64 Years ago, Yesterday... (Warning some graphic material)

reply to post by silo13

Top U.S. military leaders recognized Japan’s growing desperation, prompting several to later insist that the use of atomic bombs was not needed to secure victory. Those who believed that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was morally repugnant and/or militarily unnecessary included: Admiral William Leahy, General Dwight Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, General Curtis LeMay, General Henry Arnold, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, Admiral Ernest King, General Carl Spaatz, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey.

These men are all soldiers who's job it is to fight wars, of course they disagreed, after the fact, with dropping the Bomb...it put them out of work.

Please refer to all the links on my previous posts, as I hardly ever post info without a link.





[edit on 14-8-2009 by Oatmeal]

reply to post by Jezus

That is simply historically inaccurate. Japan was already attempting to surrender.

The surrender of Japan in August 1945 brought World War II to a close. By August 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy effectively ceased to exist, and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. While publicly stating their intent to fight on to the bitter end, Japan's leaders at the Supreme War Council (the "Big Six") were privately making entreaties to the Soviet Union to mediate peace on terms favorable to the Japanese. The Soviets, meanwhile, were preparing to attack the Japanese, in fulfillment of their promise to the Americans and the British made at the Yalta Conference.

The reason we hit Nagasaki was to convince them we had more than one bomb because their scientists knew creating the bomb would be difficult and limiting. Even after Nagasaki, another six days went by before the surrender. Why? We have learned since that their military leaders tried to convince the Emperor and Japan's civilian leaders to fight to the bitter end. The battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa demonstrated this attitude. When we invaded Okinawa, the island contained 117,000 defending troops. Before its final capture, 114,000 of them had died (according to U.S. Army reports, as many as 140,000 civilians also died during the three-month battle). To surrender was a disgrace to them; and the closer we got to Japan itself, the harder they fought.

www.mercurynews.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

The Japanese military leaders were not considering surrender. They were preparing a last-ditch defense of the home islands using old women and children with rocks and clubs if necessary. Only when they realized that the US had the capability of totally annihilating their culture with the atomic bomb (they didn't know we only had two) did they consider surrendering, and even then some of the leaders tried to prevent the Emperor�s surrender message from getting to the US.

www.ww2pacific.com...

wiki.answers.com...

www.bookmice.net...

Historically, it is extremely accurate. The Japanese "negotiations" with the Russians were simply at first to get the Russians to come over to their side. Secondly, if the Russians would not join them in their failed war, could they negotiate an ending to hostilities favorable to Japan, meaning that Japan would keep all or part of the territory they had conquered, that the Japanese Military regime would remain in power, any war crimes trials would be held by the Japanese, and the Emperor would retain his token position. These terms would definitely be refused by the Allied powers, which Russia belonged to, and were against the Potsdam Conference protocols that required unconditional surrender. Not a Conditional, Negotiated, End of Hostilities.

The government of Japan was under the military rule of Hideki Tojo, nicknamed the "Razor." He was a high-ranking general in the Imperial Japanese Army, but acted as Prime Minster for most of the war. Above Tojo was the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito. The Emperor was not interested in continuing the war and asked Tojo to end it. Many high-ranking Japanese government officials did not wish to "lose face" to the Americans. The Code of Bushido did not allow for surrender, and they preferred the nation die in battle without shame. Tojo also tried to negotiate a separate deal from the Soviet Union, but it did not respond to the Japanese requests. The Japanese were unaware that the Americans had broken their military codes. The United States was able to read all of their military and diplomatic messages. This meant that the United States knew exactly what was going on, including the military decisions being made by the Japanese government. It became clear to the United States that Japan was not going to surrender, and would have to be invaded with ground forces.

www.scs.sk.ca...

Audio of Truman's speech...
www.scs.sk.ca...

[edit on 14-8-2009 by Oatmeal]

Even some of what you posted shows that Japan was trying to surrender...

Were the Japanese trying to surrender for months before Hiroshima?

