 |
| |
|
|
Oncle Boris
|
 |
Once in a brown moon
Aug 2001
time: 00:19
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Patroklos
Perhaps Boris is having technical difficulties.
Not that any of those sources mentions Warsaw, but Warsaw was indeed part of the Vistula Offensive.
|
Look at a map, my friend. The "Vistula offensive" as you call it, was much larger in scale and duration than the battle of the Bulge. At this rate, you might as well call the whole war an "offensive"...
That's not even considering that my initial argument was responding to someone who said "look at how many troops they lost taking Warsaw"...
If the casualties for taking Wasaw were indeed 100,000, then the Soviets showed they were similar to the Allies.
quote:
And just so you know Seelow was only the first tenth of the entire Oder Offensive, and that alone yeilded three times the casualties of the Ardennes in only 4 days. Not to mention more tank losses on just the Soviet side than both the Germans and the Americans combined in the Battle of the Bulge (thats true for men too). |
Get up to academic standards. The linked text is not signed by the author, offers no cites. It "quotes" Konev's diary without mentioning any source... :rolleye:
I'm willing to debate in goodwill - that implies reliable numbers and sources. If you can indeed prove that the battle for Berlin claimed the lives of 650,000 men, you might have a point.
But that would be a highly improbable number; in most operations, the number of deaths was approximately 1/8 of the total casualties.
Then suppose the battle for Berlin was very ferocious, and that no prisoners were taken. That would leave us a very prudent ratio of 1/4 - which would mean that from January to May '45 the Soviets lost at least 2,000,000 men on the Berlin offensive alone, which is just an insanely improbable figure.
quote:
So if you yourself claim only a part of the Vistula Offensive produced 100,000 casualties, and the Ardennes only 9,000, how is it the are the same? |
That's a funny little double standard you're showing here. The term "casualties" in standard historical terminology include the dead, the wounded, the captured and the missing. However when you talk about the Soviets, you assume the number of casualties to be the number of deaths, while you downplay American numbers by saying there were only 9,000 KIA.
And if you add the British numbers, yes, the Ardennes cost the Allies a bit over 100,000 men, in "casualties".
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Propaganda
|
 |
From Russia, With Love.
Jun 2002
time: 21:19
|
|
Stop scaremongering people with your GULAG stories.
GULAG is a euphemism for what in the US would be known as "Department of Prisons," a beaurocratic organ of the state.
Just because certain census' published state a drop in assumed population growth, doesn't mean ****, obviously. If a person in 1937 died of disease, whether of dyssentary, pneumonia, flu, etc, by our (logical) assumptions, I don't think it should count as murder. People in the USSR at that time were even dying "premature deaths" in their 40s and 50s, due to MORTALITY. This wasn't 1977, afterall.
Come on, people, get a clue.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Patroklos
|
 |
Back home in good ole Norfolk VA
Dec 2001
time: 05:19
|
|
What I said
quote:
And lets not forget the losses the Russians took during the the Vistula and Oder Offensives. The Russians were going for end game. They suffered 100,000s of casualties OF THEIR BEST TROOPS. On the other hand, the Allies had been slowely moving through their half of Germany hardly fighting, resting reequiping and resupplying. |
What you replied
quote:
BS, the Americans suffered similar casualties in the battle of the Bulge. |
I was talking about the Vistula and Oder Offensives losses with the aim of showing the horrible beating the Soviets just took. You brought up the Ardennes, and you compared it to both the Vistula and Oder offensives combined. And you said that the Americans suffered "similar" casulaties.
