Putin – What Was Wrong with Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

[ljadw]

That's nit-picking .

[ljadw]

1): this is not correct : Germany was not saved from strangulation because of the pact with the SU .After 22 june 1941,there was no pact with the SU,and Britain and France were forced to use other means than the blockade to defeat Germany . The theory that Germany was saved by the deliveries from Stalin is as correct as the theory that the SU was saved by the LL deliveries : thus :not crrect

Well, a blockade is a slow weapon, it needs time to show its deadly potential. Few months, a year is nothing. Germany wasn't saved by Stalin, but still Stalin was the enabler of the Hitler's victories because:

Soviet strategic and psychological aid was obviously vital, since the Germans had to station only four regular and nine territorial divisions on the eastern border and since Comintern propaganda was slowly eroding French morale.

Ironically, that Hitler could come so close to destroying the USSR was due largely to Stalin’s own efforts.
Stalin's neutrality had allowed the Axis armies to sweep over the rest of Europe.
While not decisive to the Battle for France, the promise of Soviet economic aid, though not yet the actual deliveries, had helped convince the German generals to go along with Hitler’s plans and had allowed the Germans to take risks they might not otherwise have been willing to consider.

Having aided Hitler in eliminating the other major armies in Europe, Stalin now faced the full fury of an even more powerful Wehrmacht. The economic reserves required for this grand venture had also come in great measure from the Soviet Union itself.
Of the various items that the USSR had sent to Germany from 1939 to 1941, oil, manganese, grain, and rubber stand out. Platinum, chrome, phosphates, textiles, wood, and other foodstuffs (particularly soybeans) were also shipped in significant amounts, but the loss of these items could usually be handled by substitution or by increased imports from other countries.
Without Soviet deliveries of these four major items (oil,grain, manganese, and rubber), however, Germany barely could have attacked the Soviet Union, let alone come close to victory.
Germany’s stockpiles of oil, manganese, and grain would have been completely exhausted by the late summer of 1941.
And Germany's rubber supply would have run out half a year earlier. Even with more intense rationing and synthetic production, the Reich surely would have lacked the reserves necessary for a major campaign in the East along the lines of Operation Barbarossa.
In other words, Hitler had been almost completely dependent on Stalin to provide him the resources he need to attack the Soviet Union.

Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933-1941 by Edward E. Ericson

Edward Ericson is wrong : the fuel consumption of the German army in may-june 1940 was 276000 ton (source : F.Hahn),while the German oil production in 1940 was : 1.5 million ton of crude and 3.1 million ton of synthetic;the imports were : 1.3 million ton from Romania and only 0.8 milllion ton from the SU.

The production for 1941 was : crude : 1.6 million,synthetic : 3.9 million;imports :from the SU :0.25 million from Romania and other countries :2.55 million ton .The biggest German oil supplier was Germany herself .

It was the same for grain .

[wm]

Well, we may ask the guru himself. This is what he has to say:

The hugely increased volume of trade needed to sustain Germany’s blockaded Grossraum was bound to give the Soviet Union ever-increasing leverage.
By the autumn of 1940, Germany’s dependence on deliveries of raw materials, fuel and food from the Soviet Union was creating a positively schizophrenic situation. In trade negotiations, German machine tools were one of the means of settlement prized most highly by the Soviets. Such exports, however, were in direct conflict with the preparations of Germany’s own armed forces for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Astonishingly, rather than interrupting the Soviet deliveries to prioritize the Luftwaffe, Goering in early October 1940 ordered that, at least until 11 May 1941, deliveries to the Soviet Union, and thus to the Red Army, should have equal priority with the demands of the Wehrmacht.
Even in the immediate prelude to operation Barbarossa, Germany could not afford to do without Soviet deliveries of oil, grain and alloy metals.

The willingness to engage in such bizarre compromises reflected the increasing concern in Berlin over the precarious situation of Germany’s raw material supplies.1—11 As the military-economic office of the Wehrmacht concluded at the end of October 1940: ‘Current favorable raw material situation (improved by stocks captured in enemy territory) will, in case of prolonged war and after consumption of existing stocks, re-emerge as bottleneck. From summer 1941 this is to be expected in case of fuel oil as well as industrial fats and oils.’

