle of Stalingrad, and was a beneficiary of Stalin's political regime. Yet he was dismayed at what he had witnessed of Stalin's brutality. While Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders did not disclaim Stalin's economic policies, they strongly repudiated Stalin's terror, falsification of history, and self-glorification.
Hello MT,
Thank you for providing me a name. Sadly, that does not give me too much information and background on you.
I read your two reviews on Amazon, and I “assume” it is also your writing, on Ronald Reagan. Beyond those, I did not find much about you.
In my searching for you, I found an interesting writing: Curtis LeMay – Demented Cold Warrior
Since I found so little on the Internet about you, I have to make a provisional assumption: You are probably quite a number of years younger then I am. Your writing is very articulate and at the same time not pretentious hot air. Probably well educated, and neither an attorney nor a medical professional. For an engineer you don’t sound rigid enough. That would leave beside the teaching professions mostly business administration. Your labeling of “right-wing maggots” is out of character. Your pump goes up quick, and then you start to think and calm down quite well. So why not count to ten first? It could make you far more effective.
As to conservative, liberal, religious and other basic convictions we may be at different wavelengths, but that is ok, as long as we can sill have a civilized dialogue. And this is where it all starts, including the prevention and elimination of conflicts and wars. Accepting one another is the key.
The subjects you research and write about are just now entering historical distance, 60 – 70 years. The further we are, the more objective views will emerge.
Our opening subject -- the 1956 Hungarian uprising -- is just now nearing a sufficient historical distance when it can be discussed with less emotion. In the year of the 50th anniversary, in 2006 a large number of books, films, novels, and recollections have appeared, after a half century of silence. There are more to come. The most interesting of these productions are those that quote people other then the participating Hungarians, but who lived at the same time in different parts of the world. Their differing point of view is noteworthy.
In 1989 the Hungarians opened their borders to the East German defectors-refugees and openly defied the Russian rulers. This act (not Ronald Reagan) started the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and ended in the 1989 fall of the Russian Communist dictatorship. Then the 1989 first “free – democratic” elections were held in Hungary. There was only one problem: There was no change at the top. Rigged elections, fraud etc. Corruption.
There is a document circulating in Hungary and among Hungarians worldwide. We don't know if it is genuine, fact or fiction. It is referred to as the “Rose-Hill Pact”. (Rosehill is an elite part of Budapest, were many Communist dignitaries used to live)
It states that none of the Communist regime’s members may be expelled or punished; they must be reassigned, saved, held over etc…
The secret pact was signed by not only Hungarians of the prior and new regime, but also by the representatives of the Roman Catholic and the Jewish denominations. But as if this would not be sufficient, it was also attended and signed by REPRESENTATIVES OF THE US GOVERNMENT and naturally by the Russians.
Did such a pact in reality ever exist?
1; It was published in the Hungarian news media.
2; Events in Hungary since, seem to justify our belief that it did exist. (Everywhere the former communist agents are in leading positions…)
3; The current Prime Minister of Hungary, Gyurcsany, a communist hold-over himself, took over as PM in a putsch, not by election.
4; In 2006, the news was leaked, that during a closed door meeting of the Socialist Party (the PM’s party) Gyurcsany proudly proclaimed: “We f…d up, and we lied day and night” about the state of the Country, its economy, health etc conditions, in order to win the election.
Just before the 50th anniversary celebration of the 1956 uprising all hell broke loose as a direct result of these leaked statements.
Peaceful unarmed protesters been shot with rubber-bullets, teargas, and beatings became common like in the darkest days of pre-1956 communist days. The right of assembly in public places was denied. Was it an intentional provocation by the Government to discredit the anniversary celebrations? Most likely, yes.
One of the sad things is that in Hungary even today there are a lot of problems. Before 1989 you had guaranteed basic human necessities. Rent, food, health, job… After the “free elections” and the imaginary democracy there are no more guarantees. No social safety-net. Large segments of society started to steal and corruption is running rampant.
Under pressure, just last week they finally announced the firing of top police officials, who acted under orders from the Prime Minister. Demand for Prime Minister Gyurcsany’s stepping down has not had any results. With the Hungarian Constitution there is no way to force him out. This Constitution was written in 1947 after the Communist takeover. So, nothing is new under the sun.
Then there are those who ask us: Was it all worth it? You bet. If I would relive my life, I would do it all over again.
With regards,
Leslie Eloed
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