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Comment by Normille | Hacker News Reader

  >Ukraine was a part of Russia then. Just as a Pole I am not surprised a bunch of nukes was targetting my home country - we were a vassal state to Russia back then, so that was to be expected.

So you hate Russia for saving you from Hitler but you suck America's arse even though they were quite prepared to completley annihilate your country and all your people [including all your friends and family and everyone you knew] because you were a 'vassal state to Russia'?

Wow! --the Stockholm Syndrome really is strong in Eastern Europe these days.

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Are you even aware that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were essentially allies at the start of WW2 who planned to divide Poland among themselves until Hitler turned around and broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact?

It was a non aggression pact. They had one with Poland long before that. And another with Estonia and Latvia. Germany annexed Austria and both Germany and Italy marched into other places before Germany signed the non aggression pact with the Soviets and amassed troops at the polish border before anything happened.

I don't really understand why the German/Soviet agreement was considered the start of world war II and not the other annexations and aggressions Germany did before that. There was also the Japanese Invasion of China that happened 2 years before that treaty and yet that doesn't seem to have any meaningful impact on WWII.

> It was a non aggression pact.

...which included an (at the time) secret protocol which divided Poland into German and Soviet 'spheres of influence' [1], and the Soviet Union promptly invaded Poland two weeks after Germany did (on the 17th September 1939) annexing the Eastern territories of Poland.

In Europe at least, the start of WW2 is usually placed at the 1st of September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland (this was also taught in East German schools btw, so it's not a 'Western" point of view - the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact was conveniently left out of course).

Germany and the Soviet Union also had pretty close economic ties right up until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commerci...

  >Germany and the Soviet Union also had pretty close economic ties right up until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941

And a lot of the British upper classes [including quite a few people directly and indirectly related to the royal family] were fiercly anti-semitic and thought Hitler was giving the Jews a bit of what they deserved, from 1933 right up until he started annexing parts of his neighbours' territories.

Point being: no-one comes out of WWII with an unblemished record.

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