Ferocitus
Deity
Unnuanced nonsense. There are different types of each, just as there different types of anarchism, democracy, monarchy, socialism, libertarianism etc.
The European Project: the future of the EU.
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Oerdin
Deity
That is one of the dumber things I have read in a while. Every single communist country which has ever been in existence has been a totalitarian dictatorship. Without exception.
Chile wasn't that totalitarian; the communist party was even elected there. Pinochet coup followed, backed by the US.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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Ignoring the utter uselessness of the term 'totalitarian', what makes a country a 'communist country'?
Oerdin
Deity
Chile wasn't full on communist, it may have become so given time, but thankfully people in Chile saw the danger and decided that was not a risk they were prepared to take. Chile is better off today because of it.
Ferocitus
Deity
There are about 15 variations of communism described at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies
and about 28 variants of Fascism at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Oerdin
Deity
I am reminded of the Monty Pyrhon sketch about spam. At the end of the day it is all just spam. Communism is the greatest evil ever experienced by man responsible for more deaths than any other ideology it always ended in the exact same totalitarian hell. The people who support it are either fools or narcissists who wrongly think that some how, if they were the dictator, that some how they could make it different from what it has always been before. You are not any more enlightened and would end up at the same ignoble end.
Ferocitus
Deity
People in Chile? LOL.
Pinochet, backed by the US, instituted a military junta in Chile that ended forty years of democratic government.
And that is bullfeathers, for reasons explained below.
This is a nonsense counterfactual that you have no way of knowing, much less proving.
Hitler attacked Poland a mere week after signing of the MRP - to suggest that this was a mere coincidence is just ridiculous.
Firstly, those negotiations failed not because France and Britain "refused to cooperate", but because USSR demanded military access to Poland, which the latter refused to give, fearing the Russian troops would never leave. And weren't they damn right...
Second, Stalin was conducting negotiations with Nazis in parallel, not "after".
Thirdly, even if the negotiations had failed due to western "refusal", no way did this compel the USSR to ally Germany the way it did. Had Stalin actually been sincerely interested in containing the Nazis - instead of setting them upon the West - he could have, for starters, not supplied them with oil, grain, rubber, manganese, iron and whatever else they asked for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Commercial_Agreement_(1940)
The British and the French did declare on Germany after the attack on Poland. To blame them for pushing USSR into allying with Germany as if there was no other choice is, again, ridiculous.
The Baltic States gave in where Poland and Finland did not and accepted the Soviet ultimatums in September-October 1939, allowing their air, naval and army bases into the country, as the Soviets demanded.
Well, at least this stopped the Germans from moving in... oh wait, it didn't.
Instead, it resulted in annexations, followed by wave of murders, deportations and looting...
But at least this stopped the Germans from moving in ... oh wait, it still didn't.
Because, of course, Soviets had not been preparing for any sort of defensive action.
Naturally this was because they were kind-hearted and trusting and expected they won't have to fight anyone... and not at all for any other reason. /sarcasm.
A "communist country" is somewhat of an oxymoron in the first place.
Ferocitus
Deity
Some in Lithuania surrendered, and some were very enthusiastic Nazis themselves.
The massacre of Jews at Plungė on June 22, 1941, occurred on the same day as Operation Barbarossa commenced.
It preceded the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 when mass extermination of Jews, Roma, Russians, homosexuals became official Nazi German state policy.
There is a local saying, cauterizing the behavior of so willing associates:
"(he is) more (of a) royalist than the King (himself)" ^_^
Ferocitus
Deity
I heard that one a very long time ago, but my Lithuanian is too poor now to even begin to translate it.
I get the impression that many people think that geopolitics operates in a Newtonian way, where an imposed force results in a predictable reaction within a prescribed time.
Iran took 50 US citizens hostages in 1979. Is anybody really surprised if that action hasn't been forgotten or forgiven, even several decades later? Kill US citizens and you can bet that they won't drop marshmallows from B52's in response.
