Poll data source

Explanation

The losses of Germany on the eastern front are widely believed to be the most significant factor in defeating Nazi Germany and the USSR won the battle of Berlin, the final battle before the German capitulation. Thus Europe widely believed (for a good reason) that the USSR was the main contributor in defeating Germany. With the cold war the perception of the USSR became a lot worse in western countries like France and with increasing anti-USSR sentiment the view flipped to viewing the USA as the deciding factor. The USSR (and the Russian Federation today, even if its government is very anti USSR) viewed itself as the most important force in defeating Germany, especially because the USSR had the biggest amount of deaths. It is worth noting that the USSR was at least commercially allied with Nazi Germany until June 22, 1941 and there was an agreement between the nations on which parts of Europe each could invade and which where reserved for the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    24 hours ago

    Even though USSR has some blame for WW2 starting (Molotov-Ribbentrop and its follow-up), I’m sure Germany did the most for it.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      23 hours ago

      That pact short-circuited the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan and is the first thing every WW2 nerd cites in trying to figure out how Hitler could’ve won the war. It was also a tactic to placate Britain and France that either resulted in, or proved unnecessary by, the Phoney War. Fall Weiss was already finalized to commence before September 1. Molotov-Ribbentrop was done in August.

      Taking that pact out of the context in which it was made just seems odd.

      Or maybe not because I know the Hearts of Irons games portray it (or did) with an ‘unholy alliance’ option. The games tend to give Nazi Germany massive penalties for not doing it, so the vidya brained think it is what enabled Germany to invade the USSR and/or start WW2. They’re fun games when you know how they play with historical events, and brain breaking if you try to learn history from them.

      • PugJesus@piefed.socialM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        21 hours ago

        It was also a tactic to placate Britain and France

        “Molotov-Ribbentrop was meant to placate Britain and France”

        Fucking what.

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Well, USSR wouldn’t have survived without US help. USSR contributed the most in terms of territorial gain and manpower spent, but they would not have been able to make it without convoys to Archangelsk and Murmansk. These convoys were packed with materiell, mostly from the US, but a lot from the UK as well. Western tanks were vital in the defense of Moscow.

    So, an objective answer to the question can only be provided if “most of what” is specified.

    Nuance matters. Surveys like these rarely allow for that.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, even Soviet leaders, including the legendary Georgy Zhukov, low key admit (I will get to that later) that if it weren’t for Lend Lease, USSR may have been defeated especially during the pivotal moments in the first couple of months of the German invasion. The material deliveries from the Allies filled the gap while the Soviet rushed their industries out of the German advances and restructuring the Soviet supply chain. Since you mentioned the Allied tanks, the British tanks made up around 40% of Soviet armoured forces in the Caucasus, since the Soviets couldn’t easily deliver their own tanks to the Caucasus after the land route was cut off by the Germans.

      After the war, the Soviet leadership aimed to minimise the importance of the Allied material deliveries in order lionise their own effort and exalt the communist system. But unofficially, many Soviet leaders were thankful of Lend Lease in a hush hush and low key manner.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 day ago

      Their impact was in the Pacific theatre not Europe.

      ?

      from the bombing of europe, to overlord - the invasion of europe - this is factually incorrect. the US got into africa later than the UK because, uh, they didn’t have colonies lol…

      but half of the forces that landed on normandy were US.

      the US had a larger footprint, and other allies smaller, in the pacific, but “their impact was in the pacific theater not europe” is incorrect. The US helped bomb germany into rubble, there were impacts in europe lol.

      • Matty Roses@lemmy.todayBanned from community
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        24 hours ago

        Overlord was a year after Stalingrad, which is where the war turned on the Eastern Front.

        Just look at German losses on each front. Dday put a big nail in the coffin - but the Axis was already bleeding to death then.

    • redhorsejacket@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      2 days ago

      That’s a wild take. Quibble over exact war contributions scores all you like, but to say the US didn’t have an impact in Europe is blatantly false.

      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 days ago

        Germany would have lost the eastern and western front without them. What they did was speed up the western so the Soviets owned less of Europe afterwards.

        • Guy Ingonito@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          Very true, but the lend leasing that the US gave the USSR is significant (just not as significant as 8.7 million dead Soviets)

            • Matty Roses@lemmy.todayBanned from community
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              24 hours ago

              Yeah. The picture in the US is the Soviets just buried the Germans with dead, but military losses weren’t that uneven. What was is civilian deaths, since the Nazis were just massacring everyone.

              • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                22 hours ago

                Not just massacring, also because the massive relocations during invasion, the immense focus in industry, huge recruitment of working force, and loss of agricultural land in the south, there were big famines in WW2 USSR. It’s the main reason behind the million deaths in prisons during WW2 USSR.

                • Matty Roses@lemmy.todayBanned from community
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  21 hours ago

                  Yeah, you see an ugly pattern in lots of propaganda talking points against Russia, from WWI through now. “Russians are savage (Asiatic) orcs who don’t respect human life. So it’s good to kill them indiscriminately”

                  The hypocrisy there never seems to matter

    • MoffKalast@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      “Kif, show them the medal I won”

      I don’t think dying a lot necessarily means means doing much, it just means that you are incompetent and have a careless disregard for life.

      • Akasazh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        Here’s a copy paste of my answer above to someone with a similar argument for your perusal:

        No, but it is a measure of sacrifice. The numbers involved are incredible and without comparison to any allied nation.

        The amount of German casualties on the eastern front is not coincidentally the highest, so if killing Nazis is your metric the Russians did most of that.

        • MoffKalast@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          I guess it really depends on what the metric you want to gauge by is, ‘contribution’ is very vague. Manpower, resources, effect, something else?

          It could also be that the survey question was later phrased more as who contributed the most in France during WW2, which would not include the Soviets much at all.

    • vga@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      24 hours ago

      It’s a pretty wild to say that russians dying more than anyone else is the reason nazis lost the war. You usually don’t win wars by dying the most. Almost the exact opposite is the goal.

      • Akasazh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        24 hours ago

        If you took the trouble of reading through this thread you might have discovered two posts where I add significant detail. I’ll copy it here for you to spare you the trouble:

        No, but it is a measure of sacrifice. The numbers involved are incredible and without comparison to any allied nation.

        The amount of German casualties on the eastern front is not coincidentally the highest, so if killing Nazis is your metric the Russians did most of that.

        • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          2 days ago

          It could potentially mean that, but 80% of Nazi soldiers who died in WW2 died in the Eastern Front, so it doesn’t mean that.

      • Akasazh@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        No, but it is a measure of sacrifice. The numbers involved are incredible and without comparison to any allied nation.

        The amount of German casualties on the eastern front is not coincidentally the highest, so if killing Nazis is your metric the Russians did most of that.

  • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    2 days ago

    You also have to consider the fall of the communist party in France which fell from being a major political force (with a large infiltration by Russian goons) to a tiny party that’s almost irrelevant.

    • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      the fall of the Communist Party

      The “fall” in question:

      “clandestine “stay-behind” operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union and subsequently by NATO and by the CIA in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War. […] the operation involved the use of assassination, psychological warfare, and false flag operations to delegitimize left-wing parties in Western European countries, and even went so far as to support anti-communist militias and right-wing terrorism as they tortured communists and assassinated them”

      large infiltration by Russian goons

      Infiltration? Goons? You mean legitimate supporters of the Soviet Union, the state that saved their own fucking countries from Nazism?

      • falcunculus@jlai.lu
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 day ago

        The decline of the french communist party is very well documented and was primarily a political matter. They committed many mistakes but also were dealt a serious blow by Mitterand in the 80s; finally, their voter base started voting far-right in the 90s. Not everything is a CIA operation.

        The french communist party was also the most Moscow-aligned of all the western communist parties. This is a fact and was a serious factor in its decline since it suffered from its close association to the many failures of the Soviet Union (such as its foreign policy flip-flops and numerous human right violations), and ran all its important decisions by Moscow which prevented it from reacting quickly to the local political events. It can’t be said to have been “infiltrated” however, it was all quite open.

        I should also add that the french government wasn’t too keen on NATO far-right paramilitaries, in that (1) de Gaulle was famously suspicious of NATO and (2) the very same paramilitaries (OAS) tried to assassinate him for advocating decolonization.

        • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 day ago

          it suffered from its close association to the many failures of the Soviet Union (such as its foreign policy flip-flops and numerous human right violations)

          By that logic, all modern pro-NATO parties in the EU should have disappeared in the 1950s. You say the USSR has policy flip flops, but have you looked at the USA’s foreign policy? As for human rights violations, I don’t really know what you’re talking about regarding the French Communist Party “natural political decline”. Since Stalin’s death in the 1950s the gulags were closed, famines had disappeared, and the USSR was an overwhelmingly peaceful nation that internationally provided help to emancipatory anti-colonial projects such as those of Cuba or Vietnam, while the US bombed the fuck out of them. Also, did you just say “nah” to the source I brought and simply disregarded it?

