The sacrifice and courage of Soviet soldiers in the face of Nazi aggression is profound and worthy of admiration, yes.
Should be noted that Stalin was a Hitler-enabler and early ally, or at least subtle collaborator, leading up to the onset of the war. The western democracies should have done a better job of building a coalition with Stalin in the thirties, but failed, hoping appeasement and hand-wringing would do the trick instead.
Soviet soldiers also invaded Finland around that time and were complete assholes there, even if they did get their asses handed to them by a numerically-inferior, but fierce fighting source. It’s sad that most of the slaughter was inflicted upon Ukrainian conscripts who probably didn’t actually give a shit about annexing Finland.
Should be noted that Stalin was a Hitler-enabler and early ally, or at least subtle collaborator
lie, western “democracies” refused to ally with stalin against hitler hoping hitler will destroy communism (he kinda did too).
And ukrainians are not some divine angels who would think differently from all soviet republics somehow. They were part of the red army and soviets thought shifting the border away from important city like leningrad, I am not defending invasion of finland I think it was a net negative but maybe that invasion saved leningrad afterall.
To say they “collaborated” by using Poland as a battleground is dishonest.
In the end that was clearly an agreement on when/where the war would begin, as Poland was somewhat Nazi-aligned (but not part of the Nazi project) and the Soviets knew it’d be better to have them as an unwilling buffer than to see them completely allied with Germany.
Make no mistake, they sent their armies there to fight each other to the death.
The sacrifice and courage of Soviet soldiers in the face of Nazi aggression is profound and worthy of admiration, yes.
Should be noted that Stalin was a Hitler-enabler and early ally, or at least subtle collaborator, leading up to the onset of the war. The western democracies should have done a better job of building a coalition with Stalin in the thirties, but failed, hoping appeasement and hand-wringing would do the trick instead.
Soviet soldiers also invaded Finland around that time and were complete assholes there, even if they did get their asses handed to them by a numerically-inferior, but fierce fighting source. It’s sad that most of the slaughter was inflicted upon Ukrainian conscripts who probably didn’t actually give a shit about annexing Finland.
lie, western “democracies” refused to ally with stalin against hitler hoping hitler will destroy communism (he kinda did too).
And ukrainians are not some divine angels who would think differently from all soviet republics somehow. They were part of the red army and soviets thought shifting the border away from important city like leningrad, I am not defending invasion of finland I think it was a net negative but maybe that invasion saved leningrad afterall.
There was nothing subtle about the collaborative invasion of poland
The whole Eastern Europe was occupied by the Soviets, not just Poland.
Yes, but Poland was jointly invaded. Carved up in a treaty beforehand.
To say they “collaborated” by using Poland as a battleground is dishonest.
In the end that was clearly an agreement on when/where the war would begin, as Poland was somewhat Nazi-aligned (but not part of the Nazi project) and the Soviets knew it’d be better to have them as an unwilling buffer than to see them completely allied with Germany.
Make no mistake, they sent their armies there to fight each other to the death.