Do you really believe that most US soliders of 16 gave a fig about the liberty of Russians and Eastern Europeans?

No I didn’t. I said one of the reasons I believed the Russians were cowed by Stalin was that they didn’t overthrow him after the Nazi invasion showed what a military incompetent was.

Had I been through what the Russians had been through in the Great Terror I’d have acted like them.

You appear to be arguing with someone inside your head. I cite evidence that the Russians were too cowed to oppose Stalin, and you turn it into some sort of moral criticism of Russians. Please don’t. Making arguments against strawmen is never going to convince me that my arguments are wrong.

Neither do you, and it would behoove you to look for actual evidence as opposed to your presuppositions.

Sigh. That’s why I’ve been citing evidence right the way through. – The lack of any opposition by the Red Army to Stalin’s aggressive plans. – The use by the Red Army of political commmissionars to stop their troops running away. – That the Soviets had just come through the Great Terror, where anyone who disagreed with Stalin was shot. – How the locals initially welcomed the Nazi invasion (until the Nazis, by dint of various atrocities, managed to convince the locals that they were even worse than the Communists).

This is why I don’t believe that the Red Army was fighting for liberty.

Meanwhile you have supplied zero evidence that any individual Russian was fighting for liberty.

Total – if your family suffered so terribly in WWII and you have a pretty good idea of how the Russian system under Stalin worked, how can you discuss so comfortably the worthiness or not of millions of Russian dead in WWII? That was why I thought you knew less than me about WWII, when you started talking about comfortably discussing the worthiness of people’s deaths.

And by the way, obviously I don’t think that I’m playing the fool. Ad hominems never change your opponent’s mind. I suggest avoiding them in the future.

Uh, yes you have. You specifically criticized the Russians for not overthrowing Stalin in 1941 after the Nazi invasion.

ou have shown no evidence that Russian soldiers, as individuals or their leadership, gave a fig about liberating other countries.

Let’s be clear on the argument here. You asserted that all the Soviets shared Stalin’s lack of interest in liberation. You provided no evidence for this assertion except assumptions about how people must have acted in the Stalinist police state. The burden of actual evidence started, and remains with you. What actual evidence do you have that no Soviet soldier was interested in liberation?

Let’s turn it around. Do you really believe that a Russian solider of age 16 gave a fig about the liberty of Americans and Western Europeans? In that situation, would you care

This is a perfect example of the above. “Do you really believe” is not actually evidence, it is “I’m going to apply my own world view to a historical situation and assume it’s right.” I’m not a 16 year old Russian soldier and so I don’t know what their motivations were. Neither do you, and it would behoove you to look for actual evidence as opposed to your presuppositions.

It was an incredibly terrible time in human history and I really think you should study it at least a little.

and

Once you’ve learnt a bit about what happened in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s, I suggest you take up studying what the Japanese did to the Chinese.

I was trying to come up with a level of sarcasm sufficient for the infantile patronization of the above paragraphs, but I proved unable to manage it. So, I’ll just say that on my father’s side the branch of the family that had remained in Poland when his grandfather came over was wiped out in the Holocaust, the 50+ of them survived only by a great aunt (who once cried when my father came to visit because he was driving a Volkswagen). I will also mention, as a second note, that I have a Ph.D in military history, specializing in the two world wars, with a minor field in Russian history, and that I have a pretty good idea how the Stalinist system worked, and what the Japanese did to the Chinese.

You should be careful about assuming that those who disagree with you, either 1) don’t understand your argument, and/or 2) know less than you do. It would help you avoid playing the fool.

Dear Total. I have not argued that Russian soldiers were complicit in Stalin’s aggression. I think you have misunderstood my argument. I lumped the Russians together because Stalin had a very tight level of control – either you did what he wanted or you got shot (and if you failed because he gave you an impossible order you got shot). So if Stalin wanted to pursue an aggressive policy then the Red Army pursued an agressive policy. If Stalin wanted to throw the Eastern European countries he conquered under his dictatorship then the Red Army threw those Eastern European countries under that dictatorship. Those who didn’t died. The average Russian wasn’t complicit – they were in a situation where if they disobeyed they died. That’s why I think Stalin’s intentions were the intentions of the country.

