752·24 days agoSince we’re starting this debate again, I do wish to ask the people that think the Soviets shouldn’t have gone into Poland: what should the Soviets have done?
With benefit of hindsight and access to whatever formerly-secret documents, what is the best course of action for them?
what should the Soviets have done?
shouldve stayed put and get exterminated, it is unforgivable that they had agency and made a strategic appeasements with Germany 😔 however it was perfectly ok for the rest of europe powers to do it! 🤓
I mean they could’ve not made a pact with Nazi Germany to jointly divide Eastern Europe. Like start from that.
And before anyone mentions, that includes others who made pacts with them too.
Them: “so what should they have done?”
You: “Well I’ll tell you what they shouldn’t have done!”
So, in short, you can’t actually answer the question.
But like what should they have done, reach out to other nations like UK and France to create an anti-nazi alliance?
Most of europe was very happy doing business with Nazis until they invaded them.
there were enough collaborators to continue to do so under their preferred fascist order.
Refuse to enable Nazi expansion, prepare for war, try to make allies. So carry on before they chose to make a pact. Making that pact with Nazis wasn’t some inevitable law of nature they just had to do. You can always resist.
There’s always a reason for all kinds of actions but it’s just an attempt to avoid moral scrutiny to present the situation as inevitable. There were other options, they chose not to do those but rather made a pact. Agree or disagree with the decision from moral or some realpolitik sense, doesn’t matter. Presenting it as inevitable is avoidance.
molotow-ribbentrop was to buy time to prepare for war. They built a huge industrial complex east of the Ural to prepare since they correctly predicted that their facilities in the west would soon be overrun. They also tried to find allies but were shut down at every turn. When it was clear that there were no allies to be found and every other nation had made a non-aggression pact with the nazis only then did they resort to making their own.
I don’t think anyone thought the USSR did it for no reason. I’m just saying they could’ve chosen not to make those pacts and that’s why dividing Eastern Europe with the Nazis is given as a moral black mark for USSR.
Lol, anti communists will never forgive the USSR for not letting the Nazis have all of Eastern Europe.
I don’t think Nazis should’ve had any part of Europe tbh.
Why? It bought them time to prepare further and gave them the possibility to station troops forward in land that they knew was gonna be overrun by nazis and need liberation afterwards anyway. I really don’t understand what’s so bad about it. You dont win wars with “moral points” but with strategy like that.
You’re asking why making a pact with the Nazis is a black mark? I would think that’s obvious. Same for Chamberlain and everyone else.
You really are writing a lot of responses that don’t answer the question. It’s funny how you go on about there being other options while diligently refusing to actually list them.
Instead of making a pact with the Nazis, refuse to do that and prepare for war. Do you want a fucking WikiHow article detailing the steps for a troop mobilization of 1939 Soviet Union or what
They did prepare for war with the Nazis, and the pact was part of that. So I take it then your answer is that they shouldn’t have prepared as much for the war with the Nazis.
Given that the level of preparedness they did manage was still only barely enough to win, you answer is ultimately that you wanted the USSR to take a course of action that would have allowed the Nazis to win the Eastern Front.
Which is ultimately always what it comes down; resentment that the Soviets won.
I don’t think anyone should’ve made pacts with Nazis and enabled their actions through that. It’s not specific to the USSR.
I mean, the obvious answer is instead of trying to divvy the sovereign nation between them, they should have stood up for them and defended them when the Nazis rolled in. Barring that, they should have liberated them, then left them the fuck alone. Even a stopped clock is right sometimes, this comparison is pretty clearly silly. They weren’t lamenting the lives of Nazis lost in the battle to push them out of Poland. They were lamenting the lives of the Poles after falling under the Russian boot, after the battles were won.
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I’m asking those that believe the Soviets shouldn’t have entered. You seem to believe that the Soviets should, but that they should not have done war crimes. And I would agree, not that I have any knowledge of that, but I am not asking you.
You seem to believe that the Soviets should,
Where did I say or indicate that?
I am not asking you.
Same bro. Dunno why the fuck you guys are trying to make me say that Soviets invading and killing eveyrone was better than the nazi’s invading and killin everyone. Thats fucked up.
Ableism, denouncing Palestine Action for breaking the law in order to slow genocide, Holocaust trivialization, and now both saying the Nazis should have taken over all of Poland and misgendering another user? Incredible, you keep digging deeper.
Well, you said specifically (only said) they shouldn’t have committed war crimes, which to some extent indicates that they should have gone into Poland. If you had a problem with them going into Poland, you should have talked about that and not brought up a different thing.
Why are you talking to me if you don’t want to? You can just… not.
Also I am not your bro.
Also please stop deleting your comments.
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I’m pushing back against the notion that only “guilty nazis” were hurt by the soviets.
Ok… And I never said that?
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Ableism, denouncing Palestine Action for breaking the law in order to slow genocide, Holocaust trivialization, and now both saying the Nazis should have taken over all of Poland and misgendering another user? Incredible, you keep digging deeper.
Klanadians not beating the allegations
Except that the Soviets did not kill everyone. They did not do something similar to the holocaust.
It is well documented that the Soviets exterminated no fewer than one hundred million white cishet capitalist men.
In case people aren’t aware, the Victims of Communism foundation is a US government organization that was set up by an act of congress in 1993.
Congress also passed a bill funding them to design highschool curriculum, called the “crucial communism teaching act”.
Just reminded me of a history teacher who, when teaching the Containment policy, showed us a jar with a slip of paper contained within, which read “COMMUNISM”. Displayed prominently in the classroom thereafter.
