"Myths of the Cold War" Topic
15 Posts
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Tango01 | 13 Feb 2021 9:34 p.m. PST |
"Immediately after the Second World War when the Western powers embarked upon the reversal of alliances, upon the great conflict with their former Soviet ally, people usually spoke about the two colossi, the American and the Russian, that faced each other in hostility across a power vacuum. It was assumed that one of the colossi, the Russian, threatened the American, the western. What people did not realise then, what the governments did not tell them, was that of these two colossi, one – the American – emerged from the Second World War in full-blooded vigour and strength, immensely wealthy, with hardly any losses suffered in the war compared with the other allies, with barely a scratch on its skin; whereas the other colossus, the Russian, lay almost prostrate, bleeding profusely from all its wounds. And it was that almost prostrate, bled-white colossus who was assumed to create a major military threat to Europe – to threaten an invasion of Europe. That colossus, Russia, lost in the last war over 20 million people in dead alone. When, after the war, the first population census was carried out in the Soviet Union, it turned out that in the age groups that were older than 18 years at the end of the war, that is, in the whole adult population of the Soviet Union, there were only 31 million men compared with 53 million women. For many, many years only old men, cripples, children and women tilled the fields in the Russian countryside. Old women had to clear, with bare hands, the immense masses of rubble from their destroyed cities and towns. And this nation which had lost 20 million men in dead alone – and only think how many of the 31 million men that were left alive were the cripples and invalids and the wounded of the world war and how many were the old-aged – this nation with so tremendous, so huge a deficit in its population, this nation, of which a whole generation was lost, this nation was supposed to threaten Europe with an invasion! And until quite recently the threat of that invasion was still assumed to be real. NATO was formed in order to counter that threat! Yet any specialist in population statistics could have counted the number of years that it would take Russia to fill these gaps in her manpower. Moreover, from the end of the war until the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, the Russians had demobilised their armies so rapidly that they reduced them from 11.5 million men at the end of the war to less than three million. Only after the formation of NATO did they start remobilising, but they had such difficulties with their manpower that in the course of another three or four years they called to arms not more than another two million men. Of course Russia could not – even if we were to argue on the most cynical grounds, even if we assumed that she had the most wicked rulers – Russia could not threaten anyone in that situation. And it is not only I who say so. The former American ambassador to Moscow, Mr George F Kennan, whom we knew in those years as the advocate of the containment policy, who was the chief policy planner of the State Department, declared recently in a lecture at Geneva University in Switzerland (I am quoting from the London Times of 12 May 1965), that ‘after the Second World War, American policy makers could see Communism only in terms of a military threat. In creating NATO… they had drawn a line arbitrarily across Europe against an attack no one was planning.' Mr Kennan, who in those years preached a containment policy, declares now (better late than never!) that the containment policy had nothing to contain. He says that the NATO powers had drawn a line arbitrarily across Europe ‘against an attack no one was planning'. Then he goes on to put it even more emphatically: ‘After the war the Soviet Union did not want or need to overrun other countries.' And the Times correspondent adds: ‘In his first lecture here in Geneva a week ago, Mr Kennan said that erroneous Western concepts had given rise to many of the postwar difficulties and permitted Communist domination to extend farther west than might otherwise have been the case.' That is, he says, Russia was provoked into self-defensive expansion by the policies of the NATO powers. That is not what I say, but the former American ambassador in Moscow. ‘The Atlantic Pact,' he says, ‘was unfortunate because it was quite unnecessary.' Yet this Atlantic Pact, according to a man whom we considered as one of its architects, this ‘unnecessary' Atlantic Pact, continues to dominate and determine Western policy till this day…" Main page link Amicalement Armand
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Editor in Chief Bill | 13 Feb 2021 11:14 p.m. PST |
From Marxists Internet Archive. |
backstab | 14 Feb 2021 2:15 a.m. PST |
Lol …Marxists internet archive…. say no more |
ReallySameSeneffeAsBefore | 14 Feb 2021 8:06 a.m. PST |
More of a mausoleum than an archive really. |
JMcCarroll | 14 Feb 2021 8:59 a.m. PST |
Strange how the Soviets were Always the victim. |
Legion 4 | 14 Feb 2021 11:19 a.m. PST |
All good and accurate comments ! 👍👍👌🖖 |
Perun Gromovnik | 14 Feb 2021 11:49 a.m. PST |
Well, I dont know about them but it makes sense |
Cerdic | 14 Feb 2021 11:56 a.m. PST |
No. Be fair guys! The Soviet Union was clearly harmless. Apart from all them tanks and bombs and nukes and stuff… |
Col Durnford | 14 Feb 2021 1:24 p.m. PST |
Let's not forget that they beat the nazi record in killing their own slaves, sorry citizens. |
Tango01 | 14 Feb 2021 3:45 p.m. PST |
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Legion 4 | 15 Feb 2021 2:22 a.m. PST |
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PHGamer | 26 Feb 2021 10:51 a.m. PST |
" the Russians had demobilized their armies so rapidly that they reduced them from 11.5 million men at the end of the war to less than three million." Note here: They started WWII with 2.2 million men under arms, and were expanding. About another 60 divisions with skeletal manpower and equipment, but equal to 900,000 more men when fully mobilized. Meanwhile the USA alone went from 12 million to 1.5 million by mid 1947. |
Tango01 | 01 Mar 2021 10:25 p.m. PST |
Thanks!. Amicalement Armand |
sidley | 11 Sep 2022 1:41 p.m. PST |
Absolutely, Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were NATO myths |
Murvihill | 12 Sep 2022 7:39 a.m. PST |
Marxist theory dictated that communism would take over the world. Communist doctrine supported it. Soviet support for all communist activities worldwide demonstrated their intent. How was any other country supposed to assume otherwise? |
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