You have shown no evidence that Russian soldiers, as individuals or their leadership, gave a fig about liberating other countries. This does not surprise me. If I was a Russian in the time of WWII (soldier or not) my main objective would be surviving both the Nazis and my own government. It was an entirely ghastly time and place in world history and I am eternally grateful that none of my family was anywhere near it.

Let’s turn it around. Do you really believe that a Russian solider of age 16 gave a fig about the liberty of Americans and Western Europeans? In that situation, would you care?

comfortably passing judgment on millions of dead people.

I have never felt comfortable about the suffering of the Russians and Eastern Europeans in the 1930s and WWII. If you had ever heard my history teacher speak about his Ukrainian in-laws experiences you would not feel comfortable either. It was an incredibly terrible time in human history and I really think you should study it at least a little.

I’m sure that they’ll be glad to know that you approved of their deaths.

They’re dead. They can’t be glad about anything. It doesn’t matter to them what I think about their deaths. That’s the tragic thing about death.

You can’t assert that America is morally superior because our soldiers died for liberty

I have not asserted that America is morally superior. And what’s with this word “our”? I’m not American, as I keep telling you.

My arguments that Stalin was an evil person and he created an evil system are completely independent of any arguments about American crimes. I don’t understand why you keep going on about Americans when I criticise Stalinist Russia. Do you think that for every crime the Americans committed a thousand victims of Stalin will spring back to life? That there’s a limited amount of evil in the world so that the worse Americans were in the 1930s and 1940s the better the Russian communists were? Sadly, that’s not true. There was an incredible amount of death and suffering and cruelty around in the 1930s and 40s. Once you’ve learnt a bit about what happened in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s, I suggest you take up studying what the Japanese did to the Chinese.

Nor have I defended Thompson’s accusation. My argument is that the WaPo’s article implying that it thought that Russian soliders were dying for liberty is so mind-blindingly ignorant of history that it is ridiculous that it accuses Thompson of ignorance. Thompson can be wrong and the WaPo even wronger.

And can you please provide some reasoning for your statement that the worthiness of the deaths of Russians is integral to the discussion whether they were dying for liberty? You assert this and then go off into a non-sequitor about Americans dying for liberty and what that meant for the worthiness of other countries.

Can you please argue with me and not with some figment of your imagination? I am not American. You appear to be supplying my side of your argument from some stereotype in your head.

And you then went and:

lumped everyone in Russia together because of the Great Terror in Russia in the 1930s, whereby Stalin managed to consolidate his position so thoroughly that the Russians didn’t overthrow him even when the Nazi invasion showed that he had made one of the largest (and possibly the largest) set of military blunders in human history.

Let’s extend the logic of your argument all the way. By 1945, the Soviets were drafting 16 year olds (and younger, but we’ll stick with that). So because a 12 year (in 1941) didn’t rise up against Stalin, he is complicit in Stalin’s aggression? It’s that sort of silliness that has arisen from parsing who was “worthy” and who was not.

Good thing that we aren’t having that discussion then, isn’t it?

We are having exactly that discussion. That’s what I’ve been trying to point out.

On the whole I do think that the Russians who were killed fighting the Nazis in WWII had a worthy death, as the Gestapo’s plans for Eastern Europe were even worse than Stalin’s.

See, we are having that discussion, comfortably passing judgment on millions of dead people. I’m sure that they’ll be glad to know that you approved of their deaths.

That said, the worthiness or otherwise of deaths in battle is a different matter from whether the Russians were fighting for liberty.

No, it isn’t. It’s integral to the discussion. You can’t assert that America is morally superior because our soldiers died for liberty and (insert country here) didn’t, without saying that the former are worthy and the latter aren’t.