Didn’t work on me. When my assigned seat changed such that the jar and I were out of view of the teacher while at the board, I popped the lid off in front of everyone.
Lol
Nice
My high school history class stopped the tankman video right before the tank tried to move out of the way and said “this is the only footage to escape the oppressive regime. We don’t know what happened to tank man but we assume he was run over”
When I finally saw the full video I thought it was fake
Anti-communism is a fancy name for fascism.
Blackshirts and Reds is a great work that goes over this.
Nazis LOVE pretending they’re victims. All the time. Everywhere.
The entire Nazi ideology is rooted in victim mentality. The notion that the “Aryan” race is being oppressed by those barbaric Jews, Slavs, Romani, Chinese, etc. And because of that they need to exterminate those people before they can exterminate the Aryans.
it’s white identitarism.
Victim mentality is on the rise, for two reasons. Firstly people are being led to believe their special and entitled to success without work, and secondly because success has become unattainable even with work.
I think this may have something to do with the rise in Nazism in capitalist countries.
“Fascism is capitalism in decay”
– IDK
Edit: I think it’s also the reactionary response capitalists have to left wing momentum in the population. Hitler leveraged the threat of communism to gain power and the first people he sent to camps were German communists. Sound familiar with this whole woke thing? When a population is stressed they will generally lean either far left or right and the right wing is in power and want to suppress the left wing.
While I agree that when there’s a push for change by the left, the elite will redirect it towards the right to save themselves, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. There isn’t an effective push for change on the left for them to fight.
The rise of Trump among young voters was driven in part by the failure of the Democrats to offer a credible alternative (same in the UK), the global rise in the far-right in general (even in countries where they have no credible path to power, like Germany or Australia) is due to the unique psychology our environment has created for this generation.
I refuse to believe that the tweet is real. This is just satire, right guys? Hahaha, please be satire
I see you’re lucky enough not to be familiar with the Victims of Communism Foundation. This is pretty standard for them.
They’re also extremely successfully at mainstreaming these kind of views: they’re often cited by “respectable” western media like BBC, are used by Wikipedia, and are the original and only source for a lot of the kind of scandalous accusations against China that liberals will call you a tankie if you don’t believe
These guys are so crazy they counted all covid victims into their stats.
Yup. They’re also the only source for the “one million Uyghurs in concentration camps” claim that western “leftists” treat as unquestionable gospel
And Nazis killed during World War II.
Surprised there are still comments denouncing it on X. Guess Grok isn’t as good at censoring wokism as Elon claims.
Also, I like this picture, gonna post it here in case it gets removed:
Well I guess I’m happy all of those comments are calling it out
The black book is some hilarious stuff. They count the hypothetical unborn children of nazis. Also it counts the nazis.
Reminder that multiple co-authors denounced the book when they saw how ludicrous the other sections were, such as tallying millions of Nazi soldiers as victims of communism.
Wasn’t there also a really egregious part where they were estimating how many children the average young adult woman had in Tsarist Russia vs the USSR, and because the birth rates were lower in the USSR, they counted the supposed population deficit as victims?
Gonna make like a goose and ask them why women in the USSR had lower birth rates. Couldn’t be access to contraception/abortion, sex and family planning education, equal rights as men, or better career options, right?
Liberals think this is what WW2 was
Often hilarious how the history is biased by some collectives. Officially US the good ones which won Nazi Germany, despite that is was Rusia and the allied, the US only enter when almost everything was done. After this the cold war, where secret US papers were filtred, specifying locations in Europe where they were going to use nuclear bombs to stop an alleged Russian invasion.
Cuba crisis, it causes almost a WWIII, because evil Russia wanted to park there nuclear missiles. What is never mentioned, was,that it was an answer to the US nuclear missiles that were parked long before in Turkey, pointing to Russia. The escalation was avoided by an Rusian commander, while the US already had the finger on the red button.
Yes, certainly communism is really bad and the US the good boys which always save the world, even by nuke civilians in two cities, training and arm jihadists and Talibans, destroying democracies supporting dictators, like the September 11 with over 3000 victims, in 1973, when the CIA organized and supported an military coup by Pinochet to eliminate Allende.
Most of the currend Wars in the world and dictatorships are direct or indirect caused by the work of our good US boys. Thank you America, GFY
Officially US the good ones which won Nazi Germany, despite that is was Rusia and the allied, the US only enter when almost everything was done
The Soviet Union (and I say that to emphasize that it was not simply Russia) and other Allies also played an important role in the Pacific Theatre too once they had some breathing space. I suppose the US glorify it so aggressively because it’s one of the few major wars they were on the winning side of, but when they rapidly promoted former Nazis to high political positions and launched Operation Gladio, one can’t help but realize their troops were only sent there to stop those Nazis, not Nazism.
I have seen detailed explanations of why even their Pacific importance wasn’t as big as they claimed.
And they intervened in Europe not to stop the nazis but the Soviets from taking it all, which would’ve happened in no time if they didn’t meet the ‘allieds’ in Berlin.
I wonder who they were allied with BTW, since they saved 10000’s of nazis from the Soviets and evacuated them, or in Italy let them surrender and enabled them to go fight the Soviets.
All of the nazis in the west got fully rehabilitated despite the handful of death penalties in the Nuremberg showtrials.
I love when people pretend that the rest of Europe didn’t exist when the molotov-ribbentrop pact was signed. It’s almost as if history didn’t start until that pact signed, like Israelis pretend that history started in Oct7.
Uhhh Russia invaded unoccupied Poland at the same time as Nazi Germany.
