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I’ve scoured the entire internet and can find no evidence that half of the Jews killed by Hitler were sent to him willingly by the USSR. The Nazi’s definitely killed Russian/Polish Jews (as well as Russians and Poles in general), but why not place that blame solely on the Nazi’s? Soviets killing Polish military and political dissendents wasn’t anything new. They had killed plenty of their own for similar reasons. In that aspect they were equal opportunity killers, however wholesale genocide was a construct unique to the Nazis.
Honestly, its one of the dumbest statements I've seen here on the History Forum.
Try this logic:
1. The Final Solution didn't really begin until 1942.
2. Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941.
3. The USSR didn't hand any people over to Hitler after the war began.
It is true that in the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, the USSR and Germany divided up Poland between themselves. Stalin is a hard person to defend. However, it is true that the Soviet Union sought an alliance with the western powers against Germany before World War II began. The western powers didn't want to deal with Stalin. This probably pressured Stalin into making the 1939 Pact with Germany. Both the Germans and Soviets knew it was not a permanent relationship. It was more an agreement to buy time and build up armies.
I’ve scoured the entire internet and can find no evidence that half of the Jews killed by Hitler were sent to him willingly by the USSR. The Nazi’s definitely killed Russian/Polish Jews (as well as Russians and Poles in general), but why not place that blame solely on the Nazi’s? Soviets killing Polish military and political dissendents wasn’t anything new. They had killed plenty of their own for similar reasons. In that aspect they were equal opportunity killers, however wholesale genocide was a construct unique to the Nazis.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markg91359
Honestly, its one of the dumbest statements I've seen here on the History Forum.
Try this logic:
1. The Final Solution didn't really begin until 1942.
2. Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941.
3. The USSR didn't hand any people over to Hitler after the war began.
It is true that in the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, the USSR and Germany divided up Poland between themselves. Stalin is a hard person to defend. However, it is true that the Soviet Union sought an alliance with the western powers against Germany before World War II began. The western powers didn't want to deal with Stalin. This probably pressured Stalin into making the 1939 Pact with Germany. Both the Germans and Soviets knew it was not a permanent relationship. It was more an agreement to buy time and build up armies.
I agree with you guys, I never heard that half of the Jews killed by the Nazis were sent by the Soviet Union. That sounds like someone got their facts mixed up. Maybe a large number of Jewish people came from areas originally came from areas under Soviet control that the Germans invaded. But you cannot blame the Soviets for what the Germans or the German puppet allies did to civilians behind the lines. Someone maybe has misinterpreted this to blame the Soviets instead.
The one thing I disagree with here is MarkG's comment that the Western powers did not want to deal with Stalin. Too often we see this from the Soviet POV, well only if Stalin could have trusted the western powers! I don't know a better example of successful propaganda became we really should be asking how the Western powers could have trusted and dealt with a man of Stalin's reputation in 1939!
Henry Kissinger in his book Diplomacy has a chapter called Stalin's Bazaar or something like that. A bazaar is a kind of market and that is what Stalin really wanted to do. But the Western powers were not going to give away eastern Poland, parts of Finland and Romania and the entire Baltic States to have an alliance with the Soviets. So that is why Hitler won the diplomatic battle with Stalin and not Britain and France. There was NOTHING to stop the Soviet Union from warning Nazi Germany and guaranteeing Poland after the British and France did. It is just that there was nothing it for Stalin.
I mostly agree regarding Stalin. He was really allied with neither side in the war between Nazi Germany and Britain/France in 1939-40. He was really hoping for a replay of WWI when the Nazis invaded France, and that a long, drawn out war of attrition would essentially bleed both the Western powers and Nazi Germany dry. That, of course, would have left the Red Army as the dominant military power in Europe allowing Stalin to essentially have carte blanche as to what territory he would choose to occupy. The quick fall of France obviously threw a monkey wrench into Stalin's plan.
Whatever else you may think about Stalin, you've got to give him credit for having some big stones. It's was pretty ballsy of him to complain to Britain/USA about not opening a second front against Germany in 1941-42 when Stalin himself refused to open a second front in 1940 while France was being defeated.
I mostly agree regarding Stalin. He was really allied with neither side in the war between Nazi Germany and Britain/France in 1939-40. He was really hoping for a replay of WWI when the Nazis invaded France, and that a long, drawn out war of attrition would essentially bleed both the Western powers and Nazi Germany dry. That, of course, would have left the Red Army as the dominant military power in Europe allowing Stalin to essentially have carte blanche as to what territory he would choose to occupy. The quick fall of France obviously threw a monkey wrench into Stalin's plan.
