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How much extra losses would you expect Soviet troops take in an unprepared operation? The official story is that Stalin warned them against the uprising.

surfingdino 2y ago
Was it the same Stalin who allowed Germans to train their troops in evasion of the post-WWI peace treaty? They trained their panzer troops over there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school and their fighter pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipetsk_fighter-pilot_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipetsk_fighter-pilot_school and their chemical warfare teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomka_gas_test_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomka_gas_test_site I guess it was the same Stalin who signed a pact with the Nazi Germany to partition Poland and invaded Poland on 17 Sep 1939. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... It must have also been the same Stalin who ordered the extermination of 22,000 of the educated part of the Polish society and then blamed the Germans for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre I guess he wanted to outdo the Germans, who had a special plan for the extermination of Polish intellectuals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_Poland I don't know about you, but I don't think anybody wanted to listen to Stalin. He wasn't exactly a reliable interlocutor.
- ffgjgf1 2y ago
  Also the same Stalin who literally bankrolled the German invasion of Norway and France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commercial_Agreement_(1940) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commer... Germany had no oil after invading Poland. Almost all of it was imported over the ocean (IIRC mainly US). In theory the allies could have just waited them out. And then the Soviets sent that massive amounts of war materials due to “reasons”.. I guess. Barbarossa couldn’t have happened without that either. France/Britain were even seriously considering bombing the Soviet oil fields in Azerbaijan and intervening in Finland before France fell.
inglor_cz 2y ago
The Soviet doctrine was never particularly concerned about losses, to the degree that it jeopardized whole operations. You can see echos of the same in the current "meat attacks" in Ukraine. Shturm, poshli, vperyod, into a hail of FPVs and cluster ammo.
- the_af 2y ago
  I can't speak for current Russian doctrine, but Soviet "human wave" attacks during WWII are mostly German propaganda. It's true they took [1] heavy losses during their operations, but "human wave" attacks wasn't a tactic the Soviets used. -- [1] They took and accepted heavy losses, but given the alternative was total extermination, their tradeoffs were entirely different to the Western Allies'...
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    > I can't speak for current Russian doctrine, but Soviet "human wave" attacks during WWII are mostly German propaganda Also Western (considering silly movies like Enemy at the Gate). They had more than enough equipment outside of some brief periods to make something like that entirely unnecessary. BUT the Soviets were much more tolerant about manpower losses than the allies and even the Germans. They regularly traded massive amounts of casualties (in ways that would have been entirely unacceptable in Britain/US) to sped up their advance (or due to political reasons).
    - the_af 2y ago
      Agreed about Enemy of the Gates! Such an awful and misleading movie. As for your last point, I think the tradeoffs the Soviets were forced to make were entirely different to the Western Allies, especially say the US. If the US lost the war, their soldiers got to go back home. If the USSR lost the war, about 80% of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe would have been wiped out, as per stated Nazi plans. A terrible situation surely demanded terrible resolve to overcome.
      - ffgjgf1 2y ago
ajuc 2y ago
Attack on German forces distracted by uprising, with safe places to move through the river secured by rebels would be easier and faster than waiting for Germans to mop up and destroy the city. And of course Stalin warned against uprising - he wanted to get Poland, any independent forces were a threat to that plan. After WW2 he imprisoned anti-nazi guerilla fighters in Poland and murdered their leaders in a show trial in Moscow (after promising them safe passage).
tomjen3 2y ago
Its the Soviets - they don't give a shit about casualties.
ffgjgf1 2y ago
> extra losses would you expect Soviet troops take in an unprepared operation Not more than usual? Trading massive amounts of casualties to sped up their advance was a core aspect of their military doctrine. Soviet military leadership had no qualms about that before or after Warsaw. Of course near the very end of the war the difference between them and the allies was heavily exacerbated by the fact that the many Germans troops were willing to fight till the death after encountering the Soviets while immediately surrendering if they ran into the US/UK forces. > Stalin warned them against the uprising. Well obviously. Almost entirely due to political reasons. The last thing the soviets wanted was a rival political with its own military after the war. Same reason non-communist resistance movements were purged on a large scale after the war.
- thriftwy 2y ago
  I'm not sure why Poles have this audacity that many young Russians (but also some Belorussians and Ukrainians, and some Soviet Jews) had to die so that Poles had better bargaining position with Stalin later on. This all while explaining how Russian lives are worthless anyway (a scroll worth of comments) so why bother about these. I'm also not sure why Stalin will discard his political goals and help Polish resistance achieve theirs instead with his armies. What did they expect?
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    The had no issues unnecessarily dying entirely for Stalin’s political ambitions? One might say that being one of the aggressors who started the war and by playing a massive part in the successful German invasion of France (it’s hard to imagine Germany could have pulled that off without massive Soviet material support, they basically had no oil after all..) that the Soviets had a moral obligation to right some of those wrongs. > Russian lives are worthless anyway That was a fact (in relative terms) mainly established by the Soviets. They indeed considered the lives of their citizen to be worth very little (compared to the allies). > What did they expect? That he’d prioritize the defeat of Germany and the liberation of Poland over them. Of course extremely naive…
    - 2y ago
medo-bear 2y ago
The official story according to who?

