Affentitten

And believe it or not, I spent the small hours of last night propping up the bar with a Russian history grog. His name was not Felicity though.

LOts of good comments here. Thanks to all. I am now off to a conference for a few days, locked in 4 star resort with a horde of 22 year old Public Relations chicks called Felicity or Jemma. So if I don't add to this thread in the next few days, it's because the Felicitys didn't have any good insight into Stalinist management for me to write here.

I didn't get a choice. I've been called in because of (perceived) expertise to fill a gap in someone else's lecture plan. I guess Il Duce is not quite as important, given his realtively short war leadership compared to the other four. Japan of course is a far more mixed bag given the situation of Emperor and the more diluted military/political leadership. Personally I think I could lose FDR but the American contribution can't be ignored and I think the dynamic between he, Stalin and Churchill is important.

And basically it's a 50 minute lecture. So that means roughly 10 minutes on each guy plus a few general comments.

It does have to do with leadership 'style'. Note this is not a history lecture as such. It's more about leadership and the way that these men managed their war efforts.

I mean 41-45. Like the kind of Hollywood idea that people would be in with Stalin, he'd ask them why such and such an attack had failed and they'd be dragged out and shot if the answer wasn't satisfactory. Or dragged out and shot on just on personal whim. He has the reputation of being a psychopath. Was this real and was it present in his leadership of the Great Patriotic War?

How much of a reality is that view that everyone standing around Stalin was in mortal peril and terrified for their life? Is there a basis for that "management by fear" reputation?

Not to mention the home audience.

Curtin, Menzies etc are covered in different lectures, not given by myself. It's an undergrad unit on "Political Leadership", so WW2 is just one week of the semester. There is some great material coming out here and some viewpoints I hadn't considered before. My favourite aspect of Churchill is in all those memos and stuff that fill the appendices of his The Second World War volumes. How, whilst grappling with major strategic and economic policy decisions he still found time to send correspondence about whether troops in Italy were getting supplies of beer or how many fishing trawlers were operting in the Irish Sea. And all beautifully phrased.

Anyway, the main point is that the Royal Navy has once again trounced Johnny Frog. (Slightly more damage on the garlic guzzler boat.)

Definitely. Interesting that Hitler was so paranoid but totally blind when it came to his old Munich cronies like Goering, Himmler etc.

Very interesting. I did not know that about Churchill in the 1930s. Exactly why this was the place to post! Does anyone know if besides Churchill, any of the other leaders pulled a trigger in WW2? I know that Winnie made a couple of trips to the very front of the line to squeeze a few symbolic shots off. Obviously FDR didn;t. but what about Hitler and Stalin?

So I have to give a lecture to undergrads on "Leadership in WW2". For the sake of time and clarity I will only be able to cover the main 4: Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and FDR. I want to compare/contrast the four in terms of leadership style, realtionship with the military, relationship with "the Establishment" of their country, personal military experience, details man / big picture, complete bat**** insanity etc. I'm looking for any tips or input. Not because I'm ignorant, but because I know that the people on this forum will make my lecture better than it would be solo. Also if anyone can come up with some interesting or funny quotes on these men, particualrly from their military subordinates, it would be a nice touch for the slides.

Bound to be. They did the same to some of the personnel helping Iraq with their reactor in the 1980s.

Well I would venture to suggest that it would be pretty hard to sell a power grid to someone if they were up for unlimited liability now and forever more.

Indeed the Saudis have far more to be worried about. Nobody likes them anyway, and Iran is just a short boat trip away.

Mrs Affentitten is from rural France. The bedrock economy of the farmers there is not growing anything. Or rather, just growing enough to qualify as a farmer. So plenty of farms with a dozen cattle, an apple tree and one small paddock of canola. The other paddocks are paid for annually by the EU to do nothing. Except the farmers rent them out anyway as camping sites in the summer and caravan storage lots in the winter.

Mrs Affentitten works for Roche. So I sent her to work with the news clipping to see if they're planning on joining up.

It now seems likely that the most costly fire in terms of lives may have been started by some sort of power line discharge.

No. President Ahmadinjehad has called for 'wiping Israel off the map'. You may be interested to know that he doesn't have the constitutional power to do that. Or to sanction any use of external military force at all. That power rests with the Supreme Leader, who is a far more cautious and less bellicose cat. Your impressions are based on the typical conflation and ignorance generally shown by people with sod all understanding of the Middle East.

Regarding the 'patent pool', it's a bit like me donating my 6 year old PC to charity. Sure, it does help them, but I'm hardly giving much away. They're talking about IP on 'neglected' drugs, which probably means stuff where their patent is running out, has been superseded by a new drug or is just plainly not that profitable anyway. It's all good, but hardly worth a sainthood. When it comes down to it, there is more money to be made in developing the next migraine or back pain medication for the Western world than there is in flogging a cure for TB in a country where people couldn't pay for it anyway.

I rest my case.

Because it fairly much matches the rhetoric that came from the Bush administration and Israel. Of course, they don't deal with 'evil people' though. Rhetoric is rhetoric. And if there is one great commonality with the USA and the MIddle East it's in the way that over-the-top rhetoric holds such an important place in politicking to the local electorate. Taking at face value Ahm-in-a-jihad's tub thumping about wiping out Israel is just as pointless as believing that Obama is capable of putting "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

WTF? Iran invaded Israel in 1948 and 1967? :eek:

Good story and fairly indicative of others I have read. The family is lucky they had a dad who kept his head and kept them all alive. There has also been some great laconic interviews with Steve Irwin types describing their half an hour at the centre of a firestorm. "I realised me sandals had melted and I thought 'Bugger it. This is gettin' serious.'"