"Kursk WW2: Why Russia is still fighting world's biggest" Topic

…tank battle.

"So it is not surprising that Russian officials have lashed out at Western historians for questioning the Red Army's mastery of the battlefield.

For decades Russians have seen no reason to doubt Soviet military historians, who portrayed the Battle of Prokhorovka on 12 July 1943 as a turning-point, where the Red Army seized the initiative, then rolled back the Nazi armour.

The wider Battle of Kursk – from 5 July to 23 August 1943 – was indeed a turning-point in World War Two. Soviet forces thwarted a huge Nazi counter-attack, after Adolf Hitler's troops had suffered a colossal defeat at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Still fighting; not really.
Frustrated and sensitive about the way www2is portrayed elsewhere yes. And reasonably so, most of the time. You cannot be more impressed by it than when I went to the memorial in Moscow and was literally humbled down by the little chains hanging, one for each dead. Then well Smolensk when you are told maybe 80% of the people died, and then you see some village monument with the deads list; even having our ww1 ones which are also striking, nothing is comparable. When you see a close one do her family tree and you see how many branches were cut…
There is nothing comparable(maybe Germany?)for most of us "in the west" and especially the Anglo-Saxon sphere, fortunately for them.

Oh we were so lucky that they ended up on our side…in the end. They have every right to complain that their "contribution" to the defeat of the Axis is neglected. Mind you they tend to be a bit coy themselves about Soviet history August 1939-June 41 and the part they played in allowing Germany to conquer most of Europe.

History is never too straightforward. Ask the Finns

Timothy Snyder's book Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin is an essential read on this.

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The potted version is that between 1933 and 1945 14 million were killed by communists and Nazis in the space between Leningrad, Odessa, and Poland. The Nazis killed 10 million, the Soviets 4 million. That's excluding battle casualties. That's just people deliberately murdered.

In total Stalin may have murdered 9 million and Hitler 12 million, although it's hard to say because some of both totals died because they were exposed to both systems. For example, many died in the Gulag of starvation because of food shortages caused by Barbarossa, but they were only vulnerable in the first place because they were in the Gulag. Likewise many Soviet PoWs were sent to (and died in) the Gulag after the war simply because they had been prisoners of the Nazis. More Poles died in the Warsaw uprising than died in Japan of nuclear bombing, because Stalin fomented the uprising then did nothing to help it. The insurgents were Polish patriots, and he wanted them killed anyway for when he dismembered Poland.

And so on.

I think it is this that makes the Russian sacrifice relatively hard to empathise with. Yes there was suffering fighting off the German invasion, but millions would have died in Ukraine and Belarus anyway, because Stalin liquidated millions before the war and would have done so invasion or no invasion. Most of Stalin's victims were Soviet citizens and most of Hitler's were non-Germans.

I think the worst misfortune that could befall you in all history would be to have been born anywhere between Warsaw and Vladivostok in about 1910.

The USSR and it's allies inflicted 70-75% of the German and their Allies losses there on the Eastern Front. IMO that is the bottom line. Could they have been more tactically efficient, demonstrate more tactical expertise, etc. Well that could be said about may in WWII.

Today being lead by a Cold War former KGB Officer and his cronies/ilk. They'd like to be the USSR again of old. But in reality they are no real big threat on the Non-WMD battlefield. They lack the USSR's/Russia's strong suit. Numbers and massive production capabilities. Of course we can't forget the US/UK did Lean Lease a lot of equipment. To add to the USSR's huge production capabilities. Once they recovered from their initial losses inflicted by the German invasion.

They are no where near the threat China posses. In the new era/way of war for the Super Powers/former Super Powers, i.e. Economically.

The facts that the communist regime of the Soviet Union killed its own citizens etc. and was in many ways (at least till the end of Joseph) competitively ugly compared to the nazi (never forget the zi at the end;) does not mean we cannot understand and feel for the people, nor of their sacrifices.
And just as Germany is not the same as it was (for a short time), Russia is not what it was, nor is the politics, the people in power and so on. They do and did, accept the bad from those years; and they do, more even than many western short memory (or plain hypocrites) types, shoot on the bad stuff of those years; just as they do accept that some things were not so bad.

