The "Wars of the Past" Thread

[Hobgoblin]

I think there are a few reasons why Stalin is kind of over looked by the general public.

1. He didnt start any major wars that we got involved in. (Finland doesnt count.)
2. There isnt much film footage of him. Hitler loved the cameras and the sound of his own voice, so we have plenty of things to "remember him by."
3. Yes he was out ally in the war. So we think of him as one of the good guys.

I have to disagree with the idea that Stalin wasnt charismatic. I've been reading Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore and he was clearly very charismatic. At least as a young man. He always had girlfriends and the people around him were extremely loyal to him. He also loved to sing and write poetry.

 

[Thundercrack85]

Good points. Khrushchev certainly was more flamboyant. And he was heavily caricaturized. But then Stalin didn't bang his shoes on the table at Yalta.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Also the most memorable parts of the Cold War came after Stalin was dead.

 

[Hobgoblin]

Thats true. Sputnik was launched 4 years after Stalin died.

 

[8wid]

Would the Soviets still have invaded Afghanistan if the United States had not lost Vietnam to communism and gone through the second worst economic crisis in its history as a result? To think could that war have been prevented by previous Presidents so the US didn't look so weak?

What if JFK had lived and like he did with the Soviets in Laos and signed a treaty with them of non-interventionism over Vietnam and eventually pulled out all of the military advisors from South Vietnam would a war have gotten started? What if JFK saw through the lies put forward by the CIA that the North Vietnamese gun boats attacked the US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkein? The US would not have been dragged through such a long and expensive war, and lost so many military and civilian lives as a result either. There would have been no economic crisis following and the Kennedy administration might have even have implemented a greater level of detente then Nixon, Ford, or Carter had tried to, especially if he got approval to do a joint Lunar landing with the Soviets.

Would the Soviets still have seen themselves as a nation on par with the United States and invaded Afghanistan or could the Cold War have slowly come to a negotiated end?

 

[Hobgoblin]

Kennedy wouldnt want to be seen as an appeaser. His father was criticized for his role in trying to meet with Hitler in 1940. Jack didnt want to be seen as weak on Communism, so a lot of cooperation with the Soviets seems unlikely.

Even if he had survived two terms, there would have been a more hawkish president that would have followed him. Look at Johnson and Nixon.

 

[SV Fan]

Personally I think the worst war ever for the US was the War on drugs. Boy did we ever lose that one. Why couldn't Nixon and Reagan pick easier targets like the War on messy cities.

 

[Hobgoblin]

It would be nice if we had a War on Pollution, but that would also be seen as a War on the Economy.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

Also the most memorable parts of the Cold War came after Stalin was dead.

Korean war was pretty memorable. I think the McCarthy HUAC hearings also happened while Stalin was still alive.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

I think there are a few reasons why Stalin is kind of over looked by the general public.

1. He didnt start any major wars that we got involved in. (Finland doesnt count.)
2. There isnt much film footage of him. Hitler loved the cameras and the sound of his own voice, so we have plenty of things to "remember him by."
3. Yes he was out ally in the war. So we think of him as one of the good guys.

.

I'm sorry, but I take issue with this. No one I've ever spoken to has seen Stalin as a "good guy." Even people who admire communism and the USSR for some reason, generally think Stalin was bad. He's less well known than Hitler because he generally targeted his own people behind the confines of his iron curtain and didn't try to eliminate one race, religion or ethnicity. Plus, we know a lot more about Auschwitz than the Soviet gulags, because of more accounts of the horrors of the holocaust. Most of Stalin's victims, if they survived, didn't get to report what happened in the West. But he was a monster regardless.

Maybe people thought of him as one of the "good guys" during World War II, but definitely not since Churchill made his "iron curtain" speech in the late 40's.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Korean war was pretty memorable. I think the McCarthy HUAC hearings also happened while Stalin was still alive.

McCarthy was mainly after Stalin's death. He had nothing to do with HUAC though, which was started in 1945 but had precursors going all the way back to 1918 (long before the Cold War began). It is remembered, mostly due to Hollywood not allowing us to forget, but it is far from the most memorable part of the Cold War. When the general public thinks of the Cold War they think of the Space Race, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall, Afghanistan and the Olympic boycotts, all of which happened well after Stalin. I'm not talking about people with an interest in history. I'm talking about Joe Schmoe on the street. When they think of the Soviet leaders during the Cold War, Stalin would probably rank well behind Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev.

