Operation: Unthinkable

[Rollory]

http://www.history.neu.edu/PRO2/

You gotta say this for Churchill, he had guts.

[Iron Xides]

Why isn't this in P&R?

[Enduro_Man]

I imagine that Patton would have been up for it, but would anyone else?

Also, I've yet to read the entire document, but I assume it predates the revelation of America's atomic weapons program to the British?

[eliandi]

I imagine that Patton would have been up for it, but would anyone else?

Also, I've yet to read the entire document, but I assume it predates the revelation of America's atomic weapons program to the British?

The final report is dated 11 Jul 45, and Hiroshima was bombed on 6 Aug 45. Even with the bomb, the British report specifically mentions the Allied strategic bombers would not have significant targets due to the dispersed nature of the Soviet economy.

Ugly stuff overall- thanks for posting it

[Sarkus]

Not really a surprise. Given that Churchill was always concerned about the Soviets, and then factor in that by the time frame this document was put together it had become clear that the Soviets were not going to allow Poland to freely choose its future. The British and French declared war on Nazi Germany because of its invasion of Poland, so its always been a criticism of them that at the end of the war the western nations allowed the Soviets to determine the future of Poland. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Churchill would have been willing to consider using military forces to free Poland, as long as the US supported the idea. The US wasn't willing to use force, so that was that.

[Desslock]

Given that Britain declared war on Germany because its ally, Poland, was attacked, don't you think they had a moral obligation to not let Poland be enslaved by the Soviets?

Some people would argue that not leaving millions of people in Poland, the rest of the Eastern bloc, the Ukraine, Baltic States, etc to decades of exploitation, tyranny, misery and death was worth fighting for.

(aside from the fact that failing to confront the Soviets in 1945 led to 40 years of the world being on the brink of nuclear annihilation - if Krushschev hadn't backed down in 1962, if Kennedy had been swayed by his advisors urging an air strike on Cuba, or if any number of incidents over 40 years had escalated into war...would anyone actually think it was a good think Britain betrayed the Poles and failed to confront Russia in 1945?

[Miramon]

No documentation at hand, but I think that Eisenhower also distrusted the Russians, and had prepared war plans vs. the USSR if necessary to prevent them from taking all of Germany. I think he was concerned they would just keep rolling west until they ran out of land.

I also think, again no references, that allied generals were under urgent orders to advance east as quickly as possible in the last days of the war, so as to meet the Russians at a suitable point.

[Kunikos]

Why isn't this in P&R?

Apparently the P&R toilet bowl is overflowing.

[Gordon Cameron]

Some people would argue that not leaving millions of people in Poland, the rest of the Eastern bloc, the Ukraine, Baltic States, etc to decades of exploitation, tyranny, misery and death was worth fighting for.

On the other hand, given that they had just been through five years of the most terrible warfare in the history of mankind and that the Red Army had become an extremely potent force, I find it hard to be too harsh in passing judgment on anybody who would have just wanted the damn thing to be over.

[Enidigm]

It seems unlikely that Russia or Germany (as turncoat ally) would have had the capacity to fight for another four years - their ready manpower was nearly exhausted. The US had at that point the world's largest military complex and a huge untapped reserve of manpower, including absolute dominance of the seas.

I'm sure a similar conversation went on in the Kremlin, and similar conclusions reached if from different perspectives; for example, war with Russia would mean the crushing of Maoist forces in China by Western and Western supported forces, and opening the Chinese border to airborne penetration of the industrial heart of Russia.

[Jason McCullough]

Some people would argue that not leaving millions of people in Poland, the rest of the Eastern bloc, the Ukraine, Baltic States, etc to decades of exploitation, tyranny, misery and death was worth fighting for.

Some people would argue that a US-USSR war that would no doubt kill millions, based on no casus belli whatsoever, would have been a terrible idea. This is the kind of question only someone who wasn't alive at the time, and hadn't lived through a world war that killed millions (and possibly lived through the other world war, too) could possibly ask.

That's even assuming we could take them out in the first place. The Soviet army at the end of the war was 10 to 13 million men, with more tanks and artillery than every other country combined, if wikipedia is to be believed. They wouldn't need naval power to push us out of Europe.

I suppose theoretically we could have doubled down by drafting the entire rest of country and building an endless supply of nukes to crush the USSR in a 5 to 10 year war, killing god only knows how many of our and theirs in the process, but that's pretty far afield from the amateur hour hawks bullshitting about how we'd have just taken them out if we had the will.

[Enduro_Man]

The final report is dated 11 Jul 45, and Hiroshima was bombed on 6 Aug 45. Even with the bomb, the British report specifically mentions the Allied strategic bombers would not have significant targets due to the dispersed nature of the Soviet economy.
Conventional bombing might have had little effect on the Soviet economy, but a nuclear arsenal -even a primitive one- would give planners the option of structuring a campaign around goals of attrition and totally demoralizing the opposition. The USSR would not test its first A-bomb until '49, and I'm not sure if they had the ability to drop this from an airplane. Usable Soviet weapons also might have been further delayed if a Soviet-Allied war would've led to a crackdown on the communist nuclear spy ring. So you're looking at a window of at least five years during which the Americans would have had total atomic superiority. They would also have had strategic air superiority, as it would be years until the Soviets could field an interceptor capable of flying high enough to shoot a B-29, let alone dealing with any P-51 or, er, Ta-152H escorts. I'm just not sure there'd be that many bombs to drop in '45 or '46, but let's suppose...

So assuming the Russians don't agree to leaving Poland, and the New Allies had begun an extensive nuclear bombing campaign while their ground forces attempted to hold the line, how many Hiroshima-size explosions would it take before the USSR surrendered? Would Stalin even consider giving up, as the Imperial Japanese did? Would his commanders go along with him if he didn't? Would the Red Army be able to push westward fast enough to win before their country fell apart? Might A-bombs then be dropped on the massed divisions of T-34s as they rolled through France?

Lots of hypotheticals to consider, and we haven't even looked at the possibility of an Allied mutiny or what the Japanese might be doing while this is going on. Ugly stuff, as you said, but fascinating. Now who wants to discuss War Plan Red and the gassing of Canada?

[Lum]

It's literally unconceivable that the American and British public would have tolerated the nuclear bombing of a country that was their wartime ally a few weeks prior, much less a devastating war of attrition that would have made the invasion of Europe look like a sideshow.

(I'm pretty sure I linked this doc in P&R a year or 2 ago, btw.)

[krokodile]

It's literally unconceivable that the American and British public would have tolerated the nuclear bombing of a country that was their wartime ally a few weeks prior, much less a devastating war of attrition that would have made the invasion of Europe look like a sideshow.

(I'm pretty sure I linked this doc in P&R a year or 2 ago, btw.)

I don't think so. I mean, this was the beginning of the Red Scare, in its very infantile stages. With enough propaganda, I"m sure the American Government could've had us believing anything during this time.

[Lum]

I don't think so. I mean, this was the beginning of the Red Scare, in its very infantile stages. With enough propaganda, I"m sure the American Government could've had us believing anything during this time.

Literally *weeks* after the close of WW2? With no incident other than "Stalin didn't allow free elections in Poland, NUKE MOSCOW?"

There was significant resistance and back and forth pro and con, publicly and privately, over the possibility of escalating the Korean war to an invasion of China using nuclear weapons in 1950. The decision was eventually taken not to. This was:

- while the US still had - though not a nuclear monopoly, still clear dominance, as the Soviets had only developed a nuclear device the year prior and had doubtful means at best of delivering them,
- after years of McCarthyite "Red Scare" politics and the collapse of Nationalist China,
- during a shooting war where US troops were not only under attack, they were being defeated in detail by superior ground forces (the Chinese intervention),
- the military leadership (led by General MacArthur, a war hero who was more popular than the President) was agitating for the expansion of the war.

The fact that the US did not use nuclear weapons in the Korean War Cold War state of 1950 makes it highly doubtful that they ever would have in the still-unclear atmosphere of mid-1945.

[krokodile]

You act as though dropping the bomb involves the masses. No, it involves a green flag from the president.

