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My father lived under Lenin and Stalin as well as Hitler.
He much preferred the Germans to the Soviets.
The Elites in America were rather taken by the Soviets during the 1930's. The New York Times refused to report on the murder of 10 million Ukrainians during the early 1930's. I guess that was news that was NOT fit to print!!!
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Some people in the US (& in the West generally) were taken in by the Soviets during & after the Great War. The USSR talked a good game - their vision for a Workers' Paradise (after the withering away of the state) was very attractive - except, of course, that somehow the state morphed into the nomenklatura, which was never going to wither away.
Yah, reporting from the USSR was a tricky business - I recall that the Soviets were very careful to vet reporters, writers, correspondents, etc., & clear their reports before they were allowed to transmit back to the World.
You're mixing two things my admiration or feelings which are highly subjective and scientific achievement which are fact. People can be evil and achieve positive substantial outcomes the two are not mutually exclusive. Just like good people can sit on the couch and xbox for life.
It is of fact the the nazi v2 and rocket program laid the foundation for NASA and later missions and technological development. 1 was using the technology for "evil" the other for exploration. The usage does not change the output.
Yah. & the Space Race between the US & the USSR was basically our Germans against their Germans. (The luckier - or pluckier - German engineers & machinists & etc. deliberately surrendered to the West, preferably to the US. But anyplace rather than the USSR.)
Nazis believed they were building a better world too, a 1000yr reich.
Communism and nazi both have the same results because they both played God.
Communism is despised by freedom loving people, except communist sympathizers who are too stupid to recognize the obvious, that it cannot work. Did not work and never will.
Nah, the Nazis were quite explicit - they were building a better World, but exclusively for the master race, the Aryans - whatever that may mean. Everyone else was to serve the masters, or be removed.
In theory, Communism was open to anyone & everyone. That was one of their charms - but for Communism to work, the members have to be very nearly angels. As there was a definite shortage of angels in Russia in 1917CE, the USSR developed very badly in terms of a polity & its citizens.
Czechia were wiped off the map, Bulgaria refused to join the war against the Soviets, and Hungary didn't hand over a single Jew under Horthy, but only when the nazis overthrew him.
Nobody - country or individual - deserved to fall under the yoke of Soviet Russia.
Yah. Except that history is strange, & seems to have an almost existential sense of humor. The Nazis - the party, the Brown Shirts, their willing executioners, the SS - who arose from the chaos of German's loss in WWI & the reparations forced upon them - certainly deserved the hell on earth that the Red Army inflicted upon them. There was a lot of guilt there, & the Nazis & their military & to an extent the ordinary citizens - were complicit in a massive bloodletting of undesirables & looting of wealth & materiel goods.
Hitler & the Nazis defied all the conventions of war - apparently in the belief that they couldn't lose a second world war. They were mistaken, of course.
Similarly, Imperial Japan earned their way to the top of the US hate list in 1941. It was a mercy that the IJ Emperor finally intervened & ordered the unconditional surrender - very few US citizens would have shed a tear if we'd had to nuke the islands from end to end. I understand that the man in the street in Japan hardly counted for anything in the political world in Japan - but that's a very dangerous stance to take. & one of the reasons that the European empires fell apart shortly thereafter - no country - colonized or not - was willing to go to the chopping block on behalf of colonial masters who were apt to bargain the colonies away, when it suited their foreign purposes.
The Eastern Bloc was poorer than the West even before Communism. The exceptions were the Czech Republic (Bohemia) and East Germany. China was also incredibly poor prior to Communism and in fact it can be argued the country became Communist because of how inept Chiang Kai-Shek was in running the country.
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There's a lot of history to & around China. & China had been an empire, risen & fallen, & in one of the down cycles, essentially invaded @ the periphery & bites taken out of it by Europeans & Japan & the US. Chiang Kai-Shek was very good @ extracting money & power from political chaos, & then putting on a smiling face & doing the same to the US - & anyone who would listen.
The KMT as an organization was interested in squeeze - from what I've read, they were good @ it. Pres. FDR hoped to build up China as one of the Four Powers - with UK, France, USSR - but the KMT wasn't able to administer China in any meaningful way. & they lost the internal war after WWII to the Chinese Communist Party.
People see the idea of people "Sharing and Caring" that Communism espouses and think of it along those terms. This is why it's not taught as a moral evil.
For me personally, every human being has a God-given right to their body, thoughts, labor, ideas, beliefs, culture and property. Anything that abrogates that is a moral evil. I do not believe that other human beings have a right to command others beyond which is necessary to secure a lawful and orderly society (I'm not an Anarchist). Should people share with each other and provide charity? Absolutely. Should it be forced upon them to submit to a "Greater Good" that robs them of their person-hood. NO!
In theory, Communism was open to anyone & everyone. That was one of their charms - but for Communism to work, the members have to be very nearly angels. As there was a definite shortage of angels in Russia in 1917CE, the USSR developed very badly in terms of a polity & its citizens.
