Make sure to join the TimeGhost Army! Not only will you be literally making history, also will you receive exclusive extras such as weekly access to previews and preferred access to Q&A livestreams and more! Join at www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or timeghost.tv You can find the original version of this video including the comment section here: ruclips.net/video/Mgr7lolewC8/видео.html Cheers, Joram . *RULES OF CONDUCT* STAY CIVIL AND POLITE we will delete any comments with personal insults, or attacks. AVOID PARTISAN POLITICS AS FAR AS YOU CAN we reserve the right to cut off vitriolic debates. HATE SPEECH IN ANY DIRECTION will lead to a ban. RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, OR SLAMMING OF MINORITIES will lead to an immediate ban. PARTISAN REVISIONISM, ESPECIALLY HOLOCAUST AND HOLODOMOR DENIAL will lead to an immediate ban.
The Polish officer who is in command in the defence of Hel Peninsula was in fact a German WW1 submarine officer for the Kaiser's navy. While in prison, he refused to speak German, saying he forgot to speak the language after the Nazis attacked Poland and wish to converse in French. Also, he turned downed all offers to work for Germany, what a real Polish patriot up to the end.
@@CommanderTavos99 Well, you (kind of) can. A friend of one of my french cousins (I'm half-german half-french, live in germany, but speak french fluently), I slept with a few times, spoke very highly of germany everytime I spoke to her and she always said that its sad that so few germans are patriotic, because we had "more reasons than any other people to be". She told me she wished she were german and that she wants to move to germany when she gets older (we're both sixteen). Quite openly racist too, that girl. But most important: she has more love for my country than most germans do, despite not having any heritage connected to germany.
@@CommanderTavos99 You can be when there isn't an independent Polish nation and, heaving watched the ww1 series, might have been promised that your contribution in the german army might grant you your independent Poland back
Thank you for improving not only the technical/visual side but also adding new information, like mentioning the battle of Kock, considered the last battle of the Polish campaign, which was omitted in the original version.
This channel has been on my radar since 2018, and I am just now buckling in to binge watch every week of this war's history. It has been a daunting idea for years but I am finally giving it a try. I've learned about World War Two so many times throughout my life and yet there is always more depth and turbulence in the era to discover. I know this series will show me all that and more!
Watched the Great War series religiously whilst studying for a degree years ago. Life got in the way and I never got around to starting this series until today! Binge started, cant wait for more informative brilliance from Indy and the guys
It’s still getting Real here on April 1st 1945! Adolf is locked in a one-sided self-check out with all Germans that isn’t gonna be pretty for anyone involved.
Thank you ever so much for bringing a complete and detailed day to day summery of WWII. More than anything you provide a REALISTIC account of what war represents: misery and human suffering beyond belief, a very different story to what you might see on the Hollywood screens. This is simply too important for our youth not to see this. War, its atrocities and calamities, can only be avoided by never forgetting how it really is. Once again, thank you very much.
@@WorldWarTwoI liked the first version of Hearts of Iron where you can use a slider that moves your particular nation towards left or right politically conservative or liberal. The extremes going from Communist to Fascist. However the maps are better in the Hearts of Iron 4. However many patches the games had had, it is still tough to capture the sheer details of the real world history that you present so nicely
Love your work. Mybe answear this question in OUT of the foxholes: How were the pupet german borders drawn(ethnisity, industry, resourses?? ) and the New german soviet border? Like to upvoat
It would be cool to see the diplomacy between the different groups in China such as Nationalists and Communists during the second Sino-Japanese War if it hasn’t been covered in between 2 wars.
Chiang Kai-shek has some interesting diplomatic move(pretty successful too) but he drag by his corrupt government. Communists are almost no noticeable diplomacy since they were not representing China at the time and struggling to live. Nationalists and Communists clash to each other is other story.