@ JCFrog

Well, it's a point of view. On the other hand, many of the Soviet dead would have been murdered anyway, or would have died in the war Stalin would certainly have eventually started with Germany. He invaded Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, and Mongolia before Hitler attacked him. Stalin intended Germany, Britain and France to exhaust each other, and that's when he'd join the war.

Soviet participation in the war with Germany was not altruistic nor even voluntary; they had a non-aggression pact and jointly attacked and partitioned Poland. The western allies allowed self-determination in the countries they liberated. Stalin's USSR occupied them permanently.

In short, Soviet Russia fought not to stop a great evil but to impose a different one. While one feels for those who lost loved ones this doesn't mean we should overlook the evils of communism or give it credit for something it did not choose to do and that was not intended to help us.

Agree!

Amicalement
Armand

4th C +1

Pre-1939 alliances were complicated. Poland refused to allow any Soviet troops into the country. Given the end result that was not a prudent move. Look at the pre WW1 borders and the 'invasions' are explained.
I spoke to an old Polish woman who fought in Warsaw and she hated both Russians and Germans. She was imprisoneD by the Soviets and received 'pay' and survived to be released. She did not know of any of her friends who were imprisoned by the Germans who could say the same.

Pre-1939 alliances were complicated. Poland refused to allow any Soviet troops into the country.

They didn't let them in because they knew once the Soviets were in they would never leave and the consequences would not be good for the Polish people.

They didn't let them in because they knew once the Soviets were in they would never leave and the consequences would not be good for the Polish people.

In hindsight a colossal error.

I'm not so sure. The eastern part of Poland was occupied in succession by the Soviets, the Nazis and the Soviets. They murdered slightly different but in many cases overlappjng classes of ideological enemy. Stalin encouraged partisan activity (communist partisans would shoot schoolteachers in Belarus for "collaborating") knowing that this would trigger Nazi reprisals, which it did – they murdered a third of a million non-Jews as "partisans". Who gets the blame for that?

I hope you are aware of the policies that Poland pursued in the lands of Ukraine and Belarus, which it occupied in the 1920s? This is not the "Eastern part of Poland" – it is the territories it occupied, whose inhabitants were harassed for ethnic and religious reasons, and were turned into second-class people.

The Soviet Union intended to enter the war with Hitler back in 1938, fulfilling allied obligations to Czechoslovakia. But for this, the USSR needed to draw troops into Czechoslovakia through Poland. But Poland, France and the United Kingdom refused to facilitate such a movement. They preferred to surrender Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. And Poland itself participated in its destruction, having robbed Czechoslovakia of the Tieszyn region, acting as an ally of Hitler.

Another attempt to equate 'National Socialism' with 'Communism' and thus shake off the right-wing guilt for Nazism?

I hope you are aware of the policies that Poland pursued in the lands of Ukraine and Belarus, which it occupied in the 1920s? This is not the "Eastern part of Poland" – it is the territories it occupied,

I warned people to look at the pre-war borders but it appears no one bothered.

"Red Army's mastery of the battlefield"
the red army NEVER mastered the battlefield. Their KDR was not very good. The americans were much better man for man.

he red army NEVER mastered the battlefield. Their KDR was not very good.

Yes of course. Indeed all one had to do was 'kick in the front door and the whole rotten edifice would come tumbling down'…………………

Getting back to the point further up, I suspect the reason for the relative lack in the West of empathy for and recognition of the Soviet contribution is simply the abhorrent nature and behaviour of the Soviet regime.

The USSR enabled WW2 by its pact with Germany that enabled the invasion of Poland. It participated in that invasion and murdered thousands of Poles. It attacked its neighbours and eventually fought Germany not out of principle but because it was itself attacked. Its military success came in large measure from its disregard for human life, an attitude I note with satisfaction the western allies did not share, even at the cost of a reduction in their apparent military prowess. The USSR then used its victory to occupy much of central Europe for the best part of 50 years. Unlike any other WW2 combatant, it profited territorially by it.

In the post-WW2 world, the defeat of Nazism simply resulted in its replacement by an equivalent threat to the western democracies. Democracy had in fact almost flickered out in Europe by 1939 and the USSR was part of the problem, not the solution.

