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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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so how did the ussr go from this to marching into germany at the end and helping defeat the nazis? genuine question. was it just a case of "ok you're getting a little too close or comfort" or something else?
Essentially, the Nazis and Soviets were allies of convenience. They both had a mutual interest in destroying the sovereignty and nationhood of all of Eastern Europe, but once that was out of the way, it was an issue of "Both sides want full control over the area, and neither side has acceptable goals to the other".
The Nazis eventually struck first in Operation Barbarossa; the Soviets didn't expect the Nazis to be ready to invade them for a few more years, so they were caught off guard, which is where a lot of the "NAZIS GREAT SOLDIERS 1 MILLION SOVIETS = 1 NAZI UBERMENSCH" bullshit comes from. The Soviets were scattered and disorganized, and had to hastily reconstruct a lot of their military doctrine around the fact that the Nazis had just occupied a big chunk of the Soviet Union's industrial equipment and population.
After a few months of chaos, the Nazis discovered that sucker-punching a powerhouse doesn't make you a champion boxer, and spent the next three years getting slowly brutalized into oblivion by the Soviet Army and the Nazis' own dumbass idea to invade.
I would assume the plan of the Soviet Union was to invade Nazi Germany as well, just after they had organized? Or was it just foolish trying to invade the SU at any stage, with the better plan was to hope the two blocks would just somehow get along.
Nazi Germany was always planning on invading the Soviets EVENTUALLY, and both sides were aware of that - the Soviets just thought the Nazi timetable was a bit later. As for the Soviets, Stalin exercised such total control over the Soviet government apparatus and was furtive about his plans even in the best of times, so it's hard to know what they were planning in the long-term - if anything - other than asserting their continued interest in dominating Eastern Europe.
It is not a good idea to sign a pact with the devil when you're not organized. I mean, it's never a good idea, but it's an exceptionally bad idea when you don't have your house in order.
In their defense, the disorganization was because they were retooling their army for war. They had plans for mass-distribution of semi-auto rifles and widespread motorization and were reorganizing their entire chain of command. The thinking was that Nazi Germany was busy with Britain, and wouldn't be stupid enough to fight a war on two fronts against the foremost powers of the world.
They underestimated Nazi stupidity.
Reorganizing their entire chain of command because Stalin murdered half the leadership in a paranoid rage over fears that they might have been loyal to
checks notes
The guy who built the Red Army and won the Revolution. Whom Stalin had assassinated. Immediately following the decade when fascism was sweeping through European parliaments and Hitler was straight up telling the world he considered the eradication of Jewish people and Bolshevism his greatest goals.
I think to an extent part of the reason they were disorganised was as a result of the invasion of Poland though, they suffered disproportionate manpower and equipment losses compared to the Germans
They were disorganized because Stalin had just murdered the entire command structure of the military.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
Ah that'll do it
The only reason endrd up losing to the Soviets was because he went back on his own original war plan. He didn't want to fight a war on two fronts. The idea was to knock out France, which he did, then defeat the UK, which he didn't do. He expected the UK to sue for negotiations but they ended up resisting him for far longer than he expected. Since the US was supplying the UK and keeping them afloat, Hitler was cautious. He wanted to avoid a war with the US, so he turned his attention elsewhere, which was invading the Soviet Union, while not securing the Western front.
Despite this, Hitler still managed to reach the outskirts of Moscow and he was close to winning, but he got cocky and impatient by ordering his armies to march through the winter and unwisely split a few of his armies at the wrong times. He also made his biggest mistake by declaring war on the US when the US declared war on Japan after they attacked Pearl Harbor... Even though didn't have to. After trying to previously avoid war with US, he went and did it for no good reason. This brought second wind to the allies as Americans weapons starting pouring into the UK and the Soviet Union as well as American troops pouring into the Western front. This forced Hitler to divide his attention and resources which gave the Soviets valuable time and opportunities to recover and strike back.
Too bad the Soviets ended up occupying Eastern Europe much like the nazis but under new management rather actually liberating them.