2:20 When Raczkiewicz said Poland has for a thousand years defended Christian civilization from "Germany and her barbarous oriental ally" he wasn't talking about Japan, but Russia. Poland had heavily courted Japan as an ally against Russia during the interwar years. They were the first European country to recognize the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo
2:45 what a speech he was kinda right the allies did win with then Leo of the polish intelligence and army in the west however the polish nation was occupied by the soviets until 91 but impressively the government in exile continued and existed until polish independence.
I'm watched a remake episode for the first now just to see if the sinking of the Royal Oak was mentioned. (14th of October 1939) This is an episode too early but it it's nice to see what this channel, and the war, was at its beginning.
I hope this is not too stupid a question to ask: how did Hitler and the Nazis decide what land to annex from Poland, and what was to be part of the General Government? Why did they not just annex lands lost to Poland in the Treaty of Versailles, and put the rest under the control of the GG? I'm disregarding the parts of Poland that were taken by the Soviets in this question, of course.
@Streamlined Engine This was such an interesting question that I went away to do some research, so here's an overview. The short answer is that Germany took everything it considered of any value and left the rest to the General Government, resulting in borders that were actually pretty similar to that of 1914, but the story of how we got there is much more interesting. According to Martin Winstone in 'The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe', there really were no concrete plans in place for re-organising Poland or for whether 'Poland' would continue to exist before the war began. The eventual settlement was hastily drawn up only after Poland had been defeated and this was due to a few reasons. Firstly German foreign policy with regards to Poland was still remarkably fluid right up until mid-1939, with Hitler hoping, up to that point, to diplomatically subjugate and politically dominate Poland. This would have involved the return of Danzig and other territorial concessions in the short term but further territorial, ethnic and genocidal aims would have been accomplished over the longer term within the context of a subservient Polish puppet state. Secondly Germany was still considering the wider diplomatic landscape right up to and during the conquest. In the context of the contemporary importance of Germany's relations with the USSR, Germany might have to heed soviet opinion on the reorganisation of its western neighbour and Hitler still held out for the possibility of a negotiated peace with Britain and France once Poland had fallen. So it behooved Germany to keep its options open regarding Poland's 'post-war' fate. The final factor that persisted well in to the invasion itself was that the 'secret protocol' within the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had only established a provisional border for German and Soviet control. The USSR then dragged it's feet in invading from the east, with German troops being well inside the intended 'Soviet zone' by the time they did so. The final border was not fixed until the signing of the German-Soviet Friendship Treaty on September 28th so up until that point Germany was not even sure what territory it would end up in control of. Ultimately the decision on what land to annex and what would become of the rest of Poland was made somewhat hastily once it was clear that there was to be no negotiation with Britain and France. Finally in October it was decided that the General Government, not any state which could claim to be 'Poland', would be established to administer the lands that Germany, basically, found no use for. Anywhere with any economic, resource, strategic or 'ethnic' (ie containing German minorities or having some other historical connection to Germany) was incorporated into the Reich. All of the above comes, as I said, from one chapter of Winstone's 'The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe' so bear in mind that what I've written could really do with cross referencing with other literature, but it was certainly a fascinating read
@@WorldWarTwo I never expected to get such a detailed answer from the masters themselves... thank you Indy, Sparty or whichever TimeGhost Army member wrote this reply for me, and rock on!
I am curious how long experts think Poland would have lasted had Russia Not invaded from the East. Anybody have any idea/opinion? P.s. I am 41 and been studying WWII since I was frigging 5 years old! My first 'grown up; book was about the Japanese Zero. LOVE this channel....discovered it late...but so glad I discovered it!!!
I won't say China was rising, more like a person creeping on the ground fight himself in the middle of battlefield. Wait, it's 1939? never mind. But it will happen in 1940.
You mention that the Pan-American Security Zone was a result of the Second Pan-American Conference, and that confused me a bit because I thought those had started back in the early 20th century... so I looked it up (not particularly in-depth, admittedly), and indeed the Second Pan-American Conference was held in Mexico in 1901-1902. From what I could find out, the Pan-American Security Zone was instead a result of the Panama Conference. Aside from the name itself, every other detail you mention about the conference is, at least as far as I know, perfectly correct, so I was wondering how this mix-up came to be. Was it a typo or something like that? Or am I the one mixing things up? In any case, looking forward to continuing to binge-watch the series! Keep up the good work!