There is a reason the Korean War is nicknamed The Forgotten War.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

McCarthy was mainly after Stalin's death. He had nothing to do with HUAC though, which was started in 1945 but had precursors going all the way back to 1918 (long before the Cold War began). It is remembered, mostly due to Hollywood not allowing us to forget, but it is far from the most memorable part of the Cold War. When the general public thinks of the Cold War they think of the Space Race, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall, Afghanistan and the Olympic boycotts, all of which happened well after Stalin. I'm not talking about people with an interest in history. I'm talking about Joe Schmoe on the street. When they think of the Soviet leaders during the Cold War, Stalin would probably rank well behind Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev.

There is a reason the Korean War is nicknamed The Forgotten War.

I think the Korean war gets shortchanged because it's wedged between two wars where the casualty counts were much higher and which stretched out much longer. But the casualties from the Korean war were almost ten times as high as those from the Iraq war. I believe it was about 35,000 or so US soldiers killed. I find the war pretty interesting, especially how China intervened towards the end. We almost nuked them. And then the MacArthur resignation was damn dramatic and forever added the "old soldiers don't die, they just fade away" line into American mythology. And the people who fought and saw friends die in it will definitely never forget it.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

I agree with you that it should be far better remembered than what it is. But in pop culture it gets overshadowed by World War II and Vietnam, just like you said.

 

[Hobgoblin]

I'm sorry, but I take issue with this. No one I've ever spoken to has seen Stalin as a "good guy." Even people who admire communism and the USSR for some reason, generally think Stalin was bad. He's less well known than Hitler because he generally targeted his own people behind the confines of his iron curtain and didn't try to eliminate one race, religion or ethnicity. Plus, we know a lot more about Auschwitz than the Soviet gulags, because of more accounts of the horrors of the holocaust. Most of Stalin's victims, if they survived, didn't get to report what happened in the West. But he was a monster regardless.

Maybe people thought of him as one of the "good guys" during World War II, but definitely not since Churchill made his "iron curtain" speech in the late 40's.

That's what I was getting at.

 

[Thundercrack85]

I would add that unlike World War II (which is the War), the Korean War was just one relatively small part of a much greater conflict. Namely the Cold War. And it was overshadowed by later parts of that conflict, like Vietnam. The Korean War actually marks the transition from the World War II era to the Cold War era quite well. It was a product of both.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

This stuff about Korea being a "forgotten war" got me thinking. What is the most forgotten war that America has participated in? The Spanish-American war? War of 1812? Mexican-American war (aside from the "Alamoooooo"), Gulf war I?

Not brief military actions like the Panama or Haiti operations, but real wars.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

The Alamo wasn't the Mexican-American War. That was the Texas Revolution.

I'd go with the Moro Rebellion. Few Americans have even heard of it.

 

[Hobgoblin]

The Alamo wasn't the Mexican-American War. That was the Texas Revolution.

I'd go with the Moro Rebellion. Few Americans have even heard of it.

Is that the Philippine War? That was going to be my answer.

 

[Llama_Shepherd]

Sorry to bring up "the biggies" again. But people really don't see how close Germany was to winning both WWI and WWII.

The Germans were close to winning WWI because France had all but left their army in the control of Britain, but Britain had been blockaded by Germany, despite Britain having a navy twice the size that of Germany, they had roughly 6 weeks worth of supplies before starvation would have kicked in. Britain only survived because America and other countries agreed to send their supplies in under the protection of the British naval convoy. And while it is true that Germany was essentially "burnt out" by the war. Britain was dangerously close to that as well with a wastage of troops at twice the rate they were recruited in 1917. Plus after the French all but gave up in the war, the British army was spread thinly across the Western front the war could have gone to the Germans then.

And as for WWII you've really got to give credit to the Nazis for being incredibly crazy devious bastards. WWI was supposed to see the initiation of the Schlieffen Plan. So in preparation for war France had the Maginot Line constructed, huge concrete bunkers designed for invasion specifically from Italy and Germany, so the French Army had time to mobilise. The line ran across the entirety of both borders, except for a few small places, most notably the Ardennes, a forest. The Germans poured a huge volume of troops through these gaps, violating the neutrality of other states, while only sending a few decoy battalions to where France was actually in preparation for. As for the Eastern Front, Germany should have taken Russia. Had they stuck to their original plan and begin the invasion in May. But instead the war had to last through the winter and though the Russians were on the backfoot, they regained momentum because the German troops were inadequately prepared. If Germany had taken Russia, suffice to say, the world today would look very different.