Making a missile fire, or however we had them propelled back then (Past B-52's, right?) didn't involve the masses of American voters going to the local pollhouse and casting their vote.

[Qmanol]

And how much plutonium was there to make these magical bombs with? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the production of plutonium very slow at that point? I though the three bombs created used up pretty much all the plutonium produced at that time.

[Kunikos]

Is it possible to make a magic bomb that will destroy all P&R posts in EE?

[Desslock]

Some people would argue that a US-USSR war that would no doubt kill millions, based on no casus belli whatsoever, would have been a terrible idea.

Again, their ally-- the reason they went to war -- was being conquered by Russia. If it was reason enough to go to war in the first place, why is that insufficient casus belli whatsoever? It was completely immoral to abandon their ally to occupation and death.

You could argue that you had to abandon that goal, because the costs were higher than you were willing to pay after years of war, but that's not a moral, principled position, and it sure as fuck isn't because you had no Cassius Clay belli (which may be the most offensive thing you've ever said on this board, and that's saying a lot). It's because you don't consider continuing war to be worth living up to your previous promise, and you don't care about the citizens in allied states enough to be willing to risk more lives of your own citizens.

[Desslock]

Is it possible to make a magic bomb that will destroy all P&R posts in EE?

Why do you consider posts debating history to belong in a forum on religion and politics?

[Kunikos]

Why do you consider posts debating history to belong in a forum on religion and politics?

History is necessarily intertwined with politics. Shall we get Tom to rename it to "Politics, History, and Religion" ?

[Desslock]

It's literally unconceivable that the American and British public would have tolerated the nuclear bombing of a country that was their wartime ally a few weeks prior

You're wrong. The betrayals of Eastern Europe that occurred at the Yalta and Tehran conferences had to be hidden from the public precisely because the public sentiment was very much against the Soviets and allowing them to occupy the Baltic states, Balkans and Eastern Europe. Even prior to 1945, there was a growing sentiment in the West that war with the Soviets was inevitable.

The "red scare" predated the war - hell, the western powers intervened in Russian in the early 1920s to try to prevent the Soviets from controlling Russia. The world had just been given a "never forget" lesson of the dangers of failing to confront a tyrant immediately, and instead allowing him to consolidate his power. Our entire civilization was put at risk for decades because of the failure to stop Stalin in 1945. Fortunately, the "only" thing that happened was millions of our allies were murdered, enslaved in gulags, denied all fundamental rights and freedoms and anything beyond a subsistence standard of living for almost 50 years.

[Chris Nahr]

Again, their ally-- the reason they went to war -- was being conquered by Russia.

The occupation of Poland was not the "reason" anyone went to war, just the last straw that broke the camel's back. The reason (in the European theatre) was to defeat an increasingly powerful and aggressive Germany, and that reason was gone by 1945.

[Kunikos]

Weird, I thought the reason was because the American public felt like the Japanese had kicked them in the nuts and that they had to show the world that they weren't a country of pussies. After all, German aggression was going on LONG before America entered the war. The only way they could rally the public's support for entering the European front was to demonize Germans in all possible ways, including using television cartoons and comic books. It probably also didn't hurt that they were giving tons of people jobs by ramping up wartime production.

But whatever, I'm not a history major.

Edit: Oh, I see, you meant anyone's reason (meaning European countries).

[Desslock]

The occupation of Poland was not the "reason" anyone went to war, just the last straw that broke the camel's back.

It was actually the precise reason given in the Declaration of War. Britain and France had a written alliance with Poland, assuring their mutual defence, and Poland was invaded, so Britain and France immediately lived up to their obligations and declared war. And later abandoned those commitments at the end of the war.

France and Poland had an alliance going back to 1921: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Polish_Alliance. Britain and France had formal alliances going back to the beginning of the century, long prior to WW1. Britain repeatedly committed to give Poland "all support in their power" and assured its geographic integrity. Poland was ultimately betrayed by the western powers, but the one commitment they lived up to was to declare war on Germany when Poland was invaded.

People also forget that the Soviets started WW2 on the "other side", or at least not on our side, as they also invaded Poland and had a non-aggression treaty with Germany. There was never a lot of love for the Soviets in the west - they were just given support during the war through the lend-lease program because they were fighting a mutual enemy.

[Chris Nahr]

Britain and France had a written alliance with Poland, assuring their mutual defence, and Poland was invaded, so Britain and France immediately lived up to their obligations and declared war.

...and you think they entered this obligation out of their deep and undying love for Poland? Their goal was to contain Germany, and Poland just happened to be sitting on its eastern border. As you point out yourself, this written obligation can't have been all that important to Britain and France since they conveniently ignored the Soviet Union's participation in the 1939 division of Poland.

There was never a lot of love for the Soviets in the west - they were just given support during the war through the lend-lease program because they were fighting a mutual enemy.

You are confusing "the west" with America. There was a lot of love for the Soviets throughout Europe, before and after the war. Communist parties were and are relevant political factors in France and Italy, and the Soviet occupation of Central Europe certainly enjoyed far more popular support than the Nazis ever got. Hell, the communist parties even got back into power in free elections after 1990!

[Kyle Wilson]

Some people would argue that a US-USSR war that would no doubt kill millions, based on no casus belli whatsoever, would have been a terrible idea. This is the kind of question only someone who wasn't alive at the time, and hadn't lived through a world war that killed millions (and possibly lived through the other world war, too) could possibly ask.

I.e., Churchill.

[Desslock]

...and you think they entered this obligation out of their deep and undying love for Poland? Their goal was to contain Germany, and Poland just happened to be sitting on its eastern border.!

I'm not disagreeing with you that the primary concern of France and Britain was their own security, and that they were more concerned with preventing Hitler from threatening their societes than they were with defending others -- they obviously would have otherwise gone to war during the Sudetenland occupation, instead of adopting a policy of appeasement.

But their commitment to Poland wasn't meaningless either -- it was a formal, legal agreement (in the case of France, at least), and the three countries were allied since the post-WW1 war Poland had against Soviet Russia. They had decades of assuring each other's security, and close economic and political relations.

You are confusing "the west" with America. There was a lot of love for the Soviets throughout Europe, before and after the war

That's true - I am referring primarily to American sentiment there. Views were less uniform in the rest of the "west", but there was certainly still a lot of dislike towards the Soviets. Britain, in particular, had sentiments pretty similar to the Americans towards the Soviets.

[Gordon Cameron]

But their commitment to Poland wasn't meaningless either -- it was a formal, legal agreement

Maybe there comes a point at which you decide a "formal, legal agreement" isn't worth another X years of wholesale slaughter and another X million people thrown into the meat grinder. Those who led the Allies in World War II might have also remembered the meaningless carnage of World War I, a pointless war that began as a cascade of interlocking formal legal agreements collapsed in upon themselves, resulting in a colossal madness that the framers of those agreements never could have anticipated.

Maybe "war fatigue" is an intangible and nonrational impulse, but I can certainly imagine why it might have been a serious factor in decision making at the time.

[Jason McCullough]

Again, their ally-- the reason they went to war -- was being conquered by Russia. If it was reason enough to go to war in the first place, why is that insufficient casus belli whatsoever? It was completely immoral to abandon their ally to occupation and death.

You could argue that you had to abandon that goal, because the costs were higher than you were willing to pay after years of war, but that's not a moral, principled position, and it sure as fuck isn't because you had no Cassius Clay belli (which may be the most offensive thing you've ever said on this board, and that's saying a lot). It's because you don't consider continuing war to be worth living up to your previous promise, and you don't care about the citizens in allied states enough to be willing to risk more lives of your own citizens.

In legalistic/diplomatic terms of the standards nations should use for behavior, Treaty of Westphalia and all that, the UK had a casus belli and legal case to fight the USSR over Poland if they wanted, due to treaties and alliances. The US did not; we no treaty framework around Poland. If the UK wanted to commit suicide they could go right ahead and fight the USSR to defend Poland, but that also would not obligate the US to join in.

In realist terms of interests, the US had no significant interests in Eastern Europe.