I loved the WW1 series and am really enjoying this new one so far, but a small point of issue; honestly, referring to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Agression Pact as "friendship" is ahistroical and misleading. It was obviously NOT a "friendship" if the core stipulation of the treaty is one of non-agression. Stalin and Comintern members had almost certainly read Mein Kampf and were not ignorant of Hitler's goals of annihilation of the Soviet Union and Slavic peoples, so naturally this would have made a "friendship" impossible, no? I understand people have ideological disagreements with the USSR, but relying so staunchly on Hastings (a noted anti-socialist conservative) and Beevor for the vast majority of sources and using the word "friendship" or "alliance" is going to lead to bias and historical inaccuracy.
Some people wake up to make/have there ☕. In the morning. I walk and the talks and chatters. Ok, I have a great career, great family and and a dark blue rob what suckes about this walk was I never looked at my hair till I go there, then l I got to the store and fhen looked and realized lol. . massive wave was everywhere. 🙈. I walked about 12 blocks all together
It is not correct to equate the entire Soviet Union to only Russia, there were so many more people in the Soviet Army than just russians, about 5 million ukrainians for example. So when you say "The germans and the russians" it should be the germans and the soviets, because that's what they were.
We're liberal about using Russian as the way to describe the Red Army and the USSR due to the fact of the USSR under Stalin being a centralized dictatorship run very much out of Moscow. Thus, the other Soviet Republics cannot be said to be anything other than dominions of Russia. Think of it a bit like the way we would feel comfortable to say that the Germans invaded Poland although the German Reich would be strictly correct, while saying that the Bavarians did so would be downright bizarre. For the reason of not getting too repetitious we alternate between the two, as long as it doesn't distort the narrative away from the true state of affairs.
@@WorldWarTwo While it is true that the main capital of the USSR was Moscow, with the Russian SSR being the largest and most populous of all of the SSRs. All of the SSRs enjoyed varied degrees of autonomy within the socialist union (although the same cannot be said for the duration of WW2), which is why all of the SSRs were somewhat different from one another. What im talking about is both the official and the cultural soviet identity, which people really felt was real. If you talk to someone, anyone who lived in the USSR they'll likely tell you that they didn't really see any difference between russians, ukrainians, uzbeks or mongolians. They were all "soviet" after all, especially after the various indigenization campaigns that took place throughout the 20s and 30s. I get what you're saying, but i dont agree. Stalin wasn't the dictator he is said to have been by liberal scholars. There is even a declassified CIA document where they clearly state that the western idea of a dictatorship in the USSR is misguided, and that the USSR during Stalin had a collective leadership. www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf Stalin had power yes, but so much about him is exaggerated. People act as if he could snap his fingers and the next day people would be dead. It didnt work like that. Look at Bukharin's court trial for example. If Stalin really could just kill anyone he pleased, then why did they have to write a 800 page script for the trial? Things just dont add up. So Stalin did not have universal power and i definetly wouldn't call the USSR (atleast not during the 20s - 40s) centralized. During the 30s and 40s the USSR was still largely rural, and sending an order from Moscow to Kiev could take a month or more. Logistics and infrastructure were almost nonexistant save for in the largest cities. This great man theory mainly serves one purpose, and that is to reduce an entire mass-proletarian movement into one person, which plays into this dictatorship narrative. If Stalin is a dictator, then Obama, Bush or Clinton are aswell. The only difference is that Stalin ruled during a period of great distress, in a country that had started its industrial revolution about 10 years before WW2. With that said, im not saying that Stalin is free of responsibility, or absolved of blame. The blame should be dispersed between Stalin, his team of advisors, diplomats and pretty much the entire politburo. The NKVD also has a lot of blame, as they many times took matters into their own hands, which is why Yezhov was tried and executed.