Individual conscripted fighters and their families have all of my sympathy, but to be grateful to the Soviet Union against this background is a bit like expecting someone to be grateful to the hangman because he saved you from the firing squad.

And on the matter of Kursk, this feels like a field ripe for proper study. We had years of German apologia and Soviet propaganda, with the facts presumably somewhere underneath all that.

Little to choose between the two evil regimes and Western Europe living under the threat from the USSR post war doesn't really lend itself to them showing much interest in lauding the Soviet efforts in WW2.

They didn't let them in because they knew once the Soviets were in they would never leave and the consequences would not be good for the Polish people.

In hindsight a colossal error.

I'm not so sure. … They murdered slightly different but in many cases overlappjng classes of ideological enemy.

There is a difference. The Soviet plan was pacify and control the population in Poland. The Nazi plan was to de-populate and then re-settle Poland.

To suggest that they murdered overlapping classes is not wrong, but ignores that the Soviets controlled Poland for decades, while the Nazis controlled Poland for only about half of one decade, the span of which they were also a bit busy with a world war. If the Nazis had been in control of Poland for decades, we could effectively say there was a 100% overlap in the classes murdered, because the Nazi plan was to eliminate the Polish people as a whole, as well as to erase all vestiges of Polish history, culture, literature, and language.

The fact that there are still Poles, who speak and write Polish, in a part of the world called Poland, is evidence that the Soviets were not at all like the Nazis.

That is not a defense of the Soviets. The Soviets, and in particular during the Stalin regime, do not deserve any defending. By almost any standard they were monsters.

Almost any standard, that is, except the standard of comparison to the Nazis … if you are Polish, or Ukrainian, or Byelorussian, or Lithuanian, or Jewish. But not if you are Finnish … unless you can extend your sense of right-and-wrong to the abstract, as opposed to judging only based on how you and your people are treated.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

the red army NEVER mastered the battlefield.

They really didn't have to be masters of it. They had numbers and the ability to keep those numbers up. Even with the UK and US sending Lend Lease. But the USSR's population and production capabilities gave them a real edge, IMO. Along with the fact they were could and would take heavy losses in both blood & treasure.

The americans were much better man for man.

I would agree albeit freely admit I'm a bit biased and a former Cold War Warrior.

As well as we see with Napoleon's attack into Russia. Their vast land and weather played a big part in both invasions. Even though over a 100 + years apart.

As a Cold War Vet, our mission was to only re-establish the IGB. There would be no drive on to Berlin or even worst onto Moscow.

I have always been fun by the term "Western democracies" in relation to the largest colonial power and the country where racial segregation flourished)))
You need to carefully open the doors of your closet – from there the old skeleton may fall out)))

"Western democracies" in relation to the largest colonial power and the country where racial segregation flourished)))

Well we can't dismiss what the West[or East !] had done in the past when it came to this. We can't and shouldn't re-write history as if in some Orwellian dystopian world.

However, I'm sure the USSR had their own "biases" if not among races but ethnicities. Regardless no one, no nation is without some blame/grey areas, etc.

That being said as Rifle Plt Ldr in the 101, '80-'81. Most of my troops would be considered minorities. And the draft ended in '72. We were all volunteers. And if the Cold War went hot, we all had the chance of becoming losses especially in Infantry and Tank units. If in a battle of the "Super Powers". Or at least between NATO and the WP …

The Soviet established internal colonies by removing entire populations from one region and dumping them in another, ane external ones by occupying neighbouring countries.

So I don't think anyone had the drop on colonising in 1939, but in the western democracies, political parties opposed to colonies were allowed to exist. In Germany and the USSR, one party was allowed to exist.

At the household level, elements of national hostility were encountered. But their manifestations were punishable, up to criminal prosecution. There was no harassment at the state level with respect to any nationality, with the exception of the forced resettlement of some peoples in the period before and during the Second World War (Germans, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Koreans were resettled). But this was done for the same reasons that all US citizens of Japanese nationality were also placed in camps in the United States.
In the Russian language there is a saying: "Before you point out another to the speck in his eye, remove the log from your own eye." Or as the Bible says: "Let the one who is without sin be the first to cast a stone".
If millions of Soviet soldiers had not died in that war, who knows what the world would look like now?

