The Soviet Union did not agree to invade Poland with the Nazis, it was about spheres of influence and red lines the Nazis should not cross in Poland. Spheres of influence were not agreements to jointly work together.
That’s historical revisionism not even supported by Russian historians. That page is full of nonsensical statements too. On the page dedicated to “disproving” the secret protocols, it makes two claims:
The secret protocols required that a Polish state exists still. Since the Germans destroyed it, the protocols were void.
The Germans were talking about setting up independent states east of the demarcation line, so clearly it wasn’t about partitioning Poland.
But the text of the secret protocols as I have linked already handily disproves both notions. First, it explicitly mentions that the question of whether a Polish state should remain is to be decided later; clearly this means that the existence of Poland itself is not a precondition for the protocols holding. The protocols also basically outline “what happens after Poland is invaded and how should it be divided”, you can call it a partitioning into spheres of influence if you like, but the protocols did not care exactly what the Soviets or Nazis would do on either side of the line, annexation, puppeting or otherwise. All that mattered was declaring where belonged to who. That’s colloquially known as a partitioning.
The setting up of independent states east of the line is also not proof of anything. This was being considered before the USSR invaded, and the Germans needed to decide on something with the remaining land. They opted for independent countries over puppet governments or direct annexation, so as to leave the area to the USSR to deal with.
Ultimately both countries invaded, and the Nazis retreated back to the demarcation line.
Should the Soviets have let Poland get entirely taken over by the Nazis, standing idle? The West made it clear that they were never going to help anyone against the Nazis until it was their turn to be targeted.
The USSR was aware of the defensive pact between the west and Poland, and the west declared war on Germany when they invaded Poland.
Further, you’re ignoring the Munich Agreement, where Czechoslovakia was given to the Nazis by the west. Not only was the west on good terms with the Nazis, signing many non-aggression pacts, they fostered healthy relationships.
The west was still on appeasement mode (which was a mistake in hindsight). But they were not on “friendly” terms at all, clearly evidenced by the fact they were still negotiating with the Soviets to form an alliance against the Germans. The west was actively negotiating treaties to contain Germany where possible, but not all countries targetted by the Nazis agreed to one since they were worried aligning against Hitler would make them a target (the concern of the Baltics for example).
Finally, the Soviets were reasonably highly suspicious that Britain and Germany would ally. This was not unfounded, both were friendly enough until the outbreak of war. The Soviets desperately needed to make sure that the British and Germans would not ally, which reasonably would have happened had the Soviet Union taken unilateral action against the Nazis, rather than waiting to be attacked first.
This was, as far as I could find, never a Soviet concern. They did not believe the west would ally with Hitler, rather they were mistrusting that the west would let the USSR fight Germany on its own, weakening both states. This was actually the same concern the west had, they feared the Soviets would pull the west into a war against Germany without a cause they could support. This deep mistrust was a key reason why the triple alliance failed to materialize. Ultimately it was the west that declared war on Germany first, and the Soviets indeed let them fight before being forced into the conflict by Germany.
You’re reading the spheres of influence aspect of Molotov-Ribbentrop with hermeneutics of suspicion. The implication on your end is that the Soviets expected the pact to hold, and to split Europe with Nazi Germany. This implies the expectation of a lasting alliance, which is immediately thrown out the window when you see just how much the Soviets were preparing for war against the Nazis, and that the Red Army was specifically told to watch out for German soldiers.
Regarding Poland in particular, the Soviet sphere of influence, again, was made up of areas Poland had violently annexed from countries like Lithuania and Ukraine only a couple decades prior. The Soviets did not plan on conquesting Poland, they simply stated that Nazi Germany was not allowed to take former Soviet land. When Poland was invaded by Germany, the state was destroyed, and the Red Army took formerly Lithuanian, Ukrainian, etc areas, sparing them from the Holocaust.
Would you want the entirety of Poland to go to the Nazis? Should the USSR have gone to war with Nazi Germany then and there, with the possibility of the west aiding the Nazis to take out the USSR?
As for the West, again, you ignore that at the time they were quite honest with wanting to contain the Bolsheviks. They were more than willing to work with the Nazis, America even kept trading with them during the war, and American factories were deliberately not targeted in Nazi Germany even if Nazis were hiding in them. Truman was honest:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
The whole time in the background, Britain and France were attempting to get the Soviets and Nazis to kill each other off. France spread faulty rumors of a fabricated speech by Stalin wanting to conquest Europe, Britain warned Germany of an impending soviet attack at the same time they warned Russia of Barbarossa, and the Nazis themselves were constantly posturing around either invading Britain, using Crete as a template for naval invasion, or making a deal with them. Before Barbarossa, Rudolf Hess flew to England, drawing the appearance of an impending deal.
