Hitler and Stalin and Mao, Oh My! Quiz

Answer: Adolf Hitler

Stalin, Mao and Lenin could have said that, too. But Hitler did, and that sheds quite a light on who he really was, doesn't it?

Answer: 600,000

It was the largest invasion in history. 600,000 is an astonishing number, but that's the number of tanks and vehicles Hitler used to invade the Soviet Union. And that's not all! In addition, for that same operation, the Nazis deployed: 4,3 million troops, 700,000 horses, 4,400 aircraft, 42,600 guns - a total of 183 divisions. Amazing!

Answer: Georgy Zhukov

Tyulenev and Timoshenko were two highly decorated military commanders who took part in the defense of Russia against the Nazis and fought the Barbarossa invasion. Although Timoshenko was also a Marshal, Stalin was convinced Zhukov was a better commander due to his success in defending Moscow. Timoshenko was removed from front-line command before being reinstated as commander in 1942. Tyulenev somewhat fell into oblivion, despite his high records.

Zhukov was the first man to be appointed a Marshal of the Soviet Union while actually in the field.

Answer: NKVD

NKVD, in Russian, stands for: "Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del". In English: "People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs". A nice euphemism for a tool of terror! Indeed, it became notorious for its political repression and mass executions; it was also responsible for mass deportations and was the organization that ran the gulags.
Stalin died in 1953. THE NKVD became the KGB one year later in 1954. KGB stands for "Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti" which means "Committee for State Security".

Answer: Troika

The "Troika" (which means "Group of Three") was indeed composed of three persons (a member of the state police, a local communist party secretary, and a state procurator). It issued rapid verdicts (death or gulag) without the right to appeal. The three persons served as judges and juries. The "Troika" was Stalin's main tool to carry out the "Great Purge".
The "Cheka" was the Soviet State Security System created in 1917 and the "ancestor" of the NKVD.
"Berioshka" is fictional.

Answer: Mao and his peasants suffered a heavy defeat and retreated to the Jinggang Mountains

The fight did take place; that was the first armed uprising by Mao and his Communists. But Mao's meager troops were no match for those of Chiang Kai-shek. However, Mao later won the last phase of the Chinese Civil War and proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Answer: The Great Famine during which at least thirty million people died of starvation and malnutrition

Mao thought that land reforms and collectivization would solve all problems. Well, they did not. The result was the total opposite: the "Great Famine" lasted from 1958 to 1961, and was due mainly to the inept agricultural policies of Mao's Communist Party and also to drought and poor weather.
The "Great Leap Forward" was also an attempt at rapid industrialization, meant to catch up with Britain's steel production levels. In order to meet the compulsory quotas the people removed many of the existing railway tracks and melted them with a cheap, impure alloy of iron and carbon. The result was disastrous, as the steel thus produced was unusable and, of course, could not be exported. The quotas were met, but to no avail.
In short, the "Great Leap Forward" was a gigantic fiasco and should perhaps be renamed as... the "Great Leap Backward".
And as if that was not enough, the Cultural Revolution later killed at least another 20 million people, thus bringing the grand total to 50 million between 1949 and 1979, according to Mao Yushi (a fierce opponent of Mao).

Answer: Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon went to Beijing in 1972. Lyndon Johnson was in office from 1963 to 1969, Gerald Ford from 1974 till 1977. Al Gore was Bill Clinton's Vice-president. The meeting between Nixon and Mao prefigured Den Xiaoping's policy.

Answer: Painting watercolors and drawing cartoons

He did a few paintings and drew cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper.
Actually, when Adolf was 11 (in 1900), he had disastrous school results; his father (Alois Hitler) wanted him to be a civil servant, but the child wanted to be an artist, a painter. He was already in open conflict with his father, who used to beat him; this episode was the last straw. Twenty-five years later he wrote in "Mein Kampf": "No, no and no, I will not be a civil servant".
In 1903, Alois died of heart attack. Much to Adolf's relief. Later, Adolf applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, but was rejected twice. These were years of hardship during which he had to sell his paintings on the street in order to survive...but that does not excuse what he did later on.
There was no need to "invent" new trenches and how can one do that anyway? The writing of "Mein Kampf" wasn't started until 1923, and the huge cannon already existed - "the Big Bertha".

Answer: Corporal

He was rewarded with the rank of "Gefreiter", the second rank given to an enlisted soldier in the German, Austrian and Swiss armies and corresponds to "Corporal" in our system. However, he was no hero. His regiment had little military value, and he mainly acted as a courrier taking messages to the rear, a task that protected him from the dangers of the front.

Answer: "Stalin" comes from the Russian word "Stal" which means "Steel"

Joseph Stalin never showed any benevolence. Volvograd was renamed after Stalin into Stalingrad (not the other way round) between 1925 and 1961. "Stalin" is not derived from that town and is not a Georgian name either.

Answer: "Laogai" is the Chinese gulag; a "thamzing" is a session of self-criticism and public humiliation

"Laogai" is the abbreviation of "Láodòng Gǎizào" and means "reform through labor"; it refers to prison labor (i.e. gulags) and prison farms. 50 million people were sent to "Laogai" camps.
"Thamzing" is a Tibetan word meaning "struggle sessions". During those sessions, the victim was usually forced to stand upright on his feet and confess his (alleged) faults while other prisoners (or the crowd) would accuse, insult, persecute and beat him, all this often in stadiums in front of thousands of people. The victim's family and friends were compelled to attend those sessions. The torture was repeated over several weeks, and many committed suicide as a result, or died in the process. Anything could be treated as a "fault", it didn't have to be true. The sessions were also used to execute political rivals and class enemies.
And no, under Mao's rule, confiscation or exile would have been too lenient. The only "exile" one could hope for in those days was to a gulag ("laogai").