![007 - The Baltic in Stalin's Squeeze - WW2 - 13 October, 1939 [IMPROVED]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/42ZTg-V9VMM/mqdefault.jpg)
![007 - The Baltic in Stalin's Squeeze - WW2 - 13 October, 1939 [IMPROVED]](/img/tr.png)
Make sure to join the TimeGhost Army! Not only will you be literally making history, also will you receive exclusive extras such as weekly access to previews and preferred access to Q&A livestreams and more! Join at www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or timeghost.tv You can find the original version of this video including the comment section here: ruclips.net/video/Mgr7lolewC8/видео.html
Cheers,
Joram
.
*RULES OF CONDUCT*
STAY CIVIL AND POLITE we will delete any comments with personal insults, or attacks.
AVOID PARTISAN POLITICS AS FAR AS YOU CAN we reserve the right to cut off vitriolic debates.
HATE SPEECH IN ANY DIRECTION will lead to a ban.
RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, OR SLAMMING OF MINORITIES will lead to an immediate ban.
PARTISAN REVISIONISM, ESPECIALLY HOLOCAUST AND HOLODOMOR DENIAL will lead to an immediate ban.
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The Polish officer who is in command in the defence of Hel Peninsula was in fact a German WW1 submarine officer for the Kaiser's navy. While in prison, he refused to speak German, saying he forgot to speak the language after the Nazis attacked Poland and wish to converse in French. Also, he turned downed all offers to work for Germany, what a real Polish patriot up to the end.
@Markus Buelow Józef Unrug
@Markus Buelow Willkommen, bruder
@@CommanderTavos99 Well, you (kind of) can. A friend of one of my french cousins (I'm half-german half-french, live in germany, but speak french fluently), I slept with a few times, spoke very highly of germany everytime I spoke to her and she always said that its sad that so few germans are patriotic, because we had "more reasons than any other people to be". She told me she wished she were german and that she wants to move to germany when she gets older (we're both sixteen). Quite openly racist too, that girl. But most important: she has more love for my country than most germans do, despite not having any heritage connected to germany.
@@CommanderTavos99 You can be when there isn't an independent Polish nation and, heaving watched the ww1 series, might have been promised that your contribution in the german army might grant you your independent Poland back
@@CommanderTavos99 he can there were many ethnic germans fighting for Poland. Wise up man
You and your crew are the best presenters of history I've ever seen. Keep up the amazing work.
You should check out Mark Felton Productions, he has some splendid content
Give dan carlin a try
Thank you for improving not only the technical/visual side but also adding new information, like mentioning the battle of Kock, considered the last battle of the Polish campaign, which was omitted in the original version.
This channel has been on my radar since 2018, and I am just now buckling in to binge watch every week of this war's history. It has been a daunting idea for years but I am finally giving it a try. I've learned about World War Two so many times throughout my life and yet there is always more depth and turbulence in the era to discover. I know this series will show me all that and more!
@Luke We're happy to have you join us!
Watched the Great War series religiously whilst studying for a degree years ago. Life got in the way and I never got around to starting this series until today! Binge started, cant wait for more informative brilliance from Indy and the guys
I just discovered this channel and am just plowing through all of these. Amazing work. I can't wait to catch up and follow along as it happens!
Welcome aboard - it's a crazy ride, so buckle up.
Doing the same 2 years later!
It’s still getting Real here on April 1st 1945! Adolf is locked in a one-sided self-check out with all Germans that isn’t gonna be pretty for anyone involved.
ok they don't say jose, but you know what I mean
Thank you ever so much for bringing a complete and detailed day to day summery of WWII. More than anything you provide a REALISTIC account of what war represents: misery and human suffering beyond belief, a very different story to what you might see on the Hollywood screens. This is simply too important for our youth not to see this. War, its atrocities and calamities, can only be avoided by never forgetting how it really is. Once again, thank you very much.
