"'Yes, you would stay a polite country boy, wouldn't you? Roving through history, you'd miss out on the social changes in your homeland.'"
Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 641-735 AT 23 May 1987, p. 716.
"'...when one knows what lies ahead in history, one's incentive to follow the daily news is slight.'"
-The Shield of Time, p. 71.
"That Everard had been recruited in New York, A.D. 1954, and Nomura in San Francisco, 1972, ought to make scant difference. The upheavals of that generation were bubble pops against what had happened before and what would happen after."
-Poul Anderson, "Gibraltar Falls" IN Time Patrol, pp. 113-128 AT 114.
"It wrenched us, bidding goodbye to the friends of years. We promised to make occasional visits, but knew that these would be few and far between, until they ceased entirely. The required lies were too great a strain. As was, we left an impression that my vaguely described new position was a cover for a post in the CIA."
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Time Patrol, pp. 333-465 AT 1980, p. 351.
- the temporal equivalent of the CIA. Time Patrol agents will be in the CIA, KGB, Gestapo...
14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
How gruesome! Fairly decent Time Patrol agents infiltrating agencies as monstrous as the Cheka/KGB and Gestapo. They would inevitably become complicit in their atrocities.
Falling behind again. It would be easier to keep up if I didn't have to sleep or go to work! (Smiles)
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But might the Patrol recruit some members who would fit right in with those organizations? Remember the Patrol protects history, including the Holocaust.
Paul.
Actually, in the first story there's a man in a ragged German uniform, recruited in 1946...
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I can see the Patrol recruiting some persons who would not mind being Cheka/Gestapo officers. They might well end up being sent to the exile planet!
Mr. Stirling: But we are not told if that German came from either the Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS. I would give some benefit of the doubt to regular Army German soldiers being reasonably decent persons.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that the Patrol isn't there to make history better, or good: it's there to make it stay the same.
I think Everard points out that if you removed the Soviet leaders, others who were more competent might take their place, and so on and so forth.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree with your first point. But I either missed or forgot about the second point. Given the monstrous regime Lenin created, it's hard to imagine anyone who might have taken Stalin's place being all that more "competent." Not with the nonsensical Marxist-Leninist ideology deranging them at a time when many still BELIEVED in it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Lenin was very cunning tactically. Stalin was too, but to a lesser degree -- his paranoia meant he made some very bad errors, like trusting Hitler more than his own intelligence reports.
Though that's not a straightforward thing. For example, the Germans -wanted- the Russians to station as many of their forces as possible far forward in their new territories after the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
That was because the problems involved in attacking the USSR were primarily logistical; it was just so damned -big-. The problem wasn't -beating- the Russian forces -- the Germans killed or captured 3,000,000 Soviet soldiers in the first 6 months of Operation Barbarossa -- it was getting them to fight within workable distances from the German frontier. Getting -at- them, in other words.
So, if Stalin had believed the intelligence reports, would he have done a 'rope-a-dope', pulling most of his forces back and preparing to counterattack after the Germans' first blow fell mostly on empty space?
That would be the -logical- thing to do.
OTOH, Stalin hated to relinquish control of one square inch (or one human being).
He was forced into a "retreat strategy" in '41-42, but he hated it and continued to order premature counterattacks.
So if he'd believed the reports of an imminent German attack in '41, would he have crammed more troops into the western reaches, or perhaps even undertaken a spoiling attack against the Germans?
Either or both would have led to even higher Soviet losses, perhaps fatally so.
You can't tell in advance.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I have to agree, Stalin's paranoia and unwillingness to rationally deploy the Soviet armies the way you outlined nearly destroyed the USSR.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: OTOH, Trotsky probably wouldn't have made those particular mistakes.
Though it would have been difficult for any Soviet (or just Russian) leader to admit that their armed forces were grossly qualitatively inferior to the Germans.
My reading of Trotsky is that he would have made a realistic assessment.
Paul: Trotsky was more intelligent than Stalin, though just as ruthless -- albeit rather less of a personal sadist.
OTOH, he was also more arrogant and cocksure and impatient, which is why he lost the power struggle.
Stalin patiently did the tedious administrative detail work, establishing a network of clientage and favors, and by the time Trotsky 'wised up', it was too late.
The problem being that he -knew- he was smarter than Stalin, but overestimated the importance of that.
That sounds right.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: Trotsky might well have made other mistakes almost as bad as those made by Stalin.
Paul: Stirling beat me to making similar comments about Trotsky--that he underestimated Stalin and was outwitted and outmaneuvered by Koba in the struggle for power after Lenin died.
Ad astra! Sean
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