Message from @Atkins
Discord ID: 487784938238640138
I always wonder what a USSR under Leon Trotsky rather than Stalin would be like considering how badly Lenin did not want Stalin running the show.
Lenin was no saint. Plenty of blood on his hands. Communists have done a bang-up job of sanitizing the record though.
"Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity ... You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ... Yours, Lenin. P.S. Find tougher people."
They heap all the blame on Stalin in order to cleanse Lenin and Trotsky and canonize them.
But they're all the same type of monster.
You know, one of the worst things the Germans in WW1 seemed to have done is sending the Communist revolutionaries into Russia.
Though the WW1 Germans also carried out collective punishments on their enemies' civilian populations.
One of the worst things the Germans in WW1 did was not shoot von Hotzendorf and take command of the Austro-Hungarian army.
I have a lot of unconventional thoughts with respect to WW1.
Most of them involve shooting von Hotzendorf.
Is shooting Hotzendorf for strategical error or for humanitarian disasters under him?
Pretty much the entire war can be blamed on his incessant war-mongering and criminal incompetence.
Military generals of Nazi Germany were military genius... :\
I hate to admit.
Begrudingly I have to give them credit for today's military tactics.
We use their blitz tactics for our tanks.
"The hawkish Conrad, a pure social Darwinist, was spoiling for a war to smash the Serbs. According to Strachan, Conrad urged war on Serbia 26 times between Jan. 1, 1913, and June 1, 1914. Conrad hated Russia too, which supported Serbs because they were fellow ethnic Slavs."
You know... a lot of military geniuses were from empires lead by evil people.
Wrote constant letters to the Emperor advocating war, and the only guy who would argue against him was shot by a Serb.
On the German side of things, they went along with von Hotzendorf's warmongering because they wanted an excuse to cripple Russia before they could fully industrialize. And their pre-war assessment was completely correct: had Russia been left to their own devices in ten years the Germans would not be able to defeat them.
Though I know one of the biggest issues the Nazis suffered was the detrimental degree they valued ethnic & political purity, so they ended putting Nazis in charge of things, not because they were competent, but because they were Nazis, the air force was one of them suffered for this.
Also let us not forget how many talented Jews they decided to eject or imprison or massacre.
If the Austro-Hungarians and Turks not been complete clown shows the Triple Alliance would've won. And had that happened we wouldn't have had any Nazis or Commies.
Oh I didn't know this...
Get past the bashing of Democrats for the election thing.
Then I found out that all Democrats on the senate at the time during 2014.
They all voted to repeal the free speech prevision of the 1st amendment.
Why didn't I know about this!?
France would've lost some colonies in the peace treaty, the Austro-Hungarians would've taken land in the Balkans, and the Turks would've taken the North Caucasus (and quickly lost it thereafter as their empire was falling to bits already).
It's quite possible though that the Germans would've made the same mistake as the Entente and imposed crushing war reparations, thus fostering authoritarianism in western Europe. The US would be laughing though.
Did anyone know that?
That the Democrats during 2014 voted to rewrite the first amendment by repealing it?
I sure as hell didn't know.
It was referenced in one of the hearings this week, but it's otherwise such a laughable attempt that it doesn't merit notice.
That article is hyperbolic.
They wanted to repeal the campaign finance reform laws.
Democrats are minorities in both houses and don't hold the executive. They can't pass anything, let alone a constitutional amendment.