A message from a veteran about firearms in this country

[ChairmanGonzalo]

[

Ahhh but it is. You claim that you can prevent violent people from committing crimes by disarming the regular civilian population. How exactly is that supposed to work?

Actually no. Pro gunners in the US claim that being armed to the teeth keeps your crime down. Stats clearly show that the US has more homicides that other Western Countries (note I say western - compared to third-world countries, it's a paradise). You would think with such a proliferation of guns your country would be one of the least violent first-world countries. It's not. So it's clearly not the guns...

Do you know how big america is, its population ? Its as big as Australia and it's population is not centered on the coast, it's a melting pool of all the immigrants around the world.


Contrary to what you think I never in 51 years seen anyone carry a side arm, except for the occasional cop, Guns are not around as much as you think they are.

Guess you've never been to Montana where open carry is legal, and damn near every pickup truck has a gun rack with at least one rifle in the back.

And which has one of the highest violent gun death rates in the country

 

[2aguy]

Actually, the Soviet Union won World War II.

The Soviet Union eliminated about 90 percent of the German Army. The British and U.S forces in France and Italy were just a sideshow to the main action in central Europe
Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler

What does New Zealand do for the world? Australia for that matter? Australia can't even provide sufficient electricity for a large portion of their population.

Want to talk about Hurricane Katrina? or the midwest floods? What do we do? We helped your arse in WWII and Vietnam and Korea. That's what we did, even though the latter two had nothing to do with us.

I tell you what we don't do. We don't involve ourselves in the inner mechanisms of other countries politics. Salvador Allende anyone? We don't prop up corrupt, puppet regimes and get 50,000 of our civilians killed? Vietnam anyone? We don't make the world a much less safer place 'cause based on lies and because "he tried to kill my daddy". Iraq anyone? Or destabilise central America for my own geopolitical ideology, the result being an influx over the past 30 years of central and south american immigrants - both legal and illegal. Iran/Contra anyone?

You wish you were us.

YOU helped OUR ARSE there? You REALLY think we NEEDED your help? WWII? If it wasn't for the U.S. a large part of Europe would be Germany. Japan would be ruling the Pacific... Vietnam? Everyone lost there, so you didn't help our arse at all. Korea? Uh... maybe you need to go read some more about that. The U.S. Navy ruled that war.

The Soviet union would have easily lost the war if it wasn't for the United States.....the left wing lie about Russia winning the war is exactly that...a lie....

This article looks at the Soviets during world war 2, their intention to invade the west, which was beaten by Germany invading two weeks early and why they lost so quickly at first...

Russia In World War 2

But what Russian historiography censored for decades, is the large scale of total morale collapse of Soviet armed forces and Communist party establishments which escaped, 'disappeared', or surrendered before they even were engaged in battle. Millions, from privates to Generals, individually or as entire units, abandoned their tanks, guns, air bases, without battle, and escaped on vehicles or on foot, or simply disappeared into the nearby villages and forests.
Fighting and then losing is one thing. Massive and rapid escape without a fight and massive voluntary surrender, are another, and Soviet censorship tried to hide that, by further intensifying the myth of the destructiveness of the German attack, and by further intensifying the belief that the entire red army was right on the border. There are reports of entire unit staffs which escaped without battle and were found again hundreds of kilometers to the East. There were tens of Generals who disappeared and were never located again. There are reports of tank divisions which, although they were not right on the border and were not engaged in fighting in the first day, miraculously 'lost' 100% of their tanks and other fighting equipment in the second day of fighting, without actually being engaged in battle, and then escaped hundreds of kilometers eastwards almost without losing a single truck even to technical malfunction. There are reports of entire Air Force regiments which reported that they suffered negligible or no losses in the air or on the ground at the first day, and then simply abandoned their air bases and escaped by trucks and on foot. In 1941 Russia lost millions of soldiers. Only 32% of the reported losses were the dead and wounded. Millions surrendered, many of them as fast as they could, and so many others escaped from the front, either disappeared or remained in service, but only after a distant escape and after abandoning every weapon or equipment, even rifles and light mortars, that could force them to stay and fight.
The apparent reasons for this mass unwillingness to fight were:

• A further intensified mental shock of those who were always trained educated and taught others that attack and victory are the only possible option, and suddenly found themselves under massive surprise attack for which they never planned or prepared.
• Stalin, the murderous dictator, was surrounded with people who told him much too often what he wanted to hear about Russia's preparations for war. The enormous reported numbers of material production and manpower training were perhaps correct. For example the figures of vast mass-training of pilots (which, by the way, were NOT volunteers, unlike pilots anywhere else in the world), and received minimal training, in order to keep up with the enormous training quotas dictated by Stalin.But what Stalin never suspected, was the possibility that in his regime of mass terror and fear, where so many millions were imprisoned and millions others killed by the police, and where tens of millions starved for years in order to pay for the enormous cost of the vast effort to convert Russia with a period of just two decades from a mostly agricultural country to an industrial militarist super-power with gigantic military power. Stalin never suspected that under a massive attack on his brutal regime, the people, the millions of soldiers who previously suffered from the regime, millions were former political prisoners of which many were recruited from hard labor prisons directly to war front military service, will favor surrender to defending their homeland, or will have no willingness to fight immediately as they realized that since they're country is being massively attacked there's a good chance that they can escape from the war without being punished by the formidable regime. Given the possibility that for the first time in their life non-cooperation with the Communist regime will NOT be severely punished, so many favored that option, and that's something the Russian censorship could never admit.
  So while in all material aspects Russia was enormously prepared for war, and could therefore theoretically manage much better than it did, even under a massive surprise attack, in morale terms, the Russian people in the front (which rapidly moved East all across the long front), were generally unwilling to fight for their terrible terror regime once fear of it was lost since the regime itself was being attacked and in danger.

Click to expand...
Also...The Biggest Mistakes In World War 2

• In 1941, Stalin received a stream of information from military intelligence and spies, that Germany is going to invade Russia, as Hitler promised since the 1920s. After discussions, Stalin decided that the information was inconclusive and perhaps deliberate disinformation, and decided that there will be no invasion. As the invasion came nearer, the stream of information indicating invasion intensified, but then Stalin forbid his advisors from further disturbing him with it. Anyone who still suggested that there might be a German invasion, risked execution. Fear was such that when the invasion started, no one dared to awake Stalin and tell him about it, until Zhukov, the deputy supreme commander, told Stalin's bodyguards that he takes responsibility for awakening the dictator and telling him the bad news.

• Both Hitler and Stalin refused to allow retreats, as a matter of principle and regardless of the military situation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in each side died in vain because they were not allowed to retreat when was necessary. Russia almost lost the war because of that in 1941, and Hitler's army suffered horrible losses because of that, mainly in the winter of 1942 and in Stalingrad a year later.

Until April 1941, Russia was at war with Japan in the far East, and in 1941-1942 it fought desperately against the German invasion. But since the end of the battle of Stalingrad in Feb. 1943, Russia knew that it was going to win the war, and that Germany and Japan were losing it. It was convenient for Russia to focus entirely on defeating Germany and leave the war against Japan entirely to the US, which also provided Russia with enormous material support. During the war, Russia provided air bases for British heavy bombers which bombed Germany, but refused to provide such bases for American bombers in the Russian far East, apparently in return for a quiet Japanese agreement not to attack American supply convoys sailing to Russia's far East ports.
And from wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.[SUP][53][/SUP] Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[SUP][54][/SUP]


However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.[SUP][55][/SUP]
In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft.[SUP][56][/SUP] In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.[SUP][57][/SUP]
A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties.[SUP][58][/SUP] The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.[SUP][58][/SUP]
By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties[SUP][59][/SUP] and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942.[SUP][56][/SUP] German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers.[SUP][60][/SUP] The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as theKV-1 and T-34 tanks.
Click to expand...
At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]
The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...



also from wikipedia on the Red Army...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#The_Great_Patriotic_War

The unprepared Soviet forces suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, an incomplete reorganization and mainly because they were arranged to attack Central Europe, and not to defend Soviet territory.[SUP][39][/SUP] The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat.[SUP][39][/SUP]
And another great mistake by Stalin that almost lost the war for the Soviets...

Purges

Further information: Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
The late 1930s saw the so-called Purges of the Red Army Cadres, which occurred concurrently with Stalin's Great Purge of Soviet society. In 1936 and 1937, at the orders of Stalin, thousands of Red Army officers were dismissed from their commands. The purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of the "politically unreliable elements", mainly among higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for the settling of personal vendettas or to eliminate competition by officers seeking the same command. Many army, corps, and divisional commanders were sacked, most were imprisoned or sent to labor camps; others were executed. Among the victims was the Red Army's primary military theorist, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, perceived by Stalin as a potential political rival. Officers who remained soon found all of their decisions being closely examined by political officers, even in mundane matters such as record-keeping and field training exercises.[SUP][72][/SUP] An atmosphere of fear and unwillingness to take the initiative soon pervaded the Red Army; suicide rates among junior officers rose to record levels.[SUP][72][/SUP] Most historians believe that the purges significantly impaired the combat capabilities of the Red Army. However, the extent of the consequential damage attributable to them is still debated.
Recently declassified data indicate that in 1937, at the height of the Purges, the Red Army had 114,300 officers, of whom 11,034 were dismissed. In 1938, the Red Army had 179,000 officers, 56% more than in 1937, of whom a further 6,742 were sacked. In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army generals, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.[SUP][73][/SUP]
The result was that the Red Army officer corps in 1941 had many inexperienced senior officers. While 60% of regimental commanders had two years or more of command experience in June 1941, and almost 80% of rifle division commanders, only 20% of corps commanders, and 5% or fewer army and military district commanders, had the same level of experience.[SUP][74][/SUP]

 

[Lewdog]

Why the hell would we limit ourselves to exactly as many as we think we might need? Unless we are on a budget, why should we let the government tell us how many of a legal thing we should be able to have? How many eggs do you eat per day? How many of those do you need? Maybe the government should limit how many of those you can have in your fridge.

I don't really care how many rounds you have in your house, or fridge, or wherever else you may keep your ammo.

I care about how many rounds you can squeeze off before having to reload. I personally don't think you need more than 10, because you can reload a 9mm in less than 2 seconds if you're practiced (and I was when I was in the Security Force at Newport RI).

