Is it true that Stalin allied with Hitler ? [Archive]

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tradeunionsupporter

16th September 2011, 03:17

TheGodlessUtopian

16th September 2011, 03:27

It was a non-aggression pact that said neither side would attack the other.I do not know much more beyond that.I think Marxist-Leninists would say it was vital to sign it because it gave the USSR time to build up and prepare for the eventual conflict with Germany.

Geiseric

16th September 2011, 03:31

It was oppurtunism, plain and simple. He should have been destroying the fascists in their embryonic state rather than let them strengthen. His army trained alongside the german one, that's how close the states were.

#FF0000

16th September 2011, 03:31

I think Marxist-Leninists would say it was vital to sign it because it gave the USSR time to build up and prepare for the eventual conflict with Germany.

I think most people would say that, regardless of political bent. The USSR wasn't even ready for the Germans when they finally invaded years later

Commissar Rykov

16th September 2011, 03:35

It was a non-aggression pact that divided up areas of German Political Control and Soviet Political Control. Of course this pact became useless with the launch of Operation Barbarossa which nullified the idea of the USSR having a sphere of influence.

thesadmafioso

16th September 2011, 03:36

Stalin was a bourgeois nationalist through and through, just one with a thin veneer of red thrown over his language for the sake of appearances. Naturally, it should only of been expected of such a despicable autocrat of reaction to act in a manner so incredibly unbefitting of a communist.

#FF0000

16th September 2011, 03:42

Geiseric

16th September 2011, 03:42

I don't think he was quite a bourgeois nationalist, however he was truly a menshevik. All this two stage theory and bloc of 4 classes is menshevism!

Geiseric

16th September 2011, 03:45

Wouldn't it be more suicidal to allow the nazis be your next door neighbor? to literally share half a country as a border?

thesadmafioso

16th September 2011, 03:48

Correct as you are, anyone would be suicidal to not make that deal imo

My point was more one against his actions on the world stage leading up to this decision though. Had Stalin decided to stand up for international socialism, as opposed to nursing his own personal deviation of it, there wouldn't of been a need to negotiate with a Nazi Germany in 1939.

Though, he probably could of fared well enough still yet, had he not decided to purge the vast majority of his military leadership and then decided to undertake a disastrous invasion of Finland on the eve of World War II. If he actually listened to his intelligence warning him of an imminent attack in the days before Barbarossa was launched, the Red Army could very well of avoided a tremendous amount of losses in the early fighting as well.

Point being, Stalin still had options, even right up to the German invasion.

thesadmafioso

16th September 2011, 03:53

I don't think he was quite a bourgeois nationalist, however he was truly a menshevik. All this two stage theory and bloc of 4 classes is menshevism!

What? I'm used to hearing this sort of thing from Stalinist's, but this is rather unexpected.

On this matter, I would strongly recommend you read the follow excerpt of an article penned by Ted Grant which pertains to the Bonapartist and nationalistic nature of Stalin's abandonment of the international struggle for socialism.

Molotov’s nationalist appeal

The attack of Germany upon Russia could lead to the complete smashing not only of Hitler but of world imperialism, had we at the present time in the Kremlin, a leadership which based itself firmly on the masses of Russian workers and peasants, and had the perspective of the international revolution as the sole means of salvation. The supreme test is here and already the Bonapartist clique which holds the reigns of power in Moscow, has revealed its complete worthlessness. Trembling before their own masses; and with contempt and fear of the revolutionary possibilities of the world proletariat, above all the German and European proletariat, these contemptible flunkeys are clutching at the coat-tails of Roosevelt and Churchill to save them.

The appeal they issued to the Russian and German people is almost incredible. It contained all the old outworn liberal phrases regarding the “aggressor”, the “megalomaniac” Hitler, etc. Bloody Czar Nicholas could have appended his signature to this disgraceful appeal without altering a single word. Corroded through and through with Nationalism, not a trace of revolutionary socialism or internationalism even by implication pervaded this speech.
So corrupt, so degenerate have this perfidious Bonapartist clique become, that in their appeal to the Russian masses to rally in defence against the invader, they can go back only to the “magnificent” example of the defeat of Napoleon by reactionary feudal Czarism! It were as though the October revolution and the revolutionary war against intervention had never taken place. They dare not, they cannot appeal to the traditions dearest to the hearts of the Russian and international proletariat — to the tradition of the Red Army of Lenin and Trotsky, the army which was the child of October.

The Red Army has a tradition of courage, sacrifice and heroism unexampled in history. Ragged, ill-equipped, starving and militarily unskilled masses succeeded in beating back, despite the ruined and exhausted condition of Russia, the armies of intervention of twenty one different capitalist countries, as well as the traitor armies of Russian capitalism. They emerged victorious because they were inspired by the consciousness that they were fighting for a better world; for the cause of international socialism. It is this tradition which is deliberately avoided by Molotov. Decisively they have turned their backs on the internationalist mould from which the Soviet Union emerged and substituted for it bankrupt nationalism.

Stalin is doing this for reasons of self preservation. A revolution in Europe would soon lead to the Russian proletariat settling accounts with the bureaucracy. It will not be long before their agents of the Communist International will attempt to pacify the uneasiness among their members by pointing to the need to keep Britain and America from joining with the Nazis against the Soviet Union.

Having led the proletariat to disaster in one country after another, the fate of the Soviet Union and their own heads is now at stake, and all they can do is to look for succour from the Western powers. While loud in offers of assistance and protestations of sympathy, the British and American imperialists offer “clothes and shoes” in place of planes and vital equipment in the decisive period. The bombing of Germany by the RAF is not of decisive importance.

Stalin’s foreign policy has succeeded in isolating his Western frontiers from the Western powers. Every German plane, tank and soldier is being thrown in full force from the Black Sea to the Baltic. Aid from Britain and America, even in the best case, could not come till the decisive battles had been fought. Moreover, even a military victory under these conditions will not save the Soviet State. It is a significant fact that the Moscow radio, in transmitting Churchill’s speech, omitted the passage in which he referred to his hatred of Communism. Instead of unequivocally pointing to the nature of their “ally”, the bureaucracy hopes to deceive the Soviet people.

The first successes of the Red Army which threatened to destroy completely the power of German imperialism would result in an immediate agreement of all the imperialist powers, including Britain and America, to crush the Soviet Union. If imperialism emerges from this war intact, the Soviet Union is doomed.

Source: http://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1941/07/fascism.htm

Theoneontheleft

16th September 2011, 04:06

I have always assumed that the "Molotov-Ribbon Pact" was only an action of convenience & opportunity for both countries involved, & neither party were ever actually allies or friends in the traditional sense. Germany under Hitler broke the pact thus creating a war on two fronts.

Non-aggression treaty signed by Germany and the USSR on 23 August 1939. The pact is named after the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, working under German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin respectively. Under the terms of the treaty both countries agreed to remain neutral and to refrain from acts of aggression against each other if either went to war. Secret clauses allowed for the partition of Poland – Hitler was to acquire western Poland, Stalin the eastern part. On 1 September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland. The pact ended when Hitler invaded Russia on 22 June 1941 during World War II.

Quote Above Retrieved From:http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Ribbentrop+-+Molotov+pact

Geiseric

16th September 2011, 04:22

dodger

16th September 2011, 09:40

tradeunionsupporter..." Is it true that Stalin allied with Hitler they did sign a Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact right or correct was this even an alliance did Stalin have a good reason to sign this also Stalin did fight and defeat Hitler right ?"

YES!! Ribbentrop did sign a non aggression treaty with Molotov. No wonder the British workers called him "VON BRICKENDROP" whilst Nazi ambassador in Britain.

One of them was swinging from a rope in 6 SHORT YEARS........OH DEAR!!!

and..."the KREMLIN had stopped sending Christmas Cards.....some time ago"....:cursing:

Stalin sought with every means in his power to stay out of war, whereas Hitler did all that he could to start it. The 1939 pact with Germany gave the Soviet Union an enormous strategic advantage in the inevitable war ahead. From the Black Sea to the White Sea, the USSR was able to shift its entire Western boundary 200-300 kilometres further West. And in the vulnerable northwestern sector, the border became shorter by almost 600 kilometres, so Leningrad and Kronstadt were now deep within Soviet territory, whether approached from the Baltic states or from Finland.

It is clear that the British and French were also wrong footed by the pact. The Polish Colonels also miscalculated badly, all their treaties were discarded by the Nazis The Poles who had leapt on the corpse of Czechoslovakia and seized Silesia....would be subject to the same treatment by Nazi ally and ignored by Chamberlain, whilst he attempted to retrieve the anti Comintern pact. Finland would get 100,000 BRITISH rifles and planes which were painted with the Swastica as soon as they landed. British troops were in the same FINNISH trenches as the Wehrmacht , whilst the British army was fighting Nazis in France.
REACTION was in a terrible mess....a little scrap of paper had seen to that. Stalin was above all else in this situation a wise statesman. All the Soviets enemies were at each others throats for heavens sake. The plan to point Hitler east which the British and French capitalists also wished to profit from was stifled...blown out of the water. They could not even sing from the same HYMN SHEET !!

Yes indeed...."VON BRICKENDROP".....ACCORDING TO THE AMERICAN ARMY DOCTOR,Ribbentrop took 17 minutes to die at he end of the rope......I wonder what he was thinking.....don't you?????????....M U N I C H H H H !!

Sasha

16th September 2011, 10:14

this was a bit more than an non-agression pact, they even invaded countries together: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland

tir1944

16th September 2011, 10:16

False,the Soviet Campaign in Eastern Poland was not done in cooperation with the German armed forces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

Le Socialiste

16th September 2011, 10:53

False,the Soviet Campaign in Eastern Poland was not done in cooperation with the German armed forces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o7MZRBJ1zfQ/TCVNJaASu_I/AAAAAAAAD-s/EUlh9vWrDQU/s640/As+tropas+alem%C3%A3s+e+sovi%C3%A9ticas+apertando+ as+m%C3%A3os+ap%C3%B3s+a+invas%C3%A3o.jpg

Edit - Because making a land grab all by your self is so much better...:rolleyes:

Kosakk

16th September 2011, 10:54

Allthough the Pact gave the USSR much needed time, it also made matters worst.
I don't remember where, but Stalin had commanded the building of a "Maginot Line" in Russia.
By occupying half of Poland it meant that the Army had leave these fortifications to guard the new border.

It created a buffer-zone, but the Soviets where too busy deporting the local population to build new fortifications.

Sasha

16th September 2011, 11:25

False,the Soviet Campaign in Eastern Poland was not done in cooperation with the German armed forces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

false, the russian invasion was agreed upon in a secret protocol in the molotov-ribbentrop pact, the unexpected russian invasion in the rear broke the polish resistance against the nazi invasion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland) therefor making the russian regime directly responsible not only for its own massacres in poland but also for the Nazi-occupation of the rest of poland which ultimately where the scene for the most horrific chapters of the holocaust.

at least with hindsight the actions of the stalin bureaucracy are completely undefendable.

piet11111

16th September 2011, 11:29

They divided poland between themselves in a joint invasion and prior to that had a shared tank school at Kazan where they developed blitzkrieg doctrine and tank design.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93German_relations_before_1941

Further reading is the treaty of Rappalo https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Treaty_of_Rapallo,_1922

Stalin used the non-agression pact to move war industry behind the ural mountains so i guess he was playing for time.

Tommy4ever

16th September 2011, 11:51

It is true.

But, whilst quite despicably opportunist it is important to look at the context of the Pact.

After the victory of the Nazis in Germany in 1933 it was abundantly clear to the Soviet government that war with Germany was inevitable and they'd better prepare themselves. Industrialisation changed its focus to war production and the cornerstone of Russian foriegn policy became alliance with the Western powers (specifaclly the French) against the Germans. By the Munich Agreement in 1938 it seemed that this policy was not going to work. The British and French seemed to have no intention of fighting the Germans, or lifting a finger to save Eastern Europe (and the Soviet Union) from the Nazis.

The British government especially was extremely dismissive of the Soviets, even in the event of war the French would likely just hide behind the Maginot Line (a fearsome defensive system along the Franco-German border). Western policy seemed to be pretty simple - send Hitler's tanks Eastward at all costs. They had sold Czechoslovakia down the river and there was no reason for the Soviet government to think they wouldn't do the same to Russia. So Russia moved to their own policy of appeasement that would be similar to the West's with the central goal being to send the German tanks into Western Europe rather than the East. Remember that most people assumed it would take years for Germany to defeat France with the war going like WWI. So the Soviet government could rightly expect this policy to buy them a number of years (in reality it bought them 2).

The benefits of the Pact were considerable: buys much needed time, forces Germans to fight Western powers (nice when your enemies are fighting), trading partner in Europe, a chance to conquer Eastern Europe (Karelia in the Winter War with Finland, Eastern Poland, the Baltics and Bessarabia from Romania). From a national point of view the Pact is a no brainer. The problem lies in the fact that Stalin's government was supposed to be the leader of the international socialist movement and it both dealt with Fascists and willfully surrendered the working class of Europe to the Nazis in the name of national concerns.