While it’s inaccurate to characterize them as “victims of communism” it’s full blown anti-intellectualism, and astonishingly disrespectful to the polish people, to deny their suffering under Soviet occupation.
The Soviet Union largely stuck to areas Poland had invaded and annexed a few decades earlier, and did so largely to prevent the Nazis from taking all of Poland. Genuinely, what should the Soviet Union have done instead? Let the Nazis take all of Poland?
Oh, it all makes sense now, here you are denouncing Palestine Action for breaking the law in order to slow down genocide. You’re actually a fascist.
Genuinely, what should the Soviet Union have done instead? Let the Nazis take all of Poland?
Start with not making a pact with Nazis to divide Europe imo. That’s one part that was enabling the Nazi expansion.
They didn’t, the closest is there being lines neither country should cross. Both the Soviets and Nazis knew war was coming between them and that the treaty would not hold for long, it wasn’t a long-term plan.
Having a pact and zones of interest freed up manpower for Nazis to use in other parts of Europe. That’s how it was part in enabling them. Not that USSR would’ve been guilty of that alone or nowhere near the first to enable the Nazis.
So your complaint is that the USSR didn’t take even more of the brunt of the Nazis forces.
My complaint is making a deals and pacts with Nazis. Again, that includes everyone, not just USSR. If everyone had put up stronger opposition from the start then all could’ve been stopped way earlier.
The USSR tried extremely hard to form a unified opposition to the Nazis, and the Western powers responded by signing pacts with the Nazis. As a result, the USSR was left with the choice to also sign a pact to buy time and keep the Nazis out of some of Eastern Europe for a time, or to let them have Eastern Europe and then have to fight a war from a worse position with less preparation.
They literally did choose the option that allowed them to put up the strongest opposition possible. If they had done what you wanted, the Nazis would have won the Eastern front.
The only one trying to do that legitimately was the USSR, Britain and France sabotaged talks of anti-Nazi alliance every single time. The west wanted the Nazis and Soviets to kill each other, and then finish off the weaker one if possible.
Sure would’ve been great if the Soviet Union had the industrial power to take Nazi Germany on by itself, or had the trade with the west at the time to help close the gap. No perfect solution was available to the Soviets.
I mean we don’t know what would’ve happened but yes everyone was playing time and hoping Nazis would look elsewhere for at least some time.
We know that the Soviet Union was industrializing at incredibly high rates, but was still far behind Germany in total industrialization. We know that the west was trading a ton with the Nazis, and were hostile to the Soviets. We know that the Nazis and Soviets hated each other. What should the Soviet Union have done? Declare war before they were ready, and risk everyone allying with Nazi Germany? Let the Nazis take all of Poland?
Them: “so what should they have done?”
You: “Well I’ll tell you what they shouldn’t have done!”
So, in short, you can’t actually answer the question.
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Damn, that’s a lot of words to still not be able to answer the question
“So what should they have done??”
“Don’t make a pact with them prepare for war”
Why are you linking youtube videos instead of answering the question?
It’s just a troll :)
Trolling is when anyone questions western Chauvinists
Their instance hints it’s rather a defence mechanism against the moral ramifications of making a deal with Nazis. It’s not an unfamiliar thing to me, I’ve seen it a lot
Why do you losers always try to talk like anime villains?
Haha, what a crazy way of thinking.
“Don’t eat your own shit!”
“Well, what should I do instead of eating my own shit?! 😕”
Still can’t answer the question, I see
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Most of the area the Soviets took are areas in modern Lithuania and Ukraine. Poland had annexed them in the Polish-Soviet War and the Polish-Lithuanian War earlier.
As for the second question, no, I’m not a sociopath, I’m genuinely asking you if you would have rather had the Nazis take all of Poland.
Oh, it all makes sense now, here you are denouncing Palestine Action for breaking the law in order to slow down genocide. You’re actually a fascist.
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It’s entirely good-faith, and you don’t need to resort to insults to avoid it. What should the USSR have done? The west already rejected the USSR’s pleas for an anti-Nazi pact, and the Nazis had already taken the vast majority of Poland.
Oh, it all makes sense now, here you are denouncing Palestine Action for breaking the law in order to slow down genocide. You’re actually a fascist.
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You quite literally claimed the Soviets “out-Nazi’d the Nazis.” You aren’t being a serious person, and you’re hiding behind ableist insults. What about the Lithuanians and Ukrainians annexed by Poland?
Oh, it all makes sense now, here you are denouncing Palestine Action for breaking the law in order to slow down genocide. You’re actually a fascist.
If this isn’t a trollpost and your not getting paid for it, then I’m just baffled on how wrong someone can be regarding generic historical facts. Aside from the idea itself, that it is somehow normal and even commendable to assist foreign states against enemies without them requesting it, all the while criticizing the US for similar actions, your opinion ignores the whole Molotov-Ribbentrop secret pact.
And for argument’s sake, let’s just pretend, that Soviets were of kind heart and mind and truly wanted to help and protect the Polish people from the horrifing Nazis they so clearly detested. Then why did they host a joint parade in Brest-Litovsk after having conquered Poland?? Or better yet, why did they mercilessly execute 20 000 officers in the woods of Katyn? Not to mention the fact that the Warsaw Uprising failed because the Soviets deliberatly waited for all future dissidents to be killed off, before “liberating” it.
I didn’t ignore anything, I wrote about it in greater detail here. There was no “secret pact.” As for the parade, it was marked for the withdrawal of the Nazis from where they had overstretched. As for Katyn, the Nazis “discovered” the site, and Goebbels was the one to popularize it, yet the execution method of shooting civilians (children included) from behind into a mass grave was one the Nazis repeated countless times yet the Soviets were never found to “repeat” this method, and further, the ammunition was from Nazi Germany.