I mean..............do you REALLY need the capacity to squeeze off 100 rounds with a semi automatic weapon? If so, you're stupid, because the gun will jam from the heat created at around 60 to 75 rounds.

Let me inform you of something. That's a fallacy. I've had this talk with an ATF agent before and he says banning extended magazines is a total waste of time and nothing but a political manifestation to keep guns in the news. A person that practices enough, can get off just about as many shots and rounds by carrying multiple magazines with less rounds. A person can swap out magazines and keep firing in a very minimal difference. In fact, as he pointed out, didn't the guy in the Pulse shooting use legal size magazines? So what's your point?

 

[ChairmanGonzalo]

Actually, the Soviet Union won World War II.

The Soviet Union eliminated about 90 percent of the German Army. The British and U.S forces in France and Italy were just a sideshow to the main action in central Europe
Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler

What does New Zealand do for the world? Australia for that matter? Australia can't even provide sufficient electricity for a large portion of their population.

Want to talk about Hurricane Katrina? or the midwest floods? What do we do? We helped your arse in WWII and Vietnam and Korea. That's what we did, even though the latter two had nothing to do with us.

I tell you what we don't do. We don't involve ourselves in the inner mechanisms of other countries politics. Salvador Allende anyone? We don't prop up corrupt, puppet regimes and get 50,000 of our civilians killed? Vietnam anyone? We don't make the world a much less safer place 'cause based on lies and because "he tried to kill my daddy". Iraq anyone? Or destabilise central America for my own geopolitical ideology, the result being an influx over the past 30 years of central and south american immigrants - both legal and illegal. Iran/Contra anyone?

You wish you were us.

YOU helped OUR ARSE there? You REALLY think we NEEDED your help? WWII? If it wasn't for the U.S. a large part of Europe would be Germany. Japan would be ruling the Pacific... Vietnam? Everyone lost there, so you didn't help our arse at all. Korea? Uh... maybe you need to go read some more about that. The U.S. Navy ruled that war.

The Soviet union would have easily lost the war if it wasn't for the United States.....the left wing lie about Russia winning the war is exactly that...a lie....

This article looks at the Soviets during world war 2, their intention to invade the west, which was beaten by Germany invading two weeks early and why they lost so quickly at first...

Russia In World War 2

But what Russian historiography censored for decades, is the large scale of total morale collapse of Soviet armed forces and Communist party establishments which escaped, 'disappeared', or surrendered before they even were engaged in battle. Millions, from privates to Generals, individually or as entire units, abandoned their tanks, guns, air bases, without battle, and escaped on vehicles or on foot, or simply disappeared into the nearby villages and forests.
Fighting and then losing is one thing. Massive and rapid escape without a fight and massive voluntary surrender, are another, and Soviet censorship tried to hide that, by further intensifying the myth of the destructiveness of the German attack, and by further intensifying the belief that the entire red army was right on the border. There are reports of entire unit staffs which escaped without battle and were found again hundreds of kilometers to the East. There were tens of Generals who disappeared and were never located again. There are reports of tank divisions which, although they were not right on the border and were not engaged in fighting in the first day, miraculously 'lost' 100% of their tanks and other fighting equipment in the second day of fighting, without actually being engaged in battle, and then escaped hundreds of kilometers eastwards almost without losing a single truck even to technical malfunction. There are reports of entire Air Force regiments which reported that they suffered negligible or no losses in the air or on the ground at the first day, and then simply abandoned their air bases and escaped by trucks and on foot. In 1941 Russia lost millions of soldiers. Only 32% of the reported losses were the dead and wounded. Millions surrendered, many of them as fast as they could, and so many others escaped from the front, either disappeared or remained in service, but only after a distant escape and after abandoning every weapon or equipment, even rifles and light mortars, that could force them to stay and fight.
The apparent reasons for this mass unwillingness to fight were:

• A further intensified mental shock of those who were always trained educated and taught others that attack and victory are the only possible option, and suddenly found themselves under massive surprise attack for which they never planned or prepared.
• Stalin, the murderous dictator, was surrounded with people who told him much too often what he wanted to hear about Russia's preparations for war. The enormous reported numbers of material production and manpower training were perhaps correct. For example the figures of vast mass-training of pilots (which, by the way, were NOT volunteers, unlike pilots anywhere else in the world), and received minimal training, in order to keep up with the enormous training quotas dictated by Stalin.But what Stalin never suspected, was the possibility that in his regime of mass terror and fear, where so many millions were imprisoned and millions others killed by the police, and where tens of millions starved for years in order to pay for the enormous cost of the vast effort to convert Russia with a period of just two decades from a mostly agricultural country to an industrial militarist super-power with gigantic military power. Stalin never suspected that under a massive attack on his brutal regime, the people, the millions of soldiers who previously suffered from the regime, millions were former political prisoners of which many were recruited from hard labor prisons directly to war front military service, will favor surrender to defending their homeland, or will have no willingness to fight immediately as they realized that since they're country is being massively attacked there's a good chance that they can escape from the war without being punished by the formidable regime. Given the possibility that for the first time in their life non-cooperation with the Communist regime will NOT be severely punished, so many favored that option, and that's something the Russian censorship could never admit.
  So while in all material aspects Russia was enormously prepared for war, and could therefore theoretically manage much better than it did, even under a massive surprise attack, in morale terms, the Russian people in the front (which rapidly moved East all across the long front), were generally unwilling to fight for their terrible terror regime once fear of it was lost since the regime itself was being attacked and in danger.

Click to expand...
Also...The Biggest Mistakes In World War 2

• In 1941, Stalin received a stream of information from military intelligence and spies, that Germany is going to invade Russia, as Hitler promised since the 1920s. After discussions, Stalin decided that the information was inconclusive and perhaps deliberate disinformation, and decided that there will be no invasion. As the invasion came nearer, the stream of information indicating invasion intensified, but then Stalin forbid his advisors from further disturbing him with it. Anyone who still suggested that there might be a German invasion, risked execution. Fear was such that when the invasion started, no one dared to awake Stalin and tell him about it, until Zhukov, the deputy supreme commander, told Stalin's bodyguards that he takes responsibility for awakening the dictator and telling him the bad news.

• Both Hitler and Stalin refused to allow retreats, as a matter of principle and regardless of the military situation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in each side died in vain because they were not allowed to retreat when was necessary. Russia almost lost the war because of that in 1941, and Hitler's army suffered horrible losses because of that, mainly in the winter of 1942 and in Stalingrad a year later.

Until April 1941, Russia was at war with Japan in the far East, and in 1941-1942 it fought desperately against the German invasion. But since the end of the battle of Stalingrad in Feb. 1943, Russia knew that it was going to win the war, and that Germany and Japan were losing it. It was convenient for Russia to focus entirely on defeating Germany and leave the war against Japan entirely to the US, which also provided Russia with enormous material support. During the war, Russia provided air bases for British heavy bombers which bombed Germany, but refused to provide such bases for American bombers in the Russian far East, apparently in return for a quiet Japanese agreement not to attack American supply convoys sailing to Russia's far East ports.
And from wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.[SUP][53][/SUP] Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[SUP][54][/SUP]


However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.[SUP][55][/SUP]
In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft.[SUP][56][/SUP] In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.[SUP][57][/SUP]
A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties.[SUP][58][/SUP] The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.[SUP][58][/SUP]
By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties[SUP][59][/SUP] and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942.[SUP][56][/SUP] German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers.[SUP][60][/SUP] The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as theKV-1 and T-34 tanks.
Click to expand...
At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]
The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...



also from wikipedia on the Red Army...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#The_Great_Patriotic_War

The unprepared Soviet forces suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, an incomplete reorganization and mainly because they were arranged to attack Central Europe, and not to defend Soviet territory.[SUP][39][/SUP] The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat.[SUP][39][/SUP]
And another great mistake by Stalin that almost lost the war for the Soviets...

Purges

Further information: Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
The late 1930s saw the so-called Purges of the Red Army Cadres, which occurred concurrently with Stalin's Great Purge of Soviet society. In 1936 and 1937, at the orders of Stalin, thousands of Red Army officers were dismissed from their commands. The purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of the "politically unreliable elements", mainly among higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for the settling of personal vendettas or to eliminate competition by officers seeking the same command. Many army, corps, and divisional commanders were sacked, most were imprisoned or sent to labor camps; others were executed. Among the victims was the Red Army's primary military theorist, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, perceived by Stalin as a potential political rival. Officers who remained soon found all of their decisions being closely examined by political officers, even in mundane matters such as record-keeping and field training exercises.[SUP][72][/SUP] An atmosphere of fear and unwillingness to take the initiative soon pervaded the Red Army; suicide rates among junior officers rose to record levels.[SUP][72][/SUP] Most historians believe that the purges significantly impaired the combat capabilities of the Red Army. However, the extent of the consequential damage attributable to them is still debated.
Recently declassified data indicate that in 1937, at the height of the Purges, the Red Army had 114,300 officers, of whom 11,034 were dismissed. In 1938, the Red Army had 179,000 officers, 56% more than in 1937, of whom a further 6,742 were sacked. In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army generals, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.[SUP][73][/SUP]
The result was that the Red Army officer corps in 1941 had many inexperienced senior officers. While 60% of regimental commanders had two years or more of command experience in June 1941, and almost 80% of rifle division commanders, only 20% of corps commanders, and 5% or fewer army and military district commanders, had the same level of experience.[SUP][74][/SUP]

The Red Army faced 90 percent of Germany's armed power, and destroyed that 90 percent.

The US, ALONGSIDE the UK, Free French forces, Belgian resistance, etc. faced the remaining 10

The USSR suffered the most in the entire war, but also did the most to stop Hitler

 

[Lewdog]

Actually, the Soviet Union won World War II.

The Soviet Union eliminated about 90 percent of the German Army. The British and U.S forces in France and Italy were just a sideshow to the main action in central Europe
Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler

What does New Zealand do for the world? Australia for that matter? Australia can't even provide sufficient electricity for a large portion of their population.

Want to talk about Hurricane Katrina? or the midwest floods? What do we do? We helped your arse in WWII and Vietnam and Korea. That's what we did, even though the latter two had nothing to do with us.

