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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Confidently Incorrect
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When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.
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Fucking funny to say this in the "confidently incorrect" community. It is historical revisionism.
The soviets did absolutely everything they could to try and convince France and the UK to take action against Hitler but they were hoping Hitler would attack the USSR.
The ACTUAL historic timeline is like this:
1: The United States Bourgeoisie bankrolled the rise of fascism in Europe.
2: The bourgeois leaders of England, France, Poland, Finland and other Western European nations either ignored, enabled, or appeased Hitler's worst behavior in the buildup to WW2.
3: The bourgeois leaders of these countries, England in particular, pushed for disastrous bilateral security arrangements which created a domino effect leading to war, while ignoring the USSR's suggestion of collective, anti-fascist security arrangements.
4: The bourgeois leaders of these countries pursued a policy not of containing fascist aggression, but of diplomatically isolating the USSR, in the hopes that Hitler would go East and carry out an anti-communist genocide on their behalf.
5: The bourgeois leaders of these countries, having ignored or stalled collective security proposals from the USSR, actively made bilateral non-aggression pacts with Hitler before Molotov-Ribbentrop was signed, making the USSR the last in a long line of nations to sign non-aggression pacts with Hitler, after the USSR's collective security proposals fell through.
6: The USSR only signed Molotov-Ribbentrop to buy time. The USSR only invaded East Poland to prevent a German front from forming right at the Soviet border. This is because attempts to make mutual security arrangements with Poland fell through. The Soviets only moved into the region after the existing government had literally fled the country, leaving it ungoverned. 2 million jews in eastern poland were saved from the nazis by this action.
7: The USSR tried to purchase a strategic corridor of land from Finland that the nazis could easily use to invade the USSR. The USSR not only wanted to legally purchase this land from Finland, but to trade Finland more acres of land in exchange. i.e. an asymmetrical trade that would have ultimately benefited Finland. Finland refused because the fascist leadership of Finland wanted to see Germany invade the USSR through this strategic corridor. This led directly to the Winter War. The Finnish lost the winter war but used their intelligence that they gathered during it to collaborate with the nazis.
8: When the North Atlantic allies finally teamed up with USSR after their strategy of appeasing Hitler backfired, they immediately attempted to make asymmetrical security arrangements that would have obligated the USSR to commit far more troops and resources to the war than any other ally, essentially using the USSR as a shield against the very fascist powers they had spent the better part of a decade appeasing. The British in particular kept stalling on arrangements and pretending to be confused.
9: When the war was over the North Atlantic allies, led by the USA, who came out of the war richer than any other country on Earth, immediately committed to rehabilitating nazis, blaming the USSR, who was decimated by the war, for causing the war, and created NATO to begin encircling the USSR, 6 years before the creation of the Warsaw pact.
10: The North Atlantic allies immediately set to using the Marshall plan to rebuild the fascist German, Italian, and Japanese economies, indebting them to the United States, and orienting them towards anti-communist policy.
11: The North Atlantic allies to tried to use the Marshall plan as a proto-IMF to privatize and deregulate the economy of the war-torn USSR, and open it up to foreign capital. That the USSR rejected this was framed as aggression and used as a justification for beginning the cold war.
But hey, don't just take my word for it, or this rough outline of what is contained in well regarded books (I implore you to read some). How about we read Albert Einstein's words spoken at the time these events actually occurred?
A lot to unpack in this speech but the basics of what Einstein says are:
The USSR made all efforts to stop the war happening.
The western powers(UK, France, US, etc) shut the USSR out of European discussions and betrayed Czechoslovakia.
Molotov-Ribbentrop was an unhappy last resort that they were driven to, that the western powers were attempting to drive the nazis into attacking the USSR and that's why they would not help the USSR stop them.
The USSR supported everyone while the other powers (UK, France, US, etc) strengthened the nazis and Japanese.
I also thought it was funny for the guy to say this in !confidently_incorrect. Thank you for the history class.
They're just repeating old Stalinist propaganda.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/world/ch12.htm
It's amusing how contemporary Stalinists put so much effort into justifying a pact that Stalin himself tried to keep from public knowledge and Russians rarely want to acknowledge.
That ought to tell you that the USSR wasn't proud of Molotov-Ribbentrop.
What's even more amusing is a bunch of history revisionists come here to defend the argument that the communists and not the fascists were the main partners of the Nazis, lol. Seriously. They were literally part of the same military coalition.
Communists and Nazis were literally part of the same military coalition. Stalin made sure of that. He even made a toast for Hitler's continued good health.