On moral grounds, I cannot imagine how you can rationally come to the conclusion that saving Eastern Europe from the Soviets would be worth the costs, or even likely to succeed in the first place. It's basically "let's go on an bloodthirsty adventure to give foreigners better governments," which has a terrible track record as the sole justification for military action when you're fighting a third world country, much less a country with a bigger army than yours.

Kyle, you'll note Churchill did not actually end up favoring fighting a war with the USSR.

[Desslock]

Maybe "war fatigue" is an intangible and nonrational impulse, but I can certainly imagine why it might have been a serious factor in decision making at the time.

Sure, it was the main (only) factor, and not an irrational one either. But that doesn't mean it was the correct thing to do at the time.

[Jason McCullough]

Just so I have this straight, the "correct thing" to do was to get millions killed, and possibly lose, trying to take out the USSR in 1945?

[Kyle Wilson]

Just so I have this straight, the "correct thing" to do was to get millions killed, and possibly lose, trying to take out the USSR in 1945?

Millions were killed. Twenty million Russians died under Stalin. It's likely that more would have died in another war, but the choice here is total war vs. genocide, not total war vs. hugs and puppies. The "peace" that we ended up with was, at best, a tragic necessity.

[Jason McCullough]

Invading the USSR in 1945 would not go back in time and resurrect the people Stalin killed before 1945. How many died after 1945? From what I can tell, most of the murdering was previous to that. This is important if you're going to retroactively assert war would save lives.

More importantly, what sort of calculation leads to a war against the USSR 1) having a likelihood of actually succeeding, 2) lowering the overall post-1945 death toll?

[Desslock]

In realist terms of interests, the US had no significant interests in Eastern Europe.

True, although clearly the lessons of appeasement and its horrific results were still fresh -- in the short term, the U.S. may have had no direct benefit from preventing the USSR from enslaving Eastern Europe, but failing to prevent it when it would have been comparatively easy to do so led to entire citizenship of the U.S. being one incident or misstep from annihilation for decades.

Your insistence that standing up to the Soviets in 1945 would have inevitably led to a "bloodthirty adventure", a "ten year war", is also off-base. Leaving aside what would be an absurdly ignorant debate about how a war could/would have unfolded, morally standing up for the principles of the soon-to-be founded United Nations, and preventing millions from being enslaved, by saying "hey, get the fuck out, this is unacceptable" wouldn't have even necessarily have led to war at all, especially after the demonstration of that Atom bomb.

If there was any doubt as to the USSR's expansionist and hostile intentions in 1945 (and there really weren't, since the Soviets insisted from the outset that they were entitled to occupy ALL of Germany, for "reparations"), they were dispelled very quickly - less than a couple of months after the war, at the Potsdam conference, which quickly led to the 1947 Truman Doctrine and the Berlin Crisis of 1948. The West did not accede to the Soviet desire to occupy all of Germany, they did not accede to the Soviet desire to cut off Berlin in 1948, and both times the Soviets backed down, and they should have been less permissive in Eastern Europe as well.

[Desslock]

From what I can tell,.

Please just stop. Your pen is a fountain of ignorance.

You're like a little child trying to recite history from reading a Captain America comic book

[Jason McCullough]

So to summarize, you're completely dodging the questions about costs, benefits, and likely outcomes, justifying the policy with appeals to vague aspirational platitudes, throwing insults, and the central assertion that really all we had to do, like every other foreign policy conflict in history, was scare them enough and they'd do whatever we wanted.

The Green Lantern theory of Geopolitics (http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/blog/yglesias/2006/jul/10/the_green_lantern_theory_of_geopolitics).

Up at Cato Unbound you can find Reuel Marc Gerecht's latest argument (http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/07/09/reuel-marc-gerecht/cognitive-dissonance-the-state-of-americas-iran-policy/) for bombing Iran. I think I've covered (http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=11431) the policy arguments (http://www.prospect.org/web/view-print.ww?id=11182) on this score extensively elsewhere, so let me just note something in particular about Gerecht's essay. Like a lot of conservative writing on foreign affairs it puts a huge amount of weight on things like will, resolve, and perceptions of strength and weakness. It's a view of things that reminds me of nothing so much as the Green Lantern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Lantern) comics, which I enjoy a great deal but regard as a poor guide to national security policy.

The ring is a bit goofy. Basically, it lets its bearer generate streams of green energy that can take on all kinds of shapes. The important point is that, when fully charged what the ring can do is limited only by the stipulation that it create green stuff and by the user's combination of will and imagination. Consequently, the main criterion for becoming a Green Lantern is that you need to be a person capable of "overcoming fear" which allows you to unleash the ring's full capacities. It used to be the case that the rings wouldn't function against yellow objects, but this is now understood to be a consequence of the "Parallax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_%28comics%29) fear anomaly" which, along with all the ring's other limits, can be overcome with sufficient willpower.

Suffice it to say that I think all this makes an okay premise for a comic book. But a lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that, roughly speaking, we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient military force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower.

What's more, this theory can't be empirically demonstrated to be wrong. Things that you or I might take as demonstrating the limited utility of military power to accomplish certain kinds of things are, instead, taken as evidence of lack of will. Thus we see that problems in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't reasons to avoid new military ventures, but reasons why we must embark upon them: "Add a failure in Iran to a failure in Iraq to a failure in Afghanistan, and we could supercharge Islamic radicalism in a way never before seen. The widespread and lethal impression of American weakness under the Clinton administration, which did so much to energize bin Ladenism in the 1990s, could look like the glory years of American power compared to what the Bush administration may leave in its wake."

I don't even know what else to say about this business. It's just a bizarre way of looking at the world. The wreakage that the Bush administration is leaving in its wake is a direct consequence of this will-o-centric view of the world and Gerecht takes it as a reason to deploy more willpower.

This isn't just mockery. I honestly don't understand at all the neo-conservative world view where the only things that stopped us from winning in Vietnam, winning in Iraq, and taking out the USSR were failures of steely-eyed will. Threaten the USSR? They'll scurry back out of Eastern Europe. Just keep slaughtering indefinitely in Vietnam and Iraq, and shut up the critics back at home? We'll win then. The only thing stopping from you from punching out God is a tall enough stepladder, too, I guess.

Real life isn't a John Wayne movie.

[Desslock]

Dude, move that shit to politics and religion. You're living up to everyone's lowest expectations - a discussion about whether confronting Russia in 1945 was the right thing to do, leads you to post inflammatory crap about Neocons, Iran and Afghanistan? Jesus, Kunikos was right. It's bad enough you're a moron, don't be a jackass as well.

LAME

[Midnight Son]

I reluctantly agree with the above right winger.

[Jason McCullough]

Please just stop. Your pen is a fountain of ignorance.

You're like a little child trying to recite history from reading a Captain America comic book.

It's because you don't consider continuing war to be worth living up to your previous promise, and you don't care about the citizens in allied states enough to be willing to risk more lives of your own citizens.

it sure as fuck isn't because you had no Cassius Clay belli (which may be the most offensive thing you've ever said on this board, and that's saying a lot.

The betrayals of Eastern Europe that occurred at the Yalta and Tehran conferences.

I guess you're right - compared to that sort of non-inflammatory coldly rational stuff, talking about how the neoconservative movement has a consistent foreign policy approach based on all-things-are-possible-with-enough-willpower is pretty outrageous and out of bounds of me.

[Sarkus]

...and you think they entered this obligation out of their deep and undying love for Poland? Their goal was to contain Germany, and Poland just happened to be sitting on its eastern border. As you point out yourself, this written obligation can't have been all that important to Britain and France since they conveniently ignored the Soviet Union's participation in the 1939 division of Poland.


Not true. It was generally believed in Britain and France that the Soviet Union had become an ally of Germany's when they signed a non-agression pact right before the invasion of Poland. In fact, when the Soviets invaded Finland a few months later, both Britain and France spent considerable time and resources trying to figure out how to get aid and troops to Finland. At the time Finland accepted Soviet territorial demands in the spring of 1940, France was just about to send an expedition to Finland. So, you can hardly say they "ignored" Soviet actions.

However, once Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, it became, for the British, a "enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario. Lesser of two evils, etc.