But lets not act like this was the first or last time the Stalinist government put the national interests of the Soviet Union above those of the international socialist movement or indeed the working class as a whole. As it was a pretty successful policy its hardly the best route to take to criticise Stalin, although it is effective in pointing out exactly how the Soviet Union had abandoned the old ideals by the end of the 30s.

thesadmafioso

16th September 2011, 12:19

Thesadmafioso, I was using menshevik as a derogatory word, however sympathetic and oppurtunist he was, I wouldn't describe him as bourgeois, I think of him as an ideological remnent from the failed menshevik counter revolution. He was also nationalist, like the mensheviks, who wanted to wage revolutionary defensive war against the countries the czar wanted to invade, however in the dictionary sense I don't think they were capitalists nor bourgeois, they allied with them and destroyed the revolutions, however souly in the dictionary sense he was simply a beurecrat.

I was using bourgeois to refer to his foreign policy dealings, which were exactly what you would expect from a leader holding to the notion of nationalism, a concept thoroughly bourgeois in its origins and content.

I'm aware that Stalin wasn't literally a member of the bourgeoisie, I was merely making a legitimate comparison between his approach to international politics with that taken by actual bourgeoisie leaders, where little actual difference can be found.

I think we more or less agree on the same point here, it's just that we've become caught up in a discussion of which word describes such in the most concise manner.

tir1944

16th September 2011, 12:30

The Polish-German War has revealed the internal bankruptcy of the Polish State. During the course of ten days' hostilities Poland has lost all her industrial areas and cultural centres. Warsaw, as the capital of Poland, no longer exists. The Polish Government has disintegrated, and no longer shows any sign of life. This means that the Polish State and its Government have, in point of fact, ceased to exist. In the same way, the Agreements concluded between the U.S.S.R. and Poland have ceased to operate. Left to her own devices and bereft of leadership, Poland has become a suitable field for all manner of hazards and surprises, which may constitute a threat to the U.S.S.R. For these reasons the Soviet Government, who has hitherto been neutral, cannot any longer preserve a neutral attitude towards these facts. The Soviet Government also cannot view with indifference the fact that the kindred Ukrainian and White Russian people, who live on Polish territory and who are at the mercy of fate, should be left defenceless. In these circumstances, the Soviet Government have directed the High Command of the Red Army to order troops to cross the frontier and to take under their protection the life and property of the population of Western Ukraine and Western White Russia. At the same time the Soviet Government propose to take all measures to extricate the Polish people from the unfortunate war into which they were dragged by their unwise leaders, and enable them to live a peaceful life".
Molotov

Baseball

16th September 2011, 12:39

Tommy4ever

16th September 2011, 12:47

dodger

16th September 2011, 13:16

On September 1st 1939 Germany invaded Poland. On September 7 the Polish leaders fled, taking the country's gold with them. On 17th September the Red Army crossed the "Riga line" and dashed across Belarus and the West Ukraine for the Curzon line, beating the Germans to it and reclaiming Russian land to protect the inhabitants from fascist aggression. "That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace" said Churchill on October 1st.

The Nazis carried out mass murders throughout Eastern Europe. Hitler told his senior commanders that he wanted the `physical annihilation' of the Polish population. In their invasion of Poland, the Nazis massacred 50,000 Poles and 7,000 Jews. By contrast, Soviet policy in Poland "did not aim to get rid of any particular national or ethnic group in toto. Its purpose was social revolution, not national purification."
Hitler's invasion of Poland was unjustified. The Red Army's intervention into eastern Poland saved it from Nazi invasion - would you prefer that Hitler had occupied all Poland?
An objective and intelligent person might compare the numbers killed by the Nazi invaders, and the numbers killed in the eastern part of Poland.
Wikipedia, which is biased against the USSR, says, "Polish war dead include 5,150,000 victims of Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles and the Holocaust, the treatment of Polish citizens by occupiers included 350,000 deaths during the Soviet occupation in 1940-41."
So, even on Wikipedia's account, the Nazi invasion killed 4.8 million more Poles than the Red Army did. So an objective person, Polish or otherwise, should recognise that Soviet rule was far less murderous than Nazi domination.
And who eventually, and at great cost, freed Poland from the Nazis? The Red Army.

Responsibillity for the carnage rests with the Polish Colonels the dash across to the CURZON Line saved millions of Poles Ukrainians Jews AND Byelorussians.
In addition the route to the Balkans was denied for a time. It might seem superfluous for there to have been secret protocols, as the Red Army acted with such speed 17 days after the invasion and a whole week after the collapse of the Polish government.

Commissar Rykov

16th September 2011, 15:37

#FF0000

16th September 2011, 16:55

Yes. The USSR-Germany were allies 1939-1941. There have been numerous justification offered here thus far- except the most obvious. It should come as no surprise of an alliance between National and International Socialists.

And the Congo is a Democratic Republic, too.

But yeah we've been through this. Fascism/National Socialism and Communism come from entirely different ideological backgrounds and you will be hard-pressed finding a historian of any repute that will classily Nazism as anything but a right-wing movement.

#FF0000

16th September 2011, 16:58

false, the russian invasion was agreed upon in a secret protocol in the molotov-ribbentrop pact, the unexpected russian invasion in the rear broke the polish resistance against the nazi invasion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland) therefor making the russian regime directly responsible not only for its own massacres in poland but also for the Nazi-occupation of the rest of poland which ultimately where the scene for the most horrific chapters of the holocaust.

at least with hindsight the actions of the stalin bureaucracy are completely undefendable.

Okay I'm gonna make it clear that Stalin was dumb and I don't have much good to say about the USSR at almost any point in its history but the bolded part here is some ol' bullshit. You might as well say Russia was responsible for all of World War 2 for signing the pact in the first place.

DarkPast

16th September 2011, 18:18

?

He's just using the tired old conservative line that fascism and communism are basically the same, grouping them both under "socialism".

Okay I'm gonna make it clear that Stalin was dumb and I don't have much good to say about the USSR at almost any point in its history but the bolded part here is some ol' bullshit. You might as well say Russia was responsible for all of World War 2 for signing the pact in the first place.

Indeed. If we look at it like that, then the ultimate responsibility for the holocaust can just as easily be laid at the feet of France and Britain, who allowed Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia, and later threw away a golden opportunuty to topple the Reich while its west border was almost undefended. The western powers were during the war, if anything, even more selfish and cynical than the Soviet leadership.

Rooster

16th September 2011, 18:45

Did the soviets not round up people in Poland and hand them to the nazis?

tir1944

16th September 2011, 19:00

Did the soviets not round up people in Poland and hand them to the nazis?

What?

dodger

16th September 2011, 20:48

Sasha

16th September 2011, 20:51

Okay I'm gonna make it clear that Stalin was dumb and I don't have much good to say about the USSR at almost any point in its history but the bolded part here is some ol' bullshit. You might as well say Russia was responsible for all of World War 2 for signing the pact in the first place.

Learn to read, I said they where directly responsible for the Nazi occupation, not for the consequences of that. But since we, with hindsight, know what the consequences turned out to be, no matter that we understand what led the russian regime to their decisions back then, stupid neo-stalinoids should tone down their "best move in Russian history" shit down a bit.

tir1944

16th September 2011, 20:54

So what do you suggest Stalin should have done instead?
Leaving the whole of Poland/Western Ukraine/Belarus to the fascist beast?

#FF0000

16th September 2011, 20:58

Learn to read, I said they where directly responsible for the Nazi occupation, not for the consequences of that. But since we, with hindsight, know what the consequences turned out to be, no matter that we understand what led the russian regime to their decisions back then, stupid neo-stalinoids should tone down their "best move in Russian history" shit down a bit.

No question invading Poland turned out to be a blunder on a lot of levels. And I don't know about "best move in russian history" but at that point in time, given the situation, I don't think anyone with a sense of self-preservation wouldn't have signed the pact.

So what do you suggest Stalin should have done instead?
Leaving the whole of Poland/Western Ukraine/Belarus to the fascist beast?

haha hey now lets not make it sound like the USSR was doing it out of concern for poland or anything.

W1N5T0N

16th September 2011, 21:03

Stalin was very ..uncareful... when he signed those non-aggression pact.
Especially the part involving dividing up Poland between Germany and Russia.
Look, if there is a field between me and my mortal enemy, do i give him half that field and take the other half? Effectively erasing any buffer zone that either army would have to cross in order to stage a frontal attack? Massive mistake, and i dont really see why he did that.

Princess Luna

16th September 2011, 21:05

I find the American League Against War and Fascism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_League_Against_War_and_Fascism#Formation) a perfect example of Stalinist hypocracy
1938: Fuck America for ignoring fascism! death to all fascists!
1939: Fuck America for being imperalist! leave Hitler alone!
1941: Fuck fascism! Go America and the Soviet union!
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_League_Against_War_and_Fascism#Formation)

tir1944

16th September 2011, 21:10

Look, if there is a field between me and my mortal enemy, do i give him half that field and take the other half? Effectively erasing any buffer zone that either army would have to cross in order to stage a frontal attack? Massive mistake, and i dont really see why he did that.
Are you trolling or what?

Tommy4ever

16th September 2011, 21:20

Commissar Rykov

16th September 2011, 21:38

"Who gives a shit if they brandish a swastika or a red star? A bullet still kills you regardless of the supposed ideology of your enemy. This is one of the worst arguments and defenses of Stalin probably ever."
Dear Rykov the history of ALL armies who took to the Steppes was about plunder and genocide Stalin, whatever his faults at least knew his history. Stating as you do ideology doesn't kill people--it's bullets that kill people, has left me scratching my head. The gun lobby said people killed people--not guns. The simple truth is Poland was reckless in the extreme and paid the price. There experience of Nazis led to he mass expulsion of Germans after the war, such was their hatred.
Again your whole defense boils down to this, "At least Stalin is better than Hitler." If you are going to use such a shitty measurement for a defense that doesn't say much for Stalin. Again I repeat this is a horrible defense of Stalin and probably one of the worst I have seen on this site. If all you can come up with to defend Stalin with is that at least he was better than Hitler I question why you are offering him any support at all.

Sasha

16th September 2011, 21:52

If there had been no Pact and no reproachment with the Nazis then the Soviet Union would have gone to war in 1939 and there is a good chance that it would have lost.

Thats a lot of assumptions, one could just as well theorize that without the pact, Stalin, under his false sense of security would not have purged his best officers nor moved his best and winterproof divisions to the east which both significantly could have shortened the war and dropped the russian death toll.
And maybe giving tactical support to first the nations under the nazi threat and later to its (communist) resistance might have kept the sovietunion a lot safer than dividing those countries up and occupying them.

Rooster

16th September 2011, 22:00

If there had been no Pact and no reproachment with the Nazis then the Soviet Union would have gone to war in 1939 and there is a good chance that it would have lost.

How can you say that? If it did go to war in 1939 then Germany would have been at war on two fronts, the thing that they feared most.

Tommy4ever

16th September 2011, 22:46

Thats a lot of assumptions, one could just as well theorize that without the pact, Stalin, under his false sense of security would not have purged his best officers nor moved his best and winterproof divisions to the east which both significantly could have shortened the war and dropped the russian death toll.
And maybe giving tactical support to first the nations under the nazi threat and later to its (communist) resistance might have kept the sovietunion a lot safer than dividing those countries up and occupying them.

The military purge occured before the Pact. There was sort of a war going on the the Far East http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet-Japanese_Border_Wars so moving troops there was not exactly a terrible move. Who is to say that if the Japanese had not been beaten in these wars that they wouldn't look to launch some sort of attack in the Far East? Especially if the Soviets were fighting a losing war in the West.

How can you say that? If it did go to war in 1939 then Germany would have been at war on two fronts, the thing that they feared most.

The Soviet Union itself was much weaker in 1939 than in 1941. Just look at how the Red Army performed in the Winter War to see how dire the situation was.

Remember that French military strategy amounted to ''sit behind our nice big wall''. They didn't lift a finger to help the Poles, it is unlikely in the extreme that they would launch a great and bloody invasion of Germany to come to the rescue of the hated USSR. Or alteast, this would have been the Russian perspective at the time.

Basically, if there had been no Pact then the Soviet Union would be going to war in 1939 with its army in its most choatic state and would be forced to rely entirely on the goodness of Britain and France to ensure victory, the goodness of two countries who had shown utter disdain for the USSR and an extreme lack of willingness to violently confront the Germans. Would you see this as a good idea if you were in Soviet government in 1939?

tir1944

16th September 2011, 22:56

Sasha

16th September 2011, 23:09

The military purge occured before the Pact. There was sort of a war going on the the Far East http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet-Japanese_Border_Wars so moving troops there was not exactly a terrible move. Who is to say that if the Japanese had not been beaten in these wars that they wouldn't look to launch some sort of attack in the Far East? Especially if the Soviets were fighting a losing war in the West.

to be fair, while losing a bit of the soviet east would have sucked, losing the west like they almost did would have been way more disastrous.
the fact that russia didnt loose in the end had more to do with the nazi ineptness and the same climatic and geographical problems napoleon already encountered than with russian military strategics, if the nazi's made a push for moscow instead of turning south for kiev during the spring and summer the soviet union would have never survived.

tir1944

16th September 2011, 23:20

to be fair, while losing a bit of the soviet east would have sucked, losing the west like they almost did would have been way more disastrous.But with the "West" gone the "East" couldn't have lasted for long (and vice versa) ,so,what's your point?

the fact that russia didnt loose in the end had more to do with the nazi ineptness and the same climatic and geographical problems napoleon already encountered than with russian military strategicsSo rasputitsa and winter is what stopped the German! Amazing!

if the nazi's made a push for moscow instead of turning south for kiev during the spring and summer the soviet union would have never survived. A bold claim.Interesting but not substantiated though.
Also,let's ignore the fact that Ukraine and especially the Oil-rich Caucasus was (particularly at that time) objectively way more important to Germany than Moscow.

