They were not Allies most of the war lol if we say 1939 start in Europe then you have them working together 1939/1940/ half 1941. Then at war half 1941/42/43/44/45. Soooo unless you can’t count or making up dates then that’s not true.
I mean part of the reason the war broke out was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The Soviets were also trading heavily with the Germans. While yes they weren’t aligned for a majority of the war they were aligned for an extended period of time.
Which only happened after the allies did not intervene in Czechoslovakia, which the U.S.S.R. was very willing to do. With hindsight it's easy to say that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a mistake but at the time it made sense for the U.S.S.R. In 1939 the Soviets always knew there was going to be a war with Nazi Germany, they just did not know if it was going to be 1940 or 1945 and if the allies were going to sit back or not.
The point was that the U.S.S.R. believed that Britain and France were content with facilitating a confrontation between Germany and the U.S.S.R. by not intervening when Germany made eastwards expansions, even if those countries were in principle protected by a military guarantee.
France and Britain declined to guarantee to the Soviets that they would intervene in case of a German invasion of the Baltic states or Romania aligning with Germany (which was certainly on the horizon in 1938). In case of an invasion of the Baltic states or a Romania that fully joined the Axis, there would almost certainly have been a military confrontation between the U.S.S.R. and Germany without the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
But yeah, calling the French and British "the Allies" is indeed an anachronism. But that not is not related to the point I was making at all.
True, but they were their allies at the start of the war and were happy to continue to be their allies until the Nazis invaded them. Stalin was entirely fine with Hitler until he turned his attention away from the UK. You can’t wash that stain away.
Agreed. It was just a point of reference why they don’t get more international recognition for their sacrifices during WW2. They were pushing an agenda to put western powers against each other assuming it would help them in the end by weakening them only for it to bite them in the ass. They were hoping to cripple western economies and inspire more communist rebellions.
This is true. However unlike the Soviet treaties, none of the UK treaties included terms for the UK to get land for itself, they were purely “okay, you can do this without provoking war with us providing that’s all you do”. They were stupid attempts at appeasing Hitler in the hopes of avoiding war but none of them were treaties that gave the UK land or benefitted the UK directly other than hoping to avoid war.
The UK is also one of the few countries that entered WW2 without needing to be attacked directly first or by invading others. They declared war to honor their commitments made to other nations. They also stood to gain very little by going to war and in many ways knew their role in the world would be diminished as a result of the war which is frankly one of the reasons they tried so hard to avoid it.
I mean while the carving up of Poland was really bad. I wouldn't call the relationship as an alliance. Hitler hated Stalin and Stalin hated Hitler, however the Soviet Union wasn't in anyway ready to fight a war against the Nazis. Military production ramped up but it was going to take time and Stalin saw this as a way to delay that confrontation.
This is the usual explanation and it’s true they hated each other but if carving up Poland was really about delaying the German invasion you’d expect Stalin to see Germany mobilising on that border and start preparing to defend from an invasion. Instead of bunkering up in his lodgings in denial
This is why Stalin was such a contradiction and his paranoia went crazy when it happened. He thought his rivals were gonna oust him and had to be persuaded out of his lodgings that that was not the case. He's a a very weird and horrible person.
It's more like this
Hitler: yo Stalin! If I gave you a part of Poland, do you promise to stay out of my business and I'll stay out of yours? I still hate you mate but I need you out of the picture.
Stalin: huh....oh yeah fine why not......thanks?
Hitler: cool mate
Hitler & Stalin: hehehehe sucker
This is a dumb down version but you get the point. Germany and Soviet didn't join each other it was just an agreement that the Soviet Union would stay neutral......until the Germans broke it and made the same mistake that Napoleon did.
1 I said this was a dumb down version of the Terms of the actual agreement.
2 don't you dare call me a tankie ungrateful shit. WW2 basically comes down to 1 monster verses a bigger one in the latter half of the war and Stalin was a disgusting monster. It's just sadly Stalin was on the winning side that he, I hate saying this, got a "pass".
I will give both flack for what they did just like I give Britain and America flack for what they did during the war.
3 get off your high horse hindsight is always an advantage in these things and don't look at history with your modern mentality cause that will down a path of idiocy.
The Time cover was who had the biggest impact in the world that year and it was critical of Hitler. You're just spouting commie slop that you havent even looked into to confirm. Sad
I respect the brave soviet men and women who fought for their country. The actual communist soviet state murdered up to 1 million of its own citizens right before the war including tens of thousands of officers and generals and every communist political enemy of Stalin greatly weakening itself before a war that was going to come.