So when you try and cover your retreat with;
quote:
Look at a map, my friend. The "Vistula offensive" as you call it, was much larger in scale and duration than the battle of the Bulge. At this rate, you might as well call the whole war an "offensive"... |
You obviously should expect to be called out on it. It was a comparison of your choosing. Admitting your wrong is the only option open too you.
quote:
If the casualties for taking Wasaw were indeed 100,000, then the Soviets showed they were similar to the Allies. |
interresting, since the combined the Western Allies only took 80,000 casualties in the Ardennes.
quote:
Get up to academic standards. The linked text is not signed by the author, offers no cites. It "quotes" Konev's diary without mentioning any source |
Konev's Diary perhaps? 
quote:
I'm willing to debate in goodwill - that implies reliable numbers and sources. If you can indeed prove that the battle for Berlin claimed the lives of 650,000 men, you might have a point. |
These numbers are generally accpted, and though I find nothing wrong with my links (one is Wikipedia for Christ's sake), it is your resposibility as the person who has yet to even try and provide a source to find one contrary and in better standing than my own.
quote:
But that would be a highly improbable number; in most operations, the number of deaths was approximately 1/8 of the total casualties. |
Care to support that bald faced and false assumption with anything. I bet you the casualty to death ratio in Iraq is something closer to 1/100.
quote:
Then suppose the battle for Berlin was very ferocious, and that no prisoners were taken. That would leave us a very prudent ratio of 1/4 - which would mean that from January to May '45 the Soviets lost at least 2,000,000 men on the Berlin offensive alone, which is just an insanely improbable figure. |
That is probobly right for casualties, but certaintly not for deaths. And the character of the fighting matters not to the state of the Soviet Army that would be facing the Allies OP. If the Soviets took a million casualties, then they took a million casualties.
quote:
That's a funny little double standard you're showing here. The term "casualties" in standard historical terminology include the dead, the wounded, the captured and the missing. However when you talk about the Soviets, you assume the number of casualties to be the number of deaths, while you downplay American numbers by saying there were only 9,000 KIA. |
Funny thing is in every instance I have quoted numbers I have been talking about soley KIAs, so you are just putting up a smoke screen to hide your already outrageous comparison.
Again I said...
quote:
That is 630,000 dead ALONE! The casualties were in the millions, thouusands and thousands of tanks lost. And this was just Berlin, add in Breslau, Waraw, East Prussia... The Americans suffered no where near these casualties at the Battle of the Bulge. |
I bring attention to where I say "dead ALONE" in refereance to the 630,000 number and then say "casualties in the millions" for dead/MIA/POW/wounded. Perhaps you should READ before you respond.
And as for Warsaw, I did fail to see where you answered my comments concerning KIAs alone with something concerning casualties. Nice deflect on your part, though simultaineously making your answer irrelivant to the debate. but as stated total Allied casualties at the Battle of the Bulge were 80,000 (rounded up to give you a break) versus the Soviet 100,000.
Match.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Propaganda
|
|
From Russia, With Love.
Jun 2002
time: 21:19
|
|
Just to get some misconceptions out of the way about me.
I'm a "Stalinist"(read: Marxist-Leninist) in historical materialist terms. In Stalin's epoch, the totalitarian era, authoritarianism was the answer to all problems, especially for backward states, with feudal relations.
To this day, I can agree with Stalin's politics and (especially) economics, just not the political system created under his tenure(but only in hindsight).
This doesn't make me a Trotskyist, by any means, however. I can agree to disagree with them on all fronts, however.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
curtsibling
|
 |
of the Kill!
May 2002
time: 05:19
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Which has what to do with the question you asked? |
Short memory?
I was reacting to your redundant question.
quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
In the space of 100 years, the population of American Indians in what would become the lower 48 went from 3 million to a little over a quater million. That was largely due to starvation and diseases that ran rampant when they were crowded together on marginable tracts of land. The answer is 2.75 million. |
So they mowed down helpless people to colonise?
It is hideous, we can agree, but is the USA alone there?
What's new? I think just about every Western nation
can be accused of that one, Russia included...And your
precious communists are the last in line to be absolved
from the crime of domestic/indigenous annihilation.
But it makes it far worse that your enemy, the USA done it.