          • falcunculus@jlai.lu
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            16 hours ago

            I didn’t disregard your source, I simply pointed out how you utterly lack the basic context necessary to understand its actual impact in cold war french politics. The CIA certainly would have liked to obliterate french leftism but its ability to do so was negligible. I believe you are relying on a frame of reference that is not relevant, and you arent’t acquainted enough with this particular subject to realize so. I suggest you be more careful in the future when commenting the politics of foreign countries, lest you overgeneralize and rely on your own preconceptions.

            The french communist party (PCF) supported the invasion of Finland and the Baltics while condemning that of Czechia and colonialism. It then supported the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the annexation of Poland, which caused a third of its PMs to leave the party. It then supported Nazi Germany against French and English aggression. It then negociated with German occupation forces to continue its activities and ridiculed resistance fighters. Once Germany invaded the USSR, it finally supported the resistance and the allies. It also lied that its leader, Thorez, had been a resistance fighter when he in fact had fled to Moscow. Postwar, it denied the existence of labor camps and the Katyn massacre, and supported Soviet repression of Eastern European uprisings.

            This is what I mean by flip-flops. Every single of these, even when obviously contradictory, was justified by the will of the workers and the fight against capitalism; this decredibilized the idea there was a single unifying theory for its action. By the 60s, it appeared that for decades the french communist party was puppeted from the Moscow, had knowingly lied or disregarded its principles in multiple occasions, and defense of the international (or even just national) proletariat was in fact not its guiding principle but rather the material interests of the USSR. This was the main, fatal blow to the party. It had lost all credibility as an actual alternative system and henceforth only subsisted as a political force within the existing system. In this it was somewhat successful since it had theorized a split between revolutionary theory and socdem practice, something which had further eroded its claim to power as well. It for instance refused to support the tentative student revolution in 1968.

            That isn’t to say US imperialism wasn’t an issue. But much of the electorate saw the PCF as hypocrites who only condemned imperialism and dictatorship when it was the West doing it. Anti-imperialism and decolonialism in cold war France went far beyond the PCF so that wasn’t really something they had an edge on.

            Even after destalinization the USSR was a brutal dictatorship that criminalized dissent under the idea that the state is the party is the class. Therefore (1) democracy isn’t needed as it is merely needed to place the correct class in power for true democracy and (2) an enemy of the state is a class traitor and must be destroyed. Public protests were put down with overwhelming force such as the 1968 Prague spring. Individual dissidents were given bogus psychiatric diagnoses in order to indefinitely detain them.

            Many leftists in France pointed this out and fought for the rights of the people under Soviet rule. For instance french trotskyists fought for the liberation of Leonid Plyushch, Jiri Hayek, or Edmund Balunka.

            • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              22 hours ago

              Yes, because of Yank propaganda. I don’t see how they’re anything remotely as bad as Vietnam or Korea, look at the figures of deaths. It’s just that Europeans are racist as fuck and don’t care about deaths of Asians, and American propaganda was much more pervasive.

              • Matty Roses@lemmy.todayBanned from community
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                21 hours ago

                I don’t disagree. But that’s the main thing that wasn’t gladio, etc that helped fuck the parties in Western Europe.

                • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  21 hours ago

                  If 10% the standards applied to western communist parties had been applied to the rest of parties, communists would have ruled Europe. My point is it’s mainly gladio + propaganda that did this

      • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        While you’re mostly right, the communist parties were mostly turned into propaganda assets by Moscow. Which only “saved” countries in order to pillage all of their assets and incorporate them into their own dictatorship. So it’s not really such a disinterested gesture.

        • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          For its many mistakes, the USSR didn’t pillage the resources of any country, the only argument you could make in this direction are postwar reparations against Nazi countries such as Hungary. After 1955 especially, the trade policy inside the COMECON was one of the USSR supplying raw goods at subsidized prices in exchange for industrially manufactured goods. This policy is detailed with numbers in Robert C. Allen’s “Farm to Factory” and Albert Szymanski’s “Human Rights in the Soviet Union”. What’s your data source for claiming the Soviet Union pillaged any country?

          • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            24 hours ago

            For its many mistakes, the USSR didn’t pillage the resources of any cou

            Oh boy.