I tell you what we don't do. We don't involve ourselves in the inner mechanisms of other countries politics. Salvador Allende anyone? We don't prop up corrupt, puppet regimes and get 50,000 of our civilians killed? Vietnam anyone? We don't make the world a much less safer place 'cause based on lies and because "he tried to kill my daddy". Iraq anyone? Or destabilise central America for my own geopolitical ideology, the result being an influx over the past 30 years of central and south american immigrants - both legal and illegal. Iran/Contra anyone?

You wish you were us.

YOU helped OUR ARSE there? You REALLY think we NEEDED your help? WWII? If it wasn't for the U.S. a large part of Europe would be Germany. Japan would be ruling the Pacific... Vietnam? Everyone lost there, so you didn't help our arse at all. Korea? Uh... maybe you need to go read some more about that. The U.S. Navy ruled that war.

The Soviet union would have easily lost the war if it wasn't for the United States.....the left wing lie about Russia winning the war is exactly that...a lie....

This article looks at the Soviets during world war 2, their intention to invade the west, which was beaten by Germany invading two weeks early and why they lost so quickly at first...

Russia In World War 2

But what Russian historiography censored for decades, is the large scale of total morale collapse of Soviet armed forces and Communist party establishments which escaped, 'disappeared', or surrendered before they even were engaged in battle. Millions, from privates to Generals, individually or as entire units, abandoned their tanks, guns, air bases, without battle, and escaped on vehicles or on foot, or simply disappeared into the nearby villages and forests.
Fighting and then losing is one thing. Massive and rapid escape without a fight and massive voluntary surrender, are another, and Soviet censorship tried to hide that, by further intensifying the myth of the destructiveness of the German attack, and by further intensifying the belief that the entire red army was right on the border. There are reports of entire unit staffs which escaped without battle and were found again hundreds of kilometers to the East. There were tens of Generals who disappeared and were never located again. There are reports of tank divisions which, although they were not right on the border and were not engaged in fighting in the first day, miraculously 'lost' 100% of their tanks and other fighting equipment in the second day of fighting, without actually being engaged in battle, and then escaped hundreds of kilometers eastwards almost without losing a single truck even to technical malfunction. There are reports of entire Air Force regiments which reported that they suffered negligible or no losses in the air or on the ground at the first day, and then simply abandoned their air bases and escaped by trucks and on foot. In 1941 Russia lost millions of soldiers. Only 32% of the reported losses were the dead and wounded. Millions surrendered, many of them as fast as they could, and so many others escaped from the front, either disappeared or remained in service, but only after a distant escape and after abandoning every weapon or equipment, even rifles and light mortars, that could force them to stay and fight.
The apparent reasons for this mass unwillingness to fight were:

• A further intensified mental shock of those who were always trained educated and taught others that attack and victory are the only possible option, and suddenly found themselves under massive surprise attack for which they never planned or prepared.
• Stalin, the murderous dictator, was surrounded with people who told him much too often what he wanted to hear about Russia's preparations for war. The enormous reported numbers of material production and manpower training were perhaps correct. For example the figures of vast mass-training of pilots (which, by the way, were NOT volunteers, unlike pilots anywhere else in the world), and received minimal training, in order to keep up with the enormous training quotas dictated by Stalin.But what Stalin never suspected, was the possibility that in his regime of mass terror and fear, where so many millions were imprisoned and millions others killed by the police, and where tens of millions starved for years in order to pay for the enormous cost of the vast effort to convert Russia with a period of just two decades from a mostly agricultural country to an industrial militarist super-power with gigantic military power. Stalin never suspected that under a massive attack on his brutal regime, the people, the millions of soldiers who previously suffered from the regime, millions were former political prisoners of which many were recruited from hard labor prisons directly to war front military service, will favor surrender to defending their homeland, or will have no willingness to fight immediately as they realized that since they're country is being massively attacked there's a good chance that they can escape from the war without being punished by the formidable regime. Given the possibility that for the first time in their life non-cooperation with the Communist regime will NOT be severely punished, so many favored that option, and that's something the Russian censorship could never admit.
  So while in all material aspects Russia was enormously prepared for war, and could therefore theoretically manage much better than it did, even under a massive surprise attack, in morale terms, the Russian people in the front (which rapidly moved East all across the long front), were generally unwilling to fight for their terrible terror regime once fear of it was lost since the regime itself was being attacked and in danger.

Click to expand...
Also...The Biggest Mistakes In World War 2

• In 1941, Stalin received a stream of information from military intelligence and spies, that Germany is going to invade Russia, as Hitler promised since the 1920s. After discussions, Stalin decided that the information was inconclusive and perhaps deliberate disinformation, and decided that there will be no invasion. As the invasion came nearer, the stream of information indicating invasion intensified, but then Stalin forbid his advisors from further disturbing him with it. Anyone who still suggested that there might be a German invasion, risked execution. Fear was such that when the invasion started, no one dared to awake Stalin and tell him about it, until Zhukov, the deputy supreme commander, told Stalin's bodyguards that he takes responsibility for awakening the dictator and telling him the bad news.

• Both Hitler and Stalin refused to allow retreats, as a matter of principle and regardless of the military situation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in each side died in vain because they were not allowed to retreat when was necessary. Russia almost lost the war because of that in 1941, and Hitler's army suffered horrible losses because of that, mainly in the winter of 1942 and in Stalingrad a year later.

Until April 1941, Russia was at war with Japan in the far East, and in 1941-1942 it fought desperately against the German invasion. But since the end of the battle of Stalingrad in Feb. 1943, Russia knew that it was going to win the war, and that Germany and Japan were losing it. It was convenient for Russia to focus entirely on defeating Germany and leave the war against Japan entirely to the US, which also provided Russia with enormous material support. During the war, Russia provided air bases for British heavy bombers which bombed Germany, but refused to provide such bases for American bombers in the Russian far East, apparently in return for a quiet Japanese agreement not to attack American supply convoys sailing to Russia's far East ports.
And from wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.[SUP][53][/SUP] Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[SUP][54][/SUP]


However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.[SUP][55][/SUP]
In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft.[SUP][56][/SUP] In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.[SUP][57][/SUP]
A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties.[SUP][58][/SUP] The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.[SUP][58][/SUP]
By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties[SUP][59][/SUP] and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942.[SUP][56][/SUP] German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers.[SUP][60][/SUP] The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as theKV-1 and T-34 tanks.
Click to expand...
At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]
The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...



also from wikipedia on the Red Army...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#The_Great_Patriotic_War

The unprepared Soviet forces suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, an incomplete reorganization and mainly because they were arranged to attack Central Europe, and not to defend Soviet territory.[SUP][39][/SUP] The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat.[SUP][39][/SUP]
And another great mistake by Stalin that almost lost the war for the Soviets...

Purges

Further information: Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
The late 1930s saw the so-called Purges of the Red Army Cadres, which occurred concurrently with Stalin's Great Purge of Soviet society. In 1936 and 1937, at the orders of Stalin, thousands of Red Army officers were dismissed from their commands. The purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of the "politically unreliable elements", mainly among higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for the settling of personal vendettas or to eliminate competition by officers seeking the same command. Many army, corps, and divisional commanders were sacked, most were imprisoned or sent to labor camps; others were executed. Among the victims was the Red Army's primary military theorist, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, perceived by Stalin as a potential political rival. Officers who remained soon found all of their decisions being closely examined by political officers, even in mundane matters such as record-keeping and field training exercises.[SUP][72][/SUP] An atmosphere of fear and unwillingness to take the initiative soon pervaded the Red Army; suicide rates among junior officers rose to record levels.[SUP][72][/SUP] Most historians believe that the purges significantly impaired the combat capabilities of the Red Army. However, the extent of the consequential damage attributable to them is still debated.
Recently declassified data indicate that in 1937, at the height of the Purges, the Red Army had 114,300 officers, of whom 11,034 were dismissed. In 1938, the Red Army had 179,000 officers, 56% more than in 1937, of whom a further 6,742 were sacked. In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army generals, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.[SUP][73][/SUP]
The result was that the Red Army officer corps in 1941 had many inexperienced senior officers. While 60% of regimental commanders had two years or more of command experience in June 1941, and almost 80% of rifle division commanders, only 20% of corps commanders, and 5% or fewer army and military district commanders, had the same level of experience.[SUP][74][/SUP]

The Red Army faced 90 percent of Germany's armed power, and destroyed that 90 percent.

The US, ALONGSIDE the UK, Free French forces, Belgian resistance, etc. faced the remaining 10

The USSR suffered the most in the entire war, but also did the most to stop Hitler

Did you selectively ignore my post because it didn't fit your agenda? Do you understand the difference between defending a fortification and attacking? Did or did not the United States help supply the Russian military?

 

[2aguy]

For every one article about a shooting in Australia, there are probably tens of shootings in the usa in the same MINUTE

Doesn't matter......there shouldn't be any......gun control has not worked in Australia...that isn't me saying it....it is Australian papers........I posted links to the 3 part story.....Melbourne, the city of the gun......

Yeah: 18 mass shootings before new guns laws in 1996, 0 mass shootings afterward. But continue to stick you head up the ass by all means. Just know that the NRA is losing public support because of idiots like you

Do you realize they didn't have 18 mass shootings before 1996.......and do you know how many public shootings they had that did not become mass public shootings simply because the shooter decided not to shoot more people......

Please...tell me which of their gun laws stopped these shootings from becoming mass shootings.....please...explain which Australian gun laws stopped these shooters....

4/28/16 port arthur shooting with assault rifle..

Man found shot in Port Arthur

Port Arthur Police are investigating a shooting at Dewalt and W. 14th Street. Police got the call at about 10:45 p.m. Thursday. When they arrived on the scene they found a 29-year-old man laying outside a car that was riddled with bullets. The man had a gunshot wound to the leg and was taken to Christus Southeast Texas St. Elizabeth in Beaumont. His injuries are not life-threatening.
Police say they believe the gun used was some sort of an assault rifle. There is no word on any suspects at this time.

----------------------
4/29/16....