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Most of the area the Soviets took are areas in modern Lithuania and Ukraine. Poland had annexed them in the Polish-Soviet War and the Polish-Lithuanian War earlier.
As for the second question, no, I’m not a sociopath, I’m genuinely asking you if you would have rather had the Nazis take all of Poland.
Oh, it all makes sense now, here you are denouncing Palestine Action for breaking the law in order to slow down genocide. You’re actually a fascist.
You are doing holocaust trivialization with that second-to-last paragraph. While the things listed are bad, they are by no means worse than the Nazis.
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You literally just called someone a sociopath.
Their only option was to out Nazi the Nazis.
Thats pretty much exactly what you said
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Assuming everyone pointing out that you were doing Holocaust trivialization is USian is chauvanistic, same with insinuating others must not’ve finished highschool English.
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You’re doing a great job exampling Canadian love for Nazis.
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a) not a seppo
b) your facetiousness was rather obviously
Their only option was to out Nazi the Nazis.
as in
they didn’t have to be worse than the nazis but they were
which is holocaust trivialization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Information_on_the_Crimes_of_Communism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Study_of_Totalitarian_Regimes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Investigation_of_Communist_Crimes_and_the_Memory_of_the_Romanian_Exile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_the_Documentation_and_the_Investigation_of_the_Crimes_of_Communism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_crimes_(Polish_legal_concept)Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes
https://books.google.com/books?id=unFXfWXagqAC&pg=RA2-PT193
The new center was soon embroiled in a scandal: in October 2008 the journal Respect published a text stigmatizing the celebrated writer Milan Kundera for having ‘given’ a young student, Miroslav Dvořáček, to the Communist police in 1950. In fact, the accusation was organized by an institute employee, Adam Hradilek, a relative of Dvořáček.¹⁵
From that moment forward, the center and those running it have been the target of ever more incisive criticism. Jiří Pehe, former advisor to President Vaclav Havel and current director of the New York University in Prague, commented: ‘From its inception this Institute was occupied by people with a Jacobin style of managing history.’ His next remark leaves no room for doubt: ‘The [Institute’s] board reflects the political reality of who is in power.’¹⁶
Oops!
Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1127863
Archaeology […] was annexed to a political process, that of the official condemnation of communism, its role being to provide new incriminating evidence to confirm and supplement already known data about the communist repression (assembled from archive documents, testimonies of former political prisoners, eyewitnesses, local memory, etc.).
Interestingly, none of the archaeological texts regarding the exhumations has been published in academic journals or volumes; they have been published on the website of the IICCR/IICCMER and, most of them, in the journal of the Foundation Memoria (established in 1990 by a former political prisoner), suggestively titled Memory. Journal of Arrested Thought (in Romanian), a journal with an anti-communist, Eurocentrist and Christian discourse.
Huh, how strange. Could it be…
IICCR, subordinate to the Romanian government and coordinated by the prime minister
Wow! The capitalist governments facilitating the Nakba are the same ones funding these hopelessly corrupt anticommie think tanks?
I’m so surprised!
Both sides killed their own civilians regularly so I think they both sucked balls from a moral standpoint; also don’t forget when the war first started Stalin was allied with Hitler.
Think they might be talking about the Polish people, not the nazi soldiers. Dunno if I remember right, but there was also a internal civil war of multiple factions, one backed by Germany and the other Russia
Insert meme: Oh, I wouldn’t say “freed”, more like “under new management” 😅
It was a good thing to shut down Auschwitz, in my opinion.
That’s true, but what about that requires this?
Katyn gets pinned on the Soviets because Goebbels reported on it and it became a useful story, but the execution method was distinctly Nazi, ie killing men, women, and children from behind into mass graves. The ammunition was German-produced in 1941, and the rope used to bind the hands of the victims was German made.
The Soviets absolutely killed Polish soldiers, but the character of their involvement was not anywhere close to what the Nazis reported.
The Poles asked for their troops back when they were forming a USSR-based army and were told that thousands had mysteriously escaped. Then when asked for an official investigation, the Soviets broke ties with the Polish government in exile and made their own.
The Soviets themselves later admitted it was the NKVD. Are you defending the USSR from its own slander?
You have no explanation for why the bullets were German and produced in 1941, why the rope was German, the method Nazi, and the originator of the story Goebbels. There’s mountains of evidence against the documents listed as “proof” of Soviet guilt:
The mistakes and inconsistencies in this letter are many. To start, the letter is “Top Secret”. Standard procedure for a “Top Secret” letter were to write on the letter the name of the person who typed it, the names of all the persons who have seen the document, the names of all persons to whom this letter is to be sent, the number of copies made of this letter, the carbon paper used to make a copy of it and finally the tape of the typewriter used to make this paper. For the “Beria document”, none of these exist. Without these precautions, it is not a “Top Secret” letter. The forger of this document either was not aware of the requirements of a “Top Secret” paper, or such requirements could not be forged by them. Either way, this paper immediately looses its value, and furthermore shows it is a forgery.
But the mistakes do not stop here. The signatures of the members of the Politburo go against the form. In this letter, 4 members of the Politburo have simply signed their names. By this act, they have rejected the request of Beria. You see, if the members of the Politburo agreed to send out an order or to carry out a request, it was necessary for them to sign the document, and to write next to their signatures “agreed” or “after”. In order for the request to be agreed and the order to be sent out, the members had to express their agreement to the request or their agreement to an order being sent. If they simply signed the paper, it meant that the members had read the document, but had not agreed to it and had not sent out any orders. The forger was obviously not aware of this and has made the mistake. Even if this request is authentic, which it is not, it was not accepted by the Politburo.
