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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

> You're essentially reproducing the nazi propaganda.

And you're essentially reproducing Soviet propaganda. Over the years they covered it up extensively. If you read the article it mentions but doesn't go into details:

"The betrayal came from the top. Stalin, neglecting the relevant intelligence and then focusing on Moscow, all but abandoned Leningrad, while his apparatchiks appeared at public baths milky and fat in their privilege. The man in charge of the city, Andrei Zhdanov, enjoyed butter on his bread and lashings of caviar while those in his care ate their pets, sometimes their neighbours, and fashioned tagliatelle out of slow-boiled strips of leather."

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This really is a "what if both sides were indifferent to the value of human life?" situation.

Very much so. And of course, one would expect the enemy to not care about human lives, but it hurts more when your own country doesn't value your and your fellow citizens' lives. Moreover the Soviets and now the Russian propaganda worked very hard to blame it all on Germans and cover their own mistakes.

One can tell this by the fact that they covered this up at the time:

> Nor did the Soviets acknowledge the extent of the suffering. State broadcasts told of ‘hardship’ and ‘shortage’ – not ‘starvation’ and never ‘famine’, a word that had been criminalised a decade earlier when the government’s collectivisation policy killed millions. The accepted word was distrofia, or dystrophy. Five thousand Leningraders died of distrofia on Christmas Day 1941.

The Soviet Union routinely starved its own people. And here was a golden opportunity to blame it all on Germans. But at the time they didn't! They hid the problem. Because they knew they had their hand in it. After the war, they "regrouped", got their story together and then all pointed fingers at Hitler and praising Stalin and touting "hard time" and "historical necessity" and so on.

My Soviet era school history textbook was a lot more balanced than what you are claiming here.

Both the Soviets and the Western allies worked very hard to look the other way. I'll quote the article again:

> "Nor did the Soviets acknowledge the extent of the suffering. State broadcasts told of ‘hardship’ and ‘shortage’ – not ‘starvation’ and never ‘famine’"

That's not made up and I was merely highlighting and connecting some dots that the article didn't, but, the main gist is right there. The Soviets covered it up because Stalin only half-heartedly approved supplying the city, they evacuated works of art, but didn't evacuate the people. They didn't leave stores of supplies in the city either. That is why they didn't jump on the radio and told the whole world about atrocious starvation going on there - because they knew they were complicit. Only later after the war when they had a chance to get all their ducks in a row, so to speak, they absolved themselves of any wrongdoing and told everyone that it was all just the Germans.

In case you mean Soviet era school books in the West, that is even more interesting. Why didn't they talk about it? Because it was terribly inconvenient. Stalin was "Uncle Joe", and during the war he was just a confused, fumbling grandpa caught by surprise. But we helped him win the war. If we supported and supplied someone who was starving and killing his own people by the millions, what does that make us? That raises some questions. Britain, for instance, got into WII, to save Poland. But in the end they gave it to Stalin essentially. That's not a happy story to tell the kids, either. The fumbling and confused "Uncle Joe", somehow smartened up and became a cunning fox who tricked us at the end and took control of Poland for decades to control and oppress its population, along with many other countries.

Please don't try to equate the criminal and its victim.

Lets not forget that's where WW2 was fought and won. With two thirds of German army committed to eastern front, the entire D-day Normandy is just a pheriphiral operation.

Even Soviet propaganda aside, Leningrad (Saint-Petersburg now) objectively wasn't abandoned due to naked greed of the elite, after all USSR was fighting for survival and had to make tough decisions. Even if Stalin didn't care about the people, the city itself was really important strategically.

Minimizing the suffering of Soviet people in the WWII is always wrong. Sure members ate better than, but they still suffered. Caviar is a local and canned food. The Soviet people saved the world from the Nazi horror, and we must forever grateful.

> Stalin, neglecting the relevant intelligence and then focusing on Moscow

The seventh panzer division was within 29 km of Moscow in November, I am not sure how much or how strategic diverting resources from Moscow's defense could help Leningrad.

>>> The sad part is the starvation and suffering was brought about by their own government.

>> That is not true. The starvation was planned by Hitler and he gave explicit directives

>> to that effect. You're essentially reproducing the nazi propaganda.

> And you're essentially reproducing Soviet propaganda.

Are you actually claiming that the explicit Hitler's order to starve the city and bombard into submission is "Soviet propaganda"? Per Generalplan "Ost", city was to be flooded, population - starved.

You are engaging in literal genocide denial here.

Hundreds of thousands of people did not starve to death because of one man.

The Nazis wanted to starve millions of Russians to death. They even had a plan to do it and talked about it publicly.

Stalin starved millions of Russians to death on his own before any hostilities occured.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...

There was a famine, I don't think he deliberately did that. Yes it was his stupid policies that led to it, and he certainly didn't seem to care much, but it's different to an outright plan to starve 20-30 million slavs

Oh, I guess that makes it wholly different to the people who died, then

A decision like supplying or not supplying, defending or not defending a city like Leningrad is not something that was done without approval or disapproval of Stalin.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_of_Life

> Joseph Stalin tentatively approved, but he failed to appreciate the importance and only limited resources were committed.[19][20] The Leningrad Front planned the ice roads to bring 1965 tonnes of supplies to the city per day, but this was not initially met.[21] Little was achieved in the first weeks of operation.

That's putting it mildly. When Stalin "tentatively approved" but wasn't "enthused about it", so to speak, that meant to his minions that it should not be tried very hard and if they fail, their head is on the line.

"Stalin's warning served as a thinly veiled threat to the Leningrad leader

> The Nazis wanted to starve millions of Russians to death. They even had a plan to do it and talked about it publicly.

Just because Nazis had plans, that didn't stop Stalin from out-competing them. He started early even in the 30s. In fact it was the Soviet Union's government that killed millions of its own people in the end. It happened before, during and after the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1946%E2%80%93..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...

The Soviet Union was under the greatest, most genocidal assault in human history. The Soviets launched multiple assaults on Leningrad from 1941 until they finally relieved it in 1944. It was at huge human cost that they did so.

But yes Stalin was a brutal dictator.

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