2. `Japan was militarily defeated long before Hiroshima. It had been
trying for months, if not for years, to surrender; and the U.S. had
consistently rebuffed these overtures. A May 5 cable, intercepted and
decoded by the U.S., dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese
were eager to sue for peace. Sent to Berlin by the German ambassador
in Tokyo, after he talked to a ranking Japanese naval officer, it
read:

"Since the situation is clearly recognized to be hopeless, large
sections of the Japanese armed forces would not regard with disfavor
an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard. [7]"

As far as is known, Washington did nothing to pursue this opening.
Later that month, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson almost
capriciously dismissed three separate high-level recommendations from
within the Roosevelt administration to activate peace negotiations.
The proposals advocated signaling Japan that the U.S. was willing to
consider the all-important retention of the emperor system; i.e., the
U.S. would not insist upon "unconditional surrender"[8].'

newsgroups.derkeiler.com...

Originally posted by silo13


The thread topic is USA vaporizing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You don’t like my view point - bully for you - But no call for insults.

No insults intended, so sorry if you feel that way. Your point was that dying in an instant is about the worst way to go, so I guess dying to a bullet is also instant many times, or in a car crash, or any number of ways.

My point is humans can be very evil and those that instantly die in many cases are the lucky ones.

Those bombs were not dropped not to end the war, not to save lives, not to save the Americans from invading Japan.

Those bombs were dropped to prove to Russia the USA was not to be taken lightly, to justify 2 plus billions of dollars spent on making the bombs and so USA could be the *first* in the world to use atomic weapons. But not to *save lives and end suffering*...

Did you bother taking a look at the list of the people who opposed it?

Well assuming the list is real and not propaganda, why did they wait until after the bombs were dropped to disagree? That list is a huge majority of the leaders during the war and THEY were who decided to drop it. You don't become a 4/5 star general and sit in silent protest over something like this. Also if the leaders of our military were all against it who were the ones who felt the need to show Russia our power and who were in the positional power to over ride everyone. You are basically painting a picture that the president was solely acting on his personal agendas against Russia with the cost of 200k lives, and everyone just went a long with it.

As for your thinking it’s a fairy tale - the last moments of our lives being possible the most important?

No I agree with you here...and as I said dying is dying...it is all bad and all equal.

Herbert Hoover wrote to a friend on August 8, 1945, “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

So firebombing numerous cites that indiscriminately killed women and children is better? That is what we were doing before the bombs, and oh the other side did the same...

If Germany got the bomb first how long before London would have been bombed? Everyone was working on it to use as a weapon, it was just us that got it first...as I siad before prior to those bombs there were no lines...



[edit on 14-8-2009 by Xtrozero]

Originally posted by Xtrozero
Or see the devastation that a person like Stalin did to 20 million. He was a rather nervous guy so he would go into a town and line up the total population and kill every third person to keep the up the fear.

I'm no fan of Stalin, and no fan of violence of any sort, but this claim is false AFAIK. If you want to maintain quality of discourse, please refrain from such statements.

reply to post by Jezus

As far as is known, Washington did nothing to pursue this opening. Later that month, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson almost capriciously dismissed three separate high-level recommendations from within the Roosevelt administration to activate peace negotiations. The proposals advocated signaling Japan that the U.S. was willing to consider the all-important retention of the emperor system; i.e., the U.S. would not insist upon "unconditional surrender"[8].'

This was not an "opening". The Japanese wanted a Negotiated Surrender, favorable to Japan. The Emperor system wasn't even important, as the ruling Military faction headed by Tojo, administered the country. They wanted to stay in power, they wanted to keep some of the conquered territory, they wanted to conduct their own war crimes trials, as a sop to the Japanese people they also wanted The Emperor to keep his position. Negotiation, was not an option. The Japanese started their war, and the Allies ended it. Dropping the bomb saved millions of lives on both sides. As pointed out earlier, the battle for Okinawa took many more lives than both bombs together. After the second bomb, the Japanese had no problem with unconditional surrender.

reply to post by Oatmeal

Dropping the bomb saved millions of lives on both sides.

When you can show me proof of this, I might agree, but not you or anyone will ever be able to prove it.
So, it’s irrelevant.
Surmising doesn’t cut it with me.

As pointed out earlier, the battle for Okinawa took many more lives than both bombs together.

And this is supposed to be some kind of justification or reconciliation to using he bomb(s)?

I just don’t get that kind of reasoning, and I hope to God I never will...

