Russian atrocities

G'day

Not exactly what this thread is about but if the war kicked off between Russia and the Anglo-Americans what about the Atomic bomb????

For this thread, the Russians were treated as Untermenschen in the most horrific way, and now it was payback time. Russian propaganda would highlight the attrocities to make the soldiers fight harder, and as soon as they got into the fatherland they would take revenge. In a documentary on tv they even raped and beat women taken by the germans from their own country, speaking to them in their own language. Blinded by hate (and maybe too much wodka?)

Popski

 

Everyone had enough, at least both sides of my familie mentioned too numerous times too count. The big "What If " If Anlo-American forcees would have joined with what was left of the Wehrmacht, it would have been all over for the Soviets. Can you imagine Moscow and all her cites being bombed with no mercy both day and night such as the Reich had been through ? The Soviet fighter force only had a/c that could fly at medium altitudes and never would have been able to put up a strong force to withstand the might of these combined forces. My opinion the Soviet air forces were weak to begin with. The only thing going for it was it's ground attack arm.

E

 

I agree, Erich. The Red air force was huge, but not able enough to face the RAF and the USAAF and a recoverd Luftwaffe. But I can imagine the problem of Patton's 3rd army if it would have faced Kóniev's 1st Group of Ukranian Armies with its 1.000.000 men, 25.000 guns, 10.000 tanks... I can imagine what the Shermans would have done against T-34/85, KV-1s, IS-III... Ahhh... and we should add Zhúkov's 1st Group of Bielorrusian Armies with the same quantity of men and equippment and our dear Monty would have had to face Rokossovsky's 2nd Group of Bielorrusian Armies with another 800.000 men. And we are not talking of the 1941 Red Army, but 1945 red army!

[ 03 July 2002, 03:00 PM: Message edited by: General der Infanterie Friedrich H ]

 

But remember howq the Soviet armies attacked the Germans on the Ost front. By frontal means en-masse ! Again imagine dug in British and US armor with a filtering of 8.8cm's of the Germans. It would of been a very messy affair, and with the P-51 taking on any and all soviet a/c. B-17's and B-24's plus Lancaster bombers bombing everything flat......yes I do believe the Soviets would of taken the hard blows for sure; their cites and all factory/production units would ceased to exist.

E

 

Hallo, Erich!

Yes, you are right. The Red Air Force would have been swept from the skies and Soviet cities would have been bombed ferouscely, with B-17, B-24, Lancasters, B-29... the Urals could have been reached! But I mean, the Russians could hold quite a while more. Even without air superiority, with bad officers, obsolete weapons and bad trained men they survived the strike of the mightiest army in the world in 1941-1943. In 1945 the Red Army was no longer the Red Army of 1941, because its men were well trained, their officers and weapons were very good, and it was a HUGE army. As I said that would have outcome in the USSR complete defeat but can you imagine the tremendous cost for the Western allies?!!! Even with those 88s and P-51s and thousands of Shermans, a mass strike of T-34/85 would have been a butchery for both sides... If everybody wanted to anhilate the Soviet Union, the best chance was in the summer 1941 and God, we were close!

 

But Friedrich the Armor factories in the Soviet Union were beyond the reach of twin engine Luftwaffe bombers ! So during 1942-43 it didn't matter since they were not touched; production was not disrupted, with the advent of B-17's, B-24's the factories would of been no more !!

E

 

Erich, I precisely said that. English and American heavy bombers could reach the Urals, if not the B-17, surely the B-29s could!

 

June 11th, 1942..

The court-martial of German army captain (?) Michael Kitzelmann ends in Orel. Kitzelmann, who won an Iron Cross Second Class for bravery, has spoken out against atrocities being committed on the Eastern Front. "If these criminals should
win," he has told his fellow officers, "I would have no wish to live any longer." Kitzelmann's wish is granted. He is shot by a firing squad that day.
----

Michael Kitzelmann was horrified by what he saw done in Poland after the German invasion, and quickly became an opponent of the regime. He was eventually executed for undermining morale. From his diary, as he awaited execution:

I pray to Jesus the Crucified, who has led the way through the most bitter pain. And He answers me: "If you will be My disciple, take up your cross and follow me.!"
But I appeal to Him: "Lord, I am still so young, too young for such a heavy cross; I have not lived my life, all my hopes, plans and aims are unfulfilled." And he says: "Behold, I too was young, I had yet to live my life, and as a young man I carried to cross and sacrificed my young life."….

Now I live the life of a hermit. My day’s work consists of praying, reading the Bible, occasionally scribbling something in my diary or writing letters. It is very painful, this separation from life, from the past, from all fond hopes and plans and particularly from my nearest and dearest. It is terribly hard to submit wholly to God’s will in such agonising circumstances; but the only attainable comfort is to hold out to the end despite all suffering….[pp. 30-31]

Annedore Leber, trans. By Rosemary O’Neill, Conscience in Revolt: Sixty-Four Stories of Resistance in Germany, 1933-45 (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1994)

http://www.claytoncramer.com/leber.html
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Not sure about how this went but anyway he died for thinking the attrocities were not the right thing to do!

[ 29. November 2002, 07:09 AM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

Why does everyone at the start of a war come up with the dumb idea that it should be run by the rules and civilized ?! Toward the end of all wars there are no rules, just win the war at any cost, no matter what. If all wars were run like the Japanese, German, and Russians then perhaps there would not be so many of them started.