'This isn't a random shooting': Man targeted in Sydney killing

A gunman is at large after a "targeted" shooting in Sydney's south-west that has left one man dead and two other people injured.
---------------------
Timeline of major crimes in Australia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

25 January 1996 – Hillcrest murders – Peter May shot and killed his three children, his estranged wife and her parents in the Brisbane suburb of Hillcrest before killing himself.[54]

• 16 August 1998 – Victorian police officers Gary Silk and Rodney Miller were shot dead in an ambush by Bendali Debs and Jason Joseph Roberts in the Moorabbin Police murders.

• 3 August 1999 – La Trobe University shooting – Jonathan Brett Horrocks walked into the cafeteria in La Trobe university in Melbourne Victoria armed with a 38 caliber revolver handgun and opened fire killing Leon Capraro the boss and manager off the cafeteria and wounding a woman who was a student at the university.

• 26 May 2002 – A Vietnamese man walked into a Vietnamese wedding reception in Cabramatta Sydney, New South Wales armed with a handgun and opened fire wounding seven people.

• • 21 October 2002 – Monash University shooting – Huan Xiang opened fire in a tutorial room, killing two and injuring five.

• 18 June 2007 – Melbourne CBD shooting – Christopher Wayne Hudson opened fire on three people, killing one and seriously wounding two others who intervened when Hudson was assaulting his girlfriend at a busy Melbourne intersection during the morning peak. He gave himself up to police in Wallan, Victoria on 20 June.[71]

• 28 April 2011 – 2011 Hectorville siege – Donato Anthony Corbo shot dead Kobus and Annetjie Snyman and their son-in-law Luc Mombers and seriously wounded Mr Mombers' 14-year-old son Marcel and a police officer at Hectorville, South Australia before being arrested after an eight-hour stand off.

• 28 April 2012 – A man opened fire in a busy shopping mall in Robina on the Gold Coast shooting Bandidos bikie Jacques Teamo. A woman who was an innocent bystander was also injured from a shotgun blast to the leg. Neither of the victims died, but the incident highlighted the recent increase in gun crime across major Australian cities including Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.[citation needed]

• 23 May 2012 – Christopher 'Badness' Binse, a career criminal well known to police, was arrested after a 44-hour siege at an East Keilor home in Melbourne's north west. During the siege, Binse fired several shots at police and refused to co-operate with negotiators; eventually tear gas had to be used to force him out of the house, at which point he refused to put down his weapon and was then sprayed with a volley of non-lethal bullets.[citation needed]

• 8 March 2013 – Queen Street mall siege – Lee Matthew Hiller entered the shopping mall on Queen Street Brisbane Queensland armed with a revolver and threatened shoppers and staff with the revolver, causing a 90-minute siege which ended when Hiller was shot and wounded in the arm by a police officer from the elite Specialist Emergency Response Team. Hiller was then later taken to hospital and was treated for his injury; he pleaded gulity to 20 charges and was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail with a non-parole period of two years and three months.[citation needed]
• 9 September 2014 – Lockhart massacre – Geoff Hunt shot and killed his wife, Kim, his 10-year-old son Fletcher, and his daughters Mia, eight and Phoebe, six before killing himself on a farm in Lockhart in the Riverina district near Wagga Wagga New South Wales. The body of Geoff Hunt and a firearm are later found in a dam on the farm by police divers and a suicide note written by Geoff Hunt is also found inside the house on the farm.[citation needed]

• 7 November 2014 – Jordy Brook carjacked a Channel 7 news cameraman at gun point during a crime spree on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. He was later captured and arrested by police after luring police on a high speed chase and crashing the car.[citation needed

• 15 December 2014 – 2014 Sydney hostage crisis – Seventeen people were taken hostage in a cafe in Martin Place, Sydney by Man Haron Monis. The hostage crisis was resolved in the early hours of 16 December, sixteen hours after it commenced, when armed police stormed the premises. Monis and two hostages were killed in the course of the crisis.[87]

• 27 June 2015 – Hermidale triple murder – the bodies of three people, two men and a woman are found shot dead on a property in a rural farming community in the town of Hermidale west of Nyngan, the bodies of 28-year-old Jacob Cumberland his father 59-year-old Stephen Cumberland and a 36-year-old woman were found with gun shot wounds, the body of Jacob Cumberland was found on the drive way of the property, the body of the 36-year-old woman was found in the backyard of the property and the body of Stephen Cumberland was found in a burnt out caravan on the property. 61-year-old Allan O'Connor is later arrested and charged with the murders.

• 10 September 2015 – A 49-year-old woman is shot dead in a Mc Donald's restaurant in Gold Coast by her 57-year-old ex partner, who then turned the gun on himself afterwards and shot himself dead.
• 2 October 2015 - 2015 Parramatta shooting On 2 October 2015, Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar, a 15-year-old boy, shot and killed Curtis Cheng, an unarmed police civilian finance worker, outside the New South Wales Police Force headquarters in Parramatta, Australia. Jabar was subsequently shot and killed by special constables who were protecting the police station.

Here is a neater list.....

Timeline of major crimes in Australia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• 16 January 1998 to 15 June 2009 – Melbourne gangland killings – A series of 35 murders of crime figures and their associates that began with the slaying of Alphonse Gangitano in his home, most likely by Jason Moran, the latest victim being Des Moran who was murdered in Ascot Vale on 15 June 2009.
• 
  
• 3 August 1999 – La Trobe University shooting – Jonathan Brett Horrocks walked into the cafeteria at La Trobe university in Melbourne, Victoria, armed with a 38-calibre revolver handgun and opened fire, killing cafeteria manager Leon Capraro and wounding a woman who was a student at the university.

21st century[edit]
2000s[edit]

• 13 March 2000 – Millewa State Forest Murders – Barbara and Stephen Brooks and Stacie Willoughby were found dead, all three having been shot execution style and left in the forest.[62][63]
• 
  
• 16 July 2001 – Peter James Knight, an anti-abortion activist, walked into an abortion clinic in East Melbourne armed with a rifle. Knight shot dead security guard Stephen Gordon Rogers and was later overpowered by staff in the abortion clinic. After his arrest, Knight was charged and convicted of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
• 26 May 2002 – A Vietnamese man walked into a Vietnamese wedding reception in Cabramatta Sydney, New South Wales armed with a handgun and opened fire wounding seven people.
• 14 October 2002 – Dr. Margret Tobin, the South Australian head of Mental Health Services, was shot dead by Jean Eric Gassy as she walked out of a lift in her office building.
• 21 October 2002 – Monash University shooting – Huan Xiang opened fire in a tutorial room, killing two and injuring five.
• 25 October 2003 – Greenacre double murder – A man and a woman are shot dead in a house in the suburb of Greenacre, Sydney which was the result of a feud between two Middle Eastern crime families. Twenty-four-year-old Ziad Abdulrazak was shot 10 times in the chest and head and 22-year-old Mervat Hamka was shot twice in the neck while she slept in her bedroom. Up to 100 shots were fired into the house by four men who were later arrested and convicted of the murders.
• 
  
• 18 February 2006 – Cardross Hit and Run – Thomas Graham Towle crashed his car at high speed into a group of 13 teenagers, killing six and injuring seven near the town ofCardross, Victoria.[73]
• 18 June 2007 – Melbourne CBD shooting – Christopher Wayne Hudson opened fire on three people, killing one and seriously wounding two others who intervened when Hudson was assaulting his girlfriend at a busy Melbourne intersection during the morning peak. He gave himself up to police in Wallan, Victoria on 20 June.[75]

 

[2aguy]

Actually, the Soviet Union won World War II.

The Soviet Union eliminated about 90 percent of the German Army. The British and U.S forces in France and Italy were just a sideshow to the main action in central Europe
Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler

What does New Zealand do for the world? Australia for that matter? Australia can't even provide sufficient electricity for a large portion of their population.

Want to talk about Hurricane Katrina? or the midwest floods? What do we do? We helped your arse in WWII and Vietnam and Korea. That's what we did, even though the latter two had nothing to do with us.

I tell you what we don't do. We don't involve ourselves in the inner mechanisms of other countries politics. Salvador Allende anyone? We don't prop up corrupt, puppet regimes and get 50,000 of our civilians killed? Vietnam anyone? We don't make the world a much less safer place 'cause based on lies and because "he tried to kill my daddy". Iraq anyone? Or destabilise central America for my own geopolitical ideology, the result being an influx over the past 30 years of central and south american immigrants - both legal and illegal. Iran/Contra anyone?

You wish you were us.

YOU helped OUR ARSE there? You REALLY think we NEEDED your help? WWII? If it wasn't for the U.S. a large part of Europe would be Germany. Japan would be ruling the Pacific... Vietnam? Everyone lost there, so you didn't help our arse at all. Korea? Uh... maybe you need to go read some more about that. The U.S. Navy ruled that war.

The Soviet union would have easily lost the war if it wasn't for the United States.....the left wing lie about Russia winning the war is exactly that...a lie....

This article looks at the Soviets during world war 2, their intention to invade the west, which was beaten by Germany invading two weeks early and why they lost so quickly at first...