Michael Collins coordinated the elimination of many British spies in Ireland in one night. The next day the Brits responded by sending troops and police to a football stadium, where they opened fire, and killed even those who might have been ambivalent or apathetic about the push for Irish independence. Whether that response was justified, or proportionate is just a topic for student essays. It was repulsive and brutal, but that's how the political world works. Now, and for the foreseeable future.
If some extremists decide to lob rockets into Israel from Palestine, then that doesn't mean an equal number will, or should be returned in response. It doesn't matter one iota whether you support the Palestinian cause and find Israel's treatment of Palestinians repulsive - individuals don't get to choose the consequences of those who decided to act in a way they thought was best, for Israel or Palestine.
The USA, Great Britain, France and others opposed the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. The USA and others actually sent troops onto Russian soil at the time. After the Revolution, and after WW2, some influential Americans and others continued to threaten Russia with obliteration. Does anyone think that has been forgotten or dismissed as just idle political froth? Or that the bluster of some nitwit Russian Communists to eliminate US imperialists from the face of the Earth is something the USA takes lightly?
Balts, Hungarians, Czechs and others didn't all have clean hands during WW2. Stalin's retribution was nasty and really brutal. But he didn't do it alone. He had henchman, spies and informants within those countries. Remember too, that Nazis kept lists of who were sympathetic, who were paid, and who they used to further their ambitions. Those records weren't all destroyed and many ended up in Russian hands, just as East Germany's Stasi records were disclosed to the public after the fall of the Berlin Wall and are there as stark witness to appalling behaviour. There were Russians who thought that the reparations for their losses, for the Leningrad siege, and for other events were insufficient. There were those who were determined to ensure that anti-Russian fascism would not rise again, and they went about it with ruthless viciousness. American napalming of Vietnamese children was hardly better or worse.
The general public doesn't get to choose the consequences of the actions of some people in their countries; they might be ones who were elected, or not. Many innocent people get caught up, suffer major inconveniences, and many die in these conflicts and ideological struggles as a consequence of the actions of people they have no control over, vote for, or against, or even know exist.
It can be unbelievably vicious, or subtle. If a government imposes sanctions against Iran, North Korea or other countries and cultures, we shouldn't be surprised
when those countries (and opportunists) respond by infecting businesses, hospitals and government departments with ransomware, or cleaning out crypto-currency lockers.
People can try to make the best argument for why, for example, some country has been treated unjustly by Russia, or why some Russians think some have assisted their ideological enemies and punished those perceived enemies (and many innocent ones too!), but it isn't going to matter. There is no logic or proportion in RealPolitik. Records are kept by the US State Department, KGB/FSB HQ, British intelligence services, Mossad, Turkey's MIT, and many others, and what's in those records can have effects across several generations, and kick in at unexpected times.
I hope people continue to argue along the partisan lines you read in these forums. It amuses me greatly when I take a break from doing other stuff and wander in.
I'm pretty sure every country in Europe, if not in the world, had some enthusiastic Nazis (and Communists) at the time. However, most were lucky enough to not get occupied by both Nazi Germany and USSR and so these got no chance to act out.
I don't think there has ever been a conquest without some becoming collaborators. Hell, I bet King Leopold had some black henchmen help run his Congolose estates.
I'll remember to bring that up first thing when someone mentions colonialism, let's see what people tell me...
You mean these guys?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_Socialist_Patriotic_Organisation
Yeah, debating doesn't work by random googling out of spite, Yeekim... I won't even bother looking at that, that I never heard of them should tell you how 'bright' your idea was already.
(hm, looking at your reply to Ferocitus, though, and the 'socialist' part in your link, please don't tell me you are out of touch with reality that much that now you want to link Estonia/Finland and the other merry band of nazi client states, with Greece after it got occupied by nazi Germany. Greece actually fought against the axis and won against Italy. I know, I am endlessly optimistic, and I suppose you did).
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Interesting how a thread on the future of the EU descends into national attacks over events that will soon be a century old...
And how was the USSR supposed to prevent the germans from gobbling up the whole of Poland, and getting ever closer to the russian heartlands, if Poland refused an alliance with them? You still can't see how a rational actor would necessarily consider annexing part of that land before the germans could?
