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Shilka -> RE: OT: Germans and Russians Working Together? (12/20/2020 12:29:22 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: spence
I didn't watch the whole video but it is true. Internationally, both countries were pariahs (for different reasons). Germany got to try out some equipment and tactics that they were prohibited from having by the Treaty of Versailles and the Russians, who had recently lost both WW1 and their invasion of Poland got some valuable training along with some manufacturing experience. Fortunately for Western Allies, Stalin's purges during the late 30s didn't kill off all the soldiers who benefited from the training.
Despite the fact that even after the 1917 Brest-Litovsk treaty, some German units continued fighting the red Russians (bolsheviks) in the soon-to-be-born Baltic states, and participated in the Finnish civil war as well during 1918 before the German surrender, there were a lot of co-operation and trading going on during the interwar years regardless of potential differences in political views of the different regimes. Even USA and UK were involved in the Russian civil war, but eventually as the whites lost, it meant their influence in the country was gone. It didn't prevent later co-operation or trading with the Bolshevik regime, although it did produce the original conditions of distrust and coldness between the Bolsheviks and USA/UK. Remember that most large European countries were until that point aristocratic and their relations were mostly based on ruling family blood ties, which was now broken and a boatload of new nations were carved up from the previous German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Pre-WW1 relations between the largest European nations were actually pretty good (excluding France and Germany).
The German established tank school/proving grounds in Russia was one example, which provided mutual benefits for both. All branches of armed forces in Germany were essentially dismantled and hence they needed to find out different sorts of ways to preserve and develop technical and doctrinal experience. Another example is the naval design shell company established in the Netherlands, which was important for submarine development and probably had influence in the development of Dutch interwar submarines as well. Even Henry Ford, and GM through its Opel subsidiary, were co-operating with the Nazi regime before and somewhat during the war. Yet another example of this type of international co-operation was the Sino-German treaty going on in the interwar years, before and during the Nazi regime and which was ended (somewhat reluctantly) around the time of the tripartite pact to avoid antagonizing Japan.
So the Weimar and preceding Nazi regimes were not internationally that isolated at all.
In the 1930s Germany was a very large (if not largest) and growing economy in Europe which was consuming tremendous amounts of rare metals, for which Russia was a major supplier so trade tended to occur in addition to various forms of co-operation which occurred at the time and earlier. As whatever trade decreased between USA and Germany decreased, the trade with the Soviet Union increased. The trade with some south American countries, notably Argentina and Venezuela were naturally cut off at the start of the war, as well.
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