The liberal SDP split with the communists, supporting “centrist” Hindenburg in the name of unity.
The communists campaigned on “A vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler is a vote for war”
Hindenburg won the election, getting more votes than either the communist or fascist candidates.
Hindenburg, the liberal candidate, then proceeded to make Hitler the chancellor and staff positions of power with nazis while purging the government of communists.
The nazis then barely had to do anything to assert complete control.
The nazis didn’t get in power because communists stayed home, they got into power because the liberals would rather work with fascists than communists.
The Nazis didn’t get in power because communists stayed home, they got into power because the liberals would rather work with fascists than communists.
Lets not bury the lede. You run weak Democrats, you comprise with fascists (or just do the policies yourself; Biden’s border bill, Congressional support for making criticism of Israel a hate crime) : this is the path you put us on.
We’ve been saying from day one, that if Biden doesn’t move to the left and use every tool at his disposal to improve people’s material conditions, Trump’s going to win in 2024.
Biden didn’t just not go left, he tried to outflank the republicans from the right by facilitating genocide, ending covid protections, and passing the most draconian border bill since like the 40s.
This is the closest thing he could have done to handing Trump the presidency, short of appointing him VP and stepping down.
Biden didn’t just not go left, he tried to outflank the republicans from the right by facilitating genocide, ending covid protections, and passing the most draconian border bill since like the 40s.
This is one of the worst examples of confirmation bias I have ever seen. The Biden Administration’s entire record is out there for you to peruse, and you pick 3 things out of hundreds, possibly thousands, that you think justify your comparison.
Your hyperbole is over the top. Trump’s Title 42 and Muslim ban were far worse.
POTUS has no reasonable control over grocery store prices, which is the part of the economy everyone is most concerned with. Last time an Executive Order was used to price fix the food industry, it blew up in Nixon’s face. Supply chain constraints were industry wide, and when the order expired, prices went up far past standard inflation. The other big concern is housing, which could be addressed with legislation if Democrats had congressional majority.
I completely agree about support of Israel. The only comparison is knowing Trump will be worse for Palestinians. It’s terrible to reconcile, but those are the options.
Abstaining isn’t voting for Trump, it’s refusing to stand in his way.
Biden waited 3.5 years to end title 42 and tried to close the border. He has deported more people than Trump.
POTUS has no reasonable control over grocery store prices
He literally does though. But there’s a million other things he could have done when he had control. Instead we just get excuses about how powerless the party controlling both houses and the presidency was because of Manchin or the parliamentarian or the SCOTUS or some rules the dems set for themselves or norms or whatever.
There’s no point in quibbling about whether Biden was less bad than trump, these actions decrease how many people will vote for him. Implementing policy that makes you lose the election is refusing to stand in republican’s way.
Did you not read the second half of my comment? He ended Title 42 a year and a half after taking office. Federal judges stopped it for a year.
You wrote three and a half years.
You fabricate information in your comments often. I will always call out misinformation.
Cite your sources and stop with the lies.
Incidentally, you quoted my point about the Muslim ban in your previous comment. So yeah, we were certainly talking about it.
Biden has done plenty of good where Trump did nothing or actively worsened things for the working class, minorities, and the planet. You only select Biden’s worst policies to define his presidency.
It doesn’t matter if his excuse was some court he can just ignore and face no consequences asked him to keep it in place or if did it on a whim, he had the power to change it, he didn’t use it. It was in place for like 3 and a half years.
You’re not calling out misinformation, you’re quibbling.
Read the thread you’re so confident in condemning.
I cited my statements while your friend here repeatedly made false claims.
The Mexican Border bill you’re referring to is an Executive Order, not congressional legislation. Trump’s border Executive Order was the Muslim ban. Neither of which required congressional approval, and therefore are directly equatable.
Maybe you two should get a place together in misinformation land.
If you look at many people’s material conditions during Trump and during Biden, they haven’t gotten better. You can say whatever you want about Biden’s policies, his cabinet appointments, and how much Democrats have done when they hold power, but at the end of the day it hasn’t changed most folks’ lives one bit. It might be good metric-wise, but until folks feel like they’re better off it doesn’t matter.
