Historically High - Joseph Stalin Part Two: Rule of Steel

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

We start the final episode on Joseph Stalin as he gains full control of the Soviet Union. Prior to WW2 in Europe, Stalin consolidated power by wiping out a hefty portion of his military command structure along with anyone he perceived as a threat to his new rule. Well once Hitler decides to go back on the Nazi-Soviet non aggression pact, this decision comes back to bite Stalin almost immediately. Without experienced battlefield commanders the Russians are barely able to mount a resistance as the Nazi's charge to Moscow. Well we know in the end the Nazi's are beaten by the Russian winter and Stalin remained in power and was seen as one of the "heroes" of the Allies. But without an external enemy Stalin turns his attention to the enemy within, his own people and the new Cold War. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What's going on, folks? Hey, welcome back. Hope you guys had a great Christmas, whatever holiday, whatever denominational holiday you guys have enjoyed. And if it's still going on, you know what, keep those good times rolling. We are back with part two of Joseph Stolen, man of steel. And man, we still got a lot of stuff left to cover. I didn't even mean to do that. That was pretty good, right? Yeah. With me, as always, you hear him chuckling over there. That man is colder than Siberia. He is the Sultan of Strain, the Dean of Green, with me always. Honored to be the guy I joined for this rambunctious jaunt through history every week, his professor Adam. Oh, my God, that was poetry.

The pun was unintended. But it was so perfect. So perfectly good. Yeah, after one week of Stalin, I still don't quite have the hate that I feel like I should for him. but we're going to get a little bit I don't know into some more interesting stuff psychologically with Stalin

I think than we already have before he's kind of a people will call him a narcissist a psychopath all that kind of stuff but he has these weird little intros of emotion that kind of pop up in weird places and I think one of the weirdest ones

is going to be coming up soon so yeah he's just a wildly interesting person as far as how he gained his power. Now we're going to see how he wields his power. All right, well, we're not going to keep you waiting any longer. You guys tuned in to find out how this story ends. Not happy. Thank God.

No, thank God. Well, it's happier than it should be, but it's a little bit, you know what? I'm not going to lie to you. This podcast is going to be very unlike the end of Stalin's life. Yep. It's very unsatisfactory, but we're going to satisfy you all kinds of ways today. So buckle up. We're getting back into Joseph.

All right, where did we last leave? Where did we leave off? Aren't we arguing that his name should have been spelled with an F at the end instead of a pH? Yeah, that's right. It feels like that should be that. That does make a lot of sense, because wasn't Losef? That was a B. Was it Losef?

Oh, yeah, that's right. They can't figure it out. A lot of different ways to change your name. But I think, yeah, he was getting on with his great purge. He had just done quite the number. on both his own party and the military, but... Phase one. Faze, exactly.

Guess what? He ain't done yet! Yeah, apparently, still a lot of people out there he's got an extra grind with. That list, that lipstick list that we were talking about, it was one of those things where, like, it's got the rollout at the bottom, and he just keeps pulling it,

and then it just comically takes off and just keeps trailing off into the distance, because... God damn roll a toilet paper. Because what comes next? As if the Great Purge wasn't bad enough, we get it followed up to what's called the Great Terror, which essentially

I guess you can't really call the purge. That seems kind of like an event, maybe over the course of a few days, a couple of weeks. When it starts to last, you know, a couple years, maybe you've got to think of a different name for it. We have purge is quick. It's ripping off the Band-Aid. Yep. Now we can dip into the Great Terror, though.

And the Great Terror was truly terrifying to know just exactly how it all went down. But this NKVD, this predecessor to the KGB that we've been talking about basically starts purging the country of traders and when we use the word purging it's purging in goddamn every way that you can think of

and basically what it is is these cities all over the Soviet Union there's just these lists made with all of these names on them of people that they felt have been disloyal that aren't committed to the cause that may have done something...

They were opposing parties that were Zaris loyalists that people knew that we're still in support of possibly bringing the Tsarback or even just seeing what Stalin has done at this point and be like, you're doing the same fucking thing. And there's basically three ways that you're going to go out if you're on these lists. You're going to be arrested. You're going to be headed straight to the gulag or just shot immediately.

There's no naughty and nice portion of this list. This is all naughty. And it got to the point where, so you would basically have Stalin who was in Moscow at this point? I think so. And the new capital is now Moscow. And you basically had fucking quotas. That the people that were running these regions or that were loyal to Stalin,

basically I don't know, become governors or some shit like that. Probably. You had people with the NKBD that were in charge of these areas. They had fucking quotas of people they had to kill, depending on how many people were there. So it got to the point where there wasn't a lot of like, it didn't take much to get you on these fucking lists. They would just do it

for the reason of trying to fill these quota numbers. And they said in some circumstances, stolen, they would go over the list sometimes together of, like, high value individuals, and he would dole out fucking either the murder, the gulag, or just fucking jail time, or any of that shit,

and write little notes next to the people, like fucking prostitute or scum, or, like, cheated me in a poker fucking game once or something. Well, and like he knew most of these people. Was he just going off of vibes? Maybe the, maybe the high value ones. But you then have, had these people that were running these basically death squads all over Russia that were like,

okay, I mean, we've hit 50. Do you think he's going to be happy with 50? And they're like, eh, 55's probably going to look better to him. So they just kill another 5,000 people. It is, in this case, it feels like it's always better to overshoot the number than undershoot the number. Like you got to make sure that you get it done and then some. Um, so I know that this Ford seems to have sort of changed now with video games. These gulags. Is that call a duty? So they call it like in the new modern warfare series.

The gulag is basically because the city is like an Eastern European or like Russian city. It's called like Vrdanzk. I sound like a fucking nerd right now. But anyway, the gulag is basically the prison within that. But the gulogs were basically just like. Almost in a way they were work camps or concentration camps. Yeah. Like if you were sent to Gulag, maybe it would have been a stone structure or a person like that.

I'm sure they had varying levels of security for different, depending on what you were in there for. But a lot of these places were literally work camps. And is that what they are in the video game? No, it's an actual like stone prison. Okay. It's where you go after you die to like shoot it out with someone else to try to get back in the game. That's okay. Yeah.

Yeah, not to be confused, goulash, a delicious, delicious, pepper you could do. but it just feels like there's so many people that are going away from these lists that you would almost, if you were a person in these cities, you're like, where are these people going? Yeah. Why does this keep happening? Well, you had an entire time. This was when you also start to get into some, like, targeting of, like, ethnic minorities. So there was a group called the Volga Germans who were basically, like, subjected to, like, forced deportation. crazy. Did you read the back part or the like back history of the vulgar Germans?

No. So basically they were enticed to immigrate to this area in Russia from Germany. And when they were or when they immigrated up there, Russia basically told them like, hey, you guys can keep your culture, you can keep your language. It was basically just like a Germany located on this river in Russia. And they were all German descent. Oh yeah, the Volga River. Okay. Yeah. It was just all German descent. It was like a German colony. Uh-huh. Exactly. And when World War II kicks off, he just kills all the Volga Germans thinking like they've been here for centuries, but we're going to kill them off because they're of German descent and we got attacked with German.

