WWII was STALIN's FAULT!
Just came across this absolute trashfire of a book by an American prof. I know these revisionist takes about WWII are a dime a dozen... but this one seems particularly egregious in its claims that Stalin masterminded World War II and that the only reason for the USSR's success was that the stupefied Allies fell for his dastardly plan.
This level of brazen stupidity and/or disingenuousness borders on incomprehensible.
Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia
how in the fuck could Stalin possibly be to blame for japanese imperialism?
perfidious communist trickery pulling the japanese empire into a war it could never win, obviously.
poor widdle hirohito just wanted to enslave half of asia and all the countries denying their resources to that project and helping the chinese forced japan to be violent about it!
Somehow it took me three hours to really process this, but the argument in the picture is literally an argument for WWII being Hirohito's war, not Stalin's! They are saying the war began with Japan's invasion and it ended with Japan's defeat, so it must be a leader who was in charge that whole time . . . so it was Stalin! That's so ridiculous, so absolutely absurd that I can't express it in words.
The book has more to it, other theories about the war, but the other ones that I've seen are, if anything, even more ridiculous, like suggesting Stalin wanted to provoke war between Japan and the "Anglo-Saxon nations" for the sake of their mutual destruction, and thus WWII was his doing.
Sorry for the double-post, I just feel so baffled by how transparently this dude is blaming Japanese imperialism on Stalin.
like suggesting Stalin wanted to provoke war between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon nations” for the sake of their mutual destruction, and thus WWII was his doing.
Lmao, this exact logic but used on actual history would place all fault for WW2 on USA, UK and France
Yeah but Hirohito didn't benefit from it in the end so I guess that makes it part of Stalin's dastardly plan
Stalin hired Yuri to mind control Hirohito into invading China
Well, he was the MVP.
world record holder for most nazis killed, and it's not even close
Oh come on, this easy mode. Give me a hard one. Lol.
I am prepping for this to unironically be what they teach my kid in anti-communism school
this book is a joint collaboration between CIA and MI6
the only reason for the USSR's success was that the stupefied Allies fell for his dastardly plan.
Once again I wish communists were as powerful as Cold War propaganda says they are.
Black Flag's My War album but instead it's Stalin and WW2
These types of books are always just the author vomiting word salad across 600 pages that can be entirely condensed down into the sentence “I love Adolf Hitler”
Stalin is why my wife left me
Famously the secret to the USSR's success was the thing that destroyed half of its infrastructure and instigated a famine even after the war had ended, along with killing around 20 million of its citizens.
A college bookstore was my introduction to Robert Conquest, the former British intelligence agent who worked specifically as an anticommunist propagandist for part of the Cold War before pivoting to becoming a "historian" who claimed that more people died in the gulags than had ever even been sent to them and wrote such books as "Stalin: Breaker of Nations". I have a vague memory that the characterization that you're mentioning also came up, though it could have been from this book and not Conquest. At least one semester, Conquest was probably the single most-represented historian in the store, because I don't think other individual historians had two or three of their works assigned for the same semester.
I used to have so much respect for academia, and while I know it can be good in principle and there are certainly academics who I admire (and others who I personally know and like as people but don't always think very highly of), but overwhelmingly my takeaway from my college education is that these people are fucking fools and charlatans and critical thinking has no place in most of these spaces. It's something that I'm very self-conscious about, honestly, because it's such a sophomoric, philistine-sounding take, but every interaction I have reinforces this idea. Legitimately the only people who I really respected more as a group from my contact with them were the art teachers, who were cool and very supportive.
You can tell libs don't even read this shit because Robert Conquest is the one who details the Holodomor in multiple books. In one of these books, he explains how kulaks slaughtered millions of livestock to leave their corpses rotting in fields, set fire to grain silos, sowed soil with salt, poisoned wells, and then fled the country.
He then turns around and blames these actions on Stalin for asking them to maybe possibly please share some of the land seized during the Revolution and Civil War because this drought is causing problems for everyone else.
To be clear, I was talking about the '46-'47 famine, which was caused by the events of WWII, not the '32-'33 famine ("Holodomor"), but I agree with you that it's morbidly funny how even the most sympathetic sources give the game away that, if we are to call the famine deliberate, it was instigated by the kulaks, but their actions that were for no other purpose than destroying the food supply and productive capacity of the area are framed as heroic acts of resistance. I don't remember the detail of them poisoning wells, but they destroyed their own equipment in some cases just to keep other people from using it.
That was my nearly immediate disillusionment with college too. I thought it was supposed to be a place where you actually learn and have deep discussion and thought, and it was just more beating you over the head with 'right-thought' but this time you're paying for it so you will accept it.
"Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia" yes he was? Unless they're counting the invasion of Manchuria as the start of the World War, which is some insane goalpost shifting. Nearly every historian considers either the invasion of China or Poland as the start of the war, with a few saying it was the Spanish civil war or the invasion of the Soviet Union. Fucking no one considers the invasion of Manchuria to be the start of the war. At that point, why not say the Italian invasion of Ethiopia to be the start? Or why not say its all a continuation of the first World War? Its insane that you can just straight up lie and get away with it if you're producing propaganda for the capitalists
Or why not say its all a continuation of the first World War?
i actually say this lol. its my favourite niche historiography
Pea brain: "WWII was caused by the harsh penalties of the Treaty of Versailles."
