The Problem with Preemptive War by Dr. Richard W. Harrison 

Do ships have loose lips?

Bismarck,the ship,not the chancellor,replied blubblubblubityblub..,

So that's why Willi got rid of him.

it worked out great for the Romans at the 3rd Punic War, so they could exterminate the Carthaginians before Carthage could produce another Hannibal.

EndTaysachs a

do not question him

From what I've seen, this failure of camera work is pretty common on RU-vid documentaries; very disappointing, to say the least.

@@kathleenmckenzie6261 -- Universities are the worst at this even with a full-time cameraman. If a professor points to physical model of a human torso, fine; but the moment he points at a 2-D IMAGE of that same physical model of a torso the lawyers get all lawyery about reproducing anything that might be copywritten.

jeeze, have a bit of gratitude. Someone took the time to record and upload it so as you can sit there and take advantage of it too. The audio is fine, the sides are there

@@Mineav So people who put huge amounts of work into researching or making top quality content should be allowed to have their work stolen or misused?

You mean he was hit and miss?

To be clear, you don't have to sympathise with communism to recognise that communist leaders and army planners weren't being outlandish and paranoid to worry about foreign invasions. The conflict that brought the Bolsheviks to power ended with expelling foreign invaders who were, as Churchill later put it, trying to "strangle Bolshevism in its crib". Sun Tzu stressed the importance of knowing one's enemy. To properly understand the Soviet Union it is imperative to be honest about the existential threat the west posed to it, and to look at its actions accordingly. To dismiss the communists' bunker mentality as paranoia is to fail to understand the reality they were dealing with.

@@AliRadicali Yes. And you're quite right; don't have to be a sympathiser to believe this. It was simple reality. The Reds were fighting the Whites and something like 15 other countries who were desperate to stop the communist state before it spread to their own and upset their own ruling classes. Looked at in the context of the time, that's exactly how it was, backed up by Orlando Figes in his book on the Russian Revolution.

British, French, and USA weren't the only invading powers during the Russian Civil War. You forgot Japan, Czeckoalovakia, Poland, Turkey, and a bunch of others. Soviet Union wasn't the first pariah state, but Russia did get demonized and vilified for centuries now. Just like Japan, China, Turkey...

their hypothesis was proven correct, throughout the world especially in impoverished and colonized lands, majorities of the populations did in fact want to and tried to follow in liberation and self-actualization. What they failed to adequately take into account was previously totally unimaganable depths to which the western capitalist imperialist powers were willing to go to terrorize their own citizens and exterminate their colonial possessions in order to protect the power and wealth of the elite owning class.

In 1938 Poland asked the the CSR if they want to fight Hitler over the Munich crisis. CSR's answer was "only if the French sport us" at this point Polish authorities messaged Paris that they are willing to uphold the 1936 declaration. The Polish declaration of 1936 stated that if the need of war against Germany arises Poland will uphold it's alliance with France and join this war. So no the talks didn't fail cause of Poland but due to CSR's lack of commitment and France's appeasement policy.

@@jannowak711 I think you will find that it was Poland who refused to cooperate because it meant Soviet troops crossing into Polish territory which Poland was not willing to permit. (I cant exactly blame Polish concern here but it was nearly 20 years after the repelled the Bolsheviks). Nazis were the greater threat and the Soviets would have had to betray Britain and France if they tried to occupy or attack Poland afterwards and they would not do that. Lenin believed in exporting communism but Stalin didnt really care. Soviets only supported communist governments in central and eastern europe for the buffer zone because they were rightfully fearful of Germany and the US.

@@Internetbutthurt Yes and no Technically yes Poland did say no to Soviet troops crossing it's territory. But what I wrote is also true. (As is a plan for a preemptive strike in 1933 I think) two different plans, two different times. Sorry if I didn't write it clearly first time.

@@Internetbutthurt "repelled the bolsheviks" ? Poland attacked the USSR in 1920, not the other way round.