            Poland was conquered by USSR against their will (well. More like betrayed by British and given to USSR)

            Looting and plundering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting_of_Poland_in_World_War_II#%3A~%3Atext=The+looting+of+Polish+cultural%2Cworld+and+returned+to+Poland.

            Industrial plunder is confirmed by then internal notes and memos, that the Poland under occupation later tried to use to convince USSR to stop because they already plundered a lot, so it’s not a CIA propaganda or smthing in case you’re wondering.

            • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              22 hours ago

              Notice my comment specifically mentioning post-1955. Poland was made to pay reparations to the USSR because of the lives lost saving Poland, which is debatable, this was stopped after the mid 50s

              • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                21 hours ago

                Your comment started with

                For its many mistakes, the USSR didn’t pillage the resources of any country,

                I showed you’re wrong. Instead of saying “oops, you’re right, my bad”, you’re shifting the goal and trying to… word vomit? I don’t think there’s any value in talking to you then. But then you wrote this

                Poland was made to pay reparations to the USSR because of the lives lost saving Poland,

                … The fuck? Invaded country paying reparations? Do you hear yourself you imperialist scum? If you ever visit Poland, ping me, me and my boys are gonna fuck you up for saying that. Do hurry though before the veteran boys will die of old age.

                • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  21 hours ago

                  If you ever visit Poland, ping me, me and my boys are gonna fuck you up

                  Hope you get banned for that, but I’m glad you resort to violence when confronted with evidence, classic right wing nationalist

            • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              23 hours ago

              Poland was conquered by USSR against their will (well. More like betrayed by British and given to USSR)

              Betrayed or at least with their blessing. The Curzon Line, which was the Entente plan after WW1, was reaffirmed before and after the German invasion. The territory Poland annexed in 1921 was effectively ‘returned’ to the USSR.

              • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                21 hours ago

                Considering that one British MP resigned saying he cannot stand that shameful betrayal and the British internal propaganda surrounding that decision, the word “betrayal” fits like a glove.

                In their memoirs (from a non-public meeting Churchill ordered to explain this to the MPs), some MP wrote that Churchill argued on country being tired of war, and that they have 100k (or 300k, I don’t remember) young Polish men that can repopulate the villages - why would they let them go.

                God I hate that old racist.

          • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            2 days ago

            In every country that was forcibly incorporated in the eastern bloc, every factory that could be disassembled was systematically sent to Russia. All the machines and ressources were systematically sent to Russia. That’s absolutely pillaging.

            • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              2 days ago

              every factory that could be disassembled was systematically sent to Russia

              Then why was GDP per capita higher in Estonia and Czechoslovakia higher than in the USSR? Why did Romania go from having 40% of industrial workers to 20% after the 1990s? What’s your source for this?

              ressources were systematically sent to Russia

              I already proved, with sources, that it was backwards. The net material balances were extractive from the USSR which gave resources like metals, gas and oil at subsidized prices to the COMECON countries. Think about it for just one second: the USSR does not need resources, it’s the largest country in the world, a fossil fuel exporter, and has immense material wealth from the extensive mining complexes in the Urals. Why would the USSR need raw materials from tiny countries in its orbit? But again, if you don’t believe me, you’re free to read about it. This is a history community, not a “let’s make up reality without sources” community. I provided you sources.

              • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                2 days ago

                Then why was GDP per capita higher in Estonia and Czechoslovakia higher than in the USSR? Why did Romania go from having 40% of industrial workers to 20% after the 1990s? What’s your source for this?

                Because there was an evolution between 1946 and 1990? It seems fairly obvious.

                Russia stole all the western industry and replaced it with its own inferior tools.

                Stalin actually wasn’t a wonderful philanthropist. Sorry.

                • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  2 days ago

                  I provided you sources with NUMERICAL DATA contradicting your statements directly. Until you prove otherwise with evidence, don’t continue this conversation. This is a community about history, not vibes-based analysis.

  • Forester@pawb.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    3 days ago

    Rember the Russians depended on lend lease to be able to mobilize Siberia and continue to fight

    • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      2 days ago

      uneasy pact with Germany

      This is a widely repeated misconstruction of the events in Reddit and Lemmy. I’m gonna please ask you to actually read my comment and to be open to the historical evidence I bring (using Wikipedia as a source, hopefully not suspect of being tankie-biased), because I believe there is a great mistake in the way contemporary western nations interpret history of WW2 and the interwar period. Thank you for actually making the effort, I know it’s a long comment, but please do engage with the points I’m making:

      The only country who offered to start a collective offensive against the Nazis and to uphold the defense agreement with Czechoslovakia as an alternative to the Munich Betrayal was the USSR. From that Wikipedia article: “The Soviet Union announced its willingness to come to Czechoslovakia’s assistance, provided the Red Army would be able to cross Polish and Romanian territory; both countries refused.” Poland could have literally been saved from Nazi invasion if France and itself had agreed to start a war together against Nazi Germany, but they didn’t want to. By the logic of “invading Poland” being akin to Nazi collaboration, Poland was as imperialist as the Nazis.

