You asked about the collaborators, not the regimes themselves, so the justification becomes paramount. One group collaborated with a regime which presented itself as a progressive collectivist democracy, the other which actively touted the virtues of its genocidal totalitarianism. That says something about the individuals in question, whether or not they were duped.
Well, firstly, I thought that we were referencing the collaborators at the time of each invasion, rather than both at the time of the Nazi invasion. Secondly, the period between each invasion represents a military occupation of less than two years, which gives pro-Soviet Estonians no more reason to assume that the regime at that time was representative of a long-term Soviet occupation than pro-US Iraqis would have had to believe that 2005 represents the entirety of Iraq's future.
You assume rather more of my position than is reasonable. I merely observed that the Third Reich was a more self-evidently villainous entity than the Soviet Union, nothing more.
Thats just it you see, the fact that they are both written in the same language doesn't mean that they have the same content.
True enough. The pro-Nazi Estonians may have been siding with the greater evil, but they were doing so in reaction to a military occupation, rather than a somewhat corrupt parliamentary democracy, as the pro-Soviets were. That said, it's quite likely that many of the pro-Soviets feared (apparently quite rightly) the threat of a German invasion, and so sought the protection of the USSR. Neither side is without it's ambiguities.
Indeed. After all, the Soviets were our allies whom we only helped to win the war, not the other way around. They made far greater sacrifices than anybody else to achieve that victory.
There's something called Drag nach Osten that you need to now about. If it is not evident to you that Nazi Germany was genociding Jews, Gypsies and Slavs then I see no further point conversing with you.
Quite possibly the case, but, as I said previously, one cannot assume that those who collaborated during the initial invasions realised the extent of Soviet atrocities during the invasion, nor are they likely to have believed that the repression of the regime was anything other than a temporary state of affairs. Let's remember Hanlon's Razor, after all; don't assume that these people were evil when gullibility is also a sufficient explanation.
Well, as I said, there are certainly ambiguities. What I really meant was that the Soviets, for all their sins, at least had something which could legitimately be considered a noble cause, while the Nazis were open racial supremacists. Even if their penchant for genocide hadn't yet been revealed to the general population, their advocacy of ethnic cleansing was well known, having been an integral part of the party platform since the publication of Mein Kampf.
Good for them. I suspect they might even had a place in the world dominated by racial theories after all of the three above were eliminated. 2nd class citizens of a 2nd class race. Oh joy!
I'd say equal rights suit people better in general, but lets leave this opinion of yours as a concluding remark in our debate.
The Nazis never really figured out their position on Finnic peoples. They were never openly hostile, because their alliance of opportunity with Finland prevented it (same reason that the Japanese shot up a few ranks in the Nazi racial hierarchy after the Axis was formed). They were one of those funny groups like Celts and Hungarians who were neither Germanic nor "Mediterranean", but were not Slavic. Either way, they certainly weren't on any Nazi's list of preferred ethnicities...
