What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#61

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 26 May 2022, 00:56

wm wrote:
26 May 2022, 00:53
I've read Mein Kampf many times.
Ick
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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#62

Post by rkka_arvgk » 26 May 2022, 02:09

"The Soviets never asked the Poles for anything especially to accept Soviet troops."

The Polish gvt refused to even discuss the matter, until 23 August, with only 3 days left until the planned start date of the German attack on Poland.

"I've said the Poles or Ukrainians weren't considered to be "Untermenschen" pre-ww2."

Were Slavs untermenschen according to pre-WWII Nazi racial theory? Yes.

Are Poles & Ukrainians mostly Slavic? Yes.

Therefore it is a valid logical conclusion that prewar Nazi racial theory considered Poles & Ukrainians to be untermenschen, whether Adolf explicitly said they were or not.


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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#63

Post by rkka_arvgk » 26 May 2022, 02:12

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
26 May 2022, 00:56
wm wrote:
26 May 2022, 00:53
I've read Mein Kampf many times.
Ick
Yes, Ick, but I have a copy too, and have read it myself. It's a surreal, mind-bending combination of penetrating insight into mass human motivation at times of distress & how to exploit it for your objectives, and lunatic, unachievable objectives of utmost evil.

It contributes a lot to understanding why he was the way he was, and how he bent every single element of German national political life, except the Left, to his will.

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#64

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 26 May 2022, 02:18

rkka_arvgk wrote:
26 May 2022, 02:12
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
26 May 2022, 00:56
wm wrote:
26 May 2022, 00:53
I've read Mein Kampf many times.
Ick
Yes, Ick, but I have a copy too, and have read it myself. It's a surreal, mind-bending combination of penetrating insight into mass human motivation at times of distress & how to exploit it for your objectives, and lunatic, unachievable objectives of utmost evil.

It contributes a lot to understanding why he was the way he was, and how he bent every single element of German national political life, except the Left, to his will.
Agreed but why read it "multiple times?" Doesn't seem a sufficiently deep text to merit multiple readings... I read it once and just go back to it for citations.
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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#65

Post by wm » 26 May 2022, 03:09

rkka_arvgk wrote:
26 May 2022, 02:09
Therefore it is a valid logical conclusion that prewar Nazi racial theory considered Poles & Ukrainians to be untermenschen, whether Adolf explicitly said they were or not.
Analogously, no convincing race-theoretical explanation could be found to justify the discrimination against Poles. According to National Socialist racial doctrine, all European peoples belonged to the family of the Aryans and were thus fundamentally “racially equivalent,” that is, recognized as equal before the law.
Discrimination against Poles was justified, however, because, like all Slavs, they represented a major völkisch and racial threat to Germany. Yet here, too, such reasoning was merely pretext.

In his early statements on the Slavs, Hitler did not even mention the Poles, because at that time Poland was signatory to the Non-Aggression Treaty of 1934, and its position in the National Socialist scheme of conquest was not yet settled.

The “ethnic threat” posed by the Poles was not discovered until the invasion of Poland. The placement of the Poles under rule of special law was done from fundamentally political motives, which were considerably intensified by the antipathy toward the Poles that, for reasons both political (voting disputes in East and West Prussia, fighting in West Prussia and Upper Silesia, and the activities of the Freikorps) and religious, had been present in the eastern part of Germany in a particularly intense form since 1918.

The main reason, however, was that the Nazi leadership considered the Poles to be the most dangerous of all peoples in Eastern Europe on account of their staunch insistence upon their national rights and identity as a people.

"Non-Germans" under the Third Reich by Diemut Majer

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#66

Post by wm » 26 May 2022, 03:22

rkka_arvgk wrote:
26 May 2022, 02:09
The Polish gvt refused to even discuss the matter, until 23 August, with only 3 days left until the planned start date of the German attack on Poland.
Is it even possible to refuse if they don't even try to ask you?