That said, a war with the Soviets in mid-1945 was ridiculous thought. For one thing, the war with Japan wasn't even over and despite revisionist arguments, the reality is that nobody was counting on nuclear weapons to even work or be effective. In mid 1945 the US military was planning for a massive invasion of the Japanese home islands, not thinking about a war in Europe against our ally.

And, as others have pointed out, having two bombs to use on Japan in 1945 does not an arsenal make. Do you realize that as late as 1947 the entire US nuclear arsenal was based at one airbase and assigned to one bomber wing? Because that's all we had.

[arctangent]

http://jimala.com/newpost2.jpg

[Lum]

Yeah, let's keep the P&R out of this.

Now then, back to history. I agree that Stalin was as dangerous a leader as Hitler, and in fact have asserted before (based on research historians have done on the Soviet archives) that Stalin actually was planning a war with the West in the late 50's, immediately after a second Holocaust of Soviet Jewry. Thankfully, he died first.

That being said, the West had no business attacking the Soviets, ESPECIALLY right after World War 2.

http://image.mplib.org/wp/MPW00288.jpg

Not exactly red-scare material, is it? In fact by 1945 there was starting to develop a view that "Uncle Joe" wasn't that bad, borne of the Great Depression tainting the laissez-faire business atmosphere of the 1920s and a growing influential left wing in government, up to Roosevelt himself who was quoted more than once as feeling more at ease with Stalin than Churchill (the feeling was returned, Stalin was quite miffed at having to deal with Truman instead at Potsdam).

Of course as we saw, it only took 5 years to turn that around and remake a Second Red Scare. But 5 weeks? Unthinkable, as the plan was correctly labelled. Not only would you be asking war-weary democracies (who promply threw both British and American administrations out of office within a decade) to continue a total war footing, but to do so with a "Oceania is NOW at war with Eurasia" doublethink. It just couldn't have happened.

Add to that the minor fact that the Western Allies *couldn't* have defeated the Soviets, except *arguably*, *maybe* with nuclear weapons, assuming we had more at the time than enough for token strikes. The Soviet Union's military was far larger than ours, and with its best military leaders ready and fresh from demolishing the Wehrmacht. And, arguably, nuclear strikes against Soviet cities would merely make them *mad*. They had just taken the best Hitler had to throw at them, and won. It would have been ridiculously easy for Soviet propagandists to paint a pre-emptive Western strike as an attack on the Motherland by different breeds of fascists.

And finally, as I said, an America in the midst of McCarthy and the Korean War declined to use nuclear weapons. It's ridiculous to assert that an America fresh from World War 2 and still technically allied with the Soviets would be more willing.

[Jason McCullough]

Now then, back to history. I agree that Stalin was as dangerous a leader as Hitler, and in fact have asserted before (based on research historians have done on the Soviet archives) that Stalin actually was planning a war with the West in the late 50's, immediately after a second Holocaust of Soviet Jewry. Thankfully, he died first.

That's the research that's not online, right? It'd certainly be a head-bender if true, but I find it more than a little outlandish something that big is just a known thing off in the professional historian archives somewhere.

[Lum]

That's the research that's not online, right? It'd certainly be a head-bender if true, but I find it more than a little outlandish something that big is just a known thing off in the professional historian archives somewhere.

They have these things called "books", you see. This is a good place to start. (http://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Court-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/1400076781/)

[Desslock]

I guess you're right - compared to that sort of non-inflammatory coldly rational stuff, talking about how the neoconservative movement has a consistent foreign policy approach based on all-things-are-possible-with-enough-willpower is pretty outrageous and out of bounds of me.

Again, just stop. Nobody other than yourself is talking about "neoconservative movements" or a their "consistent foreign policy based upon willpower".

Get your piss out of our cornflakes -- if you know squadush about history, don't try to compensate for your intellectual impotence by trying to change the topic to your deranged political fetishes.

[Jason McCullough]

Desslock, you're probably a neoconservative, like Mark Steyn and William Kristol. You largely have the same set of attitudes and policy preferences, and appear to share the same reasoning to get there. What about "the reasoning you use with your views on this sound a lot like the reasoning you use on Iraq, Iran, and Vietnam, and share the same errors" is inflammatory?

[Desslock]

Of course as we saw, it only took 5 years to turn that around and remake a Second Red Scare. But 5 weeks? Unthinkable, as the plan was correctly labelled. Not only would you be asking war-weary democracies (who promply threw both British and American administrations out of office within a decade) to continue a total war footing, but to do so with a "Oceania is NOW at war with Eurasia" doublethink. It just couldn't have happened.

Good summary, except it took far less than 5 years to turn that around - at the very latest, it was 18 months with the declaration of the Truman Doctrine (and Churchill gave his famous "Iron Curtain" speach in 1946). Arguably the open hostility started with Potsdam in 1945.

The Orwell quote you gave is ironic, perhaps intentionally, since he wrote 1984 in the late 40s at least in part to criticize the doublethink that led to the type of propaganda declaring the USSR as our friend in the example you provided (and the reverse propanda afterwards).

[Desslock]

Desslock, you're probably a neoconservative, like Mark Steyn and William Kristol.

ZIP IT. ZIP-ARAMA. ZIP-A-SAURUS.

Seriously dude, quit with the politics. Nobody is interested in that stuff here, least of all me. There's a reason people avoid your circle-jerk section of this website. Have you no shame?

[Jason McCullough]

Lum, I don't get it. None of the editorial reviews mention that the book contains the blockbuster revelation that Stalin was planning on going after the west but died first.

[Jason McCullough]

ZIP IT. ZIP-ARAMA. ZIP-A-SAURUS.

You seriously confuse me.

[Lum]

Lum, I don't get it. None of the editorial reviews mention that the book contains the blockbuster revelation that Stalin was planning on going after the west but died first.

....because it's not a blockbuster revelation? Because it's a *theory* based on Stalin's raging paranoia, expansionism, and archival records, mainly from Korean War planning?

I mean, really, could you just stay on topic a bit? Because, you know, I was agreeing with you. I'm sorry if the "But yeah, Stalin was a threatening, dangerous dictator" tangent offended your leftist sensibility that decrees that all things American are spiteful neocon warmongering and all things Soviet are hearts and flowers.

[Sarkus]

That's the research that's not online, right? It'd certainly be a head-bender if true, but I find it more than a little outlandish something that big is just a known thing off in the professional historian archives somewhere.

While I'm not going to claim that everybody loved Stalin/USSR at the end of WW2, it is also not true that everybody hated them and would have easily gone to war against them. For example, part of the reason why Patton was relieved of command soon after the war in Europe ended was because he kept making comments about his willingness to fight the Soviets.

Finally, the Soviet Union was far less of an "evil empire" after Stalin died in 1953. It's very tricky to try and argue that somehow eastern Europe would have been better off being the battleground for a war that would have involved using atomic weapons.

[Lum]

Good summary, except it took far less than 5 years to turn that around - at the very latest, it was 18 months with the declaration of the Truman Doctrine (and Churchill gave his famous "Iron Curtain" speach in 1946). Arguably the open hostility started with Potsdam in 1945.

The Western-Soviet rift probably *started* with Potsdam but I'd hesitate to call it open hostility; that happened with the fall of Nationalist China and the Soviet nuclear weapons blast, both in 1949. Before that the UN was just starting up and the Soviets were still digesting Eastern Europe. Remember, in the aftermath of the European War the Allies willingly turned over most of the Russians who fought alongside the Germans (who were mostly promptly executed) -- not really the action of incipient cold warriors.

[Desslock]

You seriously confuse me.

You just can't stop filtering any discussion through your political views, regardless of the topic. Normal people aren't wired that way. If anything, my current views on Iran and foreign policy, etc., are informed by my education and knowledge of history, not the other way around, which seems to be your approach.

Don't you get that transposing your views of current American politics (which, to several of the posters in this thread, is as unimportant and foreign as your views on the 5th leading political party in Sweden) because you lack any education in this topic, but insist on contributing, is annoying? There's a whole other forum to debate politics.

[Desslock]

The Western-Soviet rift probably *started* with Potsdam but I'd hesitate to call it open hostility; that happened with the fall of Nationalist China and the Soviet nuclear weapons blast, both in 1949.