Russia In World War 2

But what Russian historiography censored for decades, is the large scale of total morale collapse of Soviet armed forces and Communist party establishments which escaped, 'disappeared', or surrendered before they even were engaged in battle. Millions, from privates to Generals, individually or as entire units, abandoned their tanks, guns, air bases, without battle, and escaped on vehicles or on foot, or simply disappeared into the nearby villages and forests.
Fighting and then losing is one thing. Massive and rapid escape without a fight and massive voluntary surrender, are another, and Soviet censorship tried to hide that, by further intensifying the myth of the destructiveness of the German attack, and by further intensifying the belief that the entire red army was right on the border. There are reports of entire unit staffs which escaped without battle and were found again hundreds of kilometers to the East. There were tens of Generals who disappeared and were never located again. There are reports of tank divisions which, although they were not right on the border and were not engaged in fighting in the first day, miraculously 'lost' 100% of their tanks and other fighting equipment in the second day of fighting, without actually being engaged in battle, and then escaped hundreds of kilometers eastwards almost without losing a single truck even to technical malfunction. There are reports of entire Air Force regiments which reported that they suffered negligible or no losses in the air or on the ground at the first day, and then simply abandoned their air bases and escaped by trucks and on foot. In 1941 Russia lost millions of soldiers. Only 32% of the reported losses were the dead and wounded. Millions surrendered, many of them as fast as they could, and so many others escaped from the front, either disappeared or remained in service, but only after a distant escape and after abandoning every weapon or equipment, even rifles and light mortars, that could force them to stay and fight.
The apparent reasons for this mass unwillingness to fight were:

• A further intensified mental shock of those who were always trained educated and taught others that attack and victory are the only possible option, and suddenly found themselves under massive surprise attack for which they never planned or prepared.
• Stalin, the murderous dictator, was surrounded with people who told him much too often what he wanted to hear about Russia's preparations for war. The enormous reported numbers of material production and manpower training were perhaps correct. For example the figures of vast mass-training of pilots (which, by the way, were NOT volunteers, unlike pilots anywhere else in the world), and received minimal training, in order to keep up with the enormous training quotas dictated by Stalin.But what Stalin never suspected, was the possibility that in his regime of mass terror and fear, where so many millions were imprisoned and millions others killed by the police, and where tens of millions starved for years in order to pay for the enormous cost of the vast effort to convert Russia with a period of just two decades from a mostly agricultural country to an industrial militarist super-power with gigantic military power. Stalin never suspected that under a massive attack on his brutal regime, the people, the millions of soldiers who previously suffered from the regime, millions were former political prisoners of which many were recruited from hard labor prisons directly to war front military service, will favor surrender to defending their homeland, or will have no willingness to fight immediately as they realized that since they're country is being massively attacked there's a good chance that they can escape from the war without being punished by the formidable regime. Given the possibility that for the first time in their life non-cooperation with the Communist regime will NOT be severely punished, so many favored that option, and that's something the Russian censorship could never admit.
  So while in all material aspects Russia was enormously prepared for war, and could therefore theoretically manage much better than it did, even under a massive surprise attack, in morale terms, the Russian people in the front (which rapidly moved East all across the long front), were generally unwilling to fight for their terrible terror regime once fear of it was lost since the regime itself was being attacked and in danger.

Click to expand...
Also...The Biggest Mistakes In World War 2

• In 1941, Stalin received a stream of information from military intelligence and spies, that Germany is going to invade Russia, as Hitler promised since the 1920s. After discussions, Stalin decided that the information was inconclusive and perhaps deliberate disinformation, and decided that there will be no invasion. As the invasion came nearer, the stream of information indicating invasion intensified, but then Stalin forbid his advisors from further disturbing him with it. Anyone who still suggested that there might be a German invasion, risked execution. Fear was such that when the invasion started, no one dared to awake Stalin and tell him about it, until Zhukov, the deputy supreme commander, told Stalin's bodyguards that he takes responsibility for awakening the dictator and telling him the bad news.

• Both Hitler and Stalin refused to allow retreats, as a matter of principle and regardless of the military situation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in each side died in vain because they were not allowed to retreat when was necessary. Russia almost lost the war because of that in 1941, and Hitler's army suffered horrible losses because of that, mainly in the winter of 1942 and in Stalingrad a year later.

Until April 1941, Russia was at war with Japan in the far East, and in 1941-1942 it fought desperately against the German invasion. But since the end of the battle of Stalingrad in Feb. 1943, Russia knew that it was going to win the war, and that Germany and Japan were losing it. It was convenient for Russia to focus entirely on defeating Germany and leave the war against Japan entirely to the US, which also provided Russia with enormous material support. During the war, Russia provided air bases for British heavy bombers which bombed Germany, but refused to provide such bases for American bombers in the Russian far East, apparently in return for a quiet Japanese agreement not to attack American supply convoys sailing to Russia's far East ports.
And from wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.[SUP][53][/SUP] Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[SUP][54][/SUP]


However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.[SUP][55][/SUP]
In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft.[SUP][56][/SUP] In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.[SUP][57][/SUP]
A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties.[SUP][58][/SUP] The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.[SUP][58][/SUP]
By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties[SUP][59][/SUP] and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942.[SUP][56][/SUP] German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers.[SUP][60][/SUP] The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as theKV-1 and T-34 tanks.
Click to expand...
At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]
The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...



also from wikipedia on the Red Army...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#The_Great_Patriotic_War

The unprepared Soviet forces suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, an incomplete reorganization and mainly because they were arranged to attack Central Europe, and not to defend Soviet territory.[SUP][39][/SUP] The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat.[SUP][39][/SUP]
And another great mistake by Stalin that almost lost the war for the Soviets...

Purges

Further information: Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
The late 1930s saw the so-called Purges of the Red Army Cadres, which occurred concurrently with Stalin's Great Purge of Soviet society. In 1936 and 1937, at the orders of Stalin, thousands of Red Army officers were dismissed from their commands. The purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of the "politically unreliable elements", mainly among higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for the settling of personal vendettas or to eliminate competition by officers seeking the same command. Many army, corps, and divisional commanders were sacked, most were imprisoned or sent to labor camps; others were executed. Among the victims was the Red Army's primary military theorist, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, perceived by Stalin as a potential political rival. Officers who remained soon found all of their decisions being closely examined by political officers, even in mundane matters such as record-keeping and field training exercises.[SUP][72][/SUP] An atmosphere of fear and unwillingness to take the initiative soon pervaded the Red Army; suicide rates among junior officers rose to record levels.[SUP][72][/SUP] Most historians believe that the purges significantly impaired the combat capabilities of the Red Army. However, the extent of the consequential damage attributable to them is still debated.
Recently declassified data indicate that in 1937, at the height of the Purges, the Red Army had 114,300 officers, of whom 11,034 were dismissed. In 1938, the Red Army had 179,000 officers, 56% more than in 1937, of whom a further 6,742 were sacked. In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army generals, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.[SUP][73][/SUP]
The result was that the Red Army officer corps in 1941 had many inexperienced senior officers. While 60% of regimental commanders had two years or more of command experience in June 1941, and almost 80% of rifle division commanders, only 20% of corps commanders, and 5% or fewer army and military district commanders, had the same level of experience.[SUP][74][/SUP]

The Red Army faced 90 percent of Germany's armed power, and destroyed that 90 percent.

The US, ALONGSIDE the UK, Free French forces, Belgian resistance, etc. faced the remaining 10

The USSR suffered the most in the entire war, but also did the most to stop Hitler

Wrong.....the USSR screwed up everything they did, the only reason they won at Stalinggrad is Hitler had to move troops to stop the advance of the allies......

 

[2aguy]

[

Ahhh but it is. You claim that you can prevent violent people from committing crimes by disarming the regular civilian population. How exactly is that supposed to work?

Actually no. Pro gunners in the US claim that being armed to the teeth keeps your crime down. Stats clearly show that the US has more homicides that other Western Countries (note I say western - compared to third-world countries, it's a paradise). You would think with such a proliferation of guns your country would be one of the least violent first-world countries. It's not. So it's clearly not the guns...

Do you know how big america is, its population ? Its as big as Australia and it's population is not centered on the coast, it's a melting pool of all the immigrants around the world.


Contrary to what you think I never in 51 years seen anyone carry a side arm, except for the occasional cop, Guns are not around as much as you think they are.

Guess you've never been to Montana where open carry is legal, and damn near every pickup truck has a gun rack with at least one rifle in the back.

And which has one of the highest violent gun death rates in the country

The cities with the strictest gun control laws...Chicago, D.C., Baltimore.......

 

[Yousaidwhat]

What does New Zealand do for the world? Australia for that matter? Australia can't even provide sufficient electricity for a large portion of their population.

Love green energy.......if hilary gets elected a large part of our country won't be able to provide energy either.....

And the progressives in the cities will be the first to have their internet cut off.

A grand day that would be.

 

[2aguy]

Actually, the Soviet Union won World War II.

The Soviet Union eliminated about 90 percent of the German Army. The British and U.S forces in France and Italy were just a sideshow to the main action in central Europe
Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler

What does New Zealand do for the world? Australia for that matter? Australia can't even provide sufficient electricity for a large portion of their population.

Want to talk about Hurricane Katrina? or the midwest floods? What do we do? We helped your arse in WWII and Vietnam and Korea. That's what we did, even though the latter two had nothing to do with us.

I tell you what we don't do. We don't involve ourselves in the inner mechanisms of other countries politics. Salvador Allende anyone? We don't prop up corrupt, puppet regimes and get 50,000 of our civilians killed? Vietnam anyone? We don't make the world a much less safer place 'cause based on lies and because "he tried to kill my daddy". Iraq anyone? Or destabilise central America for my own geopolitical ideology, the result being an influx over the past 30 years of central and south american immigrants - both legal and illegal. Iran/Contra anyone?

You wish you were us.

YOU helped OUR ARSE there? You REALLY think we NEEDED your help? WWII? If it wasn't for the U.S. a large part of Europe would be Germany. Japan would be ruling the Pacific... Vietnam? Everyone lost there, so you didn't help our arse at all. Korea? Uh... maybe you need to go read some more about that. The U.S. Navy ruled that war.

The Soviet union would have easily lost the war if it wasn't for the United States.....the left wing lie about Russia winning the war is exactly that...a lie....

This article looks at the Soviets during world war 2, their intention to invade the west, which was beaten by Germany invading two weeks early and why they lost so quickly at first...