On the first page of the document, along with the four signatures of Stalin, Molotov, Mikoyan and Voroshilov, the forger added the names of Kaganovich and Kalinin underneath these. What the forger was not aware of, is that both Kaganovich and Kalinin were absent from the 13th Session of the Politburo in March 1940. They could not have placed their signatures on this document.
Thanks for your effortposting BTW. I might not agree with your every take but it’s good work regardless!
No worries! And yea, I know we don’t agree 100%, but I do think we overall agree more than disagree, at least from what I can tell. Personally, I’m often posting when my ADHD is pushing me away from responsibilities like work, chores, etc so it isn’t always the best for me 🫠
Reached out to finally get organized IRL though, so I managed to overcome my procrastination and social anxiety enough for that!
Per our other conversation, the Soviets were trading for German finished goods. Why would you not expect to find German goods here??
And again, the Soviets themselves admitted to it. Why are you even discussing forgeries?
The ammunition was dated at 1941. Further, Soviet weaponry fired entirely different cartridges.
As for the Soviets “admitting it,” it was the anti-communist factions that produced the “evidence,” and said evidence directly contains serious flaws that other official documentation did not have. The origin of the story is with Goebbels. The post-Stalin CPSU was filled with those seeking to undermine the Soviet Union for political gain, like Khrushchev and Gorbachev, and we also have evidence that Soviet officials falsified documents for political gain.
Oh no, they killed nazis???
Unforgivable!!
Yes! Of course it was. 100%! No denying of that. :) I was rather referring to the so called “liberation of Poland” by the Soviets and all the things that happened afterwards. The puppet government of People’s Republic of Poland and all the other things.
From the Polish communists I have spoken to, the Polish People’s Republic was flawed but overall a net positive, with dramatic industrialization and improvements in quality of life. There was civil tension between the nationalists, Nazi sympathizers, and the communists. Overall, far better than Nazi occupation, and it isn’t close.
i remember a pic of an arse-faced woman showing the monthly ration provided to her by the state in poland, as if saying “look at this misery”. probably the pic was shot in the early 80s. when i first saw that the first thing that came to my mind is that, in northeastern brazil (my home region), around the same time, about 1.5 million people died of starvation and malnutrition during the drought of 1977-83, and many would literally give an arm or a leg for that ration.
Well… I’m not a fan of communism so in my opinion of course will differ. Nevertheless I think it was net negative especially because of personal freedoms (or lack there of), censorship, police brutality etc., but I totally agree that it was far better than Nazi occupation. Of course it was. It was peace time finally after all. History isn’t black and white so there were some good things from PRL (polish acronym for People’s Republic of Poland). Free education, healthcare and mass construction of public housing were some of the good ones that to this day make our lives in Poland better (the prefabricated housing especially in my opinion) but I think it could have been done without all the atrocities inflicted by the puppet government if only Poland was independent after the war and not under the de facto Soviet occupation.
Well, I am a communist, so I tend to weigh communist perspectives more heavily. It’s important to recognize that much of the opposition to the socialist system came from nationalists and far-right groups, which caused civil strife.
That’s understandable. By the way in my opinion much of the anti-sentiment towards communism in Polish society today comes from all the bad stuff the PRL government did so maybe if that didn’t happen the outlook on it today would be different. For example as a strong free speech advocate I think it’s a shame that today in Poland “promoting communism” is prohibited by law (it’s not even a normal legislation but it’s enshrined in the constitution). I personally think that shouldn’t be the case.
That’s fair, and as you point out the reaction against the socialist system is being used more for political gain by the Polish ruling class. There are other Polish users on this site, so I won’t pretend to be an expert on the PRL, but I do think you can seek out their perspectives as well if you’d like, though I’m sure you have other ways to do so given that you’re Polish yourself.
If you have an open mind and have ~3 minutes, I can recommend this short clip from a Michael Parenti lecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSpVB_XXXBQ
Further “reading” if you’re interested:
World War II began with a coordinated attack on Poland conducted by the Third Reich and the USSR, led by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin respectively. As of 1 September 1939, the very first day of World War Two, both totalitarian regimes held joint military action against Poland. Starting from 1 September, German bombers were guided onto their targets in Poland from a radio station located in Minsk
In accordance with the secret protocol as to Hitler-Stalin Pact, also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the new allies – Germany and the Soviet Union – were to jointly invade Poland. Red Army troops were to march into Poland three days following the Reich’s attack. Joseph Stalin, however, did not adhere to the protocol, with his troops advancing into Poland only 17 days after the Germans hit. The delay was caused by concerns over the propaganda discourse in the West, which Stalin wanted to focus on Germany solely.
The class struggle is a cornerstone of Karl Marx’s philosophy. It requires a restructuring of society in accordance with communism. When put in practice, this brought about genocide: the killing of 10 to 15 percent of a given society as well as annihilating its elites and those strata of society that were unwelcome in a communist state. For communists they stood in the way of communist rule and of harnessing entire societies under a totalitarian regime.
The communists spent the decade prior trying to form an anti-Nazi coalition force, such as the Anglo-French-Soviet Alliance which was pitched by the communists and rejected by the British and French. The communists hated the Nazis from the beginning, as the Nazi party rose to prominence by killing communists and labor organizers, cemented bourgeois rule, and was violently racist and imperialist, while the communists opposed all of that.
