Allied Leaders of World War II/Stalin/Part 2
Part Two-"Stalin, The Purge, Hitler and World War Two"
Stalin implemented a massive purge of the Communist Party, the Red Army, the government, and various ethnic minorities, especially Poles, beginning in the mid 1930s, which made the terms "counter-revolutionary" and "enemy of the people" commonplace, as these were often the charges used against anyone deemed a threat to his power (at least in his mind). No one really knows how many people were killed or sent to prisons or labor camps, but about three quarters of a million is a starting point, although some historians believe the figure to be perhaps a million to two million. The purge began to wind down in 1939, although Leon Trotsky, a famous Bolshevik leader, and Stalin opponent, was assassinated by a Soviet agent in Mexico in 1940. Trotsky had been exiled from the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, and maintained a stream of criticism directed at Stalin's murderous ways.
While Stalin did away with anyone remotely believed to be against him within the Soviet Union, he was not unaware of the potential threat to him and to the Soviet Union from rightwing fascists in Europe, especially from Nazi Germany and its leader, Adolf Hitler. The propaganda battles between the two countries went on throughout the 1930s, but both Stalin and Hitler suddenly needed one another by the summer of 1939. Hitler likely wanted to launch a limited war against Poland, but did not want Britain and France to intervene.* He believed a treaty with Stalin would completely discourage the British and the French from declaring war on Germany, if or when he attacked Poland. Stalin, on the other hand, wanted to buy time to build up his military, especially after thousands of army officers were killed on his orders during the purge. Negotiations commenced between Germany and the Soviet Union, all nasty propaganda attacks by the two against each other ceased, and a treaty was signed in August 1939. Stalin accomplished some of his desire to buy time, but Hitler's plan failed, as France and Britain declared war on Germany two days after Hitler invaded Poland. Stalin and Hitler also secretly agreed to divide eastern Europe between them, with Stalin even getting eastern Poland. Less than three weeks after Germany invaded Poland from its western borders, the Red Army invaded Poland from its eastern frontiers. In 1940, Stalin moved into the other countries and regions included in the agreement with Hitler: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were annexed to the Soviet Union, and then two regions of Rumania, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, were taken over. In the meantime, on November 30, 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Finland after demands by the Soviets for border adjustments were rejected by the Finns.** Though small in number, the Finns fought like hell, inflicting heavy casualties on the Soviets, before finally agreeing to peace terms when faced by insurmountable odds. The treaty, signed in the spring of 1940, gave Stalin most of what he wanted, but the poorly executed Soviet campaign was seen as the consequence of Stalin's purge of the Red Army.
On June 22, 1941, Germany, along with her eastern European allies,*** invaded the Soviet Union. The opening months of the invasion were an absolute disaster for Stalin and the Soviet forces, as the Germans made dramatic advances deep into the Soviet Union along every sector of the front. Soviet casualties were simply staggering, and totaled to about 4 million (killed, wounded and captured) in just six months! Even with all of the German victories, Hitler had overplayed his hand. He intervened more and more in military matters once left essentially to the generals, and as winter set in, the German offensive to capture Moscow sputtered to a halt. Much of the Soviet government had left Moscow, but fresh troops from Siberia and German exhaustion helped Stalin hold his capitol. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On December 11 both Hitler and Mussolini provided the final nails for their coffins by declaring war on the United States. The Axis Powers now faced formidable forces on all fronts.
Stalin intervened in military matters a great deal in 1941, nearly helping to bring defeat to himself and to the Soviet Union, as his stand fast orders allowed the German forces to encircle vast numbers of Soviet troops. By 1942, Stalin began to allow the professional military men to execute the plans to defeat the Germans. The massive battle of Stalingrad began in the summer of 1942 and ended with a decisive Soviet victory by February 1943. Hitler attempted to regain the initiative in the Soviet Union with his major offensive at Kursk, which failed, and had to be terminated due to the Allied landings in Sicily. This demonstrated that Hitler's days were numbered, as his outnumbered forces were pounded by the Soviets on one front, and as he tried to defend the rest of Europe from possible invasion by the Western Allies, spreading his forces too thinly to be successful anywhere. The Allied landings in France in June 1944 and major Soviet offensive operations drove German forces back into Germany itself, and the Soviets captured Berlin by early May 1945. Within a week, Germany surrendered.
Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and American President Franklin Roosevelt came to be called "The Big Three," and they planned and coordinated operations against the Axis Powers. Early in 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Free French representatives met at Casablanca in then French Morocco in North Africa.**** The policy of "unconditional surrender" of the Axis Powers was announced there, giving some solace to Stalin, who feared the Western Allies would conclude a separate peace with Germany; thus permitting Germany to turn all of its military forces against the Soviet Union. The three men met at Tehran in late 1943 to plan the further course of the war. In February 1945, with Hitler's Reich down for the count, the three leaders met again, this time in the Soviet Union at one of the Tsar's former palaces in the Crimea near the town of Yalta. Here the Allied leaders put together plans for post-war Europe, with many of the decisions having long term consequences for the population of eastern Europe. With the Red Army already in control of many eastern European countries, Communist movements within those countries became the governing apparatus in each. Of course, all of these Communist movements, except Yugoslavia's, owed their positions to Stalin, thus making them Soviet satellites. The plan to separate Austria from Germany and then to divide the two countries into occupation zones also was approved. Germany's borders were also a major item on the agenda, especially the border with Poland. Soviet claims to much of eastern Poland became a reality,***** but Poland was compensated by extending her western borders at Germany's expense. Stalin's gains were accomplished with his pledge to enter the war against Japan, which still held out at that time.
By the late 1940s, eastern Europe was firmly under Communist control, and Berlin lay within the Soviet occupation zone, but itself was divided into separate zones, with the western part being free. In 1948 Stalin ordered a blockade of West Berlin, thus cutting off all supplies to the area. This prompted a massive airlift by the Western Powers to supply West Berlin, which was successful. Stalin lifted the blockade.
Stalin was a heavy smoker and his health was very much in question after the war ended. In 1953 he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died a few days later, although some believed there was foul play involved.
Next... Charles De Gaulle.
* For more on this, see my article in "The German Question" series: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/08/german-question-part-one-hundred-thirty_10.html
** Stalin was concerned by the fact that Leningrad, the name used during the Soviet era for the former Russian capitol of St. Petersburg, was close to the Finnish border. He wanted the border adjusted away from Leningrad, although there were other demands, too.
*** Hungary, Rumania, Slovakia, and Finland were all German allies who committed substantial forces against the Soviet Union, and within a short time, Mussolini sent an Italian corps, later expanded to an army.
**** Stalin did not attend due to the final stages of the Stalingrad battle.
***** Anti-Communists felt the Western Allies, especially Rioosevelt, sold out to Stalin at Yalta, especially in view of Stalin's pact with Hitler of 1939, which had granted Stalin major concessions in eastern Europe, even a large part of eastern Poland. The issue has been debated since those times, but the Western Allies probably did not have much choice, unless they would have been willing to potentially go back to war, this time with the Soviets. Thus the pact with Hitler was set aside, as was the Soviet invasion of Finland and Soviet atrocities committed during the war, especially the execution of thousands of Polish army officers after the Soviet takeover of eastern Poland in 1939. While there are valid points on both sides of the issue, we have to remember, democratic nations are at a disadvantage when faced by totalitarian dictators like Hitler or Stalin, since free societies are much more dependent upon public support, while dictators can order just about anything, including war, and the only way for opponents to stop them is to risk their own lives, something most of us would not be willing to do. Let's be honest.
WORD HISTORY:
Steel-While we sometimes think we're pretty brilliant in the modern world, steel making has been around for about 3 to 4 thousand years, and perhaps longer. This noun goes back to Indo European "stak," with the notion of "be or remain firm," from the same base, "steh," that gave us "stand." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "stahlijan," which meant "formed, made of steel," and this application to the hardened metal is a Germanic invention, but borrowed by some other languages, like Polish and Russian, likely from German or Swedish. The Russian form later gave Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin his alias (his real family name was "Dzhugashvili"). The Old Germanic form gave Anglo-Saxon (Old English) "style/stele," depending upon dialect, and this later became "stel," before the modern form. The verb form meaning "to strengthen, or to make like steel," developed in the latter part of the 1500s. Common throughout the other Germanic languages, German and Low German Saxon have "Stahl," some Low German dialects have "stol," West Frisian has "stiel," Dutch has "staal," Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have "stål," and Icelandic has "stál."
