I didn’t dodge either of those points. They agreed to spheres of influence that contained areas of Ukraine and Lithuania, inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians and Lithuanians, and they didn’t give support, they only partially complied in a way that didn’t really help.
I’m aware that France didn’t do anything, the BEF wasn’t deployable in time and they actively sabotaged talked of alliances leading up tk that moment.
The Soviets could not risk their lives protecting a country that hated them and starting a war they would have likely lost. The west had proven incapable of allying with the Soviets as a preventative measure. Germany would not have been less effective, if you actually checked the article I linked the impact of the Soviet’s partial compliance was marginal at best.
This is all alt-history fanfic on your part. 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.
You did not address the fact that the Soviets directly collaborated with the Luftwaffe from Minsk. You did not address the fact that the Soviets had already geared up for an invasion on the Polish border.
Don’t claim you did when anyone can read you didn’t.
You misrepresent the facts surrounding Brest. The article you referred to does these things to: omit the facts that don’t match your narrative. You ignore historical context and have now resorted to putting up a strawman regarding which country did most to stop the Nazis, which was never the point I challenged you on (the historical fact that the Soviets did indeed agree to divide Poland with the Nazis and collaborated on the invasion).
There’s no point in continuing this conversation if you keep failing to address these key points that directly undermine your narrative.
I did address those. Plus, based on the voting ratios, it seems that “anyone that can read” is siding more with me than you. Normally I think referencing vote ratios is a stupid frame of argument, but if you’re going to make the appeal first I may as well point out that it’s in my favor, not yours.
I’m not ignoring historical context, you’re trying to invent a narrative where the Soviets, for a very short period, were actually super pro-Nazi and totally fine with them, surrounded on both sides by decades of hostile opposition and offers to send a million troops on the conditions of forming an anti-Nazi alliance. The country that hated the Nazis from the beginning, and killed 85% of the total Nazi deaths in World War II, somehow forgot its history and decided to collaborate with the Nazis willingly.
I guess I’ll show you a mirror: there’s no point in continuing this conversation if you keep failing to address these key points that directly undermine your narrative.
Please cite this directly because I’m not reading it in your replies.
you’re trying to invent a narrative where the Soviets, for a very short period, were actually super pro-Nazi and totally fine with them
Here’s the thing: this is exactly what the communist parties outside Russia also struggled with. Stalin made a deal with Hitler. Molotov literally said “Fascism? Fascism is purely a matter of taste”.
For the first two weeks of the war, the communist parties felt conflicted but ultimately didn’t need to change their stance. They were anti-fascist after all, and the UK and France had now declared war on the Nazis so this received the CPs support. Maurice Thorez even joined the French army (for a couple weeks until he left to go to Moscow).
But then, Stalin invaded Poland, and they met the Nazis as allies in the middle. Stalin publicly came out in support of Hitler’s “peace programme”. This caused some serious conflicts in the CPs in the west. Suddenly the logic shifted:
the UK and France had colonial empires, Germany did not
the UK and France declared war on Germany, not the other way around
the Germans had signed a pact of friendship with the USSR
So surely, it was better to focus on being anti-imperialist, focused against the UK and France instead of focusing on Germany.
You’ll find many socialist and communist newspapers started putting out pro-German propaganda (and some were banned for it). This only changed after 41, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
The Soviets were never “totally fine” with the Nazis. But for a time they were happy to see the Nazis turned towards the west, and they saw the opportunity to get some benefits for themselves too.
It seems you keep shifting and shifting and shifting. The soviets remained the most consistent, largest, and most millitant anti-Nazi group, while the west made it clear that they had quite a large pro-Nazi population. And I addressed them in the comments I linked, not going to rewrite it out for you.
Despite the [German–Soviet] pact, Communist resistance started very quickly in the Pas‐de‐Calais. The particular circumstances of the Forbidden Zone allowed for an independence of action that Auguste Lecœur and Julien Hapiot were able to take maximum advantage of. They decided, in August 1940, to begin organising illegal Communist activity against the occupying forces.⁷
[…]
Thus, the Communists of the Pas‐de‐Calais began their anti‐[Reich] propaganda very early on. Nevertheless, the Communists of the region did not think of themselves as disloyal to their party and their confidence in the Soviet Union was as strong as ever, it was simply that the daily reality of the Forbidden Zone pushed then more rapidly to a more anti‐[Reich] position than their comrades elsewhere.
the daily reality of the Forbidden Zone pushed then more rapidly to a more anti‐[Reich] position than their comrades elsewhere.
Yeah this was my point. It took a bit for various communist groups to pivot back to being primarily anti-reich. Those who suffered directly under the Nazis turned faster, e.g. those in northern France took the anti-reich position before the British communists did (they remained more anti-imperialist aimed at the UK, until the Soviets were invaded).
Far from possessing a single will, the reaction of Communists to the [German]–Soviet Pact and Chamberlain’s declaration of war was confused and heterogeneous, for the war shattered the Party’s whole conception of international politics.
