Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Micro102]

I've searched this quite often, but never found an answer, if there even is one. Why not always go fascist? They seem to get significantly stronger bonuses and can do things the others can't. Do fascists just have weaker potential allies?

[Hanzoku]

I think it mostly comes down to if you want to play a historically accurate game or not. If not, going fascist seems to always be the best move - a fascist America can sit there in splendid isolation while the rest of the world fights, with all of the mainland North America safe from any potential invasion by their fleets. you can also go ahead and conquer Canada, Mexico and all of South America before starting to invade the rest of the world.

[Tack]

Does make me wonder if there’s any upsides to a democratic country. Harder to go to war, costs more to guarantee countries. Only trade has benefits and it’s essentially excepted from the whole deal.

[Greenbane]

I believe a USA game is an easy game no matter which political alignment you go for.

[EnigmaticHat]

Paradox has always been bad at representing the awkwardness that totalitarian governments inflict on themselves... purges, corruption, poor communication because of fear, turning elements of society against each other.  Like if we were to actually represent the holocaust it would basically be "tie up your own infastructure to reduce your own manpower."  What Stalin did to the USSR's ability to fight was so, so much worse; IIRC something like 20 million of his people died in WW2 and large sections of that were entirely his fault.

That's not even getting into Vicky where running a planned economy is consistently better than running a capitalist economy if you can tolerate the micro.

[a1s]

20 million of his people died in WW2 and large sections of that were entirely his fault.

How do you figure that?

At least half of those losses were direct result of Nazi occupation. A good third of the rest died in German POW camps (Nazis treated western prisoners better than eastern ones, especially after 1943.) The remaining dead are comparable to the German ones from the same period. It's the nature of Totalitarian regimes to put low value on individual men, while this is abhorrent we have no reason to believe a Soviet Union led by Trotsky or anyone else would have acted more honorably.

[Persus13]

Its hard to assign blame for casualties that high to one person, but Stalin's paranoia in purging the army and his failure to realize that Hitler's Germany was about to stab him in the back played a major role in hampering the Soviet army and made the initial German offensive a lot more successful than it would have been otherwise. That meant more initial casualties for the USSR as well as giving more ground that needed to be retaken at high costs later on.

Stalin didn't benefit from seeing that Germany was taking the "War with the USSR" focus, and someone else in charge of the USSR could have made the same mistakes. But while Stalin still could have made different choices that would have resulted in less casualties, so I think its fair to blame many of those deaths on Stalin.

[Radsoc]

The fascists had the initiative, combat readiness and troops at the front that surpassed the Soviet ones in both numbers and equipment. The USSR was a developing nation caught completely off guard. Only toward the end of the war the casualties would approach 1:1 on both sides. On the day of the invasion people were minding their own business, the Winter Palace was casually being renovated and so on. War was inevitable, but they did not count for it to happen that soon.

Should also not forget that the casualty numbers also were due to that the nazis waged an extermination war. Thousands of cities and villages were completely razed by the occupants. They had almost finished looting the medieval city Novgorod when they were forced to retreat, but almost the entire city and its architecture is lost forever. Millions were sent west to work as slave labor in factories or to camps. Countless killed on sight, burned in locked barns, or just executed and put in mass graves.

Stalin did probably do the right thing in terms of purges. Having to deal with a counter revolution, either from the left or the right, while fighting the invaders would have been a bad idea.

[Persus13]

The fascists had the initiative, combat readiness and troops at the front that surpassed the Soviet ones in both numbers and equipment. The USSR was a developing nation caught completely off guard. Only toward the end of the war the casualties would approach 1:1 on both sides. On the day of the invasion people were minding their own business, the Winter Palace was casually being renovated and so on. War was inevitable, but they did not count for it to happen that soon.

Yes, and Stalin ignored sources of information on what the German Army was doing that could have changed that.

As for a counter-revolution, I've never seen someone argue that there would have been one if it hadn't been for the purges.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Said sources of information also said that Germany would attack multiple times before that point. You can only cry wolf so many times before people start to ignore you.