Basically agree, but you're pushing the timeline out too far - the countries were actually on the brink of war the year before during the 1948 Berlin Crisis -- if the unprecedented airlift hadn't been a success, and it was by no means a certainty that it would be since nothing on its scale had ever been attempted, let alone sustained -- there would likely have been some form of military conflict there and then, which may or may not have escalated into open warfare.

And long before that, in 1946 substantial aid was given to Greece and Turkey to prevent the Soviet Union from estabilishing puppet regimes in those countries. Churchill's gave his Iron Curtain speech; in 1947 Truman unveiled the containment plan that would become known as his doctrine; the Marshall Plan was formulated, etc.

[Lum]

Yep, forgot about the Berlin airlift, that's probably the first "cold war" engagement, come to think of it. Still, we're quibbling about the far end of the scale, where the plan we're discussing literally assumed that the US/UK forces would attack Russia before Japan had even surrendered. Outside of Patton's battle frenzy I don't think anyone else took that possibility remotely seriously. It would be as insane as, well, Germany invading Russia in 1941.

[Jason McCullough]

You just can't stop filtering any discussion through your political views, regardless of the topic. Normal people aren't wired that way. If anything, my current views on Iran and foreign policy, etc., are informed by my education and knowledge of history, not the other way around, which seems to be your approach.

Don't you get that transposing your views of current American politics (which, to several of the posters in this thread, is as unimportant and foreign as your views on the 5th leading political party in Sweden) because you lack any education in this topic, but insist on contributing, is annoying? There's a whole other forum to debate politics.

This would make more sense if you weren't doing the same thing. "The betrayal at Yalta" is a position held solely by wingnuts, not clear-eyed non-ideological historians. Lum, for what it's worth, is doing the "history only" bit here, not you.

[Jason McCullough]

....because it's not a blockbuster revelation? Because it's a *theory* based on Stalin's raging paranoia, expansionism, and archival records, mainly from Korean War planning?

I mean, really, could you just stay on topic a bit? Because, you know, I was agreeing with you. I'm sorry if the "But yeah, Stalin was a threatening, dangerous dictator" tangent offended your leftist sensibility that decrees that all things American are spiteful neocon warmongering and all things Soviet are hearts and flowers.

I'm pretty sure "Stalin was planning on invading Europe but died first" is a really, really, big bit of news. It would completely throw up in the air a lot of settled consensus around deterrence, containment, superpower relations, and what have you. I'd think that's topical to a discussion about the wisdom of trying to push the USSR out of Europe in 1945. If it's just an somewhat-supported extrapolation that would make sense about why I've never heard about it; I thought you previously implied there was smoking-gun level documentation.

Also, what the hell is with the personal attacks on me in this thread?

[Desslock]

Outside of Patton's battle frenzy I don't think anyone else took that possibility remotely seriously. It would be as insane as, well, Germany invading Russia in 1941.

Agree - like you said, there were perhaps insurmountable practical issues. I just strongly disagreed with the suggestion that doing so would have been baseless, or less moral a position than the alternative.

Other strange WW2 plans - Chamberlain's belated invasion of Norway, and some of the crazy stuff to more directly get Franco's Spain and Turkey involved in the war (or to ensure they stayed uninvolved, when the plans would inevitably had the opposite result).

[Desslock]

"The betrayal at Yalta" is a position held solely by wingnuts, not clear-eyed non-ideological historians.

You're just determined to pronounce your ignorance, aren't you?

The betrayal of the prior commitments to Poland at Yalta is an objective, historical and legal fact, which you perhaps are taking out of context and ascribing some greater philosophical meeting. There is zero political content in what I said.

[Jason McCullough]

Along the same lines, I take it "the USSR would have left Europe if we threatened them" is a boring historical fact of no controversy?

[Lum]

If it's just an somewhat-supported extrapolation that would make sense about why I've never heard about it; I thought you previously implied there was smoking-gun level documentation.

Of course there's no smoking-gun level documentation because Stalin wasn't a dime-store pulp fiction villain. "Muahaha, once my fiendish plans are complete I shall DESTROY THE WEST!!!" Instead we're forced to analyze what Stalin was actually saying and doing, which was encouraging client states to engage the West militarily (North Korea, China), and whipping up a war fervor among his people, mainly through finding weird and bizarre "plots" for show trials, such as the Jews trying to annex the Crimea, and, as conversations with his underlings showed, seeing the world through a prism of paranoia (the clinical kind, not the vituperative kind). There is also the small matter of Communism's inherent expansionism as state theology - while Stalin wasn't a theocrat like Lenin was, he certainly made it the state religion of his people. Constant confrontation with the West, ending in violence, was a consistent refrain of early-1950's Soviet propaganda.

Stalin knew that as long as the West held nuclear superiority there was little point in invading Europe (which was his probable long term goal), but was certainly bent on rectifying that; Khrushchev's taking over the reins turned that around to focus on agricultural development, but the job was eventually completed by Brezhnev. By that point, though, the USSR was no longer led by a single clinically insane dictator.

Also, what the hell is with the personal attacks on me in this thread?

I think it started when you started calling Desslock the Green Lantern or something.

[Jason McCullough]

Joking comparisions of a given style of thinking to a comic book are personal insults, I guess.

Back on the Stalin's invasion plans thing, I did find manage to find something on it (http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2001/0104-09.htm); didn't think of "Stalin war planning" as a search term previously. Argues for a reverse interpretation, but still interesting.

[Tyjenks]

This is the best non-P&R, P&R thread evar.

[Desslock]

Seriously, wtf is wrong with you? I corrected your absurd statement that there was no justification for standing up to the Soviets, because there were actually legal, moral, and perhaps self-interested reasons for doing so, given the resulting decades of being on the nuclear brink.

And then stated that your 'pulled out-of-ass' rhetoric about consequences was off-base and perhaps incorrect, since war wasn't an inevitable result to standing up to the Soviets:

"morally standing up for the principles of the soon-to-be founded United Nations, and preventing millions from being enslaved, by saying "hey, get the fuck out, this is unacceptable" wouldn't have even necessarily have led to war"

Which you misquote in simplistic terms as a factual assertion that the USSR would have left Europe if we threatend them? It was the opposite of statement of fact - I said we don't know that the ridiculous 10-year war you were making up would have happened at all.

And when you're informed that saying "Poland was betrayed at Yalta" is a historical and legal fact, not a political opinion, so please leave politics out of this discussion --- rather than just apologize, or moving your ignorant ass to the P&R forum, your response is just to ignore that uncomfortable realization and to move on to making another misrespresentation of one of my quotes?. GTFO, seriously.

[Iron Xides]

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/8185/usepmsbj4.png

[Rollory]

Well, to answer post #2, I posted it here because I figured it was an interesting historical tidbit and didn't include any reasons to hate Bush or liberals, and more people would see it here than in P&R. Maybe I should have known better.

[Iron Xides]

Well, to answer post #2, I posted it here because I figured it was an interesting historical tidbit and didn't include any reasons to hate Bush or liberals, and more people would see it here than in P&R. Maybe I should have known better.

Why would you think anyone who wasn't into politics would want to see it, though? There's very little to discuss aside from whether or not it's a good idea, which is a mostly political dilemma.

[Gordon Cameron]

No, I think it's reasonable to put it here. It's history. A lot of history contains politics and may even echo up to the politics of the present day, but a discussion of it can still belong to a different category.

Speaking personally, I am relatively apolitical yet fascinated by history.

[Lizard_King]

Well, to answer post #2, I posted it here because I figured it was an interesting historical tidbit and didn't include any reasons to hate Bush or liberals, and more people would see it here than in P&R. Maybe I should have known better.
Why? I'm pretty sure that the guy who actually owns the forum will chime in when he feels you've crossed a line. Until then, you just have to accept that in return for trying to set a different tone for a historical discussion, you're going to get the occasional poorly made imageshacking or "EE is my playground for stupid polls! Don't Taint It!". Those kids that ratted you out for smoking behind the cafeteria just for the sake of ratting you out had to grow up into someone.