#FF0000

16th September 2011, 23:53

So rasputitsa and winter is what stopped the German! Amazing!

The germans were hella inept, though. It is kinda what saved the USSR

Baseball

17th September 2011, 03:49

On September 7 the Polish leaders fled, taking the country's gold with them.

Of what value is gold to a revolutionary anyhow?

On 17th September the Red Army crossed the "Riga line" and dashed across Belarus and the West Ukraine for the Curzon line, beating the Germans to it and reclaiming Russian land to protect the inhabitants from fascist aggression.

Fascist aggression which the reds greenlighted.

"That the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace" said Churchill on October 1st.

Yep, the Churchill as the great anti-communist figure was largely a post 1945 creation. He tended to be far more tolerant of the reds interwar.

The Nazis carried out mass murders throughout Eastern Europe. Hitler told his senior commanders that he wanted the `physical annihilation' of the Polish population. In their invasion of Poland, the Nazis massacred 50,000 Poles and 7,000 Jews. By contrast, Soviet policy in Poland "did not aim to get rid of any particular national or ethnic group in toto. Its purpose was social revolution, not national purification."

One would think that "national purification" would also constitute a "social revolution."

Hitler's invasion of Poland was unjustified.

In a later note on this thread, you indicated that Poland was reckless and got what it deserved.
Which is it?

Dzerzhinsky's Ghost

17th September 2011, 04:18

Is it true that Stalin allied with Hitler they did sign a Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact right or correct was this even an alliance did Stalin have a good reason to sign this also Stalin did fight and defeat Hitler right ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

No. The USSR under comrade Stalin's leadership did sign a pact of non-agression with the state of Nazi Germany which essentially meant, in so many words, "you don't fuck with us, we won't fuck with you." At the time this pact was made it was crucial in so much as the USSR needed to build itself up. It should also be pointed out that it was the Soviets under Stalin's leadership whom captured Berlin and exterminated the bloody fascists like the rats that they were.

Astarte

17th September 2011, 04:19

I've posted this before in other threads, but its especially pertinent to this one http://scientificsocialist.org/Historical%20Documents/Falsifiers%20of%20History%20-%20Title%20Page.htm

Falsifiers of History (Historical Survey) ("Falsifiers") is a book published by the Soviet Information Bureau, edited and partially re-written by Joseph Stalin, in response to documents made public in January 1948 regarding German–Soviet relations before and after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiers_of_History

deadsmooth

17th September 2011, 05:41

dodger

17th September 2011, 06:39

As far as Finland painting 'swastikas' on their planes goes, they did that on the very first plane their Air Force bought back in circa 1918 C.E. While I do not wish to defend the Kingdom of Finland, in all fairness their use of that symbol has nothing to do with German National Socialism, and does indicate any support or connection.

Deadsmooth I have checked up on your statement and indeed you are correct. Thank you for taking the time to put matters straight. Facts are tricky things ....pictures more so!! :blushing:

dodger

17th September 2011, 10:15

Of what value is gold to a revolutionary anyhow?

I was merely stating the fact that the leaders had scampered to safety, leaving the populace to their inevitable fate at the hands of the Nazi.

Fascist aggression which the reds greenlighted.
I do not believe the Soviets wished the Nazi to get closer to THEIR TERRITORY....so a green light....NO!

Yep, the Churchill as the great anti-communist figure was largely a post 1945 creation. He tended to be far more tolerant of the reds interwar.

Churchill at home or abroad was never tolerant of REDS.. though a pragmatist...he stepped back from his early utterances about "beating the rats back into their holes!" said during the Welsh miners strike of the '20's, He could at least see where British interests might lie, if the Empire was not to be sacrificed.....a Grand Alliance!

One would think that "national purification" would also constitute a "social revolution."

I rarely use the term genocide, but in the case of the Polish people, I have no hesitation.

In a later note on this thread, you indicated that Poland was reckless and got what it deserved.
Which is it?

We all get what we deserve in life....the Poles were no exception. Their fate sealed by refusing to join in a grand alliance that included the Soviets. They, and others paid a terrible price. Putting faith in Chamberlain after Munich was indeed reckless. The Phoney War was proof positive. The attack on Poland by the Nazis was unprovoked aggression and rightly condemned.

W1N5T0N

17th September 2011, 10:44

nope. i was not trolling, sir.
Just plain logic. On the contrary, had Stalin attacked when Hitler was weaker, and forced him to cross Poland, then he might have had a bigger advantage.

seventeethdecember2016

7th January 2012, 22:31

Non-aggression pacts were common in that time period. I believe Turkey also had a non-aggression with Nazi Germany.

The whole point of the combined invasion of Poland was that Stalin would gain back the land the USSR lost in the Soviet-Polish war of 1920-22.

TheCultofAbeLincoln

17th January 2012, 01:37

The 'pact of steel' between the two totalitarian states was necessary for Germany to launch the war, without it the invasion of Poland would have at least had to have been delayed. Whether or not this bought the soviets more time for the eventual war with Germany (which makes Stalins ignoring his own intelligence services prior to the german invasion interesting), Hitler was not going to start the war with 200+ soviet divisions facing him and the french and british at the rear.

Those who suggest the pact was just an agreement to 'not fuck with one another' are apologists who are deliberately misleading. The pact itself outlined how the Nazis and Soviets would divide up Eastern Europe once these peoples were brought into submission, as well as made clear the price Germany would pay for the USSR to assist them in rape.

And if I catch anyone here defending the soviets whilst lambasting the protestors in syria for some car bombs, stand the fuck by.

In mid-June 1940, when international attention was focused on the German invasion of France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France), Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lithuania#First_Soviet_occupation), Estonia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia#Soviet_Annexation) and Latvia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvia#Latvia_in_World_War_II).[121] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#cite_note-wettig20-120)[143] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#cite_note-senn-142) State administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres,[121] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#cite_note-wettig20-120) in which 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians were deported or killed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language): zbrodnia katyńska, mord katyński, 'Katyń crime'; Russian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language): Катынский расстрел Katynskij ra'sstrel 'Katyn shooting'), was a mass execution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide) of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD)), the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria)'s proposal to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps, dated 5 March 1940. This official document was approved and signed by the Soviet Politburo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_of_the_Central_Committee_of_the_Communis t_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union), including its leader, Joseph Stalin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin). The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, with 21,768 being a lower bound.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre#cite_note-ipn_eng_news_high_katyn_decision-0) The victims were murdered in the Katyn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_%28rural_locality%29) Forest in Russia, the Kalinin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tver) and Kharkiv (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv) prisons and elsewhere. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers taken prisoner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_prisoners_of_war_in_Soviet_Union_%28after_1 939%29) during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland_%281939%29), another 6,000 were police officers, with the rest being Polish intelligentsia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligentsia) arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_agent), gendarmes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie), landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials and priests."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

We all get what we deserve in life....the Poles were no exception. Their fate sealed by refusing to join in a grand alliance that included the Soviets. They, and others paid a terrible price. Putting faith in Chamberlain after Munich was indeed reckless. The Phoney War was proof positive. The attack on Poland by the Nazis was unprovoked aggression and rightly condemned.

And when a woman dresses like a slut in the wrong part of town....

Poland's independence was fought for by it's allies, the liberal western democracies did indeed stand up for Poland and went to war with the aggressor states, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Keep in mind Poland has been dominated for centuries by it's neighbors, especially the Russians. To suggest that Poland merely let the Russians take over in order to protect them misses the whole point of the polish independence being fought over.

By the way, it seems way to common to blame Poland lately. Should we also blame the Belgians for their cities being burned in 1914 then?

GallowsBird

17th January 2012, 12:14

Non-aggression pacts were common in that time period. I believe Turkey also had a non-aggression with Nazi Germany.

Many countries did. Poland had the first pact with Nazi Germany as well (signed January 26, 1934), oddly enough. The Baltic states signed pacts also.

The UK and France signed the Munich Pact in September 1938 with Nazi Germany and Italy allowing Nazi Germany to invade Czechoslovakia which was an allied nation of France and the UK. Germany of course invaded annexed the Sudetenland and made a vassal state Slovakia. Poland (making use of its pact) and Hungary (an ally of Nazi Germany) also invaded Czechoslovakia at the same time.

As the USSR had a military assistance treaty with Czechoslovakia, and as they were used for propaganda ("Red scare" tactics) during the negotiations the USSR were afraid that it was a plot to send the Nazis east (which isn't unlikely) and this was one of the prime reasons for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939 as the USSR was worried there might even be a joint Capitalist-Nazi invasion of the USSR. Remember also that the USSR had proposed an alliance with the UK and France to defeat Nazi Germany earlier: it was rejected.

Omsk

17th January 2012, 15:17

Havee why did you revive this thread?

Now to asnwer to the restricted users post.

Those who suggest the pact was just an agreement to 'not fuck with one another' are apologists who are deliberately misleading. The pact itself outlined how the Nazis and Soviets would divide up Eastern Europe once these peoples were brought into submission, as well as made clear the price Germany would pay for the USSR to assist them in rape.

Regarding Poland.(and the SU Eastern policies.)

The chaos that reigned throughout Poland was rapidly becoming civil war in the eastern part of the country. This territory, which Molotov called "Western Ukraine and Byelo-- Russia" was inhabited by Ukrainian and Byelo--Russian peasants under Polish landlords. It was not given to Poland by the Versailles Treaty; both Woodrow Wilson and the British Lord Curzon left it outside their "ethnic Poland." The Polish landlords thrust the new Polish State into a war of aggression in 1920 and took the lands. Through the Warsaw government, which they dominated, the landlords treated their peasants more brutally than had the Russian tsar.... In an effort to Polonize the territory by force they settled demobilized Polish soldiers along the frontier, often by dispossessing whole villages of natives. For 20 years the League of Nations reports indicated that Eastern Poland had one of the most brutally handled minority problems anywhere in Europe.
Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 165

Some 20 million non-Poles were placed under the rule of the Polish landlords and gentry. Assured the support of England and France, Poland become the gangster of Eastern Europe. It took a fiercely anti-Soviet attitude, becoming an active base for all sorts of anti-Soviet political and terrorist groups that conducted raids and inserted agents into the USSR.
Mukhin, Y.I., Katyn Detective,1995

Non Poles were not horrified by the Red Army marching in.

And indeed, the invading Red Army units were welcomed by many Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Jewish inhabitants of this territory where the dominant Poles were an ethnic minority living mainly in the towns and the non-Polish population suffered discrimination.
Tucker, Robert. Stalin in Power: 1929-1941. New York: Norton, 1990, p. 601

And regarding Kaytn,which you,as an anti-communist mention,i dont have much to say,and i already said it in the thread about Katyn.However,things like Berias letter were debated here before (i think) and its pretty clear there are many things worth checking in this issue.(I also suggest you stop using wikipedia as an source,but than again,wikipedia is anticommunist,your an anticommunist,so in theory its logical)

Poland's independence was fought for by it's allies, the liberal western democracies did indeed stand up for Poland and went to war with the aggressor states, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Keep in mind Poland has been dominated for centuries by it's neighbors, especially the Russians. To suggest that Poland merely let the Russians take over in order to protect them misses the whole point of the polish independence being fought over

And in the same way,Russians,Belorussians,people from Ukraine and others were under Polish rule for years.[anti-Marxist Leninist anti Stalin source]
-
The Soviet Union had genuine territorial claims on Poland since the period of the Civil War when Poland took advantage of the weakness of the Russian Federation and in 1920 attacked the newly formed Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics as well as Lithuania. As a result of the defeat of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR.) in this war, Poland annexed the western regions of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Lithuania, including the cities of Lvov, Brest, Grodno, and Vilnius.
Medvedev, Roy & Zhores. The Unknown Stalin. NY, NY: Overlook Press, 2004, p. 235

TheCultofAbeLincoln

19th January 2012, 18:28

Before this continues, I just want to be clear with what you are saying: The ethnic divisions within Poland justified the Soviet Union entering a military alliance with Nazi Germany and launching World War II. Also, you are saying that Poland was a 'gangster state' and it was therefore necessary for the worlds leading totalitarian regimes to enter an alliance in order to remove this menace to eastern Europe.

Am I misunderstanding you?

Please clarify because, if you don't, this debate is going to enter a new phase.

Oh, and I am not anti-communist in the slightest.

Omsk

19th January 2012, 18:34

Soviet Union entering a military alliance with Nazi Germany and launching World War II.

I am not discussing anything with you.

TheCultofAbeLincoln

19th January 2012, 20:02

Awww, the leninist gets his feelings hurt and runs away :crying:

Answer up, you opened the can of worms now you need to eat it. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a strategic alliance between the Nazis and Soviets in which they devised how to cut up eastern europe between themselves. Your attempts to justify the soviet union partaking of this endeavor seems to consist of labeling Poland as the bad guy, though a liberal democracy it surely was not, and proclaim that because Poland's borders crossed ethnic lines it's division was the right course of action are a bit ridiculous.

The justifications for the US invading Iraq are arguably less dubious than the bull you posted, but that is beside the point. One way or the other, the fact that it was seen as justifiable to enter a military pact with the Nazi's and launch the most destructive and costly war in history is the mark of an apologist so appalling it almost makes one ill.