Which is crazy because his whole stance like we were talking about in episode one was that you were a Russian if you were in Russia. That's what made you a Russian. So he can, like, that's the complete contradiction to that. It's just a very interesting thing that he, not interesting in a way that he would target them because it kind of felt like he was targeting Jewish people. He was, these quotas were literally quotas out of these cultures of people that they were just supposed to kill. Like they were like you were saying last episode, it's like calling the herd. That's exactly what I was just going to say. And so you basically have these NKVD squads that are in charge of doing this.

And in total, I'm not sure if I mentioned it last time when we were just talking about the great purge for the total. but somewhere between like 750,000 to like 1.2 million. We're killed between like... I bet it. We're on the low side with 750,000. We're in a situation also where we're only getting the information to come out where this stuff was kept as hush, hush as possible. So that's just what we know about. So that all occurred between 1936 and 1938, while concurrently, this is where you have Hitler really starting to come into power because World War II kicks off in 1939, right?

right? Yeah. I just get hung out, dude, 750,000 people killed in two years. And then more than a million sent to the Gulegs. So, and then that's like not, like, you're going to survive that. Maybe. You got a shot.

I don't know how much of a shot. They're just using you to fucking work at that point. Yeah, they'll work you to death. But we get now, you know, after after the, you know, the Great Terror and everything like that, in 38, stolen actually reversed his stance.

He came out. I'm pretty sure public opinion after they noticed 750,000 people killed and a million people gone missing. There's probably some people going, where's my fucking neighbor? Where's my uncle? Where's my fucking dad? Like, what the fuck happened? So he reverses his stance on the purges

and basically he's like, okay, we're good now. All the internal enemies, they're all gone. And then he fucking turns and criticizes the NKVD for basically carrying out mass executions. and he fucking executes two guys who headed the NKVD. One of them was like, Gehrigiegota and then Nikola Yezhov,

who headed the NKVD during the purge years. So he makes himself in some fucking weird way, in his own mind, I don't know how you see all this happening for two years, and then he just comes back and is like, hey, I didn't know you guys were, I didn't tell you guys to, you know what? You're bad, you're naughty.

You know what? It's okay, everybody. I killed the two guys that were responsible for all this. So I'm back to being the hero again. We're all safe. Such an odd bird. Just the way that he tries to blame that stuff away. And he really, I don't know. That's some of the interesting parts of his mind just in how he can try to justify these things.

Who do you think? Because there's one guy that didn't get got during this great purge and this great terror. and it's probably the number one guy that Stalin wanted. Trotsky. Trotsky. Yeah. He lives a little longer past this. Yeah.

But I'm pretty sure that would have been the cherry on the Sunday. Yeah. Had he got that final word and be like, it would have been like the, hey, we got him. But yeah. So, I mean, and it's not long before. So you literally create this shitstorm in your country. And then in 1939, after you see

Germany start doing a thing of starting to kind of shift all over Europe, start taking these countries and everything, the Soviet Union and Germany, this is when they signed the non-aggression pact that we talked about. It was the Molotov... Oh, what was it?

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. So you get the pact signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that were just like, hey, we're not going to fight each other, but I think we can both just kind of take over these sections of Europe.

There's some shit between us that I know you want, you know that I want. Yeah, let's just carve that bitch up. And so that's signed as Poland is carved up, you know, just a little bit later. Well, and that's even we've already seen the Nazi party rise. We saw

we saw the Soviet Union tried to make an ally ship essentially with Great Britain. They they tried to be on the right side of things. But unfortunately, the right side of things was dragging their feet too much. And in that time, he's finally just like, eh, you guys aren't going to give me anything.

I know that if I sign this non-aggression pact with this guy that I'm a little sweet on, there's some things about Stalin and Hitler's feelings towards each other that I find, again, kind of fascinating. But if I can't do this the right way, I need to make sure that I don't get attacks because I wiped out like half of my army, generals, I probably don't need war with anybody right now. How can I do that? Oh, a non-aggression bag. Exactly. What was the, it happened before the Germans, the Nazis decided to go ahead and invade. Where was it? Was it the winter war against Norway? Finland, wasn't it? Yes. So you have this

situation where Stalin is like, I'm just going to start taking land. Like, it makes sense that I start taking my area. So he goes to war with, Yeah, you're right. It is with Finland. So the winter war takes place on November 30th, 1939, till March 13th, 1940. I don't know how much we covered of it. I think we kind of touched on it during the Hitler episodes, but this does not go good for the Soviet Union. And basically, within fighting Norway, they're able to... Finland. Oh, sorry. They're able to only acquire 8% of Finnish territory. And, I think after seeing that They got beat by a bunch of guys on skis. Yeah, I think the Nazis and Hitler looks at that. So here's the thing.

I have no idea, and we should probably discuss this. How the fuck was that pact even signed? What do you mean? The fucking Hitler wrote in Mind Kampf that the enemy of fucking fascism is fucking like Bolshevik communism and that they need to be wiped out.

It's in the fucking, it's in his book. Like he makes it a problem. point to discuss that at length. You then have Stalin that's just like, I mean, that guy took power. I took power. That's what kind of makes me think that Stalin wasn't really, he himself was not a communist. He just saw communism as the vessel in which he could control the population and enrich and empower himself. Yeah, it's like we talked about in doing the studies for this. They, Hitler gets held up as like, this is what fascism is. I'm not too sure how far off that is.

Hitler wasn't technically, he was technically a fascist, he wasn't truly a fascist. When you hold up Stalin... He was an authoritarian. Totalitarian. Totalitarian. Yeah. When you look at Stalin, he's sort of the same way. He is a communist.

He is what the example of people use for communists. He probably was pretty close to a communist. In all truth, in all honesty, he was a totalitarian. Fuck me. I said it the first time, right? Totalitarian ruler. that just basically used communism to come to power. He was a czar and all but name.

Yeah, I truly think that Stalin saw himself in Adolf besides the lesser mustache, the lesser stature, the bad-looking leaderhosen, but it's almost like he was sweet on him because he saw him as like, this is what I did. A kindred spirit. Yeah. So I think that there was a little bit there,

and I think it was more to look past. Like, he probably read Mine Kampf. He's like, Bolsheviks bad, yeah. But I like the way he did it. I don't think he's really what he says. Yeah, he's saying that, but have you seen the fucking uniforms? Yeah. Have you heard of this guy named Hugo Boss?

Have you seen their fucking uniforms? There's just so much that they had in common. And just like all the things that we pointed out in the beginning, the first episode, they almost mirror each other in so many ways. What that loud man lacks in mustache, he makes up for an enthusiasm during those speeches. Look at that left arm of his. but well apparently Hitler really didn't feel the same way and so after seeing the the Finns kick around the Soviets he's like

oh shit he's like I could probably just pop in here and just take whatever the fuck I need these guys are going to be fucking pushovers yeah he basically got stalemated on the western front because they knew that Great Britain wasn't going to fall so he needed to go somewhere do you think part of his decision I mean Hitler was like fucking Kenny Rogers the gambling man taking chances and everything. Do you think that he found out because, you know, they probably had,

they had to, Ribbentroff or, yeah, Ribbentroff was over there trying to go ahead and put together like the non-aggression packs and everything. So they probably had representatives of the Nazis over in Moscow and everything, trying to kind of put this kind of stuff together because they weren't at war with each other. Probably some international relations type stuff.

