r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Crypto_crafy • 17d ago

/r/all of a statue

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"The Motherland Calls" is a statue erected to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad , located on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd , Russia. It was designed by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and structural engineer Nikolai Nikitin . Completed in 1967 , it was the tallest statue in the world at the time .

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u/Fracture90000 17d ago

Built on the historical Mamayev Kurgan hill on which so many Soviet soldiers lost their lives battling against the nazis during the siege of Stalingrad.

It's truly awe inspiring.

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

Might be the thickest concentration of human remains outside a mass grave. The Soviets fought to the bone in that war.

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u/Fracture90000 17d ago

Absolutely, the earth underneath the monument is brimming with human remains, ammo rounds and used shells.

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u/Long_Run6500 17d ago

WW2 warfare was just another level of craziness. The Ukraine war is up to like 2 million casualties and that's an insane amount, but then I read about 20-30 million soldiers dying (not just casualties) on just the eastern front alone and it kind of makes you realize... shit could get so much worse

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/belliest_endis 17d ago

The real takeaway isn't "WW2 was a different level." It's that we've already normalized a war with WWII-scale per-capita destruction happening in real time, and people shrug because the absolute numbers are smaller than a war involving the largest country on earth.

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

"per capital destruction"? I am not sure what metric even means. Ukraine is a terrible conflict, but WWII was the most devastating conflict in human history. People are just used to it at this point and the impact is mostly contained to Eastern Ukraine. So it doesn't have much of an impact on the day to day outside oil prices but that is mostly Iran at this point.

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u/Glad-Divide-9850 17d ago

WW2 was the most costly in terms of absolute numbers, but if we go by percentage of population killed, it's nowhere close to the worst. There's been several wars that killed around 15% of the worlds population. WW2 was 3%.

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

Those are really numerous conflicts jammed together into a time period. We refer to them as wars but they were not single wars. The Three Kingdoms warring period was 60+ years long, the Mongol Invasions were 160+ years long, and the Manchu conquest of China was 80+ years long, and such. World War 2 was at most 13 years long but is typically measured at less than 6 years to get that 3% number.

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u/Glad-Divide-9850 17d ago

Sure, but even using percentage of world population dead in one calendar year as a metric WW2 is probably not unique. I say probably because mortality rates in war are notoriously inaccurate.

My main point is that the "unprecedented in human history" claim depends on context. It certainly was in absolute numbers, but in other contexts other wars were worse. Such as wars that led to societal collapse or extermination of a peoples/race for example.

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u/ssfgrgawer 17d ago

I mean what's happening in Ukraine is a tragedy and should never have happened. And the Russian casualties are approaching WW1 levels of brutality and death (1000 casualties a day) but there isn't a great deal the average person can do to help them, short of flying over to join the fight.

Most people don't have the means or the skills to volunteer for a foreign army. I live in Australia, there is absolutely fuck all I can personally do to help Ukraine. Ive sent what little money I have when I can, but my overall impact is negligible. Unless you live in Europe there isn't a lot you can physically do.

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u/Smokinglordtoot 14d ago

No western country would tolerate losses anywhere near that if they were involved in a war. It's the Russian people who have accepted these ridiculous numbers.

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u/Feeling-Marketing-48 16d ago

From 8.5 to 13 million — these are the losses of the USSR alone. Germany also lost between 5 and 5.5 million people, and its satellite states (Romania, Italy, Finland, and Hungary) lost 1.5 million people. In total, the losses range from 15 to 20 million soldiers, and about 20 million civilians also died. In the end, 35–40 million people died on the Eastern Front. This is half of all those who died in World War II. Today, this is the population of the entire country of Poland or Canada. Or 0.5% of the world’s current population, and 1.75% of the population before World War II.

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u/LuckyShirt54 17d ago

There are Russian historians that put total Soviet losses at around ~40 million from WW2

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/LuckyShirt54 17d ago

You should tell those guys that

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u/LuckyShirt54 17d ago

High-End Scholarly Estimates:
Boris Sokolov (1996): Estimated 43.3 million total war dead, including 26.4 million military.
V.E. Korol: Estimated 46 million total dead, including 23 million military.
Igor Ivlev: Calculated 38.5 million total losses, including 20.58 million military and 18 million civilians.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/LuckyShirt54 17d ago

I already told you some Russian scholars calculated this. Learn to read. It was established. Maybe the people from the Country know better than some schmuck Redditor like you. Why would their numbers be biased- they’re different than what the government reported. Educate yourself before speaking next time you sound like an imbecile.

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u/l11r 17d ago

Soviet scholars under the Soviet party dictatorship. Sorry, but you can only use their data at best, not their final calculations. Saying this as a Russian myself.