With what has been said about the Poles throughout this thread, I will attempt to use the exact same logic and apply it to a related but slightly different circumstance:

The Soviet Union made a deal with Nazi Germany to attempt to expand it's sphere of influence. But a few short years later, the Soviet Union got what it deserved.

(for clarification that is NOT my opinion, but the natural conclusion to some of the logic used to justify invasion and war that several "revolutionary leftists" have used in this thread)

seventeethdecember2016

19th January 2012, 20:12

Many countries did. Poland had the first pact with Nazi Germany as well (signed January 26, 1934), oddly enough. The Baltic states signed pacts also.

The UK and France signed the Munich Pact in September 1938 with Nazi Germany and Italy allowing Nazi Germany to invade Czechoslovakia which was an allied nation of France and the UK. Germany of course invaded annexed the Sudetenland and made a vassal state Slovakia. Poland (making use of its pact) and Hungary (an ally of Nazi Germany) also invaded Czechoslovakia at the same time.

As the USSR had a military assistance treaty with Czechoslovakia, and as they were used for propaganda ("Red scare" tactics) during the negotiations the USSR were afraid that it was a plot to send the Nazis east (which isn't unlikely) and this was one of the prime reasons for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939 as the USSR was worried there might even be a joint Capitalist-Nazi invasion of the USSR. Remember also that the USSR had proposed an alliance with the UK and France to defeat Nazi Germany earlier: it was rejected.
Thanks for the info.

Havee why did you revive this thread?
Sorry about that, I didn't check when the posts happened.

Omsk

19th January 2012, 21:54

Awww, the leninist gets his feelings hurt and runs away http://www.revleft.com/vb/true-stalin-allied-t161287/revleft/smilies2/crying.gif

Answer up, you opened the can of worms now you need to eat it. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a strategic alliance between the Nazis and Soviets in which they devised how to cut up eastern europe between themselves. Your attempts to justify the soviet union partaking of this endeavor seems to consist of labeling Poland as the bad guy, though a liberal democracy it surely was not, and proclaim that because Poland's borders crossed ethnic lines it's division was the right course of action are a bit ridiculous.

The justifications for the US invading Iraq are arguably less dubious than the bull you posted, but that is beside the point. One way or the other, the fact that it was seen as justifiable to enter a military pact with the Nazi's and launch the most destructive and costly war in history is the mark of an apologist so appalling it almost makes one ill.

With what has been said about the Poles throughout this thread, I will attempt to use the exact same logic and apply it to a related but slightly different circumstance:

The Soviet Union made a deal with Nazi Germany to attempt to expand it's sphere of influence. But a few short years later, the Soviet Union got what it deserved.

(for clarification that is NOT my opinion, but the natural conclusion to some of the logic used to justify invasion and war that several "revolutionary leftists" have used in this thread)
__________________

Do you realize what kind of an insult this and the post you made before is to me?The milions of people who died,gave their lives for the defence of the Motherland,who charged at Nazi bayonets and bunkers and died in the millions for the freedome of the entire world,for their lives,Hitler would have exterminated them all!Along with me who you are talking to!You even dared to make such a "assertion" using the "logic" to say they deserved it!I know "its not your opinion" (and i bet it is you worm) but still...I posted the quotes and they represent my opinion.The allies tried to turn the Nazis east and the SU reacted,but only after all talks with the allies failed (the allies prolonged them on purpose) and the pact was needed,it was not heroism,it was politics.

My main point was not that Poland was the main "bad guy" (although it was a dictatorship which tried to control the East) but that the main reasons of the pact were the "democracies" of the West and their anti-communism.
The pact was one of the best decisions Stalin made.Without it,the SU could have lost the war,and with it,the entire world would soon follow.

From that time on, Russia used the breathing-space granted by the Pact, not only to prepare for defense but to block Hitler's penetration of East Europe through measures short of war. Hitler revealed this later in his declaration of war against the USSR and bitterly listed the Russian acts that blocked him.
Moscow's first move was to build a wide buffer belt along her western border by alliances.... Moscow invited Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to send foreign ministers to Moscow to discuss an alliance. One by one, they went and signed.... The Baltic states, themselves, resented the term "vassal" applied to them by the Anglo-American press. They thought themselves not badly off. Their internal organization was not at the time affected; they merely gave bases to the USSR in return for help in their defense.
The dramatic expulsion of half a million Germans from the Baltic States followed. How bitterly Hitler resented this was shown in his declaration of war when he told how "far more than 500,000 men and women...were forced to leave their homeland.... To all this I remained silent, because I had to." These are not words of a complacent victor. The Baltic Germans were the upper class in the Baltic States; some had been there as landed barons for centuries. It was they who, at the time of the Russian Revolution, brought in the German troops to overthrow local red governments. Their expulsion scattered what was for the USSR the most dangerous fifth-column in Europe.
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 82

In Stalins own words:
At half-past-six on the afternoon of July 3, 1941, the day after his return to Moscow, Stalin spoke to his people:
"One must ask how could it have happened that the Soviet Government consented to conclude the Pact of Non-Aggression with such felons and monsters as Hitler and Ribbentrop. Had not the Soviet government thereby made a mistake? Of course not. A Pact of Non-Aggression is a pact of peace between two countries. It was just such a Pact that Germany offered us in 1939. Could the Soviet Government reject such an offer? I think no peace-loving country should reject an agreement with a neighboring State, even if at the head of that state stand such monsters and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop. This, naturally, depends on the indispensable conditions that the peace agreement does not infringe either directly or indirectly the territorial integrity, independence, and honor of the peace-loving country."
Fishman and Hutton. The Private Life of Josif Stalin. London: W. H. Allen, 1962, p. 141

The reasons for the failure of the alliances i mentioned (West>USSR) Stalin had put forward at the 18th congress : anti-communism and a lack of a desire by Britain and France to pursue a policy of collective security ".
And i like how you mention the Soviet brutality and spliting of Europe,do you realise that was not the case in the war in Finland?

During the first week of October, 1939, while still negotiating its new treaties with the Baltic states, the Soviet Government proposed a mutual assistance pact with Finland. Moscow offered to cede several thousand square miles of Soviet territory on central Karelia in exchange for some strategic Finnish islands near Leningrad, a portion of the Karelian Isthmus, and a 30 year lease on the port of Hango for the construction of a Soviet naval base. The Soviet leaders regarded these latter territories as essential to the defense of the Red naval base at Kronstadt and the city of Leningrad.
...But the pro-Nazi clique dominating the Finnish government refused to make any concessions and broke off all the negotiations.
Sayers and Kahn. The Great Conspiracy. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946, p. 333

Then Finland sued for peace, and, surprisingly, the Kremlin asked little more than its terms before the war began--a frontier somewhat more distant, the Mannerheim Line disrmed, and the occupation by Soviet units of strategic points like the island of Hango.
Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 179

Having secured the southern Baltic against surprise attack, Moscow approached Finland, which holds the gateway of the north. Though Finland's independence was a free gift from the Russian Revolution, Finland was known as the most hostile of the Baltic States. That early democratic Finland had been bloodily overthrown by Baron Mannerheim, an ex-Czarist general, with the aid of the kaiser's troops. Finland had become a base for international actions against the USSR.... Finland's air fields were built by the Nazis. Made to accommodate 2,000 planes, when Finland had 150, they were clearly designed for use by a major power....
The Finnish delegation came to Moscow October 11th. The Soviets proposed an alliance, but dropped it since the Finns were unwilling. Then they proposed an exchange of territory to protect Leningrad. They asked that the border be moved back enough to take Leningrad out of gunshot and that some small islands, guarding the sea approach, be given to the USSR. They offered in return twice as much territory, equally good but less strategic. They also asked a 30 year lease of Hangoe or some other point at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland--that long thin waterway that leads to Leningrad--as a naval base. President Cajander, of Finland, broadcast a statement that the terms did not affect Finland's integrity.
A month of bargaining went on in which Moscow raised her offers. Finland stood to get nearly 3 to 1 in the territorial trade; and Hangoe base would be held, not 30 years, but only during the Anglo-German war and would then come to Finland fully equipped. Many Finns were boasting of the "smart bargain" their diplomats were getting. Then, suddenly, the Finnish negotiators broke off discussions with the cryptic remark that circumstances would decide when and by whom they would be renewed....
So when Finnish artillery shot over the border in late November and killed Red Army men, Moscow sharply protested, and, when Finland disregarded the protest, Soviet troops marched into Finland on November 30, 1939. Finland declared war and appealed for foreign aid.
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 83

But the hostility of the British and French,American leaders were not just diplomatic,but also involved spying and false information,that great was their desire to draw the USSR into war with Germany.

Warnings from Britain and America that the Germans would attack were worse than useless, given their desperate desire for war between Germany and Russia. Stalin assumed that their efforts to make trouble between him and Hitler took the form not only of information supplied through official channels, but also through covert disinformation. On one report from a Czech agent of Soviet intelligence, forecasting a German attack on Russia, Stalin noted, 'This informant is an English provocateur. Find out who is making this provocation and punish him.' It was reasonable to suspect that the British had planted disinformation on such agents, or even on Richard Sorge, a German who was a Soviet spy in Japan, and who warned of a German attack. And, despite various forecasts of invasion on particular dates in the spring of 1941, weeks passed without action and the time remaining for a summer campaign diminished. As events were to demonstrate, Hitler needed as much time as possible, if he were to take Moscow before winter set in. Stalin was justified in thinking that the delay through May and much of June meant that he was in the clear for another year. Even if Hitler had been contemplating a drive to the east, his decision to invade the Balkans and even Crete, with the resulting loss of time and also of German paratroops, should have persuaded him to call off the Russian campaign....
McNeal, Robert, Stalin: Man and Ruler. New York: New York University Press, 1988, p. 237

And to finish,my final stance on this is that the pact was a normal event after the Munich crisis.

El Chuncho

19th January 2012, 23:59

Rodrigo

20th January 2012, 00:56

TheCultofAbeLincoln

20th January 2012, 06:44

Do you realize what kind of an insult this and the post you made before is to me?The milions of people who died,gave their lives for the defence of the Motherland,who charged at Nazi bayonets and bunkers and died in the millions for the freedome of the entire world,for their lives,Hitler would have exterminated them all!Along with me who you are talking to!You even dared to make such a "assertion" using the "logic" to say they deserved it!I know "its not your opinion" (and i bet it is you worm) but still...I posted the quotes and they represent my opinion.The allies tried to turn the Nazis east and the SU reacted,but only after all talks with the allies failed (the allies prolonged them on purpose) and the pact was needed,it was not heroism,it was politics.

My main point was not that Poland was the main "bad guy" (although it was a dictatorship which tried to control the East) but that the main reasons of the pact were the "democracies" of the West and their anti-communism.
The pact was one of the best decisions Stalin made.Without it,the SU could have lost the war,and with it,the entire world would soon follow.

Maybe your problem is simply being a bad analyzer.

You describe how millions of Russians died during the war against Nazi Germany, then claim Stalin making a pact with the Nazi's just two years prior to the german invasion was one of the "best decisions he ever made"?

You also miss the point that Germany could not have, and would not have, started the war in the first place with the prospect of having a two front war at the begining. This has been documented in many places, and it is an accepted fact of history that what Stalin really did was green light the Nazi invasion of Poland.

The reasons for the failure of the alliances i mentioned (West>USSR) Stalin had put forward at the 18th congress : anti-communism and a lack of a desire by Britain and France to pursue a policy of collective security ".

But this doesn't add up. Both Britain and France promised and delivered on the pledge to preserve Polish independence. What was Stalin looking for more than that?

At half-past-six on the afternoon of July 3, 1941, the day after his return to Moscow, Stalin spoke to his people:
"One must ask how could it have happened that the Soviet Government consented to conclude the Pact of Non-Aggression with such felons and monsters as Hitler and Ribbentrop. Had not the Soviet government thereby made a mistake? Of course not. A Pact of Non-Aggression is a pact of peace between two countries. It was just such a Pact that Germany offered us in 1939. Could the Soviet Government reject such an offer? I think no peace-loving country should reject an agreement with a neighboring State, even if at the head of that state stand such monsters and cannibals as Hitler and Ribbentrop. This, naturally, depends on the indispensable conditions that the peace agreement does not infringe either directly or indirectly the territorial integrity, independence, and honor of the peace-loving country."
Fishman and Hutton. The Private Life of Josif Stalin. London: W. H. Allen, 1962, p. 141

Stalin played with fire, the soviet union got burned. Hitler wrote that the goal of Nazi Germany was, after settling a score with the west, to establish a homeland in the place the germanic tribes came from. He wrote this in Mein Kampf, it was a central tenant of the Nazi's.

Also, the "peace loving" nation of Stalinist Russia still invaded and divided Poland with the Nazis. For whatever reason, that still disqualifies it as a peaceful nation there joe.

And i like how you mention the Soviet brutality and spliting of Europe,do you realise that was not the case in the war in Finland?

Finland? You mean the one country that bordered the Soviet Union in europe and wasn't swallowed up by the Soviet Union until 1989? Obviously the finns did something right.

But the hostility of the British and French,American leaders were not just diplomatic,but also involved spying and false information,that great was their desire to draw the USSR into war with Germany.

Obviously not much allied canniving was necessary to induce a war between the two. The intelligence that Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union a trick?

