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Comment by HayBale | Hacker News Reader

Prewar Poland was a military dictatorship(mild but was) in the permanent state of crisis, on a brink of a civil war with all of its minorities. And it is a wild take to blame communists for the nazi atrocities.

But communist solved most of the problems that prewar Poland would have problem of solving. Yeah Polish tech was amazing especially if you consider the resources

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Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.

Communists partitioned Poland in 1939 together with Germans. War would take a different direction if they didn't join Nazis. They were not really the good guys.

Actually no, the war would take the exact same direction because Hitler did not consider Slavs to be human. It would have just got to the USSR a couple of years before it was even remotely ready for the war, and, ironically, would probably cause it to lose the war, which, let me remind you, would lead to full eradication of Poles and Poland. To accuse the USSR of “joining Nazis” would require you to be completely unaware of the historical context, and forget that Poland itself “joined Nazis” in a non-aggression pact in 1934 (5 years before Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), and occupied parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. By that logic a lot of other countries in Europe (including Britain) “joined Nazis” by signing agreements with them and partitioning other states such as Czechoslovakia.

The war would take a different direction because it would take slightly longer for Germans to conquer the rest of Poland. That few weeks could help France and Germany to decide to actually join the war and attack Germany instead of just sitting there for months waiting for Germans to attack. The non-agression pact between Poland and Nazi Germany was signed to normalize relations between the country, and not to partition another country. Ribbentrop-Molotov act on the other hand had a secret protocol where they decided to divide Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into their spheres of influence. Yes, Poland did take part of Czechoslovakia after 1938, but it was a tiny sliver of land with polish ethnic majority. It was a bad move but nothing that can be compared to Soviet invasion in 1939.

They wouldn’t have to “conquer” it. They’d just march straight through and end up in Ukrainian SSR and Belarus. My point is, the USSR was hardly unique in signing “intersting” pacts in late 30s, and its desire to surround itself with at least some semblance of buffer states is quite understandable given that there are, famously, no natural geographical obstacles between it and invading European hordes. And regardless of anything else, Poland would be fucked far worse if it wasn’t for Stalin. That’s a tough pill to swallow, sure, but you don’t have to take my word for it. The Nazis did document their plans.

In september there were about 300k soldiers in the parts that soviets later occupied. If you don't think that would slow Germans down you're wrong. But more importantly during the occupation Soviets killed thousands of people in Katyn and other places, and sent close to 2 mln to gulags. They stole art, books and removed machines from factories. They raped women. And they kept doing all these dispicable acts even after the war ended. There is not much difference between ethnic cleansing that Germans did, and the one did by Russians.

Poland didn't need Stalin and his murderers. Soviet Union, and mostly Russia is responsible for millions of deaths before, during and after the wars. Even 80+ years later Russians still think that killing people is a way to save them just look at what's going on in Ukraine.

Just because Soviets pushed back Germans doesn't absolve them from all the crimes they committed. Not to mention that they cooperated with Nazi before 1941. They even widened their economic cooperation in January 1941. They didn't care that Poles were being exterminated in the Nazi occupied parts. Why would they- they were doing their part to exterminate them at the same time.

Poland also cooperated with Nazis before 1941. So did much of the rest of Europe and Britain. And no, it wouldn't have slowed Germans down, just like it did not slow them down in 1939. In general, European countries did not put up much of a fight, and some (Romania and Finland, for example) explicitly and willingly fought on Hitler's side. As to the crimes, name me an Axis or Allied country that did not commit horrific war crimes in that war. I'll wait.

You're confusing cooperation like normal countries do with actively supporting murderous regime. Soviets actively supported Nazis during the WW2.