These are very informative episodes. Glad I found These. Thanks guys!
You're welcome!
I LOVE this channel, been watching it while playing Hearts of Iron
A great game! How's your run going? And thanks for the support!
- Time Ghost Community Ambassador
@@WorldWarTwoI liked the first version of Hearts of Iron where you can use a slider that moves your particular nation towards left or right politically conservative or liberal. The extremes going from Communist to Fascist.
However the maps are better in the Hearts of Iron 4.
However many patches the games had had, it is still tough to capture the sheer details of the real world history that you present so nicely
I love how you guys go back and make improved videos. I wish I had the funds to support you more.
Just found your channel, love your style and can't wait for the hours of episodes to get into.
Welcome!
Love your work. Mybe answear this question in OUT of the foxholes: How were the pupet german borders drawn(ethnisity, industry, resourses?? ) and the New german soviet border? Like to upvoat
Upvote if your interested in the answear✔️
*upvote
Vinko Podgoršek
*answer
It would be cool to see the diplomacy between the different groups in China such as Nationalists and Communists during the second Sino-Japanese War if it hasn’t been covered in between 2 wars.
@AdmiralBonetoPick very interesting! Thanks
Chiang Kai-shek has some interesting diplomatic move(pretty successful too) but he drag by his corrupt government. Communists are almost no noticeable diplomacy since they were not representing China at the time and struggling to live. Nationalists and Communists clash to each other is other story.
2:20 When Raczkiewicz said Poland has for a thousand years defended Christian civilization from "Germany and her barbarous oriental ally" he wasn't talking about Japan, but Russia. Poland had heavily courted Japan as an ally against Russia during the interwar years. They were the first European country to recognize the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo
Old but I think he knew,he just used the opportunity to talk about Japan,most likely didn't have a better transition.
@@NikolaiOrelovGNR Of course. The segue was explicitly 'the Orient' and 'victory', not 'Germany's barbarous oriental ally'
Poland has fought against the Mongols, the Khanates the Ottoman Empires
2:45 what a speech he was kinda right the allies did win with then Leo of the polish intelligence and army in the west however the polish nation was occupied by the soviets until 91 but impressively the government in exile continued and existed until polish independence.
I never understood why Indy puts back the phone receiver at the beginning every time.
Kock :) - This time a perfect pronunciation!
I'm watched a remake episode for the first now just to see if the sinking of the Royal Oak was mentioned. (14th of October 1939)
This is an episode too early but it it's nice to see what this channel, and the war, was at its beginning.
You guys are the best
I love the music used in the background anyone knows the composer's name?
Any idea who the pilot mimicking a plane is at 2:35?
Thanks!
Glad that i found these early episodes that i have missed before the fall of France😊
I hope this is not too stupid a question to ask: how did Hitler and the Nazis decide what land to annex from Poland, and what was to be part of the General Government? Why did they not just annex lands lost to Poland in the Treaty of Versailles, and put the rest under the control of the GG? I'm disregarding the parts of Poland that were taken by the Soviets in this question, of course.
@Streamlined Engine This was such an interesting question that I went away to do some research, so here's an overview. The short answer is that Germany took everything it considered of any value and left the rest to the General Government, resulting in borders that were actually pretty similar to that of 1914, but the story of how we got there is much more interesting. According to Martin Winstone in 'The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe', there really were no concrete plans in place for re-organising Poland or for whether 'Poland' would continue to exist before the war began. The eventual settlement was hastily drawn up only after Poland had been defeated and this was due to a few reasons.
Firstly German foreign policy with regards to Poland was still remarkably fluid right up until mid-1939, with Hitler hoping, up to that point, to diplomatically subjugate and politically dominate Poland. This would have involved the return of Danzig and other territorial concessions in the short term but further territorial, ethnic and genocidal aims would have been accomplished over the longer term within the context of a subservient Polish puppet state.