It is fair to say that Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union very late in the year. But when even the NKVD was remarking that hundreds of divisions are massing near your borders, the blame for failing to act must be placed squarely at the top.

And to finish,my final stance on this is that the pact was a normal event after the Munich crisis.

Britain and France hardened their positions, knowing that they had already gone too far intrying to avoid a war. Yet the natural move for the Soviet Union was to join the Nazi's?

Two European nations declared war on Nazi Germany once they invaded Poland. Another invaded to try and get a piece of the pie.

TheCultofAbeLincoln

20th January 2012, 06:55

To claim that the Soviet Union and the NAZIs supported eachother in declaring war on Europe is bullshit of the highest order.

A NEUTRALITY PACT IS NOT AN ALLIANCE. Fact. NAZI Germany simply promised not to interfere in Soviet interests and vice versa. Meaning that if NAZI Germany invaded a Soviet ally or territory claimed by the Soviet Union, both countries would be at war. Nearly every country in Europe, including Poland and Turkey, had neutrality pacts with NAZI Germany, not because they necessarily thought it would prevent war but because they thought it would by them time.

From April 1939 the Soviet Union was one of the first countries to suggest a war with the NAZIs, unless they could be contained, and it even had the backing of anti-Communist Winston Churchill. However, most countries felt they were not ready for war and thus the Soviet Union could not find allies. Both Stalin and Maxim Litvinov considered Germany to be the biggest threat of the age, but knew that the Red Army was pretty weak at the time, and thus sought to at least postpone a war.

The Red Army and Nazi Germany divided up Poland in the fall of 1939, which brought them into war with Britain and France. Fact. From April 1939 to September 1939 is a tremendously short amount of time to go from asking to contain Nazi Germany militarily to invading countries with Nazi Germany.

The red army still consisted of hundreds of divisions and would have assisted the allies in their struggle against fascism greatly. Instead, France succombed and London was bombed while the soviet union was an accomplice to germany.

TheCultofAbeLincoln

20th January 2012, 06:58

"Stalin allied with Hitler"
"Stalin didn't want to destroy fascism" (and YOU would do it if you were in his place, wouldn't you?)

C'mon, people, in what world do you live in? It must be a magical world of fantasy, for sure... ¬¬'

Thanks for the 2 comrades above, for sharing the concrete knowledge (instead of bad old Western propaganda we saw in the entire thread).

Britain went to war with Germany. France went to war with Germany. The Soviet Union invaded Poland with Germany. Britain and France both declared war on the Soviet Union because it was an aggressor state, allied with Germany.

Stop apologizing for Stalin.

dodger

20th January 2012, 10:25

Britain went to war with Germany. France went to war with Germany. The Soviet Union invaded Poland with Germany. Britain and France both declared war on the Soviet Union because it was an aggressor state, allied with Germany.

Stop apologizing for Stalin.

Then Abe why did Chamberlain, Clemenceau the Polish Colonels, uncle tom cobbly and all NOT embrace the Grand Alliance. That alone would have stopped Hitler the great gambler, in his tracks. Hitler was only stymied by a pact against him. If there was no pact he could and did act. The Soviet- Nazi non aggression agreement was superfluous. Churchill obsessed with saving empire at least recognised that small fact. Why can't we? Doubts where Chamberlain's policies after Czechoslovakia Albania, Spain, Abyssinia, Libya and Nazi 5th column activities in European countries, to say nothing of enormous loans availed to Hitler, produced unease. To some, not Chamberlain and co. Personally I will start apologising for Stalin and indeed stop apologising when I see how with such a greasy dirty pack of cards he could have played a better hand. Hell, Ribbentrop was hanging from a rope, for 17mins by all accounts, wonder what was going through his mind? Only 6rs after his fountain pen had signed that wretched paper. The Londoners who christened him fon brickendrop and knew him well from his days as Nazi representative in their town could see all too clearly the issues involved. The declaration of war on Soviets to aid Finland an ally of the Nazi's we were supposed to be fighting a life and death struggle against, was the last straw. Churchill stepped into the breach and threatened lord Halifax with the tower should there be any more talk of appeasing Hitler. Check out who was called " Monsieur J'aime Berlin," and wonder why. Sure the answer is somewhere in wiki-waki-woky-woo......
As Alvin Finkel and Clement Leibovitz wrote of Chamberlain and his allies, "the ruling group before May 10, 1940 were bloody-minded protectors of privilege whose fixation with destroying communists and communism led them to make common cause with fascists. They were not honest idiotic patriots; they were liars and traitors who would sacrifice human lives in their defence of property and privilege." (The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, Merlin, 1997, page 8.)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Churchill-Appeasement-R-C-Parker/dp/0333675843/ref=cm_rdp_product

Channon wrote one of the best insider's accounts of politics in the 1930s. He was a fanatical supporter of Neville Chamberlain and his policy of what is still called - all-too-politely - appeasement. He showed its true intent when he wrote, "let gallant little Germany glut her fill of the Reds in the East." This is a fascinating picture of the corruption and decadence of the British ruling class of the 1930s - little different from their heirs today. Small wonder that some can only think the best of Neville and chums, but the worst of Uncle Joe.

Zostrianos

20th January 2012, 10:43

Zulu

20th January 2012, 11:57

And why did Stalin do this?
Because during the Tehran Conference Churchill insisted that it should be the British troops that would liberate Poland.

And why did the Allies bombed Dresden instead of the railroads leading to the concentration camps? Why the Hiroshima and Nagasaki "live nuking exercises"? (Little hint: there is a red star on the flag of Nagasaki.)

Bottom line: all sides were ruthless in that war, all planned for the decades ahead. Bleeding-heart kind of guys rarely gets to the top, no matter how humane their "official position" is.

dodger

20th January 2012, 12:19

The Molotov Ribbentrop pact brought about Poland's destruction. The Gestapo and NKVD had meetings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo-NKVD_Conferences)to coordinate their terror activities in the country, and the execution of Poland's educated classes and intellectuals. Here's the practical results of the pact:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_crimes_in_Poland

And yes, without Stalin the Nazis probably wouldn't have been defeated, but that doesn't really make Stalin much better than Hitler. A monstrous example of Stalin's treachery was during the Warsaw uprising, when Russian troops arrived just outside the city as the Nazis were cracking down on the resistance. Instead of sending the troops into the city to help the Poles, Stalin ordered the army to stand back and let the Nazis destroy the city, knowing full well that Hitler's crackdown would be barbaric and the Nazis would probably kill most of the population. And that's exactly what happened. And why did Stalin do this? Well, he predicted that the Polish resistance might cause trouble under his rule when he regained control of Poland, and so he figured he'd let the Germans kill them all before that happened.

There was once a writer, I don't remember who, who had a great quote about one of the tragic aspects of WW2, it went something like: "The Allies defeated a murderous dictator with the help of another"

It seems nice people don't win diplomacy contests now we hear they don't win wars. Another version of your last paragraph Stalin defeated a murderous capitalist dictator with the help of other capitalists. He could also see his and the soviets enemies in a war with each other, imagine can you the glee in the theatre. Somebody was not reading the script, the play was not supposed to end like that.
As for Warsaw, the leader of the uprising lived to a ripe age. The fighters went off into captivity. The halt at the Vistula came about after Bagration the most successful campaign of the war, heavy in costs, human and material. No military command would wish to begin his offensive from a city, impossible. Churchill called the uprising an act of reckless stupidity the man who engineered it lived to tell the tale, others were not so fortunate. Fighting on many hundreds of miles of front the Soviet Command was transparent, there were other fish to fry. Yet again the Poles were let down by their leaders hatred of communism.

GallowsBird

20th January 2012, 13:38

The Red Army and Nazi Germany divided up Poland in the fall of 1939, which brought them into war with Britain and France.

The USSR and thus Red Army were never in war with Britain and France. People have kept giving the reason why the USSR invaded an area that was conquered by Poland earlier, I suggest you re-read some posts

Stalin proposed an Anti-Hitler coalition:

One feels justified in asserting that in those years, 1935-37 and even later, Stalin was genuinely striving for an anti-Hitler coalition. This course of action was dictated to him by circumstances.... At the Nuremberg rally of September 1936 Hitler spoke about the Ukraine and Siberia as belonging to the German Lebensraum in terms so emphatic and fiery that they seemed to exclude even a transient understanding between himself and Stalin. Later in the year the leaders of the Axis came together to announce the conclusion of the anti-Comintern pact. Throughout all that period clashes, some of them serious, were occurring between Russian and Japanese frontier troops. The storm seemed to be gathering over Russia in Asia and Russia in Europe. If not anti-fascist virtue, then the demands of self-preservation drove Stalin to seek security in a solid system of alliances.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 420

The Soviet regaining of lands taken by Poland:

The chaos that reigned throughout Poland was rapidly becoming civil war in the eastern part of the country. This territory, which Molotov called "Western Ukraine and Byelo-- Russia" was inhabited by Ukrainian and Byelo--Russian peasants under Polish landlords. It was not given to Poland by the Versailles Treaty; both Woodrow Wilson and the British Lord Curzon left it outside their "ethnic Poland." The Polish landlords thrust the new Polish State into a war of aggression in 1920 and took the lands. Through the Warsaw government, which they dominated, the landlords treated their peasants more brutally than had the Russian tsar.... In an effort to Polonize the territory by force they settled demobilized Polish soldiers along the frontier, often by dispossessing whole villages of natives. For 20 years the League of Nations reports indicated that Eastern Poland had one of the most brutally handled minority problems anywhere in Europe.
Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 165

Special attention must be paid to the secret protocols signed at the same time as the nonaggression pact. They provided for the division of Poland into German and Soviet spheres of influence "in the event of territorial and political changes on the territory belonging to the Polish state." Some historians regard these agreements as totally wrong and speak of the "fourth partition of Poland." In their view the Soviet Union could simply have liberated the Polish-occupied parts of Byelorussia and the Ukraine without any preliminary agreement with Germany. England and France had already declared war on Germany, they argue, and Germany would have had to resign itself to the actions of the Red Army. The fact is, however, that at the end of August 1939 no one could have said for certain how England and France would act after Germany's invasion of Poland. They might still have refrained from declaring war. Both the prospect of German troops emerging on the Soviet border after occupying all of Poland and that of Soviet troops entering Polish territory without prior agreement with Germany entailed great dangers. I must agree that the secret protocols attached to the nonaggression pact were a natural extension of that pact. The Soviet Union was unable to prevent Germany's invasion of Poland, but it could see to the strengthening of its own defensive positions in case of possible complications --especially since the territory involved was not strictly Polish but where the local Byelorussians and Ukrainian populations had long been struggling for national liberation.
Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, p. 729

The frictions were complicated by the fact that the cities and trading towns of the region are largely Jewish.... Not even Hitler treated the Jews more brutally than did the " Poland of the Pans" as the minor nationalities called it, using the Polish term for "Lord." "A Jew-child is a future Jew; twist its neck when it is born," read one of the Anti---Semitic posters the Red Army found when it marched into Poland. Frictions between all the minor nationalities had been kept at boiling heat by pogroms.
Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 165

Few people who know the racial composition of Eastern Poland doubted that the population had resented the rule of Warsaw and felt "liberated" when the Red Army came.... Even the Polish Government--in--Exile did not venture to declare the Red Army's march an act of war.
Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 169

Deputies from Grodno told how the Jewish and Byelo-Russian workers of the city had organized their own militia before the Red Army came and had rushed out and helped build a bridge for it into the city under the fire of Polish officers.
Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 169

I'm not sure why "leftists" would support a Capitalist and specifically Fascist power like the Republic of Poland in keeping territory it STOLE west of the Curzon at the end of Russo-Polish War of 1919–20. It boggles the mind.

Rodrigo

20th January 2012, 15:21

Britain went to war with Germany. France went to war with Germany. The Soviet Union invaded Poland with Germany. Britain and France both declared war on the Soviet Union because it was an aggressor state, allied with Germany.

Stop apologizing for Stalin.

I'm not apologizing anything, I have facts on my side, while you have BELIEVES.

USSR initiated conversations about the war, with France and Britain, in 12th August 1939, in Moscow. They wanted to sign a military treaty to avoid war in Europe, proposing three possible variants of joint actions between British, French and Soviet armies, in case of German aggression. France and Britain did everything they could for the failure of this conversation. Sent second-importance representatives to Moscow, instructed to slowly conduct the conversations and to abstain from discussing or communicating about British-French plans. So, because of their avoidance of uniting with USSR, Germany destroyed Poland. The Soviets didn't advance through the country, supposedly "dividing it with Germany". Western anticommunist bullshit, period.

The US government sent a telegram on 14th June 1941 to the US embassies in London and Moscow saying they wouldn't make any agreement with USSR. On 6th June 1941, general William Donovan (US espionage chief and personal representative of Roosevelt) watched the instruction of English special services employees, in which Leeper (Britain politics espionage chief) with the permission of Churchill, informed that he and his chiefs knew, many weeks before, that Hitler would attack the USSR on June 22. And still they did NOTHING to avoid the invasion. Who's gonna talk about "Britain went to war with Germany" and "France went to war with Germany" now?

Rodrigo

20th January 2012, 15:31

And talking about the Curzon line, that's exactly where the Red Army stayed at the end.