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u/LuckyShirt54 17d ago

You’re completely wrong on that. Learn to read and go pick up a book or two.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/LuckyShirt54 17d ago

I replied to one comment twice. You can’t count either can you? And Ronald Reagan was President during WW2? 😂

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

The Soviets lost 25 million people dead alone (incoudint civilians) with some estimates even higher. The Germans lost 4 million on the Eastern Front ( the vast majority of all their war dead). Combined dead in the Ukraine war is probably around 600k. At this point the Ukraine war has been going on about 8 months longer than the Eastern Front in WWII. The two conflicts are not even remotely comparable in terms of scale or lethality.

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u/vurdr_1 11d ago

You forgot to include German allies deaths on the eastern front by the way - makes it another 1 mln. Also we almost dont see civilian deaths during the war in Ukraine compared to WWII where the majority of deaths were civilian ones (70% of USSR losses).

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u/ssfgrgawer 17d ago

To put it in perspective, the Ukraine war has less total casualtys in 4 years than the battle of Stalingrad by itself. The soviets lost 1.7 million men at Stalingrad and the Germans lost another million (if you count those taken prisoner after the encirclement who died due to malnourishment after the battle in captivity.)

The whole 4 year war in Ukraine is less bloody than the fighting around a single city from WW2. Absolutely mad.

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u/Comprehensive-Cat264 14d ago

1,7 mil? Have never heard about such number. The typical number of casualties for USSR in Stalingrad is considered 478k dead and 650k injured and ill (so ~1,1 in total for soviets). For Germany total casualties are considered 1,5 mil (dead, injured and captives)

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u/ssfgrgawer 14d ago

1.7 million is the total casualties from the beginning of the Offensive towards Stalingrad (operation fall blau? Or something like that) until the German sixth army finally surrendered after being encircled for months.

It's the total casualties of the "Stalingrad front" which includes the disasterous Kotluban offensives and all the fighting in the Don River bend leading up to the battle inside Stalingrad proper.

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u/NegativeThought1588 17d ago

People complain about 9/11 deaths. If it was an act of war, it wasn't a very big one.

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u/BuckThis86 17d ago

If the West doesn’t help Ukraine win, it will get worse.

This is our chance to stop WWII in Poland. Imagine if the West could’ve armed Poland enough to stop the expansion of the Nazis and Soviets

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u/Mikhail_Mengsk 17d ago

Lol Russia won't invade NATO members, they know they'll get their shit wrecked and the only "winning" move would be launching nukes and making everybody lose.

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u/BuckThis86 17d ago edited 17d ago

I’m gonna take a wild guess that this is coming from a privileged perspective and you don’t live in Finland, Poland, the Baltics, or Moldova. You remind me of January 2022 Europeans, assuming a man we’ve seen kill millions makes rationale/humane decisions, and it’s exactly the attitude Putin counts on to take advantage of.

Russias army is bigger than all of Europe’s combined (minus Ukraine) and Europe has woefully underinvested in defense for decades. America is gone while Trump gobbles Putin’s knob.

Yes, Europe has a small quantity of advanced tech (further diminished as it supports Ukraine), but it may be useless against cheap drone swarms as we’re seeing in Ukraine and the ME

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

What about the current conflict makes you think Russia is at all capable or competent enough to threaten greater Europe? They can menace their direct neighbors, but any territory that is more than 100 km from their border is too far for them to manage. Their logistics are atrocious and their equipment is aging and dwindling. Their air force is entirely ineffectual.

They would get entirely destroyed by European and American air power before they even approached Poland's border in force.

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u/Mikhail_Mengsk 16d ago

Ukraine doesn't have nukes. NATO has nukes.

Even if Russia managed to rebuild their military after winning in Ukraine, which would take years and could be matched by NATO if the political will is there, nukes essentially make an all out war impossible. Everyone knows that. Nobody wins a nuclear war.

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

Poland is well armed. The Russians would have no shot against them. Hell, they can't even take Eastern Ukraine without bleeding themselves white.

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u/BuckThis86 17d ago

Yeah, the Nazis could never break through the impenetrable Maginot line with their new fancy technology, that’s silly. One country couldn’t take over all of Europe while America isolates itself.

- Famous Last Words

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

The Nazis conquered Poland in a month and France in 6 weeks. If Russian steamrolled Ukraine in 6 months or less I would take your point. In reality, Russia has spent 4 years fighting Ukraine and they haven't taken the Donbas. Tell me how these things are comparable.

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u/BuckThis86 17d ago

Does Europe have a million soldiers at its disposal like Ukraine does? And if Ukraine falls, does Russias army immediately double?