You should really be reading this as an intelligently worded sleight. Particularly given they had already begun building the 102,000 tanks that would eventually kill him. It's the perfect thing to say when you know this man took power on just 42% of the vote, and that support would actually be lower after killing and suppressing all opposition if not for the terror campaigns and suppression.
When you know you're already planning to kill this man drinking to his health is quite apt.
Yes, the UK and France were likewise preparing for war. So how can Western nations be condemned for buying time by negotiating with Hitler, if you are willing to excuse Stalin for doing precisely the same thing?
Neither were doing anything of the sort. As I have already pointed out and as basically all academic historians agree - both were trying to steer Hitler towards attacking the USSR. They rejected every attempt of the USSR to do anything about the nazis, forcing the USSR to either accept fighting the nazis or to enter into their own non-aggression pact. They did not believe the USSR would do so.
Stop inventing history. Read a fucking book.
The West was most definitely preparing for war, even if they hoped Hitler would attack the USSR. Peacetime conscription, previously unheard of in the UK, was established in the months before Molotov-Ribbentrop was signed.
Meanwhile, Stalin was preparing for war and hoped Hitler would attack the West.
Why didn't the West cooperate with Stalin in those early days? Probably because they didn't trust him. For good reason.
This is nonsense. You genuinely do not know what you are talking about.
In 1936 Britain ordered just 310 Spitfires to be produced, delivered in 1938. And was only contracted for another 1000 by 1940.
When Germany fucked Poland and turned towards France in 1939, there was just 3 months between this action and Britain sending the British Expeditionary Force of 390,000 troops to support the French. These all got resoundingly fucked in the ass because they were NOT PREPARED. This led to the disaster at Dunkirk.
Britain then started to take shit seriously. Massive action was taken, the Shadow Factory Plan was put into effect, Spitfire production was taken and given to Vickers, and the London Aircraft Production Group was formed to start churning out Spitfires and bombers en masse. Britain was not remotely preparing for war, it had action plans it could take IF a war broke out, but it was doing fuck all until the IF actually happened.
But we can listen to Winston Churchill himself on this topic can't we? His words to the italian fascists in 1927 are explicitly clear on what side he stood:
I am begging you people to read books for your history. Real books by actual academic historians. Stop getting all of your history from reddit comments made by literal actual fascists who fill your brain with porridge. It's like someone says the word communism and all of you lose the capability to remember that half the internet are reactionaries that want desantis for president, you completely ignore that when they fill you brains with something you desperately want to hear because you're so heavily propagandised on anti-communism that you lose all capability to verify fact from fascist fiction and historical revisionism.
If you are counting Spitfires in 1936, then you are the one who needs to read more history books. The Hurricane, not the Spitfire, was the primary fighter aircraft used by the RAF in the early war. In 1938, RAF had only 2 Hurricane squadrons. When they declared war the following year, they already had 16 Hurricane squadrons and 35,000 new troops. So yes, they were most definitely preparing for war.
And obviously, "preparing for war" does not mean "capable of defeating Hitler". The UK suffered a defeat at Dunkirk in 1940 for the same reason that the Soviets suffered defeats at Kharkiv and Smolensk in 1941: they both prepared for war, but the Germans were far better prepared.
Bro 35,000 troops is fucking NOTHING. You grasping at straws. Just the wehrmacht at that time was nearly 3million professional soldiers. That's without even getting into the navy and the air force.
You are absolutely not taking part in this conversation seriously. All you're doing is spouting the lies you want to spout while desperately clinging onto completely incorrect positions that you stubbornly refuse to back down from because to do so would mean having to admit the socialists are right. Since you're ideologically committed to anti socialism you refuse to.
All of this happening in the Confidently Incorrect community is the funniest part.
You wanna know what actually preparing for war looks like? "We will deploy 1 million troops to the border with Germany in Poland to deter Hitler by next week if you will join us with what you have." which was literally the offer the Soviets put on the table of France and England.
You need to get a grip. The scale must be understood in order to see that they absolutely were not preparing for war. The UK right NOW in 2023 is considering a 30,000 increase in army size on the exist 73,000 army it maintains, this is categorically not a preparation for war but simply a small expansion to provide it with other capabilities. The UK at that time had a colonial empire to maintain, such changes in army size were not unusual.
Here is the UK military size every single year since 1700, obtained through a Freedom of Information request that the government must comply with when made by British citizens. I urge you to take a look at the full history and see for yourself what the obvious moment was where preparations for war begin. It was 1939 and 1940 only when the UK was forced to. If you look at the full history you will agree that the fluctuations were all perfectly normal prior to the "oh shit" moment created when the soviets finally gave up on the game that they were playing and pushed Hitler west by agreeing to the non aggression pact.