Stalin might have personally felt he had old scores to settle with the poles, back from the days of the russian civil war. But he wasn't the emotional kind of leader who lets that take precedence. It was plain,, looking at events on that autumn, that he wasn't eager to advance with the partition of Poland. He waited to see whether the germans would quickly win, or instead get bogged down. I have little doubt that if Germany had been hit with a serious attack on the Rhineland, and not been able to finish off Poland in half a few weeks, the soviets wouldn't have invaded as they did.
Do I have hard evidence, no. But you do not hesitate to attribute designs to them without evidence either. We know what happened, we do not know what might have happened. As it happened my interpretation of the move is that at the time it was mostly driven by defensive concerns. Those scaps of territory did not add much to the USSR apart from some strategic depth near its second city, versus a n extremely threatening enemy. The "division of spoils" came after, in Yalta and Potsdam.
Everyone was conducting negotiations with everyone. Stalin's interest in negotiations with the germans up to mid-1939 can be ascertained by the fact that he made a point of having them negotiated with a jewish foreign minister and jewish doplimats. There was no love lost there. Negotiations only got serious in the summer whet it was clear that other countries were not willing to do what it took to put a stop to the germans then and there.
That was one of his dumb moves. I will repeat, he was no strategic genius. But he did not do that trade deal out of any fondness for the nazis. He did it because the germans were willing to sell technology, industrial products and even weapons in exchange.
Look at a map of Europe in 1939-1940 and tell me: with whom else was the USSR able to trade? France had fallen. The UK was sending its own technology to the US, and both those countries were using up their fill industrial capacity to build up their own military. Both had a history of hostility towards the USSR. Whereas Germany had been trading technology for resources with the soviets since the end of WW1.
Sweden supplied the Reich with iron throughout the whole war. Finland too. Where is your viking-hate over that? Your hate of liberal democracy as a regime capable of entering into trade and giving support to the nazis? Or is it that you do you understand the strategic position they were in, but are selectively blind about the soviet position in 1939?
Yes, they declared war, and promptly showed that they were willing to fight the nazis... to the last pole!
Because Stalin was a fool and kept wanting to believe that Hitler was not that insane he'd open a new front at the time, could be appeased due to his dependency on trade etc, despite all that had happened already. He couldn't. Which kind of backs my original point about Hitler ordering the attack on Poland with or without the soviet-german pact. And blaming the pact for the start of WW2 being a lie.
And how was the USSR supposed to prevent the germans from gobbling up the whole of Poland, and getting ever closer to the russian heartlands, if Poland refused an alliance with them? You still can't see how a rational actor would necessarily consider annexing part of that land before the germans could?
Stalin might have personally felt he had old scores to settle with the poles, back from the days of the russian civil war. But he wasn't the emotional kind of leader who lets that take precedence. It was plain,, looking at events on that autumn, that he wasn't eager to advance with the partition of Poland. He waited to see whether the germans would quickly win, or instead get bogged down. I have little doubt that if Germany had been hit with a serious attack on the Rhineland, and not been able to finish off Poland in half a few weeks, the soviets wouldn't have invaded as they did.
Do I have hard evidence, no. But you do not hesitate to attribute designs to them without evidence either. We know what happened, we do not know what might have happened. As it happened my interpretation of the move is that at the time it was mostly driven by defensive concerns. Those scaps of territory did not add much to the USSR apart from some strategic depth near its second city, versus a n extremely threatening enemy. The "division of spoils" came after, in Yalta and Potsdam.
Everyone was conducting negotiations with everyone. Stalin's interest in negotiations with the germans up to mid-1939 can be ascertained by the fact that he made a point of having them negotiated with a jewish foreign minister and jewish doplimats. There was no love lost there. Negotiations only got serious in the summer whet it was clear that other countries were not willing to do what it took to put a stop to the germans then and there.
That was one of his dumb moves. I will repeat, he was no strategic genius. But he did not do that trade deal out of any fondness for the nazis. He did it because the germans were willing to sell technology, industrial products and even weapons in exchange.