When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon. Throughout the last decade, Britain, France, and other western countries had formed pacts with Nazi Germany, such as the Four-Power Pact, the German-French-Non-Agression Pact, and more. Molotov-Ribbentrop was unique among the non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany in that it was right on the eve of war, and was the first between the USSR and Nazi Germany. It was a last resort, when the west was content from the beginning with working alongside Hitler.
Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
Not only that, but it was the Soviet Union that was responsible for 4/5ths of total Nazi deaths, and winning the war against the Nazis. The Soviet Union did not agree to invade Poland with the Nazis, it was about spheres of influence and red lines the Nazis should not cross in Poland. When the USSR went into Poland, it stayed mostly to areas Poland had invaded and annexed a few decades prior. Should the Soviets have let Poland get entirely taken over by the Nazis, standing idle? The West made it clear that they were never going to help anyone against the Nazis until it was their turn to be targeted.
Even if September 1939 should be set as the starting point for WWII (which it should not be), the Slovak Republic played a significant rôle in invading Poland with the Third Reich, and its contribution therewith was much more of a joint effort than the Red Army’s intervention in western Ukraine. It is strange that the anticommunist’s source said nothing at all about the Slovak Republic, almost as if its omission were a political decision and the Warsaw Institute has no interest in honest education. Hmmm…
Oh, and if massacring élites were the only way to negate capitalism, it seems that the DPRK missed the memo when it disprivileged landlords.
Again, excellent work as always, comrade!
When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon.
Same people excusing Soviet pact with Nazis bemoan Finland for doing the same. Where is the consistency. Not saying you are doing that but it’s always interested me.
The Soviet Union did not agree to invade Poland with the Nazis
The article is hilarious desperate in doing handwringing and trying to sidestep the whole thing. “Well akshually it didn’t invade Poland because the government had ceased to exist!” But it also claims Soviet Union couldn’t have invaded Poland because Poland didn’t declare war on Soviet Union. Lmao
Some of the author’s arguments come off as technicalities, but the underlying facts of the situation do come from real evidence, which is more the purpose of linking that source. The fact that there wasn’t an agreement to invade Poland, but instead borders that the Nazis should not cross and which the Nazis did anyways and the Soviets kicked them back, fundamentally changes the “ally” narrative.
What are the actual arguments you consider good from it? I didn’t see anything other than handwringing and “well technically”
Less the arguments, more the evidence: there was nothing like a secret agreement to invade Poland, there were informalized areas the Nazis were to not go beyond and areas the Soviets were not to go beyond. This would be indicative of a percieved alliance if it wasn’t for the fact that at the same time, the Soviet Union was preparing for war with the Nazis and the Nazis the same for the Soviet Union, it was just a way to buy a bit of extra time as the west refused to join the Soviets until the war had become unavoidable on their turf.
Secret Protocol, Article I & II
Article I
In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the areas belonging to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern boundary of Lithuania shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence of Germany and U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the Vilnius area is recognized by each party. Article II edit
In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula and San.
The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish state and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments.
In any event both governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement.
What you quotes supports Cowbees point.
Yes, this was not an agreement to invade jointly, the USSR entered Poland 17 days after the Nazis did. This was the Soviet Union providing a “no-go” line for the Nazis in the event of Nazi invasion, largely including areas Poland had invaded and annexed from Lithuania and Ukraine a couple decades prior.
The Soviets absolutely did agree to invade, and claiming otherwise is historical revisionism. The source you linked tactically omits several facts that completely undermine the narrative presented, such as the fact that the Red Army coordinated with the Luftwaffe from Minsk during the Nazi invasion, that the agreed borders of the “spheres of influence” split a sovereign nation down the middle (which is impossible if Poland had remained sovereign), the joint military victory parade in Brest, etcetera.
Should the Soviets have let Poland get entirely taken over by the Nazis, standing idle?
If there was a genuine concern the Soviets could have guaranteed Polish independence against the Nazis. They did not, instead they jointly agreed to invade and divide the country.
The West made it clear that they were never going to help anyone against the Nazis until it was their turn to be targeted.
The UK and France declared war 2 days after Hitler invaded Poland (Hitler did not expect the UK to guarantee Poland, causing him to delay the invasion by a week while he deliberated on whether to go forward). Military spending in both the UK and France was significantly ramped up after Hitler first started showing aggression, but neither believed themselves to be ready for a war. War requires preparation, and they weren’t so delusional to believe they’d be able to avoid war forever. What neither the UK nor France expected however was that Nazi Germany’s war machine would ramp up significantly faster than their own.
What’s historical revisionism is claiming the parade to celebrate the Nazis being pushed out of areas of Poland by the Soviets was a celebration of allyship, or claiming the “spheres of influence” were a real plan for dividing Europe and not a way for the Soviets to dissuade the Nazis from pressing too far while ramping up for war. Both the Soviets and the Nazis knew war was coming between them, the treaty was always on borrowed time and in no-way signaled long-term planning on either side, the Soviets wanted to stop the Nazi threat and the Nazis intended on wiping out the Soviets, “spheres of influence” be damned.
The Eastern Pact was the hopeful alliance between Poland and the Soviets (among others like Lithuania) against the Nazis, but this fell through due to France and Britain working against it, and Polish hatred of Russians. From the French ambassador to Poland at the time:
If, in reality, the most serious danger for Poland is Germany, “the Russian”, whatever the regime to which he is subject, always appears to the Poles as “enemy n° 1”: if the German remains an adversary, he is no less a European and a man of order; the Russian is, for the Pole, a barbarian, an Asian, a dissolving and corrupting element, with whom any contact would be perilous, any compromise fatal.