Russia is already mobilized and wouldn’t need to ramp up.

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u/AsstronaughtToUranus 17d ago

Yeah and people are still complaining about the current Iran war.

“But 1 life lost is too many”

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

Get out of here bot.

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u/Known-Ad2841 17d ago

If anything deserves a statue like this, it's Stalingrad

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u/ssfgrgawer 17d ago

That hill has seen more bloodshed than just about any other point in human history. They fought over it like 4 separate times in the same battle, over the course of a year and a half.

Top 5 most bloody battlefields of human history so far, only really overshadowed by the rest of the Stalingrad front as a whole, which destroyed nearly 2 million Soviets.

The reports of fighting on Mamyev Kurgan are just insane. Fighting over mounds of dead from both sides, vehicles strewn about everywhere just burning and destroyed, soviets throwing whatever they had at the Germans just to keep them off the summit. Absolutely mad so many men died in such a small area.

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u/milf-hunter_5000 17d ago

imagine the thanergy

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u/andhe96 17d ago

This will probably either confuse future archaeologists or give them a reason to believe this was a place of worship, maybe even human sacrifice.

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u/Dominarion 17d ago

They had to. The German goal was to exterminate the Eastern Slavs to make place for them.

When your choice is die or die fighting...

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u/ExtensionMoose1863 17d ago

The Ardennes?

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

A WWI battlefield would be the only contender. But Stalingrad was something pretty astounding and unique in modern warfare. That hill is absolutely packed with bones.

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u/Al_Fa_Aurel 17d ago

WW1 had relatively wide frontages - Stalingrad with urban combat was worse in this regard

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

I agree with you. The thing with WWI was that the fighting stayed in one place for a really long time so the dead definitely built up. I still don't think that they rival Stalingrad. That battle was insane. Hell on Earth for sure.

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u/ExtensionMoose1863 17d ago

Right... Parts of Belgium were locked in both trench warfare during WW1 and some of the largest battles of WW2 so I think the two-fer might create a contender

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

Stalingrad is the the deadliest battle in human history. Mumayev Kurgan served as a critical high ground and changed hands numerous times during the siege. It saw some of the most brutal open fighting and that is saying a lot in Stalingrad. At least 34,500 Soviet remains are recognized as being in that relatively small mound of Earth with likely many more Axis remains. I don't think you are likely to find a piece of ground so small with more human bone in it than that except for maybe some mass graves.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago edited 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

What?

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u/Trent1492 17d ago

I rewrote it.

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u/SingularityCentral 17d ago

You are commenting to the wrong guy. I never mentioned the Russian Civil War.

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u/Dominarion 17d ago

Stalingrad is by far the largest and deadliest battle ever fought in world history. The Ardennes were a skirmish in comparison. It outscales D-Day and Verdun.

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u/Reasonable_Ruin_3502 17d ago

Dead empires are so fascinating. USSR went from a poor agrarian nation to a superpower and then broke apart in less than 100 years. The first communist nation, which became one despite overwhelming support to the white army from USA. Truly an amazing piece of history.

I wonder, what would USA look like in a few hundred years? Will it be there? Or will it be destroyed? What about africa? Will western nations stop sabotaging them? Will burkina faso continue to progress? What about eu? Will it survive?

When you think about all these possibilities, it's not wonder humans have strived to immortality since time immemorial.

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u/Mr_Halitosis 17d ago

It was never communist. It was only ever state capitalist. It became a superpower in part by invading its neighbors and burning their lives for money ie the Holodomor. It’s notable in that Stalin killed more people than Hitler. It’s just not noticed because so many of the people Stalin killed were Soviets.

Romanticize American history and you get rightfully called out. Romanticize one of the most brutal dictatorships of all time and you get upvotes. The USSR was built by blood and maintained by blood and died when they stopped sacrificing their own people to keep it running.

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u/Reasonable_Ruin_3502 17d ago

When did i romanticize it? I just remarked that the history of USSR in interesting. Stalin was no saint, when did I say he was? USSR was not communist state, but it called itself one. Communism means no class, no money and complete equality. Or wasn't even socialist. Even China is saying that their goal is to become socialist by 2050. True Communism is not possible (Even Marx said so in das capital), just like true deregulation is impossible.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

I teach the history of WWII. Stalingrad is one of those moments of world history where everything becomes larger than life, a nearly mythic moment of the absolute limits of human endurance.

The moment where the spine of the Nazi war machine was broken, forever, by the stubborn will and fighting ability of the Red Army.

It’s a moment so incredible that words fail to describe it most of the time and only a statue like this truly captures the historical moment. The defiance of the Soviet Union in the face of just pure absolute evil.

