Hypothetical: would the USSR have done better against Germany without Stalin?

[axi]

Has anybody ever played Stalin's Dilemma?

It's a small manager-type game, in which you have to industrialize the USSR and build a large enough army to fight the Nazis, with the least amount of deaths.

IIRC, at my best go, I only lost 10 million people due to collectivization.

You can find it in www.the-underdogs.org

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Serb

Belive me, I know how alcoholics looks like I saw plenty of them. All long-time alcoholics have the same trait, but unfortunately I don't know how to describe it. Stalin on pictures and in documentary, obviously doesn't look like alcoholic.
But I'm not surprised with this myth, some morons here in Russia even claim he was a gay.

I've seen lots more of them than you have buddy. You can depend on that.

Yeah, right. He walked at streets looking for people who are talking quietly. Typical maniac.
I'm getting tired of this.

He didn't have to walk the streets, he had lots of people do it for him. Are you making the claim that the humongous number of people he sent to death and/or imprisonment were actually guilty of plotting to overthrow the Soviet Union? What portion of those people do you hink were actually guilty?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I've seen lots more of them than you have buddy. You can depend on that.

Well he does live in Russia.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Serb


Why?

they didn't develop the skills or technology to build railroads,factories, machine equipment,etc. It was all brought in. The US had to develop a lot of what it had, it could only steal so much from GB. In particular railroads over rugged terrain, and high pressure steam engines that make trains possible are US inventions for example.

Would the 5 year plan have gotten anywhere without outside investors bringing equipment and tech in? Would it have done so as quickly as it happened? I do not know, and you don't either.

[The Vagabond]

Serb, I've got the impression that you justify Stalin totally and unconditionally.

In the early 1930s Stalin said something like that: "We are 50 years behind the developed countries. We have to cover this distance in 10 years, or else we'll be destroyed". Those who think that fast industrialization was an imperative for survival at that particular place and time are certainly right. Times were tough and cruel, and the leader of the Soviet Union had to be tough, even cruel, and with the right insight into what had to be done. Stalin was that. But unfortunately he was even more than that: He was also a paranoid and murderous maniac. The number of victims is horrendous^(*). If we try to compare him with other tough dictators like e.g. Franco or Pinochet, the numbers of victims are incomparable.

But, all in all, if I had to choose between Stalin and a kinder leader who would have failed to prepare the country for the war, I would choose Stalin, of course. All the repressions pale in comparison with what could have happened if the Soviet Union had been defeated in that war. You see, it's a really tough choice here.


(*) Here I mean the realistic estimations (like 4 million repressed, 1 million victims of the Ucranian famine), not the BS numbers that have been feeding the western propagandistic machine for decades.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Well he does live in Russia.

Well I did provide coverage for a detox ward for 3 years.

[Harovan]

You haven't probably seen more than a few hundreds, though. Serb lives in a big Russian city. I've been there for years and I can safely confirm that about half of the male population are alcoholics by western standards.

[Imran Siddiqui]

ErikM

Absolutely spot on. Capitalism is good peacetime economy. It results in light industry and agriculture buildup in the beginning, so as a wartime economy it isn't as good.. at least not until a country becomes developed, but even then. Capitalism doesn't provide the heavy industry that is needed for warfare purposes that well. This is why central planning is used in mostly every war.

[Serb]

Originally posted by VetLegion
But you are so blinded by your patriotism you take everything as an attack on Russia. You even go so far as defending Communism (yet I bet you don't vote for them, do you?) and bringing up Afghanistan to justify WW II Soviet military doctrine.

Well, I didn't bring up Afghanistan to justify anything. shawnmmcc, said Soviets had poor doctrines up to Afghanistan war. I just made a comparison of Soviet achievments during Afghanistan war with American achievments during Vietnam war.

However what I said stands, communism is terribly innefficient and Stalin harmed industrialization of Russia and funny propaganda stories (thanks for translating that part) about Potemkin villages don't change that.

What Potemkin villages? This ambassador saw with his own eyes what Soviets did within 5 years and actually it was just a bit of what they done. Do you really deny that Stalin build huge heavy industry from scratch within very short period of time?

Peace man,

Sure, but I don't recall I delared war on you.

p.s. Communism will win.