Whatever else you may think about Stalin, you've got to give him credit for having some big stones. It's was pretty ballsy of him to complain to Britain/USA about not opening a second front against Germany in 1941-42 when Stalin himself refused to open a second front in 1940 while France was being defeated.
I agree with you word for word.
I must admit that I am tired of people making excuses for Stalin's actions before and during WW2.
For instance, as you point out, Stalin stayed neutral so most of the German army was able to concentrate against France in 1940 and then turn against the Soviet Union the following year. So there was no second front for the Germans in WW2 unlike in WW1 and Stalin bears a great amount of responsibility for that and for all the deaths that it caused.
I must admit that I am tired of people making excuses for Stalin's actions before and during WW2.
For instance, as you point out, Stalin stayed neutral so most of the German army was able to concentrate against France in 1940 and then turn against the Soviet Union the following year. So there was no second front for the Germans in WW2 unlike in WW1 and Stalin bears a great amount of responsibility for that and for all the deaths that it caused.
Stalin's hands were hardly clean, true enough. But long before we get there, we'd have to apportion blame for WWI - & Britain & France did their best to starve Germany, even after the Armistice. Germany's territorial possessions (colonies) were carved up among the winners, indemnifications & damages beyond all reason were imposed upon them, bits of Germany were carved away & given away. Germany also allowed Lenin transit rights (late in WWI) from Switzerland back to Russia, in hopes of fomenting a revolution that would take Russia out of WWI. & of course the Allies did their best to conquer Russia, intervening militarily (& politically & economically) on behalf of the White Russians.
The German military maneuvered so that they didn't sign the peace accord, & they blamed the German republic for signing, & smeared the socialists & liberals, & invented the Stab in the back theory - as that was far better than admitting that their military blundered its way into war & into defeat. & of course the Jews were to blame - setting the stage for the rise of Hitler & the implementation of the Holocaust.
It's was pretty ballsy of him to complain to Britain/USA about not opening a second front against Germany in 1941-42 when Stalin himself refused to open a second front in 1940 while France was being defeated.
I never made that connection. But I guess that FDR wasn't good about asking for reciprocity. One of the reasons I rank him with Pierce, Buchanan and Nixon as Presidents.
I must admit that I am tired of people making excuses for Stalin's actions before and during WW2.
For instance, as you point out, Stalin stayed neutral so most of the German army was able to concentrate against France in 1940 and then turn against the Soviet Union the following year. So there was no second front for the Germans in WW2 unlike in WW1 and Stalin bears a great amount of responsibility for that and for all the deaths that it caused.
Well, you've left a lot of important details out.
First of all, many people forget that there has traditionally been a historical alliance between the western powers (Britain and France) and Russia. In World War I, these powers were part of the Triple Entente. Russia signed a separate peace treaty with Germany in 1918. However, if Russia had not been on the side of the western powers in the beginning of the war, its likely Germany would have marched into Paris for a second time.
Traditionally, countries have interests based on their geography. These interests transcend political systems. Russia's interests remained the same after World War I even though it was an authoritarian communist country ruled by Joe Stalin.
In 1938, British and French leaders Chamberlain and Daladier shocked the world by meeting with Hitler and signing Munich Agreement. Stalin had been hoping for an agreement with Britain and France of his own that would have involved an alliance against Hitler. The signing of the Munich Accord told Stalin that these countries would be unlikely to help if Germany chose to invade Russia. Nevertheless, Russian Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov attempted to negotiate such an alliance with Britain and France into early 1939. Stalin was unable to get what he considered a favorable agreement and eventually dismissed Litvinov and appointed Molotov as his new foreign minister. Molotov was more sympathetic to the Germans than Litvinov had been.
Later in 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union negotiated the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. This divided up Poland between the two countries. Most observers saw this as a temporary measure. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had spelled out his desire to invade Russia and seize territory that he would use as "lebensraum" or living space for the German people.
My point really is that Stalin, despite being a tyrant and a butcher, desired a military alliance with the western powers because he saw the danger that Germany posed to the Soviet Union. It was the inability to get this alliance that caused the Soviet Union to enter into the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Perhaps, if the western powers had done so early on, World War II could have at least been postponed.
I maintain that despite the fact that Stalin was one of the worst things that could have happened to the Russian people that his country's alliance with America and Britain during World War II was one of the best things that could have happened for us. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who would have died fighting the Nazis probably lived because of it.
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