Campaigns to demand shelter facilities, directed by the Communist Party, were also mounted. The government feared that Communist agitation about poor shelter provision in the working-class areas of London might provide fertile ground for political subversion. One incident of this campaign for improved shelter facilities was a demonstration at the Savoy in London’s West End. This became the subject of Cabinet investigations. The minutes of the Cabinet meeting record the recommendation that:
…strong action should, if necessary, be taken to prevent demonstrations by bodies of people purporting to seek better shelter accommodation…’
In January 1941, the central committee of the Communist Party of Belgium (Parti Communiste de Belgique, PCB) had started producing Le Drapeau Rouge (Red Flag) clandestinely. While formally supporting the [German–Soviet] pact and placing the blame for the war equally on Berlin and London, in its second edition proclaimed itself to be “against national-socialism, the agent of big business. The struggle for socialism continues.”
The resolution of the central committee “accepts the patriotic character of the resistance developed by certain sections of the Anglophile bourgeoisie and recognises the necessity to create a parallel movement to avoid the working class being dragged along behind”.¹⁵ Although it is equally fair to say that the anti[fascist] sentiments that were widespread in the Belgian working class pushed the PCB into opposing the occupation more forcefully than the logic of their support for the [German–Soviet] pact would imply.
Albert Ouzoulias, commander of the Bataillons de la Jeunesse (Youth Battalions), armed wing of the Jeunesse Communiste said:
"For us, even a Nazi was a human being. The discussions had centred on this question. The comrades refused to execute a German soldier who could have been a Communist comrade from Hamburg or a worker from Berlin. Even an officer could have been an anti-Nazi teacher. At least, everyone felt that killing a Gestapo officer was justified. But our comrades did not understand that the best way to defend our country during a war was to kill the maximum number of German officers. This would hasten the end of the war and the end of the misfortune that has affected many of the peoples of the world, including the German people. Internationalism at this time was to kill the largest possible number of Nazis".⁵⁵
In fact, the majority of Communists were happy to be rid of the [German–Soviet] pact and were quickly comfortable with the combativity of the new line.
The comment you linked did not address the direct military collaboration, e.g. the Luftwaffe being coordinated from Minsk. So please, do spell it out. You can’t, because you never did address it.
To be honest, when I first saw the claim about the Minsk radio station I immediately wondered if it was real, but The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pg. 621 does briefly discuss it and the author cited the ‘German Foreign Office papers, […] p. 480’. Strangely, though,not that manysources discuss it,and the few that I did find had surprisingly little to say about it; finding in depth English information on this radio station is frustratingly uneasy. A couple sources (The Fate of Poles in the USSR and The Polish Review) specifically claim that this station helped the Luftwaffe bomb towns, villages, and cities: a serious accusation that has attracted suspiciously little attention and reeks of Cold War sensationalism. Now I’m starting to wonder: did the Soviets even make good on their presumable promise to help the Luftwaffe?
Here is what pg. 480 of the German Foreign Office papers says:
“The Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe² would be very much obliged to the People’s Commissariat for Telecommunications if—for urgent navigational tests—the Minsk Broadcasting Station could, until further notice and commencing immediately, send out a continuous dash with intermittent call-sign ‘Richard Wilhelm 1.0.’ in the intervals between its programmes, and introduce the name ‘Minsk’ as often as possible in the course of its programme.”
I don’t know if it’s because of my limited expertise in this particular subject or if there is some context that I am overlooking, but judging from this report alone, it really doesn’t sound that scandalous. It sounds downright boring, actually. What do you think: is sending out a continuous dash and repeatedly introducing a name in navigational tests a cause for concern…? Can you feel yourself sweating at all…? Do you think that you’ll lose any sleep tonight…? Even just a little bit…? Be honest.
A funny thing, though:
“One evening a soldier came to the place where I lived and told us he’d heard on the radio that everybody who didn’t want to be under German occupation was welcome in the USSR: the borders were open for everybody.”²¹ As she has heard about the Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany, she says to herself: “Maybe there is a way. Maybe the USSR will save my life.” So together with some friends and her brother, she decides, as she puts it, to take up the “Russian offer.”²² They leave Warsaw on foot on 28 September. She writes: “The next day we were refugees in the care of the Russian Army in Bialystok. […] We were well treated and got some food and shelter.”²³
Thanks for doing the digging! All I could find is partial compliance, in not even repeating the name, but just the word “Minsk.” I presume it may be capable of triangulation of some sort, but I don’t know for sure, and the only source I found showed the Soviets refusing to fully comply with the request.
I didn’t dodge either of those points. They agreed to spheres of influence that contained areas of Ukraine and Lithuania, inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians and Lithuanians, and they didn’t give support, they only partially complied in a way that didn’t really help.
I’m aware that France didn’t do anything, the BEF wasn’t deployable in time and they actively sabotaged talked of alliances leading up tk that moment.
The Soviets could not risk their lives protecting a country that hated them and starting a war they would have likely lost. The west had proven incapable of allying with the Soviets as a preventative measure. Germany would not have been less effective, if you actually checked the article I linked the impact of the Soviet’s partial compliance was marginal at best.