[a1s]

As for a counter-revolution, I've never seen someone argue that there would have been one if it hadn't been for the purges.

Then you have been talking to the wrong people. Also "counter-revolution" might be a strong word, after the 1920s, but there was always the possibility of a coup (within the party or the army.)

Said sources of information also said that Germany would attack multiple times before that point. You can only cry wolf so many times before people start to ignore you.

This. Fourth Directorate was always overflowing with plots that other countries were supposedly hatching against the Soviet Union. You have to remember Germany was a friendly state (and a major trade partner) that was already embroiled in another war, who was going to believe they'd open another front?

[Persus13]

Said sources of information also said that Germany would attack multiple times before that point. You can only cry wolf so many times before people start to ignore you.

This. Fourth Directorate was always overflowing with plots that other countries were supposedly hatching against the Soviet Union. You have to remember Germany was a friendly state (and a major trade partner) that was already embroiled in another war, who was going to believe they'd open another front?

I'm well aware of German friendliness towards the Soviet Union. All I'm saying is that Stalin made a mistake in trusting that friendliness. What-if scenarios are always problematic because of the benefit of hindsight, but the original question was over why Stalin was responsible, and I gave some reasons for why that was the case.

As for a counter-revolution, I've never seen someone argue that there would have been one if it hadn't been for the purges.

Then you have been talking to the wrong people. Also "counter-revolution" might be a strong word, after the 1920s, but there was always the possibility of a coup (within the party or the army.)

So who would be the right people to talk to that argue this?

[Radsoc]

I wouldn't say Nazi Germany and the USSR were on friendly terms, but like most other countries they had pragmatic relations and some trade. You have to remember that German business were present abroad and foreign in Germany, like Ford.

Fascism itself is the reaction to communism. It is a last line of defense against workers defending their interests, when all other soft liberal "democratic" methods have been exhausted. Nazis were a last resort of German big business to survive in a post-Versailles redistributed markets hyper inflation internal turmoil environment. So called "jewish" Bolshevism was the main enemy, and communists and fascists frequently engaged in street battles in Weimar times. When the nazis got to power communists were put in prison. Thälmann as early as 1933. In 1936 you had the anticomintern pact. And while Germany supported Franco, the USSR supported the communist part of Republican Spain. Dimitrov of the Comintern outlined a strategy to combat fascism in 35. Nazi Germany and the USSR were not on friendly terms, but they tolerated each other as diplomatic counterparts as both were part of the world as it was. When Germany was "granted" parts of CZ by Chamberlain, the Soviets were not even asked for an opinion, despite it being a neighbouring country. The USSR attempted to align itself with the western powers against the nazis many times before 1939, but when all options had been exhausted they had no option but to sign a non-aggression pact with the Germans as a last resort. We have to remember that this was a time before the war when people like Churchill praised "great men" like Mussolini for their anti-bolshevism (and whose nations had sent troops to combat the Bolsheviks during the civil war, Churchill included).

When I write Stalin, I actually mean the governing body of the USSR. It's like saying Jobs did this and that, but in essence they are simply symbols of a much bigger apparatus. If they succeed they get most of the praise, but their heads are on the line if things go bad. Stalin personally did not get his way many times, but the embodiment of soviet power in Stalin - always.

[ZeroGravitas]

As for a counter-revolution, I've never seen someone argue that there would have been one if it hadn't been for the purges.

the Russian Civil War ended barely 10 years ago. if not for the purges it's likely that resistance to the 5 year plans and collectivization of agriculture would have generated enough opposition to end stalin's rule, if not a full counter-revolution. which would have made a nazi defeat of russia actually possible.

pretty tough to take an agrarian backwater and turn it into an industrial superpower in 20 years without just killing everyone who opposes you.

[Tack]

I mean, the Japanese did it in maybe 80 years, with only a minor civil war to show for it.