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.
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.
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.
"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...
After not upholding the 1924 pact (France) with Czechoslovakia
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...
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.
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.
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.
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).
As with Ukraine a few Nazi's didn't represent the country nor even come close to a majority.
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.
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?
On the other hand in the countries i mentioned above many locals participated in a genocide and murdered their neighbors with their bare hands.