The entirety of the pre-War period was a tumultuous game of trying to decide what the lines of the war would be. The west made it clear that it hated the Soviets, and the Soviets made it clear that they hated the Nazis, but did not want to risk both the Nazis and the west coming after them, which would have been unwinnable most likely. Nobody could be confused of an actual Soviet-Nazi alliance.
Regarding Poland, again, this was territory Poland had conquered previously that historically belonged to countries in the Soviet Union. This was a return of territory. By no means did it come without bloodshed, but nevertheless the soviets were not nearly the butchers the Nazis were.
As for the west conspiring to kill of the Soviet Union, and letting Germany do so, again, I gave naked testimony that this was the case. The Soviet Union wanted above all else to survive, the Nazis wanted new colonial territories, and the west wanted to not get colonized by the Nazis while also wanting the Soviets to stop being socialist.
Do you have a source on a British warning to Germany?
Wolkow W. K. (2003), Stalin wollte ein anderes Europa. Moskaus Außenpolitik 1940 bis 1968 und die Folgen, Edition Ost, Berlin, p. 110.
The British warnings to the USSR were sadly ignored; Stalin did not order the Red Army to get ready for an invasion, which was partially why the first few months of the war went so disastrously poorly for the Soviets.
I already explained this earlier. There was a massivedisinformation campaign, with feints from both Germany and the western powers. The first few weeks went as everyone expected, the Nazis advanced quickly over largely open land until running face to face with the full industrialized might of the Red Army. Goebbels’ diary is quite telling of the change in attitude. On the 22nd-23rd of June, the Nazis attacked confidently. On July 2nd, Goebbels wrote the following:
Overall, the fighting is hard and stubborn. We can in no way speak of a walk in the park. The red regime has mobilized the people.
July 24th:
We can have no doubt whatsoever about the fact that the Bolshevik regime, which has existed for nearly a quarter of a century, has left a deep mark on the peoples of the Soviet Union […]. It would be right, therefore, if we clearly informed the German people about the harshness of the struggle taking place in the East. The nation must be told that this operation is very difficult, but that we can and will survive it.
August 1st:
At the Führer’s headquarters […] they also openly admit that they were somewhat mistaken in their assessment of Soviet fighting power. The Bolsheviks are showing stronger resistance than we expected, and above all the material means at their disposal are greater than we had anticipated.
August 9th:
Privately, the Führer is very displeased for having allowed himself to be so deceived about the potential of the Bolsheviks by the reports [sent by German agents] coming from the Soviet Union. In particular, the underestimation of the enemy’s tanks and aircraft caused a great deal of trouble for our military operations. He suffers a lot because of this. We’re dealing with a serious crisis […]. The previous campaigns were a walk in the park by comparison […]. The Führer is not worried about the West […]. In our German thoroughness and objectivity we have always overestimated the enemy, except, in this case, the Bolsheviks.
September 16th:
We have totally underestimated the strength of the Bolsheviks.
This was not a walk in the park for the Nazis, because the Soviets planned for it. Modern historiography makes it quite clear that the Nazis and Soviets were never allies in any capacity, for any length of time, and were always conspiring against each other with no expectation of actual peace, just biding their time before what they desired to be a favorable start to war.
Regarding Poland, no, the Soviets were not worse. The Nazis subjected the Polish to the holocaust, and was committed to exterminating millions of Poles. One historian saying “in many ways, the soviets were worse” doesn’t even mean the soviets were worse in total, yet that’s the implication you bring. Historical evidence backs up that the Nazi colonization of Poland was a prototype for the Nazi colonization of the Soviets.
As for Stalin and preparation for Barbarossa, again, reports conflicted. The Soviets knew that the Nazis were going to eventually invade, which is why Stalin had the Red Army prepare for German invasion. It wasn’t that Stalin didn’t mobilize the Red Army, it’s that Stalin refused to muster forces on the border, which was exactly what the Nazis wanted. The Nazis wanted to quickly route the Red Army and march straight to Moscow relatively unopposed, instead they ran through largely empty, wide-open land quickly, before running into extreme resistance.