[Serb]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Serb, US doctrine for dealing with asymetric warfare stinks from a political standpoint. Vietnam was a classic cluster f***, and Iraq is having problems. Our problem is that our military is politically controlled, and when the administration is in denial, "they'll welcome us with open arms," our military isn't given the resources because the idiot politicians KNOW they won't have a guerilla war.

Well, I brought an example of two guerrilla wars were Soviet and US army participated, to compare their peformance. As for me, it's obviuos, that Soviets performed in Afghanistan better than Americans did in Vietnam. So, I don't see how Soviet doctrines could be worse than American.

I agree that all of the early Soviet Army was lightly armored. That's why I mentioned BT-5/7 spearheaded by T-34A/KV-1A.

But, T-34 and KV tanks were created after Tukhachevsky. Had he stayed in charge, those tanks would never be created. Tukhachevsky didn't want tanks like T-34 or KV-1, KV-2, because he din't understand the nature of modern warfare, he didn't understand what kind of tanks needed for new type of warfare. What he wanted to create, was a new breakthrought tank T-39, weight- 90 tonns, two 107mm main guns, two 45mm secondary guns, five muchineguns. It was the same fricking "land battleship" as T-35 or British "Indepentent", but just bigger, uglier and more absurd.

The T-28 and T-35 were pathetic, but then again so the the PZ-1, with the PZ-11 only competent for armored recon (which the Germans eventually used a variant for). If you look at other tanks from the same time period, nobody was doing a very good job. The Brits had tiny guns, the French had one-man turrets, and the Germans only had light tanks. It's the next generation, with the Pzkw-III that the German's get quality equipment, and then the Soviets with the T-34 and KV-1 build the best tanks for the time period, pre-1942/43 depending on how you figure your dates and the Panther and Sherman Firefly.

Sure, but again, he wanted to replace T-35 and T-28 with 90 tonns T-39. Considering T-35 and T-28 were pure crap, but were damn expensive (overall Tukhachevsky build 60 T-35 and about 500 T-28), it's obvious thier bigger and uglier version T-39, would have been even more crap and even more expensive. So, Soviet industry could not produce them in quantity needed for breakthroughts. In Tukhachevsky's armored forces were 60 T-35, 500 T-28, BUT about 20 000 light tanks with "paper armor" (T-26 and BT of all modifications) and also 4000 of swiming tanks (5-7mm armor). Can you explain such proportion? I can't. I don't know what for he need so many almost unarmored tanks.

The problem with the theory of deep operation is that it as practiced it was centrally directed, and commanders were largely trained AND REWARDED for following orders, not initiative. You cannot claim to only reward successful initiative, but there will always be mistakes. If you can get shot for a loss on the field due to failed initiative, then initiative will be rare. Doctrine includes down to the small unit level, and the disconnect between brilliant strategic doctrine and failed operational/tactical doctrine means that deep operation was a paper tiger.

Disagreed. All front-scale operations are centrally directed. Take your latest campaign in Iraq for example. Wasn't it centrally directed from HQ? Weren't your commanders following their orders? Or your generals just send your boys and told them - "just do what you want to do, what you consider will be the best"?

Khalkin-gol is a very bad example. The Japanese army was pathetic. It's best tank was worse than the BT- series, it only had a medium velocity 37mm gun, it was slow, and it had armor that could be penetrated by a heavy machine gun. There artillery was poor, and their machine guns had all kinds of problems. The only thing you could say for their doctrine was that it stressed the intiative, but it did that via frontal assaults and horrendous casualties. Their army air force was equally bad, and it took bringing in their naval air units to slow down the Soviets. The Soviets were fighting an army with worse infranty equipment than the German and British armies in WW1 (not the French, nobody was that bad ).

Sure their equipment and esp. tanks were crap, but why it's a bad example? Japanese kicked some arses before (well, to be honest Chinese army was in even worse state than Japanese) and after Khalkin-Gol. I heard they put quite a fight to US in 1941-1945.

[ErikM]

I think you are too tough on BT tanks, Serb. Surely they were no worse than PzI/PzIIs and probably even comparable to early PzIIIs. That's what Zhukov used at Khalkhin-Gol and with considerable success.

