[MrBingley]

Recently I've been reading Vasily Grossman's A Writer At War, which is a collection of his journals from the Eastern Front, and the depths of Stalin's brutality are staggering. In the Battle of Stalingrad he forbade that any citizens flee the city since he thought it would motivate the troops, and special battalions were set up behind the front line to shoot any who retreated. In the battle itself Soviet snipers targeted the German water carriers, and so the Germans bribed children with food to fetch water for them, who were promptly shot since any collaboration with the enemy was punished with death.

[pram]

Stalin also sent the NKVD to the Spanish Civil War to mostly root out “trotskyites and anarchists” from the Republican side(!) rather than against the Falange.

This is what disillusioned leftists who saw it first hand (like George Orwell) with the USSR

[DamnYuppie]

I think that was part of his order 227. Which is basically death to anyone who retreats as well as punishment to their family back home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_No._227

[MikeUt]

Odd. None of those details were included in the Enemy at the Gates movie, and it specifically focused on snipers.

[jo6gwb]

Enemy at the gates shows the Russians shooting their own retreating soldiers.

See 2:30 of following clip https://youtu.be/L8fWp-i-BGA

[MikeUt]

I was referring more to barring civilians from leaving the city, and shooting at children.

[mrDmrTmrJ]

There's a long and terrible tradition of western media refusing to expose Stalin's crimes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

[fithisux]

Unsubstantiated claim. He is used as a negative advertisement of Soviet era.

If you read carefull the trial in Nuernberg, Germany was not punished at all and they were worse.

For me he showd disrespect for his comrades. The battle of Kursk had much more casualties that it needed to be. The same happens for the war in total. He was completely incapable to be a leader. Useless and he did not care for his country. He also demonized communism and was in reality a dictator that pulled the right strings to become leader of a party (exactly what happens with leaders usually). He was also a racist and mass exterminated people. If he was different may the bloodshed of WWII would be prevented.

But the same was Pinochet and the western media covered all his crimes.

[thescriptkiddie]

??????

There's a long and terrible tradition of western media regarding Stalin as literally worse than Hitler.

[mrDmrTmrJ]

FYI:

"For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that, when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress.[8] This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

[antifa]

I'm not sure what you mean by this, the crimes of Stalin are probably over exposed in Western media, if anything. There's no shortage of people eager to inform you that Stalin killed people, even if it's completely off topic!

[alentist]

Why do you think they are "over exposed"? What do you claim is the "correct" level of exposure?

[lukami]

Would you say the same thing about the crimes of Hitler?

[fithisux]

They were determined to not surrender. This is not brutal. The enemy was killing kids and babies just because. It was a very right decision and should be thanked by all free people for their sacrifice.