Look what happened to the USA in Viet Nam trying to run a war according to Robert McNamara's rules.

War attrocities happen in all wars that I can think of. The losing side just does not get to let it's public relations department put a happy face on it's attrociaties as the winning side can do for the attrociaties it happens to do in the course of winning a war.

 

My two cents ( or pennies anyway )

Were Russian atrocities worse?
While the atrocities are a stain on Russia's honour, I don't think they can be classed as worse. You have to remember that it wasn't Russia who started the cycle of violence on the eastern front, it was the Germans.
Also the Russians while committing large scale atrocities on the invasion of Germany, never set out on a policy of extermination of the Germanic people. Something the Germans put into practise from the beginning of the war on the Eastern front, against the Russian people.
I'm afraid I agree with the old English saying,
"He who sows the wind, shall reap the whirlwind"
Not nice I know, but then war is never nice

As for taking on the Russians, like Patton suggested we should.
Sorry, but I regard this remark, as one of the silliest that you often get to hear on these topic boards.
Attack a nation that in the eyes of the people of Britain and the US was our ally and whom at great cost to themselves had helped us defeat the evil Nazi's?
Without a major attack by the Russians on the Allied forces in Western Europe there would have been zero support for this.
It wasn't until the Berlin airlift that the people of the west began to change their view of the Soviet government.
As for allying ourselves with the remains of the German armed forces? You seem to have forgotten that the allies had just discovered the Nazi concentration camps, I don't see British and American troops accepting the use of (in their eyes) Nazi troops.

But the main problem with your scenario is the cost in human lives.
How many millions of men, women and children would have lost their lives in a war, which if we look how the cold war eventually played out ,was not necessary.
Even if we add up the cost of the number of people killed in the small wars around the world due to the Cold War, it would in my view, not add up to a tenth of the casualties both sides would have suffered if we had attacked the Russians in '45

 

That fact that U.S. atrocities seldomly made it into official files and subsequentely into American history books doesn't mean that the U.S. warfare against the Vietnamese people and the NVA or Vietcong were anything close to "fair".

Cheers,

 

Posted by Peppy:

If you mean the Blood Purges, then definetly. But in terms of war crimes, the Germans or possibly the Japanese take the cake.

Posted by Redcoat:

Also, could we even win such a war? We may have had the superior navy, which would have been essentially useless in this potential conflict, and the superior air force, but the Red Army massively overwhelmed the Western Allies in terms of numbers of soldiers and and equipment. Add to that, their armour units and the sheer number of them would have cut the Allied armour to pieces. Had war occurred right after Germays surrender, the Soviets might have taken all of Europe and even threatened Britain as the Germans once did, except worse. Even with the a-bomb in limited numbers, we might not have been able to hit the Russian heartland with them.

Posted by AndyW:

Agreed. But in Vietnam, men, women, and even children were sometimes VC. Limited measures against civillian populace was sometimes necessarry to fight the war we attempted to fight. That doesnt make it justified though. In WW2, most of the civillians killed were just innocents trying to stay out of the way, or going about their daily lives. Of course the Japanese were ready to sacrifice anything to keep from losing, but even then...

 

I feel like saying only two short remarks:
1.atrocities...Germans slaughterd 25 000 000 of Soviet citizens, mostly civilians.What was the retaliation of victorious army..mearly none, in comparison to their losses anyway
2.Should USA and GB attack USSR after Hitler was defeated???...most of you here discuss like this: no,they were stronger or people were regarding them as allies..My god.I am greatfull to soviet people and their sacrifices,for if it weren't for them we,here in Europe would be speaking german.And not to mention that I as Slav wouldn't probably even be here..

 

Maybe but remember this, Stalin and Hitler were two peas in the pod. Nobody forced Stalin to sign a non-aggression pact with Hitler. He did it so he could take over some of Eastern Europe. As far as 25,000,000 civilians killed by the Germans, I think that number to be high as far as linking it to atrocities committed by the Germans. Stalin did his own purging. The only difference was that Stalin was deemed the lesser of the two evils so the Western countries allied themselves with him but rightly kept an eye on him. Yes, thank the Russian peasants for their sacrifice but give their government a free hand and they will take advantage of it.

[ 03. December 2002, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: PzJgr ]

 

Sorry for breaking the thread--I was attempting to do something but it didnt work

[ 03. December 2002, 03:10 PM: Message edited by: C.Evans ]

 

And nobody forced Hitler to break it

 

I didn't quite follow this. How do you mean?

 

25 million killed Soviet civilians is way to high. The highest guess I ever heard were "only" approx. 17 million.

Cheers,

 

Well,lowest I heard of is 22 millionns and highest up to 28.And they weren't all civillians,but soldiers included also.

 

Horrible on both sides, we know. And this is not very new, but as I noticed that the Russians admit rather a lot of attrocities, several thousand of them, then that´s news, actually.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1939174.stm


Professor Rzheshevsky said considering what the German Army had done in the Soviet Union the Germans could have expected an "avalanche of revenge".

The professor said 4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were "punished" for committing atrocities.



But he added: "The majority of soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army and the allied armies treated the local population humanely."

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I think over 4,000 officers is a lot of attrocities...