This is what Henry Kissinger wrote about it. Stalin demanded Poland and the Baltic states and all four countries resented the idea to be handed over to him.
Yet it was not Great Britain’s clumsy diplomatic conduct that had led to the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The real problem was that Great Britain could not meet Stalin’s terms without abandoning every principle it had stood for since the end of the First World War.
There was no point in drawing a line against the rape of small countries by Germany if that implied having to grant the same privilege to the Soviet Union.
...
To their moral credit, the democracies could not bring themselves to consecrate another set of aggressions, not even on behalf of their own security.
...

Stalin had a strategy but no principles; the democracies defended principle without ever developing a strategy.
...
Russia played a decisive role in the outbreak of both wars. In 1914, Russia had contributed to the start of the war by rigidly adhering to its alliance with Serbia and to an inflexible mobilization schedule; in 1939, when Stalin relieved Hitler of the fear of a two-front war, he must have known that he was making a general war inevitable. In 1914, Russia had gone to war to preserve its honor; in 1939, it encouraged war to share in the spoils of Hitler’s conquests.

Stalin’s Bazaar by Henry Kissinger
"Stalin relieved Hitler of the fear of a two-front war" means that even neutral or helpful Russia was a huge threat to Nazi Germany. The negotiations were about creating a credible deterrence to the Nazis, not about defending Poland (the Allies assumed Poland would be lost early), and Stalin refused to be part of the deterrence - because it was unprofitable.

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#67

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 26 May 2022, 03:36

wm wrote:
26 May 2022, 03:22

This is what Henry Kissinger wrote about it. Stalin demanded Poland and the Baltic states and all four countries resented the idea to be handed over to him.
Yet it was not Great Britain’s clumsy diplomatic conduct that had led to the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The real problem was that Great Britain could not meet Stalin’s terms without abandoning every principle it had stood for since the end of the First World War.
There was no point in drawing a line against the rape of small countries by Germany if that implied having to grant the same privilege to the Soviet Union.
A more cynical British leadership might have drawn the line at the Soviet border instead of Poland’s, thereby greatly improving Great Britain’s bargaining position with the Soviet Union and giving Stalin a serious incentive to negotiate about protecting Poland.
Yeah let's ask one the latter 20th Century's greatest criminals for his opinion on the matter...

Kissinger is pretending that the Polish guarantee was a matter of principle from Chamberlain. That is complete garbage. The guarantee was given without a moment's reflection during a momentary crisis (false alert of possible German invasion), and Chamberlain was exploring ways to walk it back once he realized his error. It was given days after Hitler marched into Czechia, leaving Chamberlain humiliated and lost. If he had really wanted it to bind him and to deter Hitler, he would have matched it with a military alliance as soon as possible. Instead that didn't happen until a few days before the German invasion.

By inventing a broad, coherent rationale for the impulsive Polish guarantee, Kissinger is misstating the historical record.

And he knew better - he's a pretty smart guy. The author is a Cold Warrior, he's committed to the SU being the Bad Guys regardless of the truth. The excerpt is paradigmatic of the way the Cold War warped the historiography of WW2's origins. It's a lie. It is an actual instance of capitalist propaganda - scholarship serving the imperial state.

That Kissinger is lying is obvious in his evocation of a "less cynical British leadership." Have you read any of his International Relations scholarship or know of his record? The idea that Henry Kissinger would earnestly praise a state for NOT being cynical is ridiculous.
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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#68

Post by rkka_arvgk » 26 May 2022, 04:31

wm wrote:
26 May 2022, 03:09
rkka_arvgk wrote:
26 May 2022, 02:09
Therefore it is a valid logical conclusion that prewar Nazi racial theory considered Poles & Ukrainians to be untermenschen, whether Adolf explicitly said they were or not.
Analogously, no convincing race-theoretical explanation could be found to justify the discrimination against Poles. According to National Socialist racial doctrine, all European peoples belonged to the family of the Aryans and were thus fundamentally “racially equivalent,” that is, recognized as equal before the law.
Discrimination against Poles was justified, however, because, like all Slavs, they represented a major völkisch and racial threat to Germany. Yet here, too, such reasoning was merely pretext.