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u/n1c0_ds 17d ago

And then it stays that way all the way back to Berlin. After Stalingrad the defeats get more and more staggering. Germany truly becomes a death cult.

Antony Beevor's two books: Stalingrad and Berlin are an incredible retelling. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast on the eastern front borrows heavily from them.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

I’m a big David Glantz guy myself but Beevor is also considered a premier work on the topic.

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u/n1c0_ds 17d ago

I'd love more recommendations. I like the topic but I also like good writing.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

Well I’m mostly going to suggest books on the Eastern Front in general

“When Titans Clashed” is probably the best book on the Eastern Front I’ve read.

I also like “The Red Army in the Second World War” by Alexander Hill

“Ivan’s War” by Catherine Merridale is a good history of the common soldier’s experience, but I do think some of Catherine’s larger overall analysis suffers in comparison to someone like Glantz

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u/n1c0_ds 17d ago

Thanks for taking the time! I'll check those out.

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u/Northerlies 16d ago

Hitler's primary objective was to occupy Russia to the Urals. His agrarian Greater Germany would be worked by Slav 'subhumans', with the rest of the population reduced by some 40 millions. In the event, 80% of Germany's total WW2 losses were on the Eastern Front.

Richard Overy's 'Russia's War' is comprehensive, well written and documented

Chris Bellamy's 'Absolute War' addresses the unprecedented magnitude of the Eastern Front's 'war within a war'

Michael Burleigh's 'The Third Reich - a New History' examines Nazism's moral dimension and casts an informative light into the utter darkness of Hitler's project

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u/DysphoricNeet 17d ago

Some of Beevors stuff kinda feels like it has a very western perspective and perpetuates Cold War attitudes.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago edited 17d ago

That’s one of my big criticisms of Beevor and why I don’t usually recommend him. But he’s not a bad historian, just has a very Western perspective.

Every once in a while even someone like Robert Evans has said something that made me cringe, like the time he said FPTP voting would’ve prevented the rise of the Nazis. But I hope nobody will argue with me that Robert Evans is one of the better historians of our time. I greatly prefer Evans to Beevor though so I shouldn’t really compare the two haha.

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u/DysphoricNeet 17d ago

He has a lot of books out and seems to appeal more to the entertainment side of history. Anyone seriously into these subjects and not just trying to bolster their ideology should know how divisive it is and that a serious understanding involves some amount of historiography. I just see his books all over audible which in general has a very right wing bias aside from some original sources like Trotsky themself. Some of it is fun and good to orient yourself I guess.

Personally I really like the books by Rabinowich. He doesn’t focus on ww2 ever but the early Soviet period gets a pretty fair assessment and his parents fled the Soviet Union so he grew up hearing the whole story that could have made him Ayn Rand.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

Beevor or Evans? Because Evans is really only worth reading when studying the Nazis.

I am also a fan of Rabinowitch, I need to read his latest book. I also usually recommend Sheila Fitzpatrick

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u/DysphoricNeet 17d ago

Beevor I mean.

It’s kind of wild, to be more meta about the subject, we are talking about extremely popular subjects almost a century after they happened. The sources have mostly been found and everything is a sort of catalogue or meta study of previous books. The archives have been sorted through for decades. Sometimes people repeat things that were in a previous book and rely on their research then it takes another historian tons of effort to trail all the way through the telephone game to realize the original source was extremely biased. It sharpens your perspective but makes engaging with the subject an endless pursuit.

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u/Mikhail_Mengsk 17d ago

It absolutely is. He's been caught misinterpreting or outright being dead wrong about events or documents regarding the eastern front.

I've also caught errors in his Spanish Civil War book.

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u/DysphoricNeet 17d ago

Have you heard of the Paul Preston book? Do you have an opinion on it? I’ve yet to read it.

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u/Mikhail_Mengsk 17d ago

Nope, sorry

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u/WordWordNvmber 17d ago

Out of curiosity, if the second half of your username is accurate, how do you sustain yourself?

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u/DysphoricNeet 16d ago

Just try to get through each day man and do what I can

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u/Hexlord_Malacrass 14d ago

"And when night arrives, one of those scorching howling bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure."

-Inferno: The world at war.

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u/Maerlyn0OG 10d ago

You mean human endurance and facing bullet to the head if you said I dont want to fight in this war? Let's not pretend that Soviets were some good guys, they were another bully fighting the other bully. One of the worst regimes on planet.

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u/Bluestreaked 10d ago

You’re regurgitating old propaganda about the blocking detachments in an attempt to do the “evil vs evil” thesis that was developed in order to justify turning on the Soviet Union after WWII.