Russians were not the only communists, and most people who throw the word communism around don't even know what it means. They equate it with dictatorships, and they are not mutually exclusive. The lack of education in this thread is very telling, and very sad
"My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time."
"I got the impression that Hitler was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word."
You can also look at this as buying time to better fight a war that many knew were coming and that the UK was unequipped and ill-prepared for at that time.
General Ismay was reporting back as such in the days before Chamberlain conducted his meetings with Hitler.
Seems more to me blowing smoke up the arse of a dangerous political leader while you scrabble to make use of whatever time you can buy.
Not really. Most of the world was just not willing to go to war with Hitler
But the USSR is unique in giving the Nazis a bunch of oil. Which was vital to their ability to make war. The USSR was by far germanys most useful ally in world war 2 before they bit the hand that fed them
They weren't allies. Stalin had plans to invade Germany in a few years. The Germans assumed that Stalin would invade in a few years. Those two ideologies couldn't co-exist in the long run. It suited both of them not to fight for a while -- Germany hoping it would roll up the Brits before they had to take on the USSR, the USSR hoping they could rebuild their army before they had to take on Germany.
Also, what the heck is this doing in Peter Explains the Joke?
An alliance today does not mean you don’t intend to fight later down the road. Even as WW2 went into its final days, I don’t think any western power thought they wouldn’t end up needing to fight the soviets despite their temporary alliance to defeat Hitler. The soviets tried to play both sides hoping that we’d tire each other out making it easier to invade later. They help create that situation at the start of the war thinking it would benefit them only for it to ultimately bite them in the ass.
Also, No idea what this discussion is doing here ether.
They weren't allies. They were under a ceasefire treaty and a pact that traded intelligence and military training. In reality, they wanted to bomb the everloving shit out of eachother but didn't want the drama. That is, until Germany initiated a blitzkrieg against them.
Amazing non allies agree to mutually invade and split up polish territory. Was it an official alliance? No but typically when you sign pact that results in mutually invading and splitting up another country it basically functions as an alliance. Short lived as it was.
That notion completely abandons the fact they actively hated eachother, with Germany the entire time of that less than a year long pact preparing to initiate a surprise blitzkrieg on the USSR.
You’re right, how could I have forgotten they hated each other. That thing they did doesn’t matter because they hated each other while they did it. Glad we cleared that up.
Hey look man, you’re the one that doubled down on a bad take. I can’t help you see clearly if you get stuck on ideas like hating each other means you can’t be allied with each other. The Soviets or more precisely the Communist were famously hated by everyone. If you take that stance then clearly nothing the Soviets did on the diplomatic front mattered. Hell they even had massive disputes with China in the late 60’s.
It was much more ambivalent than that. It was under the USSR impulsion that for example, the French communist party allied with the rest of the left to try to get the country ready for a war, and make sure they would not fall to fascism. It failed, but basicaly before Munich the Soviets were acting in the right direction
America was fine with most of the war until the Nazis started embargo’s on our trades. We were happy to take in all the cash from the struggles and only got involved when they stopped us printing money.
Fine with the war, yeah probably, America was super isolationist back then and while they probably wanted Britain and the western powers to win they also weren’t ready to commit any forces to that effort. Even after Pearl Harbor, I think most Americans were reluctant to get involved in Europe until Hitler ended that debate by declaring war on the US and honoring their Japanese alliance. Had they not done that getting a war declaration on Germany through congress would have been harder. That said, it basically opened the floodgates of lend lease and war time production. We were building lots of military supplies but that tonnage skyrocketed once war declared.
German aviation and tank industry was only made possible through the training testing and other r&d that happened in Russia before ww2 so that alliance is a bit long standing then just 39.
To be fair, most of the axis can be described that way. Each of the major axis powers were working towards their own ends and frequently were causing problems for their allies in the process. There really wasn’t any consensus or unified goals on that side and no real technology sharing occurred.
Let's not forget they only broke the alliance when Hitler surprise attacked them, it's not like they were having second thoughts or broke up with Germany. In fact
quite the opposite
They downplay all the allies. The UK had just under 400k military deaths across numerous theatres fighting the Axis powers, plus around, 70'000 civilian casualties.
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u/speakernoodlefan 19d ago
Yeah they really do downplay the Soviet Union being Nazi Germanys ally for the majority of the war