In his early statements on the Slavs, Hitler did not even mention the Poles, because at that time Poland was signatory to the Non-Aggression Treaty of 1934, and its position in the National Socialist scheme of conquest was not yet settled.

The “ethnic threat” posed by the Poles was not discovered until the invasion of Poland. The placement of the Poles under rule of special law was done from fundamentally political motives, which were considerably intensified by the antipathy toward the Poles that, for reasons both political (voting disputes in East and West Prussia, fighting in West Prussia and Upper Silesia, and the activities of the Freikorps) and religious, had been present in the eastern part of Germany in a particularly intense form since 1918.

The main reason, however, was that the Nazi leadership considered the Poles to be the most dangerous of all peoples in Eastern Europe on account of their staunch insistence upon their national rights and identity as a people.

"Non-Germans" under the Third Reich by Diemut Majer
Under the legal and administrative system of Nazi Germany, people categorized as Fremdvölkische (literally, "foreign people") were subject to special laws that restricted their rights, limited their protection under the law, and exposed them to extraordinary legal sanctions and brutal, extralegal police actions. These special laws, one of the central constitutional principles of the Third Reich, applied to Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, non-Europeans: anyone perceived as different or racially inferior, whether German citizens or not.

There's that "Slav" word again, lumped together with others the Nazis considered different or racially inferior. Untermenschen, in other words.

"Is it even possible to refuse if they don't even try to ask you?"

The Polish gvt went out of their way to advertise it. What's the point of asking, when your counterpart is vociferously rejecting the idea?

" "Stalin relieved Hitler of the fear of a two-front war" means that even neutral or helpful Russia was a huge threat to Nazi Germany. The negotiations were about creating a credible deterrence to the Nazis, not about defending Poland (the Allies assumed Poland would be lost early), and Stalin refused to be part of the deterrence "

Hitler did not fear a two-front war in 1939, because Chamberlain & Daladier had done absolutely nothing to prepare a military intervention in the event of a German attack on Poland. Throughout Poland's brief struggle, in a one-front war for Germany, the Anglo-French made no attempt whatsoever to assist the Polish war effort in any way. Nor did the German high command consider the Soviet armed forces a major threat, for they were Jew-Bolshevik-ridden Slavic untermenschen, racially incapable of organizing an effective war effort. One good kick and the whole rotten structure would collapse.

Adolf did fear Anglo-French military intervention, for he had massed overwhelming force against Poland, and had left little to defend Germany's western borders. On like pg 2 of Manstein's "Lost Victories" Manstein attributed the rapid conquest of Poland to two factors:

1) The German high command accepted enormous risk in the west in order to mass forces against Poland.
2) The Western allies took no action to exploit that risk.

So among many other things, you are totally mistaken on why Germany did not face a two front war in 1939. It was because of Anglo-French inaction, not because of anything the Soviet gvt did or did not do.

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#69

Post by wm » 27 May 2022, 23:31

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
26 May 2022, 03:36
By inventing a broad, coherent rationale for the impulsive Polish guarantee, Kissinger is misstating the historical record.
He doesn't offer any rationale.
He says the guarantee was a mistake.
Because it made the war between Britain/France and Germany almost certain.
And because the war was almost certain Stalin had no reason to join a (presumably highly devastating) war between his enemies far away from his country's borders.
We see nothing wrong in their having a good hard fight and weakening each other.
...
We can maneuver, pit one side against the other to set them fighting with each other as fiercely as possible.
...
Next time we’ll urge on the other side.
That was realpolitik at its finest.

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#70

Post by wm » 28 May 2022, 00:04

That the monster in human form, who sentenced millions to death for his own benefit was going to fight a war for the benefit of his ideological enemies: Britain, France, and Poland is beyond absurd.