Smol brain: "WWII was caused because the Axis were just all-around bad guys."
Big brain: "WWII was just an extension of WWI."
Large brain: "WWII was caused by the Depression and poor economic policies."
Star brain: "WWII was caused by food shortages and the world being unable to effectively allocate resources, exasperated by the Depression."
Galaxy brain: "WWII was the result of anticommunism wanting to consolidate capital in the wake of problems occurring during the interwar period as former empires lost control of their colonies, coupled with strong labor movements in the Imperial Core who saw the successes of the USSR."
Universe brain: "WWII was leftwing infighting."
600 IQ 11-D Chess Alternating Timeline brain: "WWII was because Stalin ate all the grain and wanted more so he tricked the Axis Powers into attacking him."
Based on "in Asia," they probably do mean the invasion of China. It's still nonsense because Stalin had diplomatic involvement with Chinese nationalist and communist factions, but it was not a "World War" then and it wasn't part of some grand design on Stalin's part. Like, Japan was obviously an enemy of the Soviet Union, it had just invaded during the Russian Civil War, but if we're going to say that that's enough to unite the whole of WWII under Stalin, then why don't we just say that the Russian Civil War was the start of WWII at that rate? Nothing means anything.
I don't know, it just feels like question-begging. Yeah, Stalin was in power for a longer time-frame, but he didn't want to fight these countries! It wasn't a World War when it was Japan fucking over East Asia (and Stalin wasn't being some kind of war monger by advising China!), it was Germany's initiative to take over Europe and their collaboration with Japan to crush the communists that made it a World War. They are using sophistry to basically do apologetics for the Axis, who were universally the aggressors, and making it look like actually the Soviet Union was.
Germany had already taken over, in part or in whole, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and Poland, but no, it's when the USSR invades Poland after the Polish government had already collapsed and was about to hop the border, that's the real key to it all and the fundamental aggression! I'm a very serious historian.
Edit: I wish that I could just not argue about WWII for the rest of my life, but people will never stop lying about the most basic facts of it.
Edit: I wish that I could just not argue about WWII for the rest of my life, but people will never stop lying about the most basic facts of it.
I know that feel.
:doomer:
I'm not even a historian. Most of my knowledge comes from high school, video games, tabletop games, skimming Wikipedia, and reading white supremacist/neo-nazi brainworm shit (as examples of things NOT to say or that are definitely wrong). Yet every time I turn around, there's some new trend that's re-worded Holocaust denial, anticommunist contrarianism blaming the war on Marx, or downplaying crimes committed outside of Germany by other Axis members.
Like I'm a total idiot and then I see people unironically advocating for clean SS because they're stupid dumbfuck libs that can't filter nazi justifications.
Pop historians pushing nazi-level anti-communist historical revisionism as truth, in other breaking news grass grows and the sun shines.
However, the Chamberlain clique could not make the shift. Knowing that they wanted to solve the Nazi menace on the plains of Russia, they ascribed to Russia the very same design of which they were guilty, as devious men so often do. They had a “deep seated conviction,” shared also by the French Rightists, that Russia wished to destroy the capitalist system in Europe by provoking a war from which she would remain aloof.5 The entire diplomatic record of the past five years belied this self-justifying suspicion. It showed that Russia was desperately anxious to avoid war, but also that on every occasion, without exception, she had sought to avoid war for herself by combining with others to prevent aggression or nip it in the bud. It was Russia which had incessantly pleaded that “peace is indivisible,” warning that if war came all would be engulfed in it.
The Cold War And Its Origins, 1917–1960. Vol. I, 1917–1950. By Denna Frank Fleming, 1961. Chapter 5
Seems inline with some of the god-awful takes I see on Lemmy.
That's implying that they've read a non-fiction book. Liberals will never forgive Stalin for ending the holocaust.
oh has the pendulum swung to "enemy is too strong" now, is this the protocols of the elders of Stalin? Damn I guess these communists are just better schemers than everone else, if you can't beat em join em
I love the ace attorney emojis
Damn I guess these communists are just better schemers than everone else
We're literally called the "Masters of Deceit" by Mccarthy era FBI director J Edgar Hoover for somehow being so good at infiltrating every anti-american movement in the U.S.
Such as the anti-war movement, anti-nuke movement, anti-racism movement, anti-sexism movement, etc. If its something contrary to American values according to the FBI, it's swarming with communists.
It's weird how if you have any actual basic morality you're labeled a Red by the Feds.
WW2 was Stalin dabbing on all his haters from 1941 through 1945
Reql conspiracy heads know the war was caused by Henry Ford
it's hilarious how low Britain is in these, there's a decent argument they did more, and certainly lost a lot more. but the French hate the perfidious Albionese
Perfectly understandable, even the Fr*nch have standards.
If we are lucky there wont be a country called USA by the end of the century
if there is anything left of society by 2100 it'll look something like permanent war communism in an atmosphere of absolute ecological collapse
dissagree
communism is re-surging so is fascism unfortunately
even in this graph you can see that the ones in 2004 and 2015 had a decrease for the USA and an increase for the Soviet Union ,I know it's not significant but with more time it will keep gradually changing