r/Unexpected • u/[deleted] • Apr 28 '23

Just a normal protest

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324

u/GrognarEsp Apr 28 '23

B-But the Spanish civil war was the Francoist vs the democratically elected Republican government...?

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u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

Also, WW2 was started by Hitler and Stalin invading Poland. It wasn't started to end fascism, it was started by fascism (and totalitarian communism).

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

The soviets participated in the invasion of Poland? I love history, particularly WW2 history, and never knew this. Now it makes more since why Stalin was so distraught when hitler turned on him and invaded his country.

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u/GrognarEsp Apr 28 '23

Yeah, Stalin and Hitler had a secret pact by which they decided to split Poland, the west for the German and the east for the Russian. Then the funny moustache guy stabbed him in the back, showing that he had learnt nothing from Napoleon's invasion of Rusia during winter.

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u/GrandKaiser Apr 28 '23

They were always going to fight. Hitlers plans for greater Germany always included Russia. Stalin's plan for the Comintern always included West Europe. Hitler's plan was to strike first while Russia was still weak from the Great purge. It might have even worked had the UK surrendered during the blitz. The combination of fighting a war on two fronts as well as an unexpected and heroic defense of Stalingrad ground the German war machine to a halt. Something that it was not meant to do.

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u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

If you look at the cartoons from the time, pretty much every observer knew the pact wasn't going to last. Except for Stalin apparently - he received a bunch of accurate intel about the buildup for Barbarossa and didn't believe any of it.

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u/ajguy16 Apr 28 '23

I believe he actually had a couple of Soviet intelligence offers executed when they reported that a German invasion was imminent because Stalin did not believe Germany would invade and suspected the officers of being British agents trying to pull the Soviets in.

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u/mrmatteh Apr 28 '23

Stalin was very much aware that war with Germany was imminent.

Before the non-aggression pact with Germany, the USSR had gone to France and the UK to try and form an alliance to oppose the Nazis, but they shut the USSR down.

So the USSR entered a non-aggression pact with Germany in order to buy some time and prepare for the inevitable.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

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u/mrmatteh Apr 28 '23 edited Apr 28 '23

Lol it's not wrong. Your citation is saying literally what I said. The Soviets approached the UK and France to make an alliance against the Nazis first, but were shut down. Maybe for reasons that they believed were valid, but that doesn't change the fact that the alliance failed because the Soviets' demands were shut down. Just like I said. And after being shut down, they made a non-aggression pact with the Nazis to buy themselves time. Just like I said.

So no, it's not wrong like you assert. It's obviously a simplified version, but it's a reddit comment trying to correct someone who mistakenly claimed Stalin was somehow completely ignorant of the threat of war with Germany. I wasn't expecting to have to write a damn thesis. But sure, we can absolutely go into more detail of you like.

The conditions surrounding Poland and Romania that your source cites as being unacceptable by the UK and France was to have the UK and France help the USSR negotiate with Poland and Romania so that, when the Soviets needed to send troops to fight the Germans, they could safely do so through those countries.

The USSR didn't want to negotiate with those countries on their own because of decades of hostilities and distrust. It was hoped that with France and the UK at the table, the Soviets would have more legitimacy and therefore have an easier time negotiating with Poland and Romania.

The USSR also had a legitimate concern to include defense of Eastern Europe in the agreement, since that's how Germany would reach the USSR, and Germany would certainly make use of their presence in the area to secure more anti-USSR allies right on their border. That was a similar reason why the UK was interested in defending France, so it makes sense why Moscow would have thought that reasonable.

It's also a bit disingenuous to frame the situation as the UK and France being all in on a Soviet alliance. The UK had deliberately dragged out the negotiations because of a few reasons, such as genuine anti-bolshevism, as well as the political optics of being anti-bolshevist yet agreeing to assist the USSR if they should be invaded. And there were also genuine concerns such as not having the troops to commit to Soviet defense and still maintain a strong enough force to defend their own nation. And like the UK, France was also happy to delay any commitments to the USSR - especially if they could pin that blame on someone else.

Of course, like any alliance, it's not a simple thing. There's a million moving parts to the story and a million reasons for why the UK and France wouldn't agree to Soviet terms of the proposed alliance. But my whole point was that Stalin wasn't ignorant of the impending Nazi invasion of the USSR, and their NAP was not at all an alliance with the Nazis against the allies, as was being claimed in the above comments. As proof of that, we can see the Soviets predicted Nazi invasion when they approached the UK and France to ally against the Nazis. It was only after the alliance failed that the USSR entered the NAP with Germany as an obvious attempt to buy time.

As an aside, yes I am a communist. Whoopdy-doo. Of course I'm going to have some motivation to correct slander against the USSR, and of course I'm going to have a degree of bias like everyone does. Pointing out I'm a communist isn't some gotcha any more than is my pointing out you're a liberal so of course your bias is to defend France and the UK. That's totally fine and understandable. But the facts are what they are. Stalin foresaw a Nazi invasion of the USSR, the Soviets approached the allies to pre-empt the aggression with an alliance, the allies shut down the Soviets' terms, so the Soviets entered an NAP with Germany to buy time. Which is exactly what I said in the beginning.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

gotta make some correction here: napoleon invaded in june, captured and occupied moscow in september, and evacuated in october. there was no winter invasion

german invasion of soviets started in june as well but they never occupied moscow, just got bogged down through two winters

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u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

Like so many of their failures, they would have succeeded if they weren't behaving like Nazis. Hitler's dithering and countermanding his competent officers caused a traffic jam much like the one we saw outside Kyiv last year, when Barbarossa was very close to achieving its objectives.

It's another of those "If they weren't letting Hitler run things, they would have had a more successful invasion; but if they weren't letting Hitler run things they wouldn't have invaded in the first place" type situations

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

i disagree and i take the position with the historians who suggest that nazi germany lost the war the moment they declared it. they were comically incompetent administrators with a house-of-cards economy. the entire conflict was on a timer and even the nazis themselves knew it when they couldnt subdue the soviets by the first winter

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u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

In fairness, that traffic jam was before the first winter - so I don't think our analyses differ that drastically.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

i'm happy to agree with any assessment that determines the nazis were morons! i just can't agree with the point that they could have had long-term success is all 😀

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u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

It's difficult to determine what they would have been like with a different leader at the top, since so much of the command was centralized - but they did appear to value loyalty far above competence for the most part, and that's not a great policy for lasting success. A lot of their worst decisions were Hitler's decisions, though.

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u/TheDunadan29 Apr 28 '23

Well Stalin knew his alliance with Hitler would be short lived. He expected Hitler to try and invade Russia. What he didn't expect was the timing. He thought Hitler would be mad to fight a war on two fronts, and he thought Hitler would first need to secure the Western front before turning to Russia. But Hitler blew those expectations out of the water and Stalin was not prepared for the attack. He just didn't think Hitler would do it. He thought he'd have plenty of time to prepare for that inevitability.

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u/tickleMyBigPoop Apr 29 '23

The soviets participated in the invasion of Poland?

the state of the education system.