Until then, you've created an interesting discussion with some novelties in it. What is there to be ashamed of?

[Jason McCullough]

First, I didn't say there were "no justifications for standing up to the Soviets." I said there were no diplomatic (no treaties), interest-based (on realist grounds, eastern europe is not important), or moral grounds (based on the body counts) for the United States launching a war against the Soviet Union to get them out of Eastern Europe, which is near as I can tell the only even theoretically successful way it could have happened.

The UK is the only country you can theoretically pin a moral betrayal accusation on, but 1) as mentioned, it wasn't a moral-based decision to ally with Poland in the first place, so you can't include the word "moral" with "betrayal", and 2) there's no way they could have possibly succeeded. I'm pretty sure it's not a moral betrayals of the UK when you're asking the only nation that even theoretically made a moral commitment to commit national suicide in a doomed proposition to liberate Poland.

Second, we don't "know" anything about events that didn't happen. Based on what we know of Stalin's paranoia and the USSR, however, it seems pretty uncontroversial that it would have taken a bloody long war. The governments and militaries of the the time certainly appeared to think so, as do the historians. Are there any non-marginal historians who don't think that?

On "the betrayal at Yalta", I guess it's theoretically possible you've never heard of it up in Canada, but here in the US it's a code phrase for neoconservatives and far-right types, in its most extreme form, saying that FDR literally betrayed Eastern Europe because he was a communist sympathizer, an idiot, a tool of communists in the state department, or something. McCarthy era accusations that were secret deals reached there, actual Republican presidential platforms about "renouncing any secret deals made at Yalta" - it's a never-ending source of red-baiting. Bush going to Latvia and talking about "betraying Eastern Europe" was part of this without the conspiracy angle - that if only FDR wasn't such a pansy, Stalin would have scurried back home. It's an incredibly political subject, which is I'm incredulous that you can seriously consider it a non-political bit of history.

See the google results (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=4HG&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=betrayal+at+yalta&spell=1) for what I'm talking about.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

You just can't stop filtering any discussion through your political views, regardless of the topic. Normal people aren't wired that way.

Preserved forever.

Desslock, you are exactly the wrong person to complain about McCullough's polarized politics.

[Desslock]

Speaking personally, I am relatively apolitical yet fascinated by history.

Exactly - history should be an exercise in uncovering the facts based upon analysis of the best primary evidence available. Wtf does that have to do with political opinions on political parties, or issues like gun control, abortion rights, global warming, taxation, and socialized medicine. Bah.

Sure, there are some historians who try to interpret events in terms of their current political views, generally to rationalize or exaggerate atrocities or mistreatment -- they're called "bad" historians.

Then there's guys like McCullough, who isn't a "good" or a "bad" historian, because his "historical knowledge" is solely derived from reading editorials at the Daily Kos, but who don't hesitate to let their lack of direct knowledge or study stop them from hoping in like the village idiot to explain that someone else's views must be "neoconservative" bushchimphitler talking points because some 18 year-old at the Huffington Post told him so.

[Desslock]

On "the betrayal at Yalta", I guess it's theoretically possible you've never heard of it up in Canada, but here in the US it's a code phrase for neoconservatives and far-right types,.

Dude, I could care less what you and your political nutcase buddies have decided are soooper-secret "code phrases" for whatever imaginary Cabal you're crying about this week.

And no, I'd never heard anyone use that historical fact as a political weapon. But I have heard politicians use the historical fact of the Munich Appeasement as a political weapon to criticize the conduct or political opinions of others. It doesn't matter if those historical facts are misappropriated, or correctly or erroneously used an analgous to other situations, that certainly doesn't alter their status as historical facts or in any way diminish the fact that they occurred, and it doesn't change the fact that you're using every inane post in your power to derail what could be an interesting historical discussion into a political discussion of your views on neocons and other absurdities that nobody gives a fuck about.

Why are you unable to stop? Are you really that clueless that it's unwanted here? Jesus, you've got guys like Midnight Son even stating you should stop.

[Kunikos]

EE is usually not this heated...

CANT WE ALL JUST GET ALONG??

[Desslock]

Desslock, you are exactly the wrong person to complain about McCullough's polarized politics.

Jesus, please don't insert more politics into this thread - if you've decided to flame me for some imagined wrong to your delicate political sensibilities, please move it to a more appropriate location where I can ignore it. Or PM me, and I'll actually answer it.

I'll actually take the initiative, and PM you instead, in the interests of trying to have a civil discussion and not derail this further.

[Midnight Son]

Stalin was an evil fuck, no?

[Iron Xides]

Until then, you've created an interesting discussion with some novelties in it. What is there to be ashamed of?

I like having the "novelty" of a thread primarily composed of two posters butting heads constrained to a subforum.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Jesus, please don't insert more politics into this thread - if you've decided to flame me for some imagined wrong to your delicate political sensibilities, please move it to a more appropriate location where I can ignore it.

The whole problem here is that you're defining your opinions as facts and Jason's as politics. I don't know whether your stated ignorance about the political baggage of this topic is real or feigned, but there is a long history of rightists emphasizing particular aspects of Allied-Soviet relations immediately post-WWII in order to turn that corner of history into a parable that glorifies war, typically in support of a new war. Your interpretation, particularly the use of the loaded term "betrayal," dovetails PERFECTLY with this narrative and is NOT a dispassionate examination of events.

Or PM me, and I'll actually answer it.

I'll actually take the initiative, and PM you instead, in the interests of trying to have a civil discussion and not derail this further.

Don't bother. This thread is irrevocably political and was from the first post. Nobody's derailing it, Rollory just switched it onto the wrong track.

[Jason McCullough]

What do you think when someone says "here's an earth-shattering bit of data or analysis, but you've never heard of it, and neither has someone with internet access bothered to mention it"?

In general, I think it is surprising if significant news or research doesn't end up on the internet. In this specific case, I had never heard of the evidence that Stalin was going to invade the west until Lum brought it up a couple times recently, and I was more than a little surprised something that seems like such a big deal to me wasn't immediatelly an available point of discussion all over the place. "Stalin was going to invade" is pretty bigt damned news, and I'd expect it to be the first thing mentioned, which is why I didn't get it.

That it's extrapolation and I was looking in the wrong places clears it up, I guess.

On the betrayal thing, it being a common phrase in Poland and also a bit of red-baiting in the US are not incompatible. I'm not making this up - see this bit from the 1952 (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showplatforms.php?platindex=R1952) Republican platform, which Eisenhower (http://www.google.com/search?q=1952+eisenhower+republican+platform+yalta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) disavowed:

The Government of the United States, under Republican leadership, will repudiate all commitments contained in secret understandings such as those of Yalta which aid Communist enslavements. It will be made clear, on the highest authority of the President and the Congress, that United States policy, as one of its peaceful purposes, looks happily forward to the genuine independence of those captive peoples.

[Ryan A]

I'd really like to see a picture of Jason McCullough. I always imagine him as a younger-looking version of ESPN's John Clayton.

[Midnight Son]

I'd really like to see a picture of Jason McCullough. I always imagine him as a younger-looking version of ESPN's John Clayton.

While pimpin' in his Z!

[Desslock]

Your interpretation, particularly the use of the loaded term "betrayal," dovetails PERFECTLY with this narrative and is NOT a dispassionate examination of events..

It may not be dispassionate, but it's certainly objectively historically and legally accurate that the Polish government was betrayed. The western allies committed to ensuring the political integrity of the Polish state, and instead they broke those promises, and legal commitments, and (a) allowed the USSR to annex much of Eastern Poland, (b) allowed the rest of Poland to become a puppet state; and (c) "unrecognized" the Polish Government in exile, which was operating out of Britain, and which had contributed all of its available manpower and other resources to the Allied war effort, and stripped away all of their power and legitimacy. That "betrayal" is an objective fact.

I really don't care if politicians, or political pundits, use/misuse facts or situations as comparative analogies, etc. -- those new connotations don't mean it's inappropriate, when talking about the actual historical event (as opposed to some analogy), to actually refer to the historical event! Don't attack someone for talking about a historical event just because you don't like how that historical event is currently being misused, in your opinion, by contemporary politicians.