Secondly Germany was still considering the wider diplomatic landscape right up to and during the conquest. In the context of the contemporary importance of Germany's relations with the USSR, Germany might have to heed soviet opinion on the reorganisation of its western neighbour and Hitler still held out for the possibility of a negotiated peace with Britain and France once Poland had fallen. So it behooved Germany to keep its options open regarding Poland's 'post-war' fate.
The final factor that persisted well in to the invasion itself was that the 'secret protocol' within the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had only established a provisional border for German and Soviet control. The USSR then dragged it's feet in invading from the east, with German troops being well inside the intended 'Soviet zone' by the time they did so. The final border was not fixed until the signing of the German-Soviet Friendship Treaty on September 28th so up until that point Germany was not even sure what territory it would end up in control of.
Ultimately the decision on what land to annex and what would become of the rest of Poland was made somewhat hastily once it was clear that there was to be no negotiation with Britain and France. Finally in October it was decided that the General Government, not any state which could claim to be 'Poland', would be established to administer the lands that Germany, basically, found no use for. Anywhere with any economic, resource, strategic or 'ethnic' (ie containing German minorities or having some other historical connection to Germany) was incorporated into the Reich.
All of the above comes, as I said, from one chapter of Winstone's 'The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe' so bear in mind that what I've written could really do with cross referencing with other literature, but it was certainly a fascinating read
@@WorldWarTwo I never expected to get such a detailed answer from the masters themselves... thank you Indy, Sparty or whichever TimeGhost Army member wrote this reply for me, and rock on!
I am curious how long experts think Poland would have lasted had Russia Not invaded from the East. Anybody have any idea/opinion? P.s. I am 41 and been studying WWII since I was frigging 5 years old! My first 'grown up; book was about the Japanese Zero. LOVE this channel....discovered it late...but so glad I discovered it!!!
honestly i would say a couple months
@@European_mess I agree. I also wonder if it would have given England and France enough time to get their act together and send troops
@@LittleMacscorner maybe but I have a feeling France and England would’ve taken they’re sweet time doing anything for the poles it’s pretty sad
@@European_mess Yes, I agree, you are probably right!
3 more weeks? 1 month? Not more
That was quick!
how wrong Raczkiewicz turned out to be. There was no reward for Poles to continue fighting, their country was sacrificed to Russia after the war.
There has a motto of Roc military academy is called 親愛精誠
@ honor Friendly honest fortitude and without the selfishness
Who you talking to Indy?
Germany, avoid antagonizing the US by attacking neutral American shipping challenge (impossible)
god i hate ads
I won't say China was rising, more like a person creeping on the ground fight himself in the middle of battlefield. Wait, it's 1939? never mind. But it will happen in 1940.
And now 5 years & 3 months later Warsaw has been liberated
I never knew the Japanese were ever really beten back in China.
What are the songs you use in your videos?
We’ve got them listed in the description!
You mention that the Pan-American Security Zone was a result of the Second Pan-American Conference, and that confused me a bit because I thought those had started back in the early 20th century... so I looked it up (not particularly in-depth, admittedly), and indeed the Second Pan-American Conference was held in Mexico in 1901-1902. From what I could find out, the Pan-American Security Zone was instead a result of the Panama Conference.
Aside from the name itself, every other detail you mention about the conference is, at least as far as I know, perfectly correct, so I was wondering how this mix-up came to be. Was it a typo or something like that? Or am I the one mixing things up?
In any case, looking forward to continuing to binge-watch the series! Keep up the good work!
8:10 hey.. what about us??? in canada ... heyyyy!!!
Don't you mean... eh?
Mean Muricans🥺😢
germany sinking netral USA ship? What can possibly go wrong?
