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Oliver Stone On Soviet World War 2 Casualties

posted 9 years ago by bloody-3
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I have read where Stone has said that the red army of the Soviet Union suffered 20 million war dead and we should remember that. But I would like to point out that a lot of their losses were due to the Soviet generals tactics and also the soviet secret police the NKVD. The red army leadership insisted on human wave assaults. The front line troops were ordered to charge straight into machine gun fire from heavily fortified pillboxes and dugouts resulting in huge loss of life. It was as if they had learnt nothing from world war one. A lot of red army men also hitched a ride on tanks going into battle and were easily picked off. But worst of all the NKVD went to work behind the red army lines setting up heavy machine guns to use on their own troops if they refused to fight. This happened many times with red army soldiers being mown down by their own side - http://codoh.com/library/document/2076/

[–] antonivakin 9 years ago

I bet, you've seen "Enemy at the Gates". But that is just propaganda myth. Here http://www.quora.com/Did-Soviet-officers-really-use-automatic-weapons- on-their-own-troops-in-Stalingrad-as-depicted-in-the-film-Enemy-at-the -Gates you can find explanation - what blocking units do really mean and how many soldiers and officers were really executed. Shooting in alarmist and cowards is cruel, but usual practice during war. Have you seen "When Trumpets Fade"?

Concerning poor tactics - I agree, but it, of course, changed during war, because nobody is interested in stupid losses. The war on Eastern front was tremendous, terrible, it's difficult to understand what was happening there even now, 70 years after. But proportion of military losses between Germans (+ Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns etc) and Soviets is approx. 1:1.5. Military losses of Soviets are about 7 mln people. The rest 13 mln are civilians...

[–] bloody-3 9 years ago

No, I haven't seen ENEMY AT THE GATES. The info comes from the link I provided. If you want a propaganda film see MISSION TO MOSCOW. US President Franklin Roosevelt personally asked studio head Jack Warner to make a movie showing how the Soviet Union was such a good society and how great a leader Stalin was. Now that is propaganda! www.imdb.com/title/tt0036166/ Getting back to the soviet-nazi war I would also point out that the Soviets conducted a scorched earth policy. Many public buildings, barracks, factories, warehouses, homes and crops were burnt to the ground or badly damaged by the retreating Red Army. At the end of the war they simply blamed all damage on the Germans - http://codoh.com/library/document/2112/

[–] bloody-3 9 years ago

antonivakin - you wrote "Military losses of Soviet are about 7 mln. The rest 13 mln are civilians". But the trouble with the USSR is that they blurred the line between military and civilian by introducing guerrilla or partisan warfare. If a Soviet citizen wearing civilian clothes fires a gun or throws a grenade at a German or other Axis soldier and is killed in return fire is there death listed as military or civilian? -
http://codoh.com/library/document/1493/