Through all that, it wouldn't be too surprising with as big as the purge was in how many of the military. brass it got rid of for that to be part of the decision why they were going to invade. So like they come back, Ribbentrop is like, do you know he killed like half of his fucking generals and military advisors? And Hitler's like, what? He's like, yeah, like they don't have a lot of people leading their military right now.

He's like, that sounds nice. And then he sees this thing with, you know, Finland. And he's like, they obviously don't have anyone. Yeah, they are weak. They are weak. So let's just fucking shift gears. We'll pivot around a little bit. Let's just invade Russia.

They got a lot of shit there we can use. It does make me wonder what Riven Trubb came back and told Hitler about Stalin just to like not give him any ideas. This is what Stalin did to his guys. We shouldn't do it over here though. Don't kill it. Mum's the word. Yeah. And where it's that.

Well, so I think it was in June, 1941. the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa, which was the invasion of the Soviet Union. And when this thing started, first of all, they had like 1.3, or it might have been more, million Nazi soldiers. And these were also made up of like areas

that the Nazis had Congress. So it wasn't just Germans. It was also, I think. Some holes in there. Yeah. People that were conscripted to go and fight for them. But they're lining up like on the border in Poland of where the designated break between like Russia and Germany was going to be.

And you probably have some people that were left over still in the military. Like, hey, Joe, like, I know you and Hitler have got like a thing going. But there's a lot of his guys just like on the other side of the border. Are you sure something's not up? Have you heard anything? And he's like, no, no, like he wouldn't do that. Like, I'm sure there's just some misunderstanding. he got fucking intelligence

from the British that they were going to be launching an invasion. He's like, no, I think you guys are full of shit. You guys are trying to sow deceit between me and Dolf. You guys are trying to get between me and Dolf. Like, we got something special. He'd never do that to me. Well, he done did it to you.

And it was basically kind of a Blitzkrieg 2.0 from what they did in France, and they basically just mowed right through all of what were the, unexpected and unprepared Soviet defense defenses and basically made it all the way close to Moscow. Thank God, despite Stalin's military incompetence, he's got two undefeated generals on his team. Well, yeah, before we get to General January and General February, when the Nazis broke into the Soviet Union, it broke. something in Stalin.

Stalin went into like a depression where he went away to one of his summer homes for like two weeks. We just looked up the name. What are they called? Dasha. Dashes. Dashes.

I think, yeah. And so he was just gone while the Soviet Union was getting their ass kicked. And finally two of the generals or two of the guys that worked under him worked up the balls to go talk to him. And they went out to this Dasha and was talking to him.

And one of the things that Stalin said as he goes, Lenin built this and we're going to watch it go. Or we're going to destroy it or something like that. Like, I just see him being like, after he finds out Hitler invades, he's like, that was just the last person to break all the trust. He's like, you can't trust anyone. If you can't trust Hitler, who can you trust?

And it just makes him so fucking said. He's like, I thought we had something special. I thought he really liked me. he puts a black streak in his hair and he just drinks coffee and listens to like coffee music the opposite of the mustache out of the middle of his giant mustache he's like I will stand for

everything this guy stands for or the opposite this is what I'm talking about where he just he has these weird little breaks in this solid exterior where he like you said of all people to break his

heart and to break his trust it was fucking Hitler. Of all the people to actually put him in a state or human emotion took over, yeah, it was fucking Hitler. Just the most amazing thing in the world that that's what gets to him. Like his

first wife... Is he hard for Hitler, you think? It has to have been, because this feels like the second time that he's talking about his first wife, and when she died, like, all his feelings for humanity died too. When Hitler broke that truce that they had... Hitler had started to melt.

Yeah, he knew that... He couldn't... there wasn't anybody else out there for him. Hitler was his last try at love. And Hitler broke his heart. Luckily, they just... I will never love again. Yeah, I don't know if they grabbed him by his pudgy cheeks and just shook his face. And they're like, sir, we need you.

Your country needs you. The Soviet Union needs you. He ends up snapping out of it. They said that if he had gone on that way for like another two days, there just wouldn't have been a chance for recovery. So he snaps back into action. And unfortunately, as we alluded to in the first episode, and as Chris pointed out, not the best guy to lead an army. No. Not very good. Fantastic about scheming and creating essentially coups and everything like that.

But yeah, not a great strategy guy on the battlefield. And we talked about this in World War II with the whole plan that he had put in place. He changed the rule that if anybody was to retreat. there was going to be a line of guns lined up behind them and if they retreated they were going to be killed Stalin got a lot of people killed in Barbarossa before he really kind of found his groove and I'm sure it was His groove ended up being not even his groove he got so fucking desperate of not known what the fuck to do That he was basically like why do we suck so much right now and someone just finally piped up and it's like You know those guys that we either killed during that little purge

thing or put into, you know, gulags and stuff like that, a lot of those guys kind of knew what to do in this situation. Smart as fuck. And he actually ends up calling some of these generals back from fucking, like, gulogs or wherever they were fucking forced to go to, to, like, command, like, in wheelchairs. Hey, guys. How was your vacation? Yeah.

How was Siberia? So, little thing going on. But, so finally, the thing that ends. ends up turning this around as he realizes that he doesn't know shit about fighting a war and finally brings back some of the people that know how to do it and he knows what his role is his role is to sit back and to manufacture as many tanks and as much armor and as much ammo as he can manufacture and ordered the gathering of of mass amounts of people yep and meat to basically throw into this fucking grinder and then like you said earlier general january general february

where it comes sweeping into Russia catches the Nazis with their pants down. A couple of things got them with their pants down. I mean, they charged in so fucking far. Here's the thing, too, if you're looking at a map, the greatest asset that Russia has,

can you imagine? Like, I was always surprised looking at it that they didn't take Moscow and just put it right in the fucking middle. They should do that with every capital of everything. But just to get that far, so like the Germans, you know, they sweep across like Eastern Europe

and they get into Russia, the part getting from Germany to Russia was like a fucking like hop skip and a jump compared to this. They have to push way, way into Russia. Not only that, as they start moving in, it starts widening out. So the logistics of them charging in there,

they have to be able to supply all these troops and a combination of like supply chain issues, Hitler not fucking reading his history about invading Russia pretty much at any fucking point. But then the fact that winter kicks in at this point and just stop. the fucking German advance. And that's really the

one thing, I think, in addition to actually bringing in the military people to run this thing, that's the saving grace that saved the Soviet Union from not collapsing. Oh. We forgot the top man on his list

because we jumped right into this. We'll circle back with all trot-trot after we get done talking about Barbarossa. Okay. Because that was in 1940, This is 1941 and beyond. Some very crazy family shit takes place during this time. And in 1941, the Nazis happen upon young Yakoff.

And they take Yakoff in as a prisoner. Now, Yakov obviously hates his father. We could probably deduce that. Rightfully so. Yeah, yeah. Got no problem with him hating his father. Didn't really want to be... Vice versa.

Yeah. Feelings were shared. The simple fact that Yakov is in a position, the son of the fucking, basically the new czar. Supreme ruler, yeah. The supreme ruler of the Soviet Union is in a position to be taken prisoner. Should be indication enough. It should be. He didn't want to be there, but he was conscripted just like everybody else that was over there that I'm sure definitely didn't want to be there. Somehow the Nazis find out that Yakov is Stalin's son. And so they think they got to. some shit. Didn't he look just like him? He actually, he was a gaunt man in the picture that I saw of him.

