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Comment by FridayoLeary | Hacker News Reader

What i find even more remarkable is how every town, village, school and institution have memorials for those who lost their lives in the Great War. Usually there is another plaque attached in memory of WW2. It's hard to imagine the scale of deaths. The tragedy is how little was accomplished by the sacrifices of ww1. It had none of the moral clarity of ww2 nor did most of the deaths achieve any strategic purpose.

On the other hand i knew an old scientist who had quite a few interesting and amusing stories to share about his efforts in WW2. One of them was about his attempts to perfect a formala. Several factories exploded before they succeeded.

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There was moral clarity in West and South Europe. But if you happened to be in East Europe, WW2 was primarily a war between nazism and communism. Everyone else was trying to find the least bad option, which usually meant choosing a side and switching it at least once.

I don't know if the eastern european countries besides maybe ussr count. Many many polish, ukrainian and lithuanians enthusiastically helped the germans in carrying out the holocaust.

Many jews were communists. Communists killed millions in those countries.

I think you got your causalities wrong there

On 02.04.2008, Russian State Duma confirmed that 7 million (adults and unknown number of children) died because of artificial starvation in 1932-1934 (Holodomor). Majority of them are Ukrainians. However, Russian Federation refuses to confirm the starvation and FSB agents jail or kill everybody who spreads information about Holodomor. If you are from RF - beware.

Causalities, not casualties. :)

Not even close so don't try. There were some powerful positions in the ussr occupied by jews. I'm not sure what role they had in the purges etc. Stalin was definitely not a great lover of jews.

On the other hand in the countries i mentioned above many locals participated in a genocide and murdered their neighbors with their bare hands.

> There was moral clarity in West and South Europe

Indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_declaration_of_war_on_.... Both Britain and France declared war on Germany because they made guarantees to Poland about it.

> ... in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.

That is unambiguous and clear. They kept their word.

It is tragic in the end that after the war they handed Poland over to Stalin. Poland still had its independence threatened but after having supplied and helped Stalin all that time, it was awkward having to declare war against him as well.

The political situation in the 1930s was thoroughly messed up. Britain and France may have had mainly good intentions, but their policies did not prevent the disasters.

Great Britain should have made a pact with the Soviet Union against Hitler much earlier.

Poland was in an extremely difficult situation. But the decision to invade Czechoslovakia with the Germans was certainly not a good idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_betrayal

> Britain and France may have had mainly good intentions, but their policies did not prevent the disasters.

They had an absolute lack of appetite for fighting since the WWI was not long ago. I don't know if the Germans were smart enough to understand that and fully took advantage of it or were just lucky. For the Germans it worked with Czechoslovakia so they figured it would work with Poland as well.

Stalin I think is more interesting. He was prepared to "defend" the Czechs as well. He just needed permission to take his armies across Poland and Romania. He quickly switched sides after the agreement and signed the Soviet-German agreement.

Not too long ago I also learned about the secret military cooperation between the Soviets and the Germans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_r.... The German air force was training its pilots in the Soviet Union:

> In 1925, a flying school was established near Lipetsk (Lipetsk fighter-pilot school) to train the first pilots for the future Luftwaffe

Reading that it's like reading some alternative universe fan-fiction. So that makes Stalin's position interesting. He was supposed to be allied with the French and the British officially but non-officially was assisting the Germans.

"Having tried and failed to negotiate a suitable treaty of alliance with the British and French, and fearing an Anglo-French design of involving them in a war with Germany which they would have to fight alone, the Soviets turned to a deal with Hitler."

"The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War" Russo-German Relations and the Road to War, 1933-1941

Geoffrey Roberts

https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781349241248_A35684...

> they kept their word

After not upholding the 1924 pact (France) with Czechoslovakia

That ‘defence’ of Poland mainly consisted of doing nothing, in the Phoney War.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War

That’s fair. It sort of like on “paper” they fulfilled their obligation, shot a few rounds and quickly ran away. And like we mentioned even in the end they gave Poland over to Stalin. So they won the war, but officially the reason they got into it was not redressed. Not until the Soviet Union fell, years later.

That’s true. Abandoning the Czechs was embarrassing. That was probably a factor in then choosing to at least do the right thing for Poland. Otherwise it started to look really embarrassing for them: here are these great powers and they do not keep their word. That looked very weak.

The lesson from history is that appeasing tyrants only encourages them. And we would be well to remember it.

> But if you happened to be in East Europe, WW2 was primarily a war between nazism and communism.

WWII in Eastern Europe was a war for the survival of the Slavic peoples whom the Nazis declared to be the Untermensch[0] (Belorussians, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Serbs, Ukrainians – all of them) and were determined to fully exterminate them all following the extermination of the Jews and the Roma people.

