• OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Its why they defeated the nazis, who had a 50-100 year industrialization lead when the USSR started doing a command economy. The USSR also ended up liberalizing, especially in its last decade, creating the circumstances for a coup that resulted in balkanization and massively decreased living standards.

    And all Eastern European countries experience explosive growth post communism?

    This is counterfactual

    • Tja@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      I thought a massive international effort defeated the nazis, including strategic bombing, embargos and lend-lease. Weird.

      • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        The USSR killed 80-ish percent of the nazi troops, and suffered 26 million casualties, mostly civilians exterminated by the nazis. They were mainly responsible for the victory and suffered the heaviest losses, including a lot of the lower level communist organization whose absence lead to the bureaucratic centralization (that Stalin opposed heavily before his death) that let corruption gradually take over the project.

        • Tja@programming.dev
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          2 months ago

          Yeah, when you organize your army based on politics and not on, you know, military capability, you end up sucking at war and need to make it up in numbers. You ignore intelligence of imminent invasion you let hundreds of thousands of troops get encircled and begging the Yankees for resources.

            • Tja@programming.dev
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              2 months ago

              So, no argument at all? Just a downvote and an ad-hominem? I’m disappointed…

              • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                2 months ago

                Why would I need to seriously argue against what is essentially tropes, including the asiatic hordes trope? Your argument speaks for itself.

                Compare the size of the soviet army at the start of the war to the size of the French and German armies. Now compare the Soviet delaying actions to the invasion of France.

                • Tja@programming.dev
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                  2 months ago

                  No idea what tropes you talking about, those are history book facts. Embarrassing, but facts.

                  • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                    2 months ago

                    Remind me how many French and British troops were bypassed and encircled during the invasion of France?

                    Remember that the combined forces in France were much larger and more mechanized than the soviet army during barbarossa, and were invaded by less troops

    • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      They defeated the Nazis by throwing conscripts into a meat grinder regardless of whether they even had a weapon, and by threatening to shoot them if they tried to retreat.

      That’s the nature of Authoritarian regimes. Not very working class of them.

      • SSJMarx@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        They defeated the Nazis by throwing conscripts into a meat grinder regardless of whether they even had a weapon, and by threatening to shoot them if they tried to retreat.

        Enemy at the Gates is not a documentary, it’s a propaganda film. In true fact while the Soviets did have a large number of conscripts and did suffer supply issues early in the war, at no point were they sending under-equipped battalions into the front line to die for no reason, and the thing about shooting those who retreated only applied to officers who ordered a retreat without proper cause (you’ll find that every other army in World War 2 had a similar protocol).