All of this could have been averted had they not fucked around. They fucked around and they found out. They literally brought it on themselves.
Fuck me man I don't need this irritation on a work break.
That's 35,000 trained conscripts, starting from zero trained conscripts.
Does that seem small? Well, that's because the UK did not start peacetime conscription until mid-1938, conscripts took six months to train, and war was declared in 1939. Do the math.
But before that, in May 1939, the UK greatly expanded its conscription efforts. Which means that while only 35,000 conscripts were trained by September 1939, there were 200,000 conscripts trained by December.
I think you are the one who is not taking this seriously. There is ample evidence that the UK was preparing for war throughout 1939, and you are grasping at whatever figures you can find to deny reality.
Your own link proves my point. There is a sharp increase in military personnel in 1939. You incorrectly assume that all of this increase took place after war was declared in September, but this is simply not the case - conscription was ramped up in several stages throughout 1939.
In any case, you are shifting the goalposts. Originally you suggested that Western democracies ignored Germany, now you are arguing that they should have done more, which presumes they recognized the Nazi threat. But there is no question that all of the Allies could have been better prepared. How else do you explain the nearly 500K Soviet casualties at Smolensk, with less than 40K German KIA/MIA?
Ah yes, the generous offer made by Stalin literally during his negotiations of a non-aggression pact with Hitler. I wouldn't have trusted it either.
I have literally already included these in our discussion above. You are going in circles.
Holy fucking shit, the gall of saying communists and nazis were part of a military coalition, lol. This has to be a bit, given the community we're in.
The Red Army and the Wehrmacht coordinated a combined attack on Poland. Sounds like a military coalition to me.
For all their faults, the armies of the West never conducted a joint offensive with Nazis. Almost a century later, the West considers its attempts to negotiate with Hitler a complete failure, even a source of shame. Nobody here will defend it.
But you can always count on Stalinists to shamelessly defend striking a deal with Nazis.
Yes, not subscribing to the idea that the ones who defeated the Nazis are their main allies - and not, you know, the other powers in their military coalition - means I'm a Stalinist.
Some people are so fucked up in the head, it's fascinating.
I never said the main allies of the Nazis were the Soviets.
The Nazis were allied with fascist Italy and imperialist Japan. They were in a brief military coalition with the Soviets, betrayed the Soviets, and were defeated by the Soviets (with some help from their allies in the West).
At no point were the Western democracies in any sort of military coalition or alliance with Hitler.
The Soviets wouldn't have been able to fight without American Lend-Lease. They took Berlin in American tanks.
https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/october-23/
The rest of your maundering is old Stalinist propaganda, and barely worth refuting.
I will, however, link to this:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/world/ch12.htm
Not a single piece of american lend-lease arrived until after the battle of Moscow. The war had already turned. That's not to say it wasn't useful, more germans would have escaped encirclements and pace would have been slower as a result, it would have taken 12-18 months longer. But every academic historian agrees that the germans had lost the war as of the battle of moscow. Trying to present this as the war having been won by the american aid is absurd and there are no academic historians that agree with it, at best you'll get them to hedge and say they don't know the impact.
Einstein, barely worth refuting. Your brain must be MASSIVE mate.
You're linking to a book written in 1937. That predates the molotov-ribbentrop pact by 2 years lmao. It has zero relevance here other than being "stalin bad grrr stalin was mean to trotsky!" which is true but completely irrelevant to the nazis. I will say that the idea that stalin had anything to do with the failure of the german revolution is absurd. The german revolution failed the day Rosa was murdered and if there is any event in history I would change with a time machine it would be her death. It occurred at an utterly pivotal moment that guaranteed the following rise of fascism.
If lend-lease didn't contribute to Soviet success against Germany, then by the same reasoning Western military aid didn't contribute to Ukrainian success against Russia. After all, nearly all of it arrived after the Battle of Kyiv.
I didn't say it did not contribute. I said that it was fundamentally too late for american lend-lease to change the outcome of the war, it had already been won. The nazis had one chance to win and once they were repelled they were never going to catch up with the speed of Soviet manufacturing.
Some British lend-lease had arrived shortly before that battle. So they do not lose some credit, only the american lend-lease loses credit.
When ukraine actually breaks through russia's defensive lines we can start talking about its effect on their success against russia. As you rightfully point out all of their gains at the start of this war occurred before any aid, and the lines of been more or less stagnant ever since. Their counter offensives this spring (became a summer offensive) have yet to break a single line, let alone all 3 lines. I think we should be expecting at least antoher 18 months of this assuming negotiations continue to be refused and that it is even undecided as of this point in time.