Also, it’s hilarious to me how much shit Republicans seem to get done even when they don’t hold the House, Senate, and White House together, but the minute Republicans get one of those, suddenly it’s “oh shit Democrats can’t do anything”. It’s like Republicans are playing with nukes and Democrats are showing up with rubber band guns.
And no, I won’t be voting for Biden, I’ll be voting third party. And I know, you think “a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump”, but I don’t give a shit. I’ve been seeing this same “at least I’m not…” shit for 25 years and watching our country be sold to the highest bidder under both parties. At this point, if we can’t figure out shit out, we deserve to be razed to the ground.
That’s true of the post-pandemic food industry prices for sure. That description was regarding the failure of Nixon’s attempt to price fix with an Executive Order.
It looks a lot like in a way History is repeating itself: the Democrat Establishment in the US (who are a hard neoliberals, not lefties) fielded directly and without a Primary a guy like Biden who is less than in his prime and even supports an ethno-Fascist regime commiting Genocide (and, more importantly, is unwilling to walk back on that support even to improve his odds of winning against Trump, which is what we are being told is the most important thing in the World) all of which is making it far more likely that the Fascists will get power.
There are vast contradictions between what we are being told is the danger of Trump getting elected and the DNC and Biden persistently making choices that increase the chances of Trump getting elected and not walking back on those.
Surelly if “Stop Trump” is the most important thing in the World for them, the Democrat Establishment too would be walking towards the wishes of the electorate not just trying to push the electorate to do all the walking towards the wishes of the Democrat Establishment.
We can’t say we must do everything to stop Trump and then shrug and say hold your nose and vote for the guy that’s polling poorly.
That’s not trying everything that’s people in power wanting one outcome that are willing to risk everything they say they don’t want because the scared masses should hopefully fall in line without even a backup plan for it not working.
This isn’t trying and doing everything to stop a fascist dictator taking power this is capitalist conservatives trying to stretch out their win for a little bit longer using what they think is a sure win. This can only ever end poorly even if it’s just another 4 years later from now.
the democrat establishment is already getting what they want from voters and the system and they won’t get any of the blame should they lose; so they both have no reason to change nor do they have anything to risk by trying something new.
those contradictions you referenced are the centrists version of fox news stoking the culture war, but more vague because they’re trying to appeal both both centrists and leftist; that and project 2025 are the talking points that the moderates are parroting to justify against voting progressively, thus proving martin luther king’s opinion of the the american moderate is true.
Exactly, the country that shared a massive land border with the NAZIs and was a direct target of their aggression suffered many more casualties than the ones what didn’t, who’da thunk it? Without the combined efforts of essentially the entire rest of the world, the USSR would have been toast.
During Hitlers Ascent to Power, the communist still considered the SPD to be the bigger threat and refused to march with them. And the SPD of the 1930 were by no means “liberals”. They were further to the left than any democrat has ever been.
the communist still considered the SPD to be the bigger threat and refused to march with them
…which was confirmed when they agreed with the Nazis… And when they collaborated with the Freikorps to crush, torture, and murder the communists.
And the SPD of the 1930 were by no means “liberals”. They were further to the left than any democrat has ever been.
Go ask Rosa Luxembourg, leader of communists in Germany and murdered at 47 at the order of SPD, how progressive and left the SPD was. “Left is when you agree to murder and torture communists”. Fucking revisionists man
They agreed with Hitler? They were the only faction voting against him during the Gleichschaltungkrise.
“Left is when you agree tp torture and murder communists”. So we both agree that the Stalinist Sovietunion and the KPD, which allied themselves with them arent left?
No, both SPD and KPD were way to the left of all pther political parties and had they banded together, like they did during the Kappputsch, my homecountry wouldnt have been destroyed and 60 Million People would probably still be alive. After every other institution failed Germany, these two failed them in conjunction by not even trying to organize a joined force.
So we both agree that the Stalinist Sovietunion and the KPD, which allied themselves with them arent left?
One country ended up with Nazis. The other ended up defeating the Nazis. I’d say the Bolsheviks did a better job, didn’t they? The fact that there was oppression against Mensheviks and SRs in the context of a civil war, doesn’t mean they’re anticommunists, they didn’t quite literally enable the Nazis in order to murder the ones who were more communist than them, but defeat them instead.