Kind of a handsome dude though. Like he had a look about him that if you were standing in a food line during Great Depression, he'd be the hottest guy in the food line, for sure. So they use him as bait, just like you would at any time. Propaganda tool, too. Yeah, yeah, we caught Stall and Son. How great of a leader could he really be? They say, we'll give you back Yakov if you give us back some of the generals that you would captured and the Soviets take that to Stalin he takes a look like he's like nah we're not doing

that well we kind of touched on that earlier the whole no retreat and the fact Stalin took it as a betrayal against Russia if you surrendered if you were not killed in battle and you got to a point where you surrendered instead of fighting to the death you were no longer kind of in that sense that we discussed a couple times before that disqualified you from being a Russian yeah So simply by the act of Yakov being taken prisoner, you know, give us these generals or we'll kill your son. He's just like, I ain't got no son. There's a little bit of some Trump McCain shit going on there

where he likes his war heroes not caught. He's like, yeah. He's like, actually, I don't have a fucking son because my son would never be captured. So do what you want with him. We don't, I think he ended up telling him that we don't trade generals for soldiers or something like that. Like just a very broad way of saying.

And then the fucking Nazi, leadership was like, nice. We can respect this guy. Yeah, they respected it more for that. All right, all right. This guy is brutal. Yeah. Little did they know that he has like three other humped children up in Siberia that he was knocking around with.

This wasn't just his only child. Never even knew about them. Yacov finally ended his struggles and just threw himself on an electric barbed wire fence while he was in a prison camp and killed himself. Way more preferable than being the son of Joseph Stalin. or trapped and caught by Nazis like both of those things feel Oh yeah can you imagine Can you imagine him even just hating his father

Being like I hate that motherfucker He said he doesn't have a sudden They're like we're still gonna punish you And torture the fuck out of you For all the German soldiers that are being killed Yep yeah you're Now you're gonna be our pincushion basically So

Luckily For us and I can say luckily Truly in this portion of it Stalin figures the shit out. Stalin turns things around. You get Barbarossa turned around. The Nazis are on the retreat. We'll do Stalin grad just in its own episode.

It ends up really being, I don't think there's like some supreme moment of like military like victory. I think it literally is just a combination for the Soviet Union of the winter stalling and then basically just buying them time. And being like, we have so much shit to throw it you guys now. It's now just going to be a battle of attrition because we're not going to run out of people anytime soon. Was Stalingrad named Stalingrad when the war happened there? He already named a town after himself? He had named himself just a few years prior. Okay.

So it actually was that at the time. Yes. Crazy. He was calling his shots like that that early. He named Petrograd Leningrad, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah. So you had basically he was just.

like, yep, he's like, I think we should rename this one, Stalingrad. But that was after Lennon died. That was somebody else dedicating Leningrad to it. That's what I'm saying, man. Stalingrad, he just, I'm surprised he didn't name fucking Moscow, Stalingrad. That's true. They're, well, maybe Stalingrad because they could have been like a steel town and he was the man of steel, so.

I don't think that's even that clever. I don't think he felt that way. Nope, I think it's basically just like, uh, I like this town. But it was also prior to that, it was called, um, oh, it was the um serreitsen wasn't oh was that the town that he took over the military duties in yes i believe so okay so he had a little bit of a tie to it yep that's why what it was is like a great honor something like that it was probably named because he had controlled the the military garrisoner some shit there learning on the fly baby you got to love it there we go uh yeah

he figured his shit out and when he figured his shit out that meant really really bad news for Germany and really, really good news for the allies. Yeah. Because this whole two-front war that the Germans, the Nazis were fighting on, just became that much more complicated because now Stalin's in his groove and they're moving on Berlin and there's just really nothing the Nazis can do about it at this point. So in 1945 at the Potsdam conference, you have Stalin basically pushing Truman and Churchill to divide Germany and then basically, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and, you know, you're during the war even prior to kind of like the war ending and everything that was when Stalin was going to Britain and the Allies and being like hey you guys need to start like a

second front yeah because like I'm we're doing all the fighting here and everything and basically I don't I know that it had to be a situation where it was like we have no option but to fight with this guy because now he's fighting against the enemy we need to defeat but there had to have been like Churchill being like did I not fucking tell you that this was going to happen? They're not out loud, but the whole time Churchill's sitting there, he's just like, you dumb motherfucker. Like, I tried to prepare you for this. We tried to tell you this was going to happen. There's a certain, I think it was, Churchill was pretty skeptical of Stalin, rightfully so.

But Teddy Roosevelt was kind of enamored with him. He really thought he was not a decent guy, but just like an interesting guy. Like, he didn't harbor the same feelings that Churchill had for Stalin. I'm sure it's probably because Roosevelt was a world away ruling the United States. I think that's exactly. I think you nailed it. He'd seen some of the slimy shit that he had pulled already. If your neighbor is doing a bunch of fucking shit that you're able to see over the fence,

and then your buddy comes in from out of town and the neighbor seems kind of cool, like he's over in the garage drinking beers with you and everything, he's like, that guy seems pretty cool. You got lucky you have a good neighbor. The other guy's like, no, no, not really. He hangs all of his underwear outside on the dryer lines. they're brown. Well, in 41 or sorry, in 43, from January 14th to the 24th, that's when they all met for the Casablanca conference. And that was basically when they met and were Stalin, got the invitation to meet with them.

And that was, and he's like, okay, you guys need to start your war to draw plans. So at that point, that's when the allies actually become a thing when they signed that agreement or have that conference. And then everything we've already discussed, if you haven't gone back, and listen to it. We did our episode on World War II. You kind of want to know what happens and what the timeline for all of that kind of stuff is. Go back, listen to that after this episode. But after World War II commences in, or not commences, once it kind of wraps up in Europe, after victory in Europe Day at the Potsdam Conference in July 45, like we were saying, that's when Stalin basically talks to Truman, who now is president of the United States and not FDR,

and tells Churchill, he's like, so let's figure out. how we're going to go ahead and divide Germany and get this thing done. And he's like, and at the same time, all of the areas that I currently now have and occupy, yeah, those aren't going back. I'm going to go ahead and keep those two. And that's where we essentially get the creation of like the Eastern Bloc. Yeah, I had watched a documentary. They were talking about Truman basically just setting his big atomic nuts on the table.

And he tells Stalin straight out, he goes, oh yeah, and we have this. atomic weapon that we have at our disposal, which this would have been before they dropped it, right? I believe so. Because that, the European theater ended before the Pacific. So the European theater ended on Wednesday, May 8th, oh no, victory in Europe Day, sorry. When was that? It's got to be really close. May 8, 1945 was victory in Europe Day.

Okay. And then I'll figure out when they dropped the bomb. Yeah. So Truman's trying to flex. a little bit and maybe put a little bit of a scare into Stalin. Stalin's kind of undeterred by any sort of threat. And I think he knew just based upon how hard the war was on the allied forces. They're just like, all right, man, here, you can keep this Eastern Block.