Vasantha Perera Who were the “major figures” who gave evidence against Tukhachevsky collaborating with the Nazis? Please share your reference. There is evidence the Nazis concocted documents to imply they were in a plot with the Red Army leadership. They wanted to goad Stalin into decapitating the Red Army. This is separate from the opposition to Stalin that existed in the Red Army officer corps prior to the great terror and other indications of a move against Stalin. In “1937: Stalin’s Year it Terror” by Vadim Rogovin, chapter 46 is titled “Reasons for Reprisals Against the Generals”. It raises seven reasons as follows: 1. The Red Army was a powerful material force that was outside the normal controls of the party. 2. A significant proportion of the officers of the Red Army had fought in the Civil War under Trotsky’s leadership and many were at least sympathetic to the Left Opposition 3. The commanders and personal to a certain degree reflected the dissatisfaction of the peasantry, especially given the catastrophe of forced collectivisation. 4. Tuchachevsky has conflicted with Stalin and Voroshilov on strategic doctrine and warned of the USSR being drawn into a war with Germany. In 1930 his proposal for modernising the Red Army was sharply criticised by Stalin and Voroshilov. Tukhachevsky wrote to Stalin that the current plan would preclude discussing important aspects of defence capability. Only in May 1932 did Stalin accept the error. Tukhachevsky was also consistent in his opposition to fascism and said Stalin was a “Germanophile” who would do a deal with Hitler. 5. The army leadership disagreed with the negative influence of Voroshilov and his group on the Red Army. (In their confessions in 1937 they admitted discussing the need to remove Voroshilov) 6. Stalin could was alarmed by the genuine prestige and respect given to Tuchachevsky. Stalin called him a “little Napoleon” at one point. 7. The officers were very familiar with Stalin’s actual role during the civil war, especially the failure at the battle of Warsaw when Stalin had disobeyed orders to send troops from the southern front to assist Tukhachevsky. This was still being raised in the 1930s despite Stalin’s efforts to falsify the history. It was Stalin who signed the non-aggression pact, ignored up to 82 intelligence reports of an impending invasion despite saying himself in May 1942 war with Germany was inevitable and did not prepare a defence and lined up the front line forces on the border where they could be crushed. Given this we can say Tuckhachevsky and the other executed officers would have been quite right to conclude that in order to defend the USSR they had to get rid of Stalin and it is unreasonable to suppose they hadn’t at least considered it. All of this raises an important point: the purges were not the product of Stalin’s paranoia, as the standard narrative vociferously proclaims, but were an attempt to crush the real opposition that existed to a criminal regime. PS. AFAIK tree is no other source that Tukhachevsky was anti-Semitic besides the book on De Gaulle. This is reason enough to treat it as hearsay.

Brilliant commentary

Sources?

Yes, the non aggression pact was a smart move, it broke the possibility of a capitalist coalition against the USSR and they hoped the nazis would bog down fighting France and that that would allow for revolution in those countries, but the Germans defeated the French too quickly.

This isnt the Disney channel buddy

@@johndonaldson3619 You mean I've been paying a guy with mice ears for nothing?

Try choosing content over style and who knows, you might lean something!

@@johndonaldson3619 Style is content. See, now you thought that was a false dichotomy when it really isn't.

@@dr.barrycohn5461 We'll no, content is what you're writing about - the information you're trying to convey or plot of the story you're telling. Style is the way in which you present that information - your word choice, organization, and other details of the writing..... 'doctor'

He did around 830

I think the far greater omission was not even mentioning the allied interventions during and after the russian civil war. The fact that Great Britain, France and the US had *already tried* to "strangle bolshevism in its crib" seems pertinent to the question of whether the communists were paranoid to worry about invasions.

​@@AliRadicali Hardly surprising the "Allies" tried to kill bolshevism at birth... the bolsheviks made no secret of their intention to export their "people's paradise" to Europe and beyond... they were meddling in Germany, setting up "soviets" and agitating for the military to mutiny, from 1917 onwards -- long before the allies stepped in.

​@@acosorimaxconto5610 Sure, the allies had reasons for striking a pre-emptive blow, but that's neither here nor there. The fact is they did strike the first blow and this lecturer is completely ignoring that fact in his analysis of Soviet "paranoia". If he wants to lecture about pre-emptive wars, why not start with the one that actually materialised and influenced subsequent policy? To be clear, I don't think you have to be sympathetic to communism or Lenin/Stalin to demand a fair analysis here. If we want to learn anything from the Soviet tragedy to apply to, say, China, it just doesn't do to ignore the Soviets' legitimate security concerns. Simply dismissing the russkies as "crazy" or paranoid" doesn't help at all to understand their actual thinking, it's a lazy cop-out and a dead-end in terms of gleaning knowledge. As for your point about soviet interference in Germany, I think you've got that exactly backwards, friend. The Germans helped smuggle Lenin into Russia to help stokes the flames of revolution. I have my doubts about the nascent Soviet state even being capable of infiltrating Germany while it was still struggling to establish its authority and fighting a civil war, but I also don't think it's necessary to explain the communist rioting in Germany. After all, the ideas of socialism had been around in Germany and France a lot longer than in Russia itself. I don't doubt that the kremlin sent the german communists their moral support, but I doubt they sent anything more substantial.

[citation needed]

You may have noticed that he is speaking English, not Russian. You are aware that they are different languages, right? I mean, Russian people mispronounce a lot of English names and words too, or do Russians all speak with Received Pronunciation when they say English words? I'll never understand this pedantry among Internet dorks who insist that everybody be able to perfectly pronounce every word and name in every other language. Heres the name of a Welsh town: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Now pronounce it like you would if you fucking live there, you uneducated pleb.

uneducated pleb ... right. btw i am german. you see ...good pronunciation comes with the time and intensity one will work on a matter. so it is a sign of knowledge. and it is also a sign of respect. i dont blame common people who barely speak their own language. but here we have an historian, a professional, highly educated academic , whos only job is to read and research. and he should have good knowledge of russian to read russian documents. bad pronunciation is therefore , in this case, an indication of poor qualification.

Definitely people like David Glantz, who can speak and read Russian sources or Jonathan House, who works with Glantz, tend to pronounce it closer to Russian.