Want to find the blame for Nazism in Germany? The fault is primarily of Nazis, and then of Nazi enablers, and then of anti-communist leftists.
The other ended up defeating the Nazis. I’d say the Bolsheviks did a better job, didn’t they?
Uh. The Bolsheviks actively collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis, right up until Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets carved up Poland between themselves and Germany, and tried to invade Finland (Winter War, Continuation War), which is why the Finns ended up allying with the Nazis after Operation Barbarossa.
Got it bro, the actual Nazis aren’t the Nazis, neither the ones who eliminated the most radical oppositors to Nazism, but actually the ones that died 26+mn of trying to fight them. God, you anti-communist revisionists are exhausting.
The Bolsheviks actively collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis, right up until Operation Barbarossa
Ugh, not this Nazi talking point again… The Soviet Union pursued for all the 30s a policy called “collective security”, in which it desperately tried to achieve mutual-defense pacts with England, France and Poland because the soviets knew that their 15-year-old nation which had only just started industrializing since the end of the feudal and backwards Russian Empire, didn’t have a chance alone against the Nazis with their 150 year long history of industry (as would be seen later with the USSR suffering 26+mn deaths during the war, in places like Belarus 1 in 4 people died). The USSR wanted these mutual defense agreements to the point of offering to send 1 million soldiers to France and England if they agreed to mutual defense… which France, England and Poland denied because they thought Nazis would attempt their declared goal of eliminating communisnm and massacring the “slavic untermenschen”. After this was denied and it was obvious that the west would rather see the USSR invaded than reach a mutual defense agreement, they did the only possible course of action: delaying the war as much as possible to prepare for it and industrialize a bit more. That’s where the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact takes place, not before a decade of exhausting every possible negotiation route with France and England in opposition to Nazism.
The fact that the USSR then proceeded to (rather bloodlessly, around 50k deaths overall, very comparable to the oppression within the USSR itself) invade Poland, has to do with the USSR not trusting the Polish government. Why? In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution drafted an unprecedentedly progressive constitution which granted the right to self-determination and lawful secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire. That’s how many countries such as Finland or Poland suddenly gained independence lawfully and peacefully in a never-before-seen act of respect of the right of self-determination. What did Poland immediately proceed to do? Become fully nationalist, ignore the right to self-determination of other peoples, and invade Ukraine (and later the USSR) in an attempt to gain territories they considered theirs by historical right. When they had conquered a good chunk of modern Ukraine and Belarus, the Polish Government decided it was a good idea to start a war against the USSR, since the USSR was plunged deep into a civil war and didn’t have many resources or troops to defend itself, and some conquests and victories could grant them a positive peace agreement which granted the territories the Polish Nationalists considered theirs (while ignoring the right to self-determination that the Bolsheviks had granted them less than two years earlier). Poland was also happy to make peace and appeasement treaties with Nazi Germany as long as they could also get some territorial gains from Czechoslovak land.
Similarly, Finland in 1917 after gaining independence, was plunged into a civil war between communists and whites, which the latter won and proceeded to imprison communists in Finland who had supported the Reds, around 80k of which some 12k died (funny how nobody talks about that). The USSR had reasons to suspect of a possible alliance between the Finnish government and the Nazis, and proceeded to invade Finland. After the failure of the invasion, as you said, Finland joined the Nazis.
Blaming the USSR for entering a non-aggression treaty with the Nazis, when all western nations had done it, and after 10 years of the USSR trying to make mutual defense agreement with Poland, England and France, is at best ignorant, and at worst purposefully misinforming with an agenda. The USSR had reasons to suspect of Poland and Finland (especially given its history of constant betrayals by all European powers since the October Revolution, with 14 countries sending troops to aid the Tsarist loyalists against the Bolsheviks) and, while outright invasions may not be justified, it could all have been prevented if the western powers had actually agreed to fight nazism. It’s absolutely nuts to blame the USSR and call them “collaborators with Nazis” given the historical background of the two decades before the war, especially the latter.
