BF2S Forums The Huge WW2 Discussion Thread

Haha ninja'd I figured I'd delete my post since you already covered it. Anyway... 

I speak German. Therefore I clearly have a greater perspective of WW2 events. After all, German documents were never translated into Russian properly or without being doctored, therefore you cannot have a proper perspective.

Shahter wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Shahter wrote:

and no info gets doctored along with translation.

ever.

So suddenly, Russian books are like the Qu'ran? Only valid in the original language?

Historians are now part of your grand conspiracy, along with the media? Seriously?

"now"? historians have always been one of the most important part of every nation's propaganda machine.

I guess there can never be any sharing of culture across linguistic boundaries then. Ever.

culture? that can be shared freely and with little distortion i guess. information on which the balance of the power in the world is based? - you can be sure as hell everybody and his mother in law would be trying to doctor that to suit their needs.

And so therefore somehow doctored Russian documents give you a better perspective than doctored western documents?

Shahter wrote:

and no info gets doctored along with translation.

ever.

edit: and since european theater of ww2 and it's part before the free and the brave arrived for their share of the spoils defined ww2 and its outcome - yes, the part written in russian is overwhelming.

Stalin wanted a second front in Europe. You act as if the Soviets would've preferred everyone else to have stayed home. Not the case, except for revisionist historians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference

Roosevelt gave Stalin a pledge that he had been waiting for since June 1941: that the British and the Americans would open a second front in France in the spring of 1944. Churchill up to this point had been seeking a joint United Kingdom, United States and Commonwealth forces initiative through the Mediterranean that would have secured British interests in the Middle East and India. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed that the nations in league with the Axis powers would be divided into territories to be controlled by the USSR, the U.S., and the UK.

So I guess Uncle Joe agreed to the "spoils of war" as well. It wasn't just the "free and the brave" (I guess the USSR wasn't either of those then?) dictating things. Unless you're implying the USSR was just a pawn, totally weak and unable to direct its own policy and destiny in WW2...

@Shahter: You gotta be kidding me.

For the last decade atleast the books concerning most periods of history have quite well described the events as objective as they can, your unconditionally disregard of historic works seems more brainwashed and part of a propaganda stunt than anything I've ever heard before ...

Take one example like Armageddon by Max Hastings, that book sheds a completly different view today on the events from the landings in Normandie and the Russian front closing in on Berlin than books written 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

FEOS wrote:

Stalin wanted a second front in Europe.

thank you, captain obvious, i know.

You act as if the Soviets would've preferred everyone else to have stayed home.

no, i don't. i simply state a fact - the outcome of the war was already decided when usa & co landed in europe.

So I guess Uncle Joe agreed to the "spoils of war" as well.

"agreed"? he was given an opportunity and took it, as was expected. even though ussr did most of the job practically alone, war is a mean business and sure as hell stalin wanted the second front - if nothing else, it saved a lot of his men.

@Varegg: ww2 is and always will be one enormous disgrace for "enlightened west", even more so because of the fact that it was "evil commies" who managed to deliver them from the horrors the nazzies unleashed on the world. that is why you have all the accents - like that one you mentioned in the post i responded to - in the wrong places in you so called "history books".

FEOS wrote:

Shahter wrote:

FEOS wrote:

So suddenly, Russian books are like the Qu'ran? Only valid in the original language?

Historians are now part of your grand conspiracy, along with the media? Seriously?

"now"? historians have always been one of the most important part of every nation's propaganda machine.

Except histories of WW2 have been written by historians from every country, from every perspective, and are available to everyone, in nearly every language.

except everybody who does not subscribe to the approved and agreed upon vision of certain events gets demolished by "critics and experts" in the media as a "conspiracy theorist" - much like what you and the rest of "usa! fuck, yeah"-ers try to do to the likes of me on these forums.

Shahter wrote:

I guess there can never be any sharing of culture across linguistic boundaries then. Ever.

culture? that can be shared freely and with little distortion i guess. information on which the balance of the power in the world is based? - you can be sure as hell everybody and his mother in law would be trying to doctor that to suit their needs.

It's shared via history, ffs. A nation's culture is defined via its history, which is documented by historians. If they're part of the great propaganda conspiracy, then nothing can be shared that isn't tainted. Again, your theory fails.

there are a lot of mediums carrying a nation's culture. some of those are tainted by propaganda more than others. history is definitely one of those that gets fucked up more.

Shahter wrote:

Jay wrote:

Shahter wrote:

and no info gets doctored along with translation.

You're assuming that the original source documents in Russia weren't doctored when they were written down in the first place. If anything is changed after translation, it's because it doesn't line up with reality. Western historians strive for accuracy above all else. Soviet historians strived for pleasing the communist party so they could eat meat.

of course. western historians have no reason to distort any info - they are never hired by people with an agenda, they don't have to sell their products to people holding certain ideas and ideals, nothing like that.

Since when are people in countries outside of Russia some giant monolith, all sharing the same opinions and expectations? People are all wildly different. You could write a book on the different colors of feces and someone would buy it. Not many (I would hope)...

In fact, dissenting opinion in history is what can turn a historian into a relative rock star. If he can back up his opinion with historical data of course...

