[lit-ideas] Re: Barnett's Blueprint for Action
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 23:31:12 -0700
The following doesn't specifically deal with how well Stalin was liked, but
it does run counter to Irene's view that "coercion was not a driving force
behind motivation."
On page 163 in the chapter "World War II, of Honor, Bowman writes "But in
all the totalitarian countries, fear seems to have played a much greater
part in motivating ordinary soldiers than honor. 'In a war during which no
British soldier, and only one GI, was shot for cowardice, at least 15,000
German servicemen were executed for dereliction of duty [while] in the
first winter of the war on the Eastern Front in 1941-42, more than 8,000
Russian soldiers died not in action but shot by their own army for cowardice
or desertion. During the battle of Stalingrad alone, another 12,000 men of
the Red Army were put to death pour encourager les autres.' " [Bowman sites
as his authority for this information, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, 'How Good Was
the Good War?' Boston Globe, May 8, 2005.]
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Andy Amago
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 9:51 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Barnett's Blueprint for Action
Not true, or not a blanket truth. Not everybody here loves Bush either,
but a lot do, and when there's a war, when you're attacked, you rally round
your leader. Most people had no idea what was going on politically.
Stalin sent people to the Gulags and they would write him pleading letters
thinking, convinced, that if Stalin knew their plight he would save them.
People literally were trampled to death there were so many of them in Red
Square after Stalin died, just to see the body. The country was in
mourning. That's why it was such a big deal when Khrushev began to
denounce Stalin. Politicians, men, in his audience literally cried. The
country was such a cult of personality.
My parents were rabidly anti-Communist, but that's because my grandfather
was in the White Army and, of course, they lost. They were quite
persecuted by the Reds. My family actually escaped shipment to a
concentration camp for execution by literally escaping I believe on the eve
of their being taken away after the war (they wound up in South American
smack into the middle of a revolution). It's like out of a novel. I keep
telling my mother to get a ghost writer and write it up, but she won't do
it. I think the train they were told not to take exploded. My father was
also swept up by the Nazis (he was too young to be in the army) and put
into a DP camp. To the day he died my father hated the Communists so much
that he would never even vote Democrat. Anyway, the general population
was pretty apolitical, like most people. They didn't know what was going
on, same as here. The propaganda was effective, and they fought for their
country. And yes, the paranoiac Stalin did execute most of his generals,
and he deliberately kept the people off balance. He, Stalin, then
proceeded to botch management of the war big time. It's one of the reasons
it cost so many lives, because of no leadership, and because the Germans
were a fighting machine, you have to hand that to them. Zhukov was about
the only general left and he pulled it out. Coercion was not a driving
force behind motivation even if your friends remembered it that way.
> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 9/11/2006 12:12:57 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Barnett's Blueprint for Action
>
> >>The Russians fought for their country. They did it
> willingly. They, stupidly, loved Stalin and loved their
> homeland, like anyone.
>
>
> I'm telling you what the Russians told me. They were there.
> Nobody loved Stalin. Josef Vassarionovich was a likely to
> kill them as the Nazis were; after all, the inane Georgian
> had already executed most of the Russians' best officers.
> After the '37 purges, Stalin was widely if secretly loathed.
> Stalin knew this, so all the wartime propaganda was about
> the motherland.
>
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