Lets have a discussion on the state the USSR would have been in in 1941 assuming Trostky had been the leader of the country since 1924
I think you need to set the stage a little better, not everyone is going to research Trotsky's political/military philosophy versus Stalin's.
Only because he was assassinated on Stalin's orders in 1940, aged 60. This is an AH where Stalin gets ice-picked instead....
. It stretch disbelief to breaking point to imagine Stalin being on the wrong side of an ice pick but ok ... let's play first hypothetical then is no great purges , the war record of Trotsky is very good , He did create the red army after all and was buddy with most of the top ( purged ) generals the germano-sovietic pact is not signed , Trotsky wasn't very devious so the USSR go to war in september 39 as an allied , suffer some while the western allied impersonate a concrete wall , japan keep mum and sit on it's hands no WW2 this is strictly an pan europeen cup , germany lose the attrition war after three years , Hitler is deposed as the red army besiege Berlin , no extermination camps , nice german generals in power western allied sum the soviets hordes to ceace and desist , when trotsky demure , a grand coalition of europeen from portugal to poland start the great crusade against bolchevism joined by japan , last three years and dismember the soviet union with an independent ukraine , bielorussia become polish , central asia and transcaucasia is put under british protection the russian extreme orient go to japan , russia is now a rump state bankrupt and racked by civil war . well that's about it really :smok: .
Hmm, I do think the great anti-boshivism crusade would be hard to create. and how powerfull would the russian army be under Trotsky?
. I would say , the RKKA should have its officer class in better shape Trotsky was a dynamic leader , and quite ruthless , he organised the crushing of the Kronstat soviet and the slaughter of the ukrainian Mahkno among others and they were on his side !! He always claimed that he would have camped in Warsaw if not for this lazy good for nothing Stalin , He favored modernism and local leadership , but was a bit too hot headed and could be manipulated into political mistake , he had not much foreign affairs realism and was an extremist in matter of policy so, though the officers would be better off , the peasants and factory workers might not have been treated much better. The reference to the great anti bolchevik crusade is a reference to the great proletarian world revolution dear to Trotsky heart , He could not have resisted trying to make poland and germany into soviet states , this would have been totally unacceptable to the western allied Trotsky had no fear , plenty of brains and no feel for how thin is the ice .
. A sad tale of bastardness and an object lesson to all Kronstadt is a russian navy base on an island offshore of Leningrad during the Russian revolution Red kronstad sailors were at the forefront of the soviet movement , supplying the bolchevicks with some well disciplined muscle , then the soviets got upset at the bolcheviks authoritarian rule , they were more of a grass root movement , it came to a crisis . The sailors demonstrated shouting slogans such as "down with the bolcheviks ,all power to the people's soviets " Trotsky was the big red army cheese , he had the fortress taken by storm and the sailors executed or deported the repression was particulary fierce because the kronstadt sailors were the prime example of the revolution . Makno was a very controversial Ukrainian figure , like Forrest a natural military genius and comparable to emiliano Zapata , Now, you know my favorite style of commanders The wiki link is pretty good and has some claim to objectivity witch I wouldn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Makhno . .