And Germany’s dependence was made even more acute by the poor harvest of 1940. When Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov made a three-day visit to Berlin in November 1940, one of the first items on the German agenda was an urgent request to double the import of grain from the Soviet Union, from the current level of 1 million tons per annum. By the end of 1940, the grain stocks were preoccupying even the military leadership. With regard to the food situation, General Halder noted anxiously in his diary: ‘We will swindle our way through 1941.’ Thereafter, the situation was unforeseeable.
In the event, unexpected salvation arrived in early January 1941 when the Soviets more than doubled their deliveries, even agreeing to dip into their national grain reserve to meet the German demands.

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze.

These are some of the four major items according to Ericson.
The two last "minus Soviet" columns show the increasing dependence of Germany on the USSR, and the fact Germany could not afford to do without Soviet deliveries of oil, grain and alloy metals.

[StefanSiverud]

If Nazi Germany did wrong, so did the USSR. You can't have it both ways.


If we are to play that game, the invasion of Poland was just. Hitler was merely taking back territories that were once German.

Other points :
The Machiavellian ideals started giving way to less chauvinistic ones far earlier, but with the end of WW1 and the changes in the first years thereafter, I would argue no country even halfway civilized was trying to follow the Machiavellian ideals any more. Those leaders that had done so found themselves deposed or dead.
EDIT: Of course, they returned quite soon in ideologies to the far left and right.

I would argue at least Denmark and BeNeLux were as easy to occupy for Germany as were those countries attacked by the USSR, including Finland, as a whole.

.

Here you got it wrong,because you are arguing using the "soft" arguments of the 21th century,which have no place in a discussion about what happened more than 70 years ago.

Saying that the foreign policy of Hitler and Stalin was wrong is starting from a wrong POV.Saying that a foreign policy was morally wrong,is good for journalists, bishop Tutu,Mother Theresa,and such people .

London and Paris did not object against Hitler's foreign policy (they could do nothing against it,and,his policy was not endangering the survival of Britain and France) : they objected against the way this policy was executed .

There was also a difference between Hitler's and Stalin's policy :there was a full-scale war between Poland and Germany,there was no such thing between Poland and the SU(Poland even did not declare war on the SU),thus,Britain and France could ignore what Stalin was doing .

About the Machiavellian ideas : we may consider us as very lucky that there are still intelligent statesmen (not including the present inhabitant of the White House) who are using the Machiavellian ideas (also called realpolitik):we have seen the disasters of foreign policies based on human rights .Such policies would lead mankind to nucleair war .

US intervened when N orth Korea invaded the South,but not when China invaded Tibet,or Indonesia Timor,and,this while there was no difference between these invasions .

It was the same between the both WW's:Lord Curzon supported the SU in the war against Poland,Hoare tried to limit the damage of the war in Abessinia,Eden tried to limit the damage of the Spanish Civil War,Chamberlain tried to demine the Sudeten problem before it would result in a big war .The question is not if a foreign policy was wrong or just,but if one could do something against it .If one can not prevent it,the only reasonable thing is to remain silent

I'm not quite sure which part of my post you're responding do, or rather, where your response to the rest of it went.

To start with, I'd argue the expansionist foreign policies of warmaking and coup-d'etats courtesy of Hitler and Stalin, and for that matter Mussolini and the Japanese leadership as a whole, was regarded as morally wrong even at the time by the vast majority of the civilized world. Once they started fighting each other, sides may have been taken for one side or the other, but to suggest it was considered morally right at the time is simply not true. The old empires were crumbling partly for this very reason. Violence and brutality - especially against white people - had simply started going out of fashion.

As for the purely strategic reasons their expansionist foreign policy was wrong, we need only look at the map. The only winner was the USSR, who managed to enslave several countries for almost half a century after the war and increase the borders of Russia to this day, but even for them it was a close call and the cost difficult to fathom.

How can you suggest Britain and France did not object to the Nazi German foreign policy? They did so several times, in the end even going to war against it. With the benefit of hindsight can say they should have objected more strongly, but that's easy to say now.