That is all that counts to effete commies, not the fact that
violent colonisation was widespread in history.
quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Of course, your question was irrelevent to the questions of who would have started the war in the first place and which country was more aggressive. |
Actually who is more hostile? The USA or USSR?
Look at history, and try and tell me a straight answer.
quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara Twist and spin as you might, you can't escape the historical truth. |
I know the historical truth.
The USSR declared wars on many nations, the USA mostly
had UN permission or war declared upon them...Face the facts.
You however, are letting your seeming distaste for your own
culture distort your view...That is your problem to solve.
quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
So when a democracy committs genocide its okay because at least we're a democracy? |
It is you who are saying this.
Atrocities are vile, regardless of governments or so-called justifications.
quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I haven't denied it. But the fact that a country murders its own citizens doesn't mean that country is going to start wars. The fact that Stalin's regime was a nightmare beyond belief isn't relevent when you are asking the question, which country would attack the other. |
You are getting the wrong picture.
I accused Stalin's regime of warmongering *and* atrocities.
And what is worse, the USSR under blood-thirsty 'Uncle Joe' was not accountable.
At least the USA can be made accountable and must
explain her war actions to the so-called free world.
Where does this leave us now?
.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
chegitz guevara
|
 |
Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:19
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by curtsibling
I was reacting to your redundant question. |
It was neither a question nor was it redundent. You asked how many millions of people the U.S. had starved or put into camps.
quote:
It is hideous, we can agree, but is the USA alone there? |
Sadly, we are not alone. Sad, not because oh the evil USA, but sad that so many countries have engaged in such practices. However, your question was specific to the USA, so I gave an answer specific to the USA.
quote:
And your precious communists are the last in line to be absolved from the crime of domestic/indigenous annihilation.[q/]
Who's absolving them?
[q]But it makes it far worse that your enemy, the USA done it. |
No, what makes it worse for me is that my country has done it. My people, my history, my nation committed this deed. We have yet to come to terms with it like the Germans have for their misdeeds.
quote:
Actually who is more hostile? The USA or USSR? |
As I previously stated, only one country ever invaded the other. Only one country ever supported rebellions and domesitc terrorism in the other. Only one country overtly threatened to attack the other.
quote:
Look at history, and try and tell me a straight answer. |
History gives a very good answer. The US was far more hostile to the USSR than the other way around. You may justify this by the fact that the USSR was a nightmare regime under Stalin, but you can't get around the fact that it was the U.S. that was threatening the USSR, and not the other way around.
quote:
I know the historical truth. |
Apparently not.
quote:
The USSR declared wars on many nations, |
Did it? Whom? Finland, Poland . . . hmmmm. That's it. Poland had declared war on the USSR in 1919 and stolen a huge chunk of territory from them. If an aggressive war could be justified, then the 1939 invasion of Poland would be in that catagory, as they were recovering territories stolen from them. But I don't think it was justified.
Now, we can add in countries they simply occupied against their will: Transcaucasia, the Baltic states, Tuva, Mongolia. Then there are client states they occupied, Eastern Europe and Afganistan. Afganistan asked the Soviets to intervene, but it was a new government that came as the result of a coup, so we can discount that as a legitimate intervention.
quote:
the USA mostly had UN permission or war declared upon them...Face the facts. |
The U.S. had permission to attack the Spanish in the Spanish American War? We had permission to attack Mexico? We had permission to invade Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Honduras, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines . . . ? Guatemala threatened us and we had to oraginze an army to overthrow it before they took our bananas away? Grenada was plotting our downfall and it was only a matter of time before they destroyed us? The U.S. had permission to invade Iraq?