Especially that Stalin would have to consciously throw himself under the German bus (with his decapitated and disorganized by him army), knowing that the Allies weren't even capable to help him in the next year - or more likely two years.

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#71

Post by ljadw » 28 May 2022, 17:01

wm wrote:
27 May 2022, 23:31
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
26 May 2022, 03:36
By inventing a broad, coherent rationale for the impulsive Polish guarantee, Kissinger is misstating the historical record.
He doesn't offer any rationale.
He says the guarantee was a mistake.
Because it made the war between Britain/France and Germany almost certain.
And because the war was almost certain Stalin had no reason to join a (presumably highly devastating) war between his enemies far away from his country's borders.
We see nothing wrong in their having a good hard fight and weakening each other.
...
We can maneuver, pit one side against the other to set them fighting with each other as fiercely as possible.
...
Next time we’ll urge on the other side.
That was realpolitik at its finest.
The guarentee had nothing to do with the Allied DOW and did not have a serious impact on the German,Russian and Polish strategy .

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#72

Post by ljadw » 28 May 2022, 17:03

rkka_arvgk wrote:
26 May 2022, 04:31
wm wrote:
26 May 2022, 03:09
rkka_arvgk wrote:
26 May 2022, 02:09
Therefore it is a valid logical conclusion that prewar Nazi racial theory considered Poles & Ukrainians to be untermenschen, whether Adolf explicitly said they were or not.
Analogously, no convincing race-theoretical explanation could be found to justify the discrimination against Poles. According to National Socialist racial doctrine, all European peoples belonged to the family of the Aryans and were thus fundamentally “racially equivalent,” that is, recognized as equal before the law.
Discrimination against Poles was justified, however, because, like all Slavs, they represented a major völkisch and racial threat to Germany. Yet here, too, such reasoning was merely pretext.

In his early statements on the Slavs, Hitler did not even mention the Poles, because at that time Poland was signatory to the Non-Aggression Treaty of 1934, and its position in the National Socialist scheme of conquest was not yet settled.

The “ethnic threat” posed by the Poles was not discovered until the invasion of Poland. The placement of the Poles under rule of special law was done from fundamentally political motives, which were considerably intensified by the antipathy toward the Poles that, for reasons both political (voting disputes in East and West Prussia, fighting in West Prussia and Upper Silesia, and the activities of the Freikorps) and religious, had been present in the eastern part of Germany in a particularly intense form since 1918.

The main reason, however, was that the Nazi leadership considered the Poles to be the most dangerous of all peoples in Eastern Europe on account of their staunch insistence upon their national rights and identity as a people.

"Non-Germans" under the Third Reich by Diemut Majer
Under the legal and administrative system of Nazi Germany, people categorized as Fremdvölkische (literally, "foreign people") were subject to special laws that restricted their rights, limited their protection under the law, and exposed them to extraordinary legal sanctions and brutal, extralegal police actions. These special laws, one of the central constitutional principles of the Third Reich, applied to Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, non-Europeans: anyone perceived as different or racially inferior, whether German citizens or not.

There's that "Slav" word again, lumped together with others the Nazis considered different or racially inferior. Untermenschen, in other words.

"Is it even possible to refuse if they don't even try to ask you?"

The Polish gvt went out of their way to advertise it. What's the point of asking, when your counterpart is vociferously rejecting the idea?

" "Stalin relieved Hitler of the fear of a two-front war" means that even neutral or helpful Russia was a huge threat to Nazi Germany. The negotiations were about creating a credible deterrence to the Nazis, not about defending Poland (the Allies assumed Poland would be lost early), and Stalin refused to be part of the deterrence "

Hitler did not fear a two-front war in 1939, because Chamberlain & Daladier had done absolutely nothing to prepare a military intervention in the event of a German attack on Poland. Throughout Poland's brief struggle, in a one-front war for Germany, the Anglo-French made no attempt whatsoever to assist the Polish war effort in any way. Nor did the German high command consider the Soviet armed forces a major threat, for they were Jew-Bolshevik-ridden Slavic untermenschen, racially incapable of organizing an effective war effort. One good kick and the whole rotten structure would collapse.

Adolf did fear Anglo-French military intervention, for he had massed overwhelming force against Poland, and had left little to defend Germany's western borders. On like pg 2 of Manstein's "Lost Victories" Manstein attributed the rapid conquest of Poland to two factors:

1) The German high command accepted enormous risk in the west in order to mass forces against Poland.
2) The Western allies took no action to exploit that risk.

So among many other things, you are totally mistaken on why Germany did not face a two front war in 1939. It was because of Anglo-French inaction, not because of anything the Soviet gvt did or did not do.
Lost Victories is only good as toilet paper .

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#73

Post by wm » 28 May 2022, 22:02

ljadw wrote:
28 May 2022, 17:01
The guarentee had nothing to do with the Allied DOW and did not have a serious impact on the German,Russian and Polish strategy .
It had a serious impact.
Before the British guarantee to Poland, Stalin had had to be wary lest Soviet overtures to Germany cause the democracies to wash their hands of Eastern Europe, leaving him to face Hitler alone.
After the guarantee, he had an assurance not only that Great Britain would fight for his Western frontier but that the war would start 600 miles to the west, on the German-Polish frontier.
Stalin had only two remaining concerns. First, he had to make certain that the British guarantee to Poland was solid; second, he would have to find out whether the German option really existed.
Paradoxically, the more Great Britain demonstrated its good faith with respect to Poland, which it was required to do in order to deter Hitler, the more maneuvering room Stalin gained with respect to Germany.
Great Britain sought to preserve the Eastern European status quo. Stalin aimed for the greatest range of choices and to overturn the Versailles settlement.
Chamberlain wanted to prevent war.
Stalin, who felt war was inevitable, wanted the benefits of war without participating in it.

Stalin’s Bazaar by Henry Kissinger

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#74

Post by ljadw » 29 May 2022, 09:39

The guarantee was not an assurance that Britain and France would fight if Hitler attacked Poland, because the content of the assurance was, simplified ,that B and F would do what they could do .
And,without a guarantee, B + F would still declare war on Germany .
Other point : Kissinger is wrong when he said that Britain ( he always is neglecting France ) sought to preserve the Eastern European status quo,because a change of this status quo was needed to preserve peace .
For Stalin, it was not about Poland, but about Eastern Poland (Polish Ukraine or Ukrainian Poland ) .
The independence of that region was a mortal danger for him .
The best solution was, not that it would become a part of the USSR, but that it would remain a part of Poland .
The occupation of Eastern Poland by Germany was also a mortal danger for the USSR .
If Germany attacked Poland, Stalin could not help Poland, he could only prevent Germany from taking Eastern Poland .
For Stalin,peace ( better : no war ) was better than war .Without war, he always could have occupied the Baltic States : he didn't do it,because there was no need for it . When he did it, the reason was that there was a reason for it .He feared that the Baltic States could/would ally with Germany .

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Re: What if: Anglo-Franco-Soviet Alliance in 1939

#75

Post by wm » 29 May 2022, 20:35

It was Britain because Britain was the prime mover, and France was passive. So there was no reason to mention France.
ljadw wrote:
29 May 2022, 09:39
The independence of that region was a mortal danger for him.
And when did he say that pre-Hitler-Stalin pact? Do we have a date?
And why? Was Poland going to invade Russia?

Was the 300+ kilometers to Moscow a danger to Stalinist Russia? And the 100+ to Berlin wasn't much greater danger? Strangely Germany was OK with that.
map.png

ljadw wrote:
29 May 2022, 09:39
When he did it, the reason was that there was a reason for it .He feared that the Baltic States could/would ally with Germany .
That's straight from the annals of Stalinst propaganda.
The Baltic States were honestly handed over by Hitler to Stalin - to be raped at will by Stalin. Hitler even removed all Germans from the Baltic States to make the rape more palatable.

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