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I think the one thing everyone would accept is the premise suggested in the last sentence of the post above.

"If millions of Soviet soldiers had not died in that war, who knows what the world would look like now?"

Not one contributor has questioned the sacrifice made by the people of the then USSR in WWII….and without them….unless Oppenheimer was working faster….the Western Allies could never have tackled the Axis on the Continent of Europe.

This is all about politics and international relations and no one emerges with great credit there.

"Another attempt to equate 'National Socialism' with 'Communism' and thus shake off the right-wing guilt for Nazism?"

Seriously?

There's no "right-wing guilt" for Nazism. Nazism is not truly right wing. National Socialism and Communist socialism are two sides of the same evil coin, and Nazism always had and has far more in common with left-wing socialism than with right-wing anything. Nazism is only associated with the right wing in people's minds now because of successful propaganda campaigns by Stalin and his successors through Moscow's loyal minions in Europe and America for six decades to associate and conflate Nazism with socialist Communism's other enemies, capitalist Western democracies and everyone else who was anti-Communist -- a propaganda myth and lie that has been repeated endlessly by generations of Communists, socialists and leftists from the 1930's to today. Hitler and Mussolini were both big-time socialists, but they each wanted to be in charge in their own countries and not take orders from a regime outside their own countries like the local Communists did. So the Stalinist Soviet Communist propaganda lie about Nazism being "right wing" persists to this day because Communists, socialists and leftists always want to associate evil fascism with their opponents on the right, and conceal, discount and deny the actual strong historical connection between fascism, especially Nazism, and socialism.

Now, let's all refrain from further sly insinuation of one's own partisan political opinions, whatever they may be, into our discussions here, shall we?

Nazism is not truly right wing. National Socialism and Communist socialism are two sides of the same evil coin……….. Nazism always had and has far more in common with left-wing socialism than with right-wing anything.

As I said the desperate attempts of the right to transfer the baggage of the Nazis on to the left based on nothing more than semantics. Next we will be hearing that Evolution is just a 'theory'

"Before you point out another to the speck in his eye, remove the log from your own eye." Or as the Bible says: "Let the one who is without sin be the first to cast a stone".

As I said: Well we can't dismiss what the West[or East !] had done in the past when it came to this. We can't and shouldn't re-write history as if in some Orwellian dystopian world.

However, I'm sure the USSR had their own "biases" if not among races but ethnicities. Regardless no one, no nation is without some blame/grey areas, etc.

If millions of Soviet soldiers had not died in that war, who knows what the world would look like now?

Again as I said : The USSR and it's allies inflicted 70-75% of the German and their Allies losses there on the Eastern Front. IMO that is the bottom line.

Can't be anymore magnanimous than that … again I am a Cold War Warrior and freely admit I have biases.

Another nuance … If the USSR were defeated, Germany would have received and used him resources, industrial capacities, the labor of millions of "ostarbeiters" … Got a direct exit to Asia, would be connected via direct land routes with its Japanese allies.
This would have been a completely different war …

@ cuprum

There was no harassment at the state level with respect to any nationality

WADR, complete balls.

In 1937 and 1938, a quarter of a million Soviet citizens were shot on essentially ethnic grounds…the Soviet Union in the late 1930s was a land of unequalled national persecutions. Even as the Popular Front presented the Soviet Union as the homeland of toleration, Stalin ordered the mass killing of several Soviet nationalities. The most persecuted European national minority in the second half of the 1930s was not the four hundred thousand or so German Jews (the number declining because of emigration) but the six hundred thousand or so Soviet Poles (the number declining because of executions). Stalin was a pioneer of national mass murder, and the Poles were the preeminent victim among the Soviet nationalities.

Japanese espionage was also the justification for the deportation of the entire Soviet Korean population, about 170,000 people, from the Far East to Kazakhstan.

