My point is that your link claiming the Soviets didn’t agree to invade Poland with the Nazis is historical revisionism, blatantly ignores facts and context and just does not hold up under mild scrutiny. It’s literally what I stated in my first comment.
When the Soviets did not manage to get an alliance with the west (the west still deemed the communists a huge threat as well), they did genuinely attempt to ally with the Nazis. And that’s what initially happened. Stalin didn’t believe the alliance would last of course, but ultimately he too was surprised by how early Hitler invaded. Molotov even called fascism “a matter of taste”, to demonstrate the collaboration between the two nations at that point.
The “Phoney war” has always been a bit of a misnomer. Poland fell before the British expeditionary force could even be deployed. Later revealed French intelligence showed that France severly overestimated the German strength on the French border. They didn’t press hard yet because they believed they wouldn’t be able to.
But they UK and France didn’t declare war for performative reasons. They stepped in, even if not immediately effectively, whereas the Soviets initially collaborated with the Nazis and waited to be attacked instead. They too could have unilaterally guaranteed Poland, yet chose not too. They spied an opportunity for themselves to regain lands lost to Poland in an earlier war instead and took it.
The Soviets, plainly and simply, did not agree to invade Poland. That was not a part of the non-aggression pact, nor what “spheres of influence” entailed. Those were lines the other party was not meant to cross if the likely war broke out, and secondly neither party expected the other to uphold them long-term. The Soviets never intended on allying with the Nazis, non-aggression is not an alliance. You are doing historical revisionism, as much as you deride me for it.
As for the British and French, again, they did absolutely nothing of value and watched it all happen. Should the soviets have let Poland fall entirely to the Nazis? Should the soviets have launched a war they weren’t ready for? Seems to me you wished the soviets were stronger than they were at the time and could have taken on a far more industrialized power with a fair degree of confidence, or otherwise let Poland fall to the Nazis and be subject to Nazi slaughter and the Holocaust.
My point is that your link claiming the Soviets didn’t agree to invade Poland with the Nazis is historical revisionism, blatantly ignores facts and context and just does not hold up under mild scrutiny. It’s literally what I stated in my first comment.
When the Soviets did not manage to get an alliance with the west (the west still deemed the communists a huge threat as well), they did genuinely attempt to ally with the Nazis. And that’s what initially happened. Stalin didn’t believe the alliance would last of course, but ultimately he too was surprised by how early Hitler invaded. Molotov even called fascism “a matter of taste”, to demonstrate the collaboration between the two nations at that point.
The “Phoney war” has always been a bit of a misnomer. Poland fell before the British expeditionary force could even be deployed. Later revealed French intelligence showed that France severly overestimated the German strength on the French border. They didn’t press hard yet because they believed they wouldn’t be able to.
But they UK and France didn’t declare war for performative reasons. They stepped in, even if not immediately effectively, whereas the Soviets initially collaborated with the Nazis and waited to be attacked instead. They too could have unilaterally guaranteed Poland, yet chose not too. They spied an opportunity for themselves to regain lands lost to Poland in an earlier war instead and took it.
The Soviets, plainly and simply, did not agree to invade Poland. That was not a part of the non-aggression pact, nor what “spheres of influence” entailed. Those were lines the other party was not meant to cross if the likely war broke out, and secondly neither party expected the other to uphold them long-term. The Soviets never intended on allying with the Nazis, non-aggression is not an alliance. You are doing historical revisionism, as much as you deride me for it.
As for the British and French, again, they did absolutely nothing of value and watched it all happen. Should the soviets have let Poland fall entirely to the Nazis? Should the soviets have launched a war they weren’t ready for? Seems to me you wished the soviets were stronger than they were at the time and could have taken on a far more industrialized power with a fair degree of confidence, or otherwise let Poland fall to the Nazis and be subject to Nazi slaughter and the Holocaust.