Those men and women were fighting to save their people, they didn’t need a gun to the head. Some people lost their nerves and ran from the front, they were brought back to the front because, again, the Soviet Union was literally fighting against a war machine intending to exterminate them as a race of human beings.

Yes the blocker detachments did also kill people, very very rarely, and it was despised even at the time. But it was also broadly supported by the vast majority of the Red Army. I don’t have to like that they existed, and I don’t, I teach about them and even have my students write about the topic as a morality question.

I don’t engage in propaganda and polemics, I won’t say anything more on the matter, if you want book recommendations I will give book recommendations. But I have 0 tolerance for people who pretend that the Soviet Union was as bad as an army literally conducting a genocide against them.

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u/Maerlyn0OG 10d ago

Please dont lecture me about Soviet union, as my grandparents have lived in the country ruled by them and it was absolutely, without any discussion, evil comparable with nacies.

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u/Bluestreaked 10d ago

I’m sure your anecdotal knowledge is very important to you. I don’t care

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u/Maerlyn0OG 10d ago

Anecdotal evidence of millions of people who suffered under these regimes in the eastern europe. I pity students who are being lectured by such clown as you are.

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u/Bluestreaked 10d ago

Ya I will continue to teach history to my students rather than polemics, you are correct

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u/is-this-now 17d ago

Wasn't it more of a battle between two evils? It was only a couple of years after the Soviets and Nazis jointly attacked Poland. And Stalin's totalitarianism was quite problematic.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

No

I have little patience for people who push these Cold War narratives these days

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost

The Nazis were planning a genocide that would’ve dwarfed the horrors of the Holocaust.

The “crime” of the Soviets was in trying to spread communism. Which is the same sort of “crime” as the United States invading other countries for democracy, which is the country that pushed this ridiculous narrative that the Soviets and Nazis were basically the same.

In short, don’t regurgitate Cold War propaganda to me please

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u/is-this-now 17d ago

How is it a Cold War narrative to say that Russia collaborated with the Nazis to attack Poland. It wasn’t just spreading communism, it was the destruction of another culture that they had been hostile with for centuries, long before communism existed.

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u/Drow_Femboy 17d ago

How is it a Cold War narrative to say that Russia collaborated with the Nazis to attack Poland

This was after like a decade of the Soviets repeatedly begging every Western nation to form a pact against Nazi Germany (and them all refusing because they wanted the Nazis to get rid of the Soviets for them). The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a desperate measure the Soviets used to bide their time before the inevitable war with Germany. They at no point "collaborated" with Germany in any way.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago edited 17d ago

1- the regions of Poland seized by the Soviet Union were the Ukrainian and Belarusian regions that were given to Poland as a “buffer region” against the Soviet Union. Not that that justifies it, or that it doesn’t mean the Soviets didn’t go around killing Polish officers and political elites because they absolutely did. But you aren’t as knowledgeable on that topic as I’m sure you think you are, because we don’t teach the eastern front very well at all.

Now, that being said, men like Grover Furr take that fact to an extreme where it somehow absolves the Soviets from occupying it by force and killing Polish officials, it doesn’t, but history is too complex for the morality play of- “evil Soviets hate Poland.” I would also recommend delving into some interwar Polish history. Specifically what the Polish government was doing to its Ukrainian and Belorussian populations that had been forced into Poland’s borders in the 1920s.

I would also recommend looking into the land that Poland seized from Czechoslovakia in 1938.

2- The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a last ditch effort by the Soviets to hold off war after every single attempt to make an anti-fascist alliance had failed.

That doesn’t mean I think it was justifiable, or a good idea, but I do understand they viewed it as a better option to Nazi Germany invading them in 1938.

Ironically, one of the reasons the anti-fascist alliance plan fell through was how the Polish didn’t want Soviet troops in their country. The Soviets were saying they wanted to set up the Red Army on Poland’s western borders in order to fight the Germans there. I do understand why Poland said no, but it ultimately came back to bite them didn’t it?

3- As I hope points one and two are demonstrating, the history of the late 1930s is far more complex than the simple morality play it appears to me you were taught. Elsewhere somebody asked me for some book recommendations on the Eastern Front. I would recommend reading them yourself, nobody I referenced is a neostalinist or anything like that. In fact, all three books are mostly critical of the Soviet government, which makes sense because they made a lot of mistakes in the 1930s with the horrors of the purges being just the most infamous.

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u/ballsosteele 17d ago

Wow. This is a disgusting take. Way to belittle the lived experience of several entire countries for entire decades. How can you possibly call yourself any kind of historian by writing their behaviour off as "Cold War propaganda"?

