Joe Doakes from Como Park emails re an argument that has kept historians ripping each others hair out for seven decades:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did Hitler save Europe<\/a>?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>
Yes, yes, Literally Hitler, embodiment of Evil, Holocaust, blah, blah, blah.\u00a0 But what if he had not broken the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact to invade Russia?\u00a0 Could Russia have conquered all of Europe?<\/p>
Could the truth be less absolute and more nuanced than we’ve been led to believe?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>
Churchill told the House of Commons, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it,” a paraphrase of Santayana’s famous quote.\u00a0 But what is the correct lesson to learned from Operation Barbarossa?\u00a0<\/p>
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
On the one hand, the USSR had <\/em>built up an awful lot of troops on their western frontier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, even Stalin had to have known that the Soviet Army, in the wake of the purges, wasn’t in much shape even to defend the USSR (as Barbar<\/em>ossa<\/a> showed), much less conduct a coherent offensive (as the Winter War<\/a> showed). Even the most Stalin-indulgent history I’ve read so far indicates Stalin wasn’t entertaining the idea of invading the West until well into ’42, if not later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note<\/strong>: anyone in the comment section equating a serious discussion of the “what ifs” of the most consequential event of the past 200 years with pining for Naziism will be blocked. Forever. As in, you’ll be looking way, way up to see “Dog Gone”, status-wise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There will be no more warnings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails re an argument that has kept historians ripping each others hair out for seven decades: Did Hitler save Europe?\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, yes, Literally Hitler, embodiment of Evil, Holocaust, blah, blah, blah.\u00a0 But what if he had not broken the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact to invade Russia?\u00a0 Could Russia have conquered all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77955,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77951\/revisions\/77955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}