Russia In World War 2

But what Russian historiography censored for decades, is the large scale of total morale collapse of Soviet armed forces and Communist party establishments which escaped, 'disappeared', or surrendered before they even were engaged in battle. Millions, from privates to Generals, individually or as entire units, abandoned their tanks, guns, air bases, without battle, and escaped on vehicles or on foot, or simply disappeared into the nearby villages and forests.
Fighting and then losing is one thing. Massive and rapid escape without a fight and massive voluntary surrender, are another, and Soviet censorship tried to hide that, by further intensifying the myth of the destructiveness of the German attack, and by further intensifying the belief that the entire red army was right on the border. There are reports of entire unit staffs which escaped without battle and were found again hundreds of kilometers to the East. There were tens of Generals who disappeared and were never located again. There are reports of tank divisions which, although they were not right on the border and were not engaged in fighting in the first day, miraculously 'lost' 100% of their tanks and other fighting equipment in the second day of fighting, without actually being engaged in battle, and then escaped hundreds of kilometers eastwards almost without losing a single truck even to technical malfunction. There are reports of entire Air Force regiments which reported that they suffered negligible or no losses in the air or on the ground at the first day, and then simply abandoned their air bases and escaped by trucks and on foot. In 1941 Russia lost millions of soldiers. Only 32% of the reported losses were the dead and wounded. Millions surrendered, many of them as fast as they could, and so many others escaped from the front, either disappeared or remained in service, but only after a distant escape and after abandoning every weapon or equipment, even rifles and light mortars, that could force them to stay and fight.
The apparent reasons for this mass unwillingness to fight were:

• A further intensified mental shock of those who were always trained educated and taught others that attack and victory are the only possible option, and suddenly found themselves under massive surprise attack for which they never planned or prepared.
• Stalin, the murderous dictator, was surrounded with people who told him much too often what he wanted to hear about Russia's preparations for war. The enormous reported numbers of material production and manpower training were perhaps correct. For example the figures of vast mass-training of pilots (which, by the way, were NOT volunteers, unlike pilots anywhere else in the world), and received minimal training, in order to keep up with the enormous training quotas dictated by Stalin.But what Stalin never suspected, was the possibility that in his regime of mass terror and fear, where so many millions were imprisoned and millions others killed by the police, and where tens of millions starved for years in order to pay for the enormous cost of the vast effort to convert Russia with a period of just two decades from a mostly agricultural country to an industrial militarist super-power with gigantic military power. Stalin never suspected that under a massive attack on his brutal regime, the people, the millions of soldiers who previously suffered from the regime, millions were former political prisoners of which many were recruited from hard labor prisons directly to war front military service, will favor surrender to defending their homeland, or will have no willingness to fight immediately as they realized that since they're country is being massively attacked there's a good chance that they can escape from the war without being punished by the formidable regime. Given the possibility that for the first time in their life non-cooperation with the Communist regime will NOT be severely punished, so many favored that option, and that's something the Russian censorship could never admit.
  So while in all material aspects Russia was enormously prepared for war, and could therefore theoretically manage much better than it did, even under a massive surprise attack, in morale terms, the Russian people in the front (which rapidly moved East all across the long front), were generally unwilling to fight for their terrible terror regime once fear of it was lost since the regime itself was being attacked and in danger.

Click to expand...
Also...The Biggest Mistakes In World War 2

• In 1941, Stalin received a stream of information from military intelligence and spies, that Germany is going to invade Russia, as Hitler promised since the 1920s. After discussions, Stalin decided that the information was inconclusive and perhaps deliberate disinformation, and decided that there will be no invasion. As the invasion came nearer, the stream of information indicating invasion intensified, but then Stalin forbid his advisors from further disturbing him with it. Anyone who still suggested that there might be a German invasion, risked execution. Fear was such that when the invasion started, no one dared to awake Stalin and tell him about it, until Zhukov, the deputy supreme commander, told Stalin's bodyguards that he takes responsibility for awakening the dictator and telling him the bad news.

• Both Hitler and Stalin refused to allow retreats, as a matter of principle and regardless of the military situation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in each side died in vain because they were not allowed to retreat when was necessary. Russia almost lost the war because of that in 1941, and Hitler's army suffered horrible losses because of that, mainly in the winter of 1942 and in Stalingrad a year later.

Until April 1941, Russia was at war with Japan in the far East, and in 1941-1942 it fought desperately against the German invasion. But since the end of the battle of Stalingrad in Feb. 1943, Russia knew that it was going to win the war, and that Germany and Japan were losing it. It was convenient for Russia to focus entirely on defeating Germany and leave the war against Japan entirely to the US, which also provided Russia with enormous material support. During the war, Russia provided air bases for British heavy bombers which bombed Germany, but refused to provide such bases for American bombers in the Russian far East, apparently in return for a quiet Japanese agreement not to attack American supply convoys sailing to Russia's far East ports.
And from wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.[SUP][53][/SUP] Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[SUP][54][/SUP]


However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.[SUP][55][/SUP]
In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft.[SUP][56][/SUP] In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.[SUP][57][/SUP]
A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties.[SUP][58][/SUP] The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.[SUP][58][/SUP]
By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties[SUP][59][/SUP] and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942.[SUP][56][/SUP] German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers.[SUP][60][/SUP] The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as theKV-1 and T-34 tanks.
Click to expand...
At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]
The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...



also from wikipedia on the Red Army...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#The_Great_Patriotic_War

The unprepared Soviet forces suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, an incomplete reorganization and mainly because they were arranged to attack Central Europe, and not to defend Soviet territory.[SUP][39][/SUP] The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat.[SUP][39][/SUP]
And another great mistake by Stalin that almost lost the war for the Soviets...

Purges

Further information: Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
The late 1930s saw the so-called Purges of the Red Army Cadres, which occurred concurrently with Stalin's Great Purge of Soviet society. In 1936 and 1937, at the orders of Stalin, thousands of Red Army officers were dismissed from their commands. The purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of the "politically unreliable elements", mainly among higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for the settling of personal vendettas or to eliminate competition by officers seeking the same command. Many army, corps, and divisional commanders were sacked, most were imprisoned or sent to labor camps; others were executed. Among the victims was the Red Army's primary military theorist, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, perceived by Stalin as a potential political rival. Officers who remained soon found all of their decisions being closely examined by political officers, even in mundane matters such as record-keeping and field training exercises.[SUP][72][/SUP] An atmosphere of fear and unwillingness to take the initiative soon pervaded the Red Army; suicide rates among junior officers rose to record levels.[SUP][72][/SUP] Most historians believe that the purges significantly impaired the combat capabilities of the Red Army. However, the extent of the consequential damage attributable to them is still debated.
Recently declassified data indicate that in 1937, at the height of the Purges, the Red Army had 114,300 officers, of whom 11,034 were dismissed. In 1938, the Red Army had 179,000 officers, 56% more than in 1937, of whom a further 6,742 were sacked. In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army generals, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.[SUP][73][/SUP]
The result was that the Red Army officer corps in 1941 had many inexperienced senior officers. While 60% of regimental commanders had two years or more of command experience in June 1941, and almost 80% of rifle division commanders, only 20% of corps commanders, and 5% or fewer army and military district commanders, had the same level of experience.[SUP][74][/SUP]

The Red Army faced 90 percent of Germany's armed power, and destroyed that 90 percent.

The US, ALONGSIDE the UK, Free French forces, Belgian resistance, etc. faced the remaining 10

The USSR suffered the most in the entire war, but also did the most to stop Hitler

Here you go...

At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]

The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...

 

[2aguy]

Why the hell would we limit ourselves to exactly as many as we think we might need? Unless we are on a budget, why should we let the government tell us how many of a legal thing we should be able to have? How many eggs do you eat per day? How many of those do you need? Maybe the government should limit how many of those you can have in your fridge.

I don't really care how many rounds you have in your house, or fridge, or wherever else you may keep your ammo.

I care about how many rounds you can squeeze off before having to reload. I personally don't think you need more than 10, because you can reload a 9mm in less than 2 seconds if you're practiced (and I was when I was in the Security Force at Newport RI).

I mean..............do you REALLY need the capacity to squeeze off 100 rounds with a semi automatic weapon? If so, you're stupid, because the gun will jam from the heat created at around 60 to 75 rounds.

Let me inform you of something. That's a fallacy. I've had this talk with an ATF agent before and he says banning extended magazines is a total waste of time and nothing but a political manifestation to keep guns in the news. A person that practices enough, can get off just about as many shots and rounds by carrying multiple magazines with less rounds. A person can swap out magazines and keep firing in a very minimal difference. In fact, as he pointed out, didn't the guy in the Pulse shooting use legal size magazines? So what's your point?

actual research shows that magazine limits would not effect casualties in mass public shootings...the rate of fire by the killers, shooting unarmed people is so slow, and the killer is so at ease that they easily change magazines.......

 

[Dr Grump]

Again doing what? And what kind of job did you get in Australia?


.

Why do you want to know? What does it matter?

 

[ChairmanGonzalo]

Actually, the Soviet Union won World War II.

The Soviet Union eliminated about 90 percent of the German Army. The British and U.S forces in France and Italy were just a sideshow to the main action in central Europe
Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler

Want to talk about Hurricane Katrina? or the midwest floods? What do we do? We helped your arse in WWII and Vietnam and Korea. That's what we did, even though the latter two had nothing to do with us.

I tell you what we don't do. We don't involve ourselves in the inner mechanisms of other countries politics. Salvador Allende anyone? We don't prop up corrupt, puppet regimes and get 50,000 of our civilians killed? Vietnam anyone? We don't make the world a much less safer place 'cause based on lies and because "he tried to kill my daddy". Iraq anyone? Or destabilise central America for my own geopolitical ideology, the result being an influx over the past 30 years of central and south american immigrants - both legal and illegal. Iran/Contra anyone?

You wish you were us.

YOU helped OUR ARSE there? You REALLY think we NEEDED your help? WWII? If it wasn't for the U.S. a large part of Europe would be Germany. Japan would be ruling the Pacific... Vietnam? Everyone lost there, so you didn't help our arse at all. Korea? Uh... maybe you need to go read some more about that. The U.S. Navy ruled that war.

The Soviet union would have easily lost the war if it wasn't for the United States.....the left wing lie about Russia winning the war is exactly that...a lie....

This article looks at the Soviets during world war 2, their intention to invade the west, which was beaten by Germany invading two weeks early and why they lost so quickly at first...