Everyone now had to register for an internal passport, which…allowed for the smooth pursuit of a major Soviet social policy: deportation. On 4 December 1939 the Soviet politburo ordered the NKVD to arrange the expulsion of certain groups of Polish citizens deemed to pose a danger to the new order: military veterans, foresters, civil servants, policemen, and their families. Then, on one evening in February 1940, in temperatures of about forty below zero, the NKVD gathered them all: 139,794 people taken from their homes at night at gunpoint to unequipped freight trains bound for special settlements in distant Soviet Kazakhstan or Siberia…the trains were full of aged parents as well as the children of people who were thought to be dangerous. At halts on the journey east, guards would go from car to car, asking if there were any more dead children.

in March 1940, NKVD chief Beria had ordered a deportation of people who had declined to accept a Soviet passport…the vast majority of people who had rejected the Soviet passport were Jewish refugees from western Poland…They had fled the depredations of the SS, only to be deported by the NKVD to Kazakhstan and Siberia. Of the 78,339 people deported in the June 1940 action that targeted refugees, about eighty-four percent were Jewish.

Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands

The counterfactual of what would have happened had Hitler defeated Russia is not all that difficult to answer. Hitler envisaged liquidating most of the population of Eurasia and deporting the Jews to the worst bits while colonising the best bits with Germans. The Final Solution of genocide was actually the fourth version of the solution, the previous attempts (Madagascar, etc) all having been overtaken by events.

He had no intention of advancing beyond the Urals because there was nothing there. The required oil and farmland were to be found west of them. He expected and welcomed a perpetual low-level frontier war some hundreds of miles east of Moscow. He had no objective of overturning the British Empire because he saw its existence as preferable to the alternatives.

Depending on how long this took, Japan would either have attacked the USA as per history, or would have attacked the rump USSR. There would be no reason to spare Japan had she attacked the USA, so she would have been crushed.

She'd probably have been nuked too, because meanwhile Britain and / or the USA would have acquired nuclear weapons while Hitler didn't. He'd lost all the scientists and had no access to the necessary supply of uranium ore. The three best sources are Australia, Canada, and Kazakhstan, none of which he controlled. It took espionage and uranium deposits for the USSR to make their own nuke, so the likelihood of Nazi Germany doing so with neither is small.

Had Russia been defeated, therefore, then from the late 1940s, the west would have been facing a continent largely controlled by an ideologically hostile, totalitarian and increasingly gerontocratic foreign power, kept in its place (until it collapsed) by the threat of nuclear weapons. This is a radically worse outcome than what did happen, which was that from the late 1940s the west faced a continent largely controlled by an ideologically hostile, totalitarian and increasingly gerontocratic foreign power, kept in its place (until it collapsed) by the threat of nuclear weapons.

This would have been a completely different war …

Indeed … and generally not for the better, IMO … But even then there could be some "controversy" …

4th Cuirassier

This is nonsense in severe form)))
All the persecutions you described did not occur at all based on nationality. "Socially alien elements" were subjected to repression – that is, representatives of the bourgeoisie and opponents of communist ideology. All peoples of the USSR went through similar repressions, without any exceptions. Moreover, the pro-communist representatives of the "repressed nationalities" were also widely represented in the Soviet governing bodies. There was no pretension on the basis of nationality!
Such statements are just stupid anti-Russian propaganda.

You forget about some very important things. Hitler really planned to reach only the Urals. But Japan claimed the territory of the Far East and Siberia. And if the USSR had been defeated in the West, having lost almost all of its industry, then it would hardly have been able to stop the invasion of the Japanese.
In addition, Hitler in Asia had many supporters. There were even more opponents of Great Britain. Could the Allies keep India under control? The big question is …
If the USSR fell, I would not give a penny for British security, when all the forces and means that came under German control would be concentrated to invade the island …
Nuclear weapons are a powerful argument, but they have not existed yet. And to conduct such a war, many bombs were needed … Are you so sure that Germany would not have been able to create it – but on what basis is such confidence? Uranium in Kazakhstan for Germany would not be a problem – all the former territories of the USSR would definitely go under the German protectorate. And delivery vehicles – another type of ballistic missiles, were almost ready, making the US territory completely vulnerable and easily accessible to nuclear weapons.