Your suggestion that there was no war between the USSR and Poland is simply ridiculous and I've only ever seen similar claims made by Soviet sources. The lack of a formal declaration does not mean there is no war, as the actions of Hitler and Stalin proved. Or are you going to say the Winter War, for instance, was not a war? The lack of a declaration of war against the USSR was indeed a sad act, but one caused by reality. There was no way to fight the USSR, especially not at that time. That is realpolitik.

To suggest the Machiavellian ways of Hitler and Stalin were good and we are "very lucky that there are still intelligent statesmen" following their example is not worth replying to.

[Attrition]

That seems a very one-eyed view. Imperialism is alive or perhaps as undead as ever. Look at the map of US and lackey-occupied territories since 1945. Has it shrunk or expanded? It seems a little unfair to damn the C20th imperialist Johnny-come-latelys for doing what the Portuguese, Spanish, French, English/British and west British did in the C18th-C19th and then did again in the C20th-C21st. How many real Australians have were boiled to death in the back of the van by Stalin or Hitler?

[ljadw]

but to suggest it was considered morally right at the time is simply not true. The old empires were crumbling partly for this very reason. Violence and brutality - especially against white people - had simply started going out of fashion.



How can you suggest Britain and France did not object to the Nazi German foreign policy? They did so several times, in the end even going to war against it. With the benefit of hindsight can say they should have objected more strongly, but that's easy to say now.

Your suggestion that there was no war between the USSR and Poland is simply ridiculous and I've only ever seen similar claims made by Soviet sources. The lack of a formal declaration does not mean there is no war, as the actions of Hitler and Stalin proved. Or are you going to say the Winter War, for instance, was not a war? The lack of a declaration of war against the USSR was indeed a sad act, but one caused by reality. There was no way to fight the USSR, especially not at that time. That is realpolitik.

To suggest the Machiavellian ways of Hitler and Stalin were good and we are "very lucky that there are still intelligent statesmen" following their example is not worth replying to.

1)Strawman : where did I say that Hitler's policy was considered morally wright ?
And,it is not correct to say that violence and brutality were going out of fashion : they were not,and they still are not .

2)Not correct : in november 1939,Halifax was visiting Germany and told the Germans that Britain was not opposed to a German domination of Europe east of the Rhine,as long this did not result in war .

3)As Poland did not declare war on the SU,there was no state of war,but an undeclared war,while,there was officialy a state of war between Germany and Poland .

4)This is a strawman : where did I say that the policies of Hitler and Stalin were good ?

I also object to the use of the word "civilised world" :this implies that there was also a non civilised world.
Besides,this "civilised world" did not condemn the policies of the dictators :most of the inhabitants of Latin America,Africa,Asia,were indifferent to the policies of the dictators,or were even unaware of their existence .No one was starting sanctions against Germany,Japan,Italy,the SU;the opposite happened : they all were doing business with the dictators(starting with mister hypocrisy:FDR)making it possible for the dictators to pursue their policies .And,in september 1939,who declared war on Germany ? Britain and France .Following your arguments,the civilised world was limited to Britain and France :roll: Sweden remained neutral : was Sweden not a civilised country ?

[ML59]

Thank you wm for the very interesting datas. So, it's quite obvious, from those set of tables, that German position in 1941 was already very stretched, with very low stocks of essential raw materials and food. Especially critical was the situation about grain stocks and rubber, technically already negative in 1941 without soviet supplies. It's very obvious that, living in that situation, only hope for Germany was a quick and relatively bloodless victory, they had no means to fight a prolonged attrition war. At the end of the day, that limitation set the course of the war.

[ljadw]

The conclusions from these figures are wrong /questionable :low stocks of food do no indicate a danger of starvation .It's the opposite : big stocks (as they exist in the European Community) indicate the presence of big difficulties .

From the same guru (Tooze) WoD Table A5

Available quantity of grain (millions of ton)
37/38: 25.8
38/39 :36.9
39/40 : 38.4
40/41: 33.7
41/42: 29.7
42/43 : 29.6
43/44 : 31

Stocks (same years)
3.2
8.8

7.5

3.1

1.8

2.5

3.1



For 38/39,the stocks were 8.8;for 42/43 :2.5 Does that indicate a danger of starvation for 42/43 ?