50,000 deaths is ‘rather bloodlessly’? And since that’s comparable to oppression within the USSR, it’s not that bad?
while outright invasions may not be justified,
Correct. That, right there, is the most important point you’ve made. They collaborated with Nazis to carve up territories, and were then shocked when the Nazis turned on them. As far as the appeasement pacts made with Nazi Germany by France, England, et al., there’s very, very good reasons why the Vichy gov’t and Quisling are viewed so negatively by everyone that isn’t an apologist.
Good job evading the uncomfortable 90% of my comment. Since we’re at that point, I will proceed to evade 100% of yours, seeing how you’re not interested in discussing actual facts such as the reasons for the USSR to make a non aggression treaty with the Nazis after a decade of systematic rejection of military alliances by Poland, England and France.
Yall need to learn some history.
The liberal SDP split with the communists, supporting “centrist” Hindenburg in the name of unity.
The communists campaigned on “A vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler is a vote for war”
Hindenburg won the election, getting more votes than either the communist or fascist candidates.
Hindenburg, the liberal candidate, then proceeded to make Hitler the chancellor and staff positions of power with nazis while purging the government of communists.
The nazis then barely had to do anything to assert complete control.
The nazis didn’t get in power because communists stayed home, they got into power because the liberals would rather work with fascists than communists.
Those lib kids would be very upset if they could read
Lets not bury the lede. You run weak Democrats, you comprise with fascists (or just do the policies yourself; Biden’s border bill, Congressional support for making criticism of Israel a hate crime) : this is the path you put us on.
Cool. In this comparison, none of that matters and the Tweet has a completely valid point.
Unless you suspect Biden will be appointing Trump in his cabinet if he wins?
We’ve been saying from day one, that if Biden doesn’t move to the left and use every tool at his disposal to improve people’s material conditions, Trump’s going to win in 2024.
Biden didn’t just not go left, he tried to outflank the republicans from the right by facilitating genocide, ending covid protections, and passing the most draconian border bill since like the 40s.
This is the closest thing he could have done to handing Trump the presidency, short of appointing him VP and stepping down.
This is one of the worst examples of confirmation bias I have ever seen. The Biden Administration’s entire record is out there for you to peruse, and you pick 3 things out of hundreds, possibly thousands, that you think justify your comparison.
Your hyperbole is over the top. Trump’s Title 42 and Muslim ban were far worse.
POTUS has no reasonable control over grocery store prices, which is the part of the economy everyone is most concerned with. Last time an Executive Order was used to price fix the food industry, it blew up in Nixon’s face. Supply chain constraints were industry wide, and when the order expired, prices went up far past standard inflation. The other big concern is housing, which could be addressed with legislation if Democrats had congressional majority.
I completely agree about support of Israel. The only comparison is knowing Trump will be worse for Palestinians. It’s terrible to reconcile, but those are the options.
Abstaining isn’t voting for Trump, it’s refusing to stand in his way.
Biden waited 3.5 years to end title 42 and tried to close the border. He has deported more people than Trump.
He literally does though. But there’s a million other things he could have done when he had control. Instead we just get excuses about how powerless the party controlling both houses and the presidency was because of Manchin or the parliamentarian or the SCOTUS or some rules the dems set for themselves or norms or whatever.
There’s no point in quibbling about whether Biden was less bad than trump, these actions decrease how many people will vote for him. Implementing policy that makes you lose the election is refusing to stand in republican’s way.
Wrong.
Biden ended the Muslim Ban on Jan 21, 2021, the day after he was inaugurated.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2021/01/21/biden-executive-order-ends-muslim-travel-ban-donald-trump/4240420001/
He ended Title 42 on May 20, 2022, but the measure was stopped by federal judges. It took until May of 2023 to be completed.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/20/title-42-border-judge-ruling-migrants/
Nobody is talking about the Muslim ban, we’re talking about the more recent attempt to close the mexican border.
But it’s irrelevant, you’re still missing the point.
My point is that Biden’s unpopular actions decrease how many people will vote for him. This is how Biden ensures Trump will come to power.
Did you not read the second half of my comment? He ended Title 42 a year and a half after taking office. Federal judges stopped it for a year.
You wrote three and a half years.
You fabricate information in your comments often. I will always call out misinformation.
