I'm not saying they will, but I am noticing some attempts to change the goal posts or the subject. What do you think the response will be like?
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Germany wasn't stupid enough to invade with 160,000, in the hopes that Norway would see reason...
Who cares what it's 'worth'? If you send a 30 year old Mercedes that works as well as a new one, does that make a dime's worth of difference?
Also, doesn't seem to me that the pols are trying to exaggerate how much they help that shithole. Especially considering that they do nothing for their own country except allowing toxic fumes to engulf East Palestine. It's an embarrassment, and even your friend Eyepatch McCain was trying to downplay it.
I'm definitely not happy, but let's be real. Russia has more territory than it started with. Ukraine is in ruins. It's a clear Russian victory so far. Now, should they continue and end the mistake of Ukrainian statehood? Absolutely. But I'll grant a pro-Russian rump Galicia.
Who's lost more though? The prostitute of the West. So... still a good deal, as sad as I am that anyone has to die over Western machinations.
I'm sure those governments and OSINT cretins you believe credulously are very objective and impartial...
Ukrainian casualties in Bakhmut are said to be massive.
Pointing, yes. Gloating, no.
Like the Wehrmacht did. And at the end of the 4 years, despite staggering, unbelievable losses, the USSR was at the height of its power.
I can't believe you wrote a paragraph with which I wholly agree.
Too old. But you're bragging about how the corrupt West is defeating RUSSHER. So why are you taking pleasure in the supposed achievements of Trudeau the Tyrant?
The height of its mobilized power, yes. The height of its potential power? No. The USSR lost enormous amounts of manpower, enough to demographically warp the country for generations. Russia also suffered enormous GDP and economic damage: "As result of the German invasion of World War II, the Economy of the Soviet Union suffered punishing blows, with Soviet GDP falling 34% between 1940 and 1942.[3] Industrial output did not recover to its 1940 level for almost a decade."
Just because the USSR hit peak tank production in 1944, doesn't mean it was at the "height of its power". Mobilization is cannibalistic, it is the conversion of sustainable civilian economic power to temporary warmaking power. Communists are uniquely good at full mobilization. The United States was able to mobilize to a far lesser degree than the USSR, so its economy recovered faster.
Also worth mentioning (because its forgotten by many people talking about WW2 Soviet Union): They were a major recipient of Lend Lease. Over half of their locomotives and rolling stock, almost 3/4 of their trucks, most of their uniforms, and almost all of their aviation-grade fuel was made by the US. Zhukov is on record on multiple occasions saying that he could only do things like Deep Battle because his army was moving with American trucks. Hell, one of their most iconic weapons of the war was typically mounted on an American truck. Guess what Russia doesnt have anymore, and hasnt since 1945. And this is before we get to some of the heavier shit (like Soviet pilots preferring the American P-39/63, and loving the British Valentine and American Sherman tanks).
The simple fact of the matter is, A lot of people, on both sides of the old Iron Curtain, still base their view of Russia off of a combination of bad Soviet propaganda and misremembered facts. And considering that Russias latest attempt at a mobilization resulted in mass citizen flight and a failure to meet the mobilization goal, call me skeptical that Russia can do another "Throw bodies at the problem" solution to the war.
Excellent point! However, it shows what a juggernaut Russia/USSR is when it is mobilized. My only worry is that they will pussy out and not mobilize sufficiently to take down te West's prostitute as thoroughly as I'd like.
I mean, 34% is shockingly low, considering that the Germans controlled what were the most productive and populated areas of the USSR, even accounting for the insane transportation of factories to the Urals.
The US had nothing to recover from. It also had a little to do with not losing 27 million people and not having the entire West of your country devastated.
Putin's Russia 2022 is nothing compared to Stalin's Russia of 1941. Stalin had total, absolute power over the whole Soviet population. Putin's power is very weak by comparison. The dissent seen against Putin would be unthinkable under Stalin. Putin would have called for total mobilization from the start if he could. The reason he did not isn't because he was a nice guy, or because he was so overconfident, it was because he lacked the power to do so.
Putin was unable to call for mobilization until after Ukraine's successful offensives. This means it took clear proof Russia was losing before Putin could sell his elites on partial mobilization and obtain their consent to it.
They won't because they can't, not because Putin lacks the intent or will to do so. He doesn't do it because his elites are telling him that if he does, they won't support him, and if they don't support him, the people will begin to be allowed to rise up, cracks will appear in state propaganda, and so on. Putin is not Stalin. He cannot simply make a list of a million people he suspects and have them all Gulaged. His order to do so would not be obeyed if he tried. Putin sits at the top of a whole corrupt apparatus of oligarch elites who he needs and relies on to control the country. It's more like a weak King and his court of corrupt Nobles, than an absolute dictator.
Putin basically conned his Oligarchs into support for his war because he tricked them into thinking it would be an easy win, with tons of opportunities for profit. Instead, it's been a quagmire and the Oligarchs want off, but are stuck in the same mindset the US had under Nixon in Vietnam where they want it to be over, but they don't want to lose. So they agree to allow Putin to escalate just enough to stave off defeat, but not enough to win.
Well Germany took all the best agricultural areas, but not the best industrial & resource areas, never having taken the oil fields, mines, etc. And as you said, the Soviets did everything they could to strip the area under threat of all of its industrial resources (and a lot of its skilled population) before Germany could occupy it.
The US still have some mobilization which meant a lot of civilian factories got gutted and repurposed to military production, all of which needed to switch back after the war, which is expensive. But since the US had a far more limited transformation than the USSR (or Japan), it could switch back to a civilian economy much, much faster.
To use your own terminology, you're only taking mobilized power rather than potential power. And I find it quite amusing that whenever you talk about Stalin, you sound like a hardcore Stalinist of the highest order. I would almost believe that you are Russian, given the reverence Russians now have for Stalin...
NO WAY! A successful politicians wasn't a nice guy? Dekachin is learning stuff!
So he is not a 'dictator' but just an oligarch, just like Western leaders. Only a good deal more competent and with better effects for his country. Good to know.
Sounds pretty dumb. But here you accept that if Russia counter-escalates enough, it will win, because it outclasses your corrupt puppet shithole non-country by orders of magnitude.
As far as I know, the most industrialized areas of the USSR (at least in tsarist times) were the Ukraine and the Baltic area. All areas lost very early on. How much of this was salvaged, I don't know, but only a 1/3 decline is pretty incredible. That's about the same as the decline Russia suffered under the USAID-written constitution in the 1990s.
Sure, but it's way different from having half of your country be wrecked, and in fact, wrecked to such an extent that people were starving even after the war (while Stalin was exporting food).