Look at a map of Europe in 1939-1940 and tell me: with whom else was the USSR able to trade? France had fallen. The UK was sending its own technology to the US, and both those countries were using up their fill industrial capacity to build up their own military. Both had a history of hostility towards the USSR. Whereas Germany had been trading technology for resources with the soviets since the end of WW1.
Sweden supplied the Reich with iron throughout the whole war. Finland too. Where is your viking-hate over that? Your hate of liberal democracy as a regime capable of entering into trade and giving support to the nazis? Or is it that you do you understand the strategic position they were in, but are selectively blind about the soviet position in 1939?
Yes, they declared war, and promptly showed that they were willing to fight the nazis... to the last pole!
Because Stalin was a fool and kept wanting to believe that Hitler was not that insane he'd open a new front at the time, could be appeased due to his dependency on trade etc, despite all that had happened already. He couldn't. Which kind of backs my original point about Hitler ordering the attack on Poland with or without the soviet-german pact. And blaming the pact for the start of WW2 being a lie.
All it tells me is that you're a pathetic hypocrite, but that is hardly a surprise. And no, what you are doing has nothing to do with "debating".
Your first and only input since the topic was introduced has been randomly bringing up collaboration in other countries, but when Greek collaboration gets mentioned, it's suddenly "What? No, never heard of them. No. I won't look at that. La-la-la-..."
You'll have to explain what sets "Greece after it got occupied by Nazi Germany" apart from what you call "merry band of nazi client states".
You fought against the Axis as they invaded you. Great. This still didn't stop tens of thousands of Greeks from collaborating with them after surrendering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Battalions
The difference is in that Estonia did not fight the Axis? Well, there was this one small hurdle - by the time Nazis reached Estonia, the USSR had broken it's "mutual cooperation agreement" with us, conducted a coup, arrested and/or murdered most of the senior civil servants and officers, forcibly drafted ~50 000 men (most of whom were sent to perform forced labor in Russia) and was busy pulling out, performing scorched earth tactics in its wake. I'm genuinely sorry these unfortunate circumstances somewhat hampered our capacity in resisting the Axis. Even so, they overran Estonia in roughly the same time they did Greece.
Anyway, why the **** are we even discussing this? Oh, right. Because when the European Parliament condemns both Soviet and Nazi crimes in the same document, you can't resist complaining how "stupid" this is.
And what is really interesting is how people with famous hate-boners for EU are somehow in the middle of it...
By joining Britain and France in their security guarantee. By putting up economic blockade against Germany. By providing weapons and materiel to Poland, like the Allies did to USSR during the lend-lease program. By being less transparent in its intention to use their troops inside Poland the same way they used them in Baltics - i.e. to stage a coup?
But of course none of these options had the benefit of being able to expand at the expense of neighbors, making them less "rational" I guess.
Fortunately, rest of the world outside Kremlin disagrees with you.
Ferocitus
Deity
You've got to be either joking, blind to facts, or very seriously misinformed.
By grabbing a part of Czechoslovakia at exactly the same time as Hitler annexed Sudetenland, Poland pissed of Britain, France, and the USSR.
You aren't really trying to say that those three countries should have helped them in that effort are you?
According to historian Paul N. Hehn, Poland’s annexation of Teschen may have contributed to the British and French reluctance to attack the Germans with greater forces in September 1939.
Daladier, the French Prime Minister, told the US ambassador to France that: "he hoped to live long enough to pay Poland for her cormorant attitude in the present crisis by proposing a new partition."
The Soviet Prime Minister, Molotov, denounced the Poles as "Hitler's jackals".
In his postwar memoirs, Winston Churchill compared Germany and Poland to vultures landing on the dying carcass of Czechoslovakia and lamented that:
"over a question so minor as Teschen, they [the Poles] sundered themselves from all those friends in France, Britain and the United States who had lifted them once again to a national, coherent life, and whom they were soon to need so sorely. ... It is a mystery and tragedy of European history that a people capable of every heroic virtue ... as individuals, should repeatedly show such inveterate faults in almost every aspect of their governmental life."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaolzie#Part_of_Poland_(1938–1939)
I was asked
and I answered.
Are you saying "well, they should not have tried to prevent it, Poland had it coming"?
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