Hitler was never even close to winning. The fact is, the war plan was screwed from the moment the Sovs decided they were going to fight back after the surprise attack, despite Stalin's initial breakdown. One of the first things the Sovs did after Operation Barbarossa began, after all, was to begin moving industrial equipment east. They were preparing for the long haul - while Germany exhausted itself considerably in the opening stages of the invasion. Once the initial surprise of the attack was over, the sheer material calculus was just not in their favor - casualty ratios and equipment loss were about equal, but the Sovs had something like 3 times the population and had the same proportional advantage in vehicle production. Taking Moscow just would not have made enough of a difference.
As for the UK, they were receiving lend-lease BEFORE the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Dude the Wehrmacht reached a town called Krasnaya Polyana which is 18 miles away from the center of Moscow. If they took over Moscow, which was a very real possibility then the Soviet Union would've fallen like France, or at the very least the European portion of it would. I would assume the oppressed minorities within the empire would used them opportunity to get independence. What the Soviet Union pulled is nothing short of miraculous. People don't realize just how close Hitler was to taking down the Soviet Union.
I didn't imply that they weren't?
That's not how capitals work. France itself only nominally fell because it appointed an ultraconservative collaborator (Petain) to the highest position of government.
Most of the oppressed minorities were in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, and very quickly found out that the Nazis were no liberators. Most of the remaining Soviet population was Russian, not ethnic minorities. A few of the central Asian SSRs were around, but their governments weren't oppressed, but participants in the oppression - why would they rise up?
Lol what? If you conquer a country's capital, that country falls unless its government moves elsewhere and establishes a foothold which doesn't happen often. When the Germans conquered Paris, the French government basically collapsed and from the Germans were able to take control and establish puppet governments.
Nobody thought that the Nazis were liberators. Everybody knew Hitler wanted to expand Germany and turn it into an empire. However, the Soviets were thought of as liberators by non Soviet Eastern European nations, and they quickly learned after the war that weren't exactly free, just under new management.
Those governments were Russian puppets. Russia was always a multi ethnic empire that favored Russians and oppressed the rest. There's a reason why Stalin went through his "deportation" (read: genocide) plans. They weren't good.
I think it's pretty clear given the context that I meant the rate of shipments accelerated
Yeah, like when DC fell in the War of 1812, or when Moscow fell in Napoleon's invasion, or when the Japanese took Nanking during the Second Sino-Japanese War, or-
See, this is the insane thing - many DID think of the Nazis as liberators. Numerous national independence movements were suddenly excited to collaborate after the start of Operation Barbarossa, for about all of three or four months, at which point it became apparent that the Nazis were even worse than the Soviets.
I'm not arguing that the Sovs were good. Far from it. My point is that there weren't well-formed independence movements waiting in the wings to take power should the Soviet government falter - all power was tied up in the Party and its bureaucracy, and the only organized institutions capable of taking action would have been Soviet puppets who were 'all-in' on the Soviets by a mixture of clientism and purges. If Moscow fell, the idea that the Central Asian SSRs would suddenly turn, or lose their grip, just... doesn't strike me as realistic.
I wouldn't say 'pretty clear', but if I misread it, I misread it.
The Russians suck at war. They lost to the French, then the Germans and now the Ukrainians. They should really read a book.
That's one of the crazy things about Hitler. He was basically handed half of Europe, and could have kept that and tolerable relations with the major world powers, but it wasn't enough for him. He had his sights set on total global domination, and nothing short of that would satiate his desires. I suspect that even the world would not have been enough, but thankfully we never had to find out.
It's one of the big weaknesses of these sort of egotistical maniacs imo, they make decisions based on their own egos, and create an environment where nobody is willing to call them out on it
ooh makes sense!
"Blitzkrieg" by Len Deighton is my favorite one volume history of Hitler and WW2.
Yeah, Stalingrad was pretty close for comfort lol. It was an alliance of convenience and then Hitler invaded and continued to genocide across the USSR planning to completely wipe them out and resettle their land.