Let me stand back though and thank you for your participation in this thread though, you’ve brought a lot to the table for all to think over.

peace

reply to post by buddhasystem

I'm no fan of Stalin, and no fan of violence of any sort, but this claim is false AFAIK. If you want to maintain quality of discourse, please refrain from such statements.

Though Stalin murdered 3 times more people than Hitler, to the doting Roosevelt he remained "Uncle Joe." At Yalta, Stalin even boasted to Churchill he had killed over 10 million peasants. The British-US alliance with Stalin made them his partners in crime. Roosevelt and Churchill helped preserve history's most murderous regime, to which they handed over half of Europe.

www.lewrockwell.com...

The Soviet Union suffered the most casualties during WWII (around 20 million) but lost more people from Stalin’s political purges, famine, and banishment (estimated between 30 and 35 million). The population of the former Soviet Union is actually smaller today than when Stalin took office.

www.enotes.com...

With this understood, the Soviet Union appears the greatest megamurderer of all, apparently killing near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto. Communist China up to 1987, but mainly from 1949 through the cultural revolution, which alone may have seen over 1,000,000 murdered, is the second worst megamurderer. Then there are the lesser megamurderers, such as North Korea and Tito's Yugoslavia.

www.hawaii.edu...

The consensus is about 20 million, though this is likely an understatement. Robert Conquest's book, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (Macmillan 1968), gives this figure based on a number of estimates of executions, including: 1936 to 1938, probably about 1,000,000 1936 to 1950 about 12,000,000 died in the camps 1930-1936: 3,500,000 died in the collectivization The figure may well be higher, since the above does not include Stalin's last three years after 1950, or camp deaths before 1936, such as the Ukrainian famine that Stalin purposely imposed on the region, which killed 5 million from 1932-1934. It also doesn't include the ones killed in Eastern Europe after the Soviet's conquest at the end of World War II. Some believe the figure may be as high as 60 million.

www.answerbag.com...

I would say that 20 million is a conservative estimate, just do a little research...

reply to post by silo13

And this is supposed to be some kind of justification or reconciliation to using he bomb(s)?

Atomic or conventional, it makes no difference what kind were used. The fact is millions would have died in an invasion of Japan. The Japanese surrendered after bomb number two, hence millions of lives saved.

I want to thank you for bringing up the topic. Those who died from the atomic bombings deserve to be remembered, along with the rest of the people, military and civilian, who died in this bloodiest conflict on earth. We can agree to disagree about ending it with atomic bombs, but someone or some country was sure to develop them. I'm just glad that they were used once by the USA to end a bloody conflict, and never used again.

Peace

[edit on 14-8-2009 by Oatmeal]

reply to post by Oatmeal


Oatmeal,
a) again, you didn't present any evidence that "Stalin would go into a town and shoot every third person just to instill fear in the rest". And you didn't present it because it never happened. I took exception to that outrageous and untrue claim, not to the statement of oppressive nature and cruelty of the Stalin's regime.

b) estimates on how many people perished under Stalin's rule vary, in my view 20 million can be on the top side of the range

c) Ukraine famine is a heavily played political card, and for the tragedy that it was, loss of life in Russia was comparable and these two cannot be separated

d) members of my family were oppressed and some actually died in Stalin's era, and for that reason and in the interest of truth, I have no desire to embellish his reputation -- just want to keep conservative outlook on various claims and avoid seeing non-constructive or untrue claims.

Back to the topic... I was in Hiroshima 15 years ago. Eerie...

Was the bombing necessary?

It's fairly clear that at least as many victims would have died in the event of an invasion, so what's there to discuss...



[edit on 14-8-2009 by buddhasystem]

reply to post by silo13

When you can show me proof of this, I might agree, but not you or anyone will ever be able to prove it.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that Olympic alone would cost 456,000 men, including 109,000 killed. Including Coronet, it was estimated that America would experience 1.2 million casualties, with 267,000 deaths.

www.historylearningsite.co.uk...

Admiral William Leahy estimated that there would be more than 250,000 Americans killed or wounded on Kyushu alone. General Charles Willoughby, chief of intelligence for General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific, estimated American casualties would be one million men by the fall of 1946. Willoughby's own intelligence staff considered this to be a conservative estimate.

www.waszak.com...

