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RangerJoe -> RE: Semi OT: How Russia is trying to "falsify/alter/modify" the history and their role at the start of (9/2/2019 3:37:52 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Fishbed
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ORIGINAL: Dili
Explain to me why for Soviet Union the war against Nazis was an Imperialist War for Capitalist profit?
Why Soviet Union tried to undermine any resistance against Nazis?
Who were the first collaborationists in France? What was the name of the party banned in France 1939?
Who sabotaged industries in France and Britain?
Who called on artists to undermined the resistance against Nazis?
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Do you want an explanation or was that rhetorical? Because from the tone of your answer I kinda feel you are not going to believe a single word of what I am going to say. I mean, part of the answer was already contained in the original message [:o]
I never said that Stalin was committed to the ideal of Western democracies (even though I wouldn't call the France and the UK of the 1930s exactly "idealistic"... [:D]
But I don't need to remind you who was fighting whom first in Spain in 1936. Soviet communism is the seminal foe of Fascism, and that works the other way around. They bred on the same audience and address common issues in a non-compatible way. The diplomatic moves of the late 30s I have mentioned earlier show that Stalin considered Nazi Germany to be a bigger immediate threat than Capitalist countries were - the same way the Anti-Komintern Pact in 1936 reminds us that if the Axis existed at all, it was to counter the influence of the Soviet Union. It is quite the irony indeed that this war we name WW2 in Europe actually started with an alliance between the very two nations whose existence was mutually exclusive and the cause for the actual mess to begin with, but in every regard we Western allies were a side-show preparing Nazi Germany for the great jump that was Barbarossa - or giving USSR time to muster its strength for the next round (or even its own great jump that didn't happen earlier).
I don't really see your point - of course the Communist Party got forbidden in 1939 in France, following the German-Soviet pact. You ask the question like if I had denied the whole thing. And you sort of (dangerously so if I may) invert the logic here. The PCF (French CP) was banned in a matter of days and its members arrested because they were Communists, not because they were collaborationists. Please, you are quite smarter than that. [;)]
The Pact was such a secret thing that no national branch was made aware of it before it came out in the news, and the War Cabinet in France jumped on this occasion to get rid of a clear and present threat in its back - it doesn't mean that threat had materialized at all in the meantime. The PCF went on with its social actions when possible (anti-war propaganda, strikes), and by this it was undermining the war effort, but not all French communists were unpatriotic beasts - and the PCF could hardly do much with the French Police actively on its tail. The PCF mainly went into hiding and activated its clandestine cells - that is the reason why, mind you, the Communists were also the first armed resistance organization to rise in France (see l'Organisation Spéciale created in the summer of 1940 with the purpose of protecting the militant members, which will later be the core from which communist-aligned armed guerilla Francs-Tireurs Partisans will blossom). The Communists knew how to dance different tunes in private and in public, and in France in particular they could rely on the former Spanish republicans as superb, qualified working-class muscle. Besides, once the French were done for, the Nazis didn't exactly opened the floodgates and released in mass the Communist members and sympathizers the French Republic had put away, nor did Vichy started to see them as model citizens, you know that right...
Thinking the Communists were not preparing for the next round in France as much as everywhere else would be somewhat naive. If I might add there again, pragmatism and real-politik worked both ways. It is funny how the Pact with the Nazis is seen as a d*ck move because it worked against us, but we all find it natural that everybody immediately jumped in the hype train to help the USSR in June 1941. In every regard, our elders were less dramatic about this than we are today, mainly because everybody was after its own interest. Truth is, again, we didn't do much against the Beast in the later 30s, they did, and we didn't join them in the fight. When our time finally came, they did let us down - or more exactly by letting us down they allowed the whole thing (Poland, Baltic states etc...) to happen the way it did (although it is obvious that we were were somewhat relieved with the concept that Fascists and Communists were now in the same bag then). When finally they got to eat their own sandwich full of crap on June 1941, we all decided that the Nazi threat was too much to contain without a unholy alliance both sides had initially rejected. Still, naturally they will put it in a way more heroic light than I am with a good bagload of hindsight, but at the end of the day they were in this fight first - I am more than ready to give them that.
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ORIGINAL: RangerJoe
Also, why were there demonstrations against Lend Lease and other assistance to Allied powers in the United States that suddenly stopped on 22 June 1941?
Now now, Joe, you're not suggesting that Isolationists were all Communist sleeper agents, are you [:D]
As Stalin said, useful idiots. It did not need to be all of them, just enough in either leadership roles or with access ($$) to leaders.
Again, same case as above, two stars can align without being on the same orbit in the name of a short-term "harmony of interests". Mind you, we still do that all the time even today with less than respectable people around the world. [;)]
An enemy of my enemy may be my friend, or may be another enemy. So the lesser of two evils may be worked with to destroy the greater one.
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