The doctrine was inadequate and logistics was in shambles during early weeks of the war. No tank is going to be any good without fuel and ammo. That's what most likely explains horrendous losses of them in summer'41, not that they were particularly bad.

[Serb]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Are you like 15 years old?

When I was 15 years old, I thought like most of you that Stalin was just a paranoid manic, who liked to kill his own people. Now I'm 27 and when I say that purges "strenghtened the Red Army, not the other way around", I'm absolutely serious.

Again from diary of Joseph Davis American ambassador in USSR (I didn't translate this part last time, more probably most of the names spelled wrong here, forgive me my English):

"Today, thanks to efforts of FBI, we know that Hitler's agents acted everywhere, even in United States and South America. German enterance to Praga, was supported by military organizations of Helen. The same was in Norway (Quisling), Slovakia (Tiso), Belgium (de Grell)... however we see nothing alike in Russia. "Where are the Russian agents of Hitler?" - people ask me often, and I answer - "they were shot".

The end of quote.



Besides obvious criminals and traitors like Tukhachevsky, Stalin replaced lazy and incompetent officers by proffesionals. After the purges the % of educated officers in highest leadership of Red Army incresed by 45% (most of those brightest minds, like Tukhachevsky&Co had no military education, proffesionals, my ass ). Stalin replaced all those old farts, with whole line of real professionals, like Zhukov.
Winston Churchill considered that in human history Stalin's marshals: Zhukov, Konev, Rockossovsky, Vasilevsky, Konev, etc. had only one parallel- Napoleon's marshals.
The purges of 1937-1938, weren't just arrests and exectutions. The percent of officers who were arrested during purges was actually small (iirc, about 10%). The rest of officers were FIRED from Red army during 1937-1938, retired because of age, or FIRED because of incompetence or lack of discipline.
And one more thing.
When Soviet tanks were near Berlin, just several days before his death, Hitler in his bunker, met with western journalist (don't remeber his name) and gave him his last interview. In this last interview, Hitler said something like this- "Stalin did a genius thing when he purged his army, I regret I didn't do the same".
It's confession of the defeated enemy, he had no reasons to lie, imho.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse

Trostky commanded the Red Army during the civil war - he must have won a few battles because the Red Army beats the Whites.

I don't recall a single battle he won. He perhaps was a creator of Red Army as many claim, but operational general? I doubt. He was more like draft man and propaganda man. He traveled across Russia in his personal train (It wasn't a regular train, but personal train of last Russian Tzar- Nickolai II. Trotsky's personal cook was from Paris. This guy really liked comfort.) and made speeches. But who cares about Trotsky? We spoke about Tukhachevsky.

Stalin did not distinguish himself in the civil war, quite the opposite.

Wrong guess, AH, wrong guess. Stalin won for Soviets one of the most decisive battles of Civil war. He crushed an overhelming force of Whites during defence of Tsaritzin. This city was a key factor for survival of young Soviet republic, guess how it was named later? It was renamed to Stalingrad.

In fact if I recall correctly Stalin was responsible for the Polish debacle. There was a scandal about it but this of course was written out of the official history once Stalin came to power.

Stalin responsible for the Polish debacle?
Yeah, right, next time you'll tell me, that Stalin is responsible for extinction of dinosaurs.
Poland was a Tykhachevsky's f*ck-up 100%. This "brightest mind" denied importance of reinforcements. He complitely denied reinforcements as an element of warfare and HE, and no one else, HE f*cked-up at Warsaw.
Sure after the war, he wrote a book where he start to whine - "It was not my fault, blah...blah...blah..."
This bright mind didn't win a single battle vs. enemy's army. However he was quite talented dealing with such enemies as peasants. His only victories are suppression of peasant riot at Tambov (Yeah, it's pretty honorable to shot peasants, right?) and suppression of Krondshtat riot of sailors.
That's all.

It's sad you believe that because it was actually intelligence operation by Abwehr, German military intelligence, which triggered the purges. It was their most successful operation to convince Stalin his most gifted generals were traitors.