I'm not dispassionate about the betrayal of Poland, so I'm certainly going to have little tolerance for foolish, factually inaccurate asserations. I'm downright snippy. The part of Poland that was annexed by the Soviets included my father's home, his parents, and many of his friends and family. He was a 25 year old lawyer when the Soviets invaded, shortly after Germany attacked Western Poland. He fled and acting as a ski courier for the resistance during the short period when Poland held out and shortly after (there's actually a book written about him and his three friends who were couriers, which Pope John Paul II eventually read and wrote a cool personal letter to my father about during the 80s). Then he fled to Britain, and fought as an officer in the British 8th Army for the rest of the war in North Africa and Italy against Rommel and crew.

After the allies decided they had to leave Poland to the Soviets, he realized he would be unable to return home and had a heart attack, and remained in a British hospital for several months. When he recovered, he remained in the British army, and eventually British intelligence, for 9 more years. When it became known in the Soviet Union that he was working for British intelligence, his parents, wife (who he hadn't been able to see in over a decade) and most of his family were all among the millions of innocents murdered by Stalin and the Soviets in post-war period who Jason doesn't realize existed (try reading some Solzhenitsyn, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich).

Then he moved to Canada where he worked in the Canadian intelligence service (CSIS, which initially was part of the RCMP), where he met my mother, was responsible for the sole case in Canadian history of a Soviet citizen being convicted of espionage, and raised a grumpy Desslock.

[Jason McCullough]

Have you considered that maybe with your personal history on this subject, it's entirely possible you're not doing a unbiased analysis of the events, and maybe I'm not just some crazy motherfucker for disagreeing with you on what is and isn't a historical fact? I'm sorry to hear about it, for what it's worth.

Maybe what we're disagreeing about is the multiple meanings (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/betray) of betray. They clearly abandoned them in their time of need, definition 3; however, when this is discussed in the US, conservatives are usually connotating definition 2: to deliver to an enemy by treachery, which upgrades it to actual malice.

[Sarkus]

Of course there's no smoking-gun level documentation because Stalin wasn't a dime-store pulp fiction villain. "Muahaha, once my fiendish plans are complete I shall DESTROY THE WEST!!!" Instead we're forced to analyze what Stalin was actually saying and doing, which was encouraging client states to engage the West militarily (North Korea, China)

I would disagree on the example of North Korea. There is considerable evidence that the Soviets had no expectation of US involvement in Korea, mainly because of public statements made by the US that indicated there was no intention of defending South Korea. In fact, the whole reason that the Korean War became a "UN Police Action" was because the Soviets were boycotting the meeting where it was authorized. Had they been there they could have easily boycotted it. It never ocurred to them that the US would ask for UN authorization to get involved. That hardly fits with the idea of Stalin's big evil plan.

In a general sense, sure, Communism called for everybody in the world to join. Certainly, they were willing to see that accomplished by whatever means necessary. That said, the Soviets right after WW2 were in pretty bad shape - 20 million or more war dead, the most productive parts of the country having been fought over for years. I tend to think that at least right after the war Stalin was more concerned with short-term security and economic recovery then thinking about whether it was time to order the tank armies to head for the Rhine river. Besides, in the paranoid mind of Stalin all the heroic war generals were now a threat to his power.

[Desslock]

Maybe what we're disagreeing about is the multiple meanings (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/betray) of betray. They clearly abandoned them in their time of need, definition 3; however, when this is discussed in the US, conservatives are usually connotating definition 2: to deliver to an enemy by treachery, which upgrades it to actual malice.

Is this a joke post? How is this in any way relevant to a discussion about whether there was "Cassuis Clay Beli" to go to stand up to the Soviets in 1945? You're one weird dude. I'm sorry to hear about it, for what it's worth.

[Sarkus]

It may not be dispassionate, but it's certainly objectively historically and legally accurate that the Polish government was betrayed.


I don't think anyone, including Jason, is questioning the idea that Poland was screwed over by how WW2 ended, and betrayal is certainly a word that can be used. From a legal standpoint, however, the United States had no responsibility to do more than it did, i.e. try and convince the Soviets to allow a free Poland. There are no treaties or international agreements that pledged the US to Poland in any way. If it had a moral responsibility, than so did every country in the world, including those who were neutral. Britain's responsibilities were certainly greater, but see below.

More importantly, had the US/UK/Western Allies acted along the lines of the document quoted at the beginning of this thread, what would/could have been accomplished? Realistically, the Soviets had the greater conventional military forces and the end result very well could have been massive casualties on both sides and more of Europe under Soviet control. That's not a better outcome. Worth the risk? It's a tough question but sometimes there are no easy choices.

[Gordon Cameron]

Does legality automatically confer a casus belli, or should one factor the consequences of a war into it as well? It seems to me that a war against Russia in 1945 would have been horrifically destructive, so much so as potentially to rival or exceed the already appalling carnage of World War II. Doesn't that come into the calculation somewhere?

[Lum]

I would disagree on the example of North Korea. There is considerable evidence that the Soviets had no expectation of US involvement in Korea, mainly because of public statements made by the US that indicated there was no intention of defending South Korea.

According to Soviet records newly declassified after the fall of the USSR, Stalin took a direct role in encouraging Kim Il Sung (who had the initial idea), promised significant military aid, got China to go along, then backed out after China was committed (in the end, Soviet aid to North Korea was limited to piloting North Korean MiG-15s in MiG Alley).

In addition, Kim Il Sung was very much a Soviet protege (he spent most of WW2 in the Soviet Far East, where Kim Jong Il was born, and was installed as leader by the Soviet military commander in Korea) and at the time, Stalin was the undisputed leader of the Communist community of nations.

I tend to think that at least right after the war Stalin was more concerned with short-term security and economic recovery then thinking about whether it was time to order the tank armies to head for the Rhine river. Besides, in the paranoid mind of Stalin all the heroic war generals were now a threat to his power.

Stalin by the 1950s was on a rapid train to death and was mainly convinced everyone wanted to kill him and the world was conspiring against him. Ascribing him with any self-interested rationality isn't borne out by history. But yes, Stalin intended to wait until the USSR had recovered from WW2 to start WW3, which was why he was so cagey with challenging the West through puppets, smoke and mirrors until that point. (He also intended to attack Nazi Germany once the USSR had industrialized more, but Hitler beat him to it, which he took somewhat personally.)

[Lum]

Have you considered that maybe with your personal history on this subject, it's entirely possible you're not doing a unbiased analysis of the events, and maybe I'm not just some crazy motherfucker for disagreeing with you on what is and isn't a historical fact? I'm sorry to hear about it, for what it's worth.

Considering that you were the one who cast this entire debate of sixty-year-old history through a prism of the Iraq war, I hardly think it's appropriate for you to start painting yourself as the arbiter of unbiased discussion.

[Lum]

Does legality automatically confer a casus belli, or should one factor the consequences of a war into it as well? It seems to me that a war against Russia in 1945 would have been horrifically destructive, so much so as potentially to rival or exceed the already appalling carnage of World War II. Doesn't that come into the calculation somewhere?

Well, considering we didn't actually fight a war against Russia in 1945 despite the disagreements over Eastern Europe, yes, it did.

I think a more compelling argument against tossing the Russians out of Eastern Europe would be simply that, as the war plans stated, it was doubtful we *could*. One thing that isn't really acknowledged in the West at all (and has always been a sore spot among Russians) is that in World War 2, Russia really did *all* the heavy lifting in defeating Nazi Germany. The wars in Italy and later France were essentially sideshows; had Germany not been defeated militarily in 1943-1944 by Russia, the invasion of France would never have been concievable, and right to the end the troops committed to the East always dwarfed those based in the west. And those same troops were right there in eastern Germany, not going anywhere, and while not terribly good at invading other countries, could fight off invaders very, very well.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

What's all this "Cassius Clay Belli" stuff? At first I thought Jason had coined a clever malapropism to reference Mohammed Ali's "no Viet Cong ever called me nigger" refusal to fight in the Vietnam War, but when I tried to go back and find it, I only saw it mentioned in Desslock posts. The first post McCullough mentions casus belli in is edited, so maybe he made the relatively common "cassius belli" error, but that seems kind of trivial for the amount of attention it's gotten.

