Was Stalin a "necessary evil"?

[nytemare]

Evil man, yes. Would we have defeated Hitler without his leadership over Russia in WWII?

Hard question!

[JohnKleeb]

1. Damn thats hard

Though I think the Russian winter of '41 was really vital to the victory in the East.

[atreides1]

6. True the winter was vital

But would the Russian army have fought as hard as it did under another leader. Stalin ruled by using fear, and it was this style of leadership that might have been at least partly responsible for the tough resistance that the Germans ran into.

Let's face facts with the Political Officers assigned to military units, those units put up a fight, even when they had very little to fight with.

I'm not saying that Stalin was a nice man, history has shown he was an evil, genocidal maniac, on par with Hitler.

But we will never know what would have happened, without him as the leader of the USSR.

[nytemare]

11. (Attempt to lighten things up) So, eh, how bout those O's??

:7

[Zuni]

2. perhaps, but he never killed any of your family

my grandparents lost a lot of people to Stalin during the 1930s

WWII would not have started, at least not in 1939, if not for him either. It was Stalin's deals with Hitler that ennabled Stalin to invade Poland---and Stalin invaded 2 weeks later and crushed all hope for Poland to continue to resist.

Stalin also supplied enormous amounts of raw materials to Germany, literally right until 1 hr before the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union. The last Soviet train carrying oil and grain and other raw materials crossed into germany at 3:45 am on June 22, 1941. 1 Hr later, the Luftwaffe began bombing targets inside the USSR

[JohnKleeb]

3. Thats how I feel too

Hitler had invaded the Yugoslavia and had annexed Czechoslovakia by the name the War in Russia began and I know for certain I had relatives killed.

[nytemare]

7. I didn't mean to insult, just to get people's thoughts

I qualify Stalin just a rung below Hitler on the evil scale, and realize that he caused many a great deal of pain. I don't wish to minimize anybody's suffering by my post, just to get a grasp on people's view of Stalin.

And thank you for your post, it was informative and interesting! I am sure your grandparents had many interesting stories to tell you!

[skygazer]

4. Pointless question

We cannot know that because we cannot know who would have been leading Russia if not Stalin, we cannot know how Hitler would have behaved had there been another Russian leader, etc. etc. etc.

You can't rewrite history with any accuracy - there are too many variables that one can't account for. It's a pointless exercise.

[Zuni]

5. excellent points

*golf clap

[nytemare]

10. I wanted opinions on a hard moral question

Of one evil person overcoming another one. Subjective and pointless as it may appear to you, I am interested in what people think of the psychology of it. Today, on a lesser scale, the war in Iraq draws similarities of a war between two leaders that at least on some levels are descibed as evil.

Why is an exercise in psychology pointless?

[benny05]

8. no, he was just a necessary s__t

We could have won without him..

But we would have lost many US defects over there. And FDR or his wife had visited to see the country or their politics

[HawkerHurricane]

9. Yes. Not that hard.

Russian soldiers fought just as hard under the Czars against Napoleon. Look up some of the battles in that war.
The Russians weren't fighting for world communism, or Iosef Stalin, but for Holy Mother Russia... Russians have always fought tooth and nail in defense of the Motherland.