If you don’t trust Goebbels, there’s plenty of other testemonies from Nazi officials, such as General Fedor von Bock in late July:
The enemy seeks to recapture Smolensk at all costs and is constantly sending in new forces. The theory expressed by some that the enemy acts without plans is not reflected in the facts […]. We’ve verified that the Russians have brought up across the front a new and compact deployment of forces. In many areas they seek to go on the offensive. It’s surprising for an adversary which suffered so many blows; they must possess an unbelievable amount of resources, in fact our troops still lament the power of the enemy artillery.
Here’s an excerpt from Domenico Losurdo’s book on Stalin:
Long read as an example of political-military ignorance or even blind trust in the Third Reich, the extremely cautious approach taken by Stalin in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of hostilities now appears in an entirely different light: “The relatively open concentration of Wehrmacht forces along the Soviet border, the violations of Soviet airspace and numerous other provocations had only a single purpose: to draw the main forces of the Red Army as close to the border as possible. Hitler wanted to win the war in one gigantic battle.” Even valiant generals were enticed by this trap. Expecting an onslaught, they insisted on a massive relocation of troops toward the border. However, “Stalin categorically rejected this demand, insisting on the need to maintain large-scale reserves at a considerable distance from any conceivable front line.” After the war, studying the material left behind by the German architects of Operation Barbarossa, marshall Georgy K. Zhukov recognized the correctness of the line pursued by Stalin: “Hitler’s command was counting on us bringing our main forces up to the border with the intention of surrounding and destroying them.”
Now, you may say that Zhukov was simply trying to play the political line. However, it’s abundantly clear that this is in fact exactly how it played out. The rapid conquest of largely open land was met with a rapid counteroffensive that placed the Nazis in a dreadful stalemate, and eventually a legendary counterattack. Had Stalin listened to his generals, it’s likely they would have played into the Nazi’s plans.
The USSR was aware of the defensive pact between the west and Poland, and the west declared war on Germany when they invaded Poland.
So you do think that the Soviets shouldn’t have entered Poland (after the government had already collapsed to secure the parts of Ukraine Lithuania and Belarus the Poles had occupied in the interwar period) and instead let the Nazis have full reign of the entire country until the Nazis decided to move further east?
Once you agree with the Nazis on how to split the country, it makes sense to grab the part you wanted. But diplomatic cables reveal that the Germans would not have kept this part of Poland as they intended to uphold the pact with the Soviets. That’s why there were extensive discussions to release these parts as independent states, so they could be controlled by the USSR as they had agreed.
Whether you agree on that the Soviets should have signed the pact in the first place is another matter, as it was a carte blanche to invade Poland gifted to the Nazis.
But diplomatic cables reveal that the Germans would not have kept this part of Poland as they intended to uphold the pact with the Soviets
So if they didn’t sign the pact or had left this request out of it as you seemingly desire they would have taken it wholesale? So again we’re back to the Molotov-Ribbentrop saving eastern Poland (actually Western Ukraine Belarus and Lithuania that was simply occupied by Poland) from the Nazi scourge (for a time).
Whether you agree on that the Soviets should have signed
They absolutely should as the last power to do so allowing the time for them to build up the production capacity necessary cause 80% of the Nazi deaths of the war.
It really seems like you would have preferred the Soviets leave Western Belarus Lithuania and Ukraine for dead and do nothing to delay the inevitable war with the Nazis to actually recover to fighting strength post revolution. Maybe that would have been the more pure option but it also would have been suicidal idiocy.
So if they didn’t sign the pact or had left this request out of it as you seemingly desire they would have taken it wholesale?
The Nazis were somewhat surprised by the complete collapse of the Polish government. They originally had not planned to annex the entire territory, but instead pushed for a surrender of the Polish to let the Nazis take the territory they wanted, leaving a Polish puppet state. When the Poles didn’t surrender and saw their government disintegrate, that plan went out of the window.
The Soviets had other options, eg joining the west in guaranteeing Poland or signing the triple alliance even if it wasn’t everything they wanted. Too much distrust pushed them away from this option. At the time the Nazis weren’t that powerful yet and fighting a two-front war, even against a less-than-ready Red army would have likely proven to be too much. Instead, Stalin opted to side with the Nazis in dividing Poland and sacrificed western Poland to the fascist terror regime (inflicting their own terror on the east). Ultimately the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was the final trigger for the invasion of Poland.
In 41 the Nazis had gathered enough strength for a prolonged campaign in Russia, which in 39 they absolutely weren’t ready for.