And that’s what Thompson was trying to do. He can’t assert that more Americans died fighting wars, because it isn’t remotely true. So he has to identify those deaths as uniquely virtuous in a way that makes America uniquely virtuous. “You may have lost 20 million people, but the United States is superior because you did not do it for the right reasons.”

You apparently feel comfortable saying that; I do not.

The problem now is that most people in Europe and elsewhere have learned from experience that war is always bad, and usually worse than even bad alternatives, but many Americans have not.

While intuitively this seems right—there really is a huge post-Atlantic difference in popular attitudes to war—it’s not easy to reconcile with post-WWII episodes like the wars that the French waged in Algeria and Vietnam, Britain in Kenya, and the Suez debacle of 1956.

My feeling is the European anti-war sentiment, such as it is, dates from a later point which I’d put somewhere around 1968 and the demonstrations against the Vietnam war (after the Americans had took it over from the French).

See comment 11. This was my first comment on this post and I mentioned Stalin specifically.

I lumped everyone in Russia together because of the Great Terror in Russia in the 1930s, whereby Stalin managed to consolidate his position so thoroughly that the Russians didn’t overthrow him even when the Nazi invasion showed that he had made one of the largest (and possibly the largest) set of military blunders in human history.

The larger point that emerges from this is that trying to ascribe a single set of motivations to any group of historical actors is deeply silly.

In the case of Russia from the 1930s until Stalin’s death it strikes me as entirely sensible. The country was being run by one man in a grip of steel.

. It leads to a discussion in which, from the safe comfort of the Internet, we try to parse who had a “worthy” death (because they were fighting for liberty) and who had a “unworthy” death (because they weren’t. That discussion is not only silly but repellent.

Good thing that we aren’t having that discussion then, isn’t it?

What’s repellent is that the WaPo criticises Fred Thompson’s ignorance of history while displaying a far greater ignorance of its own.
Stalin’s regime in Russia shows the depths of evil to which humanity can sink. I think it is vitally important that this knowledge is generally known. Facism is not the only evil we have to guard against.

On the whole I do think that the Russians who were killed fighting the Nazis in WWII had a worthy death, as the Gestapo’s plans for Eastern Europe were even worse than Stalin’s. Sadly, the ones who were shot by their own army for various political crimes had tragic, pointless deaths. And the only way we can make those deaths more worthwhile is by reducing the chances of it ever happening again, which is why the WaPo’s argument annoys me so much.

That said, the worthiness or otherwise of deaths in battle is a different matter from whether the Russians were fighting for liberty.

Thanks for the information about Khalkin Gol and Manchuria. I hadn’t heard of those battles at all which is a shame. The coverage of the Asian theatre of the world in NZ history is pretty biased – obviously we covered Chinese involvement in studying Mao Zedong’s Communist revolution, but the rest of NZ history accounts are focussed on NZ and Australian experiences and the American decision to use the nuclear bomb on Japan.

You surely didn’t start off talking about “Stalin” not fighting for liberty, you simply said “Soviets”, lumping together everyone involved in fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front. The larger point that emerges from this is that trying to ascribe a single set of motivations to any group of historical actors is deeply silly. It leads to a discussion in which, from the safe comfort of the Internet, we try to parse who had a “worthy” death (because they were fighting for liberty) and who had a “unworthy” death (because they weren’t. That discussion is not only silly but repellent.

The American people were weighing one evil against another and picking not fighting.

See above.

As far as I know the Russians weren’t really involved in the Asian theatre of WWII. All the fighting against the Japanese was done by the Chinese, the Americans, the Australians, the Phillipines, and presuambly a lot of other local people in the countries Japan invaded or tried to invade

Though largely true, the veterans of the 1939 Battle of Khalkin Gol, and the 1945 Battle of Manchuria would be surprised by the word “all.”