Answer: The Long March, 730 days

The "Long March" was in fact a series of marches which took Mao and his Red Army from the south, westwards then to the north, from October 1933 till October 1935.
In October 1934 they were still on the run in the south east, in Jiangxi province. They left and went to Shaanxi in the north. They crossed over 6,000 miles of rugged terrain in 370 days. This second portion of the overall march is commonly referred to as the "Long March", but Mao's escape started one year earlier and continued until 1935, so the "Long March" actually lasted much longer.
Mao and his Red Army, like in 1927, wanted to put as much distance as possible between them and the pursuing Kuomingtang's stronger military forces, and avoid encirclement.
The retreat worked very much in Mao's favor as it helped him assert his leadership and gained him many supporters.

Answer: One day

Yes, the marriage lasted only one day, well a little more than 24 hours! They were married on the night of April 28-29 1945.
Hitler and Eva, committed suicide together in his bunker the next day, April 30 1945 at 3.30pm.
According to records Eva killed herself with cyanide, Hitler shot himself in the head.
Although Eva had a diploma as a secretary/book-keeper she worked mainly as a photographer and had always wanted to be an actress in Hollywood... a dream that never came true!

Answer: The Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic (in German: "Weimarer Republik") was proclaimed on November 9 1918 (during the 1918 Revolution) and lasted until 1933, when Hitler took over. The Constitution of this Republic was adopted and promulgated in 1919 in the town of Weimar, hence the name commonly given to that regime although "German Reich" was the official name.
"Reich" means "realm" or "empire". "Third Reich" is the name given to the Nazi regime.
The "Zweites Reich" (Second Empire) was the imperial regime of 1871-1918.
The "Altes Reich" also called "Erstes Reich" (meaning respectively "Old Empire" and "First Empire") is the name given to the "Holy Roman Empire".
The "Bundesrepublik" is today's Federal Republic of Germany.

Answer: The Katyn Massacre

The genocide took place in the Katyn forest in April and May 1940. About 22,000 Poles were murdered there. Mass graves were found in that forest in 1943 by the Nazis.
In 2010, the "Russian State Duma" ("Gosudarstvennaya Duma", "Госуда́рственная ду́ма" in cyrillic), which is the lower house of the Parliament, passed a resolution admitting Soviet leader Joseph Stalin personally ordered the "Katyn Massacre".
"Dalstroy" was the name of a Russian POW camp; out of 12,000 Poles who were sent there, only 583 men survived. Although it all in fact amounts to massacre or genocide, it didn't take place in a forest.

Answer: Essentially an army of fanatical university and high school students

Do not confuse the "Red Guards" with the "Red Army". The "Red Guards" were a mass movement composed of students aged between 12 and 30. Mao used them to pursue his Cultural Revolution, closing universities and high schools in order to favor their development.

But these fanatics literally went out of control, going to unacceptable extremes, even by Mao's standards, such as destroying structures and monuments, renaming streets and monuments in Peking, confiscating the goods of alleged capitalists, as well as sending intellectuals, civil servants and anyone suspected to be anti-Mao to re-education camps - so much so that Mao realized how pernicious the movement had become.

Not that he was against torturing people or sending them to gulags, but he deemed the Red Guards had crossed the line... his line, and now posed a serious threat.

Indeed, he feared a civil war would ensue, and to avoid that, Mao called in the army, then disgraced and persecuted the "Red Guards".

Answer: Tibet; about 1 million Tibetans were killed as a result

During the "Great Leap Forward" about 1,000,000 Tibetans were killed. 6,000 monasteries were destroyed during the "Cultural Revolution". Mao saw Tibet as a natural tributary to the Chinese Empire. In addition he didn't want Tibet to fall under British or Russian control, as that country was of high strategic importance.
In those days, China neither invaded Korea nor Japan. Mao did not wage war against Britain either.

Answer: The Internationale

"The Internationale" (in French: "L'Internationale") has been a popular left-wing anthem since the late 19th century, first written in French then translated into many languages.
It was adopted as the international anthem by the International Communist Movement, the International Socialist Movement, the International Social Democratic Movement and the International Anarchist Movement.
Here are the lyrics of the refrain in English:
"This is the final struggle
Let us group together and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race."

The Soviets replaced it with the "State Anthem of the USSR" (Государственный гимн СССР, Gosudarstvenny Gimn SSSR) which was first played on the radio at midnight on January 1st 1944 and remained until 1991. After that date The Russian Federation adopted a wordless anthem. In 2000 they restored the original music but with new lyrics.

In the 1944 version, the lyrics of the "State Anthem" paid homage to Lenin and Stalin (second stanza), in English:
"Through tempests the sun of freedom shone to us,
And the great Lenin illuminated our path,
We were raised by Stalin to be true to the people,
To labour and heroic deeds he inspired us!"

Answer: Sir Lawrence Olivier

Alec Guinness played the leading role in "Hitler: The Last Ten Days" (1973) alongside Simon Ward and Doris Kunstmann as Eva Braun.
Anthony Hopkins portrayed Hitler in "The Bunker" which is a 1981 CBS TV film. He was awarded with an Emmy.
Bruno Ganz was Hitler in "Downfall" ("Der Untergang" in German). The movie was released in 2004 and was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel; it, too, depicts Hitler's final ten days.
Let us also note that another "Hitler: The Last Ten Days" movie was made in 1955; it is a German-Austrian film. And "The Death of Adolf Hitler" is a 1973 British film.