Omsk

20th January 2012, 15:54

The red army still consisted of hundreds of divisions and would have assisted the allies in their struggle against fascism greatly

Yes,now you show your full concern for the working class and the people!What a great idea!Send millions of soldiers into the meat-grinder just because some western capitalists need help in a war they tried to send to your border!
Why not?Why dont the "Bolsheviks from hell" fight for us!After all,they are just Russians..
Disgusting logic.

Stalin played with fire, the soviet union got burned. Hitler wrote that the goal of Nazi Germany was, after settling a score with the west, to establish a homeland in the place the germanic tribes came from. He wrote this in Mein Kampf, it was a central tenant of the Nazi's.

People who claim that Stalin was surprised with the Nazi invasion dont know anything about him,or the war.The SU prepared for the war.[many sources suggest this,many authors and people generally.']

I know, as I said before, that the Kremlin has been preparing for this war for full seven years; that it has starved its people of consumer goods in order to equip the red army and build new munition and armament plants.
Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 215

CHUEV: For the day of the attack, for the hour of the attack--that's what we weren't prepared for.
MOLOTOV: 0h, but no one could have been ready for the hour of the attack, even God itself! We'd been expecting the attack and we had a main goal--not to give Hitler a pretext for it. He would have said, "Soviet troops are assembling at the border. They are forcing me to take action!"
Of course that was a slip up, a shortcoming. And of course there were other slip-ups. You just try to find a way to avoid mistakes on such a question. But if you focus on them, it casts a shadow on the main point, on what decided the matter. Stalin was still irreplaceable. I am a critic of Stalin; on certain questions I did not agree with him, and I think he made some major, fundamental mistakes. But no one talks about these mistakes; instead they keep criticizing things on which Stalin was right….
In essence we were largely ready for war. The five-year plans, the industrial capacity we had created--that's what helped us to endure, otherwise we wouldn't have won out. The growth of our military industry in the years before the war could not have been greater!
The people went through a colossal strain before the war.
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 25

MOLOTOV: We even abolished the seven-hour working day two years before the war! We abolished the right of workers to move from one enterprise to another in search of better conditions, even though many of them lived poorly and were looking for better places to live.... We built no apartment houses, but there was great construction of factories, the creation of new army units armed with tanks, aircraft....
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 26

Stalin thus stimulated production in Soviet industry and agriculture because he was the first of world statesman to perceive that sooner or later Hitler's Nazi Germany would make a bid for world dominion. Stalin saw that from the outset, from 1935, when Chamberlain, and Bonnet in France, and even the United States, had small idea of Hitler's wild ambition. From then onwards Stalin swung Russia towards what I might call "preparedness," in the American sense. Deliberately he reduced the production of consumer goods, which the Russian people so greatly needed, in favor of factories to produce the material of war, and located those factories in areas east of Moscow, far from hostile attack, in the Urals and mid-Siberia and along the east Siberian coast.
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 175

Russian factories and collective farms worked furiously in the fall and winter of 1940-41, aware that the breathing-space which Stalin's agreement with Hitler had won for them in 1939 was nearly at an end. At this critical moment the Soviet state gained strength from its arbitrary system of centralization. It was able to drive its workers and peasants to the limit of their effort because the idea of greater reward for greater service had been adopted, because they had the incentive of personal profit in addition to the no less powerful incentive of patriotic service. By this time they all knew, the whole Soviet Union knew, that Germany was their enemy and that a clash with Germany could not long be averted.
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 259

The scheme of evacuation had been carefully prepared, not only of people, animals, and foodstuffs from the countryside, but of machines, even whole factories, from the towns and cities. At Christmas, 1941, the Germans boasted that they had occupied the territory in which one-half of the heavy industry of the USSR was situated.... But Goebbels omitted to state how much machinery and tools were moved eastwards from the factories of the Donetz Basin, the Ukraine, White Russia, and Leningrad by the workers who had handled them, and how much more which could not be moved was deliberately demolished, like the great Dnieper dam and power stations, by the men and women who had built them.
Duranty, Walter. Story of Soviet Russia. Philadelphia, N. Y.: JB Lippincott Co. 1944, p. 266

The record shows that the tribute was deserved. Had Stalin not won the fight for industrialization and defeated the Trotskyists and Bukharinites, the USSR would have become a Nazi province. Had he not had the foresight to build a metallurgical industry in the Urals, the Red Armies could not have been supplied with arms. Had he not industrialized the economy and introduced mechanized farming, he would have had neither a base for producing arms nor a mass of soldiers trained in the operation of machinery. Had he not signed a nonaggression treaty with Germany, the USSR might have been attacked 22 months sooner. Had he not moved the Soviet armies into Poland, the German attack would have begun even closer to Moscow. Had he not subdued General Mannerheim's Finland, Leningrad would have fallen. Had he not ordered the transfer of 1,400 factories from the west to the east, the most massive movement of its kind in history, Russian industry would have received a possibly fatal blow. Had he not built up the army and equipped it with modern arms, it would have been destroyed on the frontiers.
He did not, of course, do these things alone. They were Party decisions and Party actions, and behind the Party throughout was the power, courage, and intelligence of the working class. But Stalin stood at all times as the central, individual directing force, his magnificent courage and calm foresight inspiring the whole nation. When some panic began in Moscow in October 1941 he handled it firmly.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill. Stalin, Man of Contradiction. Toronto: NC Press, c1987, p. 107

... our Red Army, Red Navy, Red Air Fleet and the Chemical and Air Defense Society must be increased and strengthened to the utmost. The whole of our people must be kept in a state of mobilization and preparedness in the face of the danger of military attack, so that no "accident" and no tricks on the part of our external enemies may take us by surprise....
Stalin, Joseph. Stalin's Kampf. New York: Howell, Soskin & Company, c1940, p. 163

For years [this was stated in 1937], the Russian leaders have based all their actions on the belief that they will soon be involved in war. They apparently started to build up a larger gold reserve in order to strengthen their military position.
Littlepage, John D. In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, c1938, p. 271

The 18th Party Conference of February 1941 was devoted almost entirely to defense matters.... Stalin proposed that in 1941 industrial output should increase by 17-18 percent. That did not seem unrealistic. In 1940, for instance, defense output had increased by 27 percent compared to 1939.... The people knew a war was coming and that they would have to perform the impossible. By the time of Hitler's invasion, 2700 airplanes of a new type and 4300 tanks, nearly half of them a new model, had been built.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 374

A month before the German attack, Stalin, speaking to a close circle, said, 'The conflict is inevitable, perhaps in May next year.' By the early summer of 1941, acknowledging the explosiveness of the situation, he approved the premature release of military cadets, and young officers and political workers were posted, mostly without leave, straight to units which were below full strength. After much hesitation, Stalin also decided to call up about 800,000 reservists, bringing up to strength 21 divisions in the frontier military districts....
On 19 June 1941 troops were ordered to begin camouflaging aerodromes, transport depots, bases and fuel dumps, and to disperse aircraft around airfields. The order came hopelessly late, and even then Stalin was reluctant in case 'all these measures provoke the German forces'.
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 393

Despite all his miscalculations, Stalin was not unprepared to meet the emergency. He had solidly armed his country and reorganized its military forces. His practical mind had not been wedded to any one-sided strategic dogma. He had not lulled the Red Army into a false sense of security behind any Russian variety of the Maginot Line, that static defense system that had been the undoing of the French army in 1940. He could rely on Russia's vast spaces and severe climate. No body of men could now dispute his leadership. He had achieved absolute unity of command, the dream of the modern strategist.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 461

What conclusions, then, follow from the facts sighted? How is one to assess what was done before the war, what we intended to do in the near future and what we did not have time to do or were unable to do in strengthening our country's defensive capacity? How is one to make that appraisal today after everything has been gone through, critically interpreting the past and at the same time putting oneself once more on the threshold of the Great Patriotic War?
I have thought long over this and here is the conclusion to which I came.
It seems to me that the country's defense was managed correctly in its basic and principal features and orientations. For many years everything possible or almost everything was done in the economic and social aspects. As to the period between 1939 and the middle of 1941, the people and Party exerted particular effort to strengthen defense.
... The fact that in spite of enormous difficulties and losses during the four years of the war, Soviet industry turned out a colossal amount of armaments --almost 490,000 guns and mortars, over 102,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, over 137,000 military aircraft--shows that the foundations of the economy from the military, the defense standpoint, were laid correctly and firmly.
Following once more in my mind's eye the development of the Soviet Armed Forces all the way from the days of the Civil War, I should say that here too we followed the right road in the main. There was constant improvement along the right lines in Soviet military doctrine, the principles of educating and training the troops, the weapons of the army and navy, the training of commanding cadres and the structure and organization of the armed forces. The morale and fighting spirit of the troops and their political consciousness and maturity were always exceptionally high.
Of course, if it were possible to go over the whole road once more there are some things it would be better not to do. But today I cannot name a single major trend in the development of our armed forces that should have been abolished, abandoned, and disclaimed. The period between 1939 and the middle of 1941 was marked on the whole by transformations which in two or three years would have given the Soviet people a brilliant army, perhaps the best in the world.
During the period the dangerous military situation was developing we army leaders probably did not do enough to convince Stalin that war with Germany was inevitable in the very near future and that the urgent measures provided for in the operational and mobilization plans must be implemented.
Zhukov, Georgii. Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov. London: Cape, 1971, p. 226

Other elements of the Soviet military effort were less affected by the purges. The training schools increased their intake of new officer trainees. The technological threshold still moved slowly forward. The system of fortifications begun in the 1920s along the whole western frontier--the Stalin Line--continued to be constructed and extended. Most important of all, the modernization and expansion of the Soviet heavy industrial base continued, and with it the large proportion allocated to military production. Without the economic transformation, the Red Army would have been a feeble force in 1941, relying on a vast base of peasant manpower. The industrial changes of the 1930s provided the planners, the scientists, engineers, and skilled labor necessary to cope with the demands of total mobilization made after the German invasion in 1941. Whatever the weaknesses exposed by the modernization drive, it is inconceivable that the Soviet Union could have withstood the German attack without it.
Overy, R. J. Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow. New York: TV Books, c1997, p. 51

Of course considerable preparations were made. For over a decade priority had been given to heavy industry, and the Soviet armed forces had first call on it. The Red Army was enlarged by two and a half times between 1939 and 1941, war production was increased, troops and supplies transferred to the west, a 100,000 men put to work on the fortifications.
Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Knopf, 1992, p. 705

In his speech in the Reichstag on 7 March 1936 Hitler said: Nor do we doubt that Herriott. of France reported his information truly. Now, according to this information it is established in the first place that the Russian Army has a peace strength of 1,350,000 men, and secondly, that its war strength and reserves amount to 17,500,000 men. Thirdly, we are informed that it has the largest tank force in the world, and, fourthly that it has the largest air force in the world. This most powerful military factor has been described as excellent in regard to mobility and leadership and ready for action at any time.
HITLER'S SPEECHES by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 2, Page 1290

The legend of the might of Germany's mechanized army, backed by a highly industrialized society and run with ruthless Teutonic efficiency, has been with us for so long that it is difficult to realize how poor were the German preparations for the Russian campaign. The German army invaded Russia with 3,200 tanks and the monthly output of 80 to 100 was too low even to make good the wastage. Although this rate later went up rapidly, it did not reach its peak until August 1944, when it was already too late, and even then was only a quarter of the Russian output. The Germans had sufficient fuel for only a fraction of their transport to be motorized. The rest was moved by horses! The average German infantry division had about 1,500 horse-drawn vehicles and only about 600 motor-drawn ones, compared with some 3,000 in a British or American infantry division. The German soldier had no winter clothing, and had to make do by wearing large cotton combat overalls over his uniform and stuffing the spaces in between with crumpled newspapers or, since newsprint was scarce, with German propaganda leaflets.
The Russians, on the other hand, began the war with 20,000 tanks, more than were possessed by the rest of the world put together, and they produced no fewer than 100,000 during the war. They, too, used horses, but their motorized transport was adapted for winter conditions, their winter uniforms were white and, being quilted, provided excellent protection against the cold, and they possessed an adaptability to the environment that the Germans lacked. "Give a Russian an axe and a knife and in a few hours he will do anything, run up a sledge, a stretcher, a little igloo... make a stove out of a couple of old oil cans," a German medical officer wrote. "Our men just stand about miserably burning precious petrol to keep warm."
Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975, p. 252

It would be unfair to accuse Stalin of neglecting the country's defense. In 1940 new regulations lengthened the working day and week. By 1941 the army was more than double the size it had been in 1939. In a number of cases capable people were put in charge of vital departments.
Ulam, Adam. Stalin; the Man and his Era. New York: Viking Press, 1973, p. 531

It seems to me that the country's defense was managed correctly as regards its basic and principal features and orientations. For many years, everything or almost everything possible was done in the economic and social fields. As to the period from 1939 to the middle of 1941, the people and the Party applied special efforts to strengthen the country's defenses....
Of course, if it were possible to go over that whole road once again, there are some things it would have been better not to do and some things that would have to be straightened out. But today I cannot name a single major trend in the development of our armed forces that should have been written off, jettisoned, or repealed. The period between 1939 and the middle of 1941 was marked on the whole by transformations which gave the Soviet Union a brilliant army, and that readied it well for defense.
Zhukov, Georgi. Reminiscences and Reflections Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Pub., c1985, p. 270

Soviet economic might was so successfully dedicated to the war effort that in the last six months of 1942 it reached a level of production which the Germans attained only across the entire year. The numbers were remarkable. In that half-year the USSR acquired 15,000 aircraft and 13,000 tanks.
Service, Robert. Stalin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2005, p. 421

At least four marshals--and many generals--deny Stalin's alleged failure to prepare for the German invasion. In June 1941 Marshal Bagramyan says a 'titanic' effort had been made to prepare for the coming war. Marshal Vasilevsky points to a 'whole number of very important measures' taken to counter the menace of aggression. Marshal Zhukov goes farther, saying, 'every effort' and 'every means' was used to bolster the country's defenses between 1939 and 1941. Marshal Rokossovsky says that the non-aggression pact with Hitler 'gave us the time we needed so much to build up our defenses'....
Stalin's generals are virtually unanimous in pointing to Russia's accelerated pre-war industrial and military growth as the sine qua non for victory over Nazi Germany. This build-up started between the two world wars when the West had in effect quarantined the Soviet state.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders. London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 189

Djilas, a Yugoslav writer and activist who met Stalin several times during the war, says that, prior to the Nazi-Soviet War, Stalin spared nothing to achieve military preparedness; and the speed with which he carried out the transformation of the top army command in the midst of the war confirmed Stalin's adaptability and willingness to open careers to men of talent. Djilas an uncompromising critic of Stalin, says that the sweeping military purges had less effect than is commonly believed.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders. London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 190

Another myth you seem to force is that Stalin was surprised by the war.False.