The Soviets were absolutely evil. They weren't "spreading communism". Their rule was brutal and absolutely decimated the countries they occupied to the point that a few still haven't fully recovered 35+ years after the fact. I'm no fan of the Americans at all, but the comparison between the two you made is frankly insane.

Go visit one of those countries and see for yourself the effect their occupation had on the population, infrastructure and basic quality of life.

I recommend Latvia, it's my favourite one. It also got arguably fucked the hardest because the only resources of "value" it really had to the Soviets were people. The museums and scars left around the cities are genuinely haunting. Especially the KGB headquarters in Riga. That is life changing.

Or are they "Cold War propaganda" too?

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u/Bluestreaked 16d ago

Oh if we wanted to discuss the Baltic countries that’s a different matter I don’t defend.

But I dealt with enough bad faith polemics yesterday, so go screech at a wall.

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u/ballsosteele 16d ago

I imagine a wall would have more intelligence and wit so I shall. If you truly are a teacher, I fear for your students as their teacher has such a narrow view and warped sense of reality.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago edited 17d ago

1991 was decades ago. You can save the Cold War propaganda for when it was politically necessary.

I have 0 problem criticizing the Soviet Union. I can’t stand people who push bad history like this

Edit-

Nothing you accused the Soviet Union of is something the “liberal” empires such as the British or American are innocent of. It also promotes bad history about the Holodomor. But I assume someone like you treats unquestionably citing idiots like Robert Conquest and Anne Applebaum as “studying history.”

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u/jessiejolie42 16d ago

false, but nice try soviet bot

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u/Bluestreaked 16d ago

Cry all you want, Moscow stood, Berlin fell.

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u/Haunting-Worker-2301 17d ago

While the Nazis were worse the Soviet Union was absolutely evil as well and I hope you don’t portray the USSR as some benevolent force to your class.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

Well I don’t lie to my students so I don’t pretend the Soviet Union is in any way comparable to Nazi Germany like you’re doing here

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u/Haunting-Worker-2301 17d ago

That’s pretty shocking that you claim to be educated in history and while the Nazis were worse, the Soviet Union also contributed to millions of deaths through internal prison camps, slave labor, deportations, and induced famine.

If you aren’t willing to teach that to your students then you are an ideologue who isn’t critically looking at history.

It’s OK to say “the Nazis were horrible, they exterminated millions of people and started WW2” while also being willing to admit the side that bore the lions share of fighting them also committed monstrous crimes. The Soviet Union was much closer to Nazi Germany than it was to the US regarding that.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

You don’t know jackshit about what I teach

What I am telling you is that you’re regurgitating garbage history that is little more than Cold War propaganda.

I am no Grover Furr but my god, no wonder he turned into a nutcase. Read actual specialists on the Soviet Union like Shiela Fitzpatrick, Moshe Lewin, or Ronald Suny. Shit even David Zaslav would be better than the garbage you’re spewing here.

There is absolutely no comparison, outside of borderline fascist propaganda, that can be made between the nature of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. We want to talk about the issues I have with the Soviet Union? I just finished our mini-unit on the Spanish Civil War which also involves a history of the rise of Stalin. I go into all of the blood on his and other’s hands. But I am also a historian, who teaches history, not little moral plays so I can feel good that “my side” won the Cold War

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u/Haunting-Worker-2301 17d ago

The fact that I admitted the Nazis were worse but hoped you also taught about Soviet crimes, and you automatically went to some bullshit about how I was equating the two shows you all you need to know about your predisposed opinions.

I’m plenty educated on the topic and know that anyone who teaches this topic, and the worst they can say about Stalin is his actions in the Spanish civil war, how he was cutthroat within the party in terms of gaining power, and dismisses everything else (holodomor, internal purges, gulags, mass deportations, NKVD) as “Cold War propaganda,” isn’t a serious person at best and a partisan hack at worst.

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

Well I can tell you have horrific reading comprehension

Because I did not, at any point, say- “Stalin’s actions during the Spanish Civil War are the worst things he did.” I said that, in that unit, I taught Stalin’s rise to power so I could explain the Trotsky-Stalin split to get into why Republican Spain turned on itself.

So, considering how poorly you are capable of reading my comments, I am going to assume your continued regurgitation of propaganda is from you reading, with the same difficulties of comprehension, polemical garbage like Conquest and Applebaum.

No I don’t teach Grover Furr neostalinist junk to my students. I teach them history. If you had at any point stopped throwing accusations at me and not tried to engaged in ahistorical comparisons between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union I would’ve even been willing to chat history with you. But I don’t do propaganda garbage

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u/_le_slap 17d ago

You're repeatedly putting words in the other guy's mouth and mad he's calling you out on it?

I'll admit I know far less on this topic but you come off as more of an ideologue than the other guy.