These are just estimates of American casualties, not including Japanese military or civilians that had been training to defend Japan.

reply to post by buddhasystem

gain, you didn't present any evidence that "Stalin would go into a town and shoot every third person just to instill fear in the rest". And you didn't present it because it never happened. I took exception to that outrageous and untrue claim, not to the statement of oppressive nature and cruelty of the Stalin's regime.

I did not research the "kill every third person" theory, though I have heard it, because right now I don't have time...but, will get back to you on that. Originally I thought you objected to Stalin being called one of the most murderous dictators of all time.

reply to post by Oatmeal


I don't deny that only after the second bomb did Japan agree to a completely unconditional surrender (something rarely ever done).

The fact is that they were trying to surrender long before the drop of the bombs...

The point is the war could have ended without invasion or bombs.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Oatmeal,
a) again, you didn't present any evidence that "Stalin would go into a town and shoot every third person just to instill fear in the rest". And you didn't present it because it never happened. I took exception to that outrageous and untrue claim, not to the statement of oppressive nature and cruelty of the Stalin's regime.

You took exception? First I wanted to personalize his cruelty. That method of random picking by his men was one of many. At times he would wipe a whole town of people off the map with trumped up charges, many would be executed on the spot while so many more would go off to slave labor camps to die.

Google Stalin and random killings and you get 100k hits, so the facts are he did random killings in the Government, Military and communities all based on his fears and to create fear.

So do you disagree that he randomly killed millions to instill fear or are you just disagreeing with one method of 100s of different ways he did it?

as one example...

Random killings

Stalin terrorized Russia with a massive amount of arrests and executions, as well as some show trials. Stalin's police targeted kulaks, members of the anti-Bolshevik armies, priests, and immigrants of Galicia. However, huge members of average citizens were killed because random arrests were also made. This instilled in the people of Russia a fear of the police and recognition of their power. Stalin wanted to create a feeling of insecurity in his people, and wanted them to feel dependent on him. Many of those killed for espionage or treason were not given a trial. Instead they were tortured and their families threatened until they confessed to a crime.

I'm so sorry to get you all fired up over something that doesn't change the intent of my post one bit....



[edit on 14-8-2009 by Xtrozero]

Originally posted by Xtrozero
You took exception? First I wanted to personalize his cruelty.

You don't achieve much by saying something that doesn't have any relation to reality, even if you do it with best of intentions.

That method of random picking by his men was one of many. At times he would wipe a whole town of people off the map with trumped up charges, many would be executed on the spot while so many more would go off to slave labor camps to die.

Which towns were wiped out off the map on his orders? If you can't point to names and locations, it's a case of hot air and no substance.

Since we are in the Hiroshima thread, let me give you an analogy:

"one of American pilots used a telescope to spy Japanese children on the ground, on their way to school, and with a sadistic smile put the crosshairs of the bomb sight on their heads"

The explosion happened anyway, and some children were certainly vaporized, so exaggeration above is immaterial, but sounds just as silly as your fabrication.

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Was the bombing necessary?

That is a hard question to answer. I think we all can agree those two bombs broke any will that Japan had left, and that is saying a lot for their will to fight to the bitter end was extremely strong. Surrender and unconditional surrender can be completely different situations.


Add in the lost of American lives was zero and that factors in a whole another dimension in that America was at this point rather tired of the war effort and the fastest end with the least American deaths without consideration of Japanese casualties would have been their first choice.


With that said I do not think there was another way to completely break their will and end the war quickly with little or no American casualties than to drop the bombs, and so “necessary” might not be the correct word to use, but best choice of a number of different actions might be the best way to discribe it.



[edit on 14-8-2009 by Xtrozero]

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Which towns were wiped out off the map on his orders? If you can't point to names and locations, it's a case of hot air and no substance.

You are kind of side tracking this all since my post was to demonstrate that dying in the flash of a nuke is not the worst way to go, and those two nukes are by far not the worst that humanity have done.

But hey I guess you like to argue it anyways...or should I just say hey you are right the random killings didn't take place nor did Stalin kill 10s of millions to induce fear, and quell his own fear, or maybe I need to devote some time to research just for your satisfaction and I’m not sure why I should, since as you put it, this topic is not about Stalin, so maybe the point is moot.

The term "wipe off the map" is in the sense that he depopulated areas with state induced starvation, deportation to force labor camps where large numbers were killed, direct executions, forced isolations such as loss of property, job etc.

