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.
Well, depending on what year we are talking, those that had “read and re-read Mein Kampf until he almost memorized it” like Litvinov in 1928 probably would have, but “[a]s late as 1936 […] Benes, Herriot, Daladier, Eden and others had not read it.” Not to mention “In October 1938—after Munich—Neville Chamberlain instructed the Foreign Office to translate some excerpts for him” (Pope, Maxim Litvinov, pp. 317–18. Quoted in Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins, chapter 4, note 14)
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.
Well, depending on what year we are talking, those that had “read and re-read Mein Kampf until he almost memorized it” like Litvinov in 1928 probably would have, but “[a]s late as 1936 […] Benes, Herriot, Daladier, Eden and others had not read it.” Not to mention “In October 1938—after Munich—Neville Chamberlain instructed the Foreign Office to translate some excerpts for him” (Pope, Maxim Litvinov, pp. 317–18. Quoted in Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins, chapter 4, note 14)
It’s always a massive flex to be able to link epubs you’ve created, haha. Great work!