As far as I know the Russians weren’t really involved in the Asian theatre of WWII. All the fighting against the Japanese was done by the Chinese, the Americans, the Australians, the Phillipines, and presuambly a lot of other local people in the countries Japan invaded or tried to invade. I presume the Russians guarded their Asian borders right throughout that time, but if they kicked the Japanese out of any countries during WWII like they did the Nazis then all I can say is that it’s been kept one hell of a secret.

It wasn’t so much “restoring democracy” as it was installing capitalism; for example in Korea (military dictatorship) and Japan (one-party-rule political system). What you want to say here is that you don’t count ‘freedom from capitalism’ as ‘freedom’.

Which is fair enough, though it wasn’t at all clear back then: the “Free World” rhetoric wasn’t invented yet at the time; it was devised later, during the Cold War.

Well this is completely off the top of my head, but when it comes to “shedding blood for other peoples’ freedom” I’d count something like restoring democracy in the countries you kicked the Nazis/Japanese out of. With a bit more thought I might be able to add more actions to the list.

I don’t get this. I point out that the leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin, showed absolutely no signs of fighting for liberty and people tell me that I’m lumping together the motivations of all of the millions of Russians with the motivations of the leaders. I talk about the motivations of the millions of individual Russians and I’m told that talking about the motives of individuals is silly. I mean, talk about a circle immune to evidence here.

No one has produced any evidence that the Russians were fighting for liberty at either a national or an individual level. I agree that Fred Thompson’s argument was silly. But the WaPo counting the Russian dead as casulties for liberty is sillier, and it’s ridiculous that they would say that in an article criticising Fred Thompson.

IIRC, we entered WWII to fight Japan.

Speak for yourself. NZ entered WWII because “Where Britain goes, we go. Where Britain stands, we stand”.

The marines at Okinawa don’t talk about freeing those poor Philipinos or Chinese from the Jap Aggressors. We threw in against the Germans because they were bad and naugty people, true, but they were bad for years and we basically ignored them.

Because after WWI most Americans didn’t want to get involved in another European war because war is bad. The American people were weighing one evil against another and picking not fighting. In the end it turned out that they made the wrong decision, but unless you can provide some evidence that Americans were equipped with amazing superpowers to see into the future I find it hard to be rather tough on American isolationism of the time. WWI was very bad.

Think Mexican-American war, Spanish-American war. All of the ‘Indian Wars’ which Americans undoubtedly didn’t see as ‘internal’ wars, but wars against an external enemy. 1812 anyone?

The American Civil War was strikingly erased from memory, for a long time. Perhaps because of the bitterness of the Reconstruction. But something like 5% of the adult male population of the US was killed or wounded. You are getting towards France 1914-18 at those casualty levels.

I’m not sure it slated the American appetite for blood. But then, looking at the crowds in London, Paris, Munich in 1914, there was a lust for blood there, too.

The big difference is by and large the campaigning doesn’t take place on American soil, so Americans have been insulated from the more malign consequences of war. War is something of a Hollywood-ised abstraction to Americans. The reality of war to Americans is Black Hawk Down, and Fox News.

Europe it’s all just a little too recent and painful: the graveyards here list the fallen from both wars, often amounting to most of the men of the village, and then France and Britain have Korea, Algeria, Indochina, Malaya etc. to remember.

I am amazed at the inability of some commentators to distinguish between Comrade Stalin and his political objectives, and what motivated the average Soviet combat soldier.

Stalin put it best ‘The Americans brought the materials, the British bought time, the Russians brought blood’. WWII was won by the talent of the Soviet generals, and the sheer doggedness and courage of Ivan, the Russian (and latterly central Asian Soviet) soldier.

As one German officer noted of his opponents in his diary ‘they seem to have a lust for battle, to close with our forces’.

Well, apparently it’s extremely important that the individual blood-shedders are slobbering infantile idiots, similar to Mr. Thompson’s audience.