— Léon Noël, [17], 1938-06-31, Warsaw, p. 975-976
The UK and France regularly sabotaged talks of alliances with the Soviets and made their non-aggression pacts far earlier, doing far more trade and having far more Nazi synpathy among their publics and ruling class. Churchill is a famous fan of the Nazis until his hand was forced.
What’s historical revisionism is claiming the parade to celebrate the Nazis being pushed out of areas of Poland by the Soviets was a celebration of allyship
The Nazis took Brest initially, despite it being past the demarcation line. When the Soviets arrived, the Nazis voluntarily withdrew and both armies saluted one another. They then held a joint victory parade before the Nazis returned westwards, back behind the demarcation line.
The Nazis definitely weren’t “pushed out”, that’s BS. As much as you say that the west had Nazi sympathies, they never actively invaded a third nation together, collaborating militarily, and divided the spoils. But you conveniently forgot to address the military cooperation between the Nazis and the Soviets during their joint invasion of Poland, because it directly undermines your false narrative.
You’re also conveniently ignoring that the Soviets “accidentally” let slip what their secret protocols with Germany entailed to the Lithuanians, in order to pressure them into joining with the Soviets after the invasion of Poland. The Polish distaste for Russia also may have had something to do with the decades of Russian imperialism the Polish suffered from.
Undermining alliance talks is something all the great powers did. The Polish Intermarium was sabotated by the Soviets for example. That’s not unique to the Allies in the slightest.
The Nazis took Brest, and when the Soviets arrived, the Nazis pulled back rather than directly antagonizing the Soviets and risking war before Barbarossa. This isn’t complicated, had the Soviets not arrived, the Nazis would have stayed or pushed onward. As for the Nazi request for support, the Soviets only partially complied, trying to tread the line between collapsing the non-agression pact and giving as little support as possible. I didn’t bother responding to this point because you were already lying elsewhere.
The Soviets informing Lithuania of the details of the non-aggression pact was a good thing. What’s your point, exactly? That the nation that spent a decade trying to form an anti-Nazi alliance, was ideologically opposed to Nazism, when the Nazis were murdering communists, were secretly friends the whole time and that the war was an unexpected betrayal? This kind of nonsense anti-communism is historical revisionism and erasure of context.
It remains true that the country that did the most to try to stop the Nazi threat before World War II, and contributed the most to stopping the Nazis during it, was the Soviet Union, and it isn’t close.
The Soviets arrived in Brest because that’s what they had agreed upon with the Nazis. The Nazis just stuck to their end of the deal. Your attempt to frame this as the Soviets “liberating” Brest from the Nazis is laughably inaccurate. There was no antagonism when the Soviets arrived.
The Nazis would have had to stay in Brest if the Soviets didn’t show up, because both parties also agreed to suppress any Polish resistance against either side. The Nazis suddenly leaving would have given an opening to Polish resistance.
The Soviets basically told Lithuania “we decided to divvy up eastern Europe with the Nazis. You are on our side of the demarcation line, and we already invaded Poland. Know what happens when you resist”. It was a direct threat, not a promise of an alliance.
The UK and France guaranteed Polish independence and declared war on Germany when Hitler invaded. The Soviets could have done the same, but didn’t. Instead, they joined forces with the Nazis. They were just as ineffective at stopping the Nazis as the Allies were, when he wasn’t directly helping them out. Once war was declared that picture shifts, and the Soviets delivered an immense effort to stop the Nazis, most notably their sacrifice in human lives (something that must be respected and remembered). But before the war that was very different, despite attempts to minimize the Soviet collaboration by revisionists.
There was no antagonism from the Nazis because they had agreed to not press farther, or risk breaking the non-aggression pact. Without the non-aggression pact, Poland would have been totally colonized by the Nazis and subject to the Holocaust. It effectively stalled the Nazi advance without the Soviets needing to go to war quite yet.
The Soviets informed Lithuania to warn them of Nazi aggression, not to threaten them. Britain and France declared war but didn’t do jack shit, to the point that this era was remembered as the “Phoney War.” What happened next, was Britain extending diplomacy with the USSR and trying to finally form a cohesive alliance.
Again, because you’re relentlessly dodging this, what’s your point, exactly? That the nation that spent a decade trying to form an anti-Nazi alliance, was ideologically opposed to Nazism, when the Nazis were murdering communists, were secretly friends the whole time and that the war was an unexpected betrayal? This kind of nonsense anti-communism is historical revisionism and erasure of context.
the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact
Putting aside all the usual arguments that get dismissed: What were the complex and mitigating factors that required supplying the Nazi war machine with more raw materials (oil, iron, grain, cotton, rubber, et al.) after the invasion of Poland? At the same time that the famously duplicitous Americans were enacting German tariffs and shifting economic support entirely to the Allies?
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The Soviets desparately needed finished goods that they either couldn’t produce, or couldn’t produce in necessary quantities, and the West would not trade them for them.
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The US’s tariffs were notoriously symbolic. Ford, Coke, Dow Chemical, and many more continued business even into World War II. USian bombers were instructed to avoid USian factories in Nazi Germany.
- Damn, if only there were suppliers of finished goods that also were strategically aligned on fighting the Nazis. But if you can’t blame the USSR for a half measure non-aggression pact with the Nazis then you surely can’t blame the Allies for withholding trade to a country not committed to the fight. After all, the Soviets got the supplies they wanted once they were actually in the war.
- Nazi economic policy prevented profits from leaving Germany, and the fascist regimes were not subtle in their nationalization threats. Not much of a surprise that private enterprise will toe the line when faced with takeover vs nominal ownership. In terms of actual trade (ie: not Coke factories staying open to make Fanta), US exports to Germany dropped 97% from 1938-1939.