Russia In World War 2

But what Russian historiography censored for decades, is the large scale of total morale collapse of Soviet armed forces and Communist party establishments which escaped, 'disappeared', or surrendered before they even were engaged in battle. Millions, from privates to Generals, individually or as entire units, abandoned their tanks, guns, air bases, without battle, and escaped on vehicles or on foot, or simply disappeared into the nearby villages and forests.
Fighting and then losing is one thing. Massive and rapid escape without a fight and massive voluntary surrender, are another, and Soviet censorship tried to hide that, by further intensifying the myth of the destructiveness of the German attack, and by further intensifying the belief that the entire red army was right on the border. There are reports of entire unit staffs which escaped without battle and were found again hundreds of kilometers to the East. There were tens of Generals who disappeared and were never located again. There are reports of tank divisions which, although they were not right on the border and were not engaged in fighting in the first day, miraculously 'lost' 100% of their tanks and other fighting equipment in the second day of fighting, without actually being engaged in battle, and then escaped hundreds of kilometers eastwards almost without losing a single truck even to technical malfunction. There are reports of entire Air Force regiments which reported that they suffered negligible or no losses in the air or on the ground at the first day, and then simply abandoned their air bases and escaped by trucks and on foot. In 1941 Russia lost millions of soldiers. Only 32% of the reported losses were the dead and wounded. Millions surrendered, many of them as fast as they could, and so many others escaped from the front, either disappeared or remained in service, but only after a distant escape and after abandoning every weapon or equipment, even rifles and light mortars, that could force them to stay and fight.
The apparent reasons for this mass unwillingness to fight were:

• A further intensified mental shock of those who were always trained educated and taught others that attack and victory are the only possible option, and suddenly found themselves under massive surprise attack for which they never planned or prepared.
• Stalin, the murderous dictator, was surrounded with people who told him much too often what he wanted to hear about Russia's preparations for war. The enormous reported numbers of material production and manpower training were perhaps correct. For example the figures of vast mass-training of pilots (which, by the way, were NOT volunteers, unlike pilots anywhere else in the world), and received minimal training, in order to keep up with the enormous training quotas dictated by Stalin.But what Stalin never suspected, was the possibility that in his regime of mass terror and fear, where so many millions were imprisoned and millions others killed by the police, and where tens of millions starved for years in order to pay for the enormous cost of the vast effort to convert Russia with a period of just two decades from a mostly agricultural country to an industrial militarist super-power with gigantic military power. Stalin never suspected that under a massive attack on his brutal regime, the people, the millions of soldiers who previously suffered from the regime, millions were former political prisoners of which many were recruited from hard labor prisons directly to war front military service, will favor surrender to defending their homeland, or will have no willingness to fight immediately as they realized that since they're country is being massively attacked there's a good chance that they can escape from the war without being punished by the formidable regime. Given the possibility that for the first time in their life non-cooperation with the Communist regime will NOT be severely punished, so many favored that option, and that's something the Russian censorship could never admit.
  So while in all material aspects Russia was enormously prepared for war, and could therefore theoretically manage much better than it did, even under a massive surprise attack, in morale terms, the Russian people in the front (which rapidly moved East all across the long front), were generally unwilling to fight for their terrible terror regime once fear of it was lost since the regime itself was being attacked and in danger.

Click to expand...
Also...The Biggest Mistakes In World War 2

• In 1941, Stalin received a stream of information from military intelligence and spies, that Germany is going to invade Russia, as Hitler promised since the 1920s. After discussions, Stalin decided that the information was inconclusive and perhaps deliberate disinformation, and decided that there will be no invasion. As the invasion came nearer, the stream of information indicating invasion intensified, but then Stalin forbid his advisors from further disturbing him with it. Anyone who still suggested that there might be a German invasion, risked execution. Fear was such that when the invasion started, no one dared to awake Stalin and tell him about it, until Zhukov, the deputy supreme commander, told Stalin's bodyguards that he takes responsibility for awakening the dictator and telling him the bad news.

• Both Hitler and Stalin refused to allow retreats, as a matter of principle and regardless of the military situation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in each side died in vain because they were not allowed to retreat when was necessary. Russia almost lost the war because of that in 1941, and Hitler's army suffered horrible losses because of that, mainly in the winter of 1942 and in Stalingrad a year later.

Until April 1941, Russia was at war with Japan in the far East, and in 1941-1942 it fought desperately against the German invasion. But since the end of the battle of Stalingrad in Feb. 1943, Russia knew that it was going to win the war, and that Germany and Japan were losing it. It was convenient for Russia to focus entirely on defeating Germany and leave the war against Japan entirely to the US, which also provided Russia with enormous material support. During the war, Russia provided air bases for British heavy bombers which bombed Germany, but refused to provide such bases for American bombers in the Russian far East, apparently in return for a quiet Japanese agreement not to attack American supply convoys sailing to Russia's far East ports.
And from wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.[SUP][53][/SUP] Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[SUP][54][/SUP]


However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.[SUP][55][/SUP]
In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft.[SUP][56][/SUP] In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.[SUP][57][/SUP]
A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties.[SUP][58][/SUP] The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.[SUP][58][/SUP]
By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties[SUP][59][/SUP] and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942.[SUP][56][/SUP] German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers.[SUP][60][/SUP] The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as theKV-1 and T-34 tanks.
Click to expand...
At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]
The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...



also from wikipedia on the Red Army...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#The_Great_Patriotic_War

The unprepared Soviet forces suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, an incomplete reorganization and mainly because they were arranged to attack Central Europe, and not to defend Soviet territory.[SUP][39][/SUP] The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat.[SUP][39][/SUP]
And another great mistake by Stalin that almost lost the war for the Soviets...

Purges

Further information: Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
The late 1930s saw the so-called Purges of the Red Army Cadres, which occurred concurrently with Stalin's Great Purge of Soviet society. In 1936 and 1937, at the orders of Stalin, thousands of Red Army officers were dismissed from their commands. The purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of the "politically unreliable elements", mainly among higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for the settling of personal vendettas or to eliminate competition by officers seeking the same command. Many army, corps, and divisional commanders were sacked, most were imprisoned or sent to labor camps; others were executed. Among the victims was the Red Army's primary military theorist, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, perceived by Stalin as a potential political rival. Officers who remained soon found all of their decisions being closely examined by political officers, even in mundane matters such as record-keeping and field training exercises.[SUP][72][/SUP] An atmosphere of fear and unwillingness to take the initiative soon pervaded the Red Army; suicide rates among junior officers rose to record levels.[SUP][72][/SUP] Most historians believe that the purges significantly impaired the combat capabilities of the Red Army. However, the extent of the consequential damage attributable to them is still debated.
Recently declassified data indicate that in 1937, at the height of the Purges, the Red Army had 114,300 officers, of whom 11,034 were dismissed. In 1938, the Red Army had 179,000 officers, 56% more than in 1937, of whom a further 6,742 were sacked. In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army generals, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.[SUP][73][/SUP]
The result was that the Red Army officer corps in 1941 had many inexperienced senior officers. While 60% of regimental commanders had two years or more of command experience in June 1941, and almost 80% of rifle division commanders, only 20% of corps commanders, and 5% or fewer army and military district commanders, had the same level of experience.[SUP][74][/SUP]

The Red Army faced 90 percent of Germany's armed power, and destroyed that 90 percent.

The US, ALONGSIDE the UK, Free French forces, Belgian resistance, etc. faced the remaining 10

The USSR suffered the most in the entire war, but also did the most to stop Hitler

Here you go...

At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]

The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...

So you're telling me that the US and UK distracted Hitler and diverted his attention just enough that the USSR was able to regroup its forces, and then do the actual heavy punching in defeating Germany? That's what most historians say anyways.

You know that the USSR liberated more territory than the US did, right? You know that the USSR were the ones who took Berlin, right? You know that while the US faced just Italy and Germany, the USSR had to punch through Hitler's allies of Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary and then attack Germany itself, right?

 

[ChairmanGonzalo]

Oh, and the USSR invasion of Japanese occupied Manchuria in 1945, killing ONE MILLION Japanese soldiers within a week, was just as important to getting Japan to surrender as the nuclear bombs were, right?

The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did

 

[Wyatt earp]

Do you know how big america is, its population ? Its as big as Australia and it's population is not centered on the coast, it's a melting pool of all the immigrants around the world.


Contrary to what you think I never in 51 years seen anyone carry a side arm, except for the occasional cop, Guns are not around as much as you think they are.

Of course. There is not much I don't know about the US. Or a lot of other places for that matter. On my part, this is more a philosophical argument than a political one.

You don't know crap about the United states in f

[

Ahhh but it is. You claim that you can prevent violent people from committing crimes by disarming the regular civilian population. How exactly is that supposed to work?

Actually no. Pro gunners in the US claim that being armed to the teeth keeps your crime down. Stats clearly show that the US has more homicides that other Western Countries (note I say western - compared to third-world countries, it's a paradise). You would think with such a proliferation of guns your country would be one of the least violent first-world countries. It's not. So it's clearly not the guns...

Do you know how big america is, its population ? Its as big as Australia and it's population is not centered on the coast, it's a melting pool of all the immigrants around the world.


Contrary to what you think I never in 51 years seen anyone carry a side arm, except for the occasional cop, Guns are not around as much as you think they are.

Guess you've never been to Montana where open carry is legal, and damn near every pickup truck has a gun rack with at least one rifle in the back.

No I have not been to Montana in like 30 years, remind us again how the death rate up there is more then chicago.

 

[Dr Grump]

[]No need to. No right is absolute, like yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. No child has the right to carry a firearm onto the playground. Government has a role to play but denying citizens the right to bear arms violates the intent. Otherwise why even have the second?

Nobody is denying you your right, just the type. There is a difference..

And then the next type, and then...

I disagree. We have strict gun laws in NZ, and you have to have a firearms license. People still own guns. No handguns, but rifles and shotguns.

I was listening to ABC radio (our equivalent of PBS) and they had Philip Alpers on there (a NZer who is very anti-gun - i have been on US boards and even some pro-gunners know his name). He says that since the Australian gun ban in 1996 there are more guns than ever in Australia. He said more guns were imported into Australia in 2015 than in the history of gun importation - and that's NOT including those for the military. However, it is the type of gun that was imported that is the difference. No assault-type rifles or fully autos.

 

[Dr Grump]

[Q
You don't know crap about the United states in f
.

What don't I know?

 

[Yousaidwhat]

I don't go to that stupid thread obama try this again...and I have been on this sight for a few years now.

Yea we know you NZers are jealous pricks of America your country is like what 100 miles long? I never get Why there are so many NZers on U.S. boards and what there fascination with American politics are.

Politics is an interesting beast. I rarely go on the Obama thread. That aside, Obama farts the world listens. Wish it wasn't so, but it's the way it is.

Yeah I'm really jealous of America. Gee, I wish I lived there. Oh, that's right my wife got offered a job in Australia and the US at the same time. The US job offered more money but we came to Oz anyway. Decision wasn't even close.....LOL...