"Next we will be hearing that Evolution is just a 'theory'"

Or that wonderful socialism had nothing to do with the brutal murders of scores of millions of people by the socialist governments of the Union of Soviet *Socialist* Republics and Eastern Europe and Communist China and North Korea and Cambodia and Vietnam and Cuba and Africa and…

Or is that just semantics, Cleo? Drink that socialist Kool-aid much?

Hmm … Capitalism has destroyed fewer people? How many casualties did colonialism and imperialism require? I think it's just impossible to count … Billions of victims.

In realty … No one's hands are clean. But I'm glad I'm a Capitalist living in the USA.

But again … I'm biased as I said …

One curious what-if suggestion to me, regarding this thread, is what would Japan have done if the German's had reached the Urals?

I don't think anything. I believe by that time they were stretched too thin in China and the Pacific where they had already committed to getting their cherished raw materials.

I don't know if Lend Lease would've still been possible, but even so, if the Soviets were still able to churn out T-34's (weren't many factories relocated beyond the Urals?) I don't see the Japanese having another go at them. If the Germans had no intention of crossing the Urals I believe what was left of the Soviet Army would've still been enough to discourage an attack.

On a side note, if Germany knocked out Russia I doubt the Germans would've even been interested in nukes; why would they have needed them? Fortunately the allies never had to worry about it.

Almost all of the Soviet military industry was located in the European part of Russia. Except for a few aircraft factory and shipyards. The easternmost tank factory was in Stalingrad.
In 1941, these plants were dismantled and transported to the Urals, where for about a year they were again deployed and established work in a new place.
In the Far East, the USSR did not have tanks and aircraft of new types. In addition, available equipment and military units were sent in large numbers to the Western Front.
In Siberia and the Far East, there were very few explored deposits. Oil in the USSR is only Caucasian deposits, metal in the Urals. Food would be a huge challenge (Siberia is not very suitable for agriculture).
There are very big problems with logistics (that is why it was more profitable to deliver through Lend-Lease through northern ports and Asia).
I think that if the Germans managed to get to the Urals, the USSR would simply lose any ability to organize resistance.

He would more likely have stopped on the Volga. He described it as Germany's Mississippi. It represents an obvious natural frontier, east of which there was nothing worth taking.

Lend Lease would not necessarily have been available. It was Hitler who declared war on America, not the other way round, following Japan's attack on America. If Japan attacks Russia instead, there is no reason for any declaration of war.

It was the Japanese Army which advocated for war against Russia. The Navy championed the Pacific strategy. From purely a resources aspect the Navy position certainly made much more sense.

Had the Germans prevailed in Russia it would all depend on what happens to the Russian units in the East. If they remain intact and some form of organized command and control then Japan unlikely to divert resources to an attack. Should units loose their cohesiveness then a limited action by Japanese forces to take certain strategic areas, for example the port at Vladivostok, would be possible. Remember the Japanese did maintain units facing the Russians just in case so they had the resources for limited actions.

Thanks Cuprum2 for the tacit admission that socialism has indeed murdered scores of millions of people (which can be and have been counted), since you didn't/couldn't refute or dispute the acts or the numbers I mentioned, but could only respond with the standard liberal sleight-of-hand deceptive tactic of accusing your opponent of being even worse with an outrageous and unsubstantiated insinuation to (hopefully) put your opponent on the defensive and shift the light of truth away from you and your inability to truthfully refute or dispute a fact.

Your scurrilous attempted association of capitalism and colonialism with the loss of "billions" of lives is as unprovable as it outrageously false. Even you admit it's impossible to count -- but in usual sly leftist socialist misinformation style you then casually mention "billions of victims" to deceive your audience into connecting "capitalism and colonialism" with "billions of victims" without you having to explicitly state something even you know would be ludicrously false.

More and more of us are seeing leftist socialist sophistry, deception, deflection and distraction for what they are, we're simply not falling for it any more, so kindly cease peddling casual irrelevant and inappropriate leftist socialist propaganda here.

And incidentally, in actual historical fact capitalism has not only "destroyed" far, far fewer people than socialism but has enriched, improved, prospered, uplifted and liberated literally billions of people while socialism simply has not, benefits which history proves socialism is by nature and definition incapable of achieving or delivering then, now or ever.