Last edited by Jay (2011-06-23 04:09:15)

Shahter wrote:

Jay wrote:

Shahter wrote:

of course. western historians have no reason to distort any info - they are never hired by people with an agenda, they don't have to sell their products to people holding certain ideas and ideals, nothing like that.

Since when are people in countries outside of Russia some giant monolith, all sharing the same opinions and expectations? You could write a book on the different colors of feces and someone would buy it.

In fact, dissenting opinion in history is what can turn a historian into a relative rock star. If he can back up his opinion with historical data of course...

there, you have just agreed with me. those historians' goal is to sell stuff, not research actual events. and we both know that just about anything can be backed up with carefully selected historical data.

No shahter, they won't make a penny if they dump a bunch of lies in a book and try to sell it. If you're writing history, you're expected to provide source material. And lol, I don't think anyone has ever gone into the history writing profession in order to become wealthy. When I said 'rock star' I simply meant that they would become a well known name in the historical community, like Ambrose or Beevor. If I walked down the street and asked ten people if they know who Stephen Ambrose was, maybe one would be able to recognize the name.

Shahter wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Stalin wanted a second front in Europe.

thank you, captain obvious, i know.

You act as if the Soviets would've preferred everyone else to have stayed home.

no, i don't. i simply state a fact - the outcome of the war was already decided when usa & co landed in europe.

So I guess Uncle Joe agreed to the "spoils of war" as well.

"agreed"? he was given an opportunity and took it, as was expected. even though ussr did most of the job practically alone, war is a mean business and sure as hell stalin wanted the second front - if nothing else, it saved a lot of his men.

@Varegg: ww2 is and always will be one enormous disgrace for "enlightened west", even more so because of the fact that it was "evil commies" who managed to deliver them from the horrors the nazzies unleashed on the world. that is why you have all the accents - like that one you mentioned in the post i responded to - in the wrong places in you so called "history books".

You honestly think that Germany could've defeated America, Britain and the commonwealth?

Yes the Red Army were the largest contributors in Europe, no one is trying to deny that. But without the Germans fighting in North Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean, the losses of the Red Army would have been even larger. Honestly, if the Germans had focussed 100% of their forces in Eastern Europe and hadn't tried to fight on all fronts, they probably would've taken Moscow, and all of the important industrial, agricultural and resource filled lands of the western USSR.

The alliance of the USSR and the West was one of convenience. The war was certainly not an "enormous disgrace" for the west. Sure it was a military disgrace for France and some of Western European countries in the early years, but there you go again lumping everyone in together as "the west".

Last edited by Little BaBy JESUS (2011-06-23 04:27:40)

Jay wrote:

Maybe it's because you think Stalin doesn't get enough credit in the west for saving Mother Russia, but to us, he was no different from Hitler. He killed off millions of his own people because of ideology and that can never be separated from everything else that he did. If someone tried to write a book that described him as a dutiful family man that loved fluffy bunnies who took on Hitler it would be laughed at. Why? Because Stalin and his purges are what caused the Germans to advance so far into Russia in the first place. He wiped out the officer corps on the eve of battle.

We just have a different morality. I guess you can shrug off the deaths of the millions he sent to the gulags. We can't. We find it abhorrent.

We went over this with him already, apparantly the numbers were doctored and false.

Shocking wrote:

Jay wrote:

Maybe it's because you think Stalin doesn't get enough credit in the west for saving Mother Russia, but to us, he was no different from Hitler. He killed off millions of his own people because of ideology and that can never be separated from everything else that he did. If someone tried to write a book that described him as a dutiful family man that loved fluffy bunnies who took on Hitler it would be laughed at. Why? Because Stalin and his purges are what caused the Germans to advance so far into Russia in the first place. He wiped out the officer corps on the eve of battle.

We just have a different morality. I guess you can shrug off the deaths of the millions he sent to the gulags. We can't. We find it abhorrent.

We went over this with him already, apparantly the numbers were doctored and false.

It wasn't people who were killed by the millions in the gulags.

It was actually fluffy bunnies raised by the thousands on collective unicorn farms.

See how translations can be affected by propaganda?

Little BaBy JESUS wrote:

You honestly think that Germany could've defeated America, Britain and the commonwealth?

britain and the commonwealth - yes. america i think would've made a deal with nazies and be left alone - the ocean is quite an obstacle. i dunno how long that would've lasted though.

anyway, we are talking history here, right? and history does not operate in "what if..."-s.

Yes the Red Army were the largest contributors in Europe, no one is trying to deny that. But without the Germans fighting in North Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean, the losses of the Red Army would have been even larger. Honestly, if the Germans had focussed 100% of their forces in Eastern Europe and hadn't tried to fight on all fronts, they probably would've taken Moscow, and all of the important industrial, agricultural and resource filled lands of the western USSR.

ussr was about the only real contributor in europe. lend lease and all that shit was crucial in the beginning of the war because it supplied some critical resources (like aluminium for example), but altogether minimal if you look at it on the scale of the war.
as to "fighting on all fronts" i'll let you look at the numbers yourself.

The alliance of the USSR and the West was one of convenience. The war was certainly not an "enormous disgrace" for the west. Sure it was a military disgrace for France and some of Western European countries in the early years, but there you go again lumping everyone in together as "the west".

"convenience"? for whom? the enlightened west nurtured nazi germany hoping to have them crush the soviets. how horribly that backfired - that is a disgrace the west is still trying to lie their way out of.