Cite your sources and stop with the lies.
Incidentally, you quoted my point about the Muslim ban in your previous comment. So yeah, we were certainly talking about it.
Biden has done plenty of good where Trump did nothing or actively worsened things for the working class, minorities, and the planet. You only select Biden’s worst policies to define his presidency.
It doesn’t matter if his excuse was some court he can just ignore and face no consequences asked him to keep it in place or if did it on a whim, he had the power to change it, he didn’t use it. It was in place for like 3 and a half years.
You’re not calling out misinformation, you’re quibbling.
You shouldn’t engage with this guy. Its always a bait and switch/ false premise/ straw man with this guy.
You make a point about an actual bill (the mexican border bill), he makes it about trump and a muslim ban.
Its always in bad faith. Its a condition of blue MAGA.
Read the thread you’re so confident in condemning.
I cited my statements while your friend here repeatedly made false claims.
The Mexican Border bill you’re referring to is an Executive Order, not congressional legislation. Trump’s border Executive Order was the Muslim ban. Neither of which required congressional approval, and therefore are directly equatable.
Maybe you two should get a place together in misinformation land.
Just downvote and move along.
Blue fash is still fash. They aren’t an allie.
In 2016 I voted for Bernie in the primary, and Hillary in the election.
Using my civic duty to compromise for the lesser of two evils does not make me a fascist.
Name calling is unproductive and childish. Have a conversation or find someone else to use as your stepladder to superiority.
If you look at many people’s material conditions during Trump and during Biden, they haven’t gotten better. You can say whatever you want about Biden’s policies, his cabinet appointments, and how much Democrats have done when they hold power, but at the end of the day it hasn’t changed most folks’ lives one bit. It might be good metric-wise, but until folks feel like they’re better off it doesn’t matter.
Also, it’s hilarious to me how much shit Republicans seem to get done even when they don’t hold the House, Senate, and White House together, but the minute Republicans get one of those, suddenly it’s “oh shit Democrats can’t do anything”. It’s like Republicans are playing with nukes and Democrats are showing up with rubber band guns.
And no, I won’t be voting for Biden, I’ll be voting third party. And I know, you think “a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump”, but I don’t give a shit. I’ve been seeing this same “at least I’m not…” shit for 25 years and watching our country be sold to the highest bidder under both parties. At this point, if we can’t figure out shit out, we deserve to be razed to the ground.
Just a reminder to folks emphasizing that retailers used that as cover for corporate greed, and a lot of it was lies. Various links:
https://dailymontanan.com/2024/03/27/trade-watchdog-big-retailers-used-supply-chain-problems-to-inflate-grocery-costs/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/us/politics/grocery-prices-pandemic-ftc.html
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/07/retailers-have-been-cutting-costs-so-why-are-prices-still-so-high/
Great quote from that Harvard one:
The FTC report that is the basis for the first three links above: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/03/ftc-releases-report-grocery-supply-chain-disruptions
And don’t get me started on shrinkflation.
That’s true of the post-pandemic food industry prices for sure. That description was regarding the failure of Nixon’s attempt to price fix with an Executive Order.
Oh sorry I was clearly not paying much attention to what I was reading. Thanks for the gentle correction.
No problem. Thank you for citing sources in your comment. I always appreciate substantiation in this world of misinformation.
You really expect to be taken seriously saying some idiotic shit like this?
Outflanking the rights is a bad decision, because you put their extreme positions into mainstream.
I think it’s more like Trump getting elected and he is appointing Putin as US president. Which isn’t that far off, is it?
It looks a lot like in a way History is repeating itself: the Democrat Establishment in the US (who are a hard neoliberals, not lefties) fielded directly and without a Primary a guy like Biden who is less than in his prime and even supports an ethno-Fascist regime commiting Genocide (and, more importantly, is unwilling to walk back on that support even to improve his odds of winning against Trump, which is what we are being told is the most important thing in the World) all of which is making it far more likely that the Fascists will get power.
There are vast contradictions between what we are being told is the danger of Trump getting elected and the DNC and Biden persistently making choices that increase the chances of Trump getting elected and not walking back on those.