Your wife??? Is that code for what?

So your "wife" got a job offer both in Australia and america doing what?

And you are the" house wife "???

To confusing.

Now we know who wears the pants in his family.

Grumpy wears a tutu.

 

[Dr Grump]

He we know who wears the pants in his family.

Grumpy wears a tutu.

Is that you Donald?

 

[Lewdog]

Actually, the Soviet Union won World War II.

The Soviet Union eliminated about 90 percent of the German Army. The British and U.S forces in France and Italy were just a sideshow to the main action in central Europe
Don’t forget how the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler

YOU helped OUR ARSE there? You REALLY think we NEEDED your help? WWII? If it wasn't for the U.S. a large part of Europe would be Germany. Japan would be ruling the Pacific... Vietnam? Everyone lost there, so you didn't help our arse at all. Korea? Uh... maybe you need to go read some more about that. The U.S. Navy ruled that war.

The Soviet union would have easily lost the war if it wasn't for the United States.....the left wing lie about Russia winning the war is exactly that...a lie....

This article looks at the Soviets during world war 2, their intention to invade the west, which was beaten by Germany invading two weeks early and why they lost so quickly at first...

Russia In World War 2

But what Russian historiography censored for decades, is the large scale of total morale collapse of Soviet armed forces and Communist party establishments which escaped, 'disappeared', or surrendered before they even were engaged in battle. Millions, from privates to Generals, individually or as entire units, abandoned their tanks, guns, air bases, without battle, and escaped on vehicles or on foot, or simply disappeared into the nearby villages and forests.
Fighting and then losing is one thing. Massive and rapid escape without a fight and massive voluntary surrender, are another, and Soviet censorship tried to hide that, by further intensifying the myth of the destructiveness of the German attack, and by further intensifying the belief that the entire red army was right on the border. There are reports of entire unit staffs which escaped without battle and were found again hundreds of kilometers to the East. There were tens of Generals who disappeared and were never located again. There are reports of tank divisions which, although they were not right on the border and were not engaged in fighting in the first day, miraculously 'lost' 100% of their tanks and other fighting equipment in the second day of fighting, without actually being engaged in battle, and then escaped hundreds of kilometers eastwards almost without losing a single truck even to technical malfunction. There are reports of entire Air Force regiments which reported that they suffered negligible or no losses in the air or on the ground at the first day, and then simply abandoned their air bases and escaped by trucks and on foot. In 1941 Russia lost millions of soldiers. Only 32% of the reported losses were the dead and wounded. Millions surrendered, many of them as fast as they could, and so many others escaped from the front, either disappeared or remained in service, but only after a distant escape and after abandoning every weapon or equipment, even rifles and light mortars, that could force them to stay and fight.
The apparent reasons for this mass unwillingness to fight were:

• A further intensified mental shock of those who were always trained educated and taught others that attack and victory are the only possible option, and suddenly found themselves under massive surprise attack for which they never planned or prepared.
• Stalin, the murderous dictator, was surrounded with people who told him much too often what he wanted to hear about Russia's preparations for war. The enormous reported numbers of material production and manpower training were perhaps correct. For example the figures of vast mass-training of pilots (which, by the way, were NOT volunteers, unlike pilots anywhere else in the world), and received minimal training, in order to keep up with the enormous training quotas dictated by Stalin.But what Stalin never suspected, was the possibility that in his regime of mass terror and fear, where so many millions were imprisoned and millions others killed by the police, and where tens of millions starved for years in order to pay for the enormous cost of the vast effort to convert Russia with a period of just two decades from a mostly agricultural country to an industrial militarist super-power with gigantic military power. Stalin never suspected that under a massive attack on his brutal regime, the people, the millions of soldiers who previously suffered from the regime, millions were former political prisoners of which many were recruited from hard labor prisons directly to war front military service, will favor surrender to defending their homeland, or will have no willingness to fight immediately as they realized that since they're country is being massively attacked there's a good chance that they can escape from the war without being punished by the formidable regime. Given the possibility that for the first time in their life non-cooperation with the Communist regime will NOT be severely punished, so many favored that option, and that's something the Russian censorship could never admit.
  So while in all material aspects Russia was enormously prepared for war, and could therefore theoretically manage much better than it did, even under a massive surprise attack, in morale terms, the Russian people in the front (which rapidly moved East all across the long front), were generally unwilling to fight for their terrible terror regime once fear of it was lost since the regime itself was being attacked and in danger.

Click to expand...
Also...The Biggest Mistakes In World War 2

• In 1941, Stalin received a stream of information from military intelligence and spies, that Germany is going to invade Russia, as Hitler promised since the 1920s. After discussions, Stalin decided that the information was inconclusive and perhaps deliberate disinformation, and decided that there will be no invasion. As the invasion came nearer, the stream of information indicating invasion intensified, but then Stalin forbid his advisors from further disturbing him with it. Anyone who still suggested that there might be a German invasion, risked execution. Fear was such that when the invasion started, no one dared to awake Stalin and tell him about it, until Zhukov, the deputy supreme commander, told Stalin's bodyguards that he takes responsibility for awakening the dictator and telling him the bad news.

• Both Hitler and Stalin refused to allow retreats, as a matter of principle and regardless of the military situation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in each side died in vain because they were not allowed to retreat when was necessary. Russia almost lost the war because of that in 1941, and Hitler's army suffered horrible losses because of that, mainly in the winter of 1942 and in Stalingrad a year later.

Until April 1941, Russia was at war with Japan in the far East, and in 1941-1942 it fought desperately against the German invasion. But since the end of the battle of Stalingrad in Feb. 1943, Russia knew that it was going to win the war, and that Germany and Japan were losing it. It was convenient for Russia to focus entirely on defeating Germany and leave the war against Japan entirely to the US, which also provided Russia with enormous material support. During the war, Russia provided air bases for British heavy bombers which bombed Germany, but refused to provide such bases for American bombers in the Russian far East, apparently in return for a quiet Japanese agreement not to attack American supply convoys sailing to Russia's far East ports.
And from wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

In the initial hours after the German attack commenced, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general.[SUP][53][/SUP] Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions.[SUP][54][/SUP]


However, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading some historians to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.[SUP][55][/SUP]
In the first three weeks of the invasion, attempting to defend against large German advances, the Soviet Union suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft.[SUP][56][/SUP] In July 1940, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations, which gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.[SUP][57][/SUP]
A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans soon overran each of the resulting small newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties.[SUP][58][/SUP] The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or had gone missing.[SUP][58][/SUP]
By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties[SUP][59][/SUP] and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of which would die in German captivity by February 1942.[SUP][56][/SUP] German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometers, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometers.[SUP][60][/SUP] The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defense doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment such as theKV-1 and T-34 tanks.
Click to expand...
At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]
The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...



also from wikipedia on the Red Army...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#The_Great_Patriotic_War

The unprepared Soviet forces suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, an incomplete reorganization and mainly because they were arranged to attack Central Europe, and not to defend Soviet territory.[SUP][39][/SUP] The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat.[SUP][39][/SUP]
And another great mistake by Stalin that almost lost the war for the Soviets...

Purges

Further information: Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization
The late 1930s saw the so-called Purges of the Red Army Cadres, which occurred concurrently with Stalin's Great Purge of Soviet society. In 1936 and 1937, at the orders of Stalin, thousands of Red Army officers were dismissed from their commands. The purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of the "politically unreliable elements", mainly among higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for the settling of personal vendettas or to eliminate competition by officers seeking the same command. Many army, corps, and divisional commanders were sacked, most were imprisoned or sent to labor camps; others were executed. Among the victims was the Red Army's primary military theorist, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, perceived by Stalin as a potential political rival. Officers who remained soon found all of their decisions being closely examined by political officers, even in mundane matters such as record-keeping and field training exercises.[SUP][72][/SUP] An atmosphere of fear and unwillingness to take the initiative soon pervaded the Red Army; suicide rates among junior officers rose to record levels.[SUP][72][/SUP] Most historians believe that the purges significantly impaired the combat capabilities of the Red Army. However, the extent of the consequential damage attributable to them is still debated.
Recently declassified data indicate that in 1937, at the height of the Purges, the Red Army had 114,300 officers, of whom 11,034 were dismissed. In 1938, the Red Army had 179,000 officers, 56% more than in 1937, of whom a further 6,742 were sacked. In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army generals, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.[SUP][73][/SUP]
The result was that the Red Army officer corps in 1941 had many inexperienced senior officers. While 60% of regimental commanders had two years or more of command experience in June 1941, and almost 80% of rifle division commanders, only 20% of corps commanders, and 5% or fewer army and military district commanders, had the same level of experience.[SUP][74][/SUP]

The Red Army faced 90 percent of Germany's armed power, and destroyed that 90 percent.

The US, ALONGSIDE the UK, Free French forces, Belgian resistance, etc. faced the remaining 10

The USSR suffered the most in the entire war, but also did the most to stop Hitler

Here you go...

At the same time, worried by the possibility of American support after their entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which would not actually happen until 1944), Hitler shifted his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort.[SUP][69[/SUP]

The Germans did attempt an encirclement attack at Kursk, which was successfully repulsed by the Soviets[SUP][78][/SUP] after Hitler canceled the offensive, in part, because of the Allied invasion of Sicily,[SUP][79][/SUP] though the Soviets suffered over 800,000 casualties.[SUP][80][/SUP]
Yeah, it is hard to understand the Soviets...

So you're telling me that the US and UK distracted Hitler and diverted his attention just enough that the USSR was able to regroup its forces, and then do the actual heavy punching in defeating Germany? That's what most historians say anyways.

You know that the USSR liberated more territory than the US did, right? You know that the USSR were the ones who took Berlin, right? You know that while the US faced just Italy and Germany, the USSR had to punch through Hitler's allies of Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary and then attack Germany itself, right?

Dude...******* answer. Hitler extended his troops and tired them out by marching to try and take over Russia. So not only Russia was on defense of their own country, once Hitler's troops were defeated, and then on retreat... it was like shooting fish in a barrel to follow them and take back over the conquered lands. Not to mention, the U.S. giving Russia supplies. WHY do you keep ignoring the facts?