Libs in my circles have latched onto a part where he (they claim, I haven’t watched it) says the molotov-ribbentrop pact was to protect Czechoslovakia which is pretty brainwormy. I’ve been responding to ribbentrop shit for the last few days because of the uptick in discussion about it.
Germany and Poland already shared the annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia by then. How would the Molotov-Ribbentrop plan change that?
The plan of the Western powers was for Germany and Poland to invade the USSR, after giving them Czechoslovakia, while Japan enters the war from the east.
The Brits signed the Dusseldorf agreement after Munich (annexation of Sudetenland) to establish industrial cooperation between the British and Nazi Germany, months before Germany invasion of Poland. Clearly they did not expect to declare war on Nazi Germany at all. They all fully expected Hitler to turn east towards the USSR.
Stalin’s diplomats engineered the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact at the last minute (apparently without Hitler’s involvement) to drive a wedge into this plan, forcing Germany to invade Poland, and in turn forcing the British and the French to declare war on Germany.
The entire Japanese cabinet resigned after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed. Like, seriously, ask yourself, why would the entire Japanese government resign just because two foreign countries signed a neutrality pact?
Question, but how could Hitler to turn east towards the USSR if Poland is in the way? Unless they expected the Poles and Nazis to collaborate? or did they believe he wouldn’t invade France and do the USSR next? Is there any evidence of this?
Poland had been collaborating with Nazi Germany.
Granted, the thesis I wrote above came from Said Gafurov’s new book Pledge of Victory, which provided evidence to the compelling argument that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a last-minute act to foil the German-Polish-Japanese offensive against the USSR. I am very slowly going through the book because my Russian is not good and I need a lot of help with translation etc.
However, what gave me confidence is that Losurdo’s Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend also gave a very similar treatment of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact:
Even more disturbing is Poland’s role. As has been observed, Poland became “entirely subordinate to German policy,” beginning with the signing of the ten-year non-aggression pact with Germany on 26 January 1934. The following year Polish Foreign Minister Beck declared to his deputy: “There are two political formations undoubtedly doomed to disappear, Austria and Czechoslovakia.” 23 The consonance with Hitler’s program was clear, and it was not only a matter of words: “the Polish ultimatum to Czechoslovakia demanding the return of Tešin finally convinced Beneš, according to his own account, to abandon any idea of resisting the Munich settlement. Poland had been so far a more useful jackal to Germany in the East than Italy had been in the Mediterranean.” The Munich Conference did not mark the end of the Warsaw government’s collaboration with the Third Reich. “If Hitler was really aspiring to set foot in the Ukraine, he had to go through Poland; in the autumn of 1938, this seemed by no means a political fantasy.” 24 There even seems to be encouragement for this from Warsaw. In January of the following year, during a conversation with Hitler, Beck declared that Poland “does not attach any significance to the so-called security system.” 25
continued:
Stalin had every reason to be concerned or distressed. Before the Munich Conference, the U.S. ambassador to France, William C. Bullit, observed that the important thing was to isolate “Asiatic despotism,” saving “European civilization” from a fratricidal war. After the triumph achieved by Hitler a British diplomat noted in his diary: “Czechoslovakia, from having been a dagger pointed to the heart of Germany, is now rapidly being organized as a dagger into Russian vitals.” 26 At the time of the crisis that resulted in the Munich Conference, the USSR had been the only country to call out the Third Reich and confirm its support for the government in Prague, putting more than seventy army divisions on a state of alert. Subsequently, after the complete dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by the Third Reich in March 1939, Moscow forwarded a harsh note of protest to Berlin.27 The reaction of the other capitals was much more “composed.” And so, the Nazi-fascist aggressors successively devoured Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Albania and China in Asia, thanks to the direct complicity or passivity of the Western powers, who were inclined to direct the further ambitions and expansionist aims of the Third Reich toward the country that had emerged from the October Revolution. To the east the Soviet Union felt the pressure exerted by Japan on those frontiers. The danger of invasion and war was thus arriving on two fronts. It was only at this point that Moscow began to move in the direction of the non-aggression pact with Germany, taking note of the failure of the popular front policy.