      As a Spaniard leftist it’s so infuriating when the Soviet Union, the ONLY country in 1936 which actively fought fascism in Europe by sending weapons, tanks and aviation to my homeland in the other side of the continent in the Spanish civil war against fascism, is accused of appeasing the fascists. The Soviets weren’t dumb, they knew the danger and threat of Nazism and worked for the entire decade of the 1930s under the Litvinov Doctrine of Collective Security to enter mutual defense agreements with England, France and Poland, which all refused because they were convinced that the Nazis would honor their own stated purpose of invading the communists in the East. The Soviets went as far as to offer ONE MILLION troops to France (Archive link against paywall) together with tanks, artillery and aviation in 1939 in exchange for a mutual defense agreement, which the French didn’t agree to because of the stated reason. Just from THIS evidence, the Soviets were by far the most antifascist country in Europe throughout the 1930s, you literally won’t find any other country doing any remotely similar efforts to fight Nazism. If you do, please provide evidence.

      The invasion of “Poland” is also severely misconstrued. The Soviets didn’t invade what we think of nowadays when we say Poland. They invaded overwhelmingly Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands that Poland had previously invaded in 1919. Poland in 1938, a year before the invasion:

      “Polish” territories invaded by the USSR in 1939:

      The Soviets invaded famously Polish cities such as Lviv (sixth most populous city in modern Ukraine), Pinsk (important city in western Belarus) and Vilnius (capital of freaking modern Lithuania). They only invaded a small chunk of what you’d consider Poland nowadays, and the rest of lands were actually liberated from Polish occupation and returned to the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian socialist republics. Hopefully you understand the importance of giving Ukrainians back their lands and sovereignty?

      Additionally, the Soviets didn’t invade Poland together with the Nazis, they invaded a bit more than two weeks after the Nazi invasion, at a time when the Polish government had already exiled itself and there was no Polish administration. The meaning of this, is that all lands not occupied by Soviet troops, would have been occupied by Nazis. There was no alternative. Polish troops did not resist Soviet occupation but they did resist Nazi invasion. The Soviet occupation effectively protected millions of Slavic peoples like Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians from the stated aim of Nazis of genociding the Slavic peoples all the way to the Urals.

      All in all, my conclusion is: the Soviets were fully aware of the dangers of Nazism and fought against it earlier than anyone (Spanish civil war), spent the entire 30s pushing for an anti-Nazi mutual defence agreement which was refused by France, England and Poland, tried to honour the existing mutual defense agreement with Czechoslovakia which France rejected and Poland didn’t allow (Romania neither but they were fascists so that’s a given), and offered to send a million troops to France’s border with Germany to destroy Nazism but weren’t allowed to do so. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a tool of postponing the war in a period in which the USSR, a very young country with only 10 years of industrialization behind it since the first 5-year plan in 1929, was growing at a 10% GDP per year rate and needed every moment it could get. I can and do criticise decisions such as the invasion of Finland, but ultimately even the western leaders at the time seem to generally agree with my interpretation:

      “In those days the Soviet Government had grave reason to fear that they would be left one-on-one to face the Nazi fury. Stalin took measures which no free democracy could regard otherwise than with distaste. Yet I never doubted myself that his cardinal aim had been to hold the German armies off from Russia for as long as might be” (Paraphrased from Churchill’s December 1944 remarks in the House of Commons.)

      “It would be unwise to assume Stalin approves of Hitler’s aggression. Probably the Soviet Government has merely sought a delaying tactic, not wanting to be the next victim. They will have a rude awakening, but they think, at least for now, they can keep the wolf from the door” Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States, 1933–1945), from Harold L. Ickes’s diary entries, early September 1939. Ickes’s diaries are published as The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes.