I’m by no means arguing for the Democratic™️ ideological purity of the Allies, but it’s pretty clear what the universal political thinking was in the lead up to WWII. Everyone (from Hindenburg up to the USSR) thought they could keep the Nazis at arms length and aimed at their rivals. A few fascist atrocities can be overlooked so long as they happen to the right people.
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The USSR spent a decade trying to form an anti-Nazi alliance, the west wanted the Nazis and communists to kill each other. The west had multiple non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany, and turned down many offers of alliances with the Soviets against the Nazis.
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US exports fell, they were of course at war, but the US continued business and was doing a ton of business in the lead-up to the war. Further, post-war, the US protected Nazis and even put them in charge of NATO to make use of their anti-communism, like Adolf Heusinger.
It’s pretty clear that the decade leading up to World War II, the Soviets begged and pleaded for an anti-Nazi alliance, but people like Churchill, Ford, etc. loved the Nazis so much that this was impossible until the Nazis did what the Soviets said they would.
Those survey data are highly misleading. Even if U.S. businesses never withheld or consciously distorted their economic reports, they still cloaked hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Third Reich assets. In many cases, U.S. businesses simply exported their wealth indirectly to the Third Reich by using other dictatorships of the bourgeoisie (e.g. the Spanish State) as intermediaries.
Thanks for the information, comrade!
- Yes, the West wanted the Nazis and communists to fight and the Soviets wanted the Nazis to fight the West. Both sides acted accordingly. Why is this hard to admit?
- So? The other countries on the belligerent list are receiving more support by several orders of magnitude. Not to mention trade to the Allies and other European countries continuing to go up as the war went on, clearly the war wasn’t the deciding factor.
The numbers OBJECTIVELY show a decrease in German trade to a pitiful amount. In the lead up to the US’s entry, quite literally the lowest of any European country (let alone adjusted per-capita). German U-boats were sinking US trade vessels up until the end, strange way to treat your trade parter?
The numbers OBJECTIVELY show USSR-German trade in war materials increasing as the war starts, with no significant support to the Allies right up until they’re invaded. There’s not any arguing this.
Pointing to post-WWII is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. Either country could (and often does) gesture broadly at the Cold War to justify their actions.
Why is it so hard to admit that Saint Stalin and the USSR engaged in hard geopolitics? Somehow you’re trying to push the narrative of the Soviets being weak victims that begged and pleaded and were forced to concede to German demands. But you’ll also claim they’re the sole reason that the Allies won WWII. Which is it?
There’s a counterfactual history where the Soviets remain neutral and the Allies will still almost certainly win (though at a greater cost). The Axis simply didn’t have the manpower or resource access to keep up, hence their need to engage the USSR for oil. They certainly sped the war to it’s end, but that doesn’t change the fact that they could have made many different decisions if snuffing out fascism was their top priority.
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The Soviets wanted to fight the Nazis with the west the entire time, hence the numerous proposals for allied anti-fascist coalitions. The Soviets weren’t on good terms with the West, but saw the Nazis as the far greater threat and acted rationally.
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As comrade @[email protected] pointed out (that you cannot see) in this post, the US distorted economic reports and cloaked their continued ties to Nazi Germany throughout the war.
The Soviets were able to beat the Nazis, but at massive personal cost in human lives. They barely eaked out a win, because while they were massively industrializing, they were a poor, developing country against a country with a century-long industrial headstart. They needed to buy as much time as possible, as they were catching up, but the distance was still large. Those are the basic facts.
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Not just after the invasion of Poland, right up until the invasion of the Soviet Union.
On the Russian side, General Thomas, Chief of the German War Industry Department, recorded that “the Russians carried out their deliveries as planned, right up to the start of the attack. Even during the last few days, transports of India rubber from the Far East were completed by express transit trains.”30
This was not because the Russians did not expect to be attacked. As early as September 18, 1940, the Germans learned about anti-German propaganda in the Red Army, and interpreted it as a response to fear of attack by Germany.31 The Kremlin fulfilled its economic commitments to the end because it was determined to give Hitler no cause to attack. Until late in the day, also, the industrial and war materials received from Germany were a very important supplement to Russia’s armament efforts. The raw materials which Germany received were mostly perishable, while the arms and machines received by Russia remained when war came.The Cold War & Its Origins, 1917-1960, Vol. I, Denna F. Flemming, 1961, Chapter 6.
World War II began with a coordinated attack on Poland conducted by the Third Reich and the USSR
Oh? What date did this “coordinated attack” take place, and how was the coordination handled? Presuming coordinating the movements of two different armies for such a large scale operation would have required a lot of back and forth signaling and planning, all of which would have become public record when the soviet archives were opened.
It’s well documented indeed. You can read more here if you’re interested.
I don’t have access, unfortunately, though the abstract seems to be about the political situation and doesn’t mention military organization.
They go hand-in-hand, as all wars do. I’ve had a look and it’s on Anna’s archive as well.
Yeah, I found the an accessable copy and it doesn’t actually contain any of the things I was asking about. I’m guessing you were hoping nobody would check?
You sure you read the correct document?
The one I linked clearly cites soviet sources describing the USSR third reich collaborarion untill Barbarossa.
https://annas-archive.org/scidb/10.2307/826217/
I cannot find much about Soviet-German relations in it either.
You must have linked the wrong one then, because it didn’t include any of the things I described. Feel free to provide quotes from the actual one if I’m mistaken
![[1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Allied_Chinese.jpg){kind=link}
![[2]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poster_russian.jpg){kind=link}