That’s historical revisionism not even supported by Russian historians. That page is full of nonsensical statements too. On the page dedicated to “disproving” the secret protocols, it makes two claims:
But the text of the secret protocols as I have linked already handily disproves both notions. First, it explicitly mentions that the question of whether a Polish state should remain is to be decided later; clearly this means that the existence of Poland itself is not a precondition for the protocols holding. The protocols also basically outline “what happens after Poland is invaded and how should it be divided”, you can call it a partitioning into spheres of influence if you like, but the protocols did not care exactly what the Soviets or Nazis would do on either side of the line, annexation, puppeting or otherwise. All that mattered was declaring where belonged to who. That’s colloquially known as a partitioning.
The setting up of independent states east of the line is also not proof of anything. This was being considered before the USSR invaded, and the Germans needed to decide on something with the remaining land. They opted for independent countries over puppet governments or direct annexation, so as to leave the area to the USSR to deal with.
Ultimately both countries invaded, and the Nazis retreated back to the demarcation line.
The USSR was aware of the defensive pact between the west and Poland, and the west declared war on Germany when they invaded Poland.
The west was still on appeasement mode (which was a mistake in hindsight). But they were not on “friendly” terms at all, clearly evidenced by the fact they were still negotiating with the Soviets to form an alliance against the Germans. The west was actively negotiating treaties to contain Germany where possible, but not all countries targetted by the Nazis agreed to one since they were worried aligning against Hitler would make them a target (the concern of the Baltics for example).
This was, as far as I could find, never a Soviet concern. They did not believe the west would ally with Hitler, rather they were mistrusting that the west would let the USSR fight Germany on its own, weakening both states. This was actually the same concern the west had, they feared the Soviets would pull the west into a war against Germany without a cause they could support. This deep mistrust was a key reason why the triple alliance failed to materialize. Ultimately it was the west that declared war on Germany first, and the Soviets indeed let them fight before being forced into the conflict by Germany.
You’re reading the spheres of influence aspect of Molotov-Ribbentrop with hermeneutics of suspicion. The implication on your end is that the Soviets expected the pact to hold, and to split Europe with Nazi Germany. This implies the expectation of a lasting alliance, which is immediately thrown out the window when you see just how much the Soviets were preparing for war against the Nazis, and that the Red Army was specifically told to watch out for German soldiers.
Regarding Poland in particular, the Soviet sphere of influence, again, was made up of areas Poland had violently annexed from countries like Lithuania and Ukraine only a couple decades prior. The Soviets did not plan on conquesting Poland, they simply stated that Nazi Germany was not allowed to take former Soviet land. When Poland was invaded by Germany, the state was destroyed, and the Red Army took formerly Lithuanian, Ukrainian, etc areas, sparing them from the Holocaust.
Would you want the entirety of Poland to go to the Nazis? Should the USSR have gone to war with Nazi Germany then and there, with the possibility of the west aiding the Nazis to take out the USSR?
As for the West, again, you ignore that at the time they were quite honest with wanting to contain the Bolsheviks. They were more than willing to work with the Nazis, America even kept trading with them during the war, and American factories were deliberately not targeted in Nazi Germany even if Nazis were hiding in them. Truman was honest:
The whole time in the background, Britain and France were attempting to get the Soviets and Nazis to kill each other off. France spread faulty rumors of a fabricated speech by Stalin wanting to conquest Europe, Britain warned Germany of an impending soviet attack at the same time they warned Russia of Barbarossa, and the Nazis themselves were constantly posturing around either invading Britain, using Crete as a template for naval invasion, or making a deal with them. Before Barbarossa, Rudolf Hess flew to England, drawing the appearance of an impending deal.
The entirety of the pre-War period was a tumultuous game of trying to decide what the lines of the war would be. The west made it clear that it hated the Soviets, and the Soviets made it clear that they hated the Nazis, but did not want to risk both the Nazis and the west coming after them, which would have been unwinnable most likely. Nobody could be confused of an actual Soviet-Nazi alliance.
Removed by mod
Regarding Poland, again, this was territory Poland had conquered previously that historically belonged to countries in the Soviet Union. This was a return of territory. By no means did it come without bloodshed, but nevertheless the soviets were not nearly the butchers the Nazis were.
As for the west conspiring to kill of the Soviet Union, and letting Germany do so, again, I gave naked testimony that this was the case. The Soviet Union wanted above all else to survive, the Nazis wanted new colonial territories, and the west wanted to not get colonized by the Nazis while also wanting the Soviets to stop being socialist.
Wolkow W. K. (2003), Stalin wollte ein anderes Europa. Moskaus Außenpolitik 1940 bis 1968 und die Folgen, Edition Ost, Berlin, p. 110.