Stalin implemented a massive purge of the Communist Party, the Red Army, the government, and various ethnic minorities, especially Poles, beginning in the mid 1930s, which made the terms "counter-revolutionary" and "enemy of the people" commonplace, as these were often the charges used against anyone deemed a threat to his power (at least in his mind). No one really knows how many people were killed or sent to prisons or labor camps, but about three quarters of a million is a starting point, although some historians believe the figure to be perhaps a million to two million. The purge began to wind down in 1939, although Leon Trotsky, a famous Bolshevik leader, and Stalin opponent, was assassinated by a Soviet agent in Mexico in 1940. Trotsky had been exiled from the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, and maintained a stream of criticism directed at Stalin's murderous ways.
While Stalin did away with anyone remotely believed to be against him within the Soviet Union, he was not unaware of the potential threat to him and to the Soviet Union from rightwing fascists in Europe, especially from Nazi Germany and its leader, Adolf Hitler. The propaganda battles between the two countries went on throughout the 1930s, but both Stalin and Hitler suddenly needed one another by the summer of 1939. Hitler likely wanted to launch a limited war against Poland, but did not want Britain and France to intervene.* He believed a treaty with Stalin would completely discourage the British and the French from declaring war on Germany, if or when he attacked Poland. Stalin, on the other hand, wanted to buy time to build up his military, especially after thousands of army officers were killed on his orders during the purge. Negotiations commenced between Germany and the Soviet Union, all nasty propaganda attacks by the two against each other ceased, and a treaty was signed in August 1939. Stalin accomplished some of his desire to buy time, but Hitler's plan failed, as France and Britain declared war on Germany two days after Hitler invaded Poland. Stalin and Hitler also secretly agreed to divide eastern Europe between them, with Stalin even getting eastern Poland. Less than three weeks after Germany invaded Poland from its western borders, the Red Army invaded Poland from its eastern frontiers. In 1940, Stalin moved into the other countries and regions included in the agreement with Hitler: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were annexed to the Soviet Union, and then two regions of Rumania, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, were taken over. In the meantime, on November 30, 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Finland after demands by the Soviets for border adjustments were rejected by the Finns.** Though small in number, the Finns fought like hell, inflicting heavy casualties on the Soviets, before finally agreeing to peace terms when faced by insurmountable odds. The treaty, signed in the spring of 1940, gave Stalin most of what he wanted, but the poorly executed Soviet campaign was seen as the consequence of Stalin's purge of the Red Army.
On June 22, 1941, Germany, along with her eastern European allies,*** invaded the Soviet Union. The opening months of the invasion were an absolute disaster for Stalin and the Soviet forces, as the Germans made dramatic advances deep into the Soviet Union along every sector of the front. Soviet casualties were simply staggering, and totaled to about 4 million (killed, wounded and captured) in just six months! Even with all of the German victories, Hitler had overplayed his hand. He intervened more and more in military matters once left essentially to the generals, and as winter set in, the German offensive to capture Moscow sputtered to a halt. Much of the Soviet government had left Moscow, but fresh troops from Siberia and German exhaustion helped Stalin hold his capitol. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On December 11 both Hitler and Mussolini provided the final nails for their coffins by declaring war on the United States. The Axis Powers now faced formidable forces on all fronts.
Stalin intervened in military matters a great deal in 1941, nearly helping to bring defeat to himself and to the Soviet Union, as his stand fast orders allowed the German forces to encircle vast numbers of Soviet troops. By 1942, Stalin began to allow the professional military men to execute the plans to defeat the Germans. The massive battle of Stalingrad began in the summer of 1942 and ended with a decisive Soviet victory by February 1943. Hitler attempted to regain the initiative in the Soviet Union with his major offensive at Kursk, which failed, and had to be terminated due to the Allied landings in Sicily. This demonstrated that Hitler's days were numbered, as his outnumbered forces were pounded by the Soviets on one front, and as he tried to defend the rest of Europe from possible invasion by the Western Allies, spreading his forces too thinly to be successful anywhere. The Allied landings in France in June 1944 and major Soviet offensive operations drove German forces back into Germany itself, and the Soviets captured Berlin by early May 1945. Within a week, Germany surrendered.
Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and American President Franklin Roosevelt came to be called "The Big Three," and they planned and coordinated operations against the Axis Powers. Early in 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Free French representatives met at Casablanca in then French Morocco in North Africa.**** The policy of "unconditional surrender" of the Axis Powers was announced there, giving some solace to Stalin, who feared the Western Allies would conclude a separate peace with Germany; thus permitting Germany to turn all of its military forces against the Soviet Union. The three men met at Tehran in late 1943 to plan the further course of the war. In February 1945, with Hitler's Reich down for the count, the three leaders met again, this time in the Soviet Union at one of the Tsar's former palaces in the Crimea near the town of Yalta. Here the Allied leaders put together plans for post-war Europe, with many of the decisions having long term consequences for the population of eastern Europe. With the Red Army already in control of many eastern European countries, Communist movements within those countries became the governing apparatus in each. Of course, all of these Communist movements, except Yugoslavia's, owed their positions to Stalin, thus making them Soviet satellites. The plan to separate Austria from Germany and then to divide the two countries into occupation zones also was approved. Germany's borders were also a major item on the agenda, especially the border with Poland. Soviet claims to much of eastern Poland became a reality,***** but Poland was compensated by extending her western borders at Germany's expense. Stalin's gains were accomplished with his pledge to enter the war against Japan, which still held out at that time.
By the late 1940s, eastern Europe was firmly under Communist control, and Berlin lay within the Soviet occupation zone, but itself was divided into separate zones, with the western part being free. In 1948 Stalin ordered a blockade of West Berlin, thus cutting off all supplies to the area. This prompted a massive airlift by the Western Powers to supply West Berlin, which was successful. Stalin lifted the blockade.
Stalin was a heavy smoker and his health was very much in question after the war ended. In 1953 he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died a few days later, although some believed there was foul play involved.
Next... Charles De Gaulle.
* For more on this, see my article in "The German Question" series: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/08/german-question-part-one-hundred-thirty_10.html
** Stalin was concerned by the fact that Leningrad, the name used during the Soviet era for the former Russian capitol of St. Petersburg, was close to the Finnish border. He wanted the border adjusted away from Leningrad, although there were other demands, too.
*** Hungary, Rumania, Slovakia, and Finland were all German allies who committed substantial forces against the Soviet Union, and within a short time, Mussolini sent an Italian corps, later expanded to an army.
**** Stalin did not attend due to the final stages of the Stalingrad battle.
***** Anti-Communists felt the Western Allies, especially Rioosevelt, sold out to Stalin at Yalta, especially in view of Stalin's pact with Hitler of 1939, which had granted Stalin major concessions in eastern Europe, even a large part of eastern Poland. The issue has been debated since those times, but the Western Allies probably did not have much choice, unless they would have been willing to potentially go back to war, this time with the Soviets. Thus the pact with Hitler was set aside, as was the Soviet invasion of Finland and Soviet atrocities committed during the war, especially the execution of thousands of Polish army officers after the Soviet takeover of eastern Poland in 1939. While there are valid points on both sides of the issue, we have to remember, democratic nations are at a disadvantage when faced by totalitarian dictators like Hitler or Stalin, since free societies are much more dependent upon public support, while dictators can order just about anything, including war, and the only way for opponents to stop them is to risk their own lives, something most of us would not be willing to do. Let's be honest.
WORD HISTORY:
Steel-While we sometimes think we're pretty brilliant in the modern world, steel making has been around for about 3 to 4 thousand years, and perhaps longer. This noun goes back to Indo European "stak," with the notion of "be or remain firm," from the same base, "steh," that gave us "stand." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "stahlijan," which meant "formed, made of steel," and this application to the hardened metal is a Germanic invention, but borrowed by some other languages, like Polish and Russian, likely from German or Swedish. The Russian form later gave Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin his alias (his real family name was "Dzhugashvili"). The Old Germanic form gave Anglo-Saxon (Old English) "style/stele," depending upon dialect, and this later became "stel," before the modern form. The verb form meaning "to strengthen, or to make like steel," developed in the latter part of the 1500s. Common throughout the other Germanic languages, German and Low German Saxon have "Stahl," some Low German dialects have "stol," West Frisian has "stiel," Dutch has "staal," Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have "stål," and Icelandic has "stál."
Labels: English, etymology, Germanic languages, Germany, Hitler, Soviet Union, Stalin, World War Two
posted by Randy at 12:35 AM
3 Comments:
History remains my favorite but I particularly enjoyed you "rock & a hard place" post. Thanks
Ive studied lots of Russian history and Stalin was just a plain SOB. And he thought the czars were bad?
Interesting about 'steel' and 'Stalin.' He was something else.
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