Te available quantity in 37/38 was 25.8:was there a danger of starvation ?

[ljadw]

It is the same about the monthly rubber stocks :september 1939:28.2 thousand of tons/june 1940: 13.9 thousand .

What is the conclusion ? The stocks of june were the half of the stocks of september .Did this have an impact on FallGelb/Fall Rot ? Was the German economy collapsing ?

The conclusion is that there is no conclusion .What would have been the benefit for Germany if the june stocs were 100000 ton ?

[StefanSiverud]

1)Strawman : where did I say that Hitler's policy was considered morally wright ?
And,it is not correct to say that violence and brutality were going out of fashion : they were not,and they still are not .

That's the way I interpret your continual defense of Stalin's actions: saying he would be stupid not to invade his neighbours when he had the chance, saying we can't call it morally wrong, calling into question whether the USSR invasion of Poland was bad given Nazi Germany was already doing it, Stalin was only taking back what once was part of Russia etc. Given they were co-belligerents with a similarly expansionistic foreign policy, I put Hitler and Stalin together. Your arguments for Stalin doing nothing wrong can be applied equally to Hitler.

2)Not correct : in november 1939,Halifax was visiting Germany and told the Germans that Britain was not opposed to a German domination of Europe east of the Rhine,as long this did not result in war .

I am not aware of this occurring, care to provide a source indicating he had the support of the British government?

3)As Poland did not declare war on the SU,there was no state of war,but an undeclared war,while,there was officialy a state of war between Germany and Poland .

To be fair, no formal declarations of war were exchanged between Nazi Germany and Poland either. Hitler's speech to the Reichstag after the invasion - Seit 5.45 Uhr wird jetzt zuruckgeschossen! - can't count as a formal declaration of war.

4)This is a strawman : where did I say that the policies of Hitler and Stalin were good ?

See above.

I also object to the use of the word "civilised world" :this implies that there was also a non civilised world.
Besides,this "civilised world" did not condemn the policies of the dictators :most of the inhabitants of Latin America,Africa,Asia,were indifferent to the policies of the dictators,or were even unaware of their existence .No one was starting sanctions against Germany,Japan,Italy,the SU;the opposite happened : they all were doing business with the dictators(starting with mister hypocrisy:FDR)making it possible for the dictators to pursue their policies .And,in september 1939,who declared war on Germany ? Britain and France .Following your arguments,the civilised world was limited to Britain and France :roll: Sweden remained neutral : was Sweden not a civilised country ?

For starters, I agree the term "civilized world" is a bad one, but I used it for lack of a better word. Small developing nations where housing and feeding the population was enough of an issue can be excused for not caring about what happened on the other side of the world. It did not concern them. Secondly, several countries declared war on Germany in September 1939. I'm sure there's a list on Wikipedia. Lastly, I was saying the expansionism of dictatorships was regarded as wrong by most of the civilized world. How countries showed this opinion varied, and as many times before and after, protests were too weak and not backed up by consequences of importance.

[ML59]

Other than Hitler's dream of an eastern "lebensraum", i.e. a gigantic colonial empire directly bordering with the Reich, almost all the European countries during interwar years were actively seeking nationalistic policies that sometimes turned to open ethnic cleansing or repression of ethnic minorities. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Czechoslovakia were all engaged in pursuing strictly nationalistic or hyper-nationalistic goals. Some political elites in middle or eastern Europe even openly talked about a Greater Motherland, recalling sometimes remote historical periods when they ruled much larger territories. Almost all of them had reasons of complaints about the Versailles Treaty and that fuelled all over Europe the birth of fascist or militant/armed nationalistic movements. Only France, GB, (and to same extent also Belgium and Nederlands) had different agendas, mainly because they already owned a colonial empire and, therefore, their major goal was to preserve the status quo reached in the aftermath of WW1 and not allowing the emergence of any power able to challenge their privileged status.
This political agenda was, for example, strictly pursued by GB all along the interwar years; it was at that time public clear that the main goal and interest of GB was to protect and preserve its Empire, at all cost.

