As if Soviets didn’t collaborate with Nazis forming the Ribbentrop - Molotov pact.
The pact was the correct move after the western powers (and Poland, afaik) refused to more proactively join the Soviets in crushing the Nazis. The Soviets could not defeat the Nazis without being able to actually reach them on land and the Soviets could not defeat the Nazis if war started then and they were alone (as the western powers hoped would happen). Given the western powers not taking the Nazi threat seriously and the geopolitical implications of that, the pact was entirely correct.
It’s just Stalin got backstabbed by Hitler the same way he stabbed Poland in the back in 1939.
Stalin identified (what I’ve usually seen translated as) “Hitlerism” as the immediate mortal enemy of the Soviets since well before the pact. Incidentally, Hitler also publically identified the Soviets as mortal enemies of the Nazis, making all sorts of accusations about “Judeo-Bolshevism”. These two governments were not allies and it’s an abomination of historical revision to characterize it as such.
Stalin expected Hitler to violate the pact eventually, since the Soviets gained tremendous advantage from stalling and developing their semi-feudal infrastructure into something more modern. He did not, however, expect the Nazis to invade as soon as they did, was caught very unprepared, and suffered horrible losses both of soldiers and civilians (in Poland and the USSR proper) as a result. That last part is something that should be criticized, but you cannot criticize his actual errors coherently in the fantasy framework of him and Hitler being teammates.
I also wonder what exactly do you mean by Polish state being Holocaust collaborators? You do realize there was no Polish state under Nazi / Soviet occupation, except for the London one? How could it have collaborated in Holocaust?
It’s illegal in Poland to make claims like this, so it would not surprise me if you aren’t very familiar, but on a municipal level there absolutely was collaboration between existing Polish government officials and the Nazis.
People were right though, hexbear is just a Russian propaganda tube. I don’t know if you people are paid to do this subhuman work or are you really believe in this alt history bullshit you’re spreading, I feel sorry for you one way or the other.
If my quotes denote sections (with this being the fourth), then the first section of this comment (that the pact was correct) is a claim that isn’t very popular in western historiography but definitely is present. The second and third sections (Stalin and Hitler were always enemies, that the Polish government collaborated in the Holocaust) are the standard position in western historiography even though the Stalin/Hitler one gets distorted in pop history. In countries like Poland and Ukraine, these positions are much less common in part because of reactionary campaigns by those governments to revise history in the direction of Holocaust denial (see section three of my comment and Banderites in Ukraine, respectively).
Nothing I’ve said here is in the realm of a crank opinion to mainstream western historians. I can expand on the western powers not being interested in stopping the Nazis until it became a direct need for their own survival, but it felt like too much of a tangent.
The pact was the correct move after the western powers (and Poland, afaik) refused to more proactively join the Soviets in crushing the Nazis. The Soviets could not defeat the Nazis without being able to actually reach them on land and the Soviets could not defeat the Nazis if war started then and they were alone (as the western powers hoped would happen). Given the western powers not taking the Nazi threat seriously and the geopolitical implications of that, the pact was entirely correct.
Stalin identified (what I’ve usually seen translated as) “Hitlerism” as the immediate mortal enemy of the Soviets since well before the pact. Incidentally, Hitler also publically identified the Soviets as mortal enemies of the Nazis, making all sorts of accusations about “Judeo-Bolshevism”. These two governments were not allies and it’s an abomination of historical revision to characterize it as such.
Stalin expected Hitler to violate the pact eventually, since the Soviets gained tremendous advantage from stalling and developing their semi-feudal infrastructure into something more modern. He did not, however, expect the Nazis to invade as soon as they did, was caught very unprepared, and suffered horrible losses both of soldiers and civilians (in Poland and the USSR proper) as a result. That last part is something that should be criticized, but you cannot criticize his actual errors coherently in the fantasy framework of him and Hitler being teammates.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-historians-under-attack-for-exploring-polands-role-in-the-holocaust
It’s illegal in Poland to make claims like this, so it would not surprise me if you aren’t very familiar, but on a municipal level there absolutely was collaboration between existing Polish government officials and the Nazis.
Here’s another article from the most Atlanticist source you can find in journalism: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/poland-holocaust-death-camps/552455/
If my quotes denote sections (with this being the fourth), then the first section of this comment (that the pact was correct) is a claim that isn’t very popular in western historiography but definitely is present. The second and third sections (Stalin and Hitler were always enemies, that the Polish government collaborated in the Holocaust) are the standard position in western historiography even though the Stalin/Hitler one gets distorted in pop history. In countries like Poland and Ukraine, these positions are much less common in part because of reactionary campaigns by those governments to revise history in the direction of Holocaust denial (see section three of my comment and Banderites in Ukraine, respectively).
Nothing I’ve said here is in the realm of a crank opinion to mainstream western historians. I can expand on the western powers not being interested in stopping the Nazis until it became a direct need for their own survival, but it felt like too much of a tangent.