Soviet (right) and Nazi officers celebrating the joint invasion of Poland as their countries both embarked on a genocide of the Polish people, Brest, modern-day Belarus, 1939
But do yourself a favor and read up on the Polish Resistance. Those were some seriously metal sons of bitches.
And for those of you who don't like reading history: Imagine watching 50-100 of your friends getting summarily executed every day, and it doesn't make you afraid to stop killing Nazis. It makes you even more emboldened, and that's exactly what you do. You exist to make them afraid to walk the streets.
I wish our schools did a better job teaching about resistance movements. Here in the US most people don't know about the Battle of Blair Mountain, for example, even though it was the largest armed resistance action here since the US Civil War.
But if you know what the BoBM is, you know why it isn't taught, for the same reason churches don't teach what the Bible says about usury.
The Soviet officer is Semyon Krivoshein, he's Jewish and not celebrating for multiple reasons. The Nazis occupied Brest when they weren't supposed to, Krivoshein got there and started negotiating to try to get them to leave. The Nazis were making a propaganda film out of this (which is where the picture comes from) so they wanted the Soviet army to have a parade with them. After an argument Krivoshein agreed that just him and some of his staff would stand there and watch the Nazis parade out of town in exchange for the Nazis leaving Polish prisoners they took in Brest.
Brest was 50% Jewish at this point, in Operation Barbarossa the Soviets defended for 6 days, Jewish Soviet officers were summarily shot by the Nazis, almost the entire Jewish population of Brest died in the Holocaust.
It really wasn't a good time to be Jewish then. The muslim world wanted you dead, the nazis wanted you dead, the Soviets hated you, and the US and UK greatly disliked you. There was no place where Jews were actually safe and protected until after WWII.
Krivoshein was born into the well-to-do family of a Jewish artisan shop owner and in 1917 graduated from a gymnasium, a Russian secondary school for the educated elite. In 1918 he enlisted in the Red Army to fight against the Whites in the Russian Civil War, seeing service in the 1st Cavalry Army of Semyon Budyonny.
Krivoshein continued to command his corps until 1946 when he was appointed Head of Department at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy. In 1950 he moved to Odessa to command the mechanized and tank forces of the small Odessa Military District. In 1951 the Ministry of Defense selected him as a candidate for the Soviet Army higher command and sent him to study in the Higher Military Academy of the General Staff. Krivoshein graduated in 1952. The death of Stalin in March 1953 brought an end to Krivoshein's military career: as the new leadership began to reduce the huge Soviet army and, on May 4, 1953 the Soviet Ministry of Defense retired him after 35 years of service. He spent the last quarter century of his life writing four books of his war memoirs.
Both the Marxists in the Soviet Union and the Nazis in Germany tore down their countries and rebuild them in accordance to their tyrannical ideologies. It's a stretch to call regimes that brought radical change conservative when they clearly not for preserving anything from the previous regimes.
In both cases, they co-opted popular left-leaning movements to engage conservative voting bases. They combined these popular movements with nationalist conservative ideologies to garner wide appeal amongst conservatives.
After winning, they then used their momentum to tear down institutional checks and balances to make sure they would hold power indefinitely, even if their support started to wane. Conservative support, in both cases, remained strong for many years, resulting in the deaths of millions of innocent non-conservatives.
Not quite, IMHO, seeking the imaginary ideal of yesteryear is what conservatism is, everything new is bad. The right wing of any political system is regressive and also looks back to this same imaginary ideal.
Reminder that Stalin was stupid enough to believe that Hitler was NOT stupid enough to renege on their little NAP over Poland. When Barbarossa rolled in, Stalin initially forbade his troops from fighting back because he thought it was a false flag ops by the Western Allies.
You're making an awful lot of assumptions about what I believe when I haven't said a word of that.
What is it with you people and just making up what people believe, whole cloth? Guess it's just easier to argue against someone who's made of straw and only exists in your head.
so how did the ussr go from this to marching into germany at the end and helping defeat the nazis? genuine question. was it just a case of "ok you're getting a little too close or comfort" or something else?
Essentially, the Nazis and Soviets were allies of convenience. They both had a mutual interest in destroying the sovereignty and nationhood of all of Eastern Europe, but once that was out of the way, it was an issue of "Both sides want full control over the area, and neither side has acceptable goals to the other".
The Nazis eventually struck first in Operation Barbarossa; the Soviets didn't expect the Nazis to be ready to invade them for a few more years, so they were caught off guard, which is where a lot of the "NAZIS GREAT SOLDIERS 1 MILLION SOVIETS = 1 NAZI UBERMENSCH" bullshit comes from. The Soviets were scattered and disorganized, and had to hastily reconstruct a lot of their military doctrine around the fact that the Nazis had just occupied a big chunk of the Soviet Union's industrial equipment and population.
After a few months of chaos, the Nazis discovered that sucker-punching a powerhouse doesn't make you a champion boxer, and spent the next three years getting slowly brutalized into oblivion by the Soviet Army and the Nazis' own dumbass idea to invade.
I would assume the plan of the Soviet Union was to invade Nazi Germany as well, just after they had organized? Or was it just foolish trying to invade the SU at any stage, with the better plan was to hope the two blocks would just somehow get along.
It is not a good idea to sign a pact with the devil when you're not organized. I mean, it's never a good idea, but it's an exceptionally bad idea when you don't have your house in order.
The only reason endrd up losing to the Soviets was because he went back on his own original war plan. He didn't want to fight a war on two fronts. The idea was to knock out France, which he did, then defeat the UK, which he didn't do. He expected the UK to sue for negotiations but they ended up resisting him for far longer than he expected. Since the US was supplying the UK and keeping them afloat, Hitler was cautious. He wanted to avoid a war with the US, so he turned his attention elsewhere, which was invading the Soviet Union, while not securing the Western front.
Despite this, Hitler still managed to reach the outskirts of Moscow and he was close to winning, but he got cocky and impatient by ordering his armies to march through the winter and unwisely split a few of his armies at the wrong times. He also made his biggest mistake by declaring war on the US when the US declared war on Japan after they attacked Pearl Harbor... Even though didn't have to. After trying to previously avoid war with US, he went and did it for no good reason. This brought second wind to the allies as Americans weapons starting pouring into the UK and the Soviet Union as well as American troops pouring into the Western front. This forced Hitler to divide his attention and resources which gave the Soviets valuable time and opportunities to recover and strike back.
Too bad the Soviets ended up occupying Eastern Europe much like the nazis but under new management rather actually liberating them.
Because Hitler invaded them. It's basically the same way Britain went from handing over Czeckoslavakia (who they were allied with) to fighting him. Nobody wanted to get involved in another World War, but Hitler forced everyone's hands.
Nobody wanted to get involved in another World War, but Hitler forced everyone's hands.
That's one of the crazy things about Hitler. He was basically handed half of Europe, and could have kept that and tolerable relations with the major world powers, but it wasn't enough for him. He had his sights set on total global domination, and nothing short of that would satiate his desires. I suspect that even the world would not have been enough, but thankfully we never had to find out.
Yeah, Stalingrad was pretty close for comfort lol. It was an alliance of convenience and then Hitler invaded and continued to genocide across the USSR planning to completely wipe them out and resettle their land.
You ask for an independent opinion from a country that mass protested the last bullshit elections before potato dictator with a joint support from russian siloviki beat, tortured, imprisoned and\or dissappeared thousands of people. Luka is behind the wheel, and he is playing his own game balancing between a neutral sovereign country and a region of russia, whatever fits him best at the moment. He's not asking what his* people want.
* 'His' is a weird word to put there, but I'd let it stay.