When one adds up all of the invasions and interventions the the U.S carried out in the 20th Century, the U.S. engaged in seven times more aggressive, imperialist, unjustifiable actions than the USSR. We are and have been the chief threat to peace.
quote:
It is you who are saying this. |
Not me. You're the one who seems to be saying that the colonial actions of imperial monarchies somehow cancels out the colonial actions of American democracy, that everyone did it.
quote:
I accused Stalin's regime of warmongering *and* atrocities. |
Stalin's attrocities don't make him more likely to start a war. An aggressive country is more likely to engage in attrocities, but a country which kills its own isn't necessarily more likley to attack others.
quote:
And what is worse, the USSR under blood-thirsty 'Uncle Joe' was not accountable. |
No superpower is accountable.
quote:
At least the USA can be made accountable and must
explain her war actions to the so-called free world. |
It's both sad and humorous that you believe this. When has the U.S. ever been called to account?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
curtsibling
|
|
of the Kill!
May 2002
time: 05:19
|
|
Che, before you forget the orginal point, I am going to take
us back out of the distorted territory you are heading to.
My original point was that a war between Hitler and Stalin was certain.
You asked why, and then proceeded to add the USA into the mix.
You see:
Stalin desired the West of Europe more than we desired the Western steppes of the USSR.
Your odd assertion that only the wicked USA would go to war, and the angelic Stalinist USSR
would stay put, even when presented with an oppurtunity is close to total fantasy.
If you would have me think you understand even anything about capitalism/communism
and are not just an armchair weeny, with a part-time beliefs in what you claim,
then you will comprehend the fact that communism and nazism were complete enemies from their origins.
Look at the political creeds of Hitler and Stalin, do you really
think they would have maintained their friendship for long?
Given Hitler's hate for Slavs, and Stalins total loathing of the West,
if you think they would stay at peace, you are clueless about WW2.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
lord of the mark
|
 |
FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:19
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
[The U.S. had permission to attack the Spanish in the Spanish American War? We had permission to attack Mexico? We had permission to invade Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Honduras, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines . . . ? Guatemala threatened us and we had to oraginze an army to overthrow it before they took our bananas away? Grenada was plotting our downfall and it was only a matter of time before they destroyed us? The U.S. had permission to invade Iraq?
|
The Phillipines and Puerto Rico were attacked as part of the war with Spain - im not sure how you get three seperate wars out of that. The Phillipines resisted annexation, but AFAIK Puerto Rico did not. And the Phillipines WERE given their independence, at just the time the USSR was expanding into east central europe. Puerto Rico seems more interested in statehood than independence.
Some of the interventions in central america WERE authorized by the Organization of American States. It is difficult to discuss in detail, as you dont date them and so dont make clear which interventions you refer to. The overall picture though is of a US intervening regularly in a troubled region, for different motives at different times, but constantly needing to go back in after leaving - the USSR equivalent was Central Asia - which they did NOT need to repeated go back into, since they annexed it as soon as they could and didnt leave till 1991 - and they STILL dont seem to really acknowledge the independence of these states.
By going into Eastern Europe, the USSR went beyond a troubled near abroad - they invaded states that were A. More developed, and in a position to develop into democratic industrial states. (no, its not that they were white, but the socio-economic differences DO matter) and B. They went into a place that threatened the security of OTHER great powers, and was not simply their backyard.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
chegitz guevara
|
|
Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:19
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by lord of the mark
The Phillipines and Puerto Rico were attacked as part of the war with Spain - im not sure how you get three seperate wars out of that. The Phillipines resisted annexation, but AFAIK Puerto Rico did not. And the Phillipines WERE given their independence, |
Because both Puerto Rico and the Philippines were, for all intents and purposes, independent of Spain. Puorto Rico was an autonomous part of the Empire, and the Spanish only held Manilia in the Philippines. In fact, many argue that this was the real cause of the war, the fact that the U.S. was about to lose the chance to purchase these colonies from Spain, as even Cuba was winning it's fight for freedom. It would be harder to sell an invasion of three independent countries to the American people, as opposed to "liberating" three oppressed colonies.
quote:
Some of the interventions in central america WERE authorized by the Organization of American States. |
Which until recently, was basically a ruber stamp for the U.S., and not a real international organization.
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:19.
Apolyton Time is 00:19. |
top of page
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
11-05-2005 04:33
|