Wow only 10 comments
I loved the WW1 series and am really enjoying this new one so far, but a small point of issue; honestly, referring to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Agression Pact as "friendship" is ahistroical and misleading. It was obviously NOT a "friendship" if the core stipulation of the treaty is one of non-agression. Stalin and Comintern members had almost certainly read Mein Kampf and were not ignorant of Hitler's goals of annihilation of the Soviet Union and Slavic peoples, so naturally this would have made a "friendship" impossible, no? I understand people have ideological disagreements with the USSR, but relying so staunchly on Hastings (a noted anti-socialist conservative) and Beevor for the vast majority of sources and using the word "friendship" or "alliance" is going to lead to bias and historical inaccuracy.
Some people wake up to make/have there ☕. In the morning. I walk and the talks and chatters. Ok, I have a great career, great family and and a dark blue rob what suckes about this walk was I never looked at my hair till I go there, then l I got to the store and fhen looked and realized lol. . massive wave was everywhere. 🙈. I walked about 12 blocks all together
The stories of the Poles in the west are great. Too bad they had to wait 50 years for their homeland to be liberated.
Exiled govts are propping faster in this war than World War One. Just shows you what the scale is
👍
.
For The Algorithm
Thank you kind sir 🙏🏻
This is Episode 1 again. Nice try guys
what?
No, this is definitely episode 6.
Send a message to boys
Video #7
It is not correct to equate the entire Soviet Union to only Russia, there were so many more people in the Soviet Army than just russians, about 5 million ukrainians for example. So when you say "The germans and the russians" it should be the germans and the soviets, because that's what they were.
We're liberal about using Russian as the way to describe the Red Army and the USSR due to the fact of the USSR under Stalin being a centralized dictatorship run very much out of Moscow. Thus, the other Soviet Republics cannot be said to be anything other than dominions of Russia.
Think of it a bit like the way we would feel comfortable to say that the Germans invaded Poland although the German Reich would be strictly correct, while saying that the Bavarians did so would be downright bizarre. For the reason of not getting too repetitious we alternate between the two, as long as it doesn't distort the narrative away from the true state of affairs.
@@WorldWarTwo While it is true that the main capital of the USSR was Moscow, with the Russian SSR being the largest and most populous of all of the SSRs. All of the SSRs enjoyed varied degrees of autonomy within the socialist union (although the same cannot be said for the duration of WW2), which is why all of the SSRs were somewhat different from one another.
What im talking about is both the official and the cultural soviet identity, which people really felt was real. If you talk to someone, anyone who lived in the USSR they'll likely tell you that they didn't really see any difference between russians, ukrainians, uzbeks or mongolians. They were all "soviet" after all, especially after the various indigenization campaigns that took place throughout the 20s and 30s.
I get what you're saying, but i dont agree. Stalin wasn't the dictator he is said to have been by liberal scholars. There is even a declassified CIA document where they clearly state that the western idea of a dictatorship in the USSR is misguided, and that the USSR during Stalin had a collective leadership.
www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Stalin had power yes, but so much about him is exaggerated. People act as if he could snap his fingers and the next day people would be dead. It didnt work like that. Look at Bukharin's court trial for example. If Stalin really could just kill anyone he pleased, then why did they have to write a 800 page script for the trial? Things just dont add up.
So Stalin did not have universal power and i definetly wouldn't call the USSR (atleast not during the 20s - 40s) centralized. During the 30s and 40s the USSR was still largely rural, and sending an order from Moscow to Kiev could take a month or more. Logistics and infrastructure were almost nonexistant save for in the largest cities.
This great man theory mainly serves one purpose, and that is to reduce an entire mass-proletarian movement into one person, which plays into this dictatorship narrative.
If Stalin is a dictator, then Obama, Bush or Clinton are aswell. The only difference is that Stalin ruled during a period of great distress, in a country that had started its industrial revolution about 10 years before WW2.
With that said, im not saying that Stalin is free of responsibility, or absolved of blame. The blame should be dispersed between Stalin, his team of advisors, diplomats and pretty much the entire politburo. The NKVD also has a lot of blame, as they many times took matters into their own hands, which is why Yezhov was tried and executed.
What's with the phone every intro? Pretend to say something relevant at least.