It's sad, really sad, (because I really respect you) that you AH, are prisoner of the same myths, as most of the others here. Tukhachevsky wasn't a gifted general and such operation never existed. Considering what kind of harm Tukhachevsky done to Red Army, Germans were intersted at him staying in charge as longer as possible.

So sad you think that about Tukhachevsky. Stalinist propaganda is alive and well it seems in modern Russia. The Germans had immense respect for Tukhachevksy...

Sure, he was a member of their team, their minion.

... because they trained secretly in Russia during the Weimar republic period. The blitzkrieg was developed in Russia but Stalin's cronies rejected deep armoured penetration as counter-revolutionary after the purges in favour of massed infantry frontal assault. This "tactic" wasn't overturned until the end of 1942. Millions of ordinary Russian soldiers died as a result.

Once again AH,
1) The theory of deep operation (you called a blitzkrieg)was created by Triandafilov. Tukhachevsky has nothing to do with this, except that he pursued and presecuted Triandafilov all his life, untill he (Triandafilov) finally died.
2) The theory of deep operation was in Red Army's regulations since 1936. No one removed it from regulations since this time, it was a part of regulations in 1941, as well.
3) No one in Soviet leadership switched in favour of massed infantry frontal assaults after Tukhachevsky's death. Spearhead units- Mechanized Corps were still there and Red Army still should act in accordance with its regulations, in accordance with theory of deep operation which was part of those regulations. Single Mech. Corps had more than 1000 tanks and there were several such corps in 1941 and Stalin planned to increase their number to 20 within 1-1.5 years).
But problem was that in 1941, those spearhead units were still equiped by Tukhachevsky's tanks- T-26 and BT. Germans wiped-out this armada of rusty crap within few months and Soviets had to build their armor forces from scratch. Millions of Russian soldiers died as result of Tukhachevsky betrayal or his incompetence at best, because he armed them with such armaments.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I've seen lots more of them than you have buddy. You can depend on that. He didn't have to walk the streets, he had lots of people do it for him. Are you making the claim that the humongous number of people he sent to death and/or imprisonment were actually guilty of plotting to overthrow the Soviet Union? What portion of those people do you hink were actually guilty?

I think a big portion. USSR was isolated and surrounded by hostile countries. The WW2 was on horisont and enemy's activities were very high. Besides, there were many internal enemies. The civil war left a lot of people who were hostile to Bolshevicks and who did their best to harm them somehow. Next, the split in party, produced a lot of enemies within party itself. It was not a war only between Stalin and Trotsky, but among their followers as well. Followers of Trotsky had no reasons to love Stalin's line and did their best to sabotage Stalin's efforts in economy. So I think a big portion of them were actually guilty, but it doesn't meant I believe that no innocent people were shot or send to jails. Sure many innocent suffered and it's a tragedy. I believe my grand grandfather who was shot in 1937 was innocent too.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Whoha


they didn't develop the skills or technology to build railroads,factories, machine equipment,etc. It was all brought in. The US had to develop a lot of what it had, it could only steal so much from GB. In particular railroads over rugged terrain, and high pressure steam engines that make trains possible are US inventions for example.

Well, they did build those railroads and factories by themselves. Foreign companies only designed those factories not build. Anyhow, it's quite normal situation for that time (and for today too). Those design companies did not worked for USSR only. They worked for other countries as well. That's how they are making money. It's they job and they don't care much who sign the checks. It's just a buisness. I'm pretty sure today in US, hordes of engineeres from all around the world (including Russia of course) works for US. I'm pretty sure thousands of companies from all around the world, cooperate with US and sell to US their technologies.
So? What is the difference? It's quite normal proccess.

Would the 5 year plan have gotten anywhere without outside investors bringing equipment and tech in?

They were not an investors. Not a single foreigner in his straight mind, would invest in USSR in 30's. An investor put his money on risk, he may win and make a profit, but also he can loose and lost his bet. Any investment it's always a risk. What they did, whas just a deal- they sold, USSR bought. The government of SU just bought an equipment and designs from west. The government of USSR was an investor in this case, not the companies who sold this equipment to investor.

Would it have done so as quickly as it happened? I do not know, and you don't either.

Sure. But as I've said it was a buisness profitable for both sides, otherwise western companies wouldn't have been bothering with Soviets.