• RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    Genuinely, what should the Soviet Union have done instead? Let the Nazis take all of Poland?

    Start with not making a pact with Nazis to divide Europe imo. That’s one part that was enabling the Nazi expansion.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      They didn’t, the closest is there being lines neither country should cross. Both the Soviets and Nazis knew war was coming between them and that the treaty would not hold for long, it wasn’t a long-term plan.

      • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        Having a pact and zones of interest freed up manpower for Nazis to use in other parts of Europe. That’s how it was part in enabling them. Not that USSR would’ve been guilty of that alone or nowhere near the first to enable the Nazis.

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          So your complaint is that the USSR didn’t take even more of the brunt of the Nazis forces.

          • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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            2 days ago

            My complaint is making a deals and pacts with Nazis. Again, that includes everyone, not just USSR. If everyone had put up stronger opposition from the start then all could’ve been stopped way earlier.

            • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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              2 days ago

              The USSR tried extremely hard to form a unified opposition to the Nazis, and the Western powers responded by signing pacts with the Nazis. As a result, the USSR was left with the choice to also sign a pact to buy time and keep the Nazis out of some of Eastern Europe for a time, or to let them have Eastern Europe and then have to fight a war from a worse position with less preparation.

              They literally did choose the option that allowed them to put up the strongest opposition possible. If they had done what you wanted, the Nazis would have won the Eastern front.

              • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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                2 days ago

                We don’t know when Nazis would’ve invaded USSR. They still had Western Allies to deal with. The pact gave breathing room to USSR but it also pointed them towards West. So same deal as what the West wanted to do.

                • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                  1 day ago

                  We don’t know when Nazis would’ve invaded USSR.

                  But they would have invaded, probably sooner, so just letting them have all of Eastern Europe in advance would have resulted in the Nazis winning the Eastern front.

                  They still had Western Allies to deal with.

                  Which was true when they invaded them historically too, so I’m not sure what your point was.

                  The pact gave breathing room to USSR but it also pointed them towards West.

                  The USSR already did the overwhelming amount of the work in defeating the Nazis, it’s pretty file to say they should have let themselves get annihilated so the West could do even less.

                  • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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                    1 day ago

                    I’m not sure why people think it’s either or when I’ve been very clearly saying that neither should’ve been making the deals. West made deals that damn them, but stopped at Poland. Soviet Union was put in a shitty position but also they agreed to carve up Poland alongside Nazi Germany. I’d say that’s all around pretty objectionable.

                • mathemachristian[he]@lemmy.ml
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                  1 day ago

                  Hitler literally wrote a book on how much he hated communists, the bolsheviks and wanted to kill them before he even became chancellor. They were rallying against “judeo-bolshevism” from the very start. It was always very clear that the Nazis saw the main enemy in the east.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              2 days ago

              The only one trying to do that legitimately was the USSR, Britain and France sabotaged talks of anti-Nazi alliance every single time. The west wanted the Nazis and Soviets to kill each other, and then finish off the weaker one if possible.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  2 days ago

                  The western allies were doing tons of trade with the Nazis and sabotaged talks of alliance with the Soviets up until the war, hoping each would kill the other. This isn’t controversial.

                  • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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                    1 day ago

                    It isn’t, neither is that they were the first ones (after Poland) to actually fight the Nazis. So can’t knock them on that account

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          Sure would’ve been great if the Soviet Union had the industrial power to take Nazi Germany on by itself, or had the trade with the west at the time to help close the gap. No perfect solution was available to the Soviets.

          • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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            2 days ago

            I mean we don’t know what would’ve happened but yes everyone was playing time and hoping Nazis would look elsewhere for at least some time.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              2 days ago

              We know that the Soviet Union was industrializing at incredibly high rates, but was still far behind Germany in total industrialization. We know that the west was trading a ton with the Nazis, and were hostile to the Soviets. We know that the Nazis and Soviets hated each other. What should the Soviet Union have done? Declare war before they were ready, and risk everyone allying with Nazi Germany? Let the Nazis take all of Poland?

              • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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                1 day ago

                Prepare for war within their own borders, mobilize. That alone would’ve helped overall anti-Nazi effort. Now they could first divide Poland with the Soviets and then focus on the West and then head East. East and West being mobilized would’ve been a big barrier.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  1 day ago

                  Gotcha, so you would’ve let the Nazis take all of Poland, with all of the consequences of that, such as extending the Holocaust to further ground. The Soviets were doing all they could to prepare, so this just reads as you preferring Poland be sacrificed so the Soviets could have maintained “moral purity.”

                  • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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                    1 day ago

                    I would’ve liked to see USSR try to prevent the invasion from happening instead of joining it.

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Them: “so what should they have done?”

      You: “Well I’ll tell you what they shouldn’t have done!”

      So, in short, you can’t actually answer the question.

      • iii@mander.xyz
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        2 days ago

        Haha, what a crazy way of thinking.

        “Don’t eat your own shit!”

        “Well, what should I do instead of eating my own shit?! 😕”

          • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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            2 days ago

            Their instance hints it’s rather a defence mechanism against the moral ramifications of making a deal with Nazis. It’s not an unfamiliar thing to me, I’ve seen it a lot

                • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                  2 days ago

                  Sorry, I’ll try to put it more clear for you: You write like a teenager who thinks overwriting lazy insults with lots of purple prose that you picked up from Japanese children’s cartoons makes them something more than just lazy insults.

                  • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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                    2 days ago

                    I’m not a native speaker, I’m just writing how we’ve been taught to write in school. If that comes off as “purple prose” or anime, then not sure what to tell you. Miyazaki wasn’t a big part of our school curriculum.