You've got my attention

Pardon me, not twentyfive something.......39 something....she looks about 32 though........
I still think it is revolting..

If Stalin hadn't signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and assumed Germany would stick to it, he wouldn't have been caught with his pants down, and would have been able to respond to Operation Barbarossa more quickly.

Khrushchev's secret speech mentions that Churchill (among others) had given Stalin plenty of warning. I provide the following quote from the speech:

"Documents which have now been published show that [as early as] April 3, 1941 Churchill, through his ambassador to the USSR, [Sir Stafford] Cripps, personally warned Stalin that the Germans had begun regrouping their armed units with the intent of attacking the Soviet Union.

It is self-evident that Churchill did not do this at all because of his friendly feeling toward the Soviet nation. He had in this his own imperialistic goals -- to bring Germany and the USSR into a bloody war and thereby to strengthen the position of the British Empire.

All the same, Churchill affirmed in his writings that he sought to "warn Stalin and call his attention to the danger which threatened him." Churchill stressed this repeatedly in his dispatches of April 18 and on the following days. However, Stalin took no heed of these warnings. What is more, Stalin ordered that no credence be given to information of this sort, so as not to provoke the initiation of military operations."


Stalin should probably be blamed for about half of the deaths suffered by the peoples of the USSR, due to his inept handling of the Great Patriotic War.

I'm not a fan of the History Channel and I am absolutely not talking about evacuating millions of people in a week. That is just ludicrous.

Firstly, Stalin ignored every single sign given to him that the Germans were ready to invade. When the tank engines of your neighbor's army are keeping your people up at night, their reconnaisance aicraft are constantly overflying your territory uncontested, and diplomats from around the world are waving and pointing in warning, maybe it's time to listen.

Secondly, Stalin had far more than a week. The circle closed around Leningrad in late August. From the start of hostilities on June 22nd to Mga falling (the last rail line) there was a good 2+ months. He had plenty of time to move industry to the east. But what about the people? He left the people to die. He did it repeatedly throughout the war, from the Baltic states (where he had time to evacuate by sea) to Leningrad itself. But he hesitated and wasted the precious time these people had.

And to correct you, the largest military land invasion was the Soviet counterattack on Germany and, as a goal, Berlin. More troops were amassed against that single city than than all of the German forces involved in Barbarossa.

For reading, I tend to go more for narrative books based on people's experiences (the human cost of war). Amongst the books I've read on the subject are:
* The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (Harrison Salisbury)
* The Fall of Berlin (Read and Fisher)
* The Fall of Berlin (Antony Beevor)
* Stalingrad (Antony Beevor)
* When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (David Glantz)
* Panzerkrieg (McCarthy and Simon)
* Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (Norman Davies)
* The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

I will take a look for Michael Haynes and Mark Harrison. Harrison's books appear to be more statistical studies. For Haynes, I've only seen "A Century Of State Murder?: Death and Policy in Twentieth Century Russia". If you could recommend some of their books, I'd appreciate it.