to further the distinction , and to make it clearer ( as ı tend to really mess writing online compared to double-triple checks writing at home ) .
there are two distinct Russian approaches to the alliance question . One is pre-May 1940 and peace / war time . Western Europe , especially England rules the world . Communists are on the to do list of the great capitalists in London and Paris . Germany fresh out of the Great War and still paying reperations would have been a nice friend to have . The military schools issue was a two way street , Germans would have a venue to keep up with the West , Russians would have the know-how of awe inspiring German technology . And when there was a critical mass , maybe Moscow and Berlin could stand shoulder to shoulder against West Europe . Some romanticism as well , if that is the correct term here that the Germans could be induced to think more in revolutionary terms , though ı would doubt any single person in Moscow would place this in anywhere but slight hope section of their minds . Germans had already crushed a couple of revolutions , didn't they ?
Moving on in time . The sides have clashed in Spain , everybody expects a showdown between the two , Czechoslovakia has been stabbed in the back to keep the Nazis in charge ; Russians have a useful intelligence operation and they are really aware of the travails . The rarely studied history of how German generals thought Nazis to be useful fools and discovered they were neither fools nor even useful shows the sad failure of the Seecktian approach to get rid of Adolf and his followers . One reason Himmler provides the names is that he expects the favour returned , though the Russian list would contain unimportant , easily replaced figures and none of the people who lived up to their -von prefixes ( or deserved one in the multiple cases where they didn't have it ) ; though few that disappeared were actual disasters for their families . These are two thugs who have sized each other and they have discovered they can give the other a bloody nose . The first rule of the bully is to find someone that can't bully back , so they are talking each other to avoid each other .
all the while Communists expect the leading Fascists to be hypocrites , just like themselves . They don't give it enough credibility that Goering has claims around Kiev for his personal holdings ( just as an example if am not mistaking it ) though they know there is going to be a reckoning with "Capitalism" and they must prepare regardless of whom they would face . We are Turks , we have a healthy tradition of Moskof bashing , though when going through the 1939 pact critically , one finds some sympathy with the Reds in Turkish accounts of the day . This is the vacillating emnity .
post May 1940 , there is no vacillation. Everything has turned upsidedown in the world . France is no more , London will bring America in . A limited amount of time when Germany has a chance to gain an advantage , any advantage . The sides know it very well that they will fight and no quarters will be given . By 1941 , Stalin was always lying when he talked good of Germans . That didn't stop him from searching a military pact against Middle East with the Germans to get extra advantages for the big one . The one to follow the comparitively smaller affair where they would stab Germans in the back . They would have read de Tocqueville , they knew they would face Americans someday .