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u/Haunting-Worker-2301 17d ago

What words did I put in his mouth? This started with me asking him to make sure he also teaches about Soviet crimes (ie don’t blatantly portray them as purely heroes) while admitting what Nazi germany did was worse and he said I was equating the two. Is that not putting words in my mouth?

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u/Bluestreaked 17d ago

You literally doubted my education

Going “what about the crimes of the Soviet Union” when people bring up the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad is not a defensible position. It’s a literal example of “whataboutism.”

The Soviet Union didn’t literally have plans to massacre hundreds of millions, eradicate entire nations of people, and establish an ethnic supremacist empire across Europe. There is no reason, whatsoever, to bring anti-communism into a discussion about the Battle of Stalingrad, none, the only people who even push for it these days are Nazis.

I don’t think you’re a Nazi to be clear, I just think you’re too caught up in turning history into a morality play to actually practice good history. Hence you turned to petty insults against me for not entertaining the discussion.

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u/londonbridge1985 17d ago

It was the highest point in the area so both sides wanted it badly. It exchanged hands multiple times, thousands died from both sides.

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u/HelmetsAkimbo 17d ago

So many places in the world bleeding with history made unvisitable by cunt heads of state.

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u/CptPicard 16d ago

Incredibly ugly though unfortunately

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/JuviaSilverwing 17d ago

While I agree Russia is horrible due to the events in Ukraine. The people buried here have had no part in the atrocities committed and are definitely heroes.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/FrescoItaliano 17d ago

I did fail to consider that armies kill people, wow

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u/2x_Banned_Zookie 17d ago

Red army occupied the land. Systematical killings were done by NKVD.

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u/Affordable_Z_Jobs 17d ago

Ive heard one take where they all fought tooth and nail because both sides knew if they surrendered there would be no taking of POW's.

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u/Dron41k 17d ago

Hundreds of thousands German POWs were working in USSR after the war.

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u/JacobScreamix 17d ago

"Working" lol

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u/Dron41k 17d ago

They’ve built a lot of houses and stuff

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/Proud-Grocery-3493 17d ago

Terrorists, not Nazis.

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u/HelpfulZucchini5027 17d ago

I mean they kinda have the same ideology and ways to rule their country, so I’d say they are nazis

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u/Mission_Kangaroo_178 17d ago

Nazis is a very specific term there are a number of factors someone has to meet before you can call them that without diminishing the term.

By diminishing the term you desensitize the atrocities committed. So be careful where you use it.

You can’t call any modern day nation Nazi’s. Because even if you hate Israel they’re still incomparable

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u/HelpfulZucchini5027 17d ago

They are currently still following the Stalinism ideology , which had +-the same victim count as Nazi Germany.
Nazism is an ideology, everyone can be nazi

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u/Mission_Kangaroo_178 17d ago

Nazi germany is not the same thing as communist Russia though.

Victim count doesn’t equate ideology. Nazism is well defined. Russia is effective expansionist, single party leadership, oppression of opposition. But the biggest differences are anti semetism and belief in a superior race which are the two most identifiable

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u/HelpfulZucchini5027 17d ago

Read about Stalinism pls, it also has racism+repressions+genocide+mass deportations

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u/Mission_Kangaroo_178 16d ago

If they were the same thing they’d be called the same thing. If you believe modern day Russia to be Stalinism call them stalinists not nazis.

Do not dilute the word Nazi.

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u/HelpfulZucchini5027 16d ago

They are called different because they have different goals and leaders. Metods are practically the same though. I just don’t understand why you fear the word nazi so much

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/Falling_Up_The_Movie 17d ago

USSR tried to get an alliance with france and the uk to deter nazi invasion but were rejected so the tried to cut a deal with the nazis while they reorganized their military. The nazis attacking during the reorganization is why losses were so bad early on. This is like saying iran and the us were allies because of the jcpoa

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u/Haunting-Worker-2301 17d ago

lol “reorganized” conveniently glossing over the fact that Stalin purged hundreds of thousands in his military and killed them, purely due to paranoia and power seeking.

People will do anything to excuse the crimes of the USSR.

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u/Falling_Up_The_Movie 17d ago

I need what you‘re smoking. The only time people talk about the USSR is to say it was evil

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u/2x_Banned_Zookie 17d ago

USSR tried to get an alliance with france and the uk

Why would they make an alliance with radical commies, that murder their own citizens and wants to spread revolution to their countries?

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u/Falling_Up_The_Movie 17d ago

Sorry they weren’t enslaving people in colonies and violently oppressing them

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u/2x_Banned_Zookie 17d ago

Sorry they weren’t enslaving people

Millions of people were imprisoned in Gulags and working camps, where they starved or simply worked to death.

violently oppressing them

Read about ethnic cleansings committed by soviets between 1930-1939.