This is all alt-history fanfic on your part. 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.
You did not address the fact that the Soviets directly collaborated with the Luftwaffe from Minsk. You did not address the fact that the Soviets had already geared up for an invasion on the Polish border.
Don’t claim you did when anyone can read you didn’t.
You misrepresent the facts surrounding Brest. The article you referred to does these things to: omit the facts that don’t match your narrative. You ignore historical context and have now resorted to putting up a strawman regarding which country did most to stop the Nazis, which was never the point I challenged you on (the historical fact that the Soviets did indeed agree to divide Poland with the Nazis and collaborated on the invasion).
There’s no point in continuing this conversation if you keep failing to address these key points that directly undermine your narrative.
I did address those. Plus, based on the voting ratios, it seems that “anyone that can read” is siding more with me than you. Normally I think referencing vote ratios is a stupid frame of argument, but if you’re going to make the appeal first I may as well point out that it’s in my favor, not yours.
I’m not ignoring historical context, you’re trying to invent a narrative where the Soviets, for a very short period, were actually super pro-Nazi and totally fine with them, surrounded on both sides by decades of hostile opposition and offers to send a million troops on the conditions of forming an anti-Nazi alliance. The country that hated the Nazis from the beginning, and killed 85% of the total Nazi deaths in World War II, somehow forgot its history and decided to collaborate with the Nazis willingly.
I guess I’ll show you a mirror: there’s no point in continuing this conversation if you keep failing to address these key points that directly undermine your narrative.
Please cite this directly because I’m not reading it in your replies.
Here’s the thing: this is exactly what the communist parties outside Russia also struggled with. Stalin made a deal with Hitler. Molotov literally said “Fascism? Fascism is purely a matter of taste”.
For the first two weeks of the war, the communist parties felt conflicted but ultimately didn’t need to change their stance. They were anti-fascist after all, and the UK and France had now declared war on the Nazis so this received the CPs support. Maurice Thorez even joined the French army (for a couple weeks until he left to go to Moscow).
But then, Stalin invaded Poland, and they met the Nazis as allies in the middle. Stalin publicly came out in support of Hitler’s “peace programme”. This caused some serious conflicts in the CPs in the west. Suddenly the logic shifted:
So surely, it was better to focus on being anti-imperialist, focused against the UK and France instead of focusing on Germany.
You’ll find many socialist and communist newspapers started putting out pro-German propaganda (and some were banned for it). This only changed after 41, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
The Soviets were never “totally fine” with the Nazis. But for a time they were happy to see the Nazis turned towards the west, and they saw the opportunity to get some benefits for themselves too.
It seems you keep shifting and shifting and shifting. The soviets remained the most consistent, largest, and most millitant anti-Nazi group, while the west made it clear that they had quite a large pro-Nazi population. And I addressed them in the comments I linked, not going to rewrite it out for you.
(Emphasis added. Source.)
Fantastic, thank you very much as always, comrade.
Yeah this was my point. It took a bit for various communist groups to pivot back to being primarily anti-reich. Those who suffered directly under the Nazis turned faster, e.g. those in northern France took the anti-reich position before the British communists did (they remained more anti-imperialist aimed at the UK, until the Soviets were invaded).
(Source.)
(Source.)
(Source.)
(Source.)
The comment you linked did not address the direct military collaboration, e.g. the Luftwaffe being coordinated from Minsk. So please, do spell it out. You can’t, because you never did address it.
It did, because I did. I don’t care to play your posturing games.
To be honest, when I first saw the claim about the Minsk radio station I immediately wondered if it was real, but The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, pg. 621 does briefly discuss it and the author cited the ‘German Foreign Office papers, […] p. 480’. Strangely, though, not that many sources discuss it, and the few that I did find had surprisingly little to say about it; finding in depth English information on this radio station is frustratingly uneasy. A couple sources (The Fate of Poles in the USSR and The Polish Review) specifically claim that this station helped the Luftwaffe bomb towns, villages, and cities: a serious accusation that has attracted suspiciously little attention and reeks of Cold War sensationalism. Now I’m starting to wonder: did the Soviets even make good on their presumable promise to help the Luftwaffe?
Here is what pg. 480 of the German Foreign Office papers says:
I don’t know if it’s because of my limited expertise in this particular subject or if there is some context that I am overlooking, but judging from this report alone, it really doesn’t sound that scandalous. It sounds downright boring, actually. What do you think: is sending out a continuous dash and repeatedly introducing a name in navigational tests a cause for concern…? Can you feel yourself sweating at all…? Do you think that you’ll lose any sleep tonight…? Even just a little bit…? Be honest.
A funny thing, though:
(Source.)
Thanks for doing the digging! All I could find is partial compliance, in not even repeating the name, but just the word “Minsk.” I presume it may be capable of triangulation of some sort, but I don’t know for sure, and the only source I found showed the Soviets refusing to fully comply with the request.