He didn't literally pave over a town and erase the name off a map.

Document Two. Forced Collectivization
Source. Joseph Stalin. Liquidation of the Kulaks.
Background. [Collectivization met with fierce resistance, especially from the more successful peasants called kulaks, who were averse to surrendering their private plots and their freedom in running their households. Their resistance therefore had to be broken, and the Communist party fomented a rural class-struggle, seeking help from the poorer peasants. Sometimes, however, even the poorest peasants sided with the local kulaks. Under these conditions, Stalin did not shrink from unleashing violence in the countryside aimed at the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class." For Stalin the collectivization drive meant an all-out war on what was for him the citadel of backwardness: the peasant tradition.

Document Three. Terror in the countryside
Source. Lev Kopelev
Background. [The confiscation of kulak property, the deportations, and the killing rose to a brutal climax in the following spring and continued for another two years, by which time the bulk of the private farms and been eliminated. By some estimates, almost five million people were liquidated. Some were driven from their huts, deprived of all possessions, and left destitute in the deaf of winter; the men were sent to forced labor and their families left abandoned. Other killed themselves or were killed outright, sometimes in pitched battles involving a whole village-men women, and children.

The upheaval destroyed agricultural production in these years, farm animals died or were killed in huge numbers; fields lay barren. In 1932 and 1933, famine stalked the south and Southeast, killing additional millions; it was especially severe in the Ukraine, which was known as the Breadbasket of Russia. Stalin pursued his goal which bent the peasantry to the will of the state.

[edit on 14-8-2009 by Xtrozero]

reply to post by buddhasystem

Which towns were wiped out off the map on his orders? If you can't point to names and locations, it's a case of hot air and no substance.

The Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee resolve: To place the following villages on the black list for overt disruption of the grain collection plan and for malicious sabotage, organized by kulak and counterrevolutionary elements: 1. village of Verbka in Pavlograd raion, Dnepropetrovsk oblast. ... 5. village of Sviatotroitskoe in Troitsk raion, Odessa oblast. 6. village of Peski in Bashtan raion, Odessa oblast. The following measures should be undertaken with respect to these villages : 1. Immediate cessation of delivery of goods, complete suspension of cooperative and state trade in the villages, and removal of all available goods from cooperative and state stores. 2. Full prohibition of collective farm trade for both collective farms and collective farmers, and for private farmers. 3. Cessation of any sort of credit and demand for early repayment of credit and other financial obligations. 4. Investigation and purge of all sorts of foreign and hostile elements from cooperative and state institutions, to be carried out by organs of the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate. 5. Investigation and purge of collective farms in these villages, with removal of counterrevolutionary elements and organizers of grain collection disruption. The Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee call upon all collective and private farmers who are honest and dedicated to Soviet rule to organize all their efforts for a merciless struggle against kulaks and their accomplices in order to: defeat in their villages the kulak sabotage of grain collection; fulfill honestly and conscientiously their grain collection obligations to the Soviet authorities; and strengthen collective farms.

history.hanover.edu...

So he found another solution: starvation. Now, 75 years after one of the great forgotten crimes of modern times, Stalin's man-made famine of 1932/3, the former Soviet republic of Ukraine is asking the world to classify it as a genocide. The Ukrainians call it the Holodomor - the Hunger. Millions starved as Soviet troops and secret policemen raided their villages, stole the harvest and all the food in villagers' homes. They dropped dead in the streets, lay dying and rotting in their houses, and some women became so desperate for food that they ate their own children. If they managed to fend off starvation, they were deported and shot in their hundreds of thousands. So terrible was the famine that Igor Yukhnovsky, director of the Institute of National Memory, the Ukrainian institution researching the Holodomor, believes as many as nine million may have died.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

As a young man, Stalin was greatly influenced by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik party, which had long classified certain people as “anti-Soviet” or “enemies of the people.” This created an atmosphere where it was acceptable–even expected–for whole groups of people to be persecuted or annihilated. To the Bolsheviks, violence, terror, and the elimination of enemies were seen as appropriate methods to maintain political control. Yet even among the Bolsheviks, Stalin was an extremist. He was a revolutionary with a legendary propensity for violence who never cared how many lives were lost as he pursued his goals. He would, without hesitation, have entire villages burned to create fear among Soviet citizens.

www.pbs.org...