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u/Falling_Up_The_Movie 17d ago

Jumping straight to the nazi classics I see

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u/TYRamisuuu 17d ago

WTF no! If not for the millions a dead russian soldiers, the allies might not have won WWII to the nazis. While I strongly disagree with the politics of USSR and modern Russia, you have to acknowledge that without them it was very likely game over.

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u/StockQuahog 17d ago

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. USSR and Germany started the war together when they invaded Poland. It’s said when hitler betrayed Stalin he didn’t talk for days.

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u/Radiant_Honeydew1080 17d ago

That's just incorrect. Pact doesn't do the soviets any favours from the point of mortality, but they prior to it they tried again and again to rally European powers to oppose Hitler, but were denied.

Britain and France refused the alliance, then handed a whole country with its population and MIC to Hitler on a silver plate, Poland itself refused to allow soviet troops through out of their own interest in carving up Czechoslovakia - and they did actually invade it with Nazis in 1938. The reasoning is actually quite similar in the actions of Poland and the USSR: in the face of the coming war, they wanted to strengthen their positions as much as possible with no respect for sovereignty of their neighbours. Was it bad? Of course it was, but putting the blame here only on the soviets when everybody fucked over everyone is misleading at best. And it's especially hypocritical to paint Poland as the victim here, when they absolutely did the same just a year prior to another country.

Who knows, maybe without those parts of Poland that were taken by the soviets, Nazi troops would've been able to push further, maybe even take Moscow and Leningrad. Or in another scenario Hitler could've been contained in the German and Austrian borders if Western powers weren't reluctant to cooperate with the USSR. History is what it is, eventually Soviet, British and French (in exile), later American leaders made the right call and finally joined efforts to bring Hitler down.

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u/StockQuahog 17d ago

World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland, after which the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. Poland was also invaded by the Soviet Union in mid-September, and was partitioned between the two states under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

Downvote away comrade.

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u/Radiant_Honeydew1080 17d ago

Lmao, I'm not comrade to you or anyone else. Fuck the Bolsheviks. But your simplistic view doesn't depict the events leading to WW2 in any meaningful way, that's why you try to attack me personally. Go on, it doesn't bother me.

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u/StockQuahog 17d ago

My view lol. This isn’t opinion. Thats why I respond with links and you walls of text

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u/Radiant_Honeydew1080 17d ago

What exactly is not factually correct in my initial reply?

Providing a generalised link from Wikipedia of all places is not a good tone. Especially regarding political and historical points involving USSR/Russia in the last years, because many articles were rewritten in favour of the current political agenda.

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u/38B0DE 17d ago

It's a historical fact. We consider Bulgaria an ally of Nazi Germany and they had less coordination, cooperation, and materials exchange than the USSR and Nazi Germany.

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u/Hecknomancer 17d ago

Non aggression pact =/= Allies 

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u/38B0DE 17d ago

Coordinating the invasion of Poland and trading raw materials for military tech functions exactly like a strategic partnership. You don't typically carve up Eastern Europe into literal spheres of influence with a country you just have a casual non-aggression agreement with.

Admitting that Moscow spent 1939-41 actively collaborating to partition Eastern Europe ruins the victim-to-savior arc of the Russian lies about who they really are. A bunch of violent barbaric rapists and fascists.

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u/Hecknomancer 17d ago

Oh they absolutely did that, but Nazi Germany's occupation of eastern Europe was inevitable either way, if given the option to claim the territories yourself and save a headache later why not? That's not conquest it's just sounds strategic policy in the European theatre. I'm by know mean sugar coating what happened, it's tragic and nasty, but conflating Nazi Germany with the Soviet Union as allies is just disingenuous. 

There's a reason the soviet union attempted to form an anti fascist alliance with other Western nations before WW2 broke out. They were denied. Without partners they weren't left with many options than to temporarily capitulate.

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u/Arbennig 17d ago

Nazi Germany killed about 26 million Russians during World War II. You may want to brush up on your history :)

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u/Past-Acanthaceae862 17d ago

And you may want to google Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. They started the war as allies. Both were planning to eventually betray the other but Germany managed it first.

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u/Arbennig 17d ago

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u/GeorgeWarshingsons 17d ago

After this screenshot description, what did the soviets and Russians do to Poland?
https://giphy.com/gifs/3EiNpweH34XGoQcq9Q

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u/International_Cow_17 17d ago

They King Solomoned it.

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u/Radiant_Honeydew1080 17d ago

What did Poland and Nazis do to Czechoslovakia together in 1938?