You can keep this shit. What we need you to do, though, is we don't know if these people want to be a part of the Soviet Union. So we're going to need some free and fair democratic elections. and he's like, done. Because what did he say? It's not important who votes. It's only important on who's counting the votes. Yep.

So he knew. He knew that it didn't matter. It was fucking 100% lip service. He basically just gave a concession to something that he knew he was already going to taint. So they hadn't dropped the bomb yet. It was August 6, 1945.

So I think he did allude to them having that. Here's the thing, too. You just got out of, for Britain, a six-year war for the United States, a four-year war. with Pearl Harbor putting them into it, not counting the time that they were doing

Lendly stuff and supplying war materials. You have public opinion at this point, if there's been victory in Europe, and you turn around and start a brand new conflict with the Soviet Union. The guys that were your allies? Were your allies, but you also, news reports have gotten back at this point

about what's happened in the fucking Soviet Union, Stalingrad, all that kind of stuff, because that was worldwide type shit. The public is not going to be supported. of you keeping the soul. They've been missing their sons and husbands and everyone like that for the last four years. Churchill was in the position of just like,

I know this is in my fucking backyard, but I can't start this shit again. I'm so fucking tired of this. And my people are not going to be down with this at all. Yes. And the first place that's going to get fucked up is going to be Europe. Next door.

And it's going to be, and we're in no position to fight back right now. well everybody i think was just a little bit tired of it they they had to he forced them there there was no repercussion there was nothing technically that the rest of the allies the u.s or britain could do to stop it and at the same time they had to have been like fuck that sucks but not our problem i guess yeah those aren't our people that they're taking over and we still get it you guys wait so jurt part of germany is still fine you guys aren't going to touch france Spain's cool

Greece What about What about Greece was the only fucking country That made it out of this thing Yeah Just by the skin of their teeth

I'm sure Yes How did I wonder how that happened Greece I wonder how it was Greece Yeah I don't know

A slippery I guess It weird All they were in the grip All the Greek Oh Roman wrestling The oils that they used For that Maybe that's what they did

Maybe they had A rest of it It was like a Russian bearer against a green wrestler. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed like it was hell under all these places because once he took over, he basically ruled these places under threat of the great purge and the great terror that he had caused

in Russia. What was his rationale to? He was like, I never want Russia to get invaded again. Yeah, I never want to see my land tainted my war again. So I'm going to take all this as like a buffer. Yep. Yeah. Which technically if you're taking it and it becomes your land

It's your fucking land, exactly. There is no buffer. They're still invading you. If you want that to be a buffer, guess what you do? You make those countries independent. So they have to stop the people invading them. Yeah, yeah. Throw them some money every now and again,

but as long as you have that land, you know, you get a little buffer zone. So quite literally, as soon as World War II ends... We've got to head back. We've got to hit the rewind button in 1940 and go to Mexico City. I'm just saying that's literally the start of the Cold War. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So prior to this, we're going to take a little step back like Professor Adam was saying, we got to tie up a loose end.

Or more so, Stalin's got to tie up a loose end. And we get Trotsky. He's still out there. He's still out there causing problems. He's still out there running his propagandist newspapers from Mexico City. And he seemed, I don't know if he would. be comfortable, you would say, in Mexico, but he probably felt like he was

a little less touchable. Untouchable. Untouchable, yeah. Until one morning, he wakes up, there's a bunch of members of a local, I guess, like a Mexican militia. Somebody that Stalin had hired a bunch of hitmen,

they just fill his whole house full of lead. Just shoot up the whole entire thing. Like a scene in the godfather. Uh-huh. Just stepping out with machine guns and they just fucking hose the place. And by the grace of Russian God somehow Trotsky lives through this.

And every day he woke up after that he rolled over and he looked at his wife and he said they let us live again. Well, if Stalin is anything, he's persistent. Yeah, he doesn't give up. He ends up sneaking a, it was a reporter that had written

an article for Trotsky to go ahead. Some of the Trotsky had known too. Yeah, take a look over. A known affiliate or something, yeah. Yeah. he needs Trotsky to give this article a once over. He goes in, gets it through security. He's like, hey, I got this. I need Trotsky to go ahead and take a look at it.

Need him to, you know, dot the eyes, cross the T's, all that kind of stuff. I have a package here from Mr. Trotsky. Any Mr. Trotsky's signature? He goes into the room with him. Lays the article down in front of Trotsky. Trotsky's reading through the article. The gentleman pulls out an ice pick and drives it straight into the top of Trotsky's skull. somehow they said that he lived till the next day.

I think when they say that, it's like... 12-01. Or you have vital signs. Okay. I think that's more of what it's... Maybe not functioning, but yeah, he's got a pulse still, I guess. Well, and with that, pretty much comes the end of the list. Yeah, he...

Well, for now. But yeah, he got everybody that he needed to. Everybody that was pushed in front of... The end of the OG list. The rise to power list. Yeah. everybody basically that wronged him in a way that he knew them and was affiliated with them,

but they got a better position than him or just still an overall kind of threat to Stalin because he's still putting out all this negative Stalin talk that's making its way back to Russia. Obviously, he's probably crushing it before it gets into the Soviet Union, but there's still that chance that there's going to be an uprising led by Trotsky loyalists. So you wipe out Trotsky,

loyalists probably are going to disperse a little bit. Mm-hmm. All right. So getting back to the start of the Cold War. Well, here's the thing about the Cold War. Not a lot happens. It's why it's called the Cold War. But, and it's not, when I say not a lot happens, not a lot direct conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. But what you do get is you get a lot of proxy wars going on. So in June 20, on June 25th, 1950, Stalin is like, hey, there's this guy that we've been grooming a little bit. named Kim Il-sung. Kim Il-sung. He's now in position of power in North Korea. He pretty much puts him in a position to start the Korean War. And he's already got all this manufacturing for war materials. He starts providing all that kind of shit to them.

And if you haven't listened to our episode on the Korean War, we also cover that too. So you can kind of find out what happens during that conflict and how Stalin has his hand in that for basically starting a, what, three for your conflict? Yeah, I think it was three years. With the United States and the rest of the allies. Was it NATO or the UN at that point? I think it was the UN. NATO is...

That's right. UN is the precursor, whatever it was. Yeah, and then NATO is like a trade group or a different... Something like that. So basically you had the United States backing for the majority of the UN. So within five, six years after the end of World War II, you have through proxy war, Russians and the Americans and allies already at war, in a physical war. Yeah, so we just kind of kept picking.

I'm sure it was the fact that when they divided everything up, they obviously divided Japanese spoils of war up, and that's how we got Korea, where we got Korea, because it was divided with the basically free democratic people in the South. You have communists that are being placed up in the north. What does Stalin love more than communism? spreading communism. So if he can get those...

We can't keep this to ourselves. We can't keep it here. If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. Everybody's got to have a little taste of it. Yeah, he just... There were so many little things that they had done. Excuse me, between, like,

introducing different kinds of currencies in West Germany that kind of screwed up his spending in East Germany. a lot of manipulation and kind of chess pieces bouncing back and forth during the Cold War I'm sure we'll just do a Cold War episode

because it was very... Just talking of the espionage even talking about like the shit that happened in Berlin when the wall was up and the crossing over and everything so the Soviets actually by the time that Korea had started

they actually had the atom bomb or the nuclear bomb too so August 29th 1949 is when the Soviet or the USSR exploded its own atomic bomb. Which was probably a real bad day in Great Britain.