The scale of extermination of the Slavs went far beyond the mass murdering of them in concentration camps, and included rounding up villages and burning them along with the villagers down with the use of flamethrowers, with no remorse because the Nazis considered the Slavs sub-humans[1][2][3][4].

Neither Czechoslovakia, nor Poland, nor the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had communism of any shape or flavour.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michni%C3%B3w_massacre

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Centre_Lipa_Remembers...

How do Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland fit in that picture?

WW2 was a complex war. The big picture for the European part was that the two main powers divided Europe in their spheres of influence, fully intending to fight each other for overall supremacy after a while. Some countries joined their designated side voluntarily, some joined under a threat of invasion, and most of the rest were invaded. The ones I listed were the ones where the USSR was the initial aggressor.

Instead of shifting the goalposts, please do yourself a favour and read up on the Untermenschen and the convoluted hierarchy of the sub-humans in the Nazi racial ideology. As an example, since the Nazis harboured particular hatred towards the Poles, the Poles were at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and only complete obliteration of the Polish ethnicity was deemed acceptable.

One joins an alliance of convenience, sometimes in very unfavourable circumstances, to avoid the worst – the demise of one's own people and to guarantee their survival. Making a deal with the devil is a well-known adage that aptly describes such an unfortunate event.

Nazis considered the Finns (and the Estonians by extension) to be racially pure, with Latvians and Lithuanians being somewhere in between either redeemable or tolerable (frankly, I can't recall the exact details).

> WW2 was a complex war.

WWII was no more complex than the WWI, and it had a single, overarching objective – the repartitioning of the world. The main difference between the two was that the WWII was infused with a vile racial ideology, used to justify the pursuit of Lebensraum and the total annihilation of peoples whom the Nazi Party targeted with hatred, based on their crackpot so-called racial studies.

A clear view of WW II in all its complexity is important. The current tense geopolitical context makes that even more so. Have you noticed how the current head war criminal in Moscow is glorifying his WW II predecessor?

Moreover, Germans decided that Slavs are untermensch because of Holodomor henocide of Ukrainians ([Little] Russians) by Russians (Great Russians). The confusion between [Little] Russians (now Ukrainians) and Great Russians (now Russians) caused Germans to think that Russians performed genocide of their own nation, killed millions of their own mothers and children, which is biggest sin in Germany (and many other nations).

This is Nazi talk.

That was the actual Nazi plan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan

The differentiation between Ukraine and Russia is interesting.

Ukrainian nationalists had also joined the Nazis.

> Ukrainian nationalists had also joined the Nazis.

This occurred in all occupied territories didn’t it? France, Holland, Belgium etc.

It also occurred in some that weren’t occupied. Spain for example, and don’t look too hard at the British Royal Family (for this reason and various others).

Also in North America, eg: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-ame...

As with Ukraine a few Nazi's didn't represent the country nor even come close to a majority.

Few Ukrainians joined Nazi, few Jews joined Nazi, whole 3 million Russian Army joined Nazi. :-/

This is a hornet nest.

I once read this from Alain Badiou:

"This separatism at certain moments reached extremes that no one could forget, particularly not the Russian people, knowing that the vast mass of the Nazi-armed and organised armies coming from Russian territory were Ukrainian. The Vlasov army was a Ukrainian army. Today we can even read the history of Ukrainians turning entire villages to blood and fire, including French ones. A good part of the repression of the maquis in central France was carried out by Ukrainians. "

Wikimedia presents Vaslov's army as Russian:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army

But Wikipedia about Vlasov (SS Division here):

"He (Himmler) oversaw the creation of the SS-Volunteer Division "Galicia" in October 1943 from Ukrainian volunteers, but that same month he said that Vlasov made him "genuinely anxious."

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/1569-a-present-default... https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/1569-a-present-default...

--- Badiou is a strange guy but I trust him.

In general, I have the impression that the historiography of the Nazi collobaration in Central Europe has been politically influenced in recent years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Vlasov

The relevant film here is "Come and See" (USSR, 1985).

> war for the survival of the Slavic peoples

That simplifies the situation a bit too much. When Soviet Union conquered half of Poland, which side were the Slavs, and which side were the Slavs?

It's worth pointing out explicitly that WW2 didn't have the moral clarity that it does today either. The vast majority of the western world was perfectly content to let Hitler run Europe and Japan to run Asia.

What do you define as the vast majority of the western world? Just the US?

Literally not one country initiated combat against Nazi Germany before being attacked itself.

Churchill stands virtually alone as one with moral clarity on the Nazis.

USSR allied with them. France was fine seeing everyone else get rolled. Poland signed a nonaggression pact. The British parliament were generally happy to let Hitler have his way.

How about instead, you tell me who you think went out of their way to combat Nazism?

> Literally not one country initiated combat against Nazi Germany before being attacked itself.

Apart from many of the Commonwealth countries?

The UK could have declared war on Mars and the Commonwealth would follow, so you are only talking about Churchill.

Churchill became PM in May 1940, 8 months after the UK declared war on Germany.

The interim period being known as "The Phoney War" for being... well... phoney.

A technical satisfaction of their obligations to Poland and no more.

British government even signed a british german naval friendship on the eve of Munich agreement. Moral clarity haha

How else were they going to get peace in our time?

Nitpick: It was "peace for our time"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time

Meanwhile, back home... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_rearmament_before_Worl...

> Literally not one country initiated combat against Nazi Germany before being attacked itself.

The UK and France both declared war at the same time after Germany invaded Poland.

I think the UK fired the first bullets -- or rather depth charges, on Sep 3rd. That resulted in damage and no deaths. A few hours later Germany attacked a UK passenger liner and killed over 100 civilians - not just Brits but also Canadians and Americans.

The day later the RAF bombed a German naval port, causing little damage, but again attacks.

France had the Saar offensive within days, so France fired the first shots between France and Germany. Nazi invasion of the Benelux and France was inevitable, but technically France attacked Germany before Germany attacked France.

> The British parliament were generally happy to let Hitler have his way.

Britain was mobilising throughout the late 30s. Declaring war at Munich could well have resulted in a British loss - the RAF wasn't really capable of running the Battle of Britain, it barely survived even with the extra year of preparation. On the other hand Nazis were less prepared too. Who knows what that would have done - perhaps a coup against Hitler would have succeeded. On the other hand perhaps there would have been no support for war - leading to a resignation of Chamberlain, Halifax becoming PM who was even more stronger into appeasement, and a swift truce hammered out, with no the UK abandoning Poland.

Churchill was of course more wary of Hitler, but Chamberlain is the one who declared war.

This is pretty much a complete and comprehensive description of what's now called the Phoney War for being pretty much nonexistent beyond the bare minimum required to "check the box" for England and France's "defense" of Poland (which, to be clear, waiting for your ally to be directly attacked == not doing anything until you are attacked)

Not that I think any of this is indefensible, to be clear, but it is obvious in the moral clarity of today that offensive action against Nazi Germany would have been justified. The reason no one engaged in it was because it wasn't morally clear at the time.

I don't understand when you consider the first attack by Germany on the UK? The invasion of Poland?

Even if you ignore early engagements in September 1939, from April the UK was involved in fighting in Norway - losing over 4000 troops in the process.

The war wasn't waged particularly well by France or the UK in 39/40, being too late to be involved in Finland and failing to successfully defend Norway, but it was certainly waged in Norway. The failures led to the fall of both Daladier and Chamberlain, but thousands of British troops had been killed before Churchill became Prime Minister.

Yes I would say "waiting until I'm legally obligated to act, and even then doing such a minuscule job of it that it's called 'The Phoney War'" are clear evidence of a lack of moral clarity.

It seems like you believe I'm arguing that no military action was underway prior to Churchill. I'm not. I'm arguing that (effectively) no one had "moral clarity" about the Third Reich other than Churchill.

Fighting in Norway and on the high seas (see sinking of Graf Spee) does not look like phoney war…

Compared to what was necessary and warranted, it clearly was.

I don't think it has anything to do with moral clarity. The western allies didn't hesitate to attack because they weren't sure whether Hitler was such a bad guy after all. They feared another repetition of wwi and worse, because the increased effectiveness of aerial bombing would bring the horrors of the trenches to the home front. This fear drove all of the capitulations to Hitler by France and the UK in the 1930s, and continued as late as 1944, when much of the British leadership still feared to land armies in the killing fields of northwest Europe.

If you believe that today WW2 was "morally clear," what you are saying is that it was clearly worth overcoming all of those risks and that fear (understandable as it is).

They did not do that and instead were spurred into action only when they themselves were attacked, ergo obviously it was not morally clear at the time.

Okay, well I disagree with your dimensional analysis. To me moral clarity is being confident about who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Taking action to do something about it is another matter. To me it's morally clear that Ukraine is in the right in the current war, but I have taken no personal risks to put my life on the line for that belief.

Fair point!

To an extent you are right. ww1 made much more sense at the time then it does today. And it wasn't as clear during ww2 that it was in fact the greatest conflict of good vs evil ever.

The extent of the German and Japanese atrocities only became clear after the war and they were so great that even the Soviet Union were on the side of the angels.

I wouldn't say they were perfectly content. It was more that they were cowardly and apathetic.

WWI makes no sense (or perhaps, we understand it better) because over a hundred years have passed, and the highly emotive propaganda of the time no longer persuades us. If you were listening to your pastor thundering in the village church about (say) nurses in Belgium in 1914 you might not have had the emotional distance, or education in cold politics, to recognise that what was really going on was the death throes of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the fight for hegemony in the empires that remained. (Not to diminish the crimes in Belgium, btw, but they were part of a bigger picture that would have been hard to read in 1914.)

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