Was Stalin taken by surprise with the turn of events? In the broader sense, no. All his actions from the day Hitler rose to power provide a complete proof of this. But there still remained in the situation an element of surprise in the sense that it was not possible to know the precise moment at which the blow would fall.
Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 221

Stalin received the correct information that "Barbarossa" would start on June 22 for instance - but he was also given other dates ranging from April 6 right through May and up to June 15 - and as each one proved wrong, it became less likely that he would accept the true version for what it was. Werner Wachter, a senior official at the Propaganda Ministry, later explained Goebbels's technique in admirably simple language. The preparations for "Barbarossa," he said, were accompanied by so many rumors, "all of which were equally credible, that in the end there wasn't a bugger left who had any idea of what was really going on."
Certainly, that comment seems to have been true for Stalin and his intelligence chiefs as the hour for the attack drew steadily closer.
Read, Anthony and David Fisher. The Deadly Embrace. New York: Norton, 1988, p. 600

The Red Army and Nazi Germany divided up Poland in the fall of 1939, which brought them into war with Britain and France

The Red Army was not a country,to be at war with western capitalists.
Stop slandering the Red Army.

Britain and France hardened their positions, knowing that they had already gone too far intrying to avoid a war. Yet the natural move for the Soviet Union was to join the Nazi's?

This is ridiculous,the western capitalists tried with all their power to turn Hitler East,to get him to attack the USSR,and it was a natural reaction for the USSR and Stalin to accept a pact that could get a better position and more time to the USSR in order to prepare for war even more.
He already tried with diplomacy,it failed because of the western capitalists,now it was time for strategy and politics.They had their chance.

Finland? You mean the one country that bordered the Soviet Union in europe and wasn't swallowed up by the Soviet Union until 1989? Obviously the finns did something right.

Did you hear about a country in Europe called Romania?No?All right.And in the second part of the post,you say that the Nazi regime of Finland did good.Excellent.

dodger

20th January 2012, 17:17

The 'pact of steel' between the two totalitarian states was necessary for Germany to launch the war,

http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=pact%20of%20steel&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CCoQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gcsehistory.org.uk%2Fmodernwo rld%2Fappeasement%2Fpactofsteel.htm&ei=bqAZT8XxJM2trAeF78zDDQ&usg=AFQjCNGDkdkONdYXtDwtYA3jjohS3ElAdA

As any schoolboy/schoolgirl will tell you.

Franz Fanonipants

20th January 2012, 17:27

you guys guess what i just heard! wwii? it ENDED

in 1945

before any of us were alive

dodger

20th January 2012, 18:19

you guys guess what i just heard! wwii? it ENDED

in 1945

before any of us were alive

A mere 66years, dear Franz. I must admit I don't have the staying power of some. I couldn't wait 2000 years to be vindicated. Though I dare say the thread will reach 2000 before I pop my clogs.

TheCultofAbeLincoln

20th January 2012, 21:28

Yes,now you show your full concern for the working class and the people!What a great idea!Send millions of soldiers into the meat-grinder just because some western capitalists need help in a war they tried to send to your border!
Why not?Why dont the "Bolsheviks from hell" fight for us!After all,they are just Russians..
Disgusting logic.

What the hell are you talking about? Obviously I don't support war, but in the case of WWII, it's obvious that the British and French working classes were being sacrificed to try and stop Nazism, while the Soviets had to be forced by a Nazi invasion.

Blaming western capitalists for Germany and the Soviet Union dividing up Poland takes some ridiculous logic that could only be believed by a neo-Nazi or a nationalist Russian.

People who claim that Stalin was surprised with the Nazi invasion dont know anything about him,or the war.The SU prepared for the war.[many sources suggest this,many authors and people generally.']

Yeah. Great preperation. How many thousands of miles did the Germans go before being turned around?

At least four marshals--and many generals--deny Stalin's alleged failure to prepare for the German invasion. In June 1941 Marshal Bagramyan says a 'titanic' effort had been made to prepare for the coming war. Marshal Vasilevsky points to a 'whole number of very important measures' taken to counter the menace of aggression. Marshal Zhukov goes farther, saying, 'every effort' and 'every means' was used to bolster the country's defenses between 1939 and 1941. Marshal Rokossovsky says that the non-aggression pact with Hitler 'gave us the time we needed so much to build up our defenses'....
Stalin's generals are virtually unanimous in pointing to Russia's accelerated pre-war industrial and military growth as the sine qua non for victory over Nazi Germany. This build-up started between the two world wars when the West had in effect quarantined the Soviet state.
Axell, Albert. Stalin's War: Through the Eyes of His Commanders. London, Arms and Armour Press. 1997, p. 189

And how many more generals and marshals were executed by the regime for not being up to the great leaders specifications? No doubt these military leaders were being completely honest in their assessments though. After all, the Soviet Union had just lost more people in the war than any other country has lost in a war. Ever.

The Red Army was not a country,to be at war with western capitalists. Stop slandering the Red Army.

Perhaps I should have said The Wehrmacht and Red Army assisted each other in raping Poland and dividing it among their respective totalitarian regimes.

Better?

This is ridiculous,the western capitalists tried with all their power to turn Hitler East,to get him to attack the USSR,and it was a natural reaction for the USSR and Stalin to accept a pact that could get a better position and more time to the USSR in order to prepare for war even more.
He already tried with diplomacy,it failed because of the western capitalists,now it was time for strategy and politics.They had their chance.

You're contradicting history. The Western Capitalist states went to war with Germany when Hitler made his next move, the soviets assisted Hitler.

Did you hear about a country in Europe called Romania?No?All right.And in the second part of the post,you say that the Nazi regime of Finland did good.Excellent.

Wait...You're going to tell me that Romania's leaders were chosen by Romanians and not by Moscow? I mean, did the Red Army not stay in Romania until the late 1950's? Didn't Romanians kill their leader in 1989 when the rest of the Eastern Bloc was collapsing and Soviet tyranny was being thrown out?

And I am not endorsing Finlands regime at the time, but they didn't become a Soviet lackey. And that is generally a good thing.

TheCultofAbeLincoln

20th January 2012, 21:40

I'm not apologizing anything, I have facts on my side, while you have BELIEVES.

USSR initiated conversations about the war, with France and Britain, in 12th August 1939, in Moscow. They wanted to sign a military treaty to avoid war in Europe, proposing three possible variants of joint actions between British, French and Soviet armies, in case of German aggression. France and Britain did everything they could for the failure of this conversation. Sent second-importance representatives to Moscow, instructed to slowly conduct the conversations and to abstain from discussing or communicating about British-French plans. So, because of their avoidance of uniting with USSR, Germany destroyed Poland. The Soviets didn't advance through the country, supposedly "dividing it with Germany". Western anticommunist bullshit, period.

So you're saying that in August, 1 month before WWII began, the British and French did everything possible to make sure that they would fight Nazi Germany alone in an upcoming conflict...

Right. France actually wanted to be occupied by the Nazis for years and Londoners actually enjoyed being bombed.

The truth is both France and Britain felt extraordinarily betrayed when the Soviet Union sided with the Nazis, leaving them alone to face down the Nazis.

The US government sent a telegram on 14th June 1941 to the US embassies in London and Moscow saying they wouldn't make any agreement with USSR. On 6th June 1941, general William Donovan (US espionage chief and personal representative of Roosevelt) watched the instruction of English special services employees, in which Leeper (Britain politics espionage chief) with the permission of Churchill, informed that he and his chiefs knew, many weeks before, that Hitler would attack the USSR on June 22. And still they did NOTHING to avoid the invasion. Who's gonna talk about "Britain went to war with Germany" and "France went to war with Germany" now?

I don't understand this bit at all. The US wasn't in the war at this point, maintaining a staunch isolationism until December 1941. By 1941 France had already been conquered by the Nazis, since Germany's full weight was free to subdue the people of Europe after the betrayal by Mr Stalin.

Funny, in one post I'm informed that Stalin knew the Germans were going to invade and made great preperations for it. In another I'm told the sneaky Anglo-Americans made sure he was in the dark.

Omsk

20th January 2012, 22:11

What the hell are you talking about? Obviously I don't support war, but in the case of WWII, it's obvious that the British and French working classes were being sacrificed to try and stop Nazism, while the Soviets had to be forced by a Nazi invasion.

Sacrificed by the western capitalists!Who failed in their attempt to lure the USSR into war with Hitler.They tried to sacrifice the Soviet working class,and in the end,the Soviet working class did take most of the pressure and destruction.

Blaming western capitalists for Germany and the Soviet Union dividing up Poland

I am blaming the western capitalists for WW2.(among other factors)

Yeah. Great preperation. How many thousands of miles did the Germans go before being turned around?

Are you that ignorant?Miles?Who cares about miles?Millions of lives the Nazis took.And it was not the mistake of the top of the USSR,but happened because of Hitlers war machine and terror mass genocide tactics.And the western allies atempt to dry white the USSR.

And what kind of a question is that?In the end,they won,they saved the world,Stalin and his generals counted on huge teritorial losses.

And how many more generals and marshals were executed by the regime for not being up to the great leaders specifications?

What does that have to do with the argument?Stop opening new debate subjects,if you cant argument your stances we are debating right now,dont start new ones.

Perhaps I should have said The Wehrmacht and Red Army assisted each other in raping Poland and dividing it among their respective totalitarian regimes.

Better?

Horrible.

You're contradicting history. The Western Capitalist states went to war with Germany when Hitler made his next move, the soviets assisted Hitler.

Only after they realised that Stalin out-manouvered them,and that their initial plan of sacrificing the USSR to Hitlerites failed.

Wait...You're going to tell me that Romania's leaders were chosen by Romanians and not by Moscow? I mean, did the Red Army not stay in Romania until the late 1950's? Didn't Romanians kill their leader in 1989 when the rest of the Eastern Bloc was collapsing and Soviet tyranny was being thrown out?

Interesting that you mention that..

I visited Rumania after the Russian occupation. All the government authorities and the common people testified to the fact that Russia gave freedom to the democratic elements in Rumania to govern themselves.
I also visited Finland. An election was held after the Russians had freed it from the Germans. As far as I could find out, no one charged that the election had been influenced by the Russians. The electoral results showed the Finnish Communists to be in the minority. Similarly in Hungary and Austria, the Soviets permitted governments to be formed which are not communist by any stretch of the imagination.
Davis, Jerome. Behind Soviet Power. New York, N. Y.: The Readers' Press, Inc., c1946, p. 99

...But I can till you something about what it was like when the Red Army conquered Rumania and from this you may… be able to piece together a pattern of a destiny soon to unfold throughout the Balkans.
In Dorohoi and Botosani, two prefectures in Rumanian Moldavia which had been held by the Russians since April, 1944, I talked to mayors and to village officials, to trade unionists and to farmers, to Jewish refugees from Antonescu's concentration camps and to a Rumanian chief of police, to representatives of several large American business organizations and to a mother superior in a Rumanian convent.
All these people, some with satisfaction and others with regret, agreed on one thing: they said the Russians had not instigated any revolutionary movements. They said the Red Army had observed the Molotov declaration with disciplined correctness--and we saw the declaration posted wherever the hammer and sickle flew.
There appeared to be no open effort by the Red Army to propagandize the masses in favor of communism or socialism. Pictures of the King and Queen and of the late Dowager Queen Marie still hung on the walls of official buildings, while Stalin's portrait was strangely absent, except in offices of the Red Army. On the surface of things, nothing suggested that the inhabitants did not enjoy a degree of liberty which, considering that Rumania was still a country at war against Russia, was astonishing. In fact, many of the Rumanians apparently wanted to fight on the winning side now. The handsome young Russian commandant of Dorohoi told me that peasants were coming to him every day, asking to enlist in the Red Army.
"The loyalty of the population is remarkable," said he. "Men wish to become soldiers and women wish to join up as nurses. We have to refuse as politely as we can."
Snow, Edgar. The Pattern of Soviet Power, New York: Random House, 1945, p. 28

On 28 January 1945 Stalin said, "We have no wish to impose anything on the other Slavic peoples. We do not interfere in their internal affairs. Let them do what they can. The crisis of capitalism has manifested itself in the division of the capitalists into two factions-- one fascist, the other democratic. The alliance between ourselves and the democratic faction of capitalists came about because the latter had a stake in preventing Hitler's domination, for that brutal state would have driven the working class to extremes and to the overthrow of capitalism itself. We are currently allied with one faction against the other, but in the future we will be against the first faction of capitalist, too.
Dimitrov, Georgi, The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. Ed. Ivo Banac. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003, p. 358

Let me illustrate by an anecdote. Ten years ago, I met a Czech in Moscow; he had come to make an economic treaty with the USSR. I asked him what truth there was in the American claim that Moscow exploited the East European lands. He replied: "when we deal with the Chiefs of Soviet industry, they bargain for their prices and we bargain for ours. They are tough bargainers. But if they press too hard then Gottwald takes it up with Stalin for a 'political settlement,' and says the terms will ruin us.... Then Stalin gives us help."
Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 127

For an example,Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were planing to form an Balkan Union,alongside Romania,however,Stalin oposed the idea and it was abandoned after the Tito Stalin split when Tito turned his back on Stalin,and yet there were now Soviet tanks charging in and the Red Army rushing trough Romania.