Edit: Lum: I don't think that freedom from bias is required to suspect bias in others. The truth is, we're ALL taking our own perspectives into this, but only Desslock is suggesting otherwise.

[deccan]

Jason, in case you're still confused, here's my reading:

Desslock: [bunch of stuff amounting to saying that the West betrayed Poland and possibly other victims of Soviet oppression.]

Jason: You're a neocon!

Whether or not Desslock's personal views are neo-conservative (and I for one think his views probably are) is irrelevant to the discussion of historical facts in this thread. Hence, you were the one who made it political.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

No, Rollory made it political. Which would not be a problem in P&R.

[Jason McCullough]

Considering that you were the one who cast this entire debate of sixty-year-old history through a prism of the Iraq war, I hardly think it's appropriate for you to start painting yourself as the arbiter of unbiased discussion.

Did I say I was? It's terrible that his family got it, and I guess that explains why he thinks I'm crazy and yelling at me to shut up.

Also, to start yet another argument, I'm not looking at this as "everything's exactly like Iraq." It's more of if you look back at the history of conservatism, the "rollback" line of thinking hasn't changed at all, it's just been applied to new situations. If you think the US could somehow have gotten the USSR out of Poland either without a war (by standing firm or whatnot), or somehow won that war, then you're also going to think we could have won Vietnam along the same lines, and yes, also for Iraq. The whole Munich thing reinforces this line of thinking, as it was the one really big case where the trick to winning, in hindisght, was to be resolute, not to worry about the consequences.

[Sarkus]

According to Soviet records newly declassified after the fall of the USSR, Stalin took a direct role in encouraging Kim Il Sung (who had the initial idea), promised significant military aid, got China to go along, then backed out after China was committed (in the end, Soviet aid to North Korea was limited to piloting North Korean MiG-15s in MiG Alley).

In addition, Kim Il Sung was very much a Soviet protege (he spent most of WW2 in the Soviet Far East, where Kim Jong Il was born, and was installed as leader by the Soviet military commander in Korea) and at the time, Stalin was the undisputed leader of the Communist community of nations.


Right, and I'm not saying any of that is false. However, it doesn't prove your statement that Stalin "was encouraging client states to engage the West militarily (North Korea, China)". If the US was publically saying it didn't care about South Korea's independence then Stalin encouraging North Korea to invade doesn't militarily engage the West. And if you want to engage the West then you would block the West sending a UN sanctioned military force after the fact. Again, all evidence shows the Soviets were completely surprised by the UN action, because they had no reason to think the West would get involved in Korea after all the public statements to the contrary. Later, China had it's own interests at stake when it choose to get involved in the Korean war. Was it good from Stalin's point of view? Probably, but let's not present it as a planned act intended to "engage the West militarily."

[Sarkus]

The whole Munich thing reinforces this line of thinking, as it was the one really big case where the trick to winning, in hindisght, was to be resolute, not to worry about the consequences.

Actually, Munich was too late if you think the Allies standing up to Hitler would have forced him to back down. You have to go back to the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 to see Hitler planning to back down if opposed. Hitler was actually upset that a war didn't break out over the Sudentenland crisis. Now, if you want to argue that it might have made an early defeat of Germany more likely, that would be different. But in 1938 Hitler felt he was ready for what he saw as the inevitable showdown with France (and the UK, if necessary.)

[Lizard_King]

Did I say I was? It's terrible that his family got it, and I guess that explains why he thinks I'm crazy and yelling at me to shut up.

Also, to start yet another argument, I'm not looking at this as "everything's exactly like Iraq." It's more of if you look back at the history of conservatism, the "rollback" line of thinking hasn't changed at all, it's just been applied to new situations. If you think the US could somehow have gotten the USSR out of Poland either without a war (by standing firm or whatnot), or somehow won that war, then you're also going to think we could have won Vietnam along the same lines, and yes, also for Iraq. The whole Munich thing reinforces this line of thinking, as it was the one really big case where the trick to winning, in hindisght, was to be resolute, not to worry about the consequences.

Bring in the Southern Strategy! Come on! Do it!

[Desslock]

Did I say I was? It's terrible that his family got it, and I guess that explains why he thinks I'm crazy and yelling at me to shut up..

How many people in a row have to tell you that your desire to change a historical discussion into a political one is unwarranted, and unwanted, before you actually figure out that's their point? Just move the discussion into the P&R forum if you want to discuss current world politics - it's that simple.

Why are you so resistant to doing so? Since you're obviously incapable of stopping-- nobody cares about your views about the "history of conservatism", Iraq and Viet Nam in a thread about WW2 events. Nobody.

Please just take it to the other forum - I'll even concede that you know more about lefty theories about why being resolute to tyranny and standing by your word is bad has secretly been an evil neo-con plot throughout history. Yeah, how could that be perceived as offensive to anyone?

Everyone else seems to be stating that, well, it's true that Stalin was bad and that Poland was our ally, and that millions died in the Eastern bloc as a result of Soviet occupation, but maybe from a practical standpoint there was nothing we could do about it in 1945 -- thanks for disrupting that conversation to interject your opinion that betraying the Poles and allowing Stalin to consolidate his power and assemble a nuclear arsenal that threatened our existance for decades was just awesome because it thwarted some evil neocon plot that you've identified through history. Awesome contribution, thanks!

[RichVR]

IBTL

Oh, that's right...

Nevermind.

[Sarkus]

Please just stop. Your pen is a fountain of ignorance.

You're like a little child trying to recite history from reading a Captain America comic book

(which may be the most offensive thing you've ever said on this board, and that's saying a lot)

I'm not trying to take sides here, but these are the personal attacks that started this little flame war. Jason's initial response was to ignore them, but I can hardly blame him for ultimately responding. The latter suggests there is personal history at work here as well.

Perhaps this topic has run it's course if people would rather take personal shots than debate an issue which is hardly black and white.

[Desslock]

I'm not trying to take sides here, but these are the personal attacks that started this little flame war. Jason's initial response was to ignore them, but I can hardly blame him for ultimately responding. The latter suggests there is personal history at work here as wel.

You have those quotes in the reverse chronological order - Jason removed/edited the post that I was initially responding to when indicating it was "the most offensive thing" I'd seem him offer, and that precipitated our pleasant discourse.

In any event, we're not delicate snowflakes - nobody is blaming him for responding to any personal attacks -- what's objectionable is that despite the constant objections of posters here, he insists on interjecting his views on current American domestic politics on a discussion of historical, international events, when there's already a pretty tainted forum devoted to the sort of unsolicited "enlightenment" he's offering.

[Jason McCullough]

What did I remove that was so offensive?

I find your certitude that only I am daring to sully this discussion with "political" points incomprehensible (and for that matter, the thread appears evenly divided about whether it's a problem if it's political), but I guess it's pointless to argue about further.

[Lum]

It's more of if you look back at the history of conservatism, the "rollback" line of thinking hasn't changed at all, it's just been applied to new situations.

Which is funny, because "rollback" was the theory advocated by noted neo-conservative Republican Harry Truman's administration, and later shifted to "containment" by the administration of the noted liberal Democrat Eisenhower.

I guess it did change after all.

[Lum]

Later, China had it's own interests at stake when it choose to get involved in the Korean war. Was it good from Stalin's point of view? Probably, but let's not present it as a planned act intended to "engage the West militarily."

Korea was more an example of Stalin's taking advantage of the situation to encourage mischief while minimizing the Soviet Union's profile. The Berlin blockade would be a more direct example of Soviet provocation, and was intended specifically to test Western resolve and possibly result in a neutralized Germany.

[Jason McCullough]

Say what? I just finished McCullough's (no relation) book on Truman a few months ago, and there was nothing in there about rollback. Unless you mean going into North Korea, which seems to me more of a education of the US government about giddy easy victories than a conscious policy regarding communism or the Soviet Union.

[Lum]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollback

[Jason McCullough]

You mean the intelligence stuff they were fooling around with? I was thinking more NSC-68, and invading vs. not.