So, to talk about "civilized countries" opposing the empires of darkness is totally misleading and a gross falsification of what happened in the real world. Neither Uk nor France had nothing to say when Italy started the campaign to re-conquer the lost territories of Lybia and Cyrenaica, committing the most severe massacres of civilian population, creating huge concentration camps where lybians were basically left to themselves to die of diseases and malnutrition, using poison gases to kill rebels and their animals. At the time France and Spain were fighting very difficult and bloody colonial wars in the Rif to keep control of their portion of North Africa, so, being busy in massacring not only rebels but also thousands of civilian natives, they didn't see any reason to disturb Italy.
Things changed only when Italy, due to Mussolini's megalomic idea of acquiring to Italy an international recognition as a major power, creating its Empire, attacked a country that was not, according to France and UK, in Italy's sphere of influence. This action was felt as a danger for the preservation of status quo and, therefore, required firm action in order to let Italy know that no further expansion could be allowed.

All powers of that time followed their own imperial or nationalistic goals, with the exclusions of Lichtenstein and Switzerland, maybe.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ML59,

That may be so, but it doesn't seem to address the thread's question.

Besides, even if others behaved badly, it doesn't excuse the USSR or Nazi Germany.

Furthermore, the USSR and Nazi Germany differed fundamentally from all the minor Central/Eastern/Balkan minor powers you mention. The latter were in disagreement over where to draw their mutual borders, not the existence of each others' independent national existence. By contrast, through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi Germany and the USSR agreed to extinguish the independent national existence of at least four states. The first of these was Poland and this was done within six weeks of the Pact being signed.

Putin was being fundamentally dishonest about the nature of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It was not defensive, as neither contracting party had a mutual land border with the other. It was offensive against several minor states that had the misfortune to lie between them. Within 10 months, all had been swallowed up, mostly by the USSR.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

Above I posted:

"You (ljadw) write, "Besides:Stalin took back territories which in the past belonged to the Russian Empire ,while Hitler invaded countries which never were a part of Germany."

Exactly, they had "in the past belonged to the Russian Empire" - i.e. they were NOT part of Russia itself."

You replied "That's nit-picking."

I beg to differ.

The fact that Czarist Russia had already occupied non-Russian territory as part of its Empire makes it twice as bad that it did so again as the USSR under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The fact that Putin is again doing so today further compounds Russia's past actions.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ML59]

Hi Sid, I'm sorry to say that your statement is incorrect. The major difference between the great powers and the minor ones is simply that the smaller countries could never think of having enough influence or military power to force the overall situation in the direction they liked. Nevertheless, there were numerous examples of minor powers negating the real existence of independent entities out of their own state, a major case being the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where Croats, Slovenians, Bosnians were forbidden to develop their own institutions and put by international will (i.e. the Entente powers) under the strict rule of the Serbian ethnic group, creating an abnormal and explosive situation only to pay off the Serbian commitment on the Entente side during WW1.
Furthermore, I have also difficulties in understanding why should be the existence of any of the big and very racist colonial Empires of that time, like that of France, UK , Belgium and Nederland, to name the largest ones, to be considered fully legitimate and "legal" and consider as un-just and immoral only the empires, real or not, pursued by Russians or Japanese. All colonial "racist" empires were morally unjust, and that was already apparent just after WW1, when for the first time, after the Bolshevik revolution, socialist and communist egalitarian ideas started to spread out and actually formed the basis of much political movements seeking for freedom from colonial rule.

[ML59]

Back to the main topic, what SU did after the German invasion of Poland was to occupy the area east of the Curzon line that was already indicated and accepted, in 1920, by France, Great Britain and USA as the correct border between Soviet Russia and Poland (with the exemption of Byalistock, occupied by the Soviets even if being to the west of that line). The fact that Poland never accepted, in 1920 or in 1943-44 to recognize that border, doesn't mean that their aspiration in annexing all the area east of that line had any other reason than expanding the size and power of the Polish state, ruling about 10 millions of non-polish citizens, notwithstanding the much talked about president Wilson's Fourteen Points and the Self-determination of Peoples principle.