gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/theserfstv/status/1327606363388723200

Taintrunner posted:

the zoomers are hopeless

indigi posted:

I truly can’t believe people are talking about the holodomor in 2020 as a “genocide” like it wasn’t a famine that got spun into a Nazi propaganda creation that was popularized by William Randolph Hearst and was widely debunked in American popular culture by the 50s. what a time to be alive

gradenko_2000 posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

Its Coke posted:

he's half-right. it's not leftists in general that are like this, just tankies

Ardent Communist posted:

absent any extra information, immediately going against the united states' side during a geopolitical conflict is almost always the right move.

quote:

The one exception I can see is the second world war, where they were aligned with communists due to fascism picking a fight with everyone.

Even the guys they try to prop up to overthrow dictators tend to be worse than the dictators they are replacing.

Ardent Communist posted:

absent any extra information, immediately going against the united states' side during a geopolitical conflict is almost always the right move. The one exception I can see is the second world war, where they were aligned with communists due to fascism picking a fight with everyone.

Even the guys they try to prop up to overthrow dictators tend to be worse than the dictators they are replacing.

Its Coke posted:

he's half-right. it's not leftists in general that are like this, just tankies

CharlestheHammer posted:

I mean they weren’t really allies unless you think the UK were their allies after the Chamberlain treaty

CharlestheHammer posted:

I am not going to call it something it isn’t nah

Hodgepodge posted:

America had to be dragged into fighting the nazis and technically only did so because year ally, Japan, attacked them. The father and grandfather of future presidents lovef them so much he refused to stop selling them war materials.

thekeeshman posted:

The Soviets let the Nazis use their territory to develop their tanks and tank tactics, in defiance of the Versailles treaty. They then teamed up and invaded Poland together. Call it an alliance or a very special friendship but the Soviets were very helpful to the rise of the Nazis.

Ardent Communist posted:

Yeah, that's what a moron thinks about the pre-war relationship between Germany and the Soviet Union. You're ignoring (either out of ignorance or because you're arguing in bad faith) that Stalin tried to get multiple alliances against Germany, with France, Great Britain, even Poland. That last one is surprising, because Poland's government was massively anti-soviet, and both sides had bad blood because of what happened during the revolution.
Then it's also ignoring how Stalin made overtures during that whole appeasement thing to stop Hitler, since Czechoslovakia could have withstood Germany far better than Poland, both due to more defensible borders and more tanks (it's helpful to remember how much stronger the german tank forces got once they could implement all those tanks into their forces).
Then it's ignoring that if Stalin didn't invade Poland (some stalinists like to argue that since the government had left the country by the time the Red army invaded it wasn't an invasion, but I don't bother) then Germany, who was already winning handily in Poland, would have moved the borders that much further east. That border being moved west both helped the Soviet Union put more land between Germany and their major population centres, and the Jewish population in those areas who were able to be moved east when Barbarossa happened.

Basically all of Stalin's action between the wars should be seen in the light that he was doing everything he could to prepare to strengthen and defend the Soviet Union for the war that many people could see coming. The results speak for themselves.

thekeeshman posted:

The invasion of Poland was literally the thing which brought the UK and France into the war against Germany, which Stalin knew would happen since they had guaranteed Poland's safety. If Stalin was so worried about Hitler, he could have joined the war on the Allies' side at that point, so it would have been UK, France, Poland, and the Soviets vs the Nazis and Italy, which might have had a chance.

Instead he helped the Nazis neutralize Poland, which freed up Nazi resources to deal with the French and British, after which the Nazis were able to concentrate their forces against the Soviets since they had eliminated every land opponent in Europe (again, with Soviet help). Stalin passed up the chance to actually do something about Nazi expansion and aggression when they were comparatively weak and chose instead to ally with the Nazis and help them invade another country.

I would also point out that the invasion of Poland becomes a riskier proposition without Soviet help, since they would have to deal with all of Poland as well as the entry of Britain and France, and that the Soviet alliance might have been the factor which made the Nazis decide to go ahead in the first place. The Soviets were so ashamed of their own behavior that they denied the existence of the pact until 1989, despite the German copies having been published soon after the war's end.

thekeeshman posted:

The Soviets let the Nazis use their territory to develop their tanks and tank tactics, in defiance of the Versailles treaty. They then teamed up and invaded Poland together. Call it an alliance or a very special friendship but the Soviets were very helpful to the rise of the Nazis.

thekeeshman posted:

The second world war, where the communists aligned with the US after their Fascist allies betrayed them.

Ardent Communist posted:

Basically all of Stalin's action between the wars should be seen in the light that he was doing everything he could to prepare to strengthen and defend the Soviet Union for the war that many people could see coming. The results speak for themselves.

multijoe posted:

If Stalin really was doing everything he could to prepare for inevitable war with Germany you'd have thought he'd have been less surprised by military intelligence telling him the Nazis were about to invade and enacted countermeasures for that long anticipated event before they actually invaded his country

multijoe posted:

If Stalin really was doing everything he could to prepare for inevitable war with Germany you'd have thought he'd have been less surprised by military intelligence telling him the Nazis were about to invade and enacted countermeasures for that long anticipated event before they actually invaded his country

multijoe posted:

If Stalin really was doing everything he could to prepare for inevitable war with Germany you'd have thought he'd have been less surprised by military intelligence telling him the Nazis were about to invade and enacted countermeasures for that long anticipated event before they actually invaded his country

Ardent Communist posted:

But you're right, he wasn't infallible and the sheer shock stopped him from acting for a couple days.

multijoe posted:

Could you guys get your own story straight before you queue up to tell me why I'm wrong at least?

indigi posted:

you're extremely confident about something you've demonstrated profound ignorance about

Frosted Flake posted:

How did Romania end up in the Axis instead of aligned with France anyway?

Malleum posted:

The Romanian king instituted a royal dictatorship in 1938 and aligned himself with domestic fascists, which led to a lot of internal politicking about a military confrontation with the USSR and when the breakdown of the defensive treaty Romania had with Poland when the Poles got invaded let Romania remain a neutral power, they got first-hand knowledge of exactly what a treaty with France would have been worth in 1940. The Soviet Union wasn't too pleased to be neighbors with a fascist-sympathizing absolute monarchy and Romania had already had a big kerfuffle over refusing Soviets military access through the country in a theoretical Soviet-German war over Czechoslovakia, so their options there were extremely limited on the eastern front. So they couldn't remain neutral, because they were an oil exporter and any kind of modern war would necessarily require access to the Romanian oilfields or the denial of them to the enemy, they couldn't be a part of the allies because France had just gotten steamrolled and Britain couldn't do poo poo on the continent, they had a bad history with the Soviets who were very interested in making parts of the Romanian border part of the Moldovan SSR, so the only option left was ally with the rest of their neighbors in the Axis.