Wednesday, December 17, 2008

marxist nerd adult comedy here

from an email list i won't name because i don't know who would or wouldn't want their identity revealed. and Human Subjects is the order of the day, people.
>From Engels: "Hungary, Poland and Russia are the only countries in Europe where invasion is impossible in winter."

Wow. If only Hitler had read some more Engels!

-(Poster 1).

^^^
(Poster 2): Actually, I'm kind of glad he didn't (smile).
at

19 comments:

  1. wobblieDecember 17, 2008 at 1:50 PM

    To be fair, Operation Barbarossa began in June. It was the failing to win a quick and decisive victory, thus getting bogged down in the Russian winter, that ultimately did them in.

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  2. lex dexterDecember 17, 2008 at 2:09 PM

    you really do rock the military history, huh, wobs?

    the Red Army freaks me out.

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  3. wobblieDecember 17, 2008 at 2:11 PM

    I recently finished Deutscher's bio of Stalin, so the topic of the invasion of Russia is still pretty fresh in my mind.

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  4. lex dexterDecember 17, 2008 at 2:26 PM

    oh my god, Deutscher's Stalin bio! was it great?

    i envy you, you dude-who's-not-in-grad-school, you!

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  5. RKDecember 17, 2008 at 2:26 PM

    Weren't there some issues with rough terrain (mountains) that contributed to the inability to exact that swift victory?

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  6. gabbagabbaheyDecember 17, 2008 at 3:03 PM

    or, you know, he could have (and presumably did) read about Napoleon doing the same thing.

    I wouldn't really have considered Engels a 'go-to guy', to use your parlance, on military history.

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  7. wobblieDecember 17, 2008 at 3:24 PM

    lips: The Stalin bio pales relative to the Trotsky volumes, but it was still an engaging read. It's hard to give a fair hearing to the 20th Century's totalitarian par excellence, but if there's one person who could do it, it's Deutscher. The copy I found was completed prior to Stalin's death, so I'm curious to know if there's an updated version. Bonus fun fact - did you know David Horowitz, back in his "radical" days, wrote a bio of Deutscher?

    rk: The real thing which impeded the Germans was trying to achieve an decisive victory over a front which stretched some 2000 miles, combined with the German military grossly underestimating the capacity of the Red Army. Eastern Europe and European Russia is, geographically speaking, a prime invasion route - pretty much flat, which is why to this day Russia freaks out about having NATO "at its doorstep," so to speak.

    GGH: check and mate.

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  8. wobblieDecember 17, 2008 at 3:25 PM

    Eastern Europe and European Russia are... jeebus, and I call this my native tongue.

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  9. lex dexterDecember 17, 2008 at 3:31 PM

    wobs,

    i live for nuggets like that Horowitz nugget. it's amazing how many former Trotskyists have drifted rightward, or in Hitchens' case, just-plain-weird-ward. this is also true of the "New York" school of abstract expressionist painters, and of that school's great theorist, Clement Greenberg.

    the last issue of the New Left Review features a former Althusser student and leading light in contemporary political philosophy named Alain Badiou who tracks a similar trend of former French "Maoists" who have come to support Sarkozy.

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  10. lex dexterDecember 17, 2008 at 3:33 PM

    gabba,
    Engels' being an unlikely military strategist was the inspiration of the original (quoted) post, i think.

    Poor Engels. Even _the Origins of Marriage, Family and the State_ (or whatever it's called) hasn't gotten much play in the U.S. since first-wave socialist-feminism.

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  11. wobblieDecember 17, 2008 at 3:37 PM

    Nor is his The Condition of the Working Class in England acknowledged as one of the classic public health texts.

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  12. WilburDecember 17, 2008 at 5:23 PM

    Oooh, military history? Awesome. Pop quiz: name a famous WWII Axis or Red Army commander. I'll go first: Zhukov. Battle of Stalingrad.

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  13. RKDecember 17, 2008 at 5:28 PM

    Heinrich Himmler-- Schutzstaffel and Gestapo commander.

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  14. WilburDecember 17, 2008 at 5:32 PM

    Oh damn, RK! You went for the THROAT, DAWG! Himmler was a pig farmer before the war.

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  15. wobblieDecember 17, 2008 at 10:14 PM

    Aren't we macabre today! Goering, Luftwaffe.

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  16. lex dexterDecember 17, 2008 at 10:59 PM

    [just an aside - i cannot believe Dave3544 hasn't yet entered the fray. this is his wheelhouse, too.]

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  17. wobblieDecember 17, 2008 at 11:49 PM

    Really? I never figured Dave as much of a WWII man. But then again, there's really not much to argue about in that regard, eh?

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  18. dave3544December 18, 2008 at 1:15 PM

    The Desert Fox.

    http://www.tisinc99.com/wwi049396.html

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  19. WilburDecember 18, 2008 at 5:51 PM

    Nice one, Dave...I was wondering when Rommel was going to get some props around here. He was - at least to some effect - involved in the plot against Hitler, ya know...Forced to take cyanide pills for it, too.

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