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To be America's enemy is dangerous, but to be its ally is fatal (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

since they wanted the Nazis to invade the Soviet Union.

I'd dispute that based on the fact that they declared war on Germany immediately when Hitler invaded Poland, dispite the fact that he was closing the buffer to the USSR. The capitalists' real hope was that Hitler would be more of a bulwark, a guard dog who would be content suppressing communists within Germany's own borders and being militarized and prepared in case the USSR tried to expand. Hitler was granted a lot of leeway in that hope, and it's possible he misread that as either weakness or wanting him to attack the Soviets. But and the end of the day, if he wanted to fight the USSR, and Britain and France wanted him to fight the USSR, then he would've wound up fighting the USSR with little conflict with the other Allies, possibly even with their support. There's a grain of truth to what you're saying but imo it's exaggerated and doesn't fit with the facts/timeline.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    I'd dispute that based on the fact that they declared war on Germany immediately when Hitler invaded Poland

    They already had a mutual defense agreement with Poland, that's why they intervened at that point. Additionally, they didn't want Nazis to get too big because they were competing for resources and markets, as are all capitalist nations.

    I find it very easy to believe that the very nations that invaded the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war and supported the tsarists with no other reason than to attempt to destroy communism, would be happy to see Germany destroy the Soviet Union which, as a nation which had only began to industrialise in the late 1920s (compared to the extra century that Germany and England had had to industrialise), was very weak in military industrial capabilities.

    In any case I understand that that's just my opinion based on historical precedents, and there may be more nuance. However, I seem to share the same point of view of many western allies from the period:

    “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)

    “We could not doubt that the Soviet Government, disillusioned by the hesitant negotiations with Britain and France, feared a lone struggle against Hitler’s mighty war machine. It seemed they had concluded, in the interests of survival, that an accord with Germany would at least postpone their day of reckoning ” Cordell Hull (U.S. Secretary of State), The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (Published 1948)

    “It seemed to me that the Soviet leaders believed conflict with Nazi Germany was inescapable. But, lacking clear assurances of military partnership from England and France, they resolved that a ‘breathing spell’ was urgently needed. In that sense, the pact with Germany was a temporary expedient to keep the wolf from the door ” Joseph E. Davies (U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, 1937–1938), Mission to Moscow (1941)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Britain and France also had an alliance with Czechoslovakia, which they sacrificed. I'm very confused about where exactly Germany was supposed to invade from without a shared border, and the fact that Britain and France had an alliance with Poland in the first place contradicts the idea that they wanted Germany to invade the USSR.

    Of course there was no love between them and the USSR and the capitalists were persuing material interests and all, but there was also a widespread hope/belief that WWI was "the war to end all wars." "Peace in Europe" was a major political selling point.

    I read all of your quotes and none of them seem to support your narrative over mine. My only point of disagreement with you is whether Britain and France wanted Germany to invade the Soviet Union, not about the Soviet assessment of the situation. It's not even that big of a disagreement, I agree that they wanted to use Hitler but it's clear they wanted to keep him on a leash and have him serve as a first line of defense, not offense. It shouldn't be that hard to believe that the powers that be wanted to preserve the status quo and their position in it rather than throwing everything into chaos.

    You make the point yourself that they didn't want "The Nazis to get too big" but if they invaded the Soviets and emerged victorious, they'd be much bigger and pose a major threat to the other Allies (of course, there was also the possibility the USSR won, which would also pose a threat).

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    it’s clear they wanted to keep him [Hitler] on a leash and have him serve as a first line of defense

    This is basically the thing I'm arguing. The Soviet Union was never an expansionist project in the military sense (they wanted to spread the revolution abroad, such as by assisting the Republicans in Spain and giving weapons to the Vietnamese in their anti-imperialist struggle), never projecting their military force outwards except as a response to serious provoking by third party foreign actors (such as in the case of the funding and arming in Afghanistan of radical theocratic militias by the US).

    The fact that all of these western leaders talk of the USSR using the Molotov-Ribbentrop as an "odious but necessary defensive measure", proves to me that they understood that the USSR wasn't something they needed to be militarily defended of by a weaponized Germany acting as a buffer, hence that can't be understood as Germany's role in the situation in my opinion.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    The Soviet Union was never an expansionist project in the military sense (they wanted to spread the revolution abroad, such as by assisting the Republicans in Spain and giving weapons to the Vietnamese in their anti-imperialist struggle)

    I don't think this distinction mattered to the capitalists. Whether we're talking about military expansion or about supporting a socialist revolution in Germany, the capitalists didn't want it to happen and Hitler could serve as bulwark against both. Had he kept to his own borders, Britain and France would've been perfectly satisfied with that result. Instead, because he invaded Poland, a country he, again, would have had to go through to reach the USSR, they declared war. I really want to emphasize and repeat this point: If Britain and France wanted Hitler to invade the USSR, what physical route was he supposed to take?

    The fact that all of these western leaders talk of the USSR using the Molotov-Ribbentrop as an “odious but necessary defensive measure”, proves to me that they understood that the USSR wasn’t something they needed to be militarily defended of by a weaponized Germany acting as a buffer, hence that can’t be understood as Germany’s role in the situation in my opinion.

    But, as you mentioned, the Soviets had supported the Republicans in Spain - even if they were too vulnerable to launch a military invasion of Germany, there was a possibility of them supporting a revolution in Germany, and Germany of course was politically unstable. The capitalists already had their "win" of the German communists being defeated and the class conflict appearing to stabilize, that's plenty of villainous motivation on its own.

    It seems completely implausible to me that they wanted Hitler to invade but then when he started moving his borders closer to making that possible, they suddenly flipped out and did a 180 and declared war instead.

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