homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Here's what happened (Continued)

Folks,

MG:

Public nudity, eh? It is no doubt fortunate indeed that your neck of the woods is far more open minded and thus more tolerant of many things including nudity. Incidentally, you might want to at least consider changing whatever brand of beverage you were drinking at the time.

It is often governments in their own self defense and in the name of nationalism who bring on many conflicts. People, I mean individuals, across the world seem to me, as I get to know more of them, are more alike in so many more ways than they are different.

As for WW2, the Russians had a huge surplus of one thing. That was men. Germany and Russia signed a non- aggression pact that Hitler had no intention of keeping. Stalin must have suspected that yet the timing of the duplicity must have been off in his head. It appears he was surprised when attacked. Faced with a new Blitzkrieg, a war of extermination in fact, was headed his way, Stalin had no qualms about marching millions into the great meat grinder called Barbarossa.

WW2 was the deadliest military conflict of all time in terms of total dead. Over 60 million people lost their lives. That was about 3% of the world's 1940 population. Over 2 millions (est) forced labor deaths occurred in Germany alone. Russia's 1937 total population was listed as a debatable 170.6 million probably manipulated by Stalin. Russia's losses (20-26 million civilian and military)in that terrible world war were staggering. Twenty six million deaths works out to be 15.29% of the 1937 total population of Russia. Did I get that right? Staggering indeed. Stalin's awful purges of that time weakened the military and surely added to that great loss.

In the end it was the dead of the Russian winter that was Stalin's greatest ally. The same thing had stopped Emperor Napoleon also foiled Corporal Hitler. Was the German high command unaware of history or was it pure hubris? I wonder?

WW2 Deaths by country
Russia 20-26 M est.
Germany 4.3-5.3 M (Military) 350,000-500,000 Civilian est.