I already explained this earlier. There was a massivedisinformation campaign, with feints from both Germany and the western powers. The first few weeks went as everyone expected, the Nazis advanced quickly over largely open land until running face to face with the full industrialized might of the Red Army. Goebbels’ diary is quite telling of the change in attitude. On the 22nd-23rd of June, the Nazis attacked confidently. On July 2nd, Goebbels wrote the following:
July 24th:
August 1st:
August 9th:
September 16th:
This was not a walk in the park for the Nazis, because the Soviets planned for it. Modern historiography makes it quite clear that the Nazis and Soviets were never allies in any capacity, for any length of time, and were always conspiring against each other with no expectation of actual peace, just biding their time before what they desired to be a favorable start to war.
Removed by mod
Regarding Poland, no, the Soviets were not worse. The Nazis subjected the Polish to the holocaust, and was committed to exterminating millions of Poles. One historian saying “in many ways, the soviets were worse” doesn’t even mean the soviets were worse in total, yet that’s the implication you bring. Historical evidence backs up that the Nazi colonization of Poland was a prototype for the Nazi colonization of the Soviets.
As for Stalin and preparation for Barbarossa, again, reports conflicted. The Soviets knew that the Nazis were going to eventually invade, which is why Stalin had the Red Army prepare for German invasion. It wasn’t that Stalin didn’t mobilize the Red Army, it’s that Stalin refused to muster forces on the border, which was exactly what the Nazis wanted. The Nazis wanted to quickly route the Red Army and march straight to Moscow relatively unopposed, instead they ran through largely empty, wide-open land quickly, before running into extreme resistance.
If you don’t trust Goebbels, there’s plenty of other testemonies from Nazi officials, such as General Fedor von Bock in late July:
Here’s an excerpt from Domenico Losurdo’s book on Stalin:
Now, you may say that Zhukov was simply trying to play the political line. However, it’s abundantly clear that this is in fact exactly how it played out. The rapid conquest of largely open land was met with a rapid counteroffensive that placed the Nazis in a dreadful stalemate, and eventually a legendary counterattack. Had Stalin listened to his generals, it’s likely they would have played into the Nazi’s plans.
So you do think that the Soviets shouldn’t have entered Poland (after the government had already collapsed to secure the parts of Ukraine Lithuania and Belarus the Poles had occupied in the interwar period) and instead let the Nazis have full reign of the entire country until the Nazis decided to move further east?
Once you agree with the Nazis on how to split the country, it makes sense to grab the part you wanted. But diplomatic cables reveal that the Germans would not have kept this part of Poland as they intended to uphold the pact with the Soviets. That’s why there were extensive discussions to release these parts as independent states, so they could be controlled by the USSR as they had agreed.
Whether you agree on that the Soviets should have signed the pact in the first place is another matter, as it was a carte blanche to invade Poland gifted to the Nazis.
So if they didn’t sign the pact or had left this request out of it as you seemingly desire they would have taken it wholesale? So again we’re back to the Molotov-Ribbentrop saving eastern Poland (actually Western Ukraine Belarus and Lithuania that was simply occupied by Poland) from the Nazi scourge (for a time).
They absolutely should as the last power to do so allowing the time for them to build up the production capacity necessary cause 80% of the Nazi deaths of the war.
It really seems like you would have preferred the Soviets leave Western Belarus Lithuania and Ukraine for dead and do nothing to delay the inevitable war with the Nazis to actually recover to fighting strength post revolution. Maybe that would have been the more pure option but it also would have been suicidal idiocy.
The Nazis were somewhat surprised by the complete collapse of the Polish government. They originally had not planned to annex the entire territory, but instead pushed for a surrender of the Polish to let the Nazis take the territory they wanted, leaving a Polish puppet state. When the Poles didn’t surrender and saw their government disintegrate, that plan went out of the window.
The Soviets had other options, eg joining the west in guaranteeing Poland or signing the triple alliance even if it wasn’t everything they wanted. Too much distrust pushed them away from this option. At the time the Nazis weren’t that powerful yet and fighting a two-front war, even against a less-than-ready Red army would have likely proven to be too much. Instead, Stalin opted to side with the Nazis in dividing Poland and sacrificed western Poland to the fascist terror regime (inflicting their own terror on the east). Ultimately the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was the final trigger for the invasion of Poland.
In 41 the Nazis had gathered enough strength for a prolonged campaign in Russia, which in 39 they absolutely weren’t ready for.