 

[Daniel Thompson]

Sorry to bring up "the biggies" again. But people really don't see how close Germany was to winning both WWI and WWII.

The Germans were close to winning WWI because France had all but left their army in the control of Britain, but Britain had been blockaded by Germany, despite Britain having a navy twice the size that of Germany, they had roughly 6 weeks worth of supplies before starvation would have kicked in. Britain only survived because America and other countries agreed to send their supplies in under the protection of the British naval convoy. And while it is true that Germany was essentially "burnt out" by the war. Britain was dangerously close to that as well with a wastage of troops at twice the rate they were recruited in 1917. Plus after the French all but gave up in the war, the British army was spread thinly across the Western front the war could have gone to the Germans then.

And as for WWII you've really got to give credit to the Nazis for being incredibly crazy devious bastards. WWI was supposed to see the initiation of the Schlieffen Plan. So in preparation for war France had the Maginot Line constructed, huge concrete bunkers designed for invasion specifically from Italy and Germany, so the French Army had time to mobilise. The line ran across the entirety of both borders, except for a few small places, most notably the Ardennes, a forest. The Germans poured a huge volume of troops through these gaps, violating the neutrality of other states, while only sending a few decoy battalions to where France was actually in preparation for. As for the Eastern Front, Germany should have taken Russia. Had they stuck to their original plan and begin the invasion in May. But instead the war had to last through the winter and though the Russians were on the backfoot, they regained momentum because the German troops were inadequately prepared. If Germany had taken Russia, suffice to say, the world today would look very different.

Thank god that did not happen, cause the world we know of today would proably be far worst than it already is.

 

[Hobgoblin]

Sorry to bring up "the biggies" again. But people really don't see how close Germany was to winning both WWI and WWII.

The Germans were close to winning WWI because France had all but left their army in the control of Britain, but Britain had been blockaded by Germany, despite Britain having a navy twice the size that of Germany, they had roughly 6 weeks worth of supplies before starvation would have kicked in. Britain only survived because America and other countries agreed to send their supplies in under the protection of the British naval convoy. And while it is true that Germany was essentially "burnt out" by the war. Britain was dangerously close to that as well with a wastage of troops at twice the rate they were recruited in 1917. Plus after the French all but gave up in the war, the British army was spread thinly across the Western front the war could have gone to the Germans then.

Personally, I think the way that the war actually ended was the best possible outcome that Germany could hope for. Both the Allied and Central powers had fought to a standstill and bled each other dry. Perhaps things might have been different if the Western front had not resorted to trench warfare, but we will never know.

A stalemate with nothing accomplished and millions needlessly dead on both sides was the best possible outcome. Both sides were just too evenly matched.

And as for WWII you've really got to give credit to the Nazis for being incredibly crazy devious bastards. WWI was supposed to see the initiation of the Schlieffen Plan. So in preparation for war France had the Maginot Line constructed, huge concrete bunkers designed for invasion specifically from Italy and Germany, so the French Army had time to mobilise. The line ran across the entirety of both borders, except for a few small places, most notably the Ardennes, a forest. The Germans poured a huge volume of troops through these gaps, violating the neutrality of other states, while only sending a few decoy battalions to where France was actually in preparation for. As for the Eastern Front, Germany should have taken Russia. Had they stuck to their original plan and begin the invasion in May. But instead the war had to last through the winter and though the Russians were on the backfoot, they regained momentum because the German troops were inadequately prepared. If Germany had taken Russia, suffice to say, the world today would look very different.

You are right, the Germans were unprepared for the Russian winter. Perhaps the Germans could even have advanced further into the Soviet Union than they did, had they invaded in May. Still, while they could have conquered Russia, they couldnt have kept it. A few million German soldiers couldnt occupy and control such a huge amount of land with over one hundred million Russians. Think of the Iraq insurgency, but with many, many more insurgents.

 

[Daniel Thompson]

Would anybody here like to talk more about the cold war? Hollywood certainly made that popular in the 80s with russians being the bad guys in almost every action film.

 

[Hobgoblin]

I wish there were more documentaries about the Cold War. Its a fascinating time in world history. Instead the History channel gives us crap like Ancient Aliens and Swamp People.

I wonder if there is so little said about the Cold War because so much of what happened is still considered classified.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Is that the Philippine War? That was going to be my answer.

Yeah, that would be it. The rebellions that occurred in the Philippines immediately after the Spanish-American War.

 

[Hobgoblin]

Great minds think alike.