Non aggression pacts are not the same as allying with the Nazis. It also wasn’t a betrayal when the Nazis invaded. Destruction of the slavs and Lebensraum in eastern Europe was Hitler’s inevitable goal he ranted about it in meinkamf for fuck sake everyone knew it was happening eventually. The non aggression pact was necessary to delay the inevitable long enough to industrialise and build up a force to fight the Nazis largely alone as the western powers had continuously refused to form an anti nazi pact since 1933. The soviets were also the last major power to sign a non aggression pact with the Nazis. The USSR broke the nazi beast took the majority of the casualties and killed the most Nazis.
The communists were never allies with the Nazis. A non-aggression pact is not an alliance. The communists spent the decade prior trying to form an anti-Nazi coalition force, such as the Anglo-French-Soviet Alliance which was pitched by the communists and rejected by the British and French. The communists hated the Nazis from the beginning, as the Nazi party rose to prominence by killing communists and labor organizers, cemented bourgeois rule, and was violently racist and imperialist, while the communists opposed all of that.
When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon. Throughout the last decade, Britain, France, and other western countries had formed pacts with Nazi Germany, such as the Four-Power Pact, the German-French-Non-Agression Pact, and more. Molotov-Ribbentrop was unique among the non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany in that it was right on the eve of war, and was the first between the USSR and Nazi Germany. It was a last resort, when the west was content from the beginning with working alongside Hitler.
Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
Not only that, but it was the Soviet Union that was responsible for 4/5ths of total Nazi deaths, and winning the war against the Nazis. The Soviet Union did not agree to invade Poland with the Nazis, it was about spheres of influence and red lines the Nazis should not cross in Poland. When the USSR went into Poland, it stayed mostly to areas Poland had invaded and annexed a few decades prior. Should the Soviets have let Poland get entirely taken over by the Nazis, standing idle? The West made it clear that they were never going to help anyone against the Nazis until it was their turn to be targeted.
Churchill did not take the Nazis as a serious threat, and was horrified when FDR and Stalin made a joke about executing Nazis. Churchill starved millions to death in India in preventable ways, and had this to say about it:
I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.
Meanwhile, the soviet famine in the 1930s was the last major famine outside of wartime in the USSR, because collectivized farming achieved food security in a region where famine was common. As a consequence, life expectancy doubled:
The Nazis and soviets were never allies. A non-aggression pact is not an alliance, and the non-aggression pact between the soviets and the Nazis was unique among the other non-aggression pacts in that it was on the eve of war. The soviets knew war was coming, and so bought more time to prepare.
Oh my god look at all the allies hitler had. /s Even the US wanted to help them out with operation paperclip. Maybe the fact that the Soviets killed 75% of Nazis was just a bit of nazi infighting in your eyes.
[edit] lol whoops by the time I found the image and posted, cowbee had already made a much better comment with the same image
also that we started to educate people on how wounds can get infected, how deadly diseases are if not prevented and treated and we adopted hygiene and sterility precautions in hospitals
Sure, but the fact remains that the establishment of socialism under Lenin and solidified under Stalin had a dramatic impact on how these advances were distributed to the people, enabling a far greater access to medical care and necessities than before.
To be clear, you’re talking about this period here, when the USSR defeated fascism and the average life expectancy rose from 35 to 60?
Chilling.
Ah yes, the part where the USSR defeated fascism right fucking after it allied with and was subsequently betrayed by fascism.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain 🙄
Non aggression pacts are not the same as allying with the Nazis. It also wasn’t a betrayal when the Nazis invaded. Destruction of the slavs and Lebensraum in eastern Europe was Hitler’s inevitable goal he ranted about it in meinkamf for fuck sake everyone knew it was happening eventually. The non aggression pact was necessary to delay the inevitable long enough to industrialise and build up a force to fight the Nazis largely alone as the western powers had continuously refused to form an anti nazi pact since 1933. The soviets were also the last major power to sign a non aggression pact with the Nazis. The USSR broke the nazi beast took the majority of the casualties and killed the most Nazis.
The communists were never allies with the Nazis. A non-aggression pact is not an alliance. The communists spent the decade prior trying to form an anti-Nazi coalition force, such as the Anglo-French-Soviet Alliance which was pitched by the communists and rejected by the British and French. The communists hated the Nazis from the beginning, as the Nazi party rose to prominence by killing communists and labor organizers, cemented bourgeois rule, and was violently racist and imperialist, while the communists opposed all of that.
When the many talks of alliances with the west all fell short, the Soviets reluctantly agreed to sign a non-agression pact, in order to delay the coming war that everyone knew was happening soon. Throughout the last decade, Britain, France, and other western countries had formed pacts with Nazi Germany, such as the Four-Power Pact, the German-French-Non-Agression Pact, and more. Molotov-Ribbentrop was unique among the non-agression pacts with Nazi Germany in that it was right on the eve of war, and was the first between the USSR and Nazi Germany. It was a last resort, when the west was content from the beginning with working alongside Hitler.
Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:
Not only that, but it was the Soviet Union that was responsible for 4/5ths of total Nazi deaths, and winning the war against the Nazis. The Soviet Union did not agree to invade Poland with the Nazis, it was about spheres of influence and red lines the Nazis should not cross in Poland. When the USSR went into Poland, it stayed mostly to areas Poland had invaded and annexed a few decades prior. Should the Soviets have let Poland get entirely taken over by the Nazis, standing idle? The West made it clear that they were never going to help anyone against the Nazis until it was their turn to be targeted.
Churchill did not take the Nazis as a serious threat, and was horrified when FDR and Stalin made a joke about executing Nazis. Churchill starved millions to death in India in preventable ways, and had this to say about it:
Meanwhile, the soviet famine in the 1930s was the last major famine outside of wartime in the USSR, because collectivized farming achieved food security in a region where famine was common. As a consequence, life expectancy doubled:
The Nazis and soviets were never allies. A non-aggression pact is not an alliance, and the non-aggression pact between the soviets and the Nazis was unique among the other non-aggression pacts in that it was on the eve of war. The soviets knew war was coming, and so bought more time to prepare.
Oh my god look at all the allies hitler had. /s Even the US wanted to help them out with operation paperclip. Maybe the fact that the Soviets killed 75% of Nazis was just a bit of nazi infighting in your eyes.
[edit] lol whoops by the time I found the image and posted, cowbee had already made a much better comment with the same image
a long life is not necessarily a good one and some contributions and trade ie Medicinals, Antibiotics, etc were not caused by Stalin
Correlation not Causation
It was also the fact that healthcare was made universal, housing drastically improved, and famine was ended.
also that we started to educate people on how wounds can get infected, how deadly diseases are if not prevented and treated and we adopted hygiene and sterility precautions in hospitals
Sure, but the fact remains that the establishment of socialism under Lenin and solidified under Stalin had a dramatic impact on how these advances were distributed to the people, enabling a far greater access to medical care and necessities than before.