Carried out by Stalin with conviction and decisiveness, the popular front policy had cost not a little. It had strengthened the Trotskyist opposition and agitation especially in the colonies. What credibility could there be in an anti-colonialism that spared—so the accusation sounded—the major colonial powers of the time, to concentrate fire on a country, Germany, which at Versailles had lost even the few colonies it had previously possessed? Above all, for colonial peoples themselves it was difficult to accept the turn of events. England had been largely discredited. In the spring of 1919 it had not only been responsible for the Amritsar massacre, which had cost the lives of hundreds of defenseless Indians, but had resorted to “public floggings” and de-humanizing collective punishment and terrible national and racial humiliation, forcing on city dwellers “the humiliation of crawling on all fours to and from one’s home.” 28 Later, as the Second World War flared up, the imperial government repressed pro-independence demonstrations by machine-gunning them from above with the air force (infra, ch. 6, § 4). These were the years when Gandhi stated that “In India we have a Hitlerian government, albeit disguised in milder terms.” And again, “Hitler was ‘Great Britain’s sin.’ Hitler is only an answer to British imperialism.” 29 Indeed, when the war was over, Gandhi would go so far as to pay homage to Subhas Chandra Bose who had fought alongside the Axis for the sake of independence: “Subhas was a great patriot. He laid down his life for the country.”30
In conclusion: it had not been easy for the USSR to get the idea accepted that, despite appearances, even for the people of the colonies the main danger was still constituted by the Nazi-fascist coalition, by the Germany-Japan-Italy axis, and in particular by the Third Reich, which was determined to resume and radicalize the colonial tradition, even resorting to extreme means. For countries like England and France the policy of the popular fronts entailed much lower costs, and yet they sabotaged it. At this point the USSR had no choice but a pact with Germany, a move that has been defined as “a last-minute, dramatic improvisation” to which Moscow resorted in the absence of any other alternative, “on the very eve of a new European war.” 31
This became a turning point that is usually assessed with an eye exclusively on Europe. But there is no reason to ignore the repercussions in Asia. Mao Zedong expressed his satisfaction thus: “The pact represents a blow for Japan and a help for China,” because “it gives the Soviet Union a better chance” of supporting “China in her resistance to Japan.” 32 Precisely for this reason the Japanese government considered Berlin’s behavior to be “treacherous and inexcusable.” 33 In fact, flows of Russian arms and ammunition into China became very substantial.
I assume they misunderstood him in the first place, cause it was not to protect Czechoslovakia, it was in response to the betrayal of the Czechs. There was no protecting them by the time the pact was signed
I generally don’t call it an invasion. The government of poland had fled the country by the time the ussr moved into the east almost entirely unopposed because the country was ungoverned. They moved into an ungoverned territory and saved 2 million jews in the process. Then later they saved the rest of the country. And preserved it, and its culture, under lebensraum both of which would have been deleted like the americans did to the lands they captured.
Yes but he also was willing to do it if France would let them in and/or if Romania would let them use their airspace which Romania agreed to. The problem was Britain and France intentionally stalled this with fake promises of an alliance until Poland decided to help Germany invade Czechoslovakia at which point the west completely capitulated. Chamberlain is honestly less evil somehow than the Polish government
So before World War II, Poland collaborated with Hitler and although it did not yield to Hitler’s demands, it still participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler. As the Poles had not given the Danzig Corridor to Germany, and went too far, pushing Hitler to start World War II by attacking them. Why was it Poland against whom the war started on 1 September 1939? Poland turned out to be uncompromising, and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland.
Saying that Poland refusing to cede Danzig to Germany was the cause of WW2 is a bit iffy I think. Why is Danzig a legitimate target to cede while the Sudetenland was an outrage?
It would be nice if people were less easily impressed with blood and soil propaganda.