I see it differently. My overriding philosophy of history is Plus ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Chose, an epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr. It means "the more things change, the more they stay the same." The Russians were no different as people under the new age of Communism than under the czars. Drunkenness didn't go down, at least much. Productivity didn't increase much. Basically same old, same old, with the eventual fun of Stalin thrown in. I am not a believer that going from one totalitarian system to another changes much. And going abruptly from such a system to open democracy, such as the transition to Weimar, or the French Revolution, or for that matter GWB's idea of turning Iraq into a Jeffersonian democracy don't end well.
There's a lot of history to & around China. & China had been an empire, risen & fallen, & in one of the down cycles, essentially invaded @ the periphery & bites taken out of it by Europeans & Japan & the US. Chiang Kai-Shek was very good @ extracting money & power from political chaos, & then putting on a smiling face & doing the same to the US - & anyone who would listen.
The KMT as an organization was interested in squeeze - from what I've read, they were good @ it. Pres. FDR hoped to build up China as one of the Four Powers - with UK, France, USSR - but the KMT wasn't able to administer China in any meaningful way. & they lost the internal war after WWII to the Chinese Communist Party.
The KMT was horrifically corrupt even by the low standards of that period (even Western countries were corrupt during the 20s-40s). Even supporters of the KMT acknowledge how corrupt they were. Intentionally flooding China during the war only made people hate the KMT even more. As awful as the Communists were, you can't deny that the KMT deserved to lose. It's funny how people always say the CCP played no role in WWII but won't acknowledge that most Chinese fought for China not for specific parties and that a significant number of the KMT's soldiers eventually abandoned Chiang Kai-Shek for the Communists after WWII. It's how the CCP's army grew rapidly after WWII.
The KMT was horrifically corrupt even by the low standards of that period (even Western countries were corrupt during the 20s-40s). Even supporters of the KMT acknowledge how corrupt they were. Intentionally flooding China during the war only made people hate the KMT even more. As awful as the Communists were, you can't deny that the KMT deserved to lose. It's funny how people always say the CCP played no role in WWII but won't acknowledge that most Chinese fought for China not for specific parties and that a significant number of the KMT's soldiers eventually abandoned Chiang Kai-Shek for the Communists after WWII. It's how the CCP's army grew rapidly after WWII.
The KMT deserved to lose, yes. But when Communists take over, there can be no further decisions. Did the communists deserve to remain in power after Mao starved millions? But there's no way to fight a communist power. It only falls after it has crushed everything so completely that it can no longer stand, because it has the ability to steal every resource around it unquestionably. That is why we should all hate Communism. It enslaves its people to a fate that they cannot even hope to make better.
The two big props of Communism, were started by backhanded revolultionaries that hurt a country during war. In WWI, the revolutionaries pitched the czars during WWI forcing Russia out of the war with extensive loss of territory. In WWII, the KMT was sacked by those cowards who wouldn't fight the Japanese, but would carve up their fellow kin.
Only by being organized in periods of disorganization can they snake into a system and exercise control. Once they do, there is no way to get rid of them. They are practiced in the art of division, not unification, except to their own government's interests.
Old jokes from Russia are dark.
If you see a line, get in it first and ask what it is for later.
Did you hear about the farmer who found a way to increase crop yield? Ahh, they killed him for not meeting the 5 year plan numbers.
Communism is evil. Don't let it spring up near you. Discourage people from taking comfort in its cousin socialism. Capitalism and freedom aren't perfect, but at least there's an active ability to make changes and improvements.
The KMT deserved to lose, yes. But when Communists take over, there can be no further decisions. Did the communists deserve to remain in power after Mao starved millions? But there's no way to fight a communist power. It only falls after it has crushed everything so completely that it can no longer stand, because it has the ability to steal every resource around it unquestionably. That is why we should all hate Communism. It enslaves its people to a fate that they cannot even hope to make better.
The two big props of Communism, were started by backhanded revolultionaries that hurt a country during war. In WWI, the revolutionaries pitched the czars during WWI forcing Russia out of the war with extensive loss of territory. In WWII, the KMT was sacked by those cowards who wouldn't fight the Japanese, but would carve up their fellow kin.
Only by being organized in periods of disorganization can they snake into a system and exercise control. Once they do, there is no way to get rid of them. They are practiced in the art of division, not unification, except to their own government's interests.
Old jokes from Russia are dark.
If you see a line, get in it first and ask what it is for later.
Did you hear about the farmer who found a way to increase crop yield? Ahh, they killed him for not meeting the 5 year plan numbers.
Communism is evil. Don't let it spring up near you. Discourage people from taking comfort in its cousin socialism. Capitalism and freedom aren't perfect, but at least there's an active ability to make changes and improvements.
There's also a new Russian joke that goes "Everything the Communists told us about Communism was a lie, unfortunately everything they told us about capitalism is true".
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Major Tom to Ground Control
