Russin officer executions

Yes yes it would.... No not really. I have a question how come Stalin killed between 5 and 20 million of his own people and Chairman Moa 50-60 million how come no one gives a rats ass about that?

 

Or Pol Pot, who probably takes the crown as the most dedicated killer...

I think it is partly because with the Nazis, they were deliberately attempting to remove various distinct ethnic/racial/social groups from the face of the earth, for no better reason than their tisted ideology, and our armies liberated the concentration camps and death camps, and they were widely used as anti-Nazi propaganda.

Mao, Stalin, etc were equal opportunity killers, simply removing anybody in opposition, and (most importantly) we have not actually uncovered any mass-killings in operation. Records of their killings are not as well-known. China is still under the same political system...

This does not excuse their actions at all, but it helps explain the difference in perception.

 

Well I guess that makes a lot of sense.

Can you really call Mao an equal opportunity killer? He was killing everyone with a university education.

 

Pol pot was probably the worst, not on the number of people he killed, but the toal number of people he killed compared to the overall population. He killed 1/3 of the cambodian population from 1975-79. He removed everyone from cities under gunpoint, and when he thought people were not "needed", he just let them die. This guy killed anyone that wore glasses, because he thought that meant you were an intellect.

 

Be fair, he killed other people too...

My favourite was the 'Hundred Flowers Movement', when Mao asked China to submit any criticisms or suggestions regarding the government, in order to make things better. The problem was, lots of people did* - and lots of people went missing...


*Mostly suggesting that the Communists bugger off and allow democractic rule. Mao thought that this was beyond the bounds of 'healthy criticism'

 

Actually the Russians had a similair thing in their army before wwii at least. A board that the soldiers would fill in comments, suggestions, ideas. I dont know how well it worked but I heard it was a good moral booster.

 

That would make sense, since the very word "Soviet" was a name used for a council of soldiers or labourers...

Mao - more than half the deaths he is responsible for were not actually ordered killings, rather people dying of starvation because he had ordered them deported to the countryside to work as farmers (which they did not know how to do) or because of his flawed agricultural policies causing nationwide crop failures. Perhaps this is not considered as obviously bad as sending people to death camps or Gulags...

 

The Wehrmacht must have learned something from the brutal methods of the Red Army; I've read that German officers executed about a division's worth of soldiers on the Eastern front for defeatism or desertion.

It must have appeared to Stalin and his subordinates that instilling the army with fear was the only way to prevent the entire Soviet army from surrendering or deserting. This is especialy the case during 1942, when soldiers were drafted from the most far-flung regions of the U.S.S.R. These men and women as a whole probably cared little about the Soviet government's survival. Any experience with Soviet personnel or leadership made their resolve to fight for the motherland even less, or so I assume. About the only practical way I can see for Russian commanders to keep these troops on the front is by making sure that they know retreating or deserting equals death, either by the Germans or by the Russians themselves.

 

i read somewhere that entire soviet units surrenderd intact ..wanting to join the germans in the liberation of russia from stalin,i know lots of ukrainians were ready to help the germans at first ...did russian battalions try to join up in mass with the german army?

 

I donno I doubt it but I beleive there were Russian units in the SS, and I know for sure there were Ukrainian. The Ukrianians evan helped point out the jews and beat them for the Germans.

14th SS Grenadier Division Galizien (1st Ukrainian)
29th SS Grenadier Division (1st Russian)
30th SS Grenadier Division (2nd Russian)
30th SS Grenadier Division (1st Belarussian) (two division with same number?)

 

btw my comment about stalin the dancer/gardener was a joke...perhaps it did not translate well...