As far as Allied country that did not commit horrific war crimes:

- France

- Poland

- Czechoslovakia

- Belgium

- Luxembourg

- Netherlands

- Norway

- Greece

- Yugoslavia

- Ethiopia

- Philippines

- Canada

- Australia

- New Zealand

- India

- South Africa

- Brazil

- Mexico

- Mongolia

United States did actually support Hitler up to a point. USSR boycotted the Olympics in 1936 - United States participated. IBM sold stuff to Hitler, as did Ford and General Motors. Henry Ford was a big fan of Hitler, and his views on the Jews. The US-Nazi Germany trade did not fully cease until 1941, about the same time when Soviet trade with Nazi Germany ceased because Germany broke the pact and attacked. In fact, as far as I can tell, all European countries without any exceptions traded with Hitler all the way until at least 1939, or in some cases even later. Some nominally "neutral" countries, such as the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and some others, traded with Nazi Germany throughout the war. Your point is?

With friends like this… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish...

And I’m not arguing with that, Stalin also did massive purges of his own officers, leaving the red army severely deficient right before the war, but as horrible as this is, this is not total genocide, which is what awaited Poland had the USSR not won the war.

German genocide of other nations consisted of exterminating weak people and forced labor for the strong. They integrated people with "Aryan features" into their society and we're slowly getting rid of the rest.

Soviets exterminated scientist, priests, doctors and officers - the very people who could fight back. They integrated poor and weak. Their idea was to melt the remaining people into one nation. This is a form of ethnic cleansing.

Both Nazi and Soviets had the same goal - to take over the world by killing the people they didn't like and integrating people they needed. They just had difference of opinion in show to achieve their goals. Fortunately they didn't succeed, unfortunately it still resulted in millions killed by both sides.

> exterminated scientist, priests, doctors and officers

So did the Nazis, in higher quantities too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion

The question is not if the Nazis were the bad guys, but if the Russians were bad. I think the answer is pretty simple. If anyone has any doubts they should ask millions of starved Ukrainians, thousands of killed Polish officers, hundreds of thousands of killed eastern Europeans and millions of people sent to gulags. Oh wait, you can't...wonder why? Probably because Soviets were really such a nice group of people.

Jesus freaking Christ, read the German plans for Slavs - it's all public information. They were going to starve and work them all until they are dead, and then populate the lands with Germans. Poles are Slavs. To draw moral equivalence between Soviets and Hitler is idiotic. If it wasn't for the Soviets, you'd be writing this in German, or (depending on your ethnicity) you wouldn't exist at all.

Of course you can draw a moral equivalence. You can't plan[0], invade a country[1] perform genocide on it's people, install and support puppet government and only let go when your own country totally imploded and expect anything other than disdain.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

If Russians were so worried about Slavs being exterminated why were they sending supplies and resources to Nazis until the day German invasion?

Oh now I get it.. Poles and other eastern European nations should be thankful to Russians for killing millions of them and enslaving the rest instead of just exterminating everyone. Got it.

USSR did not “kill millions of Slavs” in Eastern Europe. You’re severely confused. Hitler, however, did. Fully extrapolating this line of propaganda into the future, 30-40 years from now people will believe that an amateur Austrian painter wanted European unity, but bloody dictator Stalin unfortunately got in the way. And I think that’s exactly the narrative which will dominate in the future based on the current trends.

What's more likely to happen in 30-40 years is what you're trying to do - make people forget that there were two equally evil empires - Nazis and Soviets. You want people to remember only Nazis.

The Soviets killed millions - there is no way to deny it. Holodomor alone resulted in 3-5 mln deaths. At least one million were murdered in Russia alone. In total, up to 60 mln people are estimated to have died at the hands of the Soviets. Millions more were forced out of their homes, raped and maimed.

There is only one difference between Germans and Japanese on the one hand and Russians on the other. Germans and Japanese admitted to these atrocities and apologized for them. Since the end of WW2, they have not attacked anyone else.

Russians, on the other hand, are still trying to whitewash the crimes committed by the Soviets, and they keep invading other countries. We can only hope they will either grow up and join the civilized world this century or the Russian Federation collapses.

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