Unlike the US,which actually started a lot of wars in Asia.And of course determined the results of peace seting up their puppet governments.

Another example is Austria,a country that was under joint control,and yet even though the Soviets controled a part of Austria,no "Soviet tyranny" was instaled.

Like Germany, Austria was divided up between the United States, England, France, and the Soviet Union. And, like Berlin, Vienna was divided into zones.
We owned things in Austria. We had factories, and we were running them. We set up management systems and established an economic network among the factories. They probably belonged to German capitalists, but we confiscated them and assumed ownership.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 73

Austria was a first step for us, a demonstration that we could conduct negotiations and conduct them well.... Austria became a neutral country.
So we celebrated a great international victory. It was the European debut for a country bumpkin, and it did us a lot of good. The bumpkin had learned a thing or two. We could orient ourselves without directives from Stalin.
Schecter, Jerrold. Trans & Ed. Khrushchev Remembers: the Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown, c1990, p. 80

1989 when the rest of the Eastern Bloc was collapsing and Soviet tyranny was being thrown out?

The USSR was hardly present in the East bloc in 89.Dont write unchecked posts.

Germany's full weight

Was directed at the people of the USSR while the allies did little.

The truth is both France and Britain felt extraordinarily betrayed when the Soviet Union sided with the Nazis, leaving them alone to face down the Nazis.

Didnt you read what i posted?THEY felt betrayed?They were scheming for an USSR-Nazi conflict.They betrayed European countries when they sacrificed them to Hitler,and tried the same tactic with the USSR.Stalin outsmarted them.So sad.

El Chuncho

21st January 2012, 01:23

The Red Army and Nazi Germany divided up Poland in the fall of 1939, which brought them into war with Britain and France. Fact. From April 1939 to September 1939 is a tremendously short amount of time to go from asking to contain Nazi Germany militarily to invading countries with Nazi Germany.

Sorry, that is hyperbolic nonsense. Germany and the USSR agreed to not meddle in their respective spheres of influence, which, yes, meant that they had to compromise on Poland. However, what is termed Poland also consisted of former Russian territory (''Western Ukraine and Byelo - Russia''), territory in which many non-Poles lived, which is what the USSR wanted. They did not truly consider them legitimacy parts of Poland. They did not sit around a table saying ''we'll aid your conquest Poland if you give us a cut'' or anything, they just agreed to not cross certain set boundaries (Curzon line). The Russian sphere of influence stretched to the Curzon line, so the Soviet Union wanted to reclaim parts of Russia (which was home to majority populations of Ukrainians and Byelorussians) lost after WWI, and NAZI Germany wanted to claim parts of Poland which it believed it had a right to due to the Prussian Empire owning parts of Poland. But this has been said before.

And as stated before, a neutrality pact is not an alliance.

capitalism is good

21st January 2012, 02:17

El Chuncho

21st January 2012, 11:20

Yes, it is true. Stalin and Hitler were imperialist allies who attacked and partitioned Poland. They saw each other as fellow Socialists. After all, the Nazi party was officially called, the "German Workers' National Socialist Party".

Bullshit, and we have already refuted that claim. I wish the anti-MLs would stop saying the same thing over and over again. It doesn't get more true no matter how many times you repeat it.

The Soviet Union didn't help divide Poland with the NAZIs, they just had an interest in the areas east of the Curzon line. Areas which Poland stole, and which had were mainly Ukrainian and Byelorussian.

The Soviet Union never saw the NAZIs as fellow socialist and never made an alliance with them. They proposed, to the LoN, sanctions on NAZI Germany and a war if they could not be contained by other means. This was before the west saw them as a true threat.

Your claims are thus bunk. And capitalism is shit.

human strike

21st January 2012, 11:35

The pact was a means to an end, and that end was Soviet imperialism.

TheGodlessUtopian

21st January 2012, 11:55

Yes, it is true. Stalin and Hitler were imperialist allies who attacked and partitioned Poland. They saw each other as fellow Socialists. After all, the Nazi party was officially called, the "German Workers' National Socialist Party".

I suggest reading up on the conditions of Germany prior to Hitler's rise to power.This way you will discover why Hitler took the word "socialist" to use when gaining support.

Hint: It has to do with the German social-democratic party and the mass amount of unionized workers.

El Chuncho

21st January 2012, 11:57

Nice to see that the pointless anti-Soviet catchphrases are entering the thread. :rolleyes:

dodger

21st January 2012, 12:35

Yes, it is true. Stalin and Hitler were imperialist allies who attacked and partitioned Poland. They saw each other as fellow Socialists. After all, the Nazi party was officially called, the "German Workers' National Socialist Party".

Don't be too easily impressed with a name. Look at the CONSERVATIVE party. I have yet to see them actually conserve anything worthwhile, unless of course one looks at class privilege. Hardly puts them in the same camp as workers straining every sinew trying to conserve health, education jobs, pensions and a future for our youth. Smug self satisfied observations, heard them all before, now I remember where, Prince Philip husband to our Queen . What sort of fool repeats a fools foolishness. No please don't answer. I much prefer my own fool statements to those of others, at least they have the value of being authentic. Also the thinking behind them stands a chance of being corrected. CALLING YOURSELF "CAPITALISM IS GOOD", MAKES ME WONDER IF YOU SHOULDN'T FORM YOUR OWN PARTY. Hell's teeth yer have already got a blinder of a name. Just have to convince us poor suckers the label means what it says.

Rodrigo

21st January 2012, 18:05

So you're saying that in August, 1 month before WWII began, the British and French did everything possible to make sure that they would fight Nazi Germany alone in an upcoming conflict...

I said what I said, not something you wrongly understood. They did not want to fight Germany, they wanted to see the Soviet Union being torn apart by the Nazis and only gave moral support after they discovered Hitler would like to attack England and France after supposedly conquering the Soviet Union. But even at this time, no real support was given to USSR.

Right. France actually wanted to be occupied by the Nazis for years and Londoners actually enjoyed being bombed.

Non sequitur. USSR wanted to create an anti-Nazi alliance with France and Britain, but for sure, because of their actions against these conversations, we conclude these two thought the Soviets were a worse enemy.

The three variants of the joint actions were:

I. In case Germany attack England and France, the USSR would provide effectives corresponding to 70% of armed forces mobilized by England and France against Germany. It would be obligatory the participation of Poland in the war, because of its agreement with France and England.

II. In case Poland and Romania were attacked, England and France would declare war on the aggressor and USSR would provide the same number of divisions mobilized by England and France.

III. In case USSR was attacked (through the territories of Finland, Estonia and Latvia), England and France would mobilize 70% of the forces and means deployed by USSR against Germany. It was anticipated that Poland would mobilize 45 divisions and Romania, in case of involvement in the war, all its forces.

Funny, in one post I'm informed that Stalin knew the Germans were going to invade and made great preperations for it. In another I'm told the sneaky Anglo-Americans made sure he was in the dark.

They knew WHEN the Germans were going to invade.

About that telegraph, the espionage instructions on 6 June 1941 and so on, show how the Western powers were not eager to help USSR against the aggressions of Germany. What you said about the neutrality of USA is not in contradiction with the facts I provided. :)

Franz Fanonipants

21st January 2012, 18:51

Yes, it is true. Stalin and Hitler were imperialist allies who attacked and partitioned Poland. They saw each other as fellow Socialists. After all, the Nazi party was officially called, the "German Workers' National Socialist Party".

this is awesome because basically this is the trot/whiny communist party version of events.

Zulu

21st January 2012, 20:12

this is awesome because basically this is the trot/whiny communist party version of events.

Which kind of supports the point of view that trotskyists work for the guys who think "capitalism is good"...

Zulu

21st January 2012, 21:19

The pact was a means to an end, and that end was Soviet imperialism.

How does the fact that Stalin forfeited the old Russian imperial possessions in Manchuria when Mao took over in China correlate with "Soviet Imperialism"?

"Soviet imperialism" was originally an invention of the White emigrants, which they used to psychologically cope with the "tragedy" of the loss of their "White Empire" to the communist revolutionaries. It was like "oh look, our empire is still there, it's just changed color, lol!"

Too bad Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and the rest of the Soviet revisionists, while on the way back to capitalism restored the chauvinistic mode of thinking, so yeah, that loony notion that USSR was an empire almost did come true in the end - and failed, non-surprisingly, exactly for the same reasons the old Russian empire had failed.

Экс-фашистских

21st January 2012, 21:38

Don't know if someone said this already...

Elsewhere in the same Herald Tribune, Leland
Stowe exposed the hypocrisy of those who pretend to
see the nonaggression pact as an “alliance between
Nazism and Communism.” Before August 23rd the
Soviet Union had nonaggression pacts with eight countries,
of all political varieties ranging from Afghanistan
to Italy. But, as Mr. Stowe points out, no one ever
suggested that the Soviet Union and Italy “thereby
became bosom partners for a universal ideological offense.”
Yet this is precisely what the New York Times
says in its alarm over the pact. Mr. Stowe remarks further
“The U.S.S.R. and Poland have been linked by a
non-aggression agreement for seven years and the Poles
were joined to Nazi Germany by a similar compact
during five of these years; but it was never assumed
that Poland had sold itself either to Communism or
Hitlerism.”
It would be possible to interpret the pact between
the Soviet Union and Germany in terms of who
likes it and doesn’t. The New York Times does not like
it, the boy reporters on the New York Post and Mr.
Howard’s editorial writers do not like it. The Japanese
militarists hate it. It was not well received by General
Franco. But despatches tell us that it had a fine reception
in China. We can believe that millions of honest
people in Germany will see in it the first break in the
dark cloud of lies so long surrounding them.
Ribbentrop flies to Moscow. The Nazis promise not
to attack the Soviet Union. Mein Kampf is on the dust
heap. The pact will appeal mightily to the great masses
throughout the world. It is a pact for peace. It is not
an alliance of Communism and Fascism. It is not an
alliance of any kind. It is a stroke for peace — a brilliant
stroke, a courageous stroke, a mightily successful
stroke.

That bit of text was retrieved from Marxists.org about a Soviet pamphlet but I can't paste the file here because my post count is too low.

Stalin signed the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance which was directed AGAINST Hitler and Germany.

#FF0000

21st January 2012, 22:20

Zostrianos

23rd January 2012, 05:01

Because during the Tehran Conference Churchill insisted that it should be the British troops that would liberate Poland.

That was the official reason, but it was clear the eradication of Polish resistance was also desired, which explains why the Soviets encouraged the uprising, falsely promising to aid the Poles:

"It made perfect Stalinist sense to encourage an uprising, and then not to assist one. Right to the last moment, Soviet propaganda had called for an uprising in Warsaw, promising Soviet assistance. The uprising came, but the help did not. Though there is no reason to believe that Stalin deliberately halted military operations at Warsaw, the delay at the Vistula suited Stalin’s political purposes. From the Soviet perspective, an uprising in Warsaw was desirable because it would kill Germans—and Poles who were willing to risk their lives for independence. The Germans would do the necessary work of destroying the remnants of the Polish intelligentsia..." (q.v. T. Snyder, Bloodlands, 305)

And why did the Allies bombed Dresden instead of the railroads leading to the concentration camps? Why the Hiroshima and Nagasaki "live nuking exercises"? (Little hint: there is a red star on the flag of Nagasaki.)
Bottom line: all sides were ruthless in that war, all planned for the decades ahead. Bleeding-heart kind of guys rarely gets to the top, no matter how humane their "official position" is.

Absolutely right, ultimately in war there are no good guys, just evil and lesser evil. The Nazis not only killed tens of millions, their crimes later brought about savage retribution against innocent Germans (Dresden, the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, etc.). Once the wheel starts turning, all goes to shit on every side, and it's the innocent who pay the price.

daft punk

25th January 2012, 08:52

Not read all the thread. The reason Hitler got into power was because of the policies of the German Communists. In fact the Communists even had a brief alliance with the Nazis in 1931 I think. The main problem was that the Communists refused to form an alliance with the Social Democrat workers to stop Hitler taking power.

soviechetnik

29th January 2012, 03:08

Stalin and Hitler split Poland and NKVD and Gestapo even collaborated in sending hundreds of innocent anti-fascists and others to death!
Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people deported to Siberia...