Surelly if “Stop Trump” is the most important thing in the World for them, the Democrat Establishment too would be walking towards the wishes of the electorate not just trying to push the electorate to do all the walking towards the wishes of the Democrat Establishment.
Agreed.
We can’t say we must do everything to stop Trump and then shrug and say hold your nose and vote for the guy that’s polling poorly.
That’s not trying everything that’s people in power wanting one outcome that are willing to risk everything they say they don’t want because the scared masses should hopefully fall in line without even a backup plan for it not working.
This isn’t trying and doing everything to stop a fascist dictator taking power this is capitalist conservatives trying to stretch out their win for a little bit longer using what they think is a sure win. This can only ever end poorly even if it’s just another 4 years later from now.
the democrat establishment is already getting what they want from voters and the system and they won’t get any of the blame should they lose; so they both have no reason to change nor do they have anything to risk by trying something new.
those contradictions you referenced are the centrists version of fox news stoking the culture war, but more vague because they’re trying to appeal both both centrists and leftist; that and project 2025 are the talking points that the moderates are parroting to justify against voting progressively, thus proving martin luther king’s opinion of the the american moderate is true.
and lets not forget what stopped hitler wasnt electoralism. it was the soviets, and they needed force at that point.
And the Ukrainians, and the Poles, and the French resistance, and the British, and the Americans, and the Canadians, and…
the soviets were the ones to bear the weight of all the casualties. while your heroes were sipping tea waiting for them to be destroyed by the nazis…
the british, really? americans? yall need to open a history book. ever heard of operation paperclip? or how anticommunist most of these were?
Exactly, the country that shared a massive land border with the NAZIs and was a direct target of their aggression suffered many more casualties than the ones what didn’t, who’da thunk it? Without the combined efforts of essentially the entire rest of the world, the USSR would have been toast.
The USSR did most of the work beating the nazis. America helped.
yall need some history. the USSR and germany did not share borders until much later, the west was nowhere to be found by the time they reached berlin.
the us mostly really only helped by the end when victory over nazis was already on the horizon.
They didn’t share a border until the Soviets and NAZIs jointly invaded their neighbor Poland.
no such thing as “jointly invaded”
Nah they’re an .ml user… It’s all about soviets. USSR is literal utopia to them and didn’t do anything wrong.
Forget that the Nazi efforts were always more focused on the western fronts…
During Hitlers Ascent to Power, the communist still considered the SPD to be the bigger threat and refused to march with them. And the SPD of the 1930 were by no means “liberals”. They were further to the left than any democrat has ever been.
…which was confirmed when they agreed with the Nazis… And when they collaborated with the Freikorps to crush, torture, and murder the communists.
Go ask Rosa Luxembourg, leader of communists in Germany and murdered at 47 at the order of SPD, how progressive and left the SPD was. “Left is when you agree to murder and torture communists”. Fucking revisionists man
They agreed with Hitler? They were the only faction voting against him during the Gleichschaltungkrise.
“Left is when you agree tp torture and murder communists”. So we both agree that the Stalinist Sovietunion and the KPD, which allied themselves with them arent left?
No, both SPD and KPD were way to the left of all pther political parties and had they banded together, like they did during the Kappputsch, my homecountry wouldnt have been destroyed and 60 Million People would probably still be alive. After every other institution failed Germany, these two failed them in conjunction by not even trying to organize a joined force.
One country ended up with Nazis. The other ended up defeating the Nazis. I’d say the Bolsheviks did a better job, didn’t they? The fact that there was oppression against Mensheviks and SRs in the context of a civil war, doesn’t mean they’re anticommunists, they didn’t quite literally enable the Nazis in order to murder the ones who were more communist than them, but defeat them instead.
Want to find the blame for Nazism in Germany? The fault is primarily of Nazis, and then of Nazi enablers, and then of anti-communist leftists.
Uh. The Bolsheviks actively collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis, right up until Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets carved up Poland between themselves and Germany, and tried to invade Finland (Winter War, Continuation War), which is why the Finns ended up allying with the Nazis after Operation Barbarossa.
Got it bro, the actual Nazis aren’t the Nazis, neither the ones who eliminated the most radical oppositors to Nazism, but actually the ones that died 26+mn of trying to fight them. God, you anti-communist revisionists are exhausting.
