On Apr 18, 2012, at 11:14 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
...They [the Stalinist leadership] somehow inspired their
army that surrounded armies did not do what surrounded armies are
supposed
to do: surrender....
This is precisely 180 degrees from the truth. In July-August 1941
huge Russian armies,
numbering in the millions, found themselves surrounded--and quickly
surrendered. They
were the only Russian armies in that position during the whole war.
However, there was
an army that found itself surrounded in a hopeless position but fought
on heroically for
months until its commander summoned up the courage to defy the orders
of his leader
and do what he was supposed to do--surrender. I speak, of course, of
the Wehrmacht
at Stalingrad and General von Paulus.
This is *not* to be explained by the fact that Hitler in the 1930s
granted those Germans
not in his concentration camps social services vastly better than
those that Stalin
granted to those Russians not in his (vastly larger) slave-labor camps.
Shane Mage
"This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos
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