Stalin discouraged Jewish self segregation. Before Stalin came to power, the USSR was run by Jewish Bolsheviks, but Stalin tried to eliminate Jewish separatism. That is why Jewish groups label him as antisemitic. He also destroyed most of the Jewish villages and Jewish culture because he felt that they encouraged Jewish separatism. I suppose you could call him “antisemitic,” because he tried to eliminate Jewish culture as a distinct culture. He may not have murdered Jews en masse, but destroying Jewish culture is antisemitic.

robertlindsay.wordpress.com...

Another punishment of choice in locales where widespread sabotage was suspected was mass deportation of the population to slave labor camps. December 1932 marked the beginning of mass deportations of entire villages. Records show that in 1932, some 71,236 "specially displaced" deportees were sent to such camps. The next year, this number climbed to 268,091.[10]

www.discoverthenetworks.org...

From the point of view of realnost’, Kordonsky writes, there are villages in Russia. Na samom dele, villages were eliminated by Stalin’s collectivization. What remain in the countryside are just the clustered dwellings of collective farm workers.

www.sscnet.ucla.edu...

The famine subsided only after the 1933 harvest had been completed. The traditional Ukrainian village had been essentially destroyed, and settlers from Russia were brought in to repopulate the devastated countryside. Soviet authorities flatly denied the existence of the famine both at the time it was raging and after it was over. It was only in the late 1980s that officials made a guarded acknowledgment that something had been amiss in Ukraine at this time.

www.britannica.com...

However, few outside of Ukraine have heard of the Holodomor. It is not the name of a particular death camp like Auschwitz. It was a campaign of death and terror all across the nation of Ukraine, then under control of the Soviet Union. It was especially aimed at eliminating the small farmers of the Dnipro River region, a fertile and highly productive area of Ukraine that had long been known as "the bread basket of Europe." Seven to 10 million Ukrainians were forcibly starved to death, including up to a third of the nation's children.

reply to post by buddhasystem


I would say that Stalin "wiped towns and villages off the map" by starving them to death and/or moving the inhabitants to his collective farms.

reply to post by Xtrozero

Oatmeal, a) again, you didn't present any evidence that "Stalin would go into a town and shoot every third person just to instill fear in the rest". And you didn't present it because it never happened. I took exception to that outrageous and untrue claim, not to the statement of oppressive nature and cruelty of the Stalin's regime.

1] To instruct the USSR NKVD that it should try before special tribunals: [a] the cases of the 14,700 former Polish officers, government officials,land owners, police officers, intelligence officers, gendarmes, settlers in the border regions and prison guards being held in prisoner-of-war camps; together with the cases of 11,000 members of various counter-revolutionary organisations of spies and saboteurs, former land owners, factory owners, former Polish officers, government officials, and escapees who have been arrested and are being held in the western provinces of the Ukraine and Belarus and apply to them the supreme penalty: shooting.

www.geocities.com...

On July 1st 1941, around 180 German soldiers of the 2nd and 6th Infantry Regiments and the 5th Artillery Regiment were taken prisoner by the Red Army in the town of Broniki. Most were suffering from battle wounds. Next day, the 2nd of July, advancing Wehrmacht troops discovered 153 bodies in a clover field near the town. All had been brutally murdered. According to the twelve survivors of the massacre, they were taken to the field just off the main road and forced to undress. All valuables such as money, rings, watches as well as their uniforms, shirts and shoes were stolen. Standing there naked, the prisoners were then fired upon by machine guns and automatic rifles. A few managed to escape by fleeing to the nearby woods. Similar reports from other regiments gave rise to the suspicion that the Soviets, in the early stages of the war, were not taking any prisoners. There was a division order, according to which every Russian soldier who shoots twenty German soldiers, received a three day leave pass to go home. He also was decorated and raised in rank.

members.iinet.net.au...

Known as the 'Unknown Holocaust'. In 1933, the communist leader of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin, in a bid to crush Ukraine's growing spirit of nationalism, ordered millions of independent farmers (Kulaks) into collective farms. Any resistance to the order was dealt with by the OGPU (KGB) who executed all those who disobeyed.

members.iinet.net.au...

Nope, can't find anything on Stalin ordering one out of every three people shot.