Ugh, not this Nazi talking point again… The Soviet Union pursued for all the 30s a policy called “collective security”, in which it desperately tried to achieve mutual-defense pacts with England, France and Poland because the soviets knew that their 15-year-old nation which had only just started industrializing since the end of the feudal and backwards Russian Empire, didn’t have a chance alone against the Nazis with their 150 year long history of industry (as would be seen later with the USSR suffering 26+mn deaths during the war, in places like Belarus 1 in 4 people died). The USSR wanted these mutual defense agreements to the point of offering to send 1 million soldiers to France and England if they agreed to mutual defense… which France, England and Poland denied because they thought Nazis would attempt their declared goal of eliminating communisnm and massacring the “slavic untermenschen”. After this was denied and it was obvious that the west would rather see the USSR invaded than reach a mutual defense agreement, they did the only possible course of action: delaying the war as much as possible to prepare for it and industrialize a bit more. That’s where the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact takes place, not before a decade of exhausting every possible negotiation route with France and England in opposition to Nazism.
The fact that the USSR then proceeded to (rather bloodlessly, around 50k deaths overall, very comparable to the oppression within the USSR itself) invade Poland, has to do with the USSR not trusting the Polish government. Why? In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution drafted an unprecedentedly progressive constitution which granted the right to self-determination and lawful secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire. That’s how many countries such as Finland or Poland suddenly gained independence lawfully and peacefully in a never-before-seen act of respect of the right of self-determination. What did Poland immediately proceed to do? Become fully nationalist, ignore the right to self-determination of other peoples, and invade Ukraine (and later the USSR) in an attempt to gain territories they considered theirs by historical right. When they had conquered a good chunk of modern Ukraine and Belarus, the Polish Government decided it was a good idea to start a war against the USSR, since the USSR was plunged deep into a civil war and didn’t have many resources or troops to defend itself, and some conquests and victories could grant them a positive peace agreement which granted the territories the Polish Nationalists considered theirs (while ignoring the right to self-determination that the Bolsheviks had granted them less than two years earlier). Poland was also happy to make peace and appeasement treaties with Nazi Germany as long as they could also get some territorial gains from Czechoslovak land.
Similarly, Finland in 1917 after gaining independence, was plunged into a civil war between communists and whites, which the latter won and proceeded to imprison communists in Finland who had supported the Reds, around 80k of which some 12k died (funny how nobody talks about that). The USSR had reasons to suspect of a possible alliance between the Finnish government and the Nazis, and proceeded to invade Finland. After the failure of the invasion, as you said, Finland joined the Nazis.
Blaming the USSR for entering a non-aggression treaty with the Nazis, when all western nations had done it, and after 10 years of the USSR trying to make mutual defense agreement with Poland, England and France, is at best ignorant, and at worst purposefully misinforming with an agenda. The USSR had reasons to suspect of Poland and Finland (especially given its history of constant betrayals by all European powers since the October Revolution, with 14 countries sending troops to aid the Tsarist loyalists against the Bolsheviks) and, while outright invasions may not be justified, it could all have been prevented if the western powers had actually agreed to fight nazism. It’s absolutely nuts to blame the USSR and call them “collaborators with Nazis” given the historical background of the two decades before the war, especially the latter.
Wut.
50,000 deaths is ‘rather bloodlessly’? And since that’s comparable to oppression within the USSR, it’s not that bad?
Correct. That, right there, is the most important point you’ve made. They collaborated with Nazis to carve up territories, and were then shocked when the Nazis turned on them. As far as the appeasement pacts made with Nazi Germany by France, England, et al., there’s very, very good reasons why the Vichy gov’t and Quisling are viewed so negatively by everyone that isn’t an apologist.
Good job evading the uncomfortable 90% of my comment. Since we’re at that point, I will proceed to evade 100% of yours, seeing how you’re not interested in discussing actual facts such as the reasons for the USSR to make a non aggression treaty with the Nazis after a decade of systematic rejection of military alliances by Poland, England and France.
Did you even read his comment dude?
Wowsers, that’s horrible! I’ll make sure not to vote for Biden if he nominates Trump as his VP.