      "One must suppose that the Soviet Government, seeing no immediate prospect of real support from outside, decided to make its own arrangements for self‑defence, however unpalatable such an agreement might appear. We in this House cannot be astonished that a government acting solely on grounds of power politics should take that course” Neville Chamberlain House of Commons Statement, August 24, 1939 (one day after pact’s signing)

      I’d love to hear your thoughts on this

      • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        23 hours ago

        So let me get this straight. Poland refused to a defensive alliance with russia. So russia invades poland to “protect” them from the nazis. Now… where have i heard this story before.

        Oh yeah, from modern russia.

        In his address to the Russian people on Feb. 24, 2022, Putin said the purpose was to “protect people” who had been “subjected to bullying and genocide … for the last eight years. And for this we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.”

      • skibidi@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        2 days ago

        This is some tankie bullshit.

        “They didn’t invade Poland, modern Poland is to the West, they invaded lands that belong to Ukraine and Belarus”

        My brother in Christ - the entire country of Poland moved to the West because the Soviets annexed the east and demanded Germany cede territory to Poland when redrawing the map after WW2. This displaced millions of ethnic Germans who had lived there for centuries. The annexed land was then given to the Belarus and Ukrainian SSRs to administer, and inherited by these new countries when the USSR broke apart.

        Your argument is like saying the US didn’t invade Mexico because that land is now part of Texas.

        • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          2 days ago

          Poland had invaded these territories in the Russian Civil War and annexed them, as you see on one of the maps I provided those territories had ethnic majorities of Belarusian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian peoples at the time, what makes you think they were Polish territories?

          • skibidi@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 day ago

            They were Polish territories because Poland held and administered them. They were also part of the PLC before the Russian empire seized them…

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland

            We can argue all day about what conditions grant a right to a territory. Or we can cut the bullshit and stop pretending that the Soviets sending the Red Army across the Polish border to conquer land, while raping the inhabitants, was anything but an invasion.

            • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 day ago

              while raping the inhabitants

              And that’s where we stop arguing. There is no evidence of higher rates of sexual assault by Soviet troops than by any other, and the whole “rapist hordes” stems from Nazi wartime propaganda and has been picked up by racists like you.

      • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        Thanks for bringing up Lviv. Simply put, it was under Polish control since 1272 when it went to King Casimir III during a war of succession only to lose it to the Soviets in 1939. I completely sympathize with Ukrainians losing their land and sovereignty but I think they should respect that of their neighbors too, don’t you think?

        Regardless of other countries refusing to work with the Soviets in the defense against Nazis, the alternative shouldn’t be divvying up Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Bessarabia, and Lithuania among themselves via military force in a German-Soviet Boundary Friendship Treaty.

        • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 day ago

          And what should the alternative be? Because the other only possible alternative was allowing the Nazis full control of those lands. For comparison, the Katyn massacre in Poland likely carried out by the Soviets during occupation consists of figures numbered in the tens of thousands, and Nazi extermination in Poland killed several millions. What’s the desired occupation?

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 days ago

      yes they rushed millions of tanks, ships, aircraft and artillery pieces to battle. we know, we sent them lol

      • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 days ago

        we sent them

        The US sent a total of about 7 thousand tanks to the USSR, but the T-34 Soviet tank saw about 80k units built in total, so while lend lease was very significant, the vast majority of war material of the Soviets was of Soviet origin.

        • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          I don’t think you can only look at tanks alone since the main hardware sent was trucks/jeeps.

          Also fuel and trains.

          • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            2 days ago

            The fact that the Soviets didn’t manufacture trucks is because they got them from the USA, not backwards. A truck is significantly cheaper to manufacture than a tank.

            • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              2 days ago

              sure thing buddy, the sovs did it all themselves lol.

              https://www.jrbooksonline.com/fdr-scandal-page/lend.html

              there’s dozens and dozens and dozens of line-items on that list that number in the MANY MILLIONS

              now think for a moment: did it get there via UPS? FEDEX?

              no it went via murmansk through throngs of fuckin’ german subs.

              such a silly, stupid argument to articulate - they would have died without the US’s support. Period. Russia would not have survived. there’s no win there, leningrad falls and moscow burns.

              fuck man, the ally that sends you the 3,400 LATHES so you can build the fucking tanks deserves SOME recognition lol

              hey and another thing: if stalin hadn’t been a ribbentrop treaty signing idiot, he wouldn’t have put the soviets in such a bad position they needed that kind of hail mary rescue effort huh?

              pfft

              • Riverside@reddthat.comBanned from community
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                2 days ago

                I did recognize that lend-lease was very significant. However, Britain got times as much aid from Lend-Lease and they weren’t the ones who won the war.