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Comment by herge | Hacker News Reader

In the book, he talks about the penal anti-minefield battalions, right before he explains that if the Nazi's had realized and used the hatred the average Russian soldier felt against their taskmasters, the Soviet Union would have redily fallen.

Maybe the western way costs more in terms of resources, but at least produces more loyal soldiers.

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My impression is that the average Soviet soldier was little different than soldiers elsewhere: motivated by a combination of patriotism, loyalty to immediate comrades in arms, a sense of internal discipline and a fear of external discipline. They grumbled and were exploited. They were also rational in their beliefs that their enemy would not welcome their surrender with humane treatment as a top priority - a belief that was more and more justified by experience.

The Soviets and the Nazis were engaged in total war. Motivated by racism, the Nazis tended to favor extermination of 'the Slavs' over winning their hearts and minds.

As for the 'Western Way' it has increasingly become reliant on mercenaries and proxies. There is a scale upon which the lives of the human resources at its disposal are valued. Then again, that's the nature of all militaries.

The Winter War (Soviet Union against Finland) provides a useful insight. The Russians were incompetent on the offensive, they should have crushed the Finns easily. However when the Finns took to attacking they found that individual Russian soldiers died very, very hard - the conditions they would endure and continue fighting through were astonishing.

The same spirit can be seen time and time again in other circumstances, for instance the Blitz attitudes of civilians during WW2, or Shock and Awe later on.

People endure when they are being attacked. They may not be inspired to attack back, but in terms of not giving up the human spirit can be incredible.

The Soviet army during the Winter War was very, very different from its 1945 version, both in terms of organization/training/experience and equipment. Winter War was somewhat of a wake-up call in fact.

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