surfingdino 2y ago

Was it the same Stalin who allowed Germans to train their troops in evasion of the post-WWI peace treaty? They trained their panzer troops over there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school and their fighter pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipetsk_fighter-pilot_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipetsk_fighter-pilot_school and their chemical warfare teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomka_gas_test_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomka_gas_test_site I guess it was the same Stalin who signed a pact with the Nazi Germany to partition Poland and invaded Poland on 17 Sep 1939. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... It must have also been the same Stalin who ordered the extermination of 22,000 of the educated part of the Polish society and then blamed the Germans for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre I guess he wanted to outdo the Germans, who had a special plan for the extermination of Polish intellectuals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_Poland I don't know about you, but I don't think anybody wanted to listen to Stalin. He wasn't exactly a reliable interlocutor.

ffgjgf1 2y ago
Also the same Stalin who literally bankrolled the German invasion of Norway and France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commercial_Agreement_(1940) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commer... Germany had no oil after invading Poland. Almost all of it was imported over the ocean (IIRC mainly US). In theory the allies could have just waited them out. And then the Soviets sent that massive amounts of war materials due to “reasons”.. I guess. Barbarossa couldn’t have happened without that either. France/Britain were even seriously considering bombing the Soviet oil fields in Azerbaijan and intervening in Finland before France fell.

inglor_cz 2y ago

The Soviet doctrine was never particularly concerned about losses, to the degree that it jeopardized whole operations. You can see echos of the same in the current "meat attacks" in Ukraine. Shturm, poshli, vperyod, into a hail of FPVs and cluster ammo.

the_af 2y ago
I can't speak for current Russian doctrine, but Soviet "human wave" attacks during WWII are mostly German propaganda. It's true they took [1] heavy losses during their operations, but "human wave" attacks wasn't a tactic the Soviets used. -- [1] They took and accepted heavy losses, but given the alternative was total extermination, their tradeoffs were entirely different to the Western Allies'...
- ffgjgf1 2y ago
  > I can't speak for current Russian doctrine, but Soviet "human wave" attacks during WWII are mostly German propaganda Also Western (considering silly movies like Enemy at the Gate). They had more than enough equipment outside of some brief periods to make something like that entirely unnecessary. BUT the Soviets were much more tolerant about manpower losses than the allies and even the Germans. They regularly traded massive amounts of casualties (in ways that would have been entirely unacceptable in Britain/US) to sped up their advance (or due to political reasons).
  - the_af 2y ago
    Agreed about Enemy of the Gates! Such an awful and misleading movie. As for your last point, I think the tradeoffs the Soviets were forced to make were entirely different to the Western Allies, especially say the US. If the US lost the war, their soldiers got to go back home. If the USSR lost the war, about 80% of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe would have been wiped out, as per stated Nazi plans. A terrible situation surely demanded terrible resolve to overcome.
    - ffgjgf1 2y ago

ajuc 2y ago

Attack on German forces distracted by uprising, with safe places to move through the river secured by rebels would be easier and faster than waiting for Germans to mop up and destroy the city. And of course Stalin warned against uprising - he wanted to get Poland, any independent forces were a threat to that plan. After WW2 he imprisoned anti-nazi guerilla fighters in Poland and murdered their leaders in a show trial in Moscow (after promising them safe passage).

tomjen3 2y ago

Its the Soviets - they don't give a shit about casualties.

ffgjgf1 2y ago

> extra losses would you expect Soviet troops take in an unprepared operation Not more than usual? Trading massive amounts of casualties to sped up their advance was a core aspect of their military doctrine. Soviet military leadership had no qualms about that before or after Warsaw. Of course near the very end of the war the difference between them and the allies was heavily exacerbated by the fact that the many Germans troops were willing to fight till the death after encountering the Soviets while immediately surrendering if they ran into the US/UK forces. > Stalin warned them against the uprising. Well obviously. Almost entirely due to political reasons. The last thing the soviets wanted was a rival political with its own military after the war. Same reason non-communist resistance movements were purged on a large scale after the war.

thriftwy 2y ago
I'm not sure why Poles have this audacity that many young Russians (but also some Belorussians and Ukrainians, and some Soviet Jews) had to die so that Poles had better bargaining position with Stalin later on. This all while explaining how Russian lives are worthless anyway (a scroll worth of comments) so why bother about these. I'm also not sure why Stalin will discard his political goals and help Polish resistance achieve theirs instead with his armies. What did they expect?
- ffgjgf1 2y ago
  The had no issues unnecessarily dying entirely for Stalin’s political ambitions? One might say that being one of the aggressors who started the war and by playing a massive part in the successful German invasion of France (it’s hard to imagine Germany could have pulled that off without massive Soviet material support, they basically had no oil after all..) that the Soviets had a moral obligation to right some of those wrongs. > Russian lives are worthless anyway That was a fact (in relative terms) mainly established by the Soviets. They indeed considered the lives of their citizen to be worth very little (compared to the allies). > What did they expect? That he’d prioritize the defeat of Germany and the liberation of Poland over them. Of course extremely naive…
  - 2y ago

medo-bear 2y ago

The official story according to who?