Oh, yeah. They weren't pumped about that. When the fucking Geiger counter started going off and they started to take the relation. Fuck! But, so yeah, so in the 50s, Stalin basically turns his attention. You know, who's he fighting right now? It's kind of a cold war.

He's not really fighting outside his country too much, but, oh, some shit's got to be going wrong inside Russia, right? We're still having problems. You know, people still aren't super happy under this whole communism. thing. Who do you think is the fault for that? Gotta be the Jewish people, right? It's always been the Jewish people. I want to do one goddamn episode where we do Europe or somewhere over there where it doesn't come down to the Jewish people.

I swear to God, it's the common... We have not had good luck to this point, unfortunately. And every single time they get blamed for just crazy shit. And this one had started where it was two of Stalin's kind of higher up allies that had gotten sick and they both died. and somehow through that Stalin convinced himself that since both the doctors were Jewish doctors

that they had done it intentionally to try to so dissent basically in Russia and in the Soviet Union by killing these two high up people and it just started him down this path of which is called the doctor's purge

and I think we touched on this before if everything there hasn't been like a time where it's just been nothing going on. Everything has always, like you said, he thrives in chaos.

So from the start of his rise, there was never a lull of something not going on where there was something to draw attention away from all of the internal problems that could be strictly just the fault of Stalin. And maybe when things got to that point where he started hearing murmurings

and everything like that, he was just like, okay, we got to invent another enemy or we got to invent another crisis. Got to be another scare. Got to keep these people on their toes instead of looking at what we're doing. Yep. Yeah, I could totally see that being just the reason behind everything that's going on as far as all the people that he'd blamed before in the purge.

And this doctor's purge that's coming up where he just basically starts turning on every, I guess it was mostly the Jewish doctors, but it was. was kind of just doctors as a whole. He was blaming people for penicillin being shipped into the USSR by these doctors from capitalist countries. So they were working with the capitalist. There was the desire for the Jewish population to have their state formed in Israel after World War II. Oh, that's right. Yep.

And he felt that that was a slap in the face because there, independence. Yeah, their independence was basically a betrayal of the Soviet Union because they didn't want to be communist. So before he dies, which luckily is coming up very soon, he had actually signed off on plans for four essentially concentration camp slash gulags that were in the east of Siberia. And he had earmarked it for political dissidents and anybody that was caused. political strife in the USSR, which at that point in time, he had wiped out enough of them

that there really wasn't too much of that going on in the country. Well, and the thing, too, is there's just this, I don't know if there's just this constant supply of death going on. So even just kind of jump back to the end of World War II, I know we got away from that for a second, but just in World War II alone, 27 Soviet people were killed. 8.7 of them being in the military. 27 million. Yeah.

8.7 million of those were in the military. 19 million were civilians. And so, yeah, so after the war, he had the NKVD, basically. They were ordered to catalog the scale of destruction. And it was established that 700, over 1,700 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages had been destroyed. So you not only have that, how much unrest and from the destruction and trying to, because as part of the winning side, they had to get reparations from Germany and everything like that. But on that scale of destruction where essentially the breadbasket of your country,

because fucking Siberia is probably not growing too much shit. So the area between Germany and Russia that was kind of decimated by Barbarossa and the war, that's going to take a while to fucking recover. especially those towns and villages and getting people back in there to kind of like run that kind of stuff so between that time kind of how we're saying like he has to turn his attention

to somebody else you probably have shit being real fucking bad and murmurings of like this kind of sucks well not to mention all of the war reparations that Germany had to pay after World War II were going to these places that

Russia had claimed as their their area So he's collecting the reparations for Poland and everywhere else around. And not using them in Poland. Yeah, no. He's using them strictly to fund his own endeavors. So these places definitely probably you could see that there would be uprisings there, which may have been what these concentration camps were for.

Well, and even between, they said there was another major famine that took place right after World War II from like 46 to 47. it was a combination of like drought, the war, bad harvest in 46, and they still didn't have down this system of like these, you know, community farms or whatever they called them. And there was still just horrible fucking management for food procurement. And especially in a situation where you have the entire world being torn apart by this war for the last five, six years, you're probably not going to be getting a lot of aid from anywhere. especially when he's like hey we need aid he's like you fucking won you're getting all this money from all these other countries fucking fix your shit so it had to have been

because it it's such a jump and I know it's saying that well like Solomon was crazy and all that kind of stuff he was sadistic and a maniac but like from an unhinged like crazy standpoint I think that's where there's a differentiation a differentiation

between him and Hitler is like Stalin was basically just like almost strategic in the sense of like they're kind of looking to me funny like i should probably give them someone else to look at and just fabricated something because it's such a jump to just be like who has anything happened in the news well these two guys died there were some jewish doctors that botched their or that could have not performed the surgery career he's like perfect it's all their fault and then by extension he was able to go not just after the doctors and everything but like you said with these concentration camps that started to be built in these prisoner camps

it looked very, very similar to what was happening during Hitler's shit. Yeah, and he had, I think, kind of a predisposition. Trotsky was a Jewish gentleman. I forgot his real name. Lev, the one that he blamed the guy's death on, had a Jewish father. Oh, Kavanaugh? Yeah, Lev Kavanaugh. He had a Jewish father.

So it's, he had enough breadcrumbs. Yeah, there was a general distrust. there already. Of doubt. So luckily, um, father time caught up with him. He,

he had, if there's anyone even more undefeated than generals, January and February. It's all the time. And I don't know if he had ever really planned to get old. Like, I don't know if that was ever a part of the game.

If he ever had a follow-up plan or a contingency? Yeah, he just, he thought that. Definitely wasn't his kids. No, no, definitely wasn't, uh, Yakov, that's for sure. But as time catches up with him, just like it catches up with

everybody, March 1st, 1953, he's just hanging out in his study alone. So he's 72, right? He's born 78? Yep. Yeah, 72. Okay. So getting up there. I got to think in Russian term, 72 is a very long life. Not if you're living large, baby. Yeah, again, for the and not for me. He's just hanging out in his study alone, has a heart attack, and since he was so irritable and people really weren't too pumped to interrupt him, just based upon his loose nature,

he laid in his study for a whole day before somebody found him. And it wasn't like it was this incident was probably unforeseen how quickly it happened, but even since like 1950 and everything his health had started to kind of like decline and it got to the point where even during like

meetings and get-togethers he would have these like get-togethers with like you know leadership and everything like that in the country where he would he never drank I think you drink tea or something but he would have everyone else drinking and so like

a man that will send you to a gulag for fucking looking him the wrong way I don't know if you really want to be drunk in it. But it got to the point where he was almost like nonverbal in his communication. And I'm not sure if he did that for fear of like saying something stupid or kind of showing his hand of being mentally not all there. Yeah. And showing weakness enough to be like like the, you know, the lion that gets too old and the young one and is able to take him out and take over the pride. He felt that if he said something that it would show weakness. He got to doing like hand gestures. I don't think it was weakness. I think it's that same thing that you've been talking.

talking about where he always has to blame somebody else. So if somebody misinterprets a hand signal compared to what he's saying. He'd like take a fist and like hit it to his teeth and they just interpret that it like he didn't. He's like, so you want us to beat him? Yeah. Beat them. Okay.

Sounds good. And he'd probably be like, yeah, thumbs up. That way, if anything backfired, he could say, well, you just didn't understand what I was saying to you. I didn't tell you to do that. What are you going off of? I put my hand to my mouth. I was stifling a cough.

But yeah, so leading up to that basically leads up to the heart attack. and yes, he had created such a culture of fear around him that people knew he was in the fucking study and still didn't go in to disturb him for what, two days while he sat there in a puddle of his own piss? I think it was a whole day when they found him to all of his pushback and reprisal against doctors.

They were like, we're not going to go check on him. We don't want to treat him Because if they had done anything wrong and he somehow lived through it, they were going to be killed too. So everybody just kind of hung back. Yeah, even if you saved him in order to cover up the information about the weakness of the fucking dear leader, it's going to be like, you know what he'd like to offer his sincere condolences. Now we're going to shoot you in the back of the head.

There's just zero that you can do about it. Finally, they work up the courage to go in there. There was some wild story about a cleaning lady that was in his palace. that came over. I see some surly little Russian maid coming in there and she's like,

get out of the way I need to clean and he's dead, he's dead. Yeah, she like lifts him up to try to mop to piss up

underneath him or something like that. They end up getting him onto a couch. They start feeding him and trying to get better.

They put leeches on him. Apparently that was still a fucking thing. And I mean, I guess that shows you It's Russia, buddy.

I feel like I don't think but I don't think a Jewish doctor is going to tell you to put leeches. I think they basically

had to find somebody and they were like, what do we do? And the last doctor they could drum up had been out of practice for 30 years. He's like, we used to use leeches. So maybe leeches for a heart attack? Let's try leeches. Did you try breathing into his mouth? Maybe startling him a little bit. Maybe he's just like do we have any penicillin? No, we won't import it. It's evil. But yeah. So finally, after four days of that, he dies in Moscow of a possible super-rebral hemorrhage, regardless or not, I don't think he was going to be recovering from that.

I don't think the leeches were going to be enough to bring him around. No. No, it just sent shockwaves throughout the Soviet Union because everybody that benefited under him just loved him. They thought that he was the man that brought the Soviet Union up with everybody else in the world. Do you think anybody that... really the people that would have a problem with him are dead. True. And there's a lot of them that are dead.

So I think it's like, oh, the Soviet Union mourned the loss. Do you think they mourn the loss in the same way that like, you cry now? Everyone has to be shown crying to the picture that you're forced to have in your fucking house. I mean, they said that during the demonstrations in Red Square, when they were bringing his body through, there was something like 500 people that were crushed. Yes. killed. That's how serious this whole thing was and how badly everybody wanted to see and pay their respects to him. There were people dying while they were mourning this dude's loss. He just, he kind of became like, if you were going to do anything artistically in the Soviet Union, you had to pay homage to Stalin in some way.

He had to be in all the writings. He had to be in all the books, the movies, anything like that had to be some reference to Stalin. on the whole entire time. And after that, the next guy that came in charge, everybody was really worried because Stalin had been telling them for a long time and got it in their heads that once Stalin goes,

probably to try to preserve himself, once Stalin goes, the House of Cards Falls. Yeah. Everybody underneath it's going to fuck it up. It ends with me. Uh-huh. That's a...

I'm taking it all with me. Guarantee. That's what he said, the whole entire time. Um, they finally, he succeeded by a guy named Nikita Khrushchev. And Cruzchev is like the first one

to try and break the cult of personality that Stalin had built up and was talking about how he doesn't need to be idolized the way that he is and he wasn't the greatest person alive and just basically tried to turn around a lot of the Stalinism that was in the Soviet Union because A, I think Khrushchev probably couldn't live up to what Stalin had done because for all intents of purposes, Stalin was an awful evil, terrible, terrible, terrible man that killed millions upon millions

of people. But this is the worst part he got it fucking done. He brought them into industrial age technology. They said he came to power when they were using the horse and plow and brought them into like planes and cars. Yeah. Like I just, it's so

he was not a good person but there is a way that you can look at and be like, damn, that's sort of impressive what he did. And then you hear how he got it done. Never mind. Yeah. Not good. Well, when he died, he got the linen treatment.

He gave himself the full linen package. So his body was embalmed. It was a place for display in the Moscow House of Unions for three days. And that was where the crowds we were talking about were so big that there was that huge crush. So at the, and this wasn't even the funeral. The funeral was like on the 9th of March. He was laid to rest in Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square. He said hundreds of thousands attended.

And then there was the Chinese government. a period of official mourning for his death. And then in a weird juxtaposition, I know, but in a weird juxtaposition to that, at the same time, there was a memorial, not at the same time, but like, also there was a memorial service in his honor that was held at St. George the Martyr in London.

So, and I mean, I don't know if that was done. I had to read that a couple times. I mean, like, wow, like, even after all, like the cold, like, the shit, like, Because the Cold War still goes on. Yeah.

That doesn't end. But like after all this shit that like, do you think it was just a token thing is like, oh man. Like are we going to be petty if we don't do this? Because like technically he did contribute and be a part of the allies. So if we don't do this, it's like disrespectful. Like I think it had to do more so than that than the people of letting being like, we should have a memorial for him.

No, it was 100% them having to show respect for. for a guy who it's tough to admit but we were far enough away the U.S. was far enough away that we're just like no we're good yeah we don't feel like we need we're good thanks are you guys doing it just

sign our name on the card put our name on the card yeah but it's so tough to look at Stalin and not think the butterfly effect again if Trotsky was the one that came out on top and Stalin had fallen earlier

and Trotsky was the guy that was in charge of all of Russia, all of the Soviet Union during World War II. Does the non-aggression pact happen with Germany? Do they attack the Soviet Union?

Does Trotsky change World War II enough? Does he just align with Hitler because it's sort of in the same vein? I'll play the game with you. No. I think what ends happening because I think one thing kind of led to another series of events that Stalin was a part of. So, yeah, you have the non-aggression pact, but you also had Stalin having to ignore many obvious things.

And then you, I don't know if you run into him even invading Finland. If it's Trotsky or someone else, because that was all Stalin. Like if you don't invade Finland and you don't show your hand that you have a weak hand, that's going to be a deterrent right there. Well, and then you also back down to they might not have looked so bad in the military because Trotsky wouldn't have killed all those high-ranking military members. Yeah. So they would have been more of a power. But at the same time, I don't know if the USSR would have been up to snuff enough militarily

without all that industrialization to fend off the Germans. Because you have to think that all those factories that were built and run during Stalin's time, wouldn't have been there as much to prepare. Yeah, it wouldn't have been such an extreme shift over into industrialization. It might have been a little more gradual. Yeah, it's endlessly. You could do it all day

and just think about all these little twists and turns. But Stalin, being a man who killed so many people, it's, we've been comparing him to Hitler the whole entire time. And I heard this, and I think you did too, and it's kind of a sentiment that sort of wrapped it in a good bow for me is Stalin has the body count Stalin killed many more millions than Hitler did

at the same time though Stalin ran a country for a very long time and if Hitler had had the same amount of time there's no telling how many bodies that he would have had under him yeah it's it's kind of I think we discussed this last episode two

where you're comparing two things together and because one was so evil but also was defeated and was the cause of all this kind of stuff, then you're kind of like, well, he's the worst. And then you look at Stalin, whereas, like, you know, Hitler is responsible for all of the deaths. You could almost say directly responsible for all of the deaths in World War II.

So you can pin that all on him. For Russia and for Stalin, you can, of course, pin all of the deaths for, you know, I don't know, it's a shared total for the Soviet soldiers killed and everything like that. Yeah. Probably some of the civilians as well. But you have this body count from like the famines and all of this stuff that was non, was not caused by active war, but was caused by poor decisions for Stalin. Just even with the details that we have, and I think me and you kind of, I don't think we touched on it on here,

but if all of the factual information came out and we had everything laid there in front of us for both Hitler and Stalin, I don't think there would be a contest between Hitler and Stalin. The motives are different and the motives are more evil in one way or another, where Stalin, I think, was just a machine. It's like, this is what communism requires to survive. It wasn't saying, like, I hate, he had people where he was like, I hate you and we need to get rid of you, but to lesser of an extent of just like, oh, well, we need to get rid of you for this.

So no sweat. We're just going to do that. It's like he didn't see who he didn't. didn't care. He was indiscriminate almost of who he needed to get rid of, whereas Hitler was very focused, but... Well, Hitler would kill people, but at the same time,

round those guys up, we're going to do experiments on them, round those guys up. But I'm telling you right now, Stalin did that too. The only reason we know... Russians did experiments on people? On the Germans and shit like that? Oh, fuck yes. Really? Okay. Yes. But it's it's kind of like we talked about before.

We only know as much about all the atrocities that the Nazis and Hitler, because they lost. And because all of that information was seized and gathered and interrogated and during trials, all of this was, you know, laid out to bear. If Hitler had never lost, you would never know of any of the bad things that are happening. We can directly relate this to all of the shit that has happened in the United States. If you really go back, if we were ever beaten, all of the bad stuff, we were. did would be able to come out during all of the interior it would be much more visible about like the native american atrocities and all that kind of stuff because a little bit of like you lose once

and that's when all of your weaknesses are going to start and all of the shit that you've done gets pulled out had stolen at any point the cold war turns into you know the fucking hot war and it's world war three, but it doesn't go nuclear. There's battles. Stalin ends up dying and is replaced by another, you know, friendly, friendly, Garayas regime is what basically is. You're going to have all of the stuff so there's someone to blame for all of those atrocities. No one else is going to take, that's alive, is going to take the blame for those. So you're going to have all of the information and all the dirty secrets on Stalin coming out. And especially where you have him in control of the Soviet Union for,

in almost complete control for, I think it was like 30 years. Oh, for him? For him? Yeah. When you have, I mean, he had 30 years to do all this shit. Hitler did his stuff in fucking what, 9 or 10? Yeah.

This guy had 30 years stuff. And during that 30 year time period, never once lost control of the forms of like media and he controlled the flow of information, what information was released

and what information wasn't released. He was able to go ahead and stamp out dissension even before it had a chance to get a foothold. So the only thing that comes out of this, even some of this shit comes out because it was so widespread and so big that you couldn't help but notice it. What was the stuff that was kept on?

Can you imagine getting access to look at all the NKVD records that were never, ever shown or never made known. It would exactly like you were talking about, if all of our FBI and CIA records were shown, there'd be some shit in there. And you go back to like how many,

if you look at the number just during like the initial invasion for Barbarossa, I think they said that during the initial invasion and after like they pushed back and stopped and halted the Nazis, there was like situations where like 100,000 like German soldiers would be taken prison. what did we talk about was the number of the guys that made at home was that 80,000? Oh, I think it was like 4,000 made at home. Okay, it was something super small and disproportionate, sorry.

But yeah, it was like, so what kind of fucking atrocities do you think are going on for like war crimes there? But you don't get charged with war crimes when you fucking win. Yeah. And I think part of the other reason it gives them covered too is kind of what you were alluding to, never losing but never being like taken over. Because for terrible things. Never being exposed. Yeah, for terrible reasons.

The USSR didn't break up until like the early 90s. So the Soviet Union, which I had no idea that it had gone up until the 90s, but you have all this time and all these years between when Stalin dies and the Soviet Union

falling to where there's just a cover up of all the information that never gets leaked out. because the Soviet Union in the 80s isn't going to go back and be like, yeah, Stalin was a bad guy. Yeah. They're still trying to portray the union. Anybody that was tied to Stalin, just like during the Nuremberg trials and everything like that, it wasn't just like, oh, well, Hitler's dead. And you guys all say you were just doing what Hitler was doing.

So you guys are all free to go. Yeah. There were so many people that were, you know, arrested and tried for war crimes. Had Stalin been deposed or exposed for any of this kind of stuff, there was no one there that didn't have skin in the game? those were the people that had the ability to probably expose him for stuff. But all of those people who would expose him would also be exposing themselves and would be essentially accessories to it and charged as well. So a lot of it had to be self-preservation. It would be really interesting to see.

I think that for all the atrocities that we do know about, you are right, there's definitely some shit that we just probably couldn't fathom. Yeah, it's got to be. and just the stuff we know makes him the second just fucking most horrible fucking guy it's fucking crazy and it's so crazy that so much of it

was inflicted on his own people the majority the bulk of it was inflicted on his own people it was almost like they were his just kind of his pawns and he could do whatever he wanted with him and that disregard for any sort of human emotion And he's operating based on a political system for the good of the people.

But they're his biggest fucking victim. I think it just shows you like what desperation. We talked about the same thing in the Hitler episodes is that when things get to such a horrible extent, you're willing to go ahead. You get more desperate to look for ideas that you can cling on to or try to work with because it just seems, it has to be better than what's happening right now. And so with Stalin, I think that maybe just life in the Soviet Union as a whole was just at that point under the czar that they were like, we just can't, anything sounds better than this. It doesn't matter what it is.

And people were there at the right time who were able to go in seize power. And this guy just happened to be in the midst of them and be the fucking most cunning of them all. And then if you're living in the city and you're drinking all. the Kool-Aid and your life is getting better as industrialization is growing. It's going to be a lot harder to be like, yeah, well, it was bad before and now it's good, but this guy's really bad. And it's like, no, my general way of life does seem to be better than the one before. I hear no, I see no.

Yeah, I don't live out where all those people just ate each other and died in the, you know, out of the farms. I'm here. I have a factory job. I have a good life. I'm not going to try to raise any sort of suspicion towards this guy that changes my world. Yeah. Oh

Fucking crazy Crazy dude Yeah It's nice to To end the year on something That I think we were both Kind of excited to do And

To know that 2024 is just around the corner And we got a lot more Of this stuff going It's just It's nice to be able to put a bow On just another really Terrible person

Yeah Yeah I think we do We do shit bags good Yeah I think we do these shipbags justice of telling of their shipbaggery. Yeah, I agree with that. Well, guys, have a great new year.

Stay safe out there. We'll see you in 2024. Sounds good. Later, guys. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button. Follow us.

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