GIVE THEM HELL, PUTIN...

Mutley: “Well you know a lot about politics but unless you are suggesting a
cataclysmic nuclear exchange then in a military sense the Russians lose every
time. ...If we are going to talk about like weapons and war and stuff then I
will win by the way - you have wandered into my territory.”

Nor is all this this about military conflicts, Mutley. It’s just all about adding fuel
to the fire. Besides, theories of Nato’s state-of-the-art weaponry are a weak
basis for discounting the power of endurance and will. And here the Russian
Army excels.

Let’s face it, in 1941 it was expected the Red Army would collapse in a
matter of weeks against the overwhelming power of the Wehrmacht divisions.
Barely two years later they were driving the Panzers back, having contained over
250 German divisions, while the combined Allied armies up to the invasion of
Sicily, had only faced the few vastly undersupplied divisions of Rommel's Afrika
Korps.

Of course, there was Hamburg in late July of 1943, when the
RAF annihilated more people in one stroke than would perish in Britain during
the entire war.

You may well think, then, that the tide turned at El Alamein. Or that
Britain’s principal ally, the US, supplied the major military
muscle for putting paid to the Nazi armoury. But the Russians - with no concern
for Allied pretensions - are absolutely adamant that the actual rout came in the
Soviet Union, the real turning-point of the war. On 19 November 1942,
simultaneously with the arrival of winter, the Soviet counteroffensive had
began. It resulted in the encirclement of the German Sixth Army, parts of the
Fourth Army, and a number of Romanian auxiliary brigades - a total of 250,000
soldiers. The greatest defeat the Wehrmacht had yet sustained. With that, the
high tide of German military victories had come and gone. Hitler’s vast
mechanized war-machine in the East had not only been bled dry in the horrendous
winter battles but was about to be turned back. By the end of January 1943 the
Russians had substantially defeated the invading host. The collapse of the Axis
alliance followed as a matter of course. For their own part the Americans are
deservedly conscious of the competing burden of the Pacific theatre of war,
while D-Day, like a culminating fireworks display, has been built up as the
decisive moment.

Again, I add but one word: Bollocks!

What is never acknowledged is that without the Red Army grinding into
dust 150 crack Nazi divisions, the Allies would never have landed in Normandy.

Mutley: “If Russia attacks NATO it signs its own death warrant.“

Are you quite sure we are here talking about the same multi-national
Nato force, Mutley, that is struggling to keep the hapless mule-skinners of
Afghanistan from kicking their arse. Or are you thinking of England, a nation
where children are outnumbered by pensioners clamouring for their heating money
- while Russia turns off fuel supplies? Germany? - there is military history, it
is true, but little heart, and the French lost theirs at Dien Bien Phu. Italy -
to them at least goes the honour of the last successful cavalry charge in
military history. Out into the fields they went, on 24 August 1942 , on the
banks of the River Don, with no objective in mind save for a famous victory and
personal oblivion...

I, for one, feel perfectly capable of judging events on their own merit regardless of being accused of supporting the Evil Empire. Then, of course, I could muse about the cold war actually being a battle between hostile conglomerates. But I guess what I really mean is, that I can’t stand
political nancy-boys claiming the moral high ground while talking rhetorical
gibberish.

Over to you Mutley...