Is Deliberately Starving Millions of the Populace to death A Good Thing

Kohoutek

I didn't mean unemployment benefit, that's way below the minimum wage, I meant the multitude of different benefits which meant that Karen Matthews for example, drew £300/week for no work.

We've had a government that provide universal free healthcare and free education since 1948. But in 1948, government spending was only 35% of GDP, and in 2000 it was the same figure - also 35%. But the last ten years Labour have expanded state spending to 46.5% of GDP, which isn't sustainable without much higher taxes - and I don't think that's desirable.

manchesterred

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7719633.stm

Hardly a peep about this, but Put the same man in front of a Poster of Stalins belligerent & all hell would have broken out, Both of course being homocidal maniacs, the irony .

ninky_2

manchesterred wrote: »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7719633.stm

Hardly a peep about this, but Put the same man in front of a Poster of Stalins belligerent & all hell would have broken out, Both of course being homocidal maniacs, the irony .

it's obvious why hitler is more demonised than stalin. US /UK helped russia win ww2 (or rather they helped us). i don't think stalin is that whitewashed but conveniently often conveniently ignored. whilst we'll go on about getting rid of the evils of nazism at the same time we conveniently fail to mention we fought on the same side as an equally evil regime. just goes to show that ww2 had nothing to do with getting rid of the evils of nazism but rather the same old protecting territory / interests malarky.

it's the same reason we criticise and go to war with saddam's iraq but not the saudi regime.

churchill was a bedfellow of stalin. that's not something that sits well with many.

harryhound

ninky wrote: »

it's obvious why Hitler is more demonised than Stalin. US /UK helped Russia win ww2 (or rather they helped us).

I think "we" the British can at least say we stood up for Poland - another "far away country of which we knew very little", when it was being torn apart my its two neighbours.

There were then two technological advances, we had that kept the Nazi's at bay:
Our code cracking ability (thank you Poland).
Our race proven fighter aero engines (thank you right wing capitalists who had wasted money between the war playing plane races).

Though our American cousins helped out covertly, it took a massive error of judgement by the Japanese - goaded by an economic blockade - to bring USA into the war.

The resulting war of attrition was won by USA's economic power and Russian deaths.
I don't denigrate the efforts of both male members of the previous generation of my family, who survived Dunkirk, The Desert and Italy, but just check out the Eastern front for the effort and speed put into rolling back the Germans from the first tank battle win, through Stalingrad, Leningrad to get to Berlin ten times faster (I think that is correct) than we westerners did.
OK some of the heroics were vodka fuelled - or so the Germans thought!

Just tell a whole nation that they are an inferior type of ape, and watch them produce their finest hour.

harryhound

Kohoutek wrote: »

I didn't mean unemployment benefit, that's way below the minimum wage, I meant the multitude of different benefits which meant that Karen Matthews for example, drew £300/week for no work.

We've had a government that provide universal free healthcare and free education since 1948. But in 1948, government spending was only 35% of GDP, and in 2000 it was the same figure - also 35%. But the last ten years Labour have expanded state spending to 46.5% of GDP, which isn't sustainable without much higher taxes - and I don't think that's desirable.

I think it is probably over 46% now, when you add in local government and the European union and now 20 - 25% is borrowed.
Not to mention the amount borrowed from our children by privatisation (and then gearing) and the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) build now, rent for ever schemes.

ninky_2

harryhound wrote: »

The resulting war of attrition was won by USA's economic power and Russian deaths.
I don't denigrate the efforts of both male members of the previous generation of my family, who survived Dunkirk, The Desert and Italy, but just check out the Eastern front for the effort and speed put into rolling back the Germans from the first tank battle win, through Stalingrad, Leningrad to get to Berlin ten times faster (I think that is correct) than we westerners did.
OK some of the heroics were vodka fuelled - or so the Germans thought!

Just tell a whole nation that they are an inferior type of ape, and watch them produce their finest hour.

what about the efforts of german soldiers though? should we not see them as equally 'heroic'. it was not their fault which side they were fighting for. and what about the russians?

if germany had won i would no doubt grow up being told / thinking what a heroic battle the nazis had fought.

Generali

ninky wrote: »

what about the efforts of german soldiers though? should we not see them as equally 'heroic'. it was not their fault which side they were fighting for. and what about the russians?

if germany had won i would no doubt grow up being told / thinking what a heroic battle the nazis had fought.

If there is a single defense during WW2 that should, IMO, be described as heroic it's the defense of Stalingrad (previously called Leningrad and St Petersberg).

The defenders forced the attackers to attempt to take the city room by room, not even house by house. When I read about what happened there I find myself looking around thinking what I would do if an invasive force came in through a particular door or window of my house to allow the escape of my family and then to fight back against the invaders.

If a single country should be thought of as having 'won' WWII then the Soviet Union should hold that name. The people and the millitary did this despite rather than because of Stalin however and IMO the victory should never be considered a mitigating factor when considering Stalin's name.

harryhound

Before we get confused by our geography, this is the place set up by a guy who studied in the ship yards of the Isle of Dogs (or Canary Wharf as it is politely called these days) It too held out heroically against the Germans by doing a bit of night time Ice Road Trucking, after our latest winter, I would not want to try to get through a Russian winter with no fuel and a less than starvation ration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg

This is the other place that was caught up in the German rush to control the oil fields (nothing much changes) Where the German army was left with over exposed supply lines;
A lesson the Russians learned when coming the other way and building their empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volgograd

luvpump

Generali wrote: »

If there is a single defense during WW2 that should, IMO, be described as heroic it's the defense of Stalingrad (previously called Leningrad and St Petersberg).

The defenders forced the attackers to attempt to take the city room by room, not even house by house. When I read about what happened there I find myself looking around thinking what I would do if an invasive force came in through a particular door or window of my house to allow the escape of my family and then to fight back against the invaders.

If a single country should be thought of as having 'won' WWII then the Soviet Union should hold that name. The people and the millitary did this despite rather than because of Stalin however and IMO the victory should never be considered a mitigating factor when considering Stalin's name.

Not wishing to be pedantic, but Leningrad (st pertersberg) had to endure a seige that lasted from 1941 to 1944, the "900 day siege".. The Stalingrad campaign (now known as volgograd) lasted about 5 months, )is just under a 1000 miles away from Leningrad) the result being the first major turning point in the war, interestingly it also spawned a pithy but moving description of the carnage in that city in a letter written by a soldier of the 24th Panzer division :


"We have fought during 15 days for a single house, with mortars, grenades, machine guns, and bayonets. Already by the third day 54 German corpses are strewn
in the cellars, on the landings, and the staircases. The front is
a corridor between burnt-out rooms; it is the thin ceiling
between two floors. Help comes from neighboring houses by fire
escapes and chimneys. There is a ceaseless struggle from noon to
night. From storey to storey, faces black with sweat, we bombard
each other with grenades in the middle of explosions, clouds of
dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of
furniture and human beings. Ask any soldier what half an hour of
hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight. And imagine
Stalingrad; 80 days and 80 nights of hand-to-hand struggles. The
street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses...
"Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous
cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the
reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those
scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the
Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank.
The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this burning hell of a city, the
hardest stones can not bear it for long; only men endure."

Sorry to indulge, but its one of my favourate quotes, & sums up the insanity of that war to me ...:)

StevieJ

ninky wrote: »

churchill was a bedfellow of stalin. that's not something that sits well with many.

You wouldn't be talking about the man who was voted greatest Britain would you :eek: