True, but considering how the Nazi’s viewed Slavs, it’s still unbelievable that they could support that scum.
[True, but considering how the Nazis viewed Slavs, its still unbelievable that they could support that scum.]
They celebrate those of their people who fought the Soviets alongside the Nazis, not because they were Nazis (because as Ukrainians, they couldn’t ever be), but because they fought the Russians. Ukrainians fought the Russians as Germany’s allies but alliances of convenience like that are pretty much the historical pattern. The French and the British fought the Russians during the Crimean War because they did not want an already gargantuan Russia conquering all of the Turkish empire, not because they were great friends with the Turks. A Russia that included all of the Turkish empire might be too big for both Britain and France to resist, as it encroached on their territory.
We fought Germany as Russia’s ally during WWII not because we were great friends with the Russians, but because we viewed the Germans as the more dangerous enemy. In fact, without Russia’s alliance with Germany, during which they divided up Poland, arranged a peace treaty (broken when Germany invaded Russia) and made arrangements for supplying Germany during its invasion of France, WWII might never have occurred. But we jumped in anyway, because either Russia or Germany was going to win, and whoever won would monopolize continental Europe, without American intervention. The same dynamic was at work here in terms of the US interest re fighting in Europe - a Germany that included the rest of Europe and Russia or a Russia that included all of Europe would be too big and powerful to resist.
In Asia, key figures worked for Imperial Japan, with Indonesia’s, Singapore’s, Taiwan’s, South Korea’s and Burma’s postwar leaders all having served in the Japanese government bureaucracy or military during their occupation of the Far East. They all had their own agendas and while their nations were occupied, the occupying power was the only game in town. Note that most of the Continental Army’s military leaders had fought for the Crown in the French and Indian War. The idea that Ukrainians should be ashamed of having worked with the Nazis is a little off-kilter - they worked with them in an area where they had a common interest - the eviction of Russians from their ancestral lands. The Russians weren’t exactly angels when it came to suppressing native unrest during their territorial conquests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Chechens_and_Ingush
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_conquest_of_Siberia#Indigenous_population_loss
The principal difference between Russia and the US is that Russia’s “Indians” were weak powers to the East that hadn’t progressed much beyond the bow and arrow age, whereas Russia had mastered Renaissance-era improvements